BITTER-SWEET
It was all charming, if a little strange--the friendliness of Miss Elton
when Lena met her at the station, the smart trap and groom that met them
at the end of their short journey, the very way in which Miss Elton took
possession of those awe-inspiring objects, and the respectful curiosity
of the loungers at the country station. As she stepped into the
carriage, Lena caught a glimpse of a cart-horse with so many ribs as to
suggest that the female of his species had yet to be created. He looked
so like her mother, that he gave her a spasm of anguish which she tried
to forget, as they were whirled down the road with its fringe of
straight-limbed trees. Never had the world looked more lovely. Her
spirits were lifted up.
Mrs. Lenox met them at the door with hospitable effusiveness, but Lena's
crucifixion began from that moment.
"The man will carry your bag up for you," said Mrs. Lenox.
As Olaf obediently stepped forward, Lena flushed and thought: "They both
noticed that it was only imitation leather."
Mrs. Lenox walked up stairs with them, chattering gaily with Madeline,
and Lena followed in embarrassed silence at the charming freshness and
daintiness of everything about her.
"I've put you and Miss Elton in adjoining rooms," said Mrs. Lenox,
smiling kindly at her, "so that you needn't feel remote and lonely on
your first visit here."
The man put down the bag and disappeared, and a trim maid came forward
to help Lena off with her coat which, with a sudden pang, she wished
were lined with satin instead of sateen.
"Sall Ay unpack you bag?" said the little maid politely.
"No, thank you. I prefer to do it myself," said Lena desperately. It was
more than she could endure to have a strange girl spying out the
nakedness of the land. Yet when the little maid said, "Vary well,
ma'am," and walked into the next room, Lena wondered if she had made a
mistake. She heard Miss Elton's cheerful address of the appalling
personage with the puffed up bit of hair and the saucy cap.
"How do you do, Sophie?"
"Good day, mees. As thar anything Ay can do for you?"
"I fancy my dress would be better for a good brushing after the dusty
train, and the gown I want is in the top tray of the little trunk,
Sophie."
The door closed and Lena wondered in terror what of her small store of
finery she ought to put on, and when she ought to go down stairs. She
solved the first question to the best of her ability and sat down on the
edge of a very clean beflowered chair in despair about the other, when
there came voices in the hall, and Madeline tapped on her door, and
called:
"Don't you want to come out and see the baby?"
Now Lena detested babies as sticky and order-destroying vermin, but in
relief she said: "A baby? Oh, how lovely!"
"Come," said Mrs. Lenox. "The proper study of womanhood is baby." Lena
went out to find a very small person in a very tottering condition,
steered up and down the hall by another be-capped maid who was holding
tight to his rear petticoats, while Mrs. Lenox trotted by his side,
pulling a woolly lamb that baa'd with enchanting precision, and allowing
her skirts to be worried by a small puppy, whose business in life was to
bite anything hard that lay on the floor or that wiggled. Mrs. Lenox and
Miss Elton sat down on the floor to towsle and to be towsled amid
laughter and hair-pulling and frantic yelps from the puppy, while Lena
looked on and said: "Isn't he cunning?" and wondered whether she ought
to sit on the floor or not. She wondered if this were indeed the
millionaire Mrs. Lenox of whom she read with awe from the "In the swing"
column as being present at such and such "society functions", thus and
thus attired.
Somehow Mrs. Lenox, seated on the floor, with her hair over one eye,
disconcerted Lena more than any amount of grandeur would have done. She
felt as one might who should catch the Venus of Melos cutting capers.
Then the redoubtable lady jumped up, tucked in a few hair-pins, gave a
final shake to her small son and said:
"I dressed little Frank myself this afternoon. Don't you think I did a
good job? Dressing a baby combines all the pleasures of the chase with
the requirements of the exact sciences, Miss Quincy. Now let's go down
and have some tea before big Frank gets home. I think we've time for a
little friendly chat."
This time Lena followed with greater sense of security. She knew her
dress was pretty and becoming, though inexpensive; and as for
conversation, that to Lena's mind meant clothes and society, with which
she felt a journalistic familiarity.
"Perhaps you prefer cream in your tea?" said Mrs. Lenox, with hand
poised over the little table.
"No, thank you, I like lemon," answered Lena, who had never tasted it
before and now thought it very nasty indeed. Then she wondered why she
had told such a small useless lie.
But it was comfortable to be in a big lovely room with a pile of logs
blazing in a great fireplace, and soft lamps shedding a glow rather than
making spots of light. She wished she had, like Madeline, picked out a
very easy chair instead of the stiff one she had selected, but she felt
too shy to move until Mrs. Lenox suggested it, and then she was
embarrassed because she was embarrassed. She wondered if she should ever
be able to do things like these women, without thinking of what she was
doing.
Madeline was idly turning the pages of a magazine and now she held it
up.
"Look at these illustrations. Aren't they stunning?"
"I don't know," said Mrs. Lenox. "I'm growing tired of that kind of
thing. It isn't art; it's a fad. The trouble with most of this modern
work is that it is too smart and fashionable. The clothes are more
important than the people."
"Quite a contrast to ancient art, where the people were everything and
the clothes nothing," Madeline retorted. "After all, I rather like the
modern way. The old Greeks were not a bit more real people. They were
nothing but types."
"And very decapitated and de-legged types," said Mrs. Lenox with a
laugh. "And dirty, too--like the Sleeping Beauty. Do you know, it gives
me the shivers to think of the Sleeping Beauty, lying there for ages,
with dust and cobwebs accumulating on her. I'm sure I hope the prince
gave her a thorough dusting before he kissed her."
"You are horribly realistic, Vera--a person with no imagination."
"I think I have just shown a truly vivid imagination."
"It is the business of imagination to build up a world of loveliness and
order."
"I don't agree with you. I think it is the business of imagination to
project things as they really are. I don't want to slip out from under
reality and see only beauty. Beware, Madeline, or you will degenerate
into a mere optimist."
"Isn't it funny that if your opponent can call you an optimist, he feels
that he has delivered a knock-down blow to all your arguments?" Mrs.
Lenox suddenly pulled herself together and turned toward Lena, who sat
silently drinking her tea and taking no part in the conversation.
"Did you tell me that your mother is an invalid, Miss Quincy?"
"Not exactly; but she can't go about much. It seems to play her out to
walk."
"It must be very hard on her to stay in the house all the time. I wonder
if I might take her to drive with me once in a while?" A scarlet flush
passed over Lena's face at the very idea of her mother's querulous
vulgarity being displayed to this woman, and Mrs. Lenox could not help
seeing her embarrassment.
A little wave of pity swept over the older woman. It must be a cruel
fate to be ashamed of one's surroundings. Mrs. Lenox herself was one of
those serious-minded persons who regard their opportunities as
responsibilities. She waged constant warfare with the dominion of
externals, and believed with all her heart that the life was more than
raiment; but a momentary doubt assailed her as to whether, after all, it
might not be easier to conquer things when one owned them, rather than
when one had to do without them. It has generally been Dives who is
represented as enslaved by the goods of this world. Perhaps Lazarus, if
his heart is absorbed in sordid longing for what others have and he has
not, stands just as poor a chance of the kingdom of Heaven.
What could she do to make Miss Quincy feel at ease? The girl certainly
had brains and character. Dick had told them of her brave bearing of
burdens. This stiff back and this silence were but the tribute of
shyness to new surroundings. So ran Mrs. Lenox's swift thoughts and she
set herself to make Lena talk about the things with which she was
familiar, to link her past to this present.
Evidently the same thought was flitting through Madeline's brain, for
before Mrs. Lenox spoke she began:
"Do you know, Miss Quincy, I have felt a little envy of you ever since
Dick first told us about you."
"Envy! Of me?" Lena exclaimed, moved to genuine surprise.
"Yes," Madeline went on, leaning forward, eager to explain herself. "You
see, I seem to have had a good deal of training, which looks as though
it should prepare me to do something, and then--then I don't do
anything. It makes me feel flat and unprofitable. I'd like to feel like
you every night--as though I'd really accomplished a thing or two."
"Isn't it like Madeline to try to make the girl feel the dignity of
drudgery!" Mrs. Lenox said to herself.
"The stuck-up thing!" thought Lena; "rubbing it into me that she does
not have to work for her living."
She was tempted to make a sharp answer, but remembered her diplomacy and
held it in.
"Work isn't always so pleasant when you're in it," she said.
"Everything is apt to look rough around the edges until you hold it off
and get a view of it as a whole," Mrs. Lenox put in. "Even
love--sometimes. But I think that, next to love, work is about the best
thing in life."
"Oh, that depends," Madeline cried. "When I read papers at clubs, people
talk about my 'work', but nobody thinks that it is worth while. I'd like
to earn a dollar, just as a guaranty that some one thought the thing I
did was worth it."
"Gracious!" Lena exclaimed in genuine surprise. "Do you really feel that
way about earning money?"
"Don't you?" Madeline asked in return; and each looked at the other
uncomprehendingly.
"No, I don't," Lena burst out sullenly, but forgetting to be shy. "I
feel degraded by every dirty five-dollar bill I get by being a slavey.
People make you feel that way. You get it rubbed into you every day."
"No, no," Mrs Lenox cried, remorseful now that their talk had drifted
into such intimate personalities. "I am sure, Miss Quincy, nobody feels
that way about a woman that works, except, perhaps, people whose
opinion you can well afford to despise." This was a shaft that struck so
near home that Lena could hardly hold back the tears. "I am sure I think
a thousand times more of a woman who does her honest share than I do of
the helpless ones who lie down on somebody else and whine," Mrs. Lenox
went on.
Madeline was inwardly bemoaning her own lack of tact. She really wanted
to make a friend of this girl, because Dick had asked her to, and here,
at the very beginning, she had stumbled, and all that was meant to show
her regard and sympathy but served to make a gulf between them.
Mrs. Lenox darted a look at her and sprang suddenly to her feet.
"Oh, here's Frank," she exclaimed with an air of relief. "Come in, boy,
and have some tea and fire. It was good of you to come so bright and
early."
"Earlier than bright, I'm afraid," he said.
Lena looked with interest toward the door. Frank Lenox was great in St.
Etienne, first because he was the son-in-law of old Nicholas Windsor, a
potentate of the first local magnitude, and second, because he was
pushing to still greater success the enterprises that the elder man had
begun. So people talked about him in the street-cars by his first name.
Lena felt that it was a privilege to look at him, big, clean, with that
mingling of alertness with power which is the characteristic of the
American business man. It was an experience of absorbing interest to see
the half underhand caress he gave his wife in passing, and to find
herself actually shaking hands with him. He seemed imposing and friendly
and yet quite like other people, as he looked around for a capacious
chair and his wife handed him a cup of tea. She was conscious that he
looked at her with great interest. She recognized the expression in
masculine eyes and it soothed her ruffled spirit. It was the constant
affirmation of her beauty, a beauty which had in it something dream-like
that made men's eyes dream. After all, she could always get along with
men.
"If you'd know what brought me home before my time, it was not your
charms, my dear, but a mad desire to get away from Harris, who cornered
me and opened up the negro question. I saw nothing for it but to take to
the woods."
"It makes my traditional abolition blood boil to see how public opinion
seems to be settling down and dallying with heresy and injustice
again," Madeline exclaimed. She looked flushed and vigorous, and Lena
stared at her and wondered how she could care for such things. Was it
pure affectation?
"Oh, you're young, my dear," said Mrs. Lenox laughingly. "You must hold
all your opinions violently. And you haven't been South. Things can't
help looking different down there."
"Vera!" cried Miss Elton so explosively that Lena sat up straighter than
ever, "you're not really a renegade yourself, are you?" and she spoke as
though her life depended on the answer.
"Certainly not," Mrs. Lenox answered. "But I'm growing tolerant toward
the poor old world as it is. I'm willing to let it grow slowly instead
of insisting that it shall all be immediately as good and wise as I am.
I'm learning to respect other people's point of view and to suspect that
my mind is not such an ingenious mechanism as I once supposed it to be."
"Moreover, since she has married, she has contracted a habit of taking
the opposite point of view," said her husband.
"Oh, that's one of the jokes that has successfully withstood the
ravages of time," said Mrs. Lenox scornfully.
"Very well, then, I'll say that you are getting on toward middle life
and have had your enthusiasms corrupted by a worldly-wise father and
husband. But I dare say that Miss Quincy, being young, is quite as
explosive as you are, Madeline. So we shall be two against two."
He looked with a challenge toward the girl, and perhaps Lena might have
managed the expected saucy answer if she had not suddenly remembered
that her shoes were shabby and she had meant to keep them hidden under
her skirts. This memory destroyed her new-found equilibrium, so she
blurted out a weak, "I really don't know anything about it," and then
blushed hotly at her own awkwardness.
"It's a stupid subject, anyway," said Mr. Lenox. "I fled from town to
avoid it. Let's not talk about negroes."
"Tell us what has happened in the great world," said Mrs. Lenox, leaning
forward with her elbows on her knees and chin in hands.
"Another Jap victory," he said. "And I'll take a second one of those
little cakes please, if Miss Quincy will leave one for me. It cuts me
to the heart to see how the young girls of our generation stuff on
little cakes. If they'd only take example by these same Japanese, who
develop strategy and patriotism on rice, cherry blossoms and gymnastics,
there'd be some hopes for us as a people."
He glanced again at Lena in a very amiable manner, as though he expected
her to be saucy in return, but she blushed with mystification and
mortification. She had felt doubtful as to whether she ought to take
another of the little cakes, but they were very good, and she was young
enough to love goodies, without many chances at anything so delectable
as these particular bits. And now to be detected and made fun of! She
began to question if she should be able to get along with these men,
after all.
"Thank you," he went on after a pause. "And now that I'm comforted with
cake, another cup of tea, Vera; and then, if you would complete my
happiness, just give me a posy out of that bouquet for my buttonhole."
His wife rose, pulled a flower from a vase and pinned it to his coat.
"Here's mignonette! That's for dividends," she said, and she put her
fingers in his hair and gave his head a little shake.
"Don't infringe on my head,--it's patented," he said. "Now go and sit
down, and I will tell you something really exciting as well as
instructive. I know about it because I have the privilege of helping the
good work with a few dollars. Professor Gregory has dug up two or three
hundred old manuscripts somewhere near Thebes, and he cables that they
belong to the first century after Christ, that he expects them to
illuminate most of the dark recesses of the time, and that I am
privileged to share the glory by making an ample contribution. Doesn't
that stir your young blood? I never hear of these things without a
passionate desire to go to some respectably aged land and dig and dig
and dig. It's a choice between doing so and making things in this very
new land for some other fellow to dig up six thousand years from now.
Which would you choose, Miss Quincy?"
Lena was extraordinarily pretty, and he had a theory that pretty girls
were made to be talked to. Lena thought so too, yet all she said was, "I
should think the digging would be very dirty work, though."
He glanced at her swiftly, and, though there was nothing unfriendly in
the look, she felt an uncomfortable shiver. She fell into a miserable
silence which she hardly broke when the others addressed her with a
deliberate question or made some manifest effort to include her in
topics introduced for her benefit. These attempts were only too apparent
to her and rasped her soul the more. These people had such a perplexing
way of saying whatever came into their heads. They were serious and
frivolous at unexpected places. They were not at all "elegant"; they
were natural, but their naturalness was not of Lena's kind. Mr. Lenox
rose and smiled at his wife.
"I think I must go and have a look at my latest son," he said. "He is a
very interesting person. At present he seems to be composed of two
simple but diverse elements, a stomach and a sense of humor." At the
door he paused again and said, "Have you seen our new coat of arms,
Madeline?--two kids rambunctious?"
He went away and sounds of manifest hilarity floated down the stairs.
And then dinner was announced, and he looked so good-tempered when he
returned and gave Lena his arm that her spirits were again lifted up.
She had never before been escorted to a meal as though it were an affair
of ceremony.
"I met an old fellow to-day," her host began with persistent attempt to
draw her out, "that told me that for two years he had dined on bread and
milk. And then I felt that I was a favorite of fortune to be able
fearlessly to storm the dining-room. Happy the appendix that has no
history."
Lena giggled helplessly. Was it amusement that she saw in Mr. Lenox's
eyes as he unfolded his napkin and surveyed her?
"It's an awesome thing, isn't it, to be living in a world darkened on
one side by the servant question and on the other by the appendix, like
Scylla and Charybdis?"
She found herself sitting down to face the mysteries of a meal whose
type was different from any hitherto met in her brief experience of
life. Her internal summing up was, "Of course I can't make any
impression on Mr. Lenox. He likes the other kind of woman."
She looked at Mrs. Lenox, a woman of restraint and dark hair and
straight lines, and contrasted her with herself, a thing of curves and
sunshine colors. She did not know that a man never cares for a type of
woman, but only for woman in the concrete. Poor little Lena! When the
evening was over and she found herself at last in her too-splendid
bedroom, she put arms and head down on the dressing-table and sobbed.
These people were simple where she was complicated and complicated where
she was simple. It was all uncomfortable and different. She thought of
Jim Nolan's unfrilled conversation, of his clumsy, rather inane
compliments, of his primitive amoeba-like type of humor. She saw the
whole course of her life of mean shifts and wranglings with her mother;
and though its moral niggardliness was unappreciated, its physical
meagerness sickened her in contrast to the ease and beauty of these
newer scenes. She must climb out of that life, somehow, by hook or
crook; if this were the alternative, she must grow to its likeness, no
matter how the birth-pangs hurt. She would face it. She would even
rejoice in the opportunity to study these women and mold herself to
their outward form of _bien aise_. She would--she would. Faint and
far-away voices came to her, and she wondered if Mr. and Mrs. Lenox were
discussing her and laughing, as she would do in their place, at her
gaucheries. The meaner you are yourself, the easier it is to believe in
the meanness of others. It was the most godlike of men who taught the
godliness of all men. Lena could not imagine that these people could
either like or respect her unless she were molded after their pattern
and had as much as they had.
And Miss Elton! She hated Miss Elton for that irritating calmness, for
that easy appropriation of the good things of life. She hated with a
hate that tingled her spine and shook her small body. The tragedy of
littleness made her grit her teeth as she thought of the unconscious
girl now going to bed in the next room.
"I'll get even with her somehow," was Miss Lena's resolve. "Just let me
get the hang of things a little, and I'll show her!" Miss Quincy was
conscious that though she as yet lacked knowledge of their world, she
had the advantage of the inheritance of guile.
But things! things! things! Lena thought a little of the irony of
it--that all her life she had pined to be set in luxury, and yet now and
here the very rugs and chairs and soft lights, the pictures of
unrecognized subjects, the unfamiliar delicacies before her at the
table, all seemed to loom up and crush her into insignificance by their
importance and expensiveness. They were her masters still.
But it was not Lena's way to waste her time on abstractions. While she
sat and watched her fire crumble away into ashes, she was chiefly
occupied with the concrete, and there entered into her soul and took
possession of its empty chambers and began to mold her to her own
purposes the demon of social ambition, which is not the desire to do or
to be, but rather the longing to appear to be and to seem to do--to take
the chaff and leave the wheat.
Mastered by this powerful spirit, Lena actually did make great strides
in the next few days. She learned to lounge quite comfortably, to
pretend with verisimilitude, even to chatter a little, helped chiefly by
a certain persistent light-weight on the part of Mr. Lenox; but the life
was hard and the rewards meager. All the time she suspected Miss Elton
and Mrs. Lenox of despising her, because she had so much less than they.
Their kindliness was but an added insult.