Edith Wharton - Novel 15 (24 page)

 
          
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The
big polo match came off the next day. It was the first of the season, and,
taking respectful note of the fact, the barometer, after a night of showers,
jumped back to Fair.

 
          
All
Fifth
Avenue
had poured down to see
New York
versus
Hempstead
. The beautifully rolled lawns and freshly
painted club stand were sprinkled with spring dresses and abloom with
sunshades,
and coaches and other vehicles without number
enclosed the farther side of the field.

 
          
Hayley
Delane still played polo, though he had grown so heavy that the cost of
providing himself with mounts must have been considerable. He was, of course,
no longer regarded as in the first rank; indeed, in these later days, when the
game has become an exact science, I hardly know to what use such a weighty body
as his could be put. But in that far-off dawn of the sport his sureness and
swiftness of stroke caused him to be still regarded as a useful back, besides
being esteemed for the part he had taken in introducing and establishing the
game.

 
          
I
remember little of the beginning of the game, which resembled many others I had
seen. I never played myself, and I had no money on: for me the principal
interest of the scene lay in the May weather, the ripple of spring dresses over
the turf, the sense of youth, fun, gaiety, of young manhood and womanhood
weaving their eternal pattern under the conniving sky. Now and then they were
interrupted for a moment by a quick “Oh” which turned all those tangled glances
the same way, as two glittering streaks of men and horses dashed across the
green, locked, swayed, rayed outward into starry figures, and rolled back. But
it was for a moment only—then eyes wandered again, chatter began, and youth and
sex had it their own way until the next charge shook them from their trance.

 
          
I
was of the number of these divided watchers. Polo as a spectacle did not amuse
me for long, and I saw about as little of it as the pretty girls perched beside
their swains on coach-tops and club stand. But by chance my vague wanderings
brought me to the white palings enclosing the field, and there, in a cluster of
spectators, I caught sight of Leila Delane.

 
          
As
I approached I was surprised to notice a familiar figure shouldering away from
her. One still saw old Bill Gracy often enough in the outer purlieus of the big
race-courses; but I wondered how he had got into the enclosure of a fashionable
Polo Club. There he was, though, unmistakably; who could forget that swelling
chest under the shabby-smart racing-coat, the gray top-hat always pushed back
from his thin auburn curls, and the mixture of furtiveness and swagger which
made his liquid glance so pitiful? Among the figures that rose here and there
like warning ruins from the dead-level of old New York’s respectability, none
was more typical than Bill Gracy’s; my gaze followed him curiously as he
shuffled away from his daughter. “Trying to get more money out of her,” I
concluded; and remembered what Alstrop had said of Delane’s generosity.

 
          
“Well,
if I were Delane,” I thought, “I’d pay a good deal to keep that old ruffian out
of sight.”

 
          
Mrs.
Delane, turning to watch her father’s retreat, saw me and nodded.
At the same moment Delane, on a tall deep-chested poney, ambled
across the field, stick on shoulder.
As he rode thus, heavily yet mightily,
in his red-and-black shirt and white breeches, his head standing out like a
bronze against the turf, I whimsically recalled the figure of Guidoriccio da
Foligno, the famous mercenary, riding at a slow powerful pace across the
fortressed fresco of the
Town Hall
of
Siena
. Why a
New York
banker of excessive weight and more than
middle age, jogging on a poney across a
Long Island
polo field, should have reminded me of a
martial figure on an armoured war-horse, I find it hard to explain. As far as I
knew there were no turreted fortresses in Delane’s background; and his too
juvenile polo cap and gaudy shirt were a poor substitute for Guidoriccio’s coat
of mail. But it was the kind of trick the man was always playing; reminding me,
in his lazy torpid way, of times and scenes and people greater than he could
know. That was why he kept on interesting me.

 
          
It
was this interest which caused me to pause by Mrs. Delane, whom I generally
avoided. After a vague smile she had already turned her gaze on the field.

 
          
“You’re
admiring your husband?” I suggested, as Delane’s trot carried him across our
line of vision.

 
          
She
glanced at me dubiously. “You think he’s too fat to play, I suppose?” she
retorted, a little snappishly.

 
          
“I
think he’s the finest figure in sight. He looks like a great general, a great
soldier of fortune—in an old fresco, I mean.”

 
          
She
stared, perhaps suspecting irony, as she always did beneath the unintelligible.

 
          
“Ah,
he
can pay anything he likes for his
mounts!” she murmured; and added, with a wandering laugh: “Do you mean it as a
compliment? Shall I tell him what you say?”

 
          
“I
wish you would.”

 
          
But
her eyes were off again, this time to the opposite end of the field. Of
course—Bolton Byrne was playing on the other side! The fool of a woman was always
like that—absorbed in her latest adventure. Yet there had been so many, and she
must by this time have been so radiantly sure there would be more! But at every
one the girl was born anew in her: she blushed, palpitated, “sat out” dances,
plotted for tête-à-têtes, pressed flowers (I’ll wager) in her copy of “Omar
Khayyam,” and was all white muslin and wild roses while it lasted. And the
Byrne fever was then at its height.

 
          
It
did not seem polite to leave her immediately, and I continued to watch the field
at her side. “It’s their last chance to score,” she flung at me, leaving me to
apply the ambiguous pronoun; and after that we remained silent.

 
          
The
game had been a close one; the two sides were five each, and the crowd about
the rails hung breathless on the last minutes. The struggle was short and
swift, and dramatic enough to hold even the philanderers on the coach-tops.
Once I stole a glance at Mrs. Delane, and saw the colour rush to her cheek.
Byrne was hurling himself across the field, crouched on the neck of his
somewhat weedy mount, his stick swung like a lance—a pretty enough sight, for
he was young and supple, and light in the saddle.

 
          
“They’re
going to win!” she gasped with a happy cry.

 
          
But
just then Byrne’s poney, unequal to the pace, stumbled, faltered, and came
down. His rider dropped from the saddle, hauled the animal to his feet, and
stood for a minute half-dazed before he scrambled up again. That minute made
the difference. It gave the other side their chance. The knot of men and horses
tightened, wavered, grew loose, broke up in arrowing flights; and suddenly a
ball—Delane’s—sped through the enemy’s goal, victorious. A roar of delight went
up; “Good for old Hayley!” voices shouted. Mrs. Delane gave a little sour
laugh. “That—that beastly poney; I warned him it was no good—and the ground
still so slippery,” she broke out.

 
          
“The poney?
Why, he’s a ripper. It’s not every mount that
will carry Delane’s weight,” I said. She stared at me unseeingly and turned
away with twitching lips. I saw her speeding off toward the enclosure.

 
          
I
followed hastily, wanting to see Delane in the moment of his triumph. I knew he
took all these little sporting successes with an absurd seriousness, as if,
mysteriously, they were the shadow of more substantial achievements, dreamed
of, or accomplished, in some previous life. And perhaps the elderly man’s
vanity in holding his own with the youngsters was also an element of his
satisfaction; how could one tell, in a mind of such monumental simplicity?

 
          
When
I reached the saddling enclosure I did not at once discover him; an unpleasant
sight met my eyes instead. Bolton Byrne, livid and withered—his face like an
old woman’s, I thought—rode across the empty field, angrily lashing his poney’s
flanks. He slipped to the ground, and as he did so, struck the shivering animal
a last blow clean across the head. An unpleasant sight—

 
          
But
retribution fell. It came like a black-and-red thunderbolt descending on the
wretch out of the heaven. Delane had him by the collar, had struck him with his
whip across the shoulders, and then flung him off like a thing too mean for
human handling. It was over in the taking of a breath—then, while the crowd
hummed and closed in, leaving Byrne to slink away as if he had become
invisible, I saw my big Delane, growncalm and apathetic, turn to the poney and
lay a soothing hand on its neck.

 
          
I
was pushing forward, moved by the impulse to press that hand, when his wife
went up to him. Though I was not far off I could not hear what she said; people
did not speak loud in those days, or “make scenes,” and the two or three words
which issued from Mrs. Delane’s lips must have been inaudible to everyone but
her husband. On his dark face they raised a sudden redness; he made a motion of
his free arm (the other hand still on the poney’s neck), as if to wave aside an
importunate child; then he felt in his pocket, drew out a cigarette, and lit
it. Mrs. Delane, white as a ghost, was hurrying back to Alstrop’s coach.

 
          
I
was turning away too when I saw her husband hailed again. This time it was Bill
Gracy, shoving and yet effacing himself, as his manner was, who came up, a
facile tear on his lashes, his smile half tremulous, half defiant, a
yellow-gloved hand held out.

 
          
“God
bless you for it, Hayley—God bless you, my dear boy!”

 
          
Delane’s
hand reluctantly left the poney’s neck. It wavered for an instant, just touched
the other’s palm, and was instantly engulfed in it. Then Delane, without
speaking, turned toward the shed where his mounts were being rubbed down, while
his father-in-law swaggered from the scene.

 
          
I
had promised, on the way home, to stop for tea at a friend’s house half-way
between the Polo Club and Alstrop’s. Another friend, who was also going there,
offered me a lift, and carried me on to Alstrop’s afterward.

 
          
During
our drive, and about the tea-table, the talk of course dwelt mainly on the
awkward incident of Bolton Byrne’s thrashing. The women were horrified or
admiring, as their humour moved them; but the men all agreed that it was
natural enough. In such a case any pretext was permissible, they said; though
it was stupid of Hayley to air his grievance on a public occasion. But then he
was
stupid—that was the consensus of
opinion. If there was a blundering way of doing a thing that needed to be done,
trust him to hit on it! For the rest, everyone spoke of him affectionately, and
agreed that Leila was a fool…and nobody particularly liked Byrne, an “outsider”
who had pushed himself into society by means of cheek and showy horsemanship.
But Leila, it was agreed, had always had a weakness for “outsiders,” perhaps
because their admiration flattered her extreme desire to be thought “in.”

 
          
“Wonder
how many of the party you’ll find left—this affair must have caused a good deal
of a shake-up,” my friend said, as I got down at Alstrop’s door; and the same
thought was in my own mind. Byrne would be gone, of course; and no doubt, in
another direction, Delane and Leila. I wished I had a chance to shake that
blundering hand of Hayley’s…

 
          
Hall
and drawing-room were empty; the dressing-bell must have sounded its discreet
appeal more than once, and I was relieved to find it had been heeded. I didn’t
want to stumble on any of my fellow-guests till I had seen our host. As I was
dashing upstairs I heard him call me from the library, and turned back.