“Oh; the light, light love that has wings to fly!”
DR. GRANT had not found the wrench of parting much easier than his
sister, but, like many people with deep emotions, he had found room
enough to keep his unhappiness apart from his everyday work and
appearance, and to take a certain amount of placid enjoyment out of his
new mode of living. The difficulty was in completely deceiving Cynthia
by the constant holiday aspect she expected of him. Sometimes the shadow
fell between them, and they would be silent and apart, then both would
bitterly blame themselves, pity each other, and rush back into the
holiday aspect again. They would have been far happier if they had been
less reserved.
It was about six when Geoff, returning to their apartments, heard the
noise of talk and merry laughter in his sister’s room. He opened the
door hastily to find Cynthia on her knees before the fire roasting
chestnuts with a curly-headed youngster, who laughed the more at his
appearance, as if it were a part of the game.
“This is the Knight Sir Launcelot,” said Cynthia gravely, waving her
hand towards the boy. “Launcelot—the King!” Launcelot nodded.
“I always ’spected him,” he said earnestly, “and now God must have sent
him instead of Tony. Do you think kings are nicer than birds?” he added
anxiously to Cynthia.
“Not most of them,” said Cynthia preparing to shell a hot chestnut; “but
mine’s a very nice king, as nice as any bird I should think.”
“Things when they’re _very_ nice fly away,” puzzled the thoughtful
knight; “if kings _was_ as nice as birds they might fly too!” He drew
down his brows and gazed at the solid and substantial doctor. “But
you—you don’t look as if you was a very flying person,” he finished
triumphantly. “Would you like a chestnut?” The doctor accepted one with
enthusiasm, and Launcelot, the king and the woman with red hair spent a
charming and exciting evening.
They only parted at bedtime at his mother’s door on the express
understanding that he was to come again the next day, and that knights
never even under the hardest circumstances cried, and that last, but not
least, the coal-black charger with a stiff neck under the king’s coat
transported thither from a fairy shop must be shown without delay to
Marie, daddy and the cook. These facts being grasped the worst was over,
and the knight, strewing wet kisses in his wake, was borne away to bed,
leaving his volatile mother expressing shrill-voiced thanks to Cynthia
and Geoff. The streets seemed ten times brighter and less chilly to the
doctor and his sister, and they went to a screaming French farce for the
rest of the evening, and felt much the better for it. In fact they even
forgot for a while their determination to enjoy themselves.
After this it became the custom for Launcelot to go to Cynthia every
afternoon and stay with her till evening. Millicent was always grateful,
but frequently hurried—more hurried even than an American woman in
Paris generally is. She did not refer again to the charming Count and
his sister, but one day she told Cynthia that “Clifton had gone away.”
“For how long?” asked Cynthia quietly. Millicent stared, then she sat
down and laughed. She laughed for a long while, but not very merrily.
Finally she explained with a blank terseness.
“He’s just quit; he’s gone! he’s left me. Don’t stand there and stare,
Cynthia. Sit down. We didn’t have a very good time together.” She
continued pacing restlessly up and down the little tawdry room. “He was
always the sort of man that wanted a good time, and we didn’t have much
money. After the child came, you know, it was worse than ever. I wasn’t
going to play the door-mat to Clifton, but I did my best to make it
pretty.” She looked at the little concealments, ragged and thin in the
heartless Paris sunshine, and they looked more pathetic than ever. “And
I dressed real well, but there wasn’t any keeping him. He only told me I
was ruining him with dressmakers’ bills, though he knew I make the most
of my own clothes! Sometimes I wish I hadn’t been so cock-sure about
Paris. In America there’d have been something to keep him back, but
there’s nothing to keep one back in Paris. Things look as innocent and
pretty——” her voice broke; “but they aren’t, Cynthia—they’re real
mean! they’re real mean!” Cynthia sat silently gazing at the carpet. The
nervous, breaking voice, the frightened, restless figure were not lost
upon her. They seemed familiar somehow, quite as if she had seen them
before; and the ring of pain in the most meagre phrase “But they
aren’t—they’re real mean! they’re real mean!” voiced a feeling that had
once been part of her without a voice. She waited for the inevitable
sequel. It came in a burst of hysterical sobs. “He left me a note,
Cynthia—Clifton did—he said I should know where to look for
consolation!”
“The brute!” cried Cynthia. Millicent laughed.
“Well! don’t you know they’re all that way when a man is tired. Nothing
will keep him; and then he wants to throw a sop to something, maybe he
thinks it’s his conscience, so he invents another man for the woman he’s
left—if—if there isn’t one already.”
“Millicent,” Cynthia stood up, and took the pretty, heavily ringed hand
in hers, “do you think the second man will bring you anything better
than the first? He never does—the only difference is he leaves you
worse. Stick to your art and Launcelot!” Millicent tore her hands away.
“Pshaw! you’re always talking about the child—I hate him!—there!—I
hate him! I hated the pain, I hated being put aside, I hated having to
spend my time on him—maybe if he hadn’t come Clifton would have been
different; maybe other things would have been different too! As for my
art, as you call it, what is art to a woman? Why, it’s nothing! you know
it, Cynthia. If Leslie Damores hadn’t played the fool——”
“Hush!” Cynthia stammered in a piteous attempt to hide the pain of his
name.
“Well, then! If a man wanted you, I’d like to know what pictures would
mean? Pictures! I may be weak and silly—I know I am—I loved my
husband. Yes! I did! I know I did. But if I can’t have him, I must have
somebody. And you want me—to paint! Well! I’ll tell you. I wanted to
please Clifton—so I painted. Now the Count doesn’t like the folks I mix
with——” she bridled perceptibly, and Cynthia felt sick, “so I won’t
paint any more.”
She looked at the clock. Cynthia gazed at her desperately; she heard
Launcelot’s voice in the next room. She had taught him “Sir Galahad,”
and his voice rose in a triumphant shout at the last words, “All arm’d I
ride, whate’er betide, until I find the Holy Grail!”
“What are you going to do with the child?” she asked wearily. Millicent
flushed. No woman is without the saving grace of feeling, through some
chord, a touch of shame.
“The Count,” she said, “says he’ll send him to school; he’s very kind.”
“Very,” said Cynthia dryly. “He will send him to a French school, where
he will grow into a second Count—it’s very kind of him. Millicent, if
you have no other plan, will you give him to me?”
“To you!” said Millicent—“to you?” She was astonished. She was, after
all, his mother, and even where motherhood brings no love it keeps its
sense of property. “Why, Cynthia, I don’t know as I _can_; you see,
after all, I’m his mother! It’s very kind of you, Cynthia—but——” She
looked again at the clock.
“Look here!” said Cynthia suddenly, “I’m not going without the boy. You
had better make up your mind to give him to me. You don’t want to ruin
his life as well as your own, and if you don’t let me have him——”
Cynthia’s eyes flashed. “He will be more in your way than ever now. I
shall stay and—explain—to the Count!” she finished grimly. Millicent
turned white.
“Oh, go!” she said. “For Heaven’s sake go, and take the boy with you. I
suppose you don’t know what people will say! I suppose it doesn’t matter
to you that we all know why Leslie Damores didn’t marry you. I
suppose——”
“Oh, Lady Beautiful!”—the knight stood looking from one to the other at
the door—“Lady Beautiful, do you know where it is?”
“Where what is, my darling?”
“The Holy Grail,” said the knight wrinkling his brows. “I don’t know
where to find it.” Cynthia took his hand.
“Let’s go and look for it,” she said; “it isn’t here.”
She hesitated, but Millicent stood at the window with her back to them.
She put her hands to her hair and replaced a pin. Cynthia turned with
the boy, and together they left the little tawdry flat for the last
time; left the strange, sad life with its shattered opportunities and
sordid concealments; left his mother standing by the window waiting for
the Count.