Simeon was gone--gone with his clothes packed in the sole leather
trunk that his father had used before him, but with an equipment for
botanizing as modern and extended as his personal arrangements were
meager.
The house was rented to Mrs. Barnes, the mother of the too ardent
champion of the football field--but as her son was too suffering to be
moved for several weeks to come, Deena had leisure to get the house in
order and habituate herself to the idea of being homeless.
Simeon behaved liberally in money matters; that is, he arranged that
the rent should be paid to his wife, and he gave her a power of
attorney which was to make her free of his bank account should
anything delay his return beyond her resources. At the same time the
injunctions against spending were so solemn that she understood she
was to regard her control of his money as a mere formality--a
peradventure--made as one makes his will, anticipating the unlikely.
The faculty made no objection to Simeon's going; indeed, his
researches were thought likely to redound to the high scientific
reputation that Harmouth particularly cherished, and Stephen French
had taken care to foster this impression.
The day he left was sharp for October; a wood fire crackled on the
hearth in the dining room, and Deena, pale and calm, sat behind the
breakfast service and made his coffee for the last time in many
months. He ate and drank, and filled in the moments with the Harmouth
_Morning Herald_, and his wife's natural courtesy forbade her
interrupting him. Without a word he stretched his arm across the table
with his cup to have it refilled, and Deena, feeling her
insignificance as compared with the morning news, still dared not
speak. When finally he pushed back his chair, the little carryall was
at the door waiting to take him and his luggage to the train.
"You will write from New York, Simeon, and again by the pilot," she
urged, following him into the hall. "And where is your first
port--Rio? Then from Rio, and as often as you can."
He was stuffing the pockets of his overcoat with papers and pamphlets,
but he nodded assent.
She came a step nearer and laid her hand on his arm.
"Be sure _I_ shall try to do as you would wish," she half whispered,
and there were tears in her eyes.
"To be sure, to be sure," said Simeon, with a kind of embarrassment.
"Oh, yes, _I_ shall write frequently--if not to you, to French, who
will keep you informed. Don't forget to make your weekly contribution
to your mother's housekeeping. _I_ cannot allow you to be a burden on
them during my absence; and consult Stephen whenever you are in doubt.
Good-by, Deena--I am sorry to leave you."
He puckered his lips into the hard wrinkles that made his kisses so
discreet, and gave her a parting embrace. She stood at the open door
watching the distribution of his luggage, which he superintended with
anxious care, and then he stepped into the one free seat reserved for
him, and the driver squeezed himself between a trunk and roll of rugs,
and they were off.
Simeon waved his hand, and even leaned far out from the carriage
window and smiled pleasantly, and Deena wiped her eyes, and began the
awful work of making an old house, bristling with the characteristic
accumulations of several generations, impersonal enough to rent. She
had plenty to do to keep her loneliness in abeyance, but in the back
of her consciousness there was a feeling that she had no abiding
place. Her family had urged her to marry Simeon, and he was now
throwing her back upon her family, and her dignity was hurt.
At sunset Stephen came to see how she was getting on, and they had a
cup of tea beside the dining-room fire, and talked about the voyage
and the ports Simeon would touch at; and Stephen, who had the power of
visualizing the descriptions he met with in his reading, made her see
his word-painted pictures so clearly that she exclaimed:
"When were you in South America, Mr. French?" and he laughed and
declared himself a fraud.
They talked on till the firelight alone challenged the darkness, and
then French remembered he was dining out, and left her with an
imagination aglow with all the wonders Simeon was to see. Lest she
should be lonely, he undid a roll of papers, and took out several new
magazines which he said would keep her amused till bedtime, and
somehow he put new courage into her heart.
Presently she went into the study and lit the Welsbach over the table,
and curled herself up in Simeon's great chair to enjoy her
periodicals, and then her eye fell upon a parcel of proof, directed
but not sent, and she read the address, weighed and stamped the
package, and rang the bell for the servant to post it. As she took up
her magazine once more, she noticed on the outside cover the same name
of street and building as on Simeon's direction, and she wondered
whether the same publishers lent themselves to fact and fancy.
Her servant brought her something to eat on a tray--women left to
themselves always find economy in discomfort--and she nibbled her
chicken and read her stories till she felt surfeited with both, and
fell to pondering on what made a story effective. Her eye lit upon a
short poem at the end of a page; it seemed to her poor to
banality--did it please the public or the editor? Her own verses were
a thousand times better.
She sat up suddenly with a heightened color and shining eyes, and
laughed out loud. She had an inspiration. She, too, would become a
contributor to that great publishing output; she would try her luck at
making her brains pay her bills. The name "Mrs. Simeon Ponsonby" would
carry weight with the magazine she selected, but, while disclosing her
identity to the editor, she determined to choose a pen name, fearing
her husband's disapproval.
From childhood Deena had loved to express herself in rhyme, and of
late years she had found her rhyming--so she modestly called it--a
safety valve to a whole set of repressed feelings which she was too
simple to recognize as starved affections, and which she thought was
nature calling to her from without. It was nature, but calling from
within, thrilling her with the beauty of things sensuous and driving
her for sympathy to pen and ink.
Tossing down her book, she ran to her own room, unlocked a drawer,
took out an old portfolio and returned to the study. There were,
perhaps, twenty poems she had thought worth preserving, and her eye
traveled over page after page as she weighed the merits and defects of
each before making her choice. A sensitive ear had given her admirable
imitative powers in versification, and her father, before dissipation
had dulled his intellect, had been a man of rare cultivation and
literary taste. Deena, among all his children, was the only one whose
education he had personally superintended, and she brought to her
passion for poetry some critical acumen.
She finally selected a song of the Gloucester fishermen she had
written two years before--a song of toil and death--but with a refrain
that effaced the terror with the dance of summer seas. She wrote a
formal note to the editor, saying the price was fifteen dollars, that
if accepted the signature was to be Gerald Shelton, and the check to
be made to her, and she signed her own name. Simeon should know as
soon as he came home, but she thought he could have no objection to
Geraldine Ponsonby accepting a check for the supposititious Gerald
Shelton.
Before all this was accomplished, her servant had gone to bed and
Deena, afraid to be left alone downstairs in a house so prone to
spooky noises, followed her example, but alas! not to sleep. She
tossed on her bed, sacred for many years to the ponderous weight of
old Mrs. Ponsonby, till suddenly all she had suffered from the maxims
and example of her mother-in-law took form, and she wove a story half
humorous, half pathetic, that she longed to commit to paper; but her
delicacy forbade. She was even ashamed to have found a passing
amusement at the expense of Simeon's mother, and she tried to make her
mind a blank and go to sleep. Toward morning she must have lost
consciousness, for she dreamed--or thought she dreamed--that old Mrs.
Ponsonby sat in her hard wooden rocking-chair by the window--the chair
with the patchwork cushion fastened by three tape bows to the ribs of
its back; the chair Simeon had often told her was "mother's favorite."
The old lady rocked slowly, and her large head and heavy figure were
silhouetted against the transparent window shade. A sound of wheels
came from the street, and she raised the shade and looked out, leaning
back, in order to follow the disappearing object till it was out of
range, and then she buried her face in her hands and sobbed the low,
hopeless sobs of old-age.
Deena found herself sitting up in bed, the early daylight making "the
casement slowly grow a glimmering square." The impression of her dream
was so vivid that the depression weighed upon her like something
physical. It was impossible to sleep, and at seven o'clock she got up
to dress, having heard the servant go downstairs. On her way to her
bath she passed the rocking-chair, and lying directly in her path was
a little card, yellow with age. Deena picked it up and read: "From
Mother to Simeon." The coincidence worked so on her imagination that
she sank into the nearest chair trembling from head to foot, and then
she reflected that she must have pulled the card out of the table
drawer when she went to fetch the portfolio the night before, and she
called herself a superstitious _silly_, and made her bath a little
colder than usual, as a tonic to her nerves. Cold water and hot food
work wonders, and after breakfast young Mrs. Ponsonby forgot she had
ever had a predecessor.
Her family paid her flying visits during the day, with a freedom
unknown in Simeon's reign, and she worked hard at her preparations for
renting, but in the evening, when the house was quiet, she settled
herself at the study table and made her first attempt at story
writing, this time steering clear of the personal note that had
brought such swift reprisal the night before. The occupation was
absorbing; she neither desired nor missed companionship. She was not
the first person to find life's stage amply filled by the puppets of
her own imagination.
At the end of the week two things had happened. _The Illuminator_ had
accepted her poem, and her story was finished. She determined to
submit it to Stephen, and yet when he looked in at five o'clock, she
was ashamed to ask him; what she had thought so well of the night
before, in the excitement of work, suddenly seemed to her beneath
contempt.
He lingered later than usual, for he mistook her preoccupation for
unhappiness, and hated to leave her alone.
"When do you move to your mother's?" he asked, for he thought anything
better than her present desolation; the genteel poverty brought about
by Mr. Shelton's habits, the worldliness of Mrs. Shelton, and the
demands upon time and temper made by the younger brothers and sisters,
were only the old conditions under which she had grown up.
"Next week," she said, sadly. "I shall be sorry to leave here."
"You are not lonely, then, poor little lady?" he said, kindly, while
he searched her face to see whether she told the whole truth.
His eyes were so merry, his smile so encouraging, that Deena blurted
out her request.
"I haven't felt lonely," she said, "because I have been writing a
foolish story, and my characters have been my companions. I am sure it
is no good, and yet my head is a little turned at having expressed
myself on paper. Like Dr. Johnson's simile of the dog walking on its
hind legs, the wonder isn't to find it ill done, but done at all. I am
trying to screw my courage to the point of asking you----"
"To be sure I will," he interrupted, eagerly, "and what is a great
deal stronger proof of friendship, I'll tell you what I think, even if
my opinion is nihilistic."
He followed her into the study, and she laid her manuscript on the
table and left him without a word.
The story was the usual magazine length, about five thousand words,
and Deena's handwriting was as clear and direct as her character. At
the end of half an hour she heard his voice calling her name, and she
joined him.
"It is very creditable," he said. "It fairly glows with vitality.
Without minute description, you have conveyed your story in pictures
which lodge in the imagination; but in construction it is poor--your
presentment of the plot is amateurish, and you have missed making your
points tell by too uniform a value to each."
"I understand you," said Deena, looking puzzled, "and yet, somehow,
fail to apply what you say to what I have written."
He drew a chair for her beside his own, and began making a rapid
synopsis of her story, to which he applied his criticism, showing her
what should be accentuated, what only hinted, what descriptions were
valuable, what clogged the narrative. She was discouraged but
grateful.
"You advise me to destroy it?" she asked.
"I advise you to rewrite it," he answered. Then, after a pause, he
asked: "Why do you want to write?"
"For money," she answered.
"But Simeon told me," French remonstrated, "that he had left you the
rent of this house as well as part of his salary, and a power of
attorney that makes you free of all he possesses. Why add this kind of
labor to a life that is sober enough already? Amuse yourself; look the
way you did that day at Wolfshead; be young!"
"Simeon is very generous," she said, loyally, silent as to the
restrictions put upon his provisions for her maintenance, as well as
the fact that his salary only covered the letter of credit he took
with him for such expenses as he might incur outside the expedition.
"In spite of his kindness, can't you understand that I am proud to be
a worker? Have you lived so long in the companionship of New England
women without appreciating their reserves of energy? I have to make
use of mine!"
"Then use it in having 'a good time.' I conjure you, in the name, as
well as the language, of young America."
Deena shook her head, and French stood hesitating near the door,
wondering what he could do to reawaken the spirit of enjoyment that
had danced in her eyes the day at Wolfshead.
"Will you dine with me to-morrow if I can get Mrs. McLean to chaperon
us?" he asked.
The phrase "chaperon us" was pleasant to him; it implied they had a
common interest in being together, and her companionship meant much to
him. He smiled persuasively--waiting, hat in hand, for her answer.
Deena felt an almost irresistible desire to say yes--to follow the
suggestions of this overmastering delightful companion who seemed to
make her happiness his care, but she managed to refuse.
"Thank you very much," she murmured, "it is quite impossible."
It was not at all impossible, as Stephen knew, and he turned away with
a short good-night. He wondered whether his friend's wife were a
prude.
Undoubtedly the refusal was prudent, whether Mrs. Ponsonby were a
prude or no, but it had its rise in quite a different cause. She had
no dress she considered suitable for such an occasion. Her wedding
dress still hung in ghostly splendor in a closet all by itself, but
that was too grand, and the others of her trousseau had been few in
number and plain in make, and would now have been consigned to the rag
bag had she seen any means of supplying their place. They were
certainly too shabby to grace one of Stephen's beautiful little
dinners, which were the pride of Harmouth.
Deena's ideas of French in his own _entourage_ as opposed to him in
hers were amusing. Viewed in the light of Simeon's friend, voluntarily
seeking their companionship and sharing their modest hospitality, they
met on terms of perfect equality; but when associated with his own
surroundings he seemed transformed into a person of fashion, haughty
and aloof. It was quite absurd. Stephen was as simple and
straightforward in one relation as the other, but perhaps the truth
was that Deena was afraid of his servants.
The house was the most attractive in the town, and stood in the midst
of well-kept grounds with smooth lawns and conservatories, and Deena
felt oppressed by so much prosperity. On the few occasions when Simeon
had taken her there to lunch on Sunday--the only dissipation he
allowed himself---she had thought the butler supercilious, and the
maid who came to help her off with her wraps, snippy. She had
suspected the woman of turning her little coat inside out after it was
confided to her care, and sneering at its common lining.
Deena was too superior a woman not to be ashamed of such thoughts, but
the repression of her married life had developed a morbid sensitiveness,
and she was always trying to adjust the unadjustable--Simeon's small
economies to her own ideas of personal dignity; she hardly realized
how much the desire to live fittingly in their position had to do with
her wish to earn an income.
While Stephen's criticisms were still fresh in her mind she rewrote
her story, and when she read it again--which was not till several days
had passed--she felt she had made large strides in the art she so
coveted.