I
MRS. DODGE AND MRS. CROMWELL
WE LEARNED in childhood that appearances are deceitful, and our
subsequent scrambling about upon this whirling globe has convinced many
of us that the most deceptive of all appearances are those of peace. The
gentlest looking liquor upon the laboratory shelves was what removed the
east wing of the Chemical Corporation’s building on Christmas morning;
it was the stillest Sunday noon of a drowsy August when, without even
the courtesy of a little introductory sputtering, the gas works blew up;
and both of these disturbances were thought to be peculiarly outrageous
because of the previous sweet aspects that prevented any one from
expecting trouble. Yet those aspects, like the flat calm of the summer
of 1914, should have warned people of experience that outbreaks were
impending.
What could offer to mortal eye a picture of more secure placidity than
three smiling ladies walking homeward together after a club meeting? The
particular three in mind, moreover, were in a visibly prosperous
condition of life; for, although the afternoon was brightly cold, their
furs afforded proof of expenditures with which any moderate woman would
be satisfied, and their walk led them into the most luxurious stretch of
the long thoroughfare that was called the handsome suburb’s finest
street. The three addressed one another in the caressively amiable tones
that so strikingly characterize the élite of their sex in converse; and
their topic, which had been that of the club paper, was impersonal. In
fact, it was more than impersonal, it was celestial. “Sweetness and
Light: Essay. Mrs. Roderick Brooks Battle”—these were the words printed
in the club’s year book beneath the date of that meeting, and Mrs.
Roderick Brooks Battle was the youngest of the three placid ladies.
“You’re all so sweet to say such lovely things about it,” she said, as
they walked slowly along. “I only wish I deserved them, but of course,
as everyone must have guessed, it was all Mr. Battle. I don’t suppose I
could write a single connected paragraph without his telling me how, and
if he hadn’t kept helping me I just wouldn’t have been ready with any
paper at all. Never in the world!”
“Oh, yes, you would, Amelia,” the elder of the two other ladies assured
her. “For instance, dear, that beautiful thought about the ‘bravery of
silence’—about how much nobler it is never to answer an attack—I
thought it was the finest thought in the whole paper, and I’m sure that
was your own and not your husband’s, Amelia.”
“Oh, no, Mrs. Cromwell,” Mrs. Battle returned, and although her manner
was deferential to the older woman she seemed to be gently shocked;—her
voice became a little protesting. “I could never in the world have
experienced a thought like that just by myself. It was every bit Mr.
Battle’s. In fact, he almost as much as dictated that whole paragraph to
me, word for word. It seemed a shame for me to sit up there and appear
to take the credit for it; but I knew, of course, that everybody who
knows us the least bit intimately would understand I could never write
anything and it was all Mr. Battle.”
“My dear, you’ll never persuade us of it,” the third lady said. “There
were thoughts in your paper so characteristically feminine that no one
but a woman could possibly——”
“Oh, but _he_ could!” Mrs. Battle interrupted with an eagerness that was
more than audible, for it showed itself vividly in her brightened eyes
and the sudden glow of pink beneath them. “That’s one of the most
wonderful things about Mr. Battle: his intellect is just as feminine as
it is masculine, Mrs. Dodge. He’s absolutely—well, the only way I can
express it is in his own words. Mr. Battle says no one can be great who
isn’t universal in his thinking. And you see that’s where he excels so
immensely;—Mr. Battle is absolutely universal in his thinking. It seems
to me it’s one of the great causes of Mr. Battle’s success; he not only
has the most powerful reasoning faculties I ever knew in any man but
he’s absolutely gifted with a woman’s intuition.” She paused to utter a
little murmur of fond laughter, as if she herself had so long and
helplessly marvelled over Mr. Battle that she tolerantly found other
people’s incredulous amazement at his prodigiousness natural but
amusing. “You see, an intellect like Mr. Battle’s can’t be comprehended
from knowing other men, Mrs. Dodge,” she added. “Other men look at
things simply in a masculine way, of course. Mr. Battle says that’s only
seeing half. Mr. Battle says women live on one hemisphere of a globe and
men on the other, and neither can look round the circle, but from the
stars the whole globe is seen—so that’s why we should keep our eyes
among the stars! I wanted to work that thought into my paper, too. Isn’t
it beautiful, the idea of keeping our eyes among the stars? But he said
there wasn’t a logical opening for it, so I didn’t. Mr. Battle says we
should never use a thought that doesn’t find its own logical place. That
is, not in writing, he says. But don’t you think it’s wonderful—that
idea of the globe and the two hemispheres and all?”
“Lovely,” Mrs. Dodge agreed. “Yet I don’t see how it proves Mr. Battle
has a feminine mind.”
“Oh, but I don’t mean just that alone,” Mrs. Battle returned eagerly.
“It’s the thousand and one things in my daily contact with him that
prove it. Of course, I know how hard it must be for other women to
understand. I suppose no one could hope to realize what Mr. Battle’s
mind is like at all without the great privilege of being married to
him.”
“And that,” Mrs. Cromwell remarked, “has been denied to so many of us,
my dear!”
Mrs. Dodge laughed a little brusquely, but the consort of the marvellous
Battle was herself so marvellous that she merely looked preoccupied. “I
know,” she said, gravely, while Mrs. Dodge and Mrs. Cromwell stared with
widening eyes, first at her and then at each other. “How often I’ve
thought of it!” she went on, her own eyes fixed earnestly upon the
distance where, in perspective, the two curbs of the long, straight
street appeared to meet. “It grows stranger and stranger to me how such
a miracle could have happened to a commonplace little woman like me! I
never shall understand why I should have been the one selected.”
Thereupon, having arrived at her own gate, it was with this thought that
she left them. From the gate a path of mottled flagstones led through a
smooth and snowy lawn to a house upon which the architect had chastely
indulged his Latin pleasure in stucco and wrought iron; and as Mrs.
Battle took her way over the flagstones she received from her two
friends renewed congratulations upon her essay, as well as expressions
of parting endearment; and she replied to these cheerfully; but all the
while the glowing, serious eyes of the eager little brown-haired woman
remained preoccupied with the miracle she had mentioned.
Mrs. Cromwell and Mrs. Dodge went on their way with some solemnity, and
were silent until the closing door of the stucco house let them know
they were out of earshot. Then Mrs. Cromwell, using a hushed voice,
inquired: “Do you suppose she ever had a painting made of the
Annunciation?”
“The Annunciation?” Mrs. Dodge did not follow her.
“Yes. When the miracle was announced to her that she should be the wife
of Roderick Brooks Battle. Of course, she must have been forewarned by
an angel that she was ‘the one selected.’ If Battle had just walked in
and proposed to her it would have been too much for her!”
“I know one thing,” Mrs. Dodge said, emphatically. “I’ve stood just
about as much of her everlasting ‘Mr. Battle says’ as I intend to! You
can’t go anywhere and get away from it; you can hear it over all the
chatter at a dinner; you can hear it over fifty women gabbing at a
tea—‘Mr. Battle says this,’ ‘Mr. Battle says that,’ ‘Mr. Battle says
this _and_ that’! When Belloni was singing at the Fortnightly Afternoon
Music last week you could hear her ‘Mr. Battle says’ to all the women
around her, even during that loud Puccini suite, and she treed Belloni
on his way out, after the concert, to tell him Mr. Battle’s theory of
music. She hadn’t listened to a note the man sang, and Belloni
understands about two words of English, but Amelia kept right on Mr.
Battle-says-ing him for half an hour! For my part, I’ve had all I can
stand of it, and I’m about ready to do something about it!”
“I don’t see just what one could do,” Mrs. Cromwell said, laughing
vaguely.
“_I_ do!” her companion returned. Then both were silent for a few
thoughtful moments and wore the air of people who have introduced a
subject upon which they are not yet quite warm enough to speak plainly.
Mrs. Cromwell evidently decided to slide away from it, for the time
being, at least. “I don’t think Amelia’s looking well,” she said. “She’s
rather lost her looks these last few years, I’m afraid. She seems pretty
worn and thin to me;—she’s getting a kind of skimpy look.”
“What else could you expect? She’s made herself the man’s slave ever
since they were married. She was his valet, his cook, and his
washerwoman night and day for years. I wonder how many times actually
and literally she’s blacked his boots for him! How could you expect her
_not_ to get worn out and skimpy-looking?”
“Oh, I know,” Mrs. Cromwell admitted;—“but all that was in their
struggling days, and she certainly doesn’t need to do such things now. I
hear he has twenty or thirty houses to build this year, and just lately
an immense contract for two new office buildings. Besides, he’s generous
with her; she dresses well enough nowadays.”
“Yes,” Mrs. Dodge said, grimly. “They’d both see to that for _his_
credit; but if he comes in with wet feet you needn’t tell me she doesn’t
get down on her knees before him and take off his shoes herself. I know
her! Yes, and I know him, too! Rich or poor, she’d be his valet and
errand girl just the same as she always was.”
“Perhaps,” said Mrs. Cromwell. “But it seems to me her most important
office for him is the one she’s just been filling.”
“Press agent? I should say so! She may stop blacking his boots, but
she’ll never stop that. It’s just why she makes me so confounded tired,
too! She thinks she’s the only woman that ever got married!”
“Amelia _is_ rather that way,” the other said, musingly. “She certainly
never seems to realize that any of the rest of us have husbands of our
own.”
“‘Mr. Battle can’t be comprehended from knowing other men!’” Here Mrs.
Dodge somewhat bitterly mimicked the unfortunate Amelia’s eager voice.
“‘Other men look at things in simply a masculine way!’ ‘I know how hard
it must be for other women to understand a god like my husband just from
knowing their own poor little imitation husbands!’”
“Oh, no,” Mrs. Cromwell protested. “She didn’t quite say that.”
“But isn’t it what she meant? Isn’t it exactly what she felt?”
“Well—perhaps.”
“It does make me tired!” Mrs. Dodge said, vigorously, and with the
repetition she began to be more than vigorous. Under the spell of that
rancour which increases in people when they mull over their injuries,
she began to be indignant. “For one thing, outside of the shamelessness
of it, some of the rest of us could just possibly find a few
enthusiastic things to say of our husbands if we didn’t have some regard
for not boring one another to death! I’ve got a fairly good husband of
my own I’d like to mention once in a while, but——”
“But, of course, you’ll never get the chance,” Mrs. Cromwell
interrupted. “Not if Amelia’s in your neighbourhood when you attempt
it.”
“What I _can’t_ understand, though,” Mrs. Dodge went on, “is her never
having the slightest suspicion what a nuisance it is. I should think the
man himself would stop her.”
But Mrs. Cromwell laughed and shook her head. “In the first place, of
course, he agrees with her. He thinks Amelia’s just stating facts—facts
that ought to be known. In the second, don’t you suppose he understands
how useful her press-agenting is to him?”
“But it isn’t. It makes us all sick of him.”
“Oh, it may have that effect on you and me, Lydia, but I really
wonder——” Mrs. Cromwell paused, frowning seriously, then continued:
“Of course, he’d never take such a view of it. He instinctively knows
it’s useful, but he’d never take the view of it that——”
“The view of it that what?” Mrs. Dodge inquired, as her friend paused
again.
“Why, that it may be actually the principal reason for his success. When
he left the firm that employed him as a draughtsman and started out for
himself, with not a thing coming in for him to do, don’t you remember
that even then everybody had the impression, somehow, that he was a
genius and going to do wonders when the chance came? How do you suppose
that got to be the general impression except through Amelia’s touting it
about? And then, when he did put up a few little houses, don’t you
remember hearing it said that they represented the first real
Architecture with a capital ‘A’ ever seen in the whole city? Now, almost
nobody really _knows_ anything about architecture, though we all _talk_
about it as glibly as if we did, and pretty soon—don’t you
remember?—we were all raving over those little houses of Roderick
Brooks Battle’s. What do you suppose made us rave? We must have been
wrong, because Amelia says now that Battle thinks those first houses of
his were ‘rather bad’—he’s ‘grown so tremendously in his art.’ Well,
since they were bad, what except Amelia made us think then that they
were superb? And look at what’s happened to Battle these last few years.
In spite of Amelia’s boring us to death about him, isn’t it true that
there’s somehow a wide impression that he’s a great man? Of course there
is!”
“And yet,” Mrs. Dodge interposed, “he’s not done anything that proves
it. Battle’s a good architect, certainly, but there are others as good,
and he’s not a bit better as an architect than Mr. Cromwell is as a
lawyer or than my husband is as a consulting engineer.”
“Not a bit,” Mrs. Cromwell echoed, carrying on the thought she had been
following. “But Mr. Dodge and Mr. Cromwell haven’t had anybody to go
about, day after day for years, proclaiming them and building up a
legend about them. Nobody has any idea that they’re great men, poor
things! Don’t you see where that puts you and me, Lydia?”
“No, I don’t.”
“My dear!” Mrs. Cromwell exclaimed. “Why, even Battle himself didn’t
know that he was a great man until he married Amelia and _she_ believed
he was—and _told_ him he was—and started her long career of going
about making everybody else sort of believe it, too.”
“I think it’s simply her own form of egoism,” said the emphatic Mrs.
Dodge. “She’d have done exactly the same whoever she married.”
“Precisely! It’s Amelia’s way of being in love—she’s a born idolizer.
But you didn’t answer me when I asked you where that puts _us_.”
“You and me?” Mrs. Dodge inquired, frowning.
“Don’t you see, if she’d married my husband, for instance, instead of
Battle, everybody’d be having the impression by this time that Mr.
Cromwell is a great man? He’d have felt that way himself, too, and I’m
afraid it would give him a great deal of pleasure. Haven’t we failed as
wives when we see what Amelia’s done for _her_ husband?”
“What an idea!” The two ladies had been walking slowly as they
talked;—now they came to a halt at their parting place before Mrs.
Cromwell’s house, which was an important, even imposing, structure of
the type called Georgian, and in handsome conventional solidity not
unlike the lady who lived in it. Across the broad street was a newer
house, one just finished, a pinkish stucco interpretation of
Mediterranean gaiety, and so fresh of colour that it seemed rather a
showpiece, not yet actually inhabited though glamoured with brocaded
curtains and transplanted arbor vitæ into the theatrical semblance of a
dwelling in use. Mrs. Dodge glanced across at it with an expression of
disfavour. “I call the whole thing perfectly disgusting!” she said.
II
A LADY ACROSS THE STREET
MRS. CROMWELL also looked at the new house; then she shook her head.
“It’s painful, rather,” she said, and evidently referred to something
more than the house itself.
“Outright disgusting!” her friend insisted. “I suppose he’s there as
much as ever?”
“Oh, yes. Rather more.”
“Well, I’ll say one thing,” Mrs. Dodge declared; “Amelia Battle won’t
get any sympathy from me!”
“Sympathy? My dear, you don’t suppose she dreams she needs _sympathy_!
Doesn’t she show the rest of us every day how she pities us because
we’re not married to Roderick Brooks Battle?”
“Yes, and that’s what makes me so furious. But she _will_ need
sympathy,” Mrs. Dodge persisted, with a dark glance at the new house
across the street. “She will when she knows about that!”
“But maybe she’ll never know.”
“What!” Mrs. Dodge laughed scornfully. “My dear, when a woman builds a
man into a god he’s going to assume the privileges of a god.”
“And behave like the devil?”
“Just that,” Mrs. Dodge returned, grimly. “Especially when his idolater
has burnt up her youth on his altar and her friends begin to notice
she’s getting a skimpy look. What chance has a skimpy-looking slave
against a glittering widow rich enough to build a new house every time
she wants to have tête-à-têtes with a godlike architect?”
“But she’s only built one,” Mrs. Cromwell cried, protesting.
“So far!” her pessimistic companion said; then laughed at her own
extravagance, and became serious again. “I think Amelia ought to know.”
“Oh, no!”
“Yes, she ought,” Mrs. Dodge insisted. “In the first place, she ought to
be saved from making herself so horribly ridiculous. Of course, she’s
always been ridiculous; but the way she raves about him when _he’s_
raving about another woman—why, it’s _too_ ridiculous! In the second
place, if she knew something about the Mrs. Sylvester affair now it
might help her to bear a terrific jolt later.”
“What terrific jolt, Lydia?”
“If he leaves her,” Mrs. Dodge said, gravely. “If Mrs. Sylvester decides
to make him a permanent fixture. Men do these things nowadays, you
know.”
“Yes, I know they do.” Mrs. Cromwell looked as serious as her friend
did, though her seriousness was more sympathetically a troubled one than
Mrs. Dodge’s. “Poor Amelia! To wear her youth out making a man into such
a brilliant figure that a woman of the Sylvester type might consider him
worth while taking away from her——”
“_Look!_” Mrs. Dodge interrupted in a thrilled voice.
A balustraded stone terrace crossed the façade of the new house, and two
people emerged from a green door and appeared upon the terrace. One was
a man whose youthful figure made a pleasing accompaniment to a fine and
scholarly head;—he produced, moreover, an impression of success and
distinction obvious to the first glance of a stranger, though what was
most of all obvious about him at the present moment was his devoted,
even tender, attention to the woman at his side. She was a tall and
graceful laughing creature, so sparklingly pretty as to approach the
contours and colours of a Beauty. Her rippling hair glimmered with a
Venetian ruddiness, and the blue of her twinkling eyes was so vivid that
a little flash of it shot clear across the street and was perceptible to
the two observant women as brightest azure.
Upon her lovely head she had a little sable hat, and, over a dress of
which only a bit of gray silk could be glimpsed at throat and ankle, she
wore a sable coat of the kind and dimensions staggering to moderate
millionaires. She had the happy and triumphant look of a woman confident
through experience that no slightest wish of hers would ever be denied
by anybody, herself distinctly included; and, all in all, she was
dazzling, spoiled, charming, and fearless.
Certainly she had no fear of the two observant women, neither of their
opinion nor of what she might give them cause to tell;—that sparkle of
azure she sent across the intervening street was so carelessly amused it
was derisive, like the half nod to them with which she accompanied it.
She and her companion walked closely together, absorbed in what they
were saying, her hand upon his arm; and, when they came to the terrace
steps, where a closed foreign car waited, with a handsome young
chauffeur at the wheel and a twin of him at attention beside the door,
she did a thing that Mrs. Dodge and Mrs. Cromwell took to be final and
decisive.
Her companion had evidently offered some light pleasantry or witticism
at which she took humorous offense, for she removed her white-gloved
hand from his arm and struck him several times playfully upon the
shoulder—but with the last blow allowed her hand to remain where it
was; and, although she might have implied that it was to aid her
movement into the car, the white fingers could still be seen remaining
upon the shoulder of the man’s brown overcoat as he, moving instantly
after her, took his seat beside her in the gray velvet interior. Thus,
what appeared to be a playful gesture protracted itself into a caress,
and a caress of no great novelty to the participants.
At least, it was so interpreted across the street, where Mrs. Dodge gave
utterance to a sound vocal but incoherent, and Mrs. Cromwell said “Oh,
_my_!” in a husky whisper. The French car glided by them, passing them
as they openly stared at it, or indeed glared at it, and a moment later
it was far down the street, leaving them to turn their glares upon each
other.
“That settles it,” Mrs. Dodge gasped. “It ought to have been a gondola.”
“A gondola?”
“A Doge’s wife carrying on with a fool poet or something;—she always
has that air to me. What a comedy!”
Mrs. Cromwell shook her head; her expression was of grief and shock.
“It’s tragedy, Lydia.”
“Just as you choose to look at it. The practical point of view is that
it’s going to happen to Amelia, and pretty soon, too! Some day before
long that man’s going to walk in and tell her she’s got to step aside
and let him marry somebody else. Doesn’t what we just saw prove it? That
woman did it deliberately in our faces, and she knows we’re friends of
his wife’s. She deliberately showed us she didn’t care what we saw. And
as for him——”
“He didn’t see us, I think,” Mrs. Cromwell murmured.
“_See_ us? He wouldn’t have seen Amelia herself if she’d been with
us—and she might have been! That’s why I say she ought to know.”
“Oh, I don’t think I’d like to——”
“_Somebody_ ought to,” Mrs. Dodge said, firmly. “Somebody ought to tell
her, and right away, at that.”
“Oh, but——”
“Oughtn’t she to be given the chance to prepare herself for what’s
coming to her?” Mrs. Dodge asked, testily. “She’s made that man think
he’s Napoleon, and so she’s going to get what Napoleon’s wife got. I
think she ought to be warned at once, and a true friend would see to
it.”
In genuine distress, Mrs. Cromwell shrank from the idea. “Oh, but I
could never——”
“Somebody’s _got_ to,” Mrs. Dodge insisted, implacably. “If you won’t,
then somebody else.”
“Oh, but you—you wouldn’t take such a responsibility, would you?
You—you _wouldn’t_, would you, Lydia?”
The severe matron, Lydia Dodge, thus flutteringly questioned, looked
more severe than ever. “I shouldn’t care to take such a burden on my
shoulders,” she said. “Looking after my own burdens is quite enough for
me, and it’s time I was on my way to them.” She moved in departure, but
when she had gone a little way, spoke over her shoulder, “_Some_body’s
got to, though! Good-bye.”
Mrs. Cromwell, murmuring a response, entered her own domain and walked
slowly up the wide brick path; then halted, turned irresolutely, and
glanced to where her friend marched northward upon the pavement. To Mrs.
Cromwell the outlines of Mrs. Dodge, thus firmly moving on, expressed
something formidable and imminent. “But, Lydia——” the hesitant lady
said, impulsively, though she knew that Lydia was already too distant to
hear her. Mrs. Cromwell took an uncertain step or two, as if to follow
and remonstrate, but paused, turned again, and went slowly into her
house.
A kind-hearted soul, and in a state of sympathetic distress for Amelia
Battle, she was beset by compassion and perplexity during what remained
of the afternoon; and her husband and daughters found her so preoccupied
at the dinner-table that they accused her of concealing a headache. But
by this time what she concealed was an acute anxiety; she feared that
Lydia’s sense of duty might lead to action, and that the action might be
precipitate and destructive. For Mrs. Cromwell knew well enough that
Amelia’s slavery was Amelia’s paradise—the only paradise Amelia knew
how to build for herself—and paradises are, of all structures, the most
perilously fragile.
Mrs. Cromwell was the more fearful because, being a woman, she
understood that more than a sense of duty would impel Lydia to action:
Lydia herself might interpret her action as the prompting of duty, but
the vital incentive was likely to be something much more human; for
within the race is a profound willingness to see a proud head lowered,
particularly if that head be one that has displayed its pride. Amelia
had displayed hers too long and too gallingly for Lydia’s
patience;—Lydia had “really _meant_ it,” Mrs. Cromwell thought,
recalling the fierceness of Mrs. Dodge’s “I’ve had all I can stand of
it!” that afternoon. A sense of duty with gall behind it is indeed to be
feared; and the end of Mrs. Cromwell’s anxieties was the conclusion that
Amelia’s paradise of slavery was more imminently threatened by the
virtuous Lydia than by that gorgeous pagan, Mrs. Sylvester.
III
PERVERSITY OF A TELEPHONE
THE troubled lady began to wish devoutly that the sight of Mrs.
Sylvester caressing Mr. Battle had not shocked her into a fluttering and
indecisive state of mind;—she should have discussed the event more
calmly with Lydia; should have argued against anything precipitate;—and
so, as soon as she could, after her preoccupied dinner, she went to the
telephone and gave Mrs. Dodge’s number.
Mr. and Mrs. Dodge were dining in town, she was informed; they were
going to the theatre afterward and were not expected to return until
midnight. This blank wall at once increased Mrs. Cromwell’s inward
disturbance, for she was a woman readily tortured by her imagination;
and in her mind she began to design terrible pictures of what might now
be happening in the house of the Battles. Until she went to the
telephone she thought it unlikely that Lydia had acted with such
promptness; but after receiving through the instrument the information
that no information was to be had for the present, Mrs. Cromwell became
certain that Mrs. Dodge had already destroyed Amelia’s peace of mind.
She went away from the telephone, then came back to it, and again sat
before the little table that bore it; but she did not at once put its
miraculous powers into operation. Instead, she sat staring at it, afraid
to employ it, while her imaginings became more piteous and more
horrifying. Amelia had no talk except “Mr. Battle says”; she had no
thought except “Mr. Battle thinks”; she had no life at all except as
part of her husband’s life; and if that were taken away from her, what
was left? She had made no existence whatever of her own and for herself,
and if brought to believe that she had lost him, she was annihilated.
If the great Battle merely died, Amelia could live on, as widows of the
illustrious sometimes do, to be his monument continually reinscribed
with mourning tributes; but if a Venetian beauty carried him off in a
gondola, Amelia would be so extinct that the act of self-destruction
might well be thought gratuitous;—and yet Mrs. Cromwell’s imagination
pictured Amelia in the grisly details of its commission by all the usual
processes. She saw Amelia drown herself variously; saw her with a razor,
with a pistol, with a rope, with poison, with a hat-pin.
Naturally, it became impossible to endure such pictures, and Mrs.
Cromwell tremulously picked up the telephone, paused before releasing
the curved nickel prong, but did release it, and when a woman’s voice
addressed her, “What number, please?” she returned the breathless
inquiry: “Is that you, Amelia?” Then she apologized, pronounced a
number, and was presently greeted by the response: “Mr. Roderick
Battle’s residence. Who is it, please?”
“Mrs. Cromwell. May I speak to Mrs. Battle?”
“I think so, ma’am.”
In the interval of silence Mrs. Cromwell muttered, “I _think_ so” to
herself. The maid wasn’t certain;—that was bad; for it might indicate a
state of prostration.
“Yes?” said the little voice in the telephone. “Is it Mrs. Cromwell?”
Mrs. Cromwell with a great effort assumed her most smiling and
reassuring expression. “Amelia? Is it you, Amelia?”
“Yes.”
“I just wanted to tell you again what a lovely impression your essay
made on me, dear. I’ve been thinking of it ever since, and I felt you
might like to know it.”
“Thank you, Mrs. Cromwell.”
“Lydia Dodge and I kept on talking about it after you left us this
afternoon,” Mrs. Cromwell continued, beaming fondly upon the air above
the telephone. “We both said we thought it was the best paper ever read
at the club. I—I just wondered if—if Lydia called you up to tell you
so, too. Did she?”
“No. No, she didn’t call me up.”
“Oh, didn’t she? I just thought she might have because she was so
enthusiastic.”
“No. She didn’t.”
Mrs. Cromwell listened intently, seeking to detect emotion that might
indicate Amelia’s state of mind, but Amelia’s voice revealed nothing
whatever. It was one of those voices obscured and dwindled by the
telephone into dry little metallic sounds; language was communicated,
but nothing more, and a telegram from her would have conveyed as much
personal revelation. “No, Mrs. Dodge didn’t call me up,” she said again.
Mrs. Cromwell offered some manifestations of mirth, though she intended
them to express a tender cordiality rather than amusement; and the
facial sweetness with which she was favouring the air before her became
less strained; a strong sense of relief was easing her. “Well, I just
thought Lydia _might_, you know,” she said, continuing to ripple her
gentle laughter into the mouthpiece. “She was so enthusiastic, I just
thought——”
“No, she didn’t call me up,” the small voice in the telephone
interrupted.
“Well, I’m gl——” But Mrs. Cromwell checked herself sharply, having
begun too impulsively. “I hope I’m not keeping you from anything you
were doing,” she said hastily, to change the subject.
“No, I’m all alone. Mr. Battle is spending the evening with Mrs.
Sylvester.”
“What!” Mrs. Cromwell exclaimed, and her almost convivial expression
disappeared instantly; her face became a sculpture of features only. “He
is?”
“Yes. He’s finishing the interior of her new house. With important
clients like that he always interprets them into their houses you know.
He makes a study of their personalities.”
“I—see!” Mrs. Cromwell said. Then, recovering herself, she was able to
nod pleasantly and beam again, though now her beaming was rigidly
automatic. “Well, I mustn’t keep you. I just wanted to tell you again
how immensely we all admired your beautiful essay, and I thought
possibly Lydia might have called you up to say so, too, because she
fairly raved over it when we were——”
“No.” The metallic small voice said; and it informed her for the fourth
time: “She didn’t call me up.” Then it added: “She came here.”
“No!” Mrs. Cromwell cried.
“Yes. She came here,” the voice in the instrument repeated.
“She _did_?”
“Yes. Just before dinner. She came to see me.”
“Oh, my!” Mrs. Cromwell murmured. “What did she say?”
“She was in great trouble about Mr. Dodge.”
“What?”
“She was in a tragic state,” the impersonal voice replied with perfect
distinctness. “She was in a tragic state about her husband.”
“About John _Dodge_?” Mrs. Cromwell cried.
“Yes. She was hurried and didn’t have time to tell me any details,
because they had a dinner engagement in town, and he kept telephoning
her they’d be disgraced if she didn’t come home and dress; but that’s
what she came to see me about. It seems he’s been misbehaving himself
over some fascinating and unscrupulous woman, and Mrs. Dodge thinks he
probably intends to ask for a divorce and abandon her. She was in a most
upset state over it, of course.”
“_Amelia!_” Mrs. Cromwell shouted the name at the mouthpiece.
“Yes. Isn’t it distressing?” was the response. “Oh course, I won’t
mention it to anybody but you. I supposed you knew all about it since
you’re her most intimate friend.”
Mrs. Cromwell made an effort to speak coherently. “Let me try to
understand you,” she said. “You say that Lydia Dodge came to you this
afternoon——”
“It was really evening,” the voice interrupted, in correction. “Almost
seven. And their engagement was in town at half past. That’s why he kept
calling her up so excitedly.”
“And she told you,” Mrs. Cromwell continued, “Lydia Dodge told you that
her husband, John Dodge, was philandering with——”
“There was no doubt about it whatever,” the voice interrupted. “Some
friends of hers had seen an actual caress exchanged between Mr. Dodge
and the other woman.”
“_What!_”
“Yes. That’s what she told me.”
“Wait!” Mrs. Cromwell begged. “Lydia Dodge told you that John Dodge——”
“Yes,” the voice of Amelia Battle replied colourlessly in the telephone.
“It seems too tragic, and it was such a shock to me—I never dreamed
that people of forty or fifty had troubles like that—but it was what
she came here to tell me. Of course, she didn’t have time to tell me
much, because she was so upset and Mr. Dodge was in such a hurry for her
to come home. I never dreamed there was anything but peace and happiness
between them, did you?”
“No, I didn’t,” gasped Mrs. Cromwell. “But Amelia——”
“That’s all I know about it, I’m afraid.”
“Amelia——”
“Probably she’ll talk about it to you pretty soon,” Amelia said, at the
other end of the wire. “I’m surprised she didn’t tell you before she did
me; you really know her so much better than I do. I’m afraid I’ll have
to go now. One of Mr. Battle’s assistants has just come in and I’m doing
some work with him. It was lovely of you to call me up about the little
essay, but, of course, that was _all_ Mr. Battle. Good-night.”
Mrs. Cromwell sat staring at the empty mechanism in her hand until it
rattled irritably, warning her to replace it upon its prong.
IV
A GREAT MAN’S WIFE
SHE had a restless night, for she repeatedly woke up with a start, her
eyes opening widely in the darkness of her bedroom; and each time this
happened she made the same muffled and incomplete exclamation: “Well, of
all——!” Her condition was still as exclamatory as it was anxiously
expectant when, just after her nine-o’clock breakfast the next morning,
she went to her Georgian drawing-room window and beheld the sterling
figure of Mrs. Dodge in the act of hurrying from the sidewalk to the
Georgian doorway. Mrs. Cromwell ran to admit her; brought her quickly
into the drawing room. “Lydia!” she cried. “What on earth _happened_?”
For, even if telephones had never been invented, the early caller’s
expression would have made it plain that there had been a happening.
“I’d have called you up last night,” the perturbed Lydia began;—“but we
didn’t get back till one o’clock, and it was too late. In all my life I
never had such an experience!”
“You don’t mean at the theatre or——”
“No!” Mrs. Dodge returned, indignantly. “I mean with that woman!”
“With Amelia?”
“With Amelia Battle.”
“But _tell_ me,” Mrs. Cromwell implored. “My dear, I’ve been in such a
state of perplexity——”
“Perplexity!” her friend echoed scornfully, and demanded: “What sort of
state do you think _I’ve_ been in? My dear, I went to her.”
“To Amelia?”
“To Amelia Battle,” Mrs. Dodge said. “I went straight home after I left
you yesterday; but I kept thinking about what we’d seen——”
“You mean——” Mrs. Cromwell paused, and glanced nervously through the
glass of the broad-paned window beside which she and her guest had
seated themselves. Her troubled eyes came to rest upon the pinkish
Italian villa across the street. “You mean what we saw—over there?”
“I mean what was virtually an embrace between Roderick Brooks Battle and
Mrs. Sylvester under our eyes,” Mrs. Dodge said angrily. “And she looked
us square in the face just before she did it! I also mean that both of
them showed by their manner that such caresses were absolutely familiar
and habitual—and that was all _I_ needed to prove that the talk about
them was only too well founded. So, when I’d thought it over and
over—Oh, I didn’t act in haste!—I decided it was somebody’s absolute
_duty_ to prepare Amelia for what I plainly saw was coming to her. Did
you ever see anything show more proprietorship than Mrs. Sylvester’s
fondling of that man’s shoulder? So, as you had declared _you_ wouldn’t
go, and although it was late, and Mr. Dodge and I had an important
dinner engagement, I made up my mind it had to be done immediately and I
went.”
“But what did you _tell_ her?” Mrs. Cromwell implored.
“Never,” said Mrs. Dodge, “never in my life have I had such an
experience! I tried to begin tactfully; I didn’t want to give her a
shock, and so I tried to begin and lead up to it; but it was difficult
to begin at all, because I’d scarcely sat down before she told me my
husband had got home and had telephoned to see if I’d reached her house,
and he’d left word for me to come straight back home because he was
afraid we’d be late for the dinner—and all the time I was trying to
talk to her, her maid kept coming in to say he was calling up again, and
then I’d have to go and _beseech_ him to let me alone for a minute—but
he wouldn’t——”
Mrs. Cromwell was unable to wait in patience through these
preliminaries. “Lydia! What did you _tell_ her?”
“I’m trying to explain it as well as I can, please,” her guest returned,
irritably. “If I didn’t explain how crazily my husband kept behaving you
couldn’t possibly understand. He’d got it into his head that we _had_ to
be at this dinner on time, because it was with some people who have
large mining interests and——”
“Lydia, _what_ did you——”
“I told you I tried to be tactful,” said Mrs. Dodge. “I tried to lead up
to it, and I’ll tell you exactly what I said, though with that awful
telephone interrupting every minute it was hard to say _anything_
connectedly! First, I told her what a deep regard both of us had for
her.”
“Both of you? You mean you and your husband, Lydia?”
“No, you and me. It was necessary to mention you, of course, because of
what we saw yesterday.”
“Oh,” said Mrs. Cromwell. “Well, go on.”
“I told her,” Mrs. Dodge continued, complying. “I said nobody could have
her interests more at heart than you and I did, and that was why I had
come. She thanked me, but I noticed a change in her manner right there.
I thought she looked at me in a kind of bright-eyed way, as if she were
on her guard and suspicious. I _thought_ she looked like that, and now
I’m _sure_ she did. I said, ‘Amelia, I want to put a little problem to
you, just to see if you think I’ve done right in coming.’ She said,
‘Yes, Mrs. Dodge,’ and asked me what the problem was.”
“And what was it, Lydia?”
“My dear, will you let me tell you? I said in the kindest way, I said,
‘Amelia, just for a moment let us suppose that my husband were not true
to me; suppose he might even be planning to set me aside so that he
could marry another woman; and suppose that two women friends of mine,
who had my interests dearly at heart, had seen him with this other
woman; and suppose her to be a fascinating woman, and that my friends
saw with their own eyes that my husband felt her fascination so deeply
that anybody could tell in an instant he was actually in love with
her;—and, _more_ than that,’ I said, ‘suppose that these friends of
mine saw my husband actually exchanging a caress with this woman, and
saw him go off driving with her, with her hand on his shoulder and he
showing that he liked it there and was used to having it
there;—Amelia,’ I said, ‘Amelia, what would you think about the
question of duty for those two friends of mine who had seen such a
thing? Amelia,’ I said, ‘wouldn’t you think it was the true duty of one
or the other of them to come and tell me and warn me and give me time to
prepare myself?’ That’s what I said to her.”
“And what did she——”
“She jumped right up and came and threw her arms around me,” said Mrs.
Dodge in a strained voice. “I never had such an experience in my life!”
“But what did she _say_?”
“She said, ‘You poor _thing_!’” Mrs. Dodge explained irascibly. “She
didn’t ‘say’ it, either; she shouted it, and she kept on shouting it
over and over. ‘You poor _thing_!’ And when she wasn’t saying that, she
was saying she’d never _dreamed_ Mr. Dodge was that sort of a man, and
she made such a commotion I was afraid the neighbours would hear her!”
“But why didn’t you——”
“I _did_!” Mrs. Dodge returned passionately. “I told her a _hundred_
times I didn’t mean Mr. Dodge; but she never gave me a chance to finish
a word I began; she just kept taking on about what a terrible thing it
must be for me, and how dreadful it was to think of Mr. Dodge
misbehaving like that—I tell you I never in my _life_ had such an
experience!”
“But why didn’t you _make_ her listen, at least long enough to——”
Mrs. Dodge’s look was that of a person badgered to desperation. “I
_couldn’t_! Every time I opened my mouth she shouted louder than I did!
She’d say, ‘You poor thing!’ again, or some more about Mr. Dodge, or
she’d want to know if I didn’t need ammonia or camphor, or she’d offer
to make beef _tea_ for me! And every minute my husband was making an
idiot of himself ringing the Battles’ telephone again. You don’t seem to
understand what sort of an experience it was at _all_! I tell you when I
finally had to leave the house she was standing on their front steps
shouting after me that she’d never tell anybody a thing about Mr. Dodge
unless I wanted her to!”
“It’s so queer!” Mrs. Cromwell said, bewildered more than ever. “If I’d
been in your place I know I’d never have come away without making her
understand I meant her husband, not mine!”
“‘Making her understand!’” Mrs. Dodge repeated, mocking her friend’s
voice—so considerable was her bitterness. “You goose! You don’t suppose
she didn’t understand _that_, do you?”
“You don’t think——”
“Absolutely! She had been expecting it to happen.”
“What to happen?”
“Somebody’s coming to warn her about Mrs. Sylvester. She did the whole
thing deliberately. Absolutely! She understood I was talking about
Battle as well as you do now. Of course,” said Mrs. Dodge, “of _course_
she understood!”
Then both ladies seemed to ponder, and for a time uttered various sounds
of marvelling; but suddenly Mrs. Cromwell, whose glance had wandered to
the window, straightened herself to an attentive rigidity. Her guest’s
glance followed hers, and instantly became fixed; but neither lady
spoke, for a sharply outlined coincidence was before them, casting a
spell upon them and holding them fascinated.
Across the street a French car entered the driveway of the stucco house,
and a Venetian Beauty descended, wrapped in ermine too glorious for the
time and occasion. Out of the green door of the house eagerly came upon
the balustraded terrace a dark man, poetic and scholarly in appearance,
dressed scrupulously and with a gardenia, like a bridegroom’s flower, in
his coat. In his hand he held an architect’s blue print; but for him and
for the azure-eyed lady in ermine this blue print seemed not more
important, nor less, than that book in which the two lovers of Rimini
read no more one day. They glanced but absently at the blue print; then
the man let it dangle from his hand while he looked into the lady’s eyes
and she into his; and they talked with ineffable gentleness together.
Here was an Italian episode most romantic in its elements: a Renaissance
terrace for the trysting place of a Renaissance widow and a great man,
two who met and made love under the spying eyes of female _sbirri_
lurking in a window opposite; but it was Amelia Battle who made the
romantic episode into a realistic coincidence. In a vehicle needful of
cleansing and polish she appeared from down the long street, sitting in
the attentive attitude necessary for the proper guidance of what bore
her, and wearing (as Mrs. Cromwell hoarsely informed Mrs. Dodge) “her
market clothes.” That she was returning from a market there could be no
doubt; Amelia had herself this touch of the Renaissance, but a
Renaissance late, northern, and robust. Both of the rear windows of her
diligent vehicle framed still-life studies to lure the brush of
sixteenth- and seventeenth-century lowland painters: the green tops of
sheaved celery nodded there; fat turnips reposed in baskets; purple
ragged plumes of beets pressed softly against the glass; jugs that
suggested buttermilk and cider, perhaps both, snugly neighboured the
hearty vegetables, and made plain to all that the good wife in the
forward seat had a providing heart for her man and her household.
The ladies in the Georgian window were truly among those who cared to
look. “Oh, _my_!” Mrs. Cromwell whispered.
Amelia stopped her market machine and jumped out in her market clothes
at the foot of the driveway, where stood Mrs. Sylvester’s French car in
the care of its two magnificent young men. There was an amiable
briskness, cheerful and friendly, in the air with which Amelia trotted
up the terrace steps and joined the romantic couple standing beside the
balustrade. The three entered into converse.
Mrs. Cromwell and Mrs. Dodge became even more breathless; and then, with
amazement, and perhaps a little natural disappointment, they saw that
the conversation was not acrimonious—at least, not outwardly so. They
marked that Amelia, smiling, took the lead in it, and that she at once
set her hand upon her husband’s arm—and in a manner of ownership so
masterful and complete that the proprietorship assumed by Mrs. Sylvester
in the same gesture, the preceding day, seemed in comparison the
temporary claim of a mere borrower. And Mrs. Cromwell marked also a kind
of feebleness in the attitude of the Venetian Beauty: Mrs. Sylvester was
smiling politely, but there was a disturbed petulance in her smile.
Suddenly Mrs. Cromwell perceived that beside Amelia, for all Amelia’s
skimpiness, Mrs. Sylvester looked ineffective. With that, glancing at
the sturdy figure of Lydia Dodge, Mrs. Cromwell came to the conclusion
that since Amelia had been too much for Lydia, Amelia would certainly be
too much for Mrs. Sylvester.
“Look!” said Lydia.
Amelia and her husband were leaving the terrace together. Battle walked
to the “sedan” with her and held the door open for her; she climbed to
the driver’s seat and seemed to wait, with assurance, for him to do more
than hold the door. And at this moment the seriousness of his expression
was so emphasized that it was easily visible to the Georgian window,
though only his profile was given to its view as he looked back, over
his shoulder, at the glazing smile of the lady upon the terrace. He
seemed to waver, hesitating; and then, somewhat bleakly, he climbed into
the “sedan” beside his wife.
“_Open it!_” Mrs. Dodge was struggling with a catch of the Georgian
window.
“What for?”
“She’s shouting again! I’ve _got_ to hear her!” Mrs. Dodge panted; and
the window yielded to her exertions.
Amelia’s attitude showed that she was encouraging her machine to begin
operations, while at the same time she was calling parting words to Mrs.
Sylvester. “Good-bye!” Amelia shouted. “Mr. Battle says he’s been _so_
inspired by your sympathy in his work! Mr. Battle says that’s _so_
necessary to an architect! Mr. Battle says _no_ artist can ever even
_hope_ to do anything great without it! Mr. Battle says——”
But here, under the urging of her foot, the engine burst into a
shattering uproar: ague seized the car with a bitter grip; convulsive
impulses of the apparatus to leap at random were succeeded by more
decorous ideas, and then the “sedan” moved mildly forward; the
vegetables nodded affably in the windows, and the Battles were borne
from sight.
“I see,” said Lydia Dodge, moving back to her chair. “I understand now.”
“You understand what?” her hostess inquired, brusquely, as she closed
the Georgian window.
“I understand what I just saw. I can’t tell you exactly how or why, but
it was plainly _there_—in Roderick Brooks Battle’s look, in his
slightest gesture. We were absolutely mistaken to think it possible.
He’ll never ask Amelia to step aside: he’ll never leave her. And however
much he philanders, _she’ll_ never leave _him_, either. She’ll go
straight on the way she’s always gone. _He’s_ shown us that, and _she’s_
shown us that.”
“Well, then,” Mrs. Cromwell inquired; “why is it? You say you
understand.”
“It’s because he knows that between his Venetian romance and his press
agent he’s got to take the press agent. He’s had sense enough to see he
mightn’t be a great man at all without his press agent—and he’d rather
keep on being a great man. And Amelia knows she’s getting too
skimpy-looking to get a chance to make a great man out of anybody
_else_; so she wouldn’t let me tell her about him, because she’s going
to stick to him!”
At this Mrs. Cromwell made gestures of negation and horror, though in
the back of her mind, at that moment, she was recalling her yesterday’s
thought that Lydia’s sense of duty was really Lydia’s pique. “Lydia
Dodge!” she cried, “I won’t listen to you! Don’t you know you’re taking
the lowest, unchristianest, vilest possible view of human nature?”
Mrs. Dodge looked guilty, but she decided to offer a plea in excuse.
“Well, I suppose that may be true,” she said. “But sometimes it does
seem about the only way to understand people!”
V
ONE OF MRS. CROMWELL’S DAUGHTERS
IN THE spacious suburb’s most opulent quarter, where the houses stood in
a great tract of shrubberies, gardens, and civilized old woodland
groves, there were many happily marriageable girls; and one, in
particular, was supremely equipped in this condition, for she had what
the others described as “the best of everything.” In the first place,
they said, Anne Cromwell had “looks”; in the second place, she had
“money,” and in the third she had “family,” by which they meant the
background prestiges of an important mother and several generations of
progenitors affluently established upon this soil.
Sometimes they added a word or two about her manners, though a
middle-aged listener might not have divined that the allusion was to
manners.
“She manages wonderf’ly,” they said. Amiably reserved, and never an
eager contestant in the agonizing little competitions that necessarily
engage maidens of her age, she was not merely fair but generous to her
rivals. “She can afford to be!” they cried, thus paying tribute. Her
fairness prevailed, too, among her suitors: not one could say she
favoured him more than another; but like a young princess, as politic as
she was well bred and genuinely kind, she showed an impartial
friendliness to everybody.
Even without her background she was the most noticeable young figure in
the suburb, but never because she did anything to make herself
conspicuous. At the Green Hills Country Club the eye of a stranger,
watching the dancing on a summer night, would not immediately
distinguish an individual from the mass. As the dancers went lightly
interweaving over the floor of a roofless pavilion, where the foliage of
great beech trees hung trembling above white balustrades and Venetian
lamps, the spectator’s first glance from the adjoining veranda caught
only the general aspect of carnival: the dancers were like a confusion
of gaily coloured feathers blowing and whirlpooling across a dim
tapestry. But presently, as he looked, rhythms and shifting designs
would appear in the sparkling fluctuation; points of light would
separate themselves, taking individual contour, and the brightest would
be a lovely girl’s head of “gold cooled in moonlight.”
Then it would be observed that toward this bright head darker ones
darted and zigzagged through the crowd more frequently than toward any
other, as the ardent youths plunged to “cut in”; and when the music
stopped the lovely girl was not for an instant left to the single
devotion of her partner. Other girls, as well as the young men, flocked
about her, and wherever she moved there seemed to be something like a
retinue. Thus the first question of the stranger, looking on, came to be
expected as customary—almost inevitable, “Who is that?” The reply was
as invariable, delivered with the amused condescension of a native
receiving tribute to his climate or public monuments. “That’s what
visitors always ask first. It’s Anne Cromwell.”
Mrs. Cromwell, sitting among contemporaries on the veranda that
overlooked the dancing-floor, had often heard both the question and the
answer, and although she was one of those mothers known as “sensible,”
she never heard either without a natural thrill of pride. But she was
tactful enough to conceal her feeling from the mothers of other girls,
and usually laughed deprecatingly, implying that she knew as well as any
one how little such ephemeral things signified. Anne had her own
deprecating laughter for tributes, and the most eager flatterer could
not persuade her to the air of accepting them seriously; so that both
mother and daughter, appearing to set no store by Anne’s triumphs,
really made them all the more secure. It was a true instinct guiding
them, the same that prevailed with Cæsar when thrice he refused the
crown; for what hurts our little human hearts, when we watch a
competitor’s triumph, is his pride and his pleasure in it. If he can
persuade us that it brings him neither we will not grudge it to him, but
may help him to greater.
Moreover, both Anne and her mother believed themselves to be entirely
genuine in their deprecation of Anne’s preëminence, and, when they were
alone together, talked tributes over with the same modest laughter they
had for them in company. Yet Mrs. Cromwell never omitted to tell Anne of
any stranger’s “Who is that?” nor of all the other pleasing things said
to her, or in her hearing, of her daughter. And, on her own part, Anne
laughed and told of the like things that had been said to her, or that
she had overheard.
“Of course, it doesn’t mean anything,” she would add. “I just thought
I’d tell you.”
For the truth was that Anne’s triumphs were the breath of life to both
mother and daughter, and they were doomed to make the ancient discovery
that our dearest treasures are those that are threatened.
The threat was perceived by Mrs. Cromwell upon one of those summer
nights so exquisite that we call them “unreal,” because they belong to
perished romance, and we have learned to imagine that what is real must
be unlovely. Only the relics of a discredited sentimental epoch could go
forth under the gold-pointed canopy of such a night, and sigh because
the stars are ineffable. Mrs. Cromwell was such a relic, and, being in
remote attendance upon her daughter at the country club, she had gone
after dinner to walk alone upon the links in the starlight. In an
old-fashioned mood, she naturally wanted to get away from the dance
music of the open-air pavilion; but, when she returned, her shadow from
the rising moon preceded her, and she decided that even the tomtoms and
war horns of the young people’s favourite “orchestra” could never
entirely ruin the moon. Then, instead of joining any of the groups upon
the veranda, she went to an easy chair, aloof in a shadowy corner, where
she could see the dancers and be alone to watch Anne.
She looked down a little wistfully. Only a year or so ago she had thus
watched her oldest daughter, Mildred, now a matron, and in time she
would probably see her youngest, the schoolgirl, Cornelia, dancing here.
But Anne, though the mother strove not to know it, was her dearest, and
the period of eligible maidenhood, like any other period, is not long.
Mrs. Cromwell was wistful because she thought it would not be really
long before Anne might sit here to watch the maiden dancing of a
daughter of her own.
The pavilion was a little below the level of the veranda, and almost at
once her eye found the dominant fair head it sought. Anne was talking as
she danced, smiling serenely, a graceful young figure, shapely and tall,
with a hint of the contented ampleness that would come later, as it had
come to her mother. Mrs. Cromwell, seeing Anne’s smile, smiled too, in
her seclusion, and with the same serenity; though an enemy might have
said that these two smiles partook of the same complacency. However, at
that moment Mrs. Cromwell could not have imagined the existence of an
enemy: she had no conception that there could be in the world such a
thing as an enemy to herself or to her daughter.
She was a little sorry that Anne wasn’t dancing with young Harrison
Crisp. She liked to see Anne dancing with any “nice boy,” but best of
all with young Crisp, and this was not only because the two were
harmoniously matched as dancers, as well as in other ways, but because
the mother had comprehended that this young man might prove to be her
daughter’s preference for more than dancing. Mrs. Cromwell was not
anxious to see Anne married; she wished her to prolong the pretty time
of girlhood; but any mother must have been pleased to see so splendid a
young man place himself at her daughter’s disposal. Mrs. Cromwell
wondered where he was this evening, and she had just begun to look for
him among the dancers when strangers intruded upon her retreat.
She heard unfamiliar voices behind her, and then a small group of
middle-aged people drew up wicker chairs to the veranda railing that
overlooked the dancing-floor. Mrs. Cromwell gave them a side glance and
perceived that they were visitors, “put up” at the club, for this was an
organization closely guarded, and she knew all of the members. The
newcomers sat near her, and though she would have preferred her
seclusion to remain secluded, she could not help waiting, with a little
motherly satisfaction, to hear them speak of her Anne, as strangers
inevitably must.
And presently she smiled in the darkness, thinking herself rewarded; for
a man’s voice, deeply impressed, inquired: “Who _is_ that wonderful
girl?”
In the light of the moment’s impending revelation, the mother’s smile
upon Mrs. Cromwell’s half-parted lips, as she waited for the reply,
becomes a little pathetic.
“Why, it’s _Sallie_, of course!”
This strange answer arrested Mrs. Cromwell’s smile, of which reluctant
and mirthless vestiges remained for a moment or two before vanishing
into the contours that mark an astounded disapproval. Then she slowly
turned her head and looked at these queer visitors, and her strong
impression was that the two middle-aged women and their escort, a stout
elderly man in white flannels, were “very ordinary looking people.”
Their chairs were within a dozen feet of hers, but they sat in profile
to her, and possibly were unaware of her, or were aware of her but
vaguely. For strangers in a strange place are often subject to such an
illusion of detachment as these displayed, and seem to feel that they
may speak together as freely as if they alone understood language. But,
of course, to Mrs. Cromwell’s way of thinking, the greater illusion of
the present group was in believing that somebody named Sallie was a
wonderful girl. She failed to identify this pretender: none of her
friends had a daughter named Sallie, and Anne had never spoken of any
Sallie.
“I declare I didn’t recognize her!” the elderly man said, chuckling.
“Who’d have thought it? Sallie!”
The woman who sat next him laughed triumphantly. “I don’t wonder you
didn’t recognize her,” she said. “It’s six years since you saw her, and
she was only fourteen then. I guess she’s changed _some_—what?”
“Well, ‘some’!” he agreed. “She makes the rest of ’em look like
flivvers.”
The second of the two women tapped his head with her fan. “George, I
guess you never thought you’d be the uncle of a peach like that!”
“Well, I’m not as surprised to be the uncle of a peach,” he said, with
renewed chuckling, “as I am to see you the aunt of one! I’m kind of
surprised to have Jennie, here, turn out to be the mother of one, too.
You certainly never showed any such style as that when you were young,
Jennie! Why, there ain’t a girl in that whole bunch to hold a candle to
her! She’s a two-hundred-carat blazer and makes the rest of ’em look
like what you see on a ten-cent-store counter! You heard me yourselves:
the very first thing I said was, ‘Who _is_ that wonderful girl?’ And I
didn’t even know it was Sallie. I guess that shows!”
Sallie’s mother laughed excitedly. “Oh, we’re used to it, George! She’s
never gone a place these last three years she didn’t put it all over the
other girls in two shakes of a lamb’s tail! The boys go crazy over her
as soon as they see her, even the ones that are engaged to other girls,
and a few that are married to the other girls, too! We’ve had some funny
times, I tell you, George!”
“I expect so!” he chuckled. “I guess you’re fixing for her to pick a
good one, all right, Jennie!”
“She don’t need me to do any fixing for her,” Sallie’s mother explained,
gaily. “She’s got a mighty good head on her, and I guess she knows she
can choose anything she decides she wants. Look at her now.” She laughed
in loud triumph as she spoke, and pointed to the pavilion.
Mrs. Cromwell’s eyes followed the direction of the pointing forefinger
and saw a stationary nucleus among the swirl of dancers—a knot of young
men gathered round a girl and engaged in obvious expostulation. The
disagreement was so pronounced, in fact, as to resemble a dispute; for
it involved more gesturing than is usually displayed in the mere
arguments of members of the northern races;—“cutting in” to dance with
this girl was apparently a serious matter.
She was a laughing, slender creature, with hints of the glow of rubies
in the corn-silk brown of her hair; and the apple-green thin silk of her
sparse dancing dress was the right complement for her dramatic
vividness. Brilliant eyed, her face alive with little ecstasies of
merriment as the debaters grew more and more emphatic, she might well
have made an observer think of “laughing April on the hills”—an April
with July in her hair and a ring of solemn young fauns disputing over
her.
She did not allow their disagreement to reach a crisis, however, though
the fauns were so earnest as to seem to threaten one;—she placed a slim
hand upon the shoulder of her interrupted partner, whose arm had been
all the while tentatively about her waist, and began to dance with him.
But over her shoulder as she went, she flung a look and a word to the
defeated, who dispersed thoughtfully, with the air of men not by any
means abandoning their ambitions.
Then the coronal of ruby-sprinkled hair was seen shuttling rhythmically
among the dancers; and such a glowing shuttle the eye of a spectator
must follow. This pagan April with her flying grace in scant apple-green
emerged from the other dancers as the star emerges from the other actors
in a play; and only mothers of other girls could have failed to perceive
that any stranger’s first question must inevitably be, “Who is _that?_”
Mrs. Cromwell had no such perception;—her glance, a little annoyed,
sought her daughter and easily found her. Anne was dancing with young
Hobart Simms, long her most insignificant and humblest follower. Mrs.
Cromwell thought of him as “one of the nice boys”; but she also thought
of him as “poor little Hobart,” for only two things distinguished him,
both unfortunate. His father had lately failed in business, so that of
all the “nice boys,” Hobart was the poorest; but, what was more to the
point in Mrs. Cromwell’s reflections just then, of all the “nice boys”
he was the shortest. He was at least four inches shorter than Anne, and
it seemed to the mother that the contrast in height made Anne look too
large and somehow too placid. Mrs. Cromwell wanted Anne to be kind, but
she decided to warn her against dancing with Hobart: there are contrasts
that may bring even the most graceful within the danger of looking a
little ridiculous.
Anne was at her best when she danced with the tall and romantically dark
Harrison Crisp; but unfortunately this delinquent had been discovered:
he was the triumphing partner who had carried off the young person
called Sallie. Mrs. Cromwell might have put it the other way, however:
she might have looked upon the episode as the carrying off of young
Crisp by this froward Sallie.
Sallie’s mother appeared to take this view, herself. “Look at that!” she
cried. “Look at the state she’s got that fellow in she’s dancing with!
Look at the way he’s _looking_ at her, will you!” And again she gave
utterance to the loud and excitedly triumphant laugh that not only
offended the ears of Mrs. Cromwell but disquieted her more than she
would have thought possible, half an hour earlier. It seemed to her that
she had never before heard so offensive a laugh.
“Did you ever see anything to beat it?” Sallie’s mother inquired
hilariously. “He looks at her that way the whole time—except when she’s
dancing with somebody else. Then he stands around and looks at her as if
he had an awful pain! She’s got him so he won’t dance with anybody else.
It’s a scream!” And here, in her mirthful excitement, she slapped the
stout uncle’s knee; for Sallie’s mother made it evident that she was one
of those who repeat their own youth in the youth of a daughter, and
perhaps in a daughter’s career fulfil their own lost ambitions. She
became more confidential, though her confidential air was only a
gesture; she leaned toward her companions, but did not take the trouble
to lower her voice.
“He’s been to the house to see her four times since Monday. Last week he
had her auto riding every single afternoon. The very day he _met_ her he
sent her five pounds of——”
“Who is he?” the uncle inquired. “He’s a fine _looking_ fellow, all
right, but is he——”
Sallie’s mother took the words out of his mouth. “_Is_ he?” she cried.
“I guess you’ll _say_ he is! Crisp Iron Works, and his father’s made him
first vice-president and secretary already—only two years out of
college!”
“Sallie like him?”
“She’s got ’em _all_ going,” the mother laughed;—“but he’s the king. I
guess she don’t mind keeping him standing on his head awhile though!”
Again she produced the effect of lowering her voice without actually
lowering it. “They say he was sort of half signed up for somebody else.
When we first came here you couldn’t see anything but this Anne
Cromwell. She’s one of these highbrow girls—college and old family and
everything—and you’d thought she was the whole place. Sallie only
needed about three weeks!” And with that Sallie’s mother was so highly
exhilarated that she must needs slap George’s knee once more. “Sallie’s
got her in the back row to-night, where she belongs!”
The aunt and uncle joined laughter with her, and were but vaguely aware
that the lady near them had risen from her easy chair. She passed by
them, bestowing upon them a grave look, not prolonged.
“Who’s all that?” the stout uncle inquired, when she had disappeared
round a corner of the veranda. “Awful big dignified looking party, _I’d_
call her,” he added. “Who is she?”
“There’s a lot of that highbrow stuff around here,” said Sallie’s
mother;—“but, of course, I don’t get acquainted as fast as Sallie. I
don’t know who she is, but probably I’ll meet her some day.”
If Mrs. Cromwell had overheard this she might have responded, mentally,
“Yes—at Philippi!” For it could be only on the field of battle that she
would consent to meet “such rabble.” She said to herself that she
dismissed them and their babblings permanently from her mind; and,
having thus dismissed them, she continued to think of nothing else.
Her old-fashioned mood was ruined; so was the moon, and so was her
evening. She went home early, and sent her car back to wait for Anne.
VI
SALLIE EALING
IT DID not wait so long as it usually did: Anne came home early, too, at
eleven; though the dancing would go on until one, and it was her habit
to stay as long as the musicians did. Distant throbbings of dance music
from across the links came in at the girl’s open window as she undressed
in her pretty room; but she listened without pleasure, for perhaps she
felt something unkind in these far-away sounds to-night—something
elfish and faintly jeering.
Her mother, coming in, and smiling as she always did when she came for
their after-the-party talks, saw that Anne looked serious: her eyes were
grave and evasive.
“Did you get tired—or anything, Anne?”
“It wasn’t very exciting—just the same old crowd that you always see
there, week after week. I thought I might as well get to bed a little
early.”
“That’ll please your father,” Mrs. Cromwell assured her. “I noticed you
danced several times with young Hobart Simms. You were dancing with him
when I left, I think.”
“Yes?” Anne said, inquiringly, but she did not look toward her mother.
She stood facing her dressing-table, apparently preoccupied with it. “I
shouldn’t?”
“‘Shouldn’t?’” Mrs. Cromwell echoed, laughing indulgently. “He’s
commonplace, perhaps, but he’s a nice boy, and everybody admires the
plucky way he’s behaved about his father’s failure. I only thought——”
she hesitated.
“Yes?”
“I only thought—well, he _is_ a little shorter than you——”
“I see,” Anne said; and with that she turned eyes starry with emotion
full upon her mother. The look was almost tragic, but her voice was
gentle. “Did we seem—ridiculous?”
“No, indeed! Not at all.”
“I think we did,” Anne murmured and looked down at the dressing-table
again. “Well—it doesn’t matter.”
“Don’t be so fanciful,” Mrs. Cromwell said. “You couldn’t look
ridiculous under any circumstances, Anne.”
“I understand,” said Anne. “You don’t think I danced with Hobart Simms
because I _wanted_ to, do you, Mother?”
“No, it was because you’re kind,” Mrs. Cromwell returned, comfortingly;
then continued, in a casual way, “It just happened you were with poor
little Hobart during the short time I was looking on. I suppose you
weren’t _too_ partial to him, dear. You danced with all the rest of the
customary besiegers, didn’t you?”
“Oh, I suppose so,” Anne said, wearily. In profile to her mother, she
stood looking down upon the dressing-table, her hands moving among
little silver boxes and trumperies of ivory and jade and crystal; but
those white and shapely hands, adored by the mother, were doing nothing
purposeful and were only pretending to be employed—a signal to mothers
that daughters wish to be alone but do not know how to put the wish into
tactful words. Mrs. Cromwell understood; but she did not go.
“I’m glad you danced with all of ’em,” she said. “You did dance with
them all, did you, Anne?”
“I guess so.”
“I’m glad,” the mother said again, and then, as in a musing
afterthought, she added, “I only looked on for a little while. I suppose
Harrison was there?”
The daughter’s hands instantly stopped moving among the pretty trifles
on the dressing-table; she was still from head to foot; but she spoke in
a careless enough tone. “Harrison Crisp? Yes. He was there.” And then,
as if she must be scrupulously honest about this impression, she added,
“At least, I _think_ he was.”
“Oh!” Mrs. Cromwell exclaimed, enlightened. “Anne, didn’t you dance with
him at _all_?”
“With Harrison?” the girl asked, indifferently. “No; I don’t believe I
did, now I come to think of it.”
“Didn’t he ask you at all?”
Anne turned upon her with one of those little gasps that express the
exasperated weariness of a person who makes the same explanation for the
hundreth time. “Mother! If he didn’t ask me, isn’t that the same as not
asking me ‘at all’? What’s the difference between not dancing with a
person and not dancing with him ‘at all’? What’s the use of making such
a commotion about it? Dear me!”
The unreasonableness of this attack might have hurt a sensitive mother;
but Mrs. Cromwell was hurt only for her daughter:—petulance was not
“like” Anne, and it meant that she was suffering. Mrs. Cromwell was
suffering, too, but she did not show it.
“What in the world was Harrison doing all evening?” she asked. “It seems
strange he didn’t come near you.”
“There’s no city ordinance compelling every man in this suburb to ask me
to dance. I don’t know what he was doing. Dancing with that girl from
nowhere, probably.”
“With whom?”
“Nobody you know,” Anne returned, impatiently. “A girl that’s come here
lately. He seemed to be unable to tear himself away from her long enough
to even say ‘How-dy-do’ to anybody else. He’s making rather an
exhibition of himself over her, they say.”
“I heard something of the kind,” her mother said, frowning. She seated
herself in a cushioned chair near the dressing-table. “Is she a
commonish girl named Sallie something?”
“Yes, she is,” Anne replied, and added bitterly: “Very!” Having reached
this basis, they found that they could speak more frankly; and both of
them felt a little relief. Anne sat down, facing her mother. “She’s a
perfectly horrible girl, Mother—and that’s what he seems to like!”
“I happened to hear a little about her,” Mrs. Cromwell said. “I noticed
some relatives of hers who were there—her mother was one—and they were
distinctly what we call ‘common.’ I was so surprised to find such people
put up as guests at the club that before I came home I asked some
questions about them. The mother and daughter have come here to live,
and they’re apparently quite well-to-do. Their name is Ealing, it
seems.”
“Yes,” said Anne. “Sallie Ealing.”
“What surprised me most,” Mrs. Cromwell continued, “I learned that
they’d not only been given guests’ cards for the club, but had actually
been put up for membership.”
“Yes,” Anne said huskily. “It’s Harrison. He did it himself and he’s got
about a dozen people to second them. Several of the girls thought it
their duty to tell me about that to-night.”
“You poor, dear child!” the mother cried; but her compassion had an
unfortunate effect, for the suave youthful contours of the lovely face
before her were at once threatened by the malformations of anguish: Anne
seemed about to cry vociferously, like a child. She got the better of
this impulse, however; but she stared at her mother with a luminous
reproach; and the light upon the dressing-table beside her shone all too
brightly upon her lowered eyelids, where liquid glistenings began to be
visible.
“Oh, Mamma!” she gasped. “What’s the matter with me?”
“The matter with you?” her mother cried. “You’re perfect, Anne! What do
you mean?”
Anne choked, bit her lip, and again controlled herself, except for the
tears that kept forming steadily and sliding down from her eyes as she
spoke. “I mean, why do I mind it so much? Why do I care so about what’s
happening to me now? I never minded anything in my life before, that I
remember. I was sorry when Grandpa died, but I didn’t feel like _this_.
Have I been too happy? Is it a punishment?”
Her mother seized her hands. “‘Punishment’? No! You poor lamb, you’re
making much out of nothing. Nothing’s happened, Anne.”
“Oh, but it has!” Anne cried, and drew her hands away. “You don’t
_know_, Mamma! It’s been coming on ever since that girl first came to
one of the summer dances, a month ago! Mamma, to-night, if it hadn’t
been for little Hobart Simms, there were times when I’d have been
stranded! Absolutely! It’s such a horribly helpless feeling, Mamma. I
never knew what it was before—but I know now!”
“But you _weren’t_ ‘stranded,’ dear, you see.”
“I might have been if I hadn’t come away,” Anne said, and her tears were
heavier. “Mamma, what can I do? It’s so unfair!”
“You mean this girl is unfair?”
“No; she only does what she thinks will give her a good time.” There was
sturdiness in Anne’s character; she was able to be just even in this
crisis of feeling. “You can’t blame her, and it wouldn’t do any good if
you did. I mean it’s unfair of human nature, I guess. I honestly never
knew that men were so stupid and so—so _soft_! I mean it’s unfair that
a girl like this Sallie Ealing can turn their heads.”
“I just caught a glimpse of her,” Mrs. Cromwell said. “What is she
like?”
“She’s awful. The only thing she hasn’t done is bob her wonderful hair,
but she’s too clever about making the best of her looks to do that. She
smokes and drinks and ‘talks sex’ and swears.”
“Good heavens!” Mrs. Cromwell exclaimed. “And such a girl is put up for
membership at our quiet old family country club.”
Anne shook her head, and laughed tearfully. “She’ll never be blackballed
for that, Mamma! Nobody thinks anything about those things any more; and
besides, she only does them because she thinks they’re ‘what goes.’
_They_ aren’t what’s made the boys so wild over her!”
“Then what has?”
“Oh, it’s so crazy!” Anne cried. “I could imagine little boys of seven
or even ten, being caught that way, at a children’s party, but to see
grown _men_!”
“Anne!” Mrs. Cromwell contrived to smile, though rather dismally. “How
are these ‘grown men’ caught by Miss Sallie Ealing?”
“Why, just by less than _nothing_, Mamma! Of course, she’s got a kind of
style and anybody’d notice her anywhere, but what makes you notice her
so much is her being so triumphant: the men are all rushing at her every
instant, and that makes you look at her more than you would. But what
_started_ them to rushing and what keeps them going is the thing I feel
I can never forgive them for. Mamma, I feel as if I could never respect
a man again!”
“Remember your father,” Mrs. Cromwell said indulgently. “Your
father——”
“No; if a man like Harrison Crisp can become just a girl’s slave on that
account——” Anne interrupted herself. “Why, it’s like Circe’s cup!” she
cried. “I suppose that meant Circe’s kiss, really.”
“They don’t do that, do they, Anne?”
“I don’t know,” Anne said. “It’s not that at first, anyhow.”
“Well, how does she enslave them?”
“It’s like this, Mamma. The first time I ever saw her, I was dancing
with Harrison, and he happened to point her out to me. He’d just met her
and didn’t take any interest in her at all. He really didn’t. Well, a
minute or two later she danced near us and spoke to him over her
partner’s shoulder as they passed us. ‘I heard something terrible about
you!’ was what she said, and she danced on away, looking back at him
over her shoulder. Pretty soon someone cut in and took me away, and
Harrison went straight and cut in and danced with Sallie Ealing almost
all the rest of the evening. The next day he and I were playing over the
course and when we finished she was just starting out from the club in a
car with one of the boys. She called back to Harrison, ‘I dreamed about
you last night!’ and he was terribly silly: he kept calling after her,
‘What was the dream?’ And she kept calling back, ‘I’ll _never_ tell
you!’ Mamma, that’s what she does with them _all_.”
“Tells them she’s dreamed about them?”
“No,” Anne said. “That’s just a sample of her ‘line.’ When she dances
near another girl and her partner, she’ll say to the other girl’s
partner, ‘Got something _queer_ to tell you,’ or ‘I _heard_ something
about you last night,’ or ‘Wait till you _hear_ what I know about
_you_,’ or something like that; and, of course, he’ll get rid of the
girl he’s with as soon as he can and go to find out. She almost never
passes a man at a dance, or on the links, without either calling to him
if he’s not near her, or whispering to him if he is. It’s always some
absolutely silly little mystery she makes up about him—and almost her
whole stock in trade is that she’s heard something about ’em, or thought
something curious about ’em, or dreamed about ’em. It’s always something
about _them_, of course. Then they follow her around to find out, and
she doesn’t tell ’em, so they keep _on_ following her around, and she
gets them so excited about themselves that then they get excited about
_her_—and she makes ’em think she’s thinking about them
mysteriously—and they get so they can’t _see_ anybody but Sallie
Ealing! They don’t know what a cheap bait she’s caught ’em with,
Mamma;—they don’t even guess she’s _used_ bait! That’s why I don’t feel
as if I could ever respect a man again. And the unfairness of it is so
_strange_! The rest of us could use those tricks if we were willing to
be that cheap and that childish; but we can’t even tell the men that we
wouldn’t stoop to do it! We can’t do anything because they’d think we’re
jealous of her. What _can_ we do, Mamma?”
Mrs. Cromwell sighed and shook her head. “I’m afraid a good many
generations of girls have had their Sallie Ealings, dear.”
“You mean there isn’t anything we can do?” Anne asked, and she added,
with a desolate laugh, “I just said that, myself. But _men_ do things
when they feel like this, don’t they, Mamma? Why is it a girl can’t? Why
do I have to sit still and see men I’ve respected and looked up to and
thought so wise and fine—why do I have to sit still and see them
hoodwinked and played upon and carried off their feet by such silly
little barefaced tricks, Mamma? And why don’t they see what it is,
themselves, Mamma? Any girl or woman—the very stupidest—can see it,
Mamma, so why doesn’t the cleverest man? Are men _all_ just _idiots_,
Mamma? Are they?”
This little tumult of hurried and emotional questions pressed upon the
harassed mother for but a single reply. “Yes, dear,” she said. “They
are. It’s a truth we have to find out, and the younger we are when we
find out, the better for us. We have to learn to forgive them for it and
to respect them for the intelligence they show in other ways—but about
the Sallie Ealings and what we used to call ‘women’s wiles,’ we have to
face the fact that men are—well, yes—just idiots!”
“_All_ men, Mamma?”
“I’m afraid so!”
“And there’s nothing to do about it?”
“I don’t quite say that,” Mrs. Cromwell returned thoughtfully. “There’s
one step I shall certainly be inclined to take. I’m certain these Ealing
people would _not_ make desirable members of the club and I——”
“No, no!” Anne cried, in terrified protest. “You mustn’t try to have
them blackballed, Mamma. You couldn’t do a single thing about it that
Harrison would hear of, because he’s proposed them himself, and he’d
insist on knowing where the opposition came from. Don’t you see what
he’d think? It would look that way to everybody else, too. Don’t you
_see_, Mamma?”
Mrs. Cromwell was forced to admit her helplessness to help her daughter
even by this stroke of warfare. “It’s true, I’m afraid, Anne. But what
an outrageous thing it is! We can’t even take measures to protect a good
old family institution like the Green Hills club from people who’ll
spoil it for us—and all because a silly boy was made sillier by a
tricky girl’s telling him she’d dreamed about him!”
“Yes,” Anne said, while new tears sidled down her cheeks;—“he must have
been silly all the time. I didn’t think he was—not until this
happened—but he must have been, since it _could_ happen.” She put out a
hand to her mother’s. “Mamma,” she said, piteously, “why does any one
have to care what a silly person does? If he’s silly and I know it, why
does it matter to me what he does? Why don’t I get over it?”
And with that, the sobbing she had so manfully withheld could be
withheld no longer. Her mother soothed her in a mother’s way, but found
nothing to say that could answer the daughter’s question. They had an
unhappy half-hour before Anne was able to declare that she was ashamed
of herself and apologize for “making such an absurd scene”; but after
that she said she was “all right,” and begged her mother to go to bed.
Mrs. Cromwell complied, and later, far in the night, came softly to
Anne’s door and listened.
Anne’s voice called gently, “Mother?”
The door was unlocked, and Mrs. Cromwell went in. “Dearest, I’ve been
thinking. You and I might take a trip somewhere abroad perhaps. Would
you like to?”
“We can’t. We can’t even do that. Don’t you see if we went now it would
look as if I couldn’t stand it to stay here? We can’t do anything,
Mother!”
Mrs. Cromwell bent over the bed. “Anne, this isn’t serious, dear. It
will pass, and you’ll forget it.”
“No. I think I must have idealized men, Mother. I believe I thought in
my heart that they’re wiser than we are. _Are_ they _all_ such fools,
Mother? That’s what I can’t get over. If you were in my place and Papa
not engaged to you yet, and he saw Sallie Ealing and she tried for
him—oh, Mamma, do you think that even _Papa_——”
Mrs. Cromwell responded with a too impulsive honesty; she gave it as her
opinion that Sallie would have found Mr. Cromwell susceptible. “I’m
afraid so, Anne,” she said. “Perhaps this Ealing girl’s way would be too
crude for him now, at his age, but I shouldn’t like him to be exposed to
her system in the hands of Madame de Staël, for instance. Somewhere in
the world there may be a man who wouldn’t feel any fascination in it,
but if there is he’d be a ‘superman,’ and we aren’t likely to meet him.
You must go to sleep now.”
“I’ll try to, Mother,” the unhappy girl said obediently. “I’ll _try_ not
to think.”
VII
NAPOLEON WAS A LITTLE MAN
ON AN afternoon of June sunshine, a week later, Mrs. Cromwell sat with a
book beside one of the long windows of her drawing-room. The window was
open, and just outside it a grass terrace, bordered by a stone
balustrade, overlooked the lawn that ran down to the shady street. Anne
reclined in a wicker _chaise longue_ upon the terrace, protected by the
balustrade and a row of plants from the observation of the highway. She,
also, had a book; but it lay upon her lap in the relaxed grasp of a
flaccid hand. Her eyes were closed, though she was not asleep; and the
mother’s frequent side glances took anxious and compassionate note of
darkened areas beneath the daughter’s eyelids, of pathetic shapings
about her mouth.
The street was lively with motorists on the way to open country, for it
was Saturday, and the automobiles were signalling constantly; but among
all the signals, so alike, there was one that Anne recognized. Suddenly
she opened her eyes, drew herself up, and looked across the top of the
balustrade at a shining gray car just then approaching. It was a long,
fleet-looking thing, recognizably imported, and impressive in its
intimations of power, yet it selfishly had seats for but two people. One
was not occupied; and in the other reclined a figure appropriate to the
fine car, for, like the car, the figure was long, fleet-looking, and
powerful. The young man was bareheaded; his dark hair shone in the
sunlight, and his hands were gracefully negligent, but competent, upon
the wheel. One of them gave Anne a cordial though somewhat preoccupied
wave of greeting.
She waved in return, but did not smile; then she sank back in her chair
and closed her eyes again. Her mother sent a hard glance down the street
after the disappearing car, looked at Anne, and breathed a deep,
inaudible sigh.
A moment later a straw hat upon a head of short sandy hair appeared
above the balustrade and little Hobart Simms came up the stone steps
that led from the lawn to the terrace. “I hope I’m not disturbing a
nap,” he said, apologetically.
Mrs. Cromwell was sorry to see him. There are times when the intrusions
of the insignificant are harder to bear than those of the important, and
she felt that Anne’s suffering would be the greater for the strain of
talking to this bit of insignificance in particular. However, both
mother and daughter gave the youth a friendly enough greeting; he sat
down in a chair near Anne, and Mrs. Cromwell returned her eyes to her
book.
“It’s such a fine day,” Hobart said, fanning himself with his straw hat.
“I thought maybe after I get my breath you might like to take a walk,
maybe.”
“I believe not,” Anne said, smiling faintly. “How did you lose your
breath, Hobart?”
“Hurrying,” he explained. “I’m working with the receiver that’s in
charge of my father’s business, you know. As soon as I found he wasn’t
coming this afternoon I left. I hurried because I was afraid you’d be
out somewhere. We haven’t any car, you know;—they’re in the receiver’s
hands, too.”
“I’m so sorry, Hobart.”
“Not at all,” he returned, cheerfully. “It’s a good thing. There are
lots of families that ought to learn how to use a sidewalk again. It’s
doing all of our family good. We’d got like too many other people; we’d
got to believing the only place where we could walk was a golf course.
Bankruptcy’s been a great thing for my father—I believe it’ll add ten
years to his life.”
Anne laughed and Mrs. Cromwell was pleased, for although the laugh was
languid, it was genuine. The mother’s glance passed from her daughter to
the caller and lingered with some favour upon his shrewd and cheerful
face. Perhaps it was just as well that he had come, if he could amuse
Anne a little.
“I never heard of any one who took that view before,” the girl said.
“It’s pretty plucky of you, I think.”
“Not at all,” he said. “We’re all of us having a great time. Never had
to do anything we didn’t want to before, and it’s such a novelty it’s
more fun than Christmas. If it hadn’t happened I doubt if I’d ever have
found out that I like to work.”
“But you did work, Hobart.”
“Yes,” he said, dryly. “For my father. This is a pretty good receiver
we’ve got, and he’s showed me the difference between working for my
father and working for other people.” He paused and chuckled. “Best
thing ever happened to me!”
Anne did not hear him. The automobile signal that had caught her
attention a little while before was again audible from the street, and
she had turned to look. The long, gray, foreign car came slowly by,
moving flexibly through a momentary clustering of other machines, and it
seemed to guide itself miraculously, for the driver had no apparent
interest in where it went. His attention was all upon the occupant of
the seat that had been vacant a few minutes before;—upon her he gazed
with such aching solicitude that he could be known for a lover at a
distance all round about him of fifty paces and more. And not only he,
but his companion also seemed enclosed within the spell that comes upon
lovers, shutting out the world from them; for, as he gazed upon her, so
she likewise gazed receptively upon him. But, being a girl, she was in
fact aware of certain manifestations in the world outside the spell,
which he was not, and she knew that she was observed from a Georgian
terrace.
She detached her eyes from Harrison’s long enough to wave her slim hand,
and received in return a beaming smile from Anne, across the balustrade,
and a wave of the hand most cordial. Harrison remained in his trance,
incapable of making or receiving any salutation, and Hobart Simms,
looking after the car as it passed northward, did not see how bleak and
blank Anne looked as she sank back in her chair.
He laughed. “Poor old Harry Crisp!” he said. “He didn’t even see us, so
it’s all up with him. It’s too bad: he might have got something out of
life; but it’s all over now.”
“I don’t follow you, I’m afraid,” Anne said, coldly, in a tired voice.
“No? Well, in the first place, he’s working for his father. That’s bad,
but it can be got over. What’s really fatal, he’s going to marry that
Miss Ealing. I’ve heard it rumoured, and after looking at ’em just now I
see it’s true. That’s something he can’t get over.”
“Can’t he?” Anne’s tired voice was a little tremulous. “You mean he’ll
always be in love with her? I should think that rather desirable if
they’re to marry.”
“Oh, he’ll get over _that_,” Hobart said, briskly. “I mean he’ll never
get over his having married Miss Ealing.”
Anne looked puzzled; but she did not try to make him be more explicit.
Instead, she asked indifferently, “Don’t you call her ‘Sallie,’ Hobart?
I thought all the men called her ‘Sallie’ by this time. She’s been here
several weeks.”
“No, I don’t,” he answered. “I haven’t called her anything, in fact.”
“What? Didn’t she take the trouble to fascinate you, Hobart?”
He laughed. “You’d hardly think she would, but she did—a little. I
don’t suppose you could say she went out of her way to do it, or took
any trouble, exactly; but she did invite me to join, as it were.”
Anne was more interested. Since the passing of Harrison Crisp’s car she
had been leaning back in her long chair, but now she sat upright and
looked frowningly at her caller.
“‘Invited you to join?’” she said. “What do you mean?”
“I mean she invited me to get on the bandwagon,” he explained. “Not
right up on a front seat, of course; but anyhow I was given a ticket to
hang on behind somewhere.”
“I don’t understand you.”
“Probably you don’t,” Hobart said, and he looked thoughtful. “You’re
always so above the crowd, Anne, probably you wouldn’t understand Miss
Ealing’s invitations. You see I’m in a pretty good position to see
things that you wouldn’t, so to speak. Of course, strangers never pay
any attention to the little shrimps in a crowd, and when Miss Ealing did
pay me a slight attention I wasn’t so grateful as I should have been;—I
thought it was pretty funny.”
“‘Funny’!” Anne exclaimed. “Why?”
“Because it only showed her up, you see. Of course, it didn’t mean she
had any interest in me; it only meant she had a use for me. She already
had most of the rest of ’em excited about her; but she’s a real
collector and she wanted the _whole_ collection—even me! You see, the
girl that makes ’em _all_ think she’s thinking about them isn’t thinking
about _any_ of ’em, of course. She’s only thinking about herself, like
any other selfish little brute.”
“Hobart!”
“Of course, I don’t mean to say she gave me a pressing invitation to
join,” he explained, laughing cheerfully at himself. “Naturally, that
couldn’t be expected. The big, hand-painted, gilt-edged card was for
Harrison Crisp, of course; and then there were a number of handsomely
engraved ones for tall eligibles. She just slipped me a little one
printed on soft paper—a sort of handbill, you know, when she was
delivering ’em around to the residue.”
Anne’s languor had vanished now. She stared at him incredulously.
“Hobart Simms,” she cried, “what do you mean by ‘handbills’?”
“It’s simple enough,” he began. “That is, it is to me. Taller men with
fathers that aren’t in the hands of a receiver wouldn’t have much of a
chance to understand it, I imagine. She’s made a real stir in our little
Green Hills midst with her handbills and——”
Anne interrupted sharply: “I asked you what you meant by her
‘handbills.’”
“Yes; I’m trying to tell you, but it’s so ridiculous I’m afraid you
won’t be able to see what I mean. It’s like this: she’ll be passing you,
for instance, dancing with some other man, or hanging to his arm, and
she’ll whisper to you quickly over his shoulder, ‘I _heard_ something
about you,’ or, ‘I’ve found _out_ something about you,’ or, maybe,
‘Can’t you even _look_ at me?’ Something like that, you know,—and
you’re supposed to get excited and follow up the mystery. You’re
supposed to wonder just how much she _is_ thinking about you, you see.
That’s what I mean by her handbills, because if you _don’t_ get excited,
but look around a little, you’ll notice she’s passing ’em pretty freely.
That’s why I thought it was funny when she even gave me one!”
“Hobart!” Anne cried, and her voice was free and loud, “Hobart Simms!”
“Yes?” he said, inquiringly, not comprehending the vehemence of her
exclamation.
Anne did not respond at once. Instead, she sat staring at him, and her
mother marked how a small glow of red came into the daughter’s cheek.
Then Mrs. Cromwell also stared at little Hobart Simms; and for the first
time noticed what a good profile he had and what a well-shaped head.
Slowly and wonderingly the daughter’s eyes turned to meet the mother’s,
and each caught the marvel of the other’s thought: that it was this
unconsidered little Hobart Simms who fitted Mrs. Cromwell’s definition
of a “superman.”
“Why, yes,” Anne said, slowly. “If you really care to go for a walk, I’d
like to go with you, Hobart.”
Mrs. Cromwell watched them as they went forth, outwardly the most
ill-assorted couple in her sight that day; for Hobart was a full “head”
the shorter. They talked amiably together as they went, however, and
Mrs. Cromwell’s heart was lightened by the sound of Anne’s laughter,
which came back to her even when the two had gone but a little distance.
The mother’s heart might have known less relief, that afternoon, had she
suspected this walk to be the beginning of “anything serious.” And yet,
had she been a good soothsayer and seeress she might well have been
pleased; for not many years were to pass before Hobart Simms’s
electrified fellow citizens were to remind one another frequently that
Napoleon was a little man, too.
VIII
MRS. DODGE’S ONLY DAUGHTER
THAT capable and unsentimental matron, Mrs. Dodge, was engaged in the
composition of an essay for the Woman’s Saturday Club (founded 1882) and
the subject that had been assigned to her was “Spiritual Life and the
New Generation.” Her work upon it moved slowly because the flow of her
philosophical thinking met constant interference, due to an anxiety of
her own connected with the New Generation, though emphatically not (in
her opinion) with its Spiritual Life. Anxiety always makes philosophy
difficult; but she sat resolutely at her desk whenever her apprehensions
and her general household duties permitted; and she was thus engaged
upon a springtime morning a week before her “paper” was to be presented
for the club’s consideration.
She wrote quotations from Ruskin, Whitman, Carlyle, and Schopenhauer,
muttering pleasantly to herself that the essay was “beginning to sound
right well”; but, unfortunately for literature, the window beside her
desk looked down upon the street. Nothing in the mild activities of “the
finest suburb’s finest residential boulevard” should have stopped an
essay, and yet a most commonplace appearance there stopped Mrs. Dodge’s.
Her glance, having wandered to the window, became fixed in a widely
staring incredulity; then rapidly narrowed into most poignant distaste.
She dropped her pen, and from her parted lips there came an outcry
eloquent of horror.
Yet what she saw was only a snub-nosed boy shambling up the brick path
to her front door, walking awkwardly, and obviously in a state of
embarrassment.
At the same moment Mrs. Dodge’s only daughter, Lily, aged eighteen,
standing at a window of the drawing-room downstairs, looked forth upon
precisely the same scene; but discovered no boy at all upon the brick
path. Where her mother saw a snub-nosed boy shambling, Lily beheld a
knight of Arthur’s court, bright as the sun and of such grace that he
came toward the house like a bird gliding in a suave curve before it
lights. Merlin wafted him; she had no consciousness that feet carried
him; no consciousness that he wore feet at all. She knew only that this
divine bird of hers was coming nearer and nearer to her, while her heart
melted within her.
Then, investing him with proper human feet for the purpose of her
desire, she wanted to throw herself down before the door, so that he
would step upon her as he entered. But, instead, she ran to admit him,
and, gasping, took him by the hand, led him into the drawing-room,
moaned, and cast herself upon his bosom, weeping.
“They want to separate us!” she sobbed. “Forever! But you have come to
me!”
Upstairs, her mother set a paperweight upon the manuscript of “Spiritual
Life and the New Generation,” realizing at once that emotional conflict
was to occupy her for the next hour or so, if not longer. She descended
fiercely to the drawing-room, where the caller, rosy as fire, removed
his arm from Lily’s waist, and would have stepped away from her. But
Lily moaned, “No!” and clung to him.
“Stand away from my daughter!” Mrs. Dodge said. “Explain what you mean
by daring to come here.”
“I—I want to,” he stammered. “That’s just what I—it’s what I came for.
I—I want to——”
But Mrs. Dodge interrupted him. “Did you understand me? I said, ‘Stand
away from my daughter!’”
“I would,” he said, deferentially. “I would, but—but——”
He was unable to explain in words a difficulty that was too evident
without them: the clinging Lily resisted his effort to detach himself,
and it was clear that in order to obey her mother’s command he would
need assistance. This, however, was immediately forthcoming.
“Lily!” Mrs. Dodge rushed upon her; but Lily clung only the more
tragically.
“No, no!” she moaned. “This is my place and it is my right!”
Mrs. Dodge set really violent hands upon her, and unmistakably there
hovered a possibility, in the imminent future, that Lily would not only
be removed from her lover but would also get a shaking. Rather than be
seen under such undignified circumstances, she succumbed upon a sofa,
weeping there. “You _see_,” she wailed;—“you _see_ how they treat me!”
“Now, before you march out of here,” her mother said to the intruder,
“you explain how you dared to come.”
“Well, that’s what I came for,” he responded. “I wanted to explain.”
“You make it perfectly clear in one stroke,” Mrs. Dodge said. “You came
here to explain why you came here!”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Brilliant!” she cried. “But I hadn’t looked for better. I think you may
trouble yourself to take your instant departure, Mr. Oswald Osborne!”
As she pronounced this name, which she did with oppressive distinctness,
the young man winced as at the twinge of an old wound reopened. “I don’t
think that’s fair,” he said, plaintively.
“It isn’t ‘fair’ for me to choose whom I care to see in my own house?”
Mrs. Dodge inquired with perfect hypocrisy, for she knew what he meant.
“I’m talking about ‘Oswald’,” he explained. “I can’t help my name, and I
don’t think it’s fair to taunt me with it. My parents did have me
christened ‘Oswald,’ I admit; but they were sorry when I got older and
they saw how I felt about it and what it would do to me. You know as
well as I do, Mrs. Dodge, I’ve struggled pretty long to get people to
quit calling me ‘Oswald,’ and almost everybody calls me Crabbe now. It
isn’t a very good middle name, but anyhow it’s better than——”
“Good heavens!” Mrs. Dodge interrupted. “Are you going to stand here all
morning talking about your _name_? I’m afraid you overlook the
circumstance that you’ve been requested to leave my house.”
“I know it,” he said, apologetically. “But it really isn’t fair to call
me ‘Oswald’ any more, when practically nobody else does, and that’s what
threw me off. What I came here for, I had to see Lily.”
“_I_ had to see _you_!” Lily cried from the sofa. “If I hadn’t, I should
have died!” And at a scornful look from her mother, she passionately
insisted upon the accuracy of this view. “Oh, yes, I should, Mamma! You
don’t _know_ what you and Papa have been putting me through! You don’t
_know_ what it does to me! You don’t know what it’s making me suffer!
You don’t understand!”
“I understand too much, unfortunately,” the mother retorted. “I
understand that you’ve got yourself into such a hysterical state over a
young man who couldn’t possibly buy a pair of shoes for you—or for
himself!—and that your father and I daren’t let you step out of the
house alone for fear you’ll try to run away with him again.”
Young Mr. Osborne protested with some heat. “Why, I’m not barefooted,
Mrs. Dodge!” he said. “What I came here to say this morning is right on
the point you’re discussing. You and Mr. Dodge haven’t once been fair to
me during the whole trouble we’ve had about this matter, and when you
say I couldn’t even give Lily a pair of shoes——”
“Could you?” Mrs. Dodge inquired, breathing deeply. “Am I misinformed by
my husband? I seem to recall he told me that when you and Lily were
eloping last week—in a borrowed car—he overtook you at a refilling
station, where she was offering her watch and rings for gasoline.”
“I didn’t ask her to,” Crabbe Osborne said, flushing deeper. “I admit
she offered ’em, but I was arguing about it with her when Mr. Dodge got
there. Anyhow, the gas man wouldn’t take ’em.”
“Oh, he should have!” Lily moaned. “Then we wouldn’t have all this to go
through. We’d have been out of it all. We’d have been together for
always!”
“Would you?” her mother asked, with a hard laugh. “Just how would you
have obtained a marriage license, since there weren’t enough funds for
gasoline?”
“I had that all thought out,” the young man replied. “We were going to
stop and get married at Saline. I’ve got a cousin living in Saline, and
I could have borrowed as much as we needed from him. He’d have trusted
me, because he knows I’d pay him back.”
“And would you?” Mrs. Dodge inquired.
This brought a protest from both of the afflicted lovers. Young Mr.
Osborne said, “Oh, look here, Mrs. Dodge,” and swallowed, but Lily made
a real outcry. She sprang up, facing her mother angrily.
“Shame!” she cried. “You taunt him with his poverty! Has he ever
pretended for one moment to be a rich man? If he had, there might be
some point to your taunts, but you know he hasn’t. From the very first I
defy you to say he hasn’t been absolutely frank about it! I do, Mamma! I
defy you to say so!”
“Sit down,” said her mother.
“‘Sit down?’ I won’t, Mamma; I won’t sit down! Indeed, I won’t, and you
haven’t any right to make me! You and Papa order me to do this; you
order me to do that; you order me to do everything; but the time’s past
when I obeyed you like a Myrmidon. I don’t trust your wisdom any more,
Mamma; nor Papa’s, either—not since you’ve tried to keep me an absolute
prisoner and won’t let Crabbe even step inside the yard!”
“‘Inside the yard?’” Mrs. Dodge said. “It strikes me he’s rather farther
than that.” She turned upon the perplexed young man. “How many times do
you usually have to be requested to leave a house?”
“Why, I expect to go,” he responded, feebly. “I do expect to go, Mrs.
Dodge. I think I have a right to explain, though, and if you’d just
listen a minute——”
“Very well. I’ll give you a minute.”
“It’s like this,” he said. “I know you and Mr. Dodge object to me as—as
a son-in-law——”
“We do, indeed!”
“Well, you see,” he went on, “that’s just the injustice of it. I’m
twenty-two-and-a-half years old, and while I admit I’ve had considerable
trouble in some of the positions I’ve filled in a business way, why, you
can’t expect hard luck to keep on being against me forever. It’s bound
to turn, Mrs. Dodge. Luck doesn’t always run just one way, not by any
means. My own father said last night he wouldn’t be surprised if I’d get
hold of something pretty soon that would interest me so much I’d do
mighty well at it. Well, he’s been prejudiced against me a good long
while now, and I thought if he had faith in me to say as much as that,
it was certainly time for other people to begin to show a little faith
in me, too. What I came here for this morning, Mrs. Dodge, was to tell
Lily about my father saying that to me. I thought she ought to know
about it. You see, Father speaking that way started me to thinking, and
I’ve realized with the positions I’ve held so far I couldn’t get myself
interested in the work. That’s just exactly what’s been the main
difficulty. So I wanted to tell Lily I’ve made up my mind I’m going to
look for a position where the work _will_ interest me. I thought if she
knew I’d taken this stand on the question——”
“Excuse me,” Mrs. Dodge interrupted, “I believe the minute I agreed to
listen is up. I must remind you of my request to leave this house.”
“Well—” he said, uncertainly, “if you put it like that——”
“I do, if you please.”
“Well——” he said, again, and took a step toward the door, but was
detained by Lily, who made an impassioned effort to reach him in spite
of the fact that her large and solid mother instantly placed herself
between them.
“You sha’n’t go!” Lily cried. “If you do, I’ll go with you. I’ll die if
you leave me! I will, Mamma!”
“Stop that!” Mrs. Dodge commanded, and again found herself in the
predicament of a lady who is compelled to use force. Lily struggled,
and, unable to pass, looked agony upon her lover, wept at him over her
mother’s shoulder, and also extended an imploring arm and hand toward
him above this same impediment.
“You mustn’t leave me!” she begged, hoarsely. “I can’t _stand_ it! Take
me _away_ with you!” And to this she added a word that her mother found
incredible, even though Mrs. Dodge had been through some amazing scenes
lately, and thought the utmost of Lily’s extravagance already within her
experience. Yet the mother might have been wiser here, might have
understood that for a girl of Lily’s emotional disposition, and in
Lily’s condition of tragic love, no limits whatever may be set.
To Lily herself the word she used was not extravagant at all; it was
merely her definition of Crabbe Osborne. As he went toward the door Lily
saw a brightness moving with him, an effulgence that would depart with
him and leave but darkness when he had passed the threshold. No doubt
the true being of young Crabbe was neither as Mrs. Dodge conceived it
nor as Lily saw it;—no earthly intellect could have defined just what
he was: nor, for that matter, can any earthly intellect say what
anything is, since all of our descriptive words express nothing more
than how the things appear to ourselves; and our descriptions,
therefore, are all but bits of autobiography. Thus, Lily’s word really
expressed not Crabbe but her own condition, and that was what shocked
her mother. Yet Lily sincerely believed that the word described Crabbe;
and, in her opinion, since her lover’s effulgence was divine, this word
was natural, moderate, and peculiarly accurate.
“Take me away with you,” she wailed; and then, in a voice beset with
tears, she hoarsely called him, “Angel”!
“Oh, murder!” cried Mrs. Dodge. And she was inspired to turn upon Crabbe
Osborne a look that expressed in full her critical thought of Lily’s
term for him.
Unquestionably he found himself in difficulties. Called “angel” in the
presence of a third party, he may have been hampered by some sense of
personal inadequacy. He produced a few sounds in his throat, but nothing
in the way of appropriate response; and under the circumstances the
expression of Mrs. Dodge was not long to be endured by any merely human
being.
“I guess maybe—maybe I better be stepping along,” he murmured, and
acted upon the supposition that his guess was a correct one.
Lily cried, “No! Don’t _leave_ me!” And piteously she used her strange
word for him again; but her mother held her fast until after the closing
of the front door was heard. “Oh, Heaven!” Lily wailed, “won’t you even
let me go and watch him till he’s out of sight? Won’t you even let me
_look_ at him?”
“No, I won’t!”
Upon this the daughter slid downward from the mother’s grasp and cast
herself upon the floor. “He’s gone!” she sobbed. “Oh, he’s gone! He’s
gone, and you drove him out! You drove him! You did! You drove him!”
“Get up from there,” Mrs. Dodge said, fiercely. “Be quiet! Do you want
the servants to hear you?”
“What do _I_ care who hears me? You drove him! You drove him, Mamma! You
did! You _drove_ him!”
IX
MRS. DODGE’S HUSBAND
“SPIRITUAL Life and the New Generation” lay meekly upon Mrs. Dodge’s
desk for all the rest of that day, and nothing was added to it. Late in
the afternoon Lily consented to take a little beef tea and toast in her
room; but she was still uttering intermittent gurgles, like sobs too
exhausted for a fuller expression, when her mother brought her tray to
her—or perhaps Lily merely renewed the utterance of these sounds at
sight of her mother—and all in all the latter had what she called “a
day indeed of it!”
So she told Mr. Dodge upon his arrival from his office that evening.
“_Haven’t_ I, though!” she added, and gave him so vivid an account that,
although he was tired, he got up from his easy chair and paced the
floor.
“It comes back to the same old, everlasting question,” he said, when she
had concluded. “What does she _see_ in him? What on earth makes her act
like that over this moron? There’s the question I don’t believe anybody
can answer. She’s always been a fanciful, imaginative girl, but until
this thing came over her she appeared to be fairly close to normal. Of
course, I supposed she’d fall in love some day, but I thought she’d have
a few remnants of reason left when she did. I’ve heard of girls that
acted like this, but not many; and I never dreamed ours would be one of
that sort. I’d like to know what other parents have done who’ve had
daughters get into this state over some absolutely worthless cub like
Crabbe Osborne.”
“I don’t know,” Mrs. Dodge said, helplessly. “I’d ask ’em if I did. I’m
sure I’m at my wits’ end about it.”
“We both are. I admit I haven’t the faintest idea how to do anything
more intelligent than we’ve been doing—and yet I see where it’s going
to end.”
“Where, Roger? Where do you think it’s going to end?”
“They’ve tried twice now,” he said, gloomily. “Last time, if the idiot
had taken the precaution to see that there was plenty of gas in his
borrowed car before they started, they’d have been married. Some day
before long he’ll borrow _enough_ gas, and then she’s going to slip out
and meet him again, and they will.”
“No, no!” his wife protested. “I can’t bear to hear you say so.”