Ever After (28 page)

“You can give yourself airs about your music, though, from now on.”

“Well, if it comes to that, so can you!” And he sang in a false tenor with a horrible burlesque tremolo—“
GoodBYE,
for-ev-er,
GoodBYE
for-ev-er,
Goodbyee,
Goodbyee,
Goodbye,
Goo-hood-
buh-hyeeee!”

In spite of her preoccupation, Gwen was amused.

“Maybe we’d better call that off.”

“Not on your life! We’re hired, she said so! Why shouldn’t we take her money, somebody else will!”

“The same as tonight?”

“The same!”

“Own up, Fitz. You didn’t get paid for tonight, you only said that to make me feel good.”

“I get paid two weeks from Saturday, though!”

“Oh, Fitz, you
couldn’t
!”

“Watch me! She has practically bet me I can’t learn the
accompaniment
to
Goodbye
in two weeks. That’s castin’ aspersions on my manhood. Got to demonstrate.”

“But she’s your aunt’s
friend
!” Gwen reminded him, horrified.

“Well, s’posin’ she is, I’m all the accompanist you’ve got, aren’t I? I discovered you, didn’t I? All right, then! From now on, you don’t sing without me at the piano, see? It’s nice work. I like it.” He drank some champagne. “We’ve got a whole bottle of that stuff here, you’d better drink up.”

Cabot put his head in at the door. He looked very handsome in his evening tail coat and white tie, his crisp dark hair gone grey at the edges, his tall body held as straight as when it wore a Federal uniform more than thirty years before.

“What is this, the children’s table?” he inquired with a grin. “Fitz, that man Herbert is having a quiet fit over your music. Go out and talk to him, he wants to see the score of your operetta or whatever it is.”

“He
does
?” Fitz was impressed, and turned to Gwen. “Mind if I—?”

She shook her head, and he went off to the ballroom, leaving Cabot by
the door.

“We’re getting a lot of compliments on your singing,” Cabot said, advancing to the table to choose a sandwich. “Fitz said you might be willing to take some other engagements, is that right?”

“I’d be glad to, but I haven’t got an accompanist. Fitz told Mrs. Palmer that he’d play for me at her house, but that can’t go on indefinitely.”

“Why not?”

They looked at each other, Cabot munching his sandwich, Gwen with her glass at her lips. In that instant, while his hard, hooded eyes bored into her, they understood and liked each other.

“You needn’t worry about him, Mr. Murray,” she said. “He won’t come to any harm through me.”

“Do you take me for a fool, my dear?” he said, and went to lean on the mantelpiece, looking down at her. The firelight threw sharp shadows upward on his rugged face. “So you’ve tumbled to it,” he added, smiling. “How?”

“He mentioned his Aunt Eden once. Then Mrs. Palmer called your wife by her given name, and I knew. It wasn’t really news to me, though. That is—I knew he didn’t belong in West
Twenty-ninth
Street. You see, Mr. Murray, I’m no fool either.”

“Would it be any use to you to know,” he remarked, watching her from the hearthrug, “that when I first went to Virginia, where I found my wife, I felt as though I had stepped into another world where I had no right to be?”

Gwen sat motionless, looking down into her glass. Was it written all over her that she loved Fitz and couldn’t have him? She wouldn’t admit it, though, much as she liked this knowing, outspoken uncle of his. He wasn’t going to hypnotize her into giving herself away.

“Well, I just thought I’d mention it,” Cabot was saying.

Still she made no answer, obstinately.

“Who are you?” he demanded gently. “How did you first meet him?”

“At a third-rate music hall.” She let it sound just as bad as it could.

“Mm-hm. I said How.”

Slowly her eyes came up to him. Then they went to the door. There was no sign of Fitz to rescue her. When she looked back Cabot was still waiting.

“I worked there with my brother as a dancing team. He got into trouble with the Fagan crowd. They called his hand and he shot himself—during a performance. Fitz and Johnny were there that night. It was their own idea to protect me from Fagan—I needed it, too. They walked me right out from under Gyp O’Connor‘s nose and hid me in Johnny’s room. They loaned me money, they fed me, they got me another job where I’d be safe. With the money I get here tonight I can pay back what I owe them. And that’s all. I didn’t know there were people like them. I kept waiting for the catch in it. There wasn’t one. But you know them better than I do, you’re not surprised.”

“Fagan—O’Connor—?” he said, and his eyes glinted. “For the love of God,
those
small-time crooks! If you have any more trouble with them, let me know.”

“Are you—with the police?”

“No, I’m Murray of the
Star
. We know those fellows, every one of them—that’s our business. Part of it. We helped clean up the Piotti gang last year. That was safe-cracking. Your Fagan is a
gambler, and that’s harder. All the same, we’re always interested in him.”

“He’s a killer. You want to look out.”

“You’ve got friends from now on, Miss Maguire. Remember that.”

“Funny. That’s what Fitz always says.”

“Don’t you believe it?”

Gwen rose and set her glass back on the tray.

“Mr. Murray, if you have any idea that I—that Fitz and I—well, it’s like I told you, he wants nothing of me, nor I of him. When I give
him back the money I owe him we’re all square. I could walk out tomorrow and there’s no harm done.”

“I sort of hope you won’t though.” He had not moved from his position against the mantel. “You’re good for Fitz, I think. But don’t be too easy on him. He wants shaking up.”

She faced him, the light full on her troubled, honest eyes and curving red mouth.

“I hope you aren’t putting ideas into my head, Mr. Murray,” she remarked with dignity, and Cabot grinned, strolling towards her with one hand in his pocket.

“Well, it suddenly occurred to me that you might have some idea of paying your debt back and then going out into the night and closing the door behind you with a dull, Ibsenesque thud. And I just wanted to say, while there is still time—Don’t.” He patted her shoulder briefly on his way to the door. At the threshold he turned and caught her eyes across the room. “Don’t do it,” he said firmly, and went.

Gwen stared after him a moment Then she poured herself another glass of champagne.

“Hullo, Mr. Tosti,” she murmured, and drank to him gravely.

T
HE
entire Murray family and Fitz escorted Sue from New York to Williamsburg and spent Christmas there, as usual. Plans were already being made for Dabney’s son Miles’s coming-of-age in April. Coming-of-age parties were even more regarded in the family than Christmas. They occurred less frequently. There was always a special wine which had been laid down at the time of the christening with the date on it, and there were certain table traditions and ceremonies. Only the worst kind of personal disaster or emergency prevented any member of the family from attending, no matter how
far he might have to travel. Although Eden’s son Bracken had been born and reared in New York, he had come of age in Williamsburg, with all the fixings and everybody there to drink his health. And now it was Miles’s turn.

In order not to miss Miles’s party, Eden and Virginia had set their sailing for England for the first week in May. Cabot’s plans for going abroad with them were provisional, for he had now
become
deeply interested in the situation in Cuba, where Spanish brutality was receiving a good deal of publicity through the reports of adventurous Special Correspondents from the American Press.

The ubiquitous Richard Harding Davis had been sent there by Hearst, and had witnessed the dawn execution of a young Cuban patriot, his account of which had wrung the hearts of his readers. Scovel of the
World,
Flint of the
Journal,
among others, had been risking their lives under fire with the insurgent forces—dodging Spanish spies, burning up with fever, sometimes landing in jail, and somehow getting their dispatches smuggled out. Most of them were wanted by Spanish firing squads. Ralph Paine had gone pirating with a filibustering ship running arms to the insurgents and nearly lost his life in a running fight at sea. Frederick Remington, Stephen Crane, Ernest McCready—only a few years earlier the name of Cabot Murray would have joined the distinguished list. But in that climate it was a job for a young man, as he well knew; a man moreover who had not for thirty years been subject to recurrent bouts of malaria which laid him low, put severe strain on his heart, and then departed abruptly till next time. He now perceived with incredulous
surprise
that Bracken was not going
to demand Cuba as his next assignment instead of returning to the Fleet Street office, which in his absence Nelson was running creditably. It was inconceivable to Cabot that any son of his should so neglect a spectacular opportunity for news gathering.

Bracken for the first time in his life was not completely alive to his father’s wishes. His mind dwelt obstinately on getting back to England, to Farthingale, to Dinah. Her letters, written spontaneously now without Miss French’s supervision, were full of Edward’s hunting talk and news of the weather. But always somewhere in their schoolgirl content he could find a line to comfort him which showed her need of him and her sustaining confidence in his quick return. Since it was impossible yet for him to write as he felt, he tried to bring her closer to his life by telling about the parties Eden gave, the plays they saw, the endless variety and stimulation of a newspaper shop. And at the end of each letter he promised again to come back soon—by the end of January, anyway.

Just before they all left New York for Williamsburg in December Cabot came to a decision and Bracken got his orders—on to Tampa
right after Christmas, and thence to Key West and Havana, where he was to report to the American Consul, General Fitzhugh Lee, under whom Sedgwick had served as a cavalryman during the War Between the States. With General Lee’s approval Bracken would make his manners to the Spanish Captain-General and take all the safe-conducts and introductions Blanco would part with, as Davis had done the year before with his predecessor. Then, with other credentials supplied by the Cuban
junta
in New York, Bracken was to get out at night between the lines, talk to the insurgents, learn both sides, never take any notes, never go near the cable office, and bring back the story in his head to be written on uncensored American soil.

As an assignment it was a Special Correspondent’s dream, and Bracken knew that a year ago he would have been blissfully happy at the prospect. He was nearly as aghast as his father would have been to discover that he only wanted to go back to England instead. He found it hard to talk to Cabot about Dinah, when at one time he had longed for the chance. It was still too soon. The best parents on earth could never understand the cobweb romance which
nevertheless
held him fast with the strength of steel. And so he had said very little after all, and left them wondering, which was not his way. He told himself it would be much simpler once they saw her, when they came to Farthingale in the spring. He had given up without even trying to describe to them his own fatalistic belief that he and Dinah were meant to be, and that obstacles were only put in their way to be overcome, and that the more unlikely it seemed that he would ever be free to take her the surer he became, inside, that she was his.

And now there was this Cuba business. It never occurred to Bracken to question his assignment, or try to beg off from it. It was a nuisance, qualified by many emphatic adjectives, but he would see it through, although it meant that now he would be lucky to arrive in England before the first of March. But he told himself that Dinah must learn to wait for him, and could not begin too soon, and he sat down to write and explain. This was rather difficult to do, for it must on no account be a love letter and yet on the other hand he must not sound like just another careless adult who found it inconvenient to keep a promise. He wrote the letter more than once and was not satisfied with the final version. But he sent it off along with the best music box New York could produce for her Christmas present—in a gold case, with a tinkling minuet tune and a French miniature on the lid.

Fitz, happily exempt from family tradition and obligation, returned to New York with Cabot and Eden after Christmas and settled down to finish his musical comedy. Victor Herbert had
backed up his own enthusiasm with an introduction to a manager he thought would be interested in producing it, and from him Fitz had received substantial encouragement in the form of an option. No one had ever seen Fitz so busy.

“It must be that girl,” Eden said to Cabot one evening towards the end of January. “I do believe Fitz is going to find himself at last. She believes in him. He needed something like that.”

“She needs a job,” Cabot said. “Fitz will always go out of his way to help somebody else. That’s why he wants to sell this opperetta of his—so she can sing in it.”

“Do you think he—?”

“I think he’s too near-sighted. But maybe he’ll come to, eventually.”

“
Marry
her?”

“You married me,” he reminded her, and they smiled at each other.

“Still, it’s not quite the same thing,” Eden said then.

“Not quite. I had a great deal more on my soul than this little waif of Fitz’s ever dreamed of.”

“But do you think she’s—”

“Virtuous? Oh,
women
! She’s not nineteen yet, he says, so she’s not had much time for sin!”

“She’s got red on her mouth, Cabot. I’m only thinking of the family, if he should ever take her home to Williamsburg as his wife.”

“And how much did you think of the family, beloved, when you fell in love with your rough Yankee journalist?”

“I wish I could feel sure she wasn’t just feathering her nest,” Eden said wilfully.