 | The Introducers |  |
1.
The INTRODUCERS
By EDITH WHARTON
—
A STORY IN TWO PARTS
AT nine o'clock on an August morning Mr. Frederick Tilney descended the terrace steps of Sea Lodge and strolled across the lawn to the cliffs.
The upper windows of the long white facade above the terrace were all close-shuttered, for at nine o'clock Newport still sleeps, and he who is stirring enough to venture forth at that unwonted hour may enjoy what no wealth could buy a little later—the privilege of being alone.
Though Mr. Tilney's habits of life, combined with the elegance of his appearance, declared him to be socially disposed, he was not insensible to the rarer pleasures of self-communion, and on this occasion he found peculiar gratification in the thought of having to himself the whole opulent extent of turf and flower border between Ochre Point and Bailey's Beach. The morning was brilliant, with a blue horizon line pure of fog, and such a sparkle on every leaf and grass blade, and on every restless facet of the ever-moving sea, as would have tempted a less sophisticated fancy to visions of wet bows and a leaping stern, or of woodland climbs up the course of a mountain stream.
But it was so long since Mr. Tilney had found a savor in such innocent diversions, that the unblemished fairness of the morning suggested to him only a lazy well-being associated with escape from social duties, and the chance to finish the French novel over which he had fallen asleep at three o'clock that morning.
It was odd how he was growing to value his rare opportunities of being alone. He who in his earlier years had depended on the stimulus of companionship as the fagged diner-out depends on the fillip of his first glass of champagne, was now beginning to watch for and cherish every momentary escape from the crowd. It had grown to such a passion with him, this craving to have the world to himself, that he had overcome the habit of late rising, and learned to curtail the complications of his toilet, in order to secure a half hour of solitude before he was caught back into the whizzing social machinery.
"And talk of the solitude of the desert, it's nothing to the Newport cliffs at this hour," he mused, as he threw himself down on a shaded seat invitingly placed near the path which follows the shore. "Sometimes I feel as if the sea, and the cliffs, and the skyline out there, were all a part of the stupid show—the expensive stage setting of a rottenly cheap play—to be folded up and packed away with the rest of the rubbish when the performance is over; and it's good to come out and find it here at this hour, all by itself, and not giving a hang for the ridiculous goings-on of which it happens to be made the temporary background. Well— there's one comfort: none of the other fools really see it— it's here only for those who seek it out at such an hour—and as I'm the only human being who does, it's here only for me, and belongs only to me, and not to the impenetrable asses who think they own it because they've paid for it at so many thousand dollars a foot!"
And Mr. Tilney, throwing out his chest with the irrepressible pride of possessorship, cast an eye of approval
"Yes—it's mine—all mine—and this is the only real possessorship, after all! No fear of intruders at this hour—no need of warning signposts, and polite requests to keep to the path. I don't suppose anybody ever walked along this path at my hour, and I don't care who walks here for the rest of the day!" But at this point his meditations were interrupted by the sight of a white gleam through the adjacent foliage; and a moment later all his theories as to the habits of his neighbors had been rudely shattered by the appearance of a lady who, under the sheltering arch of a wide lace sunshade, was advancing indolently toward his seat.
"Why, you've got my bench!" she exclaimed, passing before him, with merriment and indignation mingling in her eyes as sun and wind contended on the ripples behind her.
"Your bench?" echoed Tilney, rising at her approach, and dissembling his annoyance under a fair pretense of hospitality. "If ever I thought anything on earth was mine, it's this bench."
The lady, who was young, tall and critical-looking, drew her straight brows together and smilingly pondered his assertion.
"I suppose you thought that because it happens to stand in the grounds of Sea Lodge instead of Cliffwood—we haven't any benches, by the way; but my theory is a little different, as it happens. I think things belong only to the people who know how to appreciate them."
"Why, so do I—if the bench isn't mine, at least the theory is!" Tilney protested.
"Well, it's mine too, and it makes the bench mine, you see," the young lady argued with earnestness, "because hitherto I've been the only person who appreciated sitting on it at this hour."
"Ah, hitherto, perhaps—but not since I arrived here last week. I haven't missed a morning," Tilney declared.
She smiled. "That explains the misunderstanding. I've been away for a week, and before that no one ever ever sat on my bench at this hour."
"And since then no one has ever ever sat on my bench at this hour; but, my dear Miss Grantham," Tilney gallantly concluded, "I shall be only too honored if you will make the first exception to this rule by sitting on it in my company this morning."
Miss Grantham was evidently a young lady of judicial temper, for she weighed this assertion as carefully as the other, before answering, with a slight tinge of condescension: "I don't know that you have any more right to ask me to sit on my bench, than I have to ask you to sit on yours, but for my part I am magnanimous enough to assume just for once that it's ours."
Tilney bowed his thanks and seated himself at her side. "I realize how magnanimous it is of you," he returned, "for, just as you came round the corner, I was saying to myself that this bench was really the only thing in the world I could call my own—"
"And now I've taken half of it away from you! But then," she rejoined, "you've taken the other half from me; and as I was under the same delusion as yourself, we are both in the same situation, and had better accommodate ourselves as best we can to the diminished glory of joint ownership."
"It would be ungrateful of me to reject so reasonable a proposal; but in return for my consent, would you mind telling me how you happen to attach such excessive importance to the ownership of this bench?"
"It isn't the bench alone—it's the bench and the hour. They are the only things I have to myself."
Tilney met her lovely eyes with a look of intelligence. "Ah, that's surprising—very surprising."
"Why so?" she exclaimed, a little resentfully.
"Because it's so exactly my own feeling."
Miss Grantham smiled and caressed the folds of her lace gown. "And is it so surprising that we should happen to have the same feelings?"
"Not in all respects, I trust; but I never suspected you of an inclination for solitude."
She returned his scrutiny with a glance as penetrating. "Well, you don't look like a recluse yourself; yet I think I should have guessed that you sometimes have a longing to be alone."
"A longing? Good heavens, it's a passion, it's becoming a mania!"
"Ah, how well I understand that. It's the only thing that can tear me from my bed!"
"I confess one doesn't associate you with the sunrise," he said, letting his glance rest with amusement on the intricate simplicity of her apparel.
"And you!" she smiled back at him. "If our friends were to be told that Fred Tilney and Belle Grantham were to be found sitting on the cliffs at nine o'clock in the morning, the day after the Summerton ball—"
"And that they had come there, not to meet each other, but to escape from every one else—"
"Oh, there's the point: that's what makes it interesting. If we're in the same box why shouldn't we be on the same bench?"
"It requires no argument to convince me that we should. But are we in the same box? You see I've just come, and when I saw you last night I supposed you were stopping with the Summertons."
She shook her head. "No, I'm next door, at Cliffwood, for the summer."
"At Cliffwood? With the Bixbys?" He glanced at the fantastic chimneys and profusely carved gables which made the neighboring villa rise from its shrubberies like a piece montee from a flower-decked dish.
"Well, why not, if you're at Sea Lodge with Mr. Magraw?"
"Oh, I'm only a poor itinerant devil—"
"And what am I but a circulating beauty? Didn't you know I'd gone into the business too? I hope you won't let professional jealousy interfere with our friendship."
"I'm not sure that I can help it, if you've really gone into the business. But when I last saw you—where was it?—oh, in Athens—"
"Things were different, were they not?" she interposed. "I was sketching and you were archaeologizing—do you remember that divine day at Delphi? Not that you took much notice of me, by the way—"
"Wasn't one warned off the premises by the report that you were engaged to Lord Pytchley?"
She colored, and negligently dropped her sunshade between her eyes and his. "Well, I wasn't, you see—and my sketches were not good enough to sell. So I've taken to this kind of thing instead. But I thought you meant to stick to your digging."
He hesitated. "I was very keen about it for a time; but I had a touch of the sun out in Greece that summer; and a rich fellow picked me up on his steam yacht and carried me off to the Black Sea and then to a salmon river in Norway. I meant to go back, but I dawdled, and the first thing I knew they put another chap in my place. And now I'm Hutchins Magraw's secretary."
He sat staring absently at the distant skyline, and perceiving that he was no longer conscious of her presence she quietly shifted her sunshade and let her eyes rest for a moment on his moody profile.
"Yes—that's what I call it, too. I'm Mrs. Bixby's secretary—or Sadie's, I forget which. But how much writing do you do?"
"Well, not much. The butler attends to the invitations."
"I merely keep an eye on Sadie's spelling, and see that she doesn't sign herself 'lovingly' to young men. Mrs. Bixby has no correspondents, and the dinner invitations are engraved."
"And what are your other duties?"
"Oh, the usual things—reminding Mrs. Bixby not to speak of her husband as Mr. Bixby, not to send in her cards when people are at home, not to let the butler say 'fine claret' in a sticky whisper in people's ears, not to speak of town as 'the city,' and not to let Mr. Bixby tell what things cost. Mrs. Bix-
Tilney reflected. "Magraw is a good fellow too. There's really nothing to do except to tone him down a little—as you say, one feels as if one didn't earn one's keep."
She flashed round upon him instantly. "Ah, but I didn't say that. I said the ostensible duties were easy—but how about the others?"
He looked at her a little consciously. "What do you mean by the others?"
"I don't know how far you live up to your duties, but I'm horribly conscientious about mine. And of course what we're both paid for is to be introducers," she said.
"Introducers?" He colored slightly and, flinging his arm over the back of the bench, turned to command a fuller view of her face. "Yes, that is what we're paid for, I suppose."
"And that's what I hate about it, don't you?"
"Uncommonly," he assented with emphasis.
It isn't that the Bixbys are not nice people—they are, deep down, you know—or at least they would be, if they were leading a real life among their real friends. But the very fact that one is abetting them to lead a false life, and renounce and deny their past, and impose themselves on people who wouldn't look at them if it were not for their money, and who rather resent their intrusion as it is—well, if one oughtn't to be paid well for doing such a job as that, I don't know what it is to work for my living!"
Tilney continued to observe with appreciation the dramatic play of feature by means of which she expressed her rising disgust at her task; but when she ended he merely said in a detached tone: "It's charming how you've preserved your illusions."
"My illusions? Why, I haven't enough left for decency!"
"Oh, yes, you have. About the Bixbys, and what they would be if one hadn't egged them on. Why not say to yourself that, if they were not vulgar at heart, they would never have let themselves be taken in by this kind of humbug?"
"Is that what you say about Mr. Magraw?"
"I've told you that Magraw is a good fellow. But when I ran across him he was simply aching to see the show, and all I've done is to get him a seat in the front row."
"Yes—but are you not expected to do something more for him?"
"Something more—in what line?"
"Well, I think the Bixbys expect me to make a match for Sadie."
"The deuce they do! Well, we'll marry her to my man."
Miss Grantham uttered a cry of dismay. "Don't suggest it even in joke! Don't you see what a catastrophe it would be?"
"Why should it be a catastrophe?"
"Don't you really see? In the first place we should both be out of a job, and in the second, I should earn the everlasting enmity of the Bixbys. What they want for Sadie is not money but position. Mrs. Bixby tells me that every day."
Tilney received this in meditative silence: then he said with a slight laugh: "Well, if position is all they want, why don't you choose me as your candidate?"
Miss Grantham did not echo his laugh; she simply concentrated her gaze on his with a slowly deepening interest before answering: "It's a funny idea—but I believe they might do worse."
Tilney's hilarity increased.
"At any rate," she continued, without noticing it, "there's one thing that you and no one else can do for them, and I really believe that Mrs. Bixby, in her present mood, would be capable of rewarding you with her daughter's hand."
"Good heavens! Then I should have
"Oh, Sadie's charming. Didn't you notice her last night at the ball? I managed to smuggle her in, though I couldn't get the others invited. What Mrs. Bixby wants," Miss Grantham earnestly continued, "what she's absolutely sickening for at this moment, is to have Sadie invited to Aline Leicester's little Louis XV. dance to-morrow night. And you are the only person in Newport who can do it. I didn't even have a chance to try—for the very day my invitation came I happened to meet Aline, and she said at once: 'Belle, I see the Bixbys in your eye; but I don't see them in my ballroom.' After that, I tried a little wire-pulling, but it simply made her more obstinate—you know her latest pose is to snub the new millionaires; and you are the only person who can persuade her to make an exception for the Bixbys. Aline's family feeling is tremendously strong, and every one knows you are her favorite cousin."
Tilney listened attentively to this plea; but when it had ended he said, with a discouraging gesture: "I was just going to try to get an invitation for Magraw!"
"Lump them together, then—it will be just as easy; and if you should want Mr. Bixby to do anything for you—such as putting you on to a good tip—"
"Thanks, but I've been put on to too many good tips. If it weren't for the good tips I've had, I should be living like a gentleman on my income."
"Well, you'll make Mrs. Bixby think you the most eligible young man in Newport. And if you could persuade Aline to ask Sadie to the dinner before the dance—"
" Comme vous y allez! What would be my return for that?"
She rose with a charming gesture. "Who knows, after all? Perhaps only the pleasure of doing me a very great favor."
"That settles it. I'll do what I can. But how about getting your costumes at such short notice?"
"Oh, we cabled out to Worth on the chance." She held out her hand for good-by. "If only there were something I could do for you!"
"Well, there is, as it happens," he rejoined with a smile. "If I succeed in my attempt, let Magraw dance the cotillon with you at Aline's."
She hesitated, visibly embarrassed. "I should be delighted, of course. I'm engaged already, but that's nothing. Only—I'm going to be horribly frank—the Bixbys are rather a heavy load, and I'm not sure I can carry your friend too!"
"Oh, yes, you can. That's my reason for asking you. You see, I really can't help Magraw much. It takes a woman to give a man a start. Aline will say, 'Oh, bring him, if you choose'—but when he comes she won't take any notice of him, or introduce him to any of the nice women. He was too shy to go to the Summertons' last night—he's really very shy under his loudness—so Aline's dance will be his first appearance in Newport; and if he's seen dancing the cotillon with you, at a little souterie like that, with only a handful of people in the room, why, he's made, and my hard work is over for the season."
She smiled. "If you take a fancy to Sadie, perhaps it's over for life."
"And if you—by George! No, I don't think I want you to dance the cotillon with Magraw."
"Why not? Do you grudge me a comfortable home for my old age?"
He stood gazing at her as though for the first time his eyes took in the full measure of her grace.
"No—but I grudge him even a cotillon with you."
"Ah, you and I were not made to dance cotillons with one another; or do anything together, except conspire at sunrise for each other's material advancement. And that reminds me—I shan't see you again to-day, for we are going to Narragansett on Mr. Bixby's yacht, and to-night we have a dinner at home. But if you succeed with Aline, will you send me a line in the evening?"
He shook his head as they clasped hands once more. "No; but I'll tell you about it here to-morrow morning."
"Very well—I'll be punctual!" she called out to him, as she sped away through the shrubbery.
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