"My dear, it's simply this: when Andrew Carstyle married her years ago--Heaven knows why he did; he's one of the Albany Carstyles, you know, and she was a daughter of old Deacon Ash of South Millbrook--well, when he married her he had a tidy little income, and I suppose the bride expected to set up an establishment in New York and be hand-in-glove with the whole Carstyle clan. But whether he was ashamed of her from the first, or for some other unexplained reason, he bought a country-place and settled down here for life. For a few years they lived comfortably enough, and she had plenty of smart clothes, and drove about in a victoria calling on the summer people. Then, when the beautiful Irene was about ten years old, Mr. Carstyle's only brother died, and it turned out that he had made away with a lot of trust-property. It was a horrid business: over three hundred thousand dollars were gone, and of course most of it had belonged to widows and orphans. As soon as the facts were made known, Andrew Carstyle announced that he would pay back what his brother had stolen. He sold his country-place and his wife's carriage, and they moved to the little house they live in now. Mr. Carstyle's income is probably not as large as his wife would like to have it thought, and though I'm told he puts aside, a good part of it every year to pay off his brother's obligations, I fancy the debt won't be discharged for some time to come. To help things along he opened a law office--he had studied law in his youth--but though he is said to be clever I hear that he has very little to do. People are afraid of him: he's too dry and quiet. n.o.body believes in a man who doesn't believe in himself, and Mr. Carstyle always seems to be winking at you through a slit in his professional manner. People don't like it--his wife doesn't like it. I believe she would have accepted the sacrifice of the country-place and the carriage if he had struck an att.i.tude and talked about doing his duty. It was his regarding the whole thing as a matter of course that exasperated her. What is the use of doing something difficult in a way that makes it look perfectly easy? I feel sorry for Mrs. Carstyle. She's lost her house and her carriage, and she hasn't been allowed to be heroic."

Vibart had listened attentively.

"I wonder what Miss Carstyle thinks of it?" he mused.

Mrs. Vance looked at him with a tentative smile. "I wonder what _you_ think of Miss Carstyle?" she returned,

His answer rea.s.sured her.

"I think she takes after her mother," he said.

"Ah," cried his aunt cheerfully, "then I needn't write to _your_ mother, and I can have Irene at all my parties!"

Miss Carstyle was an important factor in the restricted social combinations of a Millbrook hostess. A local beauty is always a useful addition to a Sat.u.r.day-to-Monday house-party, and the beautiful Irene was served up as a perennial novelty to the jaded guests of the summer colony. As Vibart's aunt remarked, she was perfect till she became playful, and she never became playful till the third day.

Under these conditions, it was natural that Vibart should see a good deal of the young lady, and before he was aware of it he had drifted into the anomalous position of paying court to the daughter in order to ingratiate himself with the father. Miss Carstyle was beautiful, Vibart was young, and the days were long in his aunt's s.p.a.cious and distinguished house; but it was really the desire to know something more of Mr. Carstyle that led the young man to partake so often of that gentleman's overdone mutton. Vibart's imagination had been touched by the discovery that this little huddled-up man, instead of travelling with the wind, was persistently facing a domestic gale of considerable velocity. That he should have paid off his brother's debt at one stroke was to the young man a conceivable feat; but that he should go on methodically and uninterruptedly acc.u.mulating the needed amount, under the perpetual accusation of Irene's inadequate frocks and Mrs. Carstyle's apologies for the mutton, seemed to Vibart proof of unexampled heroism. Mr. Carstyle was as inaccessible as the average American parent, and led a life so detached from the preoccupations of his womankind that Vibart had some difficulty in fixing his attention.

To Mr. Carstyle, Vibart was simply the inevitable young man who had been hanging about the house ever since Irene had left school; and Vibart's efforts to differentiate himself from this enamored abstraction were hampered by Mrs. Carstyle's cheerful a.s.sumption that he _was_ the young man, and by Irene's frank appropriation of his visits.

In this extremity he suddenly observed a slight but significant change in the manner of the two ladies. Irene, instead of charging him with being sarcastic and horrid, and declaring herself unable to believe a word he said, began to receive his remarks with the impersonal smile which he had seen her accord to the married men of his aunt's house-parties; while Mrs. Carstyle, talking over his head to an invisible but evidently sympathetic and intelligent listener, debated the propriety of Irene's accepting an invitation to spend the month of August at Narragansett. When Vibart, rashly trespa.s.sing on the rights of this unseen oracle, remarked that a few weeks at the seash.o.r.e would make a delightful change for Miss Carstyle, the ladies looked at him and then laughed.

It was at this point that Vibart, for the first time, found himself observed by Mr. Carstyle. They were grouped about the debris of a luncheon which had ended precipitously with veal stew (Mrs. Carstyle explaining that poor cooks _always_ failed with their sweet dish when there was company) and Mr. Carstyle, his hands thrust in his pockets, his lean baggy-coated shoulders pressed against his chair-back, sat contemplating his guest with a smile of unmistakable approval. When Vibart caught his eye the smile vanished, and Mr. Carstyle, dropping his gla.s.ses from the bridge of his thin nose, looked out of the window with the expression of a man determined to prove an alibi. But Vibart was sure of the smile: it had established, between his host and himself, a complicity which Mr. Carstyle's attempted evasion served only to confirm.

On the strength of this incident Vibart, a few days later, called at Mr. Carstyle's office. Ostensibly, the young man had come to ask, on his aunt's behalf, some question on a point at issue between herself and the Millbrook telephone company; but his purpose in offering to perform the errand had been the hope of taking up his intercourse with Mr. Carstyle where that gentleman's smile had left it. Vibart was not disappointed.

In a dingy office, with a single window looking out on a blank wall, he found Mr. Carstyle, in an alpaca coat, reading Montaigne.

It evidently did not occur to him that Vibart had come on business, and the warmth of his welcome gave the young man a sense of furnishing the last word in a conjugal argument in which, for once, Mr. Carstyle had come off triumphant.

The legal question disposed of, Vibart reverted to Montaigne: had Mr.

Carstyle seen young So-and-so's volume of essays? There was one on Montaigne that had a decided flavor: the point of view was curious.

Vibart was surprised to find that Mr. Carstyle had heard of young So-and-so. Clever young men are given to thinking that their elders have never got beyond Macaulay; but Mr. Carstyle seemed sufficiently familiar with recent literature not to take it too seriously. He accepted Vibart's offer of young So-and-so's volume, admitting that his own library was not exactly up-to-date.

Vibart went away musing. The next day he came back with the volume of essays. It seemed to be tacitly understood that he was to call at the office when he wished to see Mr. Carstyle, whose legal engagements did not seriously interfere with the pursuit of literature.

For a week or ten days Mrs. Carstyle, in Vibart's presence, continued to take counsel with her unseen adviser on the subject of her daughter's visit to Narragansett. Once or twice Irene dropped her impersonal smile to tax Vibart with not caring whether she went or not; and Mrs. Carstyle seized a moment of _tete-a-tete_ to confide in him that the dear child hated the idea of leaving, and was going only because her friend Mrs.

Higby would not let her off. Of course, if it had not been for Mr.

Carstyle's peculiarities they would have had their own seaside home--at Newport, probably: Mrs. Carstyle preferred the tone of Newport--and Irene would not have been dependent on the _charity_ of her friends; but as it was, they must be thankful for small mercies, and Mrs. Higby was certainly very kind in her way, and had a charming social position--for Narragansett.

These confidences, however, were soon superseded by an exchange, between mother and daughter, of increasingly frequent allusions to the delights of Narragansett, the popularity of Mrs. Higby, and the jolliness of her house; with an occasional reference on Mrs. Carstyle's part to the probability of Hewlett Bain's being there as usual--hadn't Irene heard from Mrs. Higby that he was to be there? Upon this note Miss Carstyle at length departed, leaving Vibart to the undisputed enjoyment of her father's company.

Vibart had at no time a keen taste for the summer joys of Millbrook, and the family obligation which, for several months of the year, kept him at his aunt's side (Mrs. Vance was a childless widow and he filled the onerous post of favorite nephew) gave a sense of compulsion to the light occupations that chequered his leisure. Mrs. Vance, who fancied herself lonely when he was away, was too much engaged with notes, telegrams and arriving and departing guests, to do more than breathlessly smile upon his presence, or implore him to take the dullest girl of the party for a drive (and would he go by way of Millbrook, like a dear, and stop at the market to ask why the lobsters hadn't come?); and the house itself, and the guests who came and went in it like people rushing through a railway-station, offered no points of repose to his thoughts. Some houses are companions in themselves: the walls, the book-shelves, the very chairs and tables, have the qualities of a sympathetic mind; but Mrs. Vance's interior was as impersonal as the setting of a cla.s.sic drama.

These conditions made Vibart cultivate an a.s.siduous exchange of books between himself and Mr. Carstyle. The young man went down almost daily to the little house in the town, where Mrs. Carstyle, who had now an air of receiving him in curl-papers, and of not always immediately distinguishing him from the piano-tuner, made no effort to detain him on his way to her husband's study.

III

Now and then, at the close of one of Vibart's visits, Mr. Carstyle put on a mildewed Panama hat and accompanied the young man for a mile or two on his way home. The road to Mrs. Vance's lay through one of the most amiable suburbs of Millbrook, and Mr. Carstyle, walking with his slow uneager step, his hat pushed back, and his stick dragging behind him, seemed to take a philosophic pleasure in the aspect of the trim lawns and opulent gardens.

Vibart could never induce his companion to prolong his walk as far as Mrs. Vance's drawing-room; but one afternoon, when the distant hills lay blue beyond the twilight of overarching elms, the two men strolled on into the country past that lady's hospitable gateposts.

It was a still day, the road was deserted, and every sound came sharply through the air. Mr. Carstyle was in the midst of a disquisition on Diderot, when he raised his head and stood still.

"What's that?" he said. "Listen!"

Vibart listened and heard a distant storm of hoof-beats. A moment later, a buggy drawn by a pair of trotters swung round the turn of the road.

It was about thirty yards off, coming toward them at full speed. The man who drove was leaning forward with outstretched arms; beside him sat a girl.

Suddenly Vibart saw Mr. Carstyle jump into the middle of the road, in front of the buggy. He stood there immovable, his arms extended, his legs apart, in an att.i.tude of indomitable resistance. Almost at the same moment Vibart realized that the man in the buggy had his horses in hand.

"They're not running!" Vibart shouted, springing into the road and catching Mr. Carstyle's alpaca sleeve. The older man looked around vaguely: he seemed dazed.

"Come away, sir, come away!" cried Vibart, gripping his arm. The buggy swept past them, and Mr. Carstyle stood in the dust gazing after it.

At length he drew out his handkerchief and wiped his forehead. He was very pale and Vibart noticed that his hand shook.

"That was a close call, sir, wasn't it? I suppose you thought they were running."

"Yes," said Mr. Carstyle slowly, "I thought they were running."

"It certainly looked like it for a minute. Let's sit down, shall we? I feel rather breathless myself."

Vibart saw that his friend could hardly stand. They seated themselves on a tree-trunk by the roadside, and Mr. Carstyle continued to wipe his forehead in silence.

At length he turned to Vibart and said abruptly:

"I made straight for the middle of the road, didn't I? If there _had_ been a runaway I should have stopped it?"

Vibart looked at him in surprise.

"You would have tried to, undoubtedly, unless I'd had time to drag you away."

Mr. Carstyle straightened his narrow shoulders.

"There was no hesitation, at all events? I--I showed no signs of--avoiding it?"

"I should say not, sir; it was I who funked it for you."

Mr. Carstyle was silent: his head had dropped forward and he looked like an old man.

"It was just my cursed luck again!" he exclaimed suddenly in a loud voice.

For a moment Vibart thought that he was wandering; but he raised his head and went on speaking in more natural tones.

"I daresay I appeared ridiculous enough to you just now, eh? Perhaps you saw all along that the horses weren't running? Your eyes are younger than mine; and then you're not always looking out for runaways, as I am.

Do you know that in thirty years I've never seen a runaway?"

"You're fortunate," said Vibart, still bewildered.