The female now leaned from her seat,and with the tone of setting the whole thing right,explained :"We had no idea it was a lady.""Doubtless you're not accustomed to their appearance,"said John to Charley.
I don't know what Charley would have done about this;for while the completely foreign voice was delightedly whispering,"Toujours le panache!"a new,deep,and altogether different female voice exclaimed:--"Why,John,it's you!"
So that was Hortense,then!That rich and quiet utterance was hers,a schooled and studied management of speech.I found myself surprised,and I knew directly why;that word of one of the old ladles,"I consider that she looks like a steel wasp,"had implanted in me some definite antici-pations to which the voice certainly did not correspond.How fervently Idesired that she would lift her thick veil,while John,with hat in hand,was greeting her,and being presented to her companions!Why she had not spoken to John sooner was of course a recondite question,and beyond my power to determine with merely the given situation to guide me.Hadn't she recognized him before?Had her thick veil,and his position,and the general slight flurry of the misadventure,intercepted recognition until she heard his voice when he addressed Charley.Or had she known her lover at once,and rapidly decided that the moment was an unpropitious one for a first meeting after absence,and that she would pass on to Kings Port unrevealed,but then had found this plan become impossible through the collision between Charley and John?It was not until certain incidents of the days following brought Miss Rieppe's nature a good deal further home to me,that a third interpretation of her delay in speaking to John dawned upon my mind;that I was also made aware how a woman's understanding of the words "Steel wasp,"when applied by her to one of her own sex,may differ widely from a man's understanding of them;and that Miss Rieppe,through her thick veil,saw from her seat in the automobile something which my own unencumbered vision had by no means detected.
But now,here on the bridge,even her outward appearance was as shrouded as her inward qualities--save such as might be audible in that voice,as her skilful,well-placed speeches to one and the other of the company tided over and carried off into ease this uneasy moment.All men,at such a voice,have pricked up their ears since the beginning;there was much woman in it;each slow,schooled syllable called its challenge to questing man.But I got no chance to look in the eye that went with that voice;she took all the advantages which her veil gave her;and how well she used them I was to learn later.
In the general smoothing-out process which she was so capably effecting,her attention was about to reach me,when my name was suddenly called out from behind her.It was Beverly Rodgers,that accomplished and inveterate bachelor of fashion.Ten years before,when I had seen much of him,he had been more particular in his company,frequently declaring in his genial,irresponsible way that New York society was going to the devil.
But many tempting dances on the land,and cruises on the water,had taken him deep among our lower classes that have boiled up from the bottom with their millions--and besides,there would be nothing to marvel at in Beverly's presence in any company that should include Hortense Rieppe,if she carried out the promise of her voice.
Beverly was his customary,charming,effusive self,coming out of the automobile to me with his "By Jove,old man,"and his "Who'd have thought it,old fellow?"and sprinkling urbane little drops of jocosity over us collectively,as the garden water-turning apparatus sprinkles a lawn.His knowing me,and the way he brought it out,and even the tumbling into the road of a few wraps and chattels of travel as he descended from the automobile,and the necessity of picking these up and handing them back with delightful little jocular apologies,such as,"By Jove,what a lout I am,"all this helped the meeting on prodigiously,and got us gratefully away from the disconcerting incident of the torn money.Charley was helpful,too;you would never have supposed from the polite small-talk which he was now offering to John Mayrant that he had within some three minutes received the equivalent of a slap across the eyes from that youth,and carried the soiled consequences m his pocket.And such a thing is it to be a true man of the world of finance,that upon the arrival now of a second automobile,also his property,and containing a set of maids and valets,and also some live dogs sitting up,covered with glass eyes and wrappings like their owners,munificent Charley at once offered the dead dog and his mistress a place in it,and begged she would let it take her wherever she wished to go.Everybody exclaimed copiously and condolingly over the unfortunate occurrence.What a fine animal he was,to be sure!What breed was he?Of course,he wasn't used to automobiles!
Was it quite certain that he was dead?Quel dommage!And Charley would be so happy to replace him.
And how was Eliza La Heu bearing herself amid these murmurously chattered infelicities?She was listening with composure to the murmurs of Hortense Rieppe,more felicitous,no doubt.Miss Rieppe,through her veil,was particularly devoting herself to Miss La Lieu.I could not hear what she said;the little chorus of condolence and suggestion intercepted all save her tone,and that,indeed,coherently sustained its measured cadence through the texture of fragments uttered by Charley and the others.Eliza La Heu had now got herself altogether in hand,and,saving her pale cheeks,no sign betrayed that the young girl's feelings had been so recently too strong for her.To these strangers,ignorant of her usual manner,her present strange quietness may very well have been accepted as her habit.
