Time Ladies' Magazine.

Gisborne Times, Volume XXV, Issue 2191, 21 September 1907, Page 1 (Supplement)

Time Ladies' Magazine.

COUNTING HIM OUT.

(By Helen Mathers.) The water rippled wide in waves of amber and cherry color, reflected from threaded necklaces of light, hung on the houseboat that had taken first prize at the Regatta, and on Giat dancing, rosy river rocked a flotilla of boats in which were men in flannels, . all silent, entranced, as tho blended tones of Melba and Caruso scattered themselves in gold on the enchanted air. “Best record I over heard,” said one of tho men to his companion, when the storm of applause following the cessation of voices was over. “Yes,” said Barbie. “One almost sees Caruso so busy recognising some friend in the house, that he forgets all about the ‘business’ of his part; then, without even looking at Melba, suddenly making a grab at her hand, and resuming his telegraphic nods and sings—singing like an angel all tho while—child of nature 1” The man laughed. “Juffio,” said tho girl suddenly, “isn’t that’ woman sitting behind tho scarlet geraniums Mrs. Strothers?” Juffie started.

“I haven’t looked,” he said, “been listening too hard, I suppose” ; then from where ho lay in the punt, he raised himself on his elbow, loaned forward, and peered upwards. “Light’s confusing,” he said at last —and it was true—ajl the illumination of the houseboat seemed to stream outwards and tho upper deck was almost in darkness, screened by a hanging garden that' by day was vivid scarlet and green, but now of an opaque darkness, with here and there a white face dimly seen beyond; bus, bad light as it might be, he made out Bill Fyvio, by the'same jealous agency perhaps as had made the woman visible to Barbie. At that moment came dancing out “The Malliehiche.” so French, so gay, so sad, so haunting—just running up and down a few little notes with varied cadences in the light places—the result a pure delight, that set foot' and hand beating time, and brought smiles of pleasure to 1 he bps of those who listened. “I wonder if Mrs. Strothers got her diiorce,” he said, when once more the ■houseboat was silent, and her many beautiful necklaces above and the long line of lamps that described a : glowing line of beauty below, swayed gently in the night air.

“Divorce. . . .” said Barbie, thoughtfully, “it’s a dreadful word.” “Why?” “Oh I it means—means—yon see, Juffie, no one can force you to marry a man—you form your own opinion of his character and looks, and if you are not quite an idiot, or an idiot, in a hurry, you ought not to be fa.,- out in your estimate of him. But however he turns out, you’ve made your bed, and you must lie on it.” “Well,” said Juffie, drawing a long breath, “and I thought you were quite a modern maiden!”

“I am—in the way I choose my clothes and do my hair” (and indeed, the maddening little curl that bob--hed in the soft cloud of hair above lisr brow spoke the last word in modernity)! “but inside I’m old-fashioned , and”—she blushed in the uncertain light, but he saw the blush—“l’d rather make a mistake in marrying and stick to it than through divorce be passed from hand to hand like— She stopped, for her most fervent, prayer always was, “From envy, hatred, malice, and all unchartiableness, good Lord, deliver us. n

“Like Lallie Struthers,” lie said, and laughed oddly; then sat silent, thinking hard. “From hand to hand” . . yes, that was what it came to, these American divorces. . . an ugly -word rose to his lips. . . if) was jnst a question of who would pay th3se wo.men most. . .’ another man bid higher, then hey I for divorce,, and off they went, and so on and on in what way did they differ from—from—-yet. who could, look on the frail, orchidaceous woman up yonder, and even think of her as anything not quite nice? J '

“So you are a patient said; “who’d have thought it, Barbie?”

“I am not/’'she flashed out, “bul divorce strikes at the root of home life, even if the principals achieve ■ happiness, always—always the children suffer.” ' V '

Mo nodded.-. Within - his persona; knowledge had come many instance: j of this; Barbie herself was a case inV point. . “•By Jove.” He glanced round and found that they wero almosl V alone: nearly all the other boats had j stolen silently away, and the river i was practically- deserted, the only J sign of life being the glittering wall' of light made by the houseboats on J their right; and as he pulled rapidly : away, Lallie Struthers came to the, side of the “Red Cockade” and look- 1 - ed over, I

It was as if instinct told her that the man who held ' her fancy was there. She had seen the pair more than once that day—the houseboat had made an excellent observatory whence to view the show—the river nearly hidden under every kind ol craft save where the course was kept for the competitors, the bank dappled with spectators, the green woods and stately Palace beyond, the crowded bridge in the distance—all the details that go to make an English regatta world, just as all the prettiest girls, escorted by some of the best-looking men alive, seem to combine to bring all the charms to grace it. But Barbie and Juffie had been an easy first in good looks that day—there were perhaps prettier girls singly than she cpiito as handsome men present as Juffie, but together they defied competition, a,nd both willing and unwilling admiration had followed them everywhere they went. Mrs Struthers certainly was unwilling as the two came into view among the floating population, disappeared, turned up again, were obliterated in the block where no worse accident was possible than to find your punt interlocked with that of some person with whom you cut on terra firma. But everything made for pleasure, the glorious day, the river scent, the music, the peripatetic sweet-toned harp, oven the rampant gramophones, softened by distance, conduced to the -cheeriness of the occasion; Lallie thought it compared favorably with -one of their Harvard shows, with its meaningless, .monotonous shouts of -“Rahl Rah! Rah!”

Yos, she had enjoyed it all very much, some of tho races were pretty, tho men sending their punts nlong with long magnificent strokes, and tho men and women poling from each side of a gondoln, all of uneven height and stroke, were comical in the extreme: one man broko his jiolo and fell in, his head bobbing danger- , ously among the crowdod boats ns he swam homewards—she watched it through her glasses till ho had landed. It was a surprise to her to see, Cieoffry Piusent there, and with such a pretty girl : old friends, too, judging by their look of camaraderie. She was so engrossed in her thought that she did not even hear what Bill Fyvio was talking about, but roused herself with a start as the servants began to extinguish the illuminations, t ml turned to follow the rest of the ci mpauy downstairs. “You wero saying—?” and slio turned a vacant face on her companion. “That Pinsent’s a lucky chap, ho always gets hold of tho prettiest women wherever ho happens to bo. Awfully fetching that little dancing curl above her forehead; I managed to get near her when fie was sculling, and took a good look at her.” Mrs. Strothers smiled; there was method in the madness of Bill’s comitting the unpardonable sin of praising one woman to another. “Yes, she’s real cunning,” she said, and sank into a chair in tho delightful saloon where half a dozen people talked cheerily; then, accepting a glass of iced water from her admirer, looked at him lazily tho while. Long ago she had divided men into three classes—those whom it was impossible to love, those whom one ought to love, aiid those whom one can love: she did not recognise the first, Bill and her American lovers belonged to the second, and Geoffry Pinsent to tlio last l .

“Lallie,” cried her handsome hostess, raising a glass containing something better than iced water, “hero’s luck to you—luck to your next venture!”

There was a clinking of glass, a ripple of assent from all present, but her smile of acknowledgement, as they drank to her future; the feeling of delight with which she had received a cablegram earlier in the day, announcing the granting of her divorce in Ohio State, had somehow fizzled out completely. In Geoffry Pinsent was not only a delightful lover, but a great catch, and she mistrusted Barbie.

The clock struck twelve as the man and girl ran up the steps leading to the river-side hotel beloved of Theodore Hook, where Barbie and her mother were staying, and when she had gone in, Pinsent re-entered his boat, and sculled further down the river to his own quarters. On his way he met a man who had just left the “Red Cockade,” and who casually

told him as their boats came alongside that the pretty American, Mrs. 'Strothers, had received a cable a few hours before to say she had got her divorce. "

“What do you think she did?” continued the man, in blissful ignorance of Pinsent’s knowing her. “Read the message aloud, then said, in that nasal drawl of hers, ‘I reckon I’ve just counted him out I’ Glad I’m not an American husband 1”

“Counted him out!” Long after ( tlie gossip had gone, and far into the night, the phrase lfaunted Geoffry; it might be applied to him some da) if—if

Barbie’s words recurred to him also; who would have thought that such a modern pretty girl had so deep a sense of a woman’s responsibilities? ... he fell asleep com-

paring their characters, their looks, land dreamed of both; but in his ‘dreams he felt a warmth at his heart when with Barbie that he did not with the other; odd like how in sleep

one’s real likes and dislikes assert themselves. He had noticed this before, yet) on waking it always seemed to him something new. It was one of the most perfect mornings of a glorious summer, and by seven o’clock Pinsent was in his ooat, meaning to scull up-river for an hour or so before breakfast, and possibly bathe in a quiet back-water —he had brought his towels. Glanc-

ng at the “Swan” in passing, there was no sign of Barbie; indeed, ho uardly met a soul by the way. Everything was unusually quiet after the dissipations of the night before, the occupants of the houseboat still asleep bohind 'drawn blinds. So lie thought, till he came alongside the “Red Cockade,” and almost in his ear heard his name softly called in a nasal drawl; turning quickly he saw just above him, sitting in the opon narrow door or window of her room, Lallie Struthers combing lier magnificent hair.

Ho thought she was exactly like the “Tatcho” advertisement (only she wore a silken thing with Mechlin frills instead of a prettier if less conventional garb), and she went on combing as she talked, looking most distractingly lovely. “Didn’t know you were down till

Miss Barbie and I thought we saw Vyou behind the geraniums ' last night,” he said. “Awfully good

gramophone your hostess has got. Caruso was ” , "Who is Miss Barbie?” said Mrs. Brothers, lifting her comb languidly, ;nd holding a long strand away from ler at arm’s length: looking at him with eyes blue as heaven, through the glorious red web of it. “An old friend. She and lier mo-

'her are staying at the ‘Swan’”—he pointed over his shoulder beyond tlie

ine of houseboats. “By Jove! there he goes!” he exclaimed, as Barbie lashed past, using a long, clean troke, but she seemed neither to lear him when lie called, nor to see tim and the woman framed like a

picture in the narrow doorway. It struck Geoflry how intimate, how married they must look to outsiders—already servants’ heads had come round corners—he loosened the grip by which he had steadied his boat, and the comb in Lallie’s hand remained suspended in surprise as an interval of water showed between

iem. “Geoffry,” sho said reproachfully, [ have so much to tell you.”

“I know,” he said briefly, and went back. It would have been brutal, with that look in her eyes, to have widened the distance between them. She looked less like the “Tatcho” girl at that moment than beauty in dis-

tress—an unrehearsed role, so now that sho did not know how to play

“What had he dono?” ho said abruptly.

“Why, ho would not lot me go on his racing ear when he raced. It was moral cruelty, of course, and of tho worst kind. It upset me very much, and, knowing that, he persisted.”

“But he knew how dangerous it was,” exclaimed Geoffry; “it was a man’s ordinary care for what ho valued. Anything else?” bailie’s "comb lay in her lap. A little color had come into her pnlo face; with that hair her complexion should have been fresh and brilliant, but iced water had done its fatal work, as with nil American women—tho eternal, sip, sip, sip. “Isn’t that more than" enough?” she said in astonishment. “Besides, our marriage was an accident. You see, a party of us wont to Coney Island and missed the last train, so wo decided we might as well get married, to enable us to stay tho night at one of tho boarding-houses in the neighborhood ; wo telephoned the chaplain to corno and marry us—there were half a dozen pairs of us—and he did.” “So tlftit really it mattered very little whether you married Strothers or any of tho other Johnnies then?” Lallie started at his tone—that was where the Englishman scored over tho American men—that they were such brutes, and mastered you; but she was not going to be mastered.

“W. Strothers was the richest and best-looking man there,” she said coldly, and lifted her comb again to the amazing hair that rippled over her knees, lay on the ground even, in burnished waves of copper; with all a man’s profound admiration for tho beautiful, he filled his eyes with that wonderful color, while all the time liis mentality closely watched her. “And so Mr. Strothers married you ‘to oblige,’ as the charladies say,” said Geoffry, with a smile that robbed the remark of some of its rudeness. “But now supposing you married someone else, and he prevented your doing things absolutely idiotic and dangerous to life, would that be cruelty?”

“But he wouldn’t. A real liigh60uled gentleman lets his wife do everything she wants”—sho looked so equisitely lovely with her blue eyes shining through a tangle of sunbeams that, -in spite of himself, he smiled. After all beauty is divine, is practically above the law. Barbie sculling all the distance, unnoticed fully realised the fact. . . . Perhaps the girl in passing sent a telepathic wave towards him; but suddenly be thought of her voice—soft, with rather a breathless rush in it, as if her heart outran her throat, and he contrasted Lallie’s nasal drawl with it . the rosy, pearly lights of Barbie’s skin would make Lallie’s look like delicate ivory if the women were side by side, and the homely words, “As you made your

bed yorf- must lie on it,” recurred to him. . . . Without meaning to say it, ho exclaimed—“So you just counted Strothers out.” “I did,” said tlio triumphant nasal voice; “I just counted old man Struthers out.” He looked at her in sudden horror. What was slio ? . . . Sometimes men made woman that . . . but this woman, and such as she—pampered, daintily fed, served, and cared for—made themselves what they became—what she was. “Good God!” he said,“ you call being everything to a man—then tiring of him for no sufficient reason, going straight to the arms of another /nan —you call it counting him out; can .you count out what has got into tho sum of your life like that?”

“Oh! we can,” she said calmly; “wo doi” “And did Struthers object?” “Well,” she said vaguely, “I believe he liked me some; but lie- behaved handsomely about money and so on; our men fix that up all right for us, so that wo shan’t suffer!”

“And you don’t suffer —you have not enough delicacy to mind changing your mate as you change your gown?” “Now you’re real coarse,” she said indignantly. “We in America don’t allow our men to talk like that.”

“No—you only do the things they aro ashamed to talk about!” cried Geoffry, and in a sudden disgusted rage pushed out into the river, leaving Lallie with the suspended comb in her hand; her attitude of giving law to creation, and incidentally man, for the moment, temporarily abandoned. But ho would come back. She know men—he would come back.

“But, Juffie—l only said if—if I made a mistake—what I was going to do.”

“Well—make the mistake—marry me.”

Barbie shook-her head. Sho wa; reclining on cushions in a punt, moored in a backwater, a big red umbrella hiding both their heads from the gazing of an infrequent passing public; the other couples near were aware only of one another. “Why not?”

“Because men’s attitude to women is horrid now—you can do without us, or if you find you can’t, you elaborately apologise to everyone —including your fiancee—for the betise of getting tied up.” “Barbie—l won’t.”

“You see, you can do without us, but we can’t do without you. You walk through a rose garden, plucking one at every step—we see one rose at the ond of a long alley to ja'dmire, and perhaps wear, but if there is no rose at the end of the vista—nothing—how do you suppose we women feel?”

“I didn’t think I was anything half as. nice as a rose.” “You don’t look forward to marriage, as mother says men and girls did in her day, w-itli eagerness, with joy, at. getting something they wanted badly, but in a spirit of sad inquiry—<,f doubt —even of fear—all certain to handicap and paralyse your chauces of happiness.” “Barbie, the first thing I’ll do when we are married, is to snip off that impertinent curl of yours bobbing above your forehead —there is marital defiance ia every bob of it.”

“Juffio —a latter-day wit says that love is allusion, marriage delusion, and woman confusion.”

“Yes, lovio, and a Now Yorker says that tho first age of man is when he thinks about all the wicked things ho is going to do: this is called ‘lnnoconce.’ Tho soconil is when lie does all tho wicked things he has thought of in childhood: this is called ‘Tin Prime of Life.’ Tho third age ifwhen ho roponts all tho wicked tilings ho has done: this is called ‘Dotage.’ Barbie, dear little girl, will you take mo in my dotago? I’ve begun to repent—lots of tilings—but, thank God! I’ve not repented too Into.” “It looked as if yon would have to this morning 1’ sho said, and the saucy curl bobbed quite a long way off.

“Yes, Barbie; promise that, however hateful 1 am, you won’t count me out.”

“ ‘Count you out’ ?” “Yes; but anyway, wo won’t con kisses”—and they didn’t.