LENA'S FRIENDS
Lena sat one morning behind the coffee-urn so self-absorbed and smiling
that Dick wondered.
"Mrs. Percival," he remonstrated, "you have a husband at this end of the
table. Have you forgotten it? What are you thinking about?"
"Dick, I believe I have found a friend--a real friend," Lena jerked out.
"A good many of them, I should say. Who is this fortunate person?"
"Mrs. Appleton."
"Mrs. Appleton!" Dick gulped at his coffee and stared at his wife in
some perplexity. "Isn't she a--well, for one thing, a good deal older
than you?"
"She'll be all the better guide," Lena retorted with one of her demure
pouts. "You know she invited me to join the class she has gotten up for
Swami Ram Juna. You needn't grin in that horrid way, Dick. I shall be
so wise very soon that you'll be afraid of me."
"Heaven forbid, you dear little inspirer of awe."
"At any rate, she's taken the greatest fancy to me, and I to her. She
came here yesterday in the pouring rain, and we spent a long afternoon
talking together. We feel the same way about everything. She says that
with my beauty, I ought to make a great hit, and she's going to give a
big reception in my honor. Of course, with her experience, she can be a
great help to me."
"I see." Dick forgot his breakfast entirely, and meditated.
"What is Mr. Appleton like?" Lena persisted.
"He has enough money to make me pale my ineffectual fires, and he adds
to that the personality of the great American desert. But I suspect his
wife is so wholly satisfied with the golden glow that the latter fact
has never penetrated to her consciousness. I think Mrs. Appleton has not
yet recovered from her astonishment at finding herself wedded to
profusion. It appears to delight her afresh from day to day."
"You can be very nasty about people when you choose." Lena's tone was
unmistakably vexed.
"Frankly, Lena, I do not like Mrs. Appleton or her attitude toward life.
She is the kind of woman who refuses to take the simplest thing simply,
the kind that thinks subscription dances and clubs and private cars and
family tombs were invented chiefly to show our exclusiveness."
"Well, what are they for?"
Dick laughed. "Most of them to get all the fun there is in things, I
should say; and the tombs, to show that love holds even after death."
"I like her, anyway," said Lena. "I like her better than the stuck-up
kind of women." The words sound bald. Lena's lips made them seem
humorous. It was so easy to avoid disapprobation just by that little
smile and whimsical twist of the mouth.
"And whom do you mean by that!"
"You know whom I mean," Lena answered defiantly. "And I consider Mrs.
Appleton a great deal more of a society woman than Mrs. Lenox. At any
rate she goes a great deal more. And she does not neglect her church
duties or her charities, either. She has told me things that she is
doing."
"I should say she does not neglect them," ejaculated Dick. "She has the
art so to regild them that even philanthropy and religion become mere
appendages to society. Does Mrs. Lenox belong to Ram Juna's class,
Lena?"
"No. Mrs. Appleton asked her, but she wrote that though she was
interested in oriental thought, she, personally, found it more
satisfactory to get it by reading. Now wasn't that snobby, Dick?"
"Is it snobbish to choose what really suits you, instead of following a
craze like a sheep woman?"
But Lena shut her lips tightly. If she had not will, she had obstinacy.
She could be resolute in behalf of her realities, luxury, beauty and
self. From the moment when Mrs. Appleton first dawned on her horizon,
she had recognized her ideal. Here was a woman who was at once showy,
fashionable and virtuous. The things that Mrs. Lenox took for granted or
ignored were to her matters of absorbing importance. She magnified the
office of every detail of social conduct and every minutia of society's
"functions". It was worth while to spend a week of soul-fatiguing labor
in order that a tea should be just right; and her preparations were not
made in silence, but with an amount of discussion and red-tape that
filled every crevice of life. She had learned the art of so cramming the
days with trifles that there was no room for the big things and she
could conveniently forget them.
Mrs. Appleton seemed to recognize in Lena the same curious mingling of
deep-down barbaric egotism and love of display, with the longing to be
civilizedly correct. The two were drawn together.
"I like her," said Lena positively.
"I'm sorry," Dick said gently. "I can't say that I do, and I should be
glad if you could find your friends among those I love and respect."
"You needn't try to dictate my friendships," said Lena sharply.
"I did not think of dictating, sweetheart. But when we love each other,
we naturally long for sympathy in all things." Dick was making a brave
effort.
But there was little use in making this appeal to Lena, to whom love was
but a beneficent masculine idiosyncrasy. Dick glanced at her and at his
watch.
"I must be off," he said. "I have an engagement to meet Preston and
plan out our campaign."
"Ours!"
"I'm going to run for alderman of this ward," Dick laughed as Lena
flushed. "Don't you approve?"
"How can you be interested in running for alderman?" she asked. "It is
such a mean little ambition. I wish you would try for something big. It
would be grand to have you a senator, so that we could go to Washington.
I should love to be in all the gaieties and meet all the distinguished
people."
"Why, sweetheart, you don't suppose I care for the great name of city
father, do you?" Dick answered laughing. "That's only the end of a
lever. I do care immensely to be one of those who will clean up this
city and keep it clean. Perhaps, if we do these near-by things, the big
ones will come, by and by."
"A sort of public housemaid," said Lena scornfully.
"Exactly!" Dick laughed and nodded.
But Lena shrugged her shoulders and pouted as the door shut and she idly
watched her husband's final hand-wave.
He walked down town and the fresh northern air set his pulses
quickening. He noted how few gray heads there were, how full everything
seemed of the vitality of youth. On the piazzas were groups of happy
well-kept children, bundled up for winter play and bubbling over with
exuberance. To any passer-by they told that these were the homes of
young married people. Everywhere life looked sweet and normal and
vigorous. And he knew that for miles in every direction there were more
such homes of more such people.
But when he reached the part of town whither his steps were bent, all
this was reversed. Here was dirt, if not of body, then of spirit. Here
were a thousand evil influences at work. Here was public plundering for
private greed; here were wire-pullings and bargainings and selfishness
reigning supreme. And these forces were the nominal rulers of a city,
the greater part of whose life was good.
However, he was getting the ropes in his hands. These things were no
longer vague generalities floating in his mind, as rosy clouds might be
backed by thunder-heads on the horizon. They were growing definite. He
began to know who were the evil-workers and how they did it. He had the
art of making friends, and he made friends among publicans and sinners
as well as--well, there weren't any saints in St. Etienne to make
friends with. At any rate some of the powers that were began to say that
Dick Percival knew entirely too much. And some of the powers that ought
to be, but still slept, namely the good citizens of St. Etienne, found
their slumbers disturbed by his straight and convincing words.
But to-day all his labors seemed not worth while. There was a sour taste
in his mouth. To do the little thing with a big heart was after all
nothing but a sham. His ideals, he thought, had simmered down to petty
things. He was spending his time in nosing out small evil-smelling
scandals and in running for a mean inferior office. He felt nauseated
with himself. Worse, he felt a horrible new doubt of his wife. Mrs.
Appleton had been to him the type of woman he disliked, worldly,
shallow, busy with the sticks and straws; yet now there would creep in a
suspicion that some of the things he had forgiven to Lena's beauty and
lack of sophistication were close of kin to the older woman's more
blatant materialism. Materialism was the thing Dick had not learned to
associate with his own women.
This radiant morning, then, he felt himself under the dominion of the
grand inquisitors who invented the torture of little things. Life
consisted in having slow drops of water fall on his head, one at a time.
Family life was slimed with small bickerings, children were a nuisance,
society a bore, and the most beautiful woman in the world defiant and
uninspiring at the breakfast-table.
It does not take Cleopatra long to wither the ideals.
Dick began to analyze his wife, which is a dangerous thing for a man to
do. If a husband wishes to preserve the lover's state of mind, he must
continue to think of his wife as a single indivisible creature, not a
compound of faults, virtues and charms, lest in some unlucky moment he
find that the faults are the biggest ingredient.
Dick, however, was thinking, and the substance of his thoughts was that
this little girl, who bore his name, had her seamy side. Up to now, if
he noticed a defect, he instantly and chivalrously put it out of his
mind, but now certain doubts had knocked so long that by sheer
persistence they forced an entrance. Lena, who began by being a sweet,
innocent, much-enduring little thing, now that he knew her more and
more intimately, was less and less the creature he imagined. To the
world in general she was still the big-eyed ingenue, learning to take
her place in society. To him alone, it seemed, to him whose love and
reverence she ought to have desired, she was becoming indifferent as to
the impression she made. Was the other side of her a pose? Dick found
himself walking very fast, and he slackened his pace to a respectable
gait. If Lena the lovable was a pose, then the inspiration and ideals
and joy of his life were frauds. That thought was too appalling. He
deliberately stopped thinking about it and turned his thoughts to frauds
in city politics, which were easier to endure.
Lena, on the other hand, sitting idly by the window, indulged in a
little reflection on her own part. She was revolving with some
bitterness her disappointment and disillusionment. She remembered what a
glorious gilded creature Dick had appeared to her at one time. Now he
was sunk to be a very ordinary young man, with curious and stupid
idiosyncrasies, and not nearly so rich and important as many of the
people she came in contact with. Might she have done better if she had
waited? She too stopped regretting and turned her attention to a novel.
She was just beginning to discover the charms of "Gyp." She looked up to
see Mr. Early come up the pathway, and a moment later he stood beside
her.
"Mrs. Percival," he said, "I have brought you this little vase, the
first of its kind that my artists have produced. I thought it so really
beautiful that I could not resist laying one before you as a kind of
tribute."
"Oh, it is lovely. And am I really the only person in the world who has
one?"
"You and Miss Elton." A pang of small jealousy shot through Lena's
heart. It was always and everywhere Miss Elton. "I sent her another, but
of slightly different shape. I am, as you know, a worshiper of beauty,
but all these creations of man's hands are but parodies, are they not,
Mrs. Percival, on absolute beauty? They are like ourselves, the
creatures of a day. Nature herself, in sea and air and woodland,
produces exquisite loveliness, and yet even her achievements are dwarfed
when one stands face to face with one of creation's masterpieces--a
woman."
And Mr. Early made a ponderous bow as he presented his work of art. Lena
was so impressed by this compliment that she wrote it out while it was
fresh in her memory, and when Dick came home, she read it to him. He
gave a great bellowing laugh that grated harshly on Lena's nerves; and
then at sight of her reproachful eyes, he drew himself together and gave
her a friendly pat on the shoulder, affectionate, to be sure, but quite
different from Mr. Early's chivalrous manner, and said:
"Thinks you better than his old straight-legged tables, does he? Well, I
should say so! Serves him right for being an old bachelor, and having
nothing but furniture and Ram Juna to illuminate existence. I should
expect that combination to drive a man either to drink or to blank
verse."
"I don't think it is nice of you to swear, Dick," Lena answered
severely, but on the verge of tears.
"Swear, sweetheart? Why, what do you mean?"
"Well, it's almost the same thing to talk about 'blank' verse." Dick
laughed again and went directly to the library without even noticing the
extremely lovely new dress which his wife had put on for his
edification.
Dick's limitations were becoming manifest to young Mrs. Percival. He
might be a gentleman, but she feared that he would never be more. There
was nothing imposing about him. He had lifted her out of sordid want,
but he would not raise her to the pinnacle of greatness. The bland flat
face of Mr. Early and his commanding slowness of movement impressed her
imagination much as a great stone image might its votary. Here was
indeed the truly illustrious. She devoured every floating newspaper
paragraph that concerned Sebastian; for she was still under the dominion
of the idea that greatness in the dailies constituted greatness indeed.
She would have been proud to touch the hem of his frock-coat. How much
greater her elation when, on public occasions, he singled her out and
stalked across the room to utter in loud tones, intended for the ears of
half a hundred, some well-rounded compliment. A conquest of Mr. Early
would have been, for Lena, the consummation of achievement; but she
could not help seeing that his eyes turned more frequently upon Miss
Elton than upon Mrs. Percival--upon Miss Elton, of whom she felt
constant jealousy and abnormal curiosity.
Jealousy rose to its height when, on a certain afternoon, from her
favorite post beside a window, Lena watched a carriage drive up to Mr.
Early's door, and Miss Elton dismount and run up the steps. Mrs.
Percival leaned forward to make sure of her eyes, and then she sat and
eyed the hole where the mouse had disappeared.
Of course she could not know what was going on inside. When Madeline
received a note from Mr. Early, asking her to come and see some very
wonderful tapestries that he had just hung, it seemed the most natural
thing in the world. Sebastian's house was always more like a museum than
bachelor's quarters. He was continually turning it inside out for public
inspection, so Madeline went in all innocence, expecting to find a dozen
or so of her friends sharing the private view. She was embarrassed, but
hardly seriously, as Mr. Early came forward to welcome her.
"Am I all alone?" she said with a little laugh.
"Apparently you are. But I dare say some others will drop in on us in a
moment," Mr. Early made answer. "Meanwhile I am favored, for your
opinion is what I particularly want. These queer old tapestries have
been sent to me from France, but whether I keep them or not depends on
whether they seem the right thing in the right place. Will you come this
way?"
The big hall had a singularly impersonal aspect. Madeline had never
before seen it except when thronged with people, and now that they two
stood alone in its wide empty space, she was struck with a certain
desolation in it.
"Well?" inquired Mr. Early.
"I can't tell at once," said Madeline slowly. "Beauty is a thing that
takes time to unfold itself upon one, isn't it? But I think they are
beautiful. They are certainly strange and solemn, and they intensify the
dignity of this big room; but they make it seem less homelike than ever.
They seem to me things to look at rather than to live with. I suppose
their appropriateness depends a little on what you want to make of this
place. And you do want it only for a public room, do you not, Mr.
Early?"
"I am afraid that is all I am capable of," said Sebastian, looking
pensively at her. "You see the home feeling is beyond my achievement. It
needs the feminine touch to create that ideal atmosphere. That, Miss
Madeline, is above art."
"It is so common, are you sure it is not below art?" Madeline smiled.
"I am sure," responded Mr. Early with conviction. "It is a subject on
which I have thought much since you came home last year. Never until
then did I wholly realize the lack in my home and in my life. If now, in
all humbleness, I am consulting your taste, it is because I have
sometimes dared to hope that you, my dear lady, would one day give that
final grace to this which would make it indeed a home, instead of the
mere abiding place that it is now."
Madeline turned upon him sharply.
"Mr. Early," she said, "it isn't wholly courteous in you to take
advantage of my being alone with you in your own domain to speak to me
in this way."
"I beg your pardon," Sebastian answered. "It was a wholly unpremeditated
expression of what has long been an ardent desire. I did not mean to
speak, but your own words seemed to break down the barriers of my
passion. I could wish that you would permit me to put it in the form
which my heart prompts; but perhaps you are right. Your fine sense of
the proprieties must be my rule of conduct. I shall only trust that I
may soon find a time to speak when I shall not offend your delicacy,
and when, I pray, I may not offend your heart."
"Neither now nor at any other time should I advise you to go any
further," said Madeline laughingly, for it was hard to take the bombast
of Mr. Early very seriously. He made her think now of a sort of pouter
pigeon. And Sebastian remained only partly satisfied as to the effect
which he wished to produce. He wanted to give her something to think
about, and so make way for the more impassioned wooing that he was
resolved should follow. He was convinced that to stand alone with him in
the midst of his splendors would make a strong impression on the mind of
any sensible girl. The great hall was certainly a place to capture the
imagination--not only from its stately proportions and the mellow
coloring that melted into shadow in the far-off roof, but from the
multitude of smaller details, the intricate carvings, gathered abroad or
made under Mr. Early's own eye, the few priceless paintings, the great
jars whose exquisite decorations blended their richer tones with the
deeper shades around. In a wide alcove was gathered a collection of
portraits of distinguished men and women, statesmen, artists and
literati of this country and of Europe, and each picture was accompanied
by an autograph letter to the well-beloved Sebastian Early. It could be
no small thing to contemplate the possession of this house of
notabilities and of the man who had built it up around himself. This,
Mr. Early meant, should be the artistic opening of his campaign. And
Miss Elton had laughed.
There was silence for a long minute, and Madeline, glancing nervously at
her host, saw that his face was grave and that his eyes were fixed upon
her in a melancholy way. She began to feel uncomfortable.
"I think I must be going now," she said.
"You have not told me whether I am to keep the tapestries," Mr. Early
humbly objected.
"Oh, I couldn't possibly decide for you. But they seem to harmonize
beautifully with this room."
"I am grateful for your decision. Permit me to see you to your carriage,
Miss Madeline."
Lena, watching hungrily from her vantage post, noted Mr. Early's
obsequious courtesies, Madeline's flushed face, and drew angry
conclusions. Nevertheless, she leaned forward and bowed graciously as
Madeline drove past.
"If she should marry Mr. Early, I shouldn't feel as if I had triumphed a
bit in getting Dick away from her," she said to herself, with a bald
comprehension of her true state of mind. For Lena made up for her pose
toward others by a certain unimaginative frankness in her
self-communings.
Then, catching a glimpse of another figure, she exclaimed, "Oh, there
comes Miss Huntress!" and immediately settled herself with an air of
elegant leisure to receive her former superior. Miss Huntress was a
source of continual satisfaction to Lena, the opposite of a skeleton at
the feast, a continual reminder of present prosperity as compared with
past nonentity. To meet her gave Madame Cecropia the same thrill of
satisfaction that it still did to draw her dainty skirts around her and
step into her carriage, half hoping that some envious girl was viewing
her perfections as she had once eyed those of others. On the other hand,
Miss Huntress derived almost equal pleasure out of her acquaintance with
Lena, whose littleness she measured, and whose small successes she
looked upon with amusement, unflecked by envy. Emily Huntress was a
plodding person, with much business on hand and an earnest necessity for
earning money, and though her canons were not over fine, still she had
her standards and lived up to them. She found Lena useful as a source of
social information.
"You want to know what is going on?" inquired Mrs. Percival. "Well, of
course you know it's Lent, and there isn't anything much. But if you
will come up to my boudoir, I will look over my engagement book, and
perhaps I can help you to a paragraph or two."
The word boudoir was a sweetmeat to Lena's palate, combined, as it was,
with the knowledge that her visitor, with a sister, kept house in three
rooms.
So they went up stairs, and Lena babbled and preened herself, while Miss
Huntress frowned and pondered on the difficulties of making anything
readable out of her small kernel of information. The arrival of a cup of
tea, Miss Huntress, being a woman as well as a reporter, found
mollifying to the hardness of life.
"I see," she said with an acid little laugh, "you have the _Chatterer_
up here in your unholy of unholies." Her eyes fell on a small magazine
which made a speciality of besmirching the good names of the entire
country. "Everybody reads it, and everybody pretends to despise it."
"It's awfully interesting," said Lena, and she went on with a little
giggle, "I think I'll just tuck it away before my husband comes in. He
doesn't approve of it, you know. Men don't care for gossip. I think it
is perfectly wonderful what an amount of scandal it gets hold of. I
don't see how they do it. And they've such a naughty way of writing it
up, too."
"Nothing very remarkable. In every town of importance they have some one
always on the lookout for a promising piece of mud." Miss Huntress eyed
Lena speculatively for a moment. "I'll tell you in confidence," she went
on, "and I trust you to keep mum about it, for the sake of the times
when I helped you--I write for it here. I don't exactly like it, but you
know I can't afford to despise dollars and cents. It's just plain
business, after all. There's a demand for that kind of thing and it
falls to my lot to supply it."
"And did you write that awful thing about Mrs. Clarke?" cried Lena,
sitting up with big blue eyes, and gazing earnestly at Miss Huntress
with, awe as an arbiter of reputations.
"Yep," replied that lady with a gulp of tea.
"Gracious!" exclaimed Mrs. Percival. "I hope you'll never send them
anything about me."
"Then you'd better never do anything indiscreet," Miss Huntress laughed
maliciously. "But I don't think you would," she went on speculatively.
"You're too clever and too ambitious for that. Do you know, I've rather
come to the conclusion that it's only rather simple-hearted people who
do those things. Take that Mrs. Clarke, now. Of course her husband was a
brute, and when the other man came along she fell so much in love with
him that she didn't even think of any one else in the world except their
two selves. A woman who was incapable of whole-souled passion would have
kept an eye on the world and walked the narrow path of virtue."
"Why, you're defending her!" exclaimed Lena.
"Not in the least," said Miss Huntress grimly. "I helped to make her pay
the price."
"Oh, well," Lena said with an air of greatness, "there are some of us
who can combine the deepest love with decent behavior you know."
"Of course," answered Miss Huntress.
"Now Miss Elton is just that other kind. I believe she never thinks what
people say about her," Lena observed. "Not that she'd do anything out of
the way, you understand."
"Certainly not." Miss Huntress began to prick up her professional ears.
"She's a particular friend of yours, isn't she?"
"Intimate," said Lena. "You know they used to say that Mr. Percival--but
of course that was before he met me, and anyway there was nothing in
it."
"I know," said Miss Huntress. "I sent a line to the _Chatterer_ once
about it."
"Did you really? Well, of course, for form's sake, she has to be as nice
as ever to me and Mr. Percival. But she has reconciled herself. It's all
Mr. Early now."
"You don't say!" ejaculated Miss Huntress with interest.
"She's regularly throwing herself at his head. Why only this afternoon I
saw her do the most unconventional thing."
"What was it?"
"Oh, I dare say she was just getting him to subscribe to some charity or
something equally innocent. Still, it was queer. But I know her too
well to suspect her of any impropriety. She's really the dearest,
sweetest girl, Miss Huntress, and I'm the last person in the world to
criticize her."
"But aren't you going to tell me?"
"Well, she came, quite alone, you understand, to Mr. Early's this
afternoon, and was closeted there the longest time. I couldn't help
wondering what it was all about. What do you suppose?"
"That was funny," meditated Miss Huntress.
"I'm certain there's some perfectly natural explanation, if we only knew
it," Lena went on. "But she looked awfully flushed when she came out."
"Thank you," said Miss Huntress. "I must be going now."
"Oh, won't you have another cup of tea? Of course, I'm on very good
terms with Miss Elton," said Lena, fingering the tray cloth a little
nervously. "I shouldn't like her to think I'd criticized her behavior,
even to you."
"You needn't be afraid," rejoined Miss Huntress. "I never let on how I
get my information. I'd lose my job if I did. Much obliged to you, Mrs.
Percival. Things are so dull during Lent that we're thankful for even a
few crumbs. I guess that's your husband's step. It must be getting
late."
"Oh, good-by! Dick, you dear boy, how glad I am to see you," cried Lena,
fluttering to the door to meet her returning lord. "Miss Huntress, this
is my husband. Good-by, again. Don't you remember?" she went on, as Dick
followed her back into her room. "She used to be my 'boss' when I was a
poor little slavey in the _Star_ office, before my best beloved prince
came and rescued me from dragons and printers' devils."
"And are you so fond of her that you keep up the acquaintance?"
"Oh, I remember how hard it used to be to get 'matter'; and I don't mind
helping her out a bit when she's hard pressed."
"You are a kind-hearted little soul, Lena,"--and her husband stooped and
kissed her fondly, doing penance in his heart for his doubts of a day or
two ago, thoughts cruel, unjust, unwarranted. Lena had never looked more
delectable than now, with her head on one side, pouring his tea. She
kissed each lump of sugar as she put it in and laughed at her own
conceit; and she brought the cup over to his chair and rubbed her apple
blossom of a cheek against his with a little purr.
"I'm afraid you think me very silly, Dick," she laughed. "I do not seem
to get a bit wiser or better behaved, do I, for all Mrs. Appleton and
Ram Juna, and even your lovely high-bred mother? Dick, do you despise
me!"
"Despise! Why I love and love you and love you all over," said Dick.