"No," he had said; "but the fact that you do ends it automatically."
She had some difficulty in extricating herself from her own ultimatum.
Naturally, her respect for him increased.
"I'm almost glad you are not here, Nan," she wrote. "He is so honest he
could not help loving your honesty. I feel as if together, somehow, you
would both find me out."
She inclosed a little photograph of him to show Nan what a
splendid-looking person he was; but it was not his beauty she dwelt
upon, but his straight, keen eyes and the fine firmness of his
mouth--not the determination of the self-conscious bulldog, which so
many people assume in a photograph, but just a nice steely fixity
of purpose. Yes, Nan, far away in China, with plenty of leisure for
reflection, found that for the first time she envied her friend.
A little later a real honest quarrel was reported. Letitia, habitually
unpunctual, was three-quarters of an hour late for an appointment, and
he simply had not waited for her. Under her anger Nan could catch her
admiration for the first man who had dared not to wait.
"I explained to him that I could not help it, and all he said was: 'You
could have helped it if I had been a train.' Of course, everything is
over--he does not know how to behave."
No letter at all came in the next mail, and the announcement of her
engagement in the one following:
"Fortunately--and wonderfully--mamma likes him, for, as you know, it
would have been awfully hard to marry a man if she hated him."
It would indeed; or, rather, Nan thought, it would have been difficult
for Letitia to fall in love with a man Mrs. Lewis did not approve of,
for she had a wonderful gift of phrase--just, but cruel--by which
budding sentiments could be cut off as by a knife. Nan had seen her
more than once prune away a growing romance from Letitia's life with
a deft, hideously descriptive sentence. Each time Nan had been in
complete sympathy with her.
She usually did agree with Mrs. Lewis, who was the most brilliant woman
she had ever known--and almost the most alarming. She saw life not only
steadily and whole, and in the darkest colors, but she reported most
frankly on what she saw. Frauds, or even people mildly artificial,
dreaded Mrs. Lewis as they did the plague. Letitia herself would have
dreaded her if she had not been her daughter. It said a great deal for
Roger Rossiter's integrity that his future mother-in-law liked him. It
also said something for his financial situation. Mrs. Lewis had always
intended her child to marry someone with money.
"It is not exactly that I'm mercenary," she said. "I don't want Letitia
to be specially magnificent; but I want her to have everything else,
and money too. Why not?"
So when Nan heard the marriage had actually taken place, she felt
pretty sure Roger must have enough to support Letty comfortably. It
was really astonishing, she thought, how much she knew about him, this
man she had never seen, more than she knew about lots of people she
saw constantly. And so, as she rang the bell of his house, she had
something of the same excitement that she might have had on seeing the
curtain rise on a play about which she had heard endless discussion. At
last she was going to be able to judge it for herself.
A Swedish maidservant came to the door--a nice-looking woman with an
exaggerated opinion of her own knowledge of English. She almost refused
Nan admittance--just to be on the safe side; but Letitia's cheerful
shout intervened.
"Is that you at last, Nan?"
The two girls were quickly clasped in each other's arms--not so quickly
that Nan did not see that Letitia was lovelier than ever--happier--more
alive--more golden.
It was about noon when Nan arrived. She was to stay not only for
luncheon but for dinner, so as to see Roger, who never got home until
five o'clock, and possibly later today, for he had been in Albany
the night before and might find extra things waiting for him at the
office when he returned to it. Both mothers were motoring from town
for lunch--in Mrs. Rossiter's car--so that the only time the friends
could count on was now, immediately, this hour and a half. Letitia
was awfully sorry, but she didn't see how she could have arranged it
differently.
Nan smiled at that well-remembered phrase of her friend's. As a matter
of fact, she was not sorry the mothers were coming. She was curious to
see Roger's mother, who, for a mother with an only son, had behaved
with the most astonishing cordiality about the marriage. A well-to-do
widow, she had given Roger a good part of her income. Letty's letters
had referred to her as an angel; and Nan was always eager to see
Mrs. Lewis at any time. Only she and Letty must waste no time, but
set immediately about a process known to them as catching up. This
meant that they each asked questions, listening to the answers only
so long as they appeared to contain new matter, and then ruthlessly
interrupting with a new question. Thus:
"Have you seen Bee since she--"
"Oh, I meant to tell you--she never did."
"Isn't that just like her? She always reminds me of--"
"Yes, you wrote me--Roger simply loved it. You knew that Hubert--"
"Yes, he cabled me. I thought it was you he--"
"So did I--so did he, for that matter--only mamma once said of him--"
"Oh, my dear, that heavenly thing about the scrubbing brush! Isn't she
priceless--your mother? And she really likes Roger?"
"Crazy about him--thinks him too good for me."
And so they came to talk about the really important subject--Letty's
marriage--Roger's wisdom and kindness and generosity. It amused and
delighted Nan to hear her friend talking of men from the point of view
of a person who owned one. Mrs. Lewis, who had long ago been obliged
to part from an impossible husband, had always been a little more
aloof from men, a little more contemptuous of them than of women; and
Letitia, although her life was occupied with nothing else, had regarded
them as an exciting, possibly hostile and certainly alien tribe. Now
it was wonderful to hear her identify herself with a man's point of
view-- "We think--" "We feel--"
Not for a long time did the old remote tone creep in. They were
speaking of men in general, and Letitia said suddenly:
"Tell me something, Nan--you have brothers--do you think the cleverest
of them are a little silly about women?"
Nan's heart gave a leap. Letitia was looking intent.
"Running after women, you mean?"
"Oh, no!" Letty was quite shocked at the suggestion. "No, I mean
believing everything they say. Roger repeats the most fatuous things
women say to him, as if they had any importance."
Letitia twisted her eyebrows in distress only half comic.
Nan hesitated; she knew just the sort of thing Letitia must have in
mind.
"Well," she said, "I think men often seem rather naïve--particularly
scientific men."
"Yes," Letty agreed quickly, "and of course Roger has always been so
busy. He has never gone about much; but still, he'll say driving home,
'Did you ever think, Letty, that I was a specially dominating sort of
person? Mrs.'--somebody or other whom he sat next to--'said I was the
kind of man who if I couldn't dominate a woman might kill her.' That
old stuff, Nan, that we've all used and discarded. Or he'll look in the
glass and say, 'Honestly, I can't see that my eyes--'It makes me feel
ashamed, Nan."
Oh, dear, Nan thought, she could have made Letty understand, if she
had had brothers, that these were a man's moments of confidence,
attaching and friendly, like the talk she and Letty were having at that
moment. It wasn't fair to judge a man by such moments any more than to
judge girls by silly giggling confidences to one another. Yes, that was
it--men let down the bars of their egotism to the woman they loved, and
maintained a certain reserve with their men friends, while women, just
the other way--
"Oh, mercy, Nan, you're so just!" Letitia broke out. "If you were in
love with a man, you'd want him to appear well all the time."
There was a ring at the bell and the sound of a motor panting at the
door. The two mothers had arrived, and the subject of man's gullibility
had to be dropped, as the two friends hurried downstairs.