Short Fiction

Christopher Gonfallon was at a loss to explain. Everything about her, the innocence of her eyes, the purity of her lips, the atmosphere which she exhaled, everything, even to the ripple of her laugh, seemed at variance with such as they. That she should be admired was a thing which he accepted as a matter of course: she was, he had already discovered, admirable in manifold respects. But she was not a catch; the recent disasters of her father must have bespattered her not a little; she was not, never had been, and in all probability never would be, in what is colloquially known as the swim; and yet, seemingly, without an effort on her part, a bouquet of the flowers of the upper four was claiming her as its own. Truly he could not make it clear. Now and then on returning to the rectory he had loitered a second at the sitting-room door, surprised at the murmur of voices, the hum of a conversation that seemed to flutter from ear to ear, interrupted, if at all, by a laugh, or the click of a fan furled suddenly; and through it he would catch Claire’s intonation, undulatory yet vibrant as a child’s, and he would see her, behind the teacups, in her face the flush of the rose, in her expression the guilelessness of one too young to be aware of wrong.

Once only, on the impulse of the moment, he had ventured in, but his cloth must have jarred, for immediately there had been an escape, delayed only by Mrs. Manhattan’s superior tact, which had led him into a corner and forced him into platitudes on the subject of the Bond of Hope, a benevolent institution for deserving poor, over which as rector he presided.

Ah, yes, the Bond of Hope was doing famous work. And even as he asserted it he remembered a smothered scandal of the month before⁠—Ah, yes, the Bond of Hope indeed! But as he smiled assuringly he caught in Mrs. Manhattan’s congratulations an inflection which told him she was not the fool she looked; and when Mrs. Manhattan had taken her Directoire coat away and the other visitors had departed, he himself had lingered, refreshed by Claire’s limpid smile, the guilelessness of her face.

Guileless she was⁠—so guileless, so pure and chaste of face and way, that a day or two later, when Gonfallon, outwearied with the effort of setting new thoughts into archaic frames, dropped his pen, determining, if need were, that he would exhume a sermon from the package he had brought from Bronx, the charm was upon him. Already he had discerned in her something of the confidence of a flower, a flexibility which a passing wind might disarray, that innocence which a breath will tarnish and which it was for him who stood quasily in loco parentis to preserve unsullied by the world. For a moment he pondered on the possibility of mating her to some earnest young cleric, Mr. Qualms, for instance, one of his own assistants, a recent graduate of Trinity, a sturdy servant of Christ who possessed a look of feverish determination and trousers that bagged at the knee. Yet, somehow, the idea seemed incongruous and unpleasant; this thought took a tangential flight, and he fell to musing as to what Claire could have in common with her guests and they with her.

So far as the feminine element was concerned, little there was to be said. Mrs. Manhattan was indeed a butterfly of fashion⁠—rather mature and stout, but still a butterfly⁠—yet did she not each Sunday occupy a pew that fronted the pulpit, under the very drippings of the sanctuary as were, and was not her husband warden of the church? Miss Nevers, he understood, had been taxed with inconsequences; but society he knew to be censorious. Besides, was she not the originator of the Girls’ Friendly Aid Association?⁠—and, moreover, when after some sudden peroration he had extended his arm, with that gesture with which all New York was familiar, and asked the congregation, as though it embodied a unit, Are you one of those miserable sinners? he had watched Miss Nevers and marked that not so much as an eyelid had quivered at the taunt. With Miss Pickett no fault whatever could be found: her attendance at communion had the exactitude of an eclipse. And so far as the duchess was concerned, albeit on marrying a Frenchman she had renounced the Episcopal Church, was there not, poor, errant lamb, a chance of winning her back to the fold?

But of the men he was by no means so sure. Jones, certainly, apart from the ribaldry of his fiction and a mania he had for collecting plots, was harmless as a strawberry festival, and an old friend to boot. Maule was of a different class: he had a coarse mouth, and his reputation was sour. Rerick was not a bit better. Tandem he dismissed with an epithet⁠—popinjay. But Yarde detained his thoughts. Concerning him he had obtained information⁠—information which the young man’s appearance refuted, for he was fragrant, colorful, and grateful to the eye, evidence, however, which Gonfallon was not inclined to accept in his favor. And in declining he was logical; for if Satan be not seductive how can he ever enthrall?

As he thought of Yarde his perplexity increased. He was welcomed from one end of Fifth Avenue to the other. Outwardly he was not ill-behaved, a little effeminate perhaps, but not actually offensive, and yet about him was an atmosphere which Gonfallon could not breathe. It seemed to him that beneath the affectations of a peacock he concealed the beak and talons of a bird of prey⁠—the sort of man that ought to have the danger-signal hoisted wheresoever he went. But still, if Claire chose to receive him, what manner of complaint could be made? Because he himself happened to be of the cloth there was little reason why he should expect his wife’s sister to