Harriet and the Piper | Page 7

was taken by a newcomer,
Richard Carter himself, the owner of all this smiling estate, who had
come up from the little launch at the landing, had changed hastily into
white flannels, Harriet saw at a glance, and had unexpectedly joined
them for tea. His usual programme was to go off immediately for golf,
and to make his first appearance in the family at dinner-time, but
perhaps it had been unusually tiring in the city to-day--he looked pale
and tired, and as if some of the grime of the sun-baked streets clung
about him still.
"Tea, Mr. Carter?" Harriet ventured.
He was watching his wife with a sort of idle interest. She had to repeat
her invitation.
"If you please, Miss Field! Tea sounded right, somehow, to me to- day.
It's been a terrible day!"
"I can imagine it!" Harriet's voice was pleasantly commonplace. But
the moment had its thrill for her. This lean, tall, tired man, with his
abstract manner, his perfunctory courtesies, his nervous, clever hands,

loomed in oddly heroic proportions in Harriet's life. His face was keen
and somewhat lined under a smooth crest of slightly graying hair; he
smiled very rarely, but there was a certain kindliness in his gray eyes,
when Nina or Ward or his wife turned to him, that Harriet liked. He
came and went quietly, absorbed in his business, getting in and out of
his cars with a murmur to his chauffeur, disappearing with his golf
sticks, presiding almost silently over his own animated dinner table. He
was always well groomed, well dressed without being in the least
conspicuous; always more or less tired when she saw him. In the
evenings he smoked, listened to music, went early to bed. But he never
failed to visit his mother, or pay her some little definite attention when
she was with them; and when Madame Carter was in her New York
apartment he called on her nearly every day.
For Harriet he had hardly a dozen words a year. He merely smiled
kindly when she thanked him for the Christmas gift that bore his
untouched card; if she went to her sister for a day or two, he gave her
only a nod of greeting when she came back. Sometimes he thanked her
for a small favour, briefly and indifferently; now and then asked with
sharp interest about Nina's teeth or his mother's headache.
But Harriet had known other types of men, and for his very silences, for
his indifference, for his loyalty to his own women, she had begun to
admire him long ago. She had not been born in this atmosphere of
pleasure and ease and riches; she was not entirely unfitted to judge a
man. There was not much to awaken respect in the men she met at
Crownlands, still less in the women. She liked Ward for his artless
boyishness; forgave Anthony Pope much because he was straight and
clean and self-respecting; but there were plenty of other men, spoiled
and selfish, weak and stupid; men who amused and flattered Isabelle
Carter perhaps, but among whom her husband loomed a very giant.
Harriet had watched Richard Carter with a keenness of which she was
hardly conscious herself, ready to detect the flaw, the weakness in his
character, but she never found it, and after awhile she became his silent
champion, his secret ally in all domestic matters, quick to see that his
mail and his telephone messages were sacred, that his meals never were
late, and that any small request, such as the use of the study for some

unexpected conference, or the speedy sending of a telegram, was
promptly granted.
Isabelle was always breezily civil to her husband; he had long ago
vanished as completely from among the vital elements of her life as if
he were dead, perhaps more than if he were dead. She thought--if she
thought about him at all--that he never saw her little affairs; she
supposed him perfectly satisfied with his home and children and club
and business, and incidentally with his beautiful figurehead of a wife.
They had quarrelled distressingly, several years ago, when he had
bored her with references to her "duty," and her influence over Nina,
and her obligations to her true self. But that had all stopped long since,
and now Isabelle was free to sleep late, to dress at leisure, to make what
engagements she pleased, to see the persons who interested her.
Richard never interfered; never was there a more perfectly discreet and
generous husband. Half the women Isabelle knew were attempting to
live exactly as she did, to cultivate "suitors," and drift about in an
atmosphere of new gowns and adulation and orchids and softly lighted
drawing rooms, and incessant playing with fire; it was the accepted
thing, in