Jennie cried herself to sleep that Wednesday night, and, in the morning,
cried herself awake. She was in no doubt as to the motive of her tears;
she was sorry for having put a gulf between her and the man she loved by
marrying one she didn't care for.
Why she didn't care for him was beyond her power of analysis. He was
good and kind and tender; he was rocklike and steady and strong. In a
forceful way he was almost handsome, and some day he would be rich. But
there was the fact that, her heart being given to the one man, her
nerves shuddered at the other. The explanation she used to give, that
the lividness of the scar on his forehead frightened her, was no longer
tenable, since the mark tended to fade out. The other infirmity, his
limp, was also less conspicuous, for, though he would never walk as if
his foot had not been crushed, he walked as well as many other men. It
wasn't these peculiarities; it wasn't any one thing in itself; it was
simply that she didn't love him and never would.
Whereas, she did love another man. She loved his violet eyes, his brown
mustache, his flashing teeth, his selfishness, his cruelty. She loved
his system of starving her out, his habit of keeping her in anguish. Too
much reasonableness was hard for her to assimilate, like too much water
to a portulaca.
And Bob had been so reasonable. He had tried to explain himself. He had
used words that scared, that shocked her. Polygamous! Monogamous! The
very sounds suggested anatomy or impropriety.
Nevertheless, she could have pardoned this language as an eccentricity
if, in the dimness of the parson's hall, he hadn't taken her in his arms
and kissed her. This possibility was something she forgot when she
followed him up the rectory's brownstone steps. For the inadvertence she
blamed herself the more, since, throughout the winter, she had never
once lost sight of it. Whenever he had proposed to her, the advantages
of marrying so much money had been offset by her terror at his "pawing
her about." With no high-flown ideas as to virtue, Jennie would have
fought like a wildcat for her virginity of mind and body till ready of
her own free will to give them up. And here she had sold herself to Bob
Collingham, a man whose touch made her shrink.
"I can't live with you!" she had cried, as she tore herself from his
embrace.
And poor Bob had been reasonable again.
"Of course not, Jennie darling--not yet. When I come back--"
She hadn't let him finish. She had dashed through the door and down the
steps, so that he had some ado to keep up with her.... Even then, if he
had only dragged her away and been a cave man....
And the evening at home had been one of the oddest she had ever spent
under her father's roof. Everyone was so queer--or else she was queer
herself. Gussie and Gladys, reconciled after their squabble, had both
been in high spirits, and Teddy almost hysterical. He gave imitations of
the men with whom he worked most closely at the bank, of Fred Inglis, of
Mrs. Inglis, of Dolly, Addie, and Sadie Inglis, which made everyone feel
that a great actor was being lost to the stage; but on top of these
exhibitions he would fall into spells of profound reverie. The father
had been apathetic, but he was always apathetic now; the mother, on the
other hand, more serene than usual. More than usual, too, her eyes
applauded Teddy's high spirits with a quiet, adoring smile. Altogether,
the supper had been a merry one, and yet, to Jennie's thinking, merry
with a mysterious note in the merriment--a note which perhaps only
Pansy's intuitions could have really understood.
But sitting on the edge of her bed in the morning, she saw a ray of
hope. There was divorce. Marriage wasn't the irreparable thing which
their family traditions assumed it to be. As a tolerably diligent reader
of the personal items in the papers, Jennie had more than once read of
divorces granted to young couples who had parted at the church door.
Naturally, she shrank from the fuss it would involve, but better the
fuss than....
Having got up, for the reason that she couldn't stay in bed, she dressed
slowly, because none of the family was as yet astir. She would surprise
her mother by lighting the gas range and making the coffee before anyone
came down. Thus it happened that she saw the postman crossing the street
with a letter in his hand. Though letters were not rare in the family,
they were rare enough to make the arrival of one an incident. She went
to the door to take it from the postman's hand. Seeing it addressed to
Miss Follett and bearing the postmark "Marillo," her knees trembled
under her.
Having read what Mrs. Collingham had written, Jennie's first thought was
that her early rising enabled her to keep this missive secret. What it
could portend was beyond her surmise. It was not unfriendly, but neither
was it cordial. It took the guarded tone, she thought, of a woman who
meant to see her face to face before being willing to commit herself. As
success on meeting people face to face had mostly been Jennie's portion,
she was not so much afraid of the test as of what it might bring
afterward.
What it might bring afterward was the recognition of her marriage and
her translation into a rich family. This would mean the end of her
father's and mother's material cares, Teddy's advancement at the bank,
and brilliant careers for Gussie and Gladys in New York social life.
Jennie could think of at least half a dozen picture plays in which the
sacrifice of some lovely, virtuous girl had done as much as this for her
relatives.
So, all that day, sacrifice was much in her mind. Against a vague
background of grandeur, it had the same emotional effect as of passion
sung to the accompaniment of a great orchestra. To see herself with a
limousine at her command, and the family established in a modest villa
somewhere near Marillo Park, if not quite within it, enabled her
mentally to face another embrace from Bob in the spirit of an
early--Christian maiden thinking of the lions awaiting her in the arena.
It would be terrible--but it could be met.
The vision of the limousine at her command seemed to have come partly
true as a trim chauffeur stepped up to her in the station at Marillo,
touching his cap and asking if he spoke to Miss Follett. He touched his
cap again when he closed the door on her, and the car tooled away along
a road which bore the same relation to the roads with which Jennie was
familiar as a glorified spirit to a living man.
The park was not so much a park as it was a country. It had hills,
valleys, landscapes, lakes, and what seemed to Jennie immense estates
for which there was plenty of room. There were houses as big as hotels
and much more beautiful. Trees, flowers, lawns, terraces, fountains,
tennis courts, dogs, horses, and motor cars were as silver in the
building of the Temple of Jerusalem--nothing accounted of. Jennie had
seen high life as lived by the motion-picture heroine, but she had not
believed that even wealth could buy such a Garden of Eden as this.
Expecting to reach Collingham Lodge a few minutes after passing the
grille, she had gone on and on, over roads that branched, and then
branched, and then branched again, like the veinings of a leaf.
After descending at the white-columned portico, she went up the steps in
a state bordering on trance. She knew what to do much as Elijah, having
come by the chariot of fire to another plane of life, must have known
what to do when required to get out and go onward. Since a man in livery
opened a door of wrought-iron tracery over glass, she had no choice but
to pass through.
It is possible that Max, by his supersenses, knew that she belonged to
his master, for, springing toward her, he nosed her hand. It was, as she
put it to herself, the only human touch in the first stages of her
welcome. Thenceforward, during all the forty or fifty minutes of her
stay, he kept close to her, either on foot or crouched beside her chair,
till a curious thing happened when she regained the car.
I have said in the first stages of her welcome, for as soon as she
entered the hall she heard a cheery voice.
"Oh, so it's you, Miss Follett! So glad you've come. It's really too bad
to bring you so far--only, it seemed to me we might be cozier here than
if I went up to town."
Adown the golden space which seemed to Jennie much too majestic for
anyone's private dwelling, a brisk figure moved, with hand outstretched.
A few seconds later Jennie was looking into eyes such as she didn't
suppose existed in human faces. Beauty, dignity, poise, white hair
dressed to perfection, and clothes such as Jennie had never seen off the
stage--and rarely on it--were all subordinated to a hearty, kindly,
womanly greeting before which they sank out of sight. Overpowered as she
was by the material costliness of all she saw, the girl was well-nigh
crushed by this unaffected affability. Like the Queen of Sheba at the
court of Solomon, to be Scriptural again, there was no more spirit left
in her.
Mrs. Collingham went on talking as, side by side, they walked slowly up
the strip of red carpet into the cool recesses of the house.
"I hope you didn't find the train too stuffy. It's too bad they won't
give us a parlor car on the locals. For the last three or four years we
only have a parlor car on what they call the 'husbands' trains'--one in
the morning and one in the afternoon, and, my dear, they make us pay for
it as if--"
A toss of the hands proved to Jennie that Mrs. Collingham knew the
difference between cheap and dear, which again took her by surprise.
They passed through the terrace drawing-room, which Jennie couldn't
notice because she trod on air, and came out to the flagged pavement.
Even here, Mrs. Collingham didn't pause, but, leading the way to the end
of it, she went round a corner to the northern and more private side of
the house, which looked into a little wood.
"Mr. Collingham's at home--just driven down--but I'm not going to have
him here. Men are such a nuisance when women talk about intimate things,
don't you think? They make such mountains of molehills. It's just as
when you have a cry. They think your heart must be breaking, and never
seem to understand that it gives you some relief."
Jennie was still more astounded. That the mistress of Collingham Lodge,
a great figure in Marillo Park, and therefore high up in the peerage of
the United States, could have the same feelings as herself seemed the
touch of nature that makes the whole world kin to a degree she had put
beyond the limits of the human heart.
They came to a construction like a giant birdcage--a room out of doors,
yet sheltered from noisome insects like their own screened piazza,
furnished with an outdoor-indoor luxury.
"We don't have many mosquitoes at Marillo," Mrs. Collingham explained,
as she led the way in, "but in spring they can be troublesome. So we'll
have our tea here. Gossip will bring it presently. Where will you sit? I
think you'll like that chair. There! What about a cushion? Oh, I'm sure
you don't need it at your age, but, still, one likes to be comfortable.
No, Max; stay out. Well, if you must come in, come in. He seems to like
you," she chatted on. "He's Bob's dog, and I suppose he takes to Bob's
friends."
Rendered speechless by this frank reference to the man who was the bond
between them, there was, fortunately, no immediate need for Jennie to
speak, since Gossip appeared in the doorway pushing the tea equipage. It
was a little table on wheels, and on it Jennie noticed, in a general
way, every magnificent detail--the silver tray, the silver kettle, the
silver teapot, the silver tongs, the silver spoons. "And all of them
solid," she said to herself, awesomely. She regretted that she wouldn't
be at liberty to recount these marvels at home. At home, they thought
her merely at the studio, while she had been borne away through the air
as by a witch on a broomstick.
Jennie would have said that Mrs. Collingham had hardly looked at her,
but then, she reflected, every woman knew how little _looking_ you had
to do to grasp the details of another woman's personality. You took them
all in at a glance, as if you brought seven or eight senses into play.
Each time her hostess, now settled behind the tea table, lifted her fine
eyes, Jennie was sure they "got" her, like a camera.
"You pose, don't you?" The words came out in a casual, friendly tone, as
she busied herself with the spirit lamp. "That must be so interesting. I
often wonder, when I'm in the big galleries, what the immortal women
would have said had they known how their features would go down through
the ages. Take Dorotea Nachtigal, for instance, the original of
Holbein's 'Meyer Madonna' in Darmstadt--the most wonderful of all the
Madonnas, I always say--and how queer I suppose she would have felt if
she'd known that we should be adoring her when she's no more than a
handful of dust. Or the model who posed for the Madonna di San Sisto! Or
the young things who sat to Greuze! Did you ever think of them?"
Jennie saw how Bob could have come by words like "polygamous" and
"monogamous." People at Marillo Park spoke a language of their
own--"English with frills on it," was the way she put it to herself.
From the intonation, she was able to frame her answer in the negative,
while, once more, the superb eyes, which were oddly like Bob's little
steely ones, were lifted on her with a smile.
"You know, I should think people would be crazy to paint you. How do you
like your tea? Sugar? Cream? One lump? Two lumps?" Having flung out
answers at random, Jennie leaned forward to take her cup, while the
kindly voice ran on: "Just as you sit there you're a picture. Funny I
should have given you a tan-colored cushion, because it tones in
exactly."
Jennie explained that the various shades of brown and some of the deeper
ones of red were among her favorites.
"Because they go so well with your hair," her hostess said,
comprehendingly, and studying her now more frankly. "My dear, you've got
the most lovely hair! It isn't auburn; it isn't coppery; it isn't red.
It's--what is it? Oh, I see! It's amber--it's the extraordinary shade
Romney gets into some of his portraits of Lady Hamilton. You see it in
the one in the Frick gallery, if I remember rightly. You must look the
next time you're there."
Jennie tried to stammer that she would, only that her syllables ran into
one another and became incoherent.
"But Romney couldn't paint _you_," Mrs. Collingham declared,
enthusiastically, putting her cup to her lips. "He's too Georgian.
You're the twentieth century. You're the perfect spirit of the
age--restless, rebellious, wistful, and delicate all at once. Girls
nowadays remind me of exquisite fragile things like the spire of the
Sainte Chapelle, only built of steel. You've got the steel look--all
slender and unbendable. It's curious that--the way women look like the
ages in which they're born. You've only to go through a portrait
collection to see that it's so. Take the Stuart women, for instance--the
Vandyke and Lely women--great saucer-eyed things, with sensual lips and
breasts. And then the Holbein women, so terribly got up in their stiff
Sunday clothes, which they must have hurried to put into their cedar
chests the minute they got home from mass. But they belong to their
time, don't you think?"
Jennie could only say she did think, vowing in her heart that the next
day would see her going round the Metropolitan Museum with a catalogue.
"But you! Hubert Wray says he's done a wonderful study of you, and I'm
crazy to see it. The only thing I don't like from his description is
that he's got you in a Greek dress and attitude, and _I_ think, now that
I've seen you, that the day after to-morrow is your style. What do you
say yourself?"
"I don't know about the day after to-morrow; I'm so busy with to-day."
Mrs. Collingham took this with a pleasant little laugh.
"You clever thing! You won't give yourself away." She mused a few
seconds, a smile on her lips, and then said, with a sudden lifting of
the eyes, "What do you think of Bob?"
The girl could only stammer:
"Think of him--in what way?"
"Do you think he looks like me?"
In this rapid, unexpected shifting of the ground, Jennie was like a
giddy person trying to keep her head.
"Well, yes--in a way; only--"
Mrs. Collingham laughed again.
"I see that, too. He does. I can't deny it. Often when I look at him, I
see myself, only--you'll laugh, I know--only myself as I'd be reflected
in the back of a silver spoon. That's the trouble with Bob--he's so
unformed. You must have noticed it. I suppose it's the war; and yet I
don't know. He's always been like that--a dear fellow, but no more than
half grown. I dare say that by the time he's fifty he'll be something
like a man."
As there seemed to be no absolute need for a response to this, Jennie
waited for more. It came, after another little spell of musing.
"He's talked to me so much about you all through the winter. That's why
I asked you to come down. Mr. Collingham and I feel so tremendously
indebted to you for the way you've acted."
Jennie could only repeat feebly, "The way I've acted?"
"I mean the way you've understood him. Almost any other girl--yes, girls
right here in Marillo Park--would have taken him at his word." Jennie's
lips were parted, but unable to frame a question. Mrs. Collingham eyed
the spirit lamp. "All the same, that doesn't excuse _him_. Even a fellow
who isn't half grown should have more sense than to make love to every
girl he spends an hour with. One of these days, some girl will catch
him, and then he'll be sorry. That's why we've been so thankful for the
kind of influence you've had over him, and why my husband and I thought
we'd like to do something--well, something a little audacious."
Jennie was twisting her fingers and untwisting them, but luckily her
hostess, by keeping her eyes on the spirit lamp, didn't notice this sign
of nervousness. Once more she spoke, with a musing half smile.
"We--we see a good deal of some one else who keeps talking about you;
and--you won't mind, will you?--of course we've drawn our conclusions.
We couldn't help that--could we?--when they were staring us in the
face."
"Do you mean Mr. Wray?" Jennie asked, with the point-blank helplessness
of one who doesn't know how to hedge.
"Oh, I didn't use the name, now did I? And, as I've said, what we've
seen we've seen, and we couldn't help it. But, of course, if it hadn't
been for Bob, we shouldn't have seen so quickly."
"But he doesn't know?" Jennie cried, more as query than as affirmation.
"No; I suppose he doesn't. I only mean that as you refused Bob so many
times--he told me that--we naturally thought there must be some one
else, and when everything pointed that way and Hubert talked of you so
much--" She kept this line of reasoning suspended while once more she
shifted her ground suddenly. "I wonder if you've ever realized how hard
it is to show your gratitude toward people to whom you truly and deeply
feel grateful?"
Jennie mumbled something to the effect that she had never been in that
situation.
"Well, it _is_ a situation. People are so queer and proud and
_difficile_. I suppose it's we older people who run up oftenest against
that; but if Mr. Collingham and I could only do for people the things we
_might_ do, and which they won't let us do--"
Once more the idea was suspended to give Jennie time to take in the fact
that a good thing was coming her way; but all she could manage was to
stare with frightened, fascinated eyes and no power of thought.
"Do you know, my dear," the artless voice ran on, "now that I'm face to
face with you, I'm really afraid? I told my husband that, if he'd leave
us alone together, I shouldn't be--and, after all, I am." She leaned
forward confidentially. "How frank would you let me be? How much would
you be willing for me to say?"
But before the girl could invent a reply the voice kept up its even,
caressing measure.
"_I_ know how things are with you--at least, I think I do. I've been
young, my dear. I know what it is to be in love. You're coloring, but
you needn't do it--not with me. You're very _much_ in love, aren't you?"
Jennie bowed her head to hide her tears. She hadn't meant to admit how
much in love she was, but this sympathy unnerved her.
"You do love Hubert, don't you?"
"Yes, but--"
"And that's why you told Bob you couldn't marry him?"
"That's one of the reasons, but--"
"One of the reasons will do, my dear. You don't know how much I feel
with you and for you. I could tell you a little story about myself when
I was your age--but, then, old love tales are like dried flowers,
they've lost their scent and color. Mr. Collingham and I are very fond
of Hubert, and, of course, he doesn't make enough to marry on as things
are now. He has a little something, I suppose, and, with the work he's
doing, the future is secure. You'll find, one day, that he'll be
painting you as Andrea del Sarto painted Lucrezia, and Rembrandt
Saskia--their wives, you know--"
"Oh, but, Mrs. Collingham--"
"There, there, my dear! I'm not going to say anything more about that. I
know Hubert and what he wants, and so my husband and I thought that if
we could show our gratitude to you and make things easier for him--"
"Oh, but you couldn't!"
"We couldn't unless you helped us. That goes without saying, of course.
But we hoped you would. You see, when people have so much--not that
we're so tremendously rich, but when they have enough--and when they
know as we do what struggle is--and there's been anyone whom they admire
as we admire you, after all you've done for Bob--we thought that if we
could give you a little present--a wedding present it would be--only
just a little in anticipation--we thought five thousand dollars--"
She ceased suddenly because Jennie appeared as one transfixed. She sat
erect; but the life seemed to have gone out of her.
Mrs. Collingham was prepared for this; she had discounted it in advance.
"She's playing for more," she said to herself. Luckily, she had named
her minimum only, and had arranged with her husband for a maximum. The
maximum was all the same to her so long as she saved Bob. Having given
Jennie credit for seeing through the game all along--such girls were
quick and astute--she had expected that the first figure of the
"present" would meet with just this reception.
But Jennie was saying to herself, "Oh, if this kind offer had only come
yesterday!" Five thousand dollars was a sum of which she could not see
the spending limitations. It meant all of which the family had need and
that she herself had ever coveted. With five thousand dollars, she could
not only have put her father on his feet, but have come before Hubert as
an heiress.
"If you don't think it enough," Mrs. Collingham said, at last, with a
shade of coldness in her tone, "I should be willing to make it seven--or
ten. Perhaps we'd better say ten at once, and end the discussion. My
husband's willing to make it ten, but I don't think he'd give more. Our
son is very dear to us"--the realities seeped through in spite of her
attempts at comedy--"and, oh, Miss Follett, if you'll only help us to
keep him for ourselves as you've helped us already--"
Jennie staggered to her feet. Her arms hung lax at her sides. Ten
thousand dollars! The sum was fabulous! It would have meant all cares
lifted from the home--and Hubert! She was hardly aware of speaking as
she said:
"Oh, Mrs. Collingham, I can't take your money. I wish I could. My God!
how I wish I could! But--but--"
"But, for goodness' sake, child, why can't you?"
"Because--oh, because--I'm married to Bob already."