Harry Osgood's char-a-bancs was a vehicle he had had constructed for use over the rough country roads. It was built somewhat like the two boots of a drag put together without the body, and had seats for ten persons, besides the servants, placed in three rows, and all facing forward, while its lightness rendered it very convenient for the purpose for which it was designed. The servants stowed the luggage away and Mrs.

Osgood a.s.signed places to the party. The elder Miss Simpson was given the box seat, the next was occupied by Reine Merrit, Waterman, Howard-Jones, and the younger Miss Simpson, while Miss Warner, Van Vort, Duncan and Helen Osgood mounted to the remaining one.

"Let em go," shouted Osgood as he shoved the brake back. The grooms jumped from the horses heads, the wheelers sprang into their collars, and the trap rolled away from the station. "Oakhurst," the Osgood place, was a short four miles distant, and the road, a fairly good one for America, ran, for the most part, through a forest of maples, broken here and there by the country seat of some New Yorker, or an occasional farm.

The country was quite rolling, and the road, running as it did over a succession of small hills, made the driving a delight to Harry Osgood.

He was a coachman who had learned his trade in England, and having been a subscriber to the _Guildford Coach_ for two seasons, he was able to "sit his bench" like a veteran, and work his team with the smartness of one who has done "out of London roading"; but, with all his experience he was not a careful workman. He invariably made the four miles, from the station to his house, a galloping stage, and it was his pride to do the distance just under the twenty minutes; so, as soon as he turned the corner by the red barn, he sprang his team into a gallop, and they scarcely trotted another step of the way. Up hill and down the horses scampered, while the trap rocked like a ship at sea, now to this side and now to that, and when rounding the corners it often seemed as though the vehicle would certainly be turned over and the entire party landed in a hopeless muddle in the ditch; but nothing worse than a few feminine screams occurred until they reached the place where the road entered the Morristown turnpike.

Here Osgood espied another team coming up the main road, and as both traps were about an equal distance from the fork, he considered it a glorious chance for a race; so, giving his horses their heads, he urged them into a run. The driver of the other four, as ready for sport as Osgood, did the same, and the two traps came furiously on to where the roads met. The men cheered while the women held on to their seats, trembling with fright; and as the two traps came together at the fork, the other coachman tried to crowd in front of Osgood by taking some of the latter's road. There was no time to pull up, and seeing that his only safety from a wicked upset was to beat his rival, Osgood called on his horses for an extra spurt. The leaders were neck and neck, and the stranger had crowded him so far toward the edge of the road that he felt his hind wheel slipping down the embankment. The women shut their eyes and screamed while the men prepared to jump, but Osgood, acting with presence of mind, hit his rival's off-wheeler across the head with his whip, and "toweled" his own wheelers a good stinging cut across the shoulders. The wheel horse of the other trap, frightened at this sudden attack, jumped toward the pole, and, with his weight, swayed the vehicle toward the near side of the road, while Osgood's own wheelers sprang forward under the lashing and drew the trap onto the road before it had time to upset. Osgood darted ahead of his rival, and the party breathed freer as all visions of broken limbs and mangled bodies vanished from their frightened minds.

"Well done, old man," called Howard-Jones, who was himself a coaching man. "I like sport, but such a lubberly bit of work as that ought not to go unpunished."

"A man who will do a trick like that ought not to be trusted with a donkey," replied Osgood, as he pulled his team together after the excitement of the spurt.

"That's the trouble, nowadays," continued Howard-Jones. "After a lesson or two in the park, at team work, chaps set up as experienced coachmen."

"Who is the duffer, anyway?" called Duncan from behind.

"Jack Ashton. You know him, don't you?" replied Howard-Jones. "He has the place just beyond Harry's."

"I ought to," said Duncan. "He was in my cla.s.s at college. I didn't recognize him, though."

"Do you always forget your friends so easily?" said Helen Osgood with an ironical sparkle in her blue-black eyes.

"Sometimes I try to," Duncan answered.

"Are you always successful?" she asked.

"No, Helen," he whispered, "not always."

The trap had reached the stone gateway of the Osgood place. As they turned in, a call was sounded on the horn to announce their coming to the servants, and, after pa.s.sing the lodge, they could see the low, white country house, with rambling wings and numerous stables and outhouses in the rear, standing on a rise of ground at the end of the winding road. The place had been in the Osgood family for more than a hundred years. The oak-covered grounds about the house, and the green, rolling lawn in front, were typical of an English park; but the old wooden, colonial house, with its rambling additions and green blinds, its stately veranda and Doric columned portico, was American, of a type fast disappearing before the modern house decorator with his tints and _bibelots_.

The trap dashed up to the door, a knot of servants appeared, the grooms placed the ladder against the steps, and the guests alighted and were conducted to their apartments, where, for the next hour, the house party was occupied in the task of dressing for dinner.

CHAPTER X.

"I WILL LAUGH, TOO."

Harry Osgood was a man whose life was devoted to sport, and as he had inherited a large fortune, he was able to indulge his tastes to the fullest extent. Some one of his friends had said facetiously, that he was fond of horses, hounds, and his wife, in the order named, and no one who knew him well would deny that more of his life was spent in his stables and kennels than in his home. He had pa.s.sed many years in England, and most of his time there was spent in a hard riding country, where everyone, including the parson, followed the hounds. To Osgood, therefore, there was no sport like hunting, and no music like the inspiriting cry of the pack. He had been brought up on the "pigskin" and felt a supreme contempt for many of the men about New York who went in for sport, not for the love of it, but as a pose which enabled them to wear the pink and talk the slang of the shires. He had seen so many chaps of that description come an ignominious "cropper" at the first fence, that he paid little attention to the talk of the clubs, and never pa.s.sed his opinion on a would-be sportsman until he saw him in the hunting field. In his opinion it took something more than a pink coat to make a hunting man, so he endeavored to collect around him, in New Jersey, a few of as hard riders as ever followed hounds.

The Ess.e.x Hunt had become famous for its long runs, and as few men not born to the saddle cared to risk their necks over the rolling country about Morristown, this hunt was decidedly unpopular with the drawing-room sportsmen. However, if the field was small at the meet, it diminished little at the finish. For years Harry Osgood had been M. F.

M. of the Ess.e.x Hunt, and the pack could not have been in better hands, as he had a capital huntsman of long experience with the Quorn Hunt, and he devoted his own time, during the hunting season, entirely to the sport. Osgood had this peculiarity, however, he must have sport all the year round; so he was as much at home on the box seat, or at the tiller, as in the saddle. There is a popular impression that a man cannot be both a horseman and a sailor, but Harry Osgood had often refuted it. In the summer months, when there was no hunting, and it was too hot for driving, he went to sea, and his schooner, "Persephone," was one of the crack flyers of the N. Y. Y. C. fleet, while her owner was a qualified navigator who had taken an English Board of Trade yachtsman's certificate.

It is, therefore, not surprising that Helen Osgood entered little into her husband's life, for, except when frost was in the ground, he had no time to devote to his wife. Helen, however, heartily approved of his neglect, and, except for the fact that he compelled her to reside so much of the time in the country, was perfectly satisfied with her husband. She always managed to have at least one amusing man in the house who did not go in for hunting, and as she never interfered with Harry's sport, theirs was a _menage_ where husband and wife were both contented and amused. The world had been surprised at Harry Osgood's marriage, but probably no one was more astonished than himself. A country house, a rare day's sport, a good dinner, a cozy corner, a pair of bewitching blue-black eyes, a hasty word, and his fate was sealed before he had had time fully to realize the situation; but, having been "landed," as he expressed it, he made up his mind to bear it like a man and make the best of a hasty bargain. The marriage was, however, no surprise to Helen. She had carefully arranged it in her mind several months before, and Harry Osgood's proposal was but the consummation of her plans. He was precisely the kind of man that she considered an attractive, poor girl ought to marry, and women like Helen seem to possess a faculty for adjusting their lives according to their desires.

She was the only woman whom Duncan Grahame had ever asked to be his wife, and perhaps for the reason that she had refused him, she continued to occupy the most central cell of his somewhat honeycombed heart. She had declined to marry Duncan because, at that time, he was poor, and she knew that he possessed too quick a perception, and too arbitrary a disposition, to be a suitable husband for a woman of her ambitions. She had, however, since her marriage, granted Duncan the privileges of a somewhat equivocal friendship, which, owing to a general misconception of Helen Osgood's character, the world often misapprehended. Her acquaintances fancied her unhappy in her home life, but she was perfectly contented. Her friends believed she was a woman of strong feelings and sympathies, but she was subtle and calculating. The world thought her friendship for Duncan must be of a serious nature, while, in reality, it was scarcely more than a _pa.s.se temps_. Though not hara.s.sed by any scruples, she was too cold really to love, and too clever actually to compromise herself. But she was, however, sufficiently selfish to receive without giving, and sufficiently vain to enjoy the continued admiration of so scarred and complex a heart as Duncan's. She had been gifted with a peculiar insight into human character, and having studied the nature of man as a scientist might that of a mollusk, she felt that she understood every masculine vagary. Prompted mostly by curiosity, she singled out Duncan as the specimen best calculated to demand the full exercise of her powers. If she had, at times, permitted certain familiarities which the world might not entirely approve, she had been careful to define the boundaries beyond which they must not pa.s.s; and the fact that his actions were governed in a manner so contrary to his wishes kept Duncan in a continuous state of irritation, and served at the same time to produce a continuity of affection quite unusual in his other experiences.

For nearly four years this peculiar friendship, so galling to Duncan, so gratifying to Helen, had continued intermittently; and though many ruptures had occurred, they had all ended in Duncan's suing for peace.

The long continuance of so unnatural a relation was rendered possible only by the fact that Helen Osgood had, so far, been incapable of experiencing the feelings of other women, and seeing no reason to transgress where there was no temptation, she contented herself with inspiring a love where others excited a pa.s.sing fancy. Other women might amuse Duncan, but she would control him; other women might love him, but she would study him; other women might lose him, but she would remain his master. That was her a.n.a.lysis of the affair, and, so far, she felt that it had been correct. It is true she had not seen Duncan since the quarrel in January, and she knew that he must, in the meantime, have been intimate with other women; but she felt confident that he would come back to her and plead again for the love she had so often refused him. She did not believe that Duncan's pa.s.sion was of a lofty nature. On the contrary, she doubted his sincerity just as she doubted the sincerity of every man of the world. She knew perfectly well the view of life held by the men about her, and she often said that were she a man she would be a freebooter too, and capture the hearts that came in her way. She thought that if a woman was weak enough to be trapped into taking a false step, she got her deserts. She, for one, would go armed, not because her conscience troubled her, but because she did not consider the game worth the risk.

The unexpected return of Duncan had been somewhat of a surprise to Helen; but, in order to impress upon him that it was a matter of indifference to her, she avoided him as much as possible during the evening of his arrival at Oakhurst. The house party spent the evening playing pool in the billiard-room, and in that atmosphere of whiskey, soda, and smoke, where the conversation was hilarious and general, and often interspersed with familiar repartee and laughter, it was not difficult for Helen to keep Duncan at a convenient distance, while, however much he might chafe under the restraint, he was unable to free himself from his unpleasant position. There is nothing so exasperating to a man of Duncan's disposition and experience as to feel that he is being made a fool of by a woman. Though nothing had been said, Duncan realized the galling fact that Helen Osgood was playing with him. After the women had gone to bed he sat in the smoking-room, sulking over his "night-cap," and though Osgood and Howard-Jones carried on a heated discussion about the merits of perch bits, he paid not the slightest attention to what was being said. Waterman and Van Vort occasionally tried to chaff him, but he was so snappish in his manner that they wisely decided to let him alone. Meanwhile Duncan was thinking of the time, at Newport, when, jogging home after a day with the hounds, he had asked Helen Osgood to marry him. He had felt confident that she would do so, but instead, he got laughed at for his sincerity, and he had been laughed at ever since. He had often brought himself to the point of believing that he did not care for her, but the next time he was brought under her subtle influence he was compelled to acknowledge that he was still under her spell. Other women had surrendered to him with a facility that destroyed the pleasure of an exciting contest, but other women were not Helen Osgood.

The next morning none of the house party put in an appearance before eleven o'clock, and it was not until luncheon that they all met together. Some of the men had, it is true, been out to the kennels, and Osgood and Howard-Jones had taken out a tandem--much to the horror of neighboring Sabbath-keepers--but Mrs. Osgood and the girls managed to keep secluded until the luncheon-hour. Dinner was the only formal meal at Oakhurst, and there was a freedom about the life that made it very attractive to the men. Any sort of lounging costume was permissible during the daytime, and the guests straggled in at luncheon without regard for promptness. No one waited for the others, and the last to come was the last to be served. The conversation was chiefly about horses and dogs, with social gossip for a relish, but no topic more intellectual than the last French novel or the latest comedy at Daly's was permissible. In fact, any one bold enough to inaugurate a literary or political discussion would have been greeted with a stare of mingled pity and astonishment. If any of the guests were acquainted with matters literary or artistic, they were usually discreet enough to remain silent out of deference to the host; but on one occasion a school friend of Helen's, from Boston, hearing some remarks about the last story of Bourget, took the opportunity to start a discussion upon the poetic psychology of Sully-Prudhomme, which was greeted in a manner that made the poor girl fancy she had said something very indiscreet. At the first favorable opportunity, however, Helen rea.s.sured her, but advised her not to talk about books, if she wanted to get on with the Ess.e.x Hunt.

On the present occasion the conversation was confined to the stables, and after luncheon the house party sought amus.e.m.e.nt for the afternoon.

Osgood suggested a drive, so a team was put to the drag, and the afternoon, until tea-time, was spent behind three chestnuts and a piebald "tooled" by the host.

Meanwhile Duncan chafed under the discipline to which he felt he was being carefully subjected, but it was not until after an elaborately prepared dinner, served by the late butler of His Grace, the Duke of Northampton, and two footmen, that he was permitted a word alone with Helen. The other guests had gone into the drawing-room, at Helen's suggestion, to listen to Van Vort's latest comic song, and feeling that they would be off her hands for a while, she detained Duncan in the pa.s.sage-way leading to the library. Between the two doors was a broad lounge, which had been placed there to offer an opportunity for a quiet talk, and Helen took the initiative by seating herself and motioning Duncan to a place beside her. He sat down sulkily, and remained silent for a while, trying to drive off the peculiarly helpless feeling which a man invariably experiences in the presence of a woman whose personality is stronger than his own. Duncan plunged his hands into his pockets and sank into a corner of the lounge, mentally deciding that he was an a.s.s, and trying to bring his reason to control his feelings. He looked at Helen a moment, but when he met her glance, he winced and turned his eyes away, and she felt that she had not been wrong in her confidence that he would come back to her unchanged.

"You are solemn enough for a _croque-mort_," said Helen, after a few moments of silence. "Aren't you going to amuse me?"

"No," grunted Duncan peevishly, "you brought me here."

"I didn't bring you here to sulk. I hope, for your own sake, you haven't been behaving this way for the past six months. I understand you, but strangers might not appreciate such manners." She said this in the indifferent manner she invariably a.s.sumed when Duncan indulged in a display of temper, and it was this indifference which always made his outbursts so abortive.

"There is no need to behave so with strangers," he replied, trying to a.s.sume a sarcastic manner, and feeling, inwardly, that it was not successful. "They are usually civil to me."

"O, indeed! and pray how do I treat you?"

"Like a dog," he sneered gruffly.

"Like a pet poodle," she replied, "whom I allow to lie about the house in the snuggest corners; like a pet poodle whom I fondle when he is agreeable, and humor when he is snappish; but take care how you behave or I may think you are only a puppy."

Duncan jumped to his feet. "I won't be blackguarded," he muttered angrily.

Helen leaned forward and caught his hand.

"Come, Duncan, dear," she said, drawing him gently toward her, "you must sit down and tell me who it was that commenced this quarrel."

Duncan permitted himself to be drawn to the seat beside her. His heart was consumed with conflicting sentiments, but he felt that the courage which had made the quarrel in January possible was failing, and that he would be compelled to sue for peace. "I am not a child," he said, as though to expostulate against her manner.

"Yes, you are," answered Helen softly, "but a big, lovable child of whom I am very fond."

Duncan looked into her eyes to see if he could read behind her words, but he only felt the deep, mysterious power which had brought him under her influence that day in Newport. Then he had felt a hopeful, honest love, for a moment, but it had been crushed out by her laughter. Before that he had been a thoughtless boy, taking life as only a holiday frolic. Had she given him her love, he felt that to him life would have been different; but that laughter had chilled his heart, and the hopeful, honest love had gone out forever. She had married and he had loved her again, but it was a feeling of a different sort, for the man who speaks of love to a married woman casts out honesty from his heart.

He loved her with a heated longing which her coldness fanned. He wanted to possess her for his own, yet felt that he was balked by his stupidity and cowardice. In her presence he was a shrinking child with the yearning of a man. "Helen," he said, after a moment, "I will not be played with; I am too much in earnest."

"You frighten me by your seriousness," she said, with a roguish tone in her voice. "I like you better when you are angry. It suits you."

"I will not be trifled with, Helen," he said; "you have no right to treat me so."

"I have the right of a billigerent," she laughed. "You declared war, you remember."

"Then I sue for peace."

"And I grant it," she replied softly, putting out her hand. "Come, let us be friends."

Duncan took her hand and pressed it to his lips. He looked up into her tantalizing eyes and felt again the warm impulse of the old love burning in his heart. "I cannot be your friend, Helen," he said pa.s.sionately, "for I love you."