"A MILESTONE PASSED, THE ROAD SEEMS CLEAR"
As the "season" heightened, the beautiful paneled walls of Mrs.
Marshall-Smith's salon were frequently the background for chance
gatherings of extremely appropriate callers. They seemed a visible
emanation of the room, so entirely did they represent what that sort
of a room was meant to contain. They were not only beautifully but
severely dressed, with few ornaments, and those few a result of the
same concentrated search for the rare which had brought together the
few bibelots in the room, which had laid the single great dull Persian
rug on the unobtrusively polished oaken floor, which had set in the
high, south windows the boxes of feathery green plants with delicate
star-like flowers.
And it was not only in externals that these carefully brushed and
combed people harmonized with the mellow beauty of their background.
They sat, or stood, moved about, took their tea, and talked with an
extraordinary perfection of manner. There was not a voice there,
save perhaps Austin Page's unstudied tones, which was not carefully
modulated in a variety of rhythm and pitch which made each sentence a
work of art. They used, for the most part, low tones and few gestures,
but those well chosen. There was an earnest effort apparent to achieve
true conversational give-and-take, and if one of the older men found
himself yielding to the national passion for lengthy monologues on a
favorite theme, or to the mediocre habit of anecdote, there was an
instant closing in on him of carefully casual team-work on the part of
the others which soon reduced him to the tasteful short comment
and answer which formed the framework of the afternoon's social
activities.
The topics of the conversation were as explicitly in harmony with the
group-ideal as the perfectly fitting gloves of the men, or the smooth,
burnished waves of the women's hair. They talked of the last play at
the Français, of the exhibitions then on view at the Petit Palais, of
a new tenor in the choir of the Madeleine, of the condition of the
automobile roads in the Loire country, of the restoration of the
stained glass at Bourges.
On such occasions, a good deal of Sylvia's attention being given to
modulating her voice and holding her hands and managing her skirts as
did the guests of the hour, she usually had an impression that the
conversation was clever. Once or twice, looking back, she had been
somewhat surprised to find that she could remember nothing of what had
been said. It occurred to her, fleetingly, that of so much talk, some
word ought to stick in her usually retentive memory; but she gave the
matter no more thought. She had also been aware, somewhat dimly, that
Austin Page was more or less out of drawing in the carefully composed
picture presented on those social afternoons. He had the inveterate
habit of being at his ease under all circumstances, but she had felt
that he took these great people with a really exaggerated lack of
seriousness, answering their chat at random, and showing no chagrin
when he was detected in the grossest ignorance about the latest move
of the French Royalist party, or the probabilities as to the winner
of the Grand Prix. She had seen in the corners of his mouth an
inexplicable hidden imp of laughter as he gravely listened, cup in
hand, to the remarks of the beautiful Mrs. William Winterton Perth
about the inevitable promiscuity of democracy, and he continually
displayed a tendency to gravitate into the background, away from the
center of the stage where their deference for his name, fortune, and
personality would have placed him. Sylvia's impression of him was far
from being one of social brilliance, but rather of an almost wilful
negligence. She quite grew used to seeing him, a tall, distinguished
figure, sitting at ease in a far corner, and giving to the scene a
pleasant though not remarkably respectful attention.
On such an afternoon in January, the usual routine had been preserved.
The last of the callers, carrying off Mrs. Marshall-Smith with her,
had taken an urbane, fair-spoken departure. Sylvia turned back from
the door of the salon, feeling a fine glow of conscious amenity, and
found that Austin Page's mood differed notably from her own. He had
lingered for a tête-à-tête, as was so frequently his habit, and now
stood before the fire, his face all one sparkle of fun. "Don't they
do it with true American fervor!" he remarked. "It would take a
microscope to tell the difference between them and a well-rehearsed
society scene on the stage of the Français! That's their model,
of course. It is positively touching to see old Colonel Patterson
subduing his twang and shutting the lid down on his box of comic
stories. I should think Mrs. Patterson might allow him at least that
one about the cowboy and the tenderfoot who wanted to take a bath!"
The impression made on Sylvia had not in the least corresponded to
this one; but with a cat-like twist of her flexible mind, she fell
on her feet, took up his lead, and deftly produced the only suitable
material she had at command. "They _seem_ to talk well, about such
interesting things, and yet I can never remember anything they say.
It's odd," she sat down near the fireplace with a great air of
pondering the strange phenomenon.
"No, it isn't odd," he explained, dropping into the chair opposite her
and stretching out his long legs to the blaze. "It's only people who
do something, who have anything to say. These folks don't do anything
except get up and sit down the right way, and run their voices up and
down the scale so that their great-aunts would faint away to hear
them! They haven't any energy left over. If some one would only write
out suitable parts for them to memorize, the performance would be
perfect!" He threw back his head and laughed aloud, the sound ringing
through the room. Sylvia had seldom seen him so light-heartedly
amused. He explained: "I haven't seen this sort of solemn, genteel
posturing for several years now, and I find it too delicious! To see
the sweet, invincible American naïveté welling up in their intense
satisfaction in being so sophisticated,--oh, the harmless dears!" He
cried out upon them gaily, with the indulgence of an adult who looks
on at children's play.
Sylvia was a trifle breathless, seeing him disappear so rapidly down
this unexpected path, but she was for the moment spared the effort to
overtake him by the arrival of Tojiko with a tray of fresh mail. "Oh,
letters from home!" Sylvia rejoiced, taking a bulky one and a thin one
from the pile. "The fat one is from Father," she said, holding it up.
"He is like me, terribly given to loquaciousness. We always write each
other reams when we're apart. The little flat one is from Judith. She
never can think of anything to say except that she is still alive and
hopes I am, and that her esteem for me is undiminished. Dear Spartan
Judy!"
"Do you know," said the man opposite her, "if I hadn't met you, I
should have been tempted to believe that the institution of the
family had disappeared. I never saw anything like you Marshalls! You
positively seem to have a real regard for each other in spite of
what Bernard Shaw says about the relations of blood-kin. You even,
incredible as it seems, appear to feel a mutual respect!"
"That's a very pretty compliment indeed," said Sylvia, smiling at him
flashingly, "and I'm going to reward you by reading some of Judith's
letter aloud. Letters do paint personalities so, don't they?"
He settled himself to listen.
"Oh, it won't take long!" she reassured him laughingly. She read:
"'DEAR SYLVIE: Your last letter about the palaces at Versailles was
very interesting. Mother looked you up on the plan of the grounds in
Father's old Baedeker. I'm glad to know you like Paris so much. Our
chief operating surgeon says he thinks the opportunities at the School
of Medicine in Paris are fully as good as in Vienna, and chances for
individual diagnoses greater. Have you visited that yet?'" Over
the letter Sylvia raised a humorous eyebrow at Page, who smiled,
appreciative of the point.
She went on: "'Lawrence is making me a visit of a few days. Isn't he
a queer boy! I got Dr. Wilkinson to agree, as a great favor, to let
Lawrence see a very interesting operation. Right in the middle of it,
Lawrence fainted dead away and had to be carried out. But when he came
to, he said he wouldn't have missed it for anything, and before he
could really sit up he was beginning a poem about the "cruel mercy of
the shining knives."'" Sylvia shook her head. "Isn't that Lawrence!
Isn't that Judith!"
Page agreed thoughtfully, their eyes meeting in a trustful intimacy.
They themselves might have been bound together by a family tie, so
wholly natural seemed their sociable sitting together over the fire.
Sylvia thought with an instant's surprise, "Isn't it odd how close he
has come to seem--as though I'd always, always known him; as though I
could speak to him of anything--nobody else ever seemed that way to
me, nobody!"
She read on from the letter: "'All of us at St. Mary's are feeling
very sore about lawyers. Old Mr. Winthrop had left the hospital
fifteen thousand dollars in his will, and we'd been counting on that
to make some changes in the operating-room and the men's accident ward
that are awfully needed. And now comes along a miserable lawyer who
finds something the matter with the will, and everything goes to that
worthless Charlie Winthrop, who'll probably blow it all in on one
grand poker-playing spree. It makes me tired! We can't begin to keep
up with the latest X-ray developments without the new apparatus, and
only the other day we lost a case, a man hurt in a railroad wreck,
that I know we could have pulled through if we'd been better equipped!
Well, hard luck! But I try to remember Mother's old uncle's motto,
"Whatever else you do, _don't_ make a fuss!" Father has been off for a
few days, speaking before Alumni reunions. He looks very well. Mother
has got her new fruit cellar fixed up, and it certainly is great.
She's going to keep the carrots and parsnips there too. I've just
heard that I'm going to graduate first in my class--thought you might
like to know. Have a good time, Sylvia. And don't let your imagination
get away with you.
"'Your loving sister,
"'JUDITH,'"
"Of all the perfect characterizations!" murmured Page, as Sylvia
finished. "I can actually see her and hear her!"
"Oh, there's nobody like Judith!" agreed Sylvia, falling into a
reverie, her eyes on the fire.
The peaceful silence which ensued spoke vividly of the intimacy
between them.
After a time Sylvia glanced up, and finding her companion's eyes
abstractedly fixed on the floor, she continued to look into his face,
noting its fine, somewhat gaunt modeling, the level line of his brown
eyebrows, the humor and kindness of his mouth. The winter twilight
cast its first faint web of blue shadow into the room. The fire burned
with a steady blaze.
As minute after minute of this hushed, wordless calm continued, Sylvia
was aware that something new was happening to her, that something in
her stirred which had never before made its presence known. She felt
very queer, a little startled, very much bewildered. What was that
half-thought fluttering a dusky wing in the back of her mind? It came
out into the twilight and she saw it for what it was. She had been
wondering what she would feel if that silent figure opposite her
should rise and take her in his arms. As she looked at that tender,
humorous mouth, she had been wondering what she would feel to press
her lips upon it?
She was twenty-three years old, but so occupied with mental effort and
physical activity had been her life, that not till now had she known
one of those half-daring, half-frightened excursions of the fancy
which fill the hours of any full-blooded idle girl of eighteen. It was
a woman grown with a girl's freshness of impression, who knew that
ravished, scared, exquisite moment of the first dim awakening of the
senses. But because it was a woman grown with a woman's capacity for
emotion, the moment had a solemnity, a significance, which no girl
could have felt. This was no wandering, flitting, wingèd excursion.
It was a grave step upon a path from which there was no turning back.
Sylvia had passed a milestone. But she did not know this. She sat very
still in her chair as the twilight deepened, only knowing that she
could not take her eyes from those tender, humorous lips. That was the
moment when if the man had spoken, if he had but looked at her ...
But he was following out some thought of his own, and now rose, went
to Mrs. Marshall-Smith's fine, small desk, snapped on an electric
light, and began to write.
When he finished, he handed a bit of paper to Sylvia. "Do you suppose
your sister would be willing to let me make up for the objectionable
Charlie Winthrop's deficiences?" he asked with a deprecatory air as
though he feared a refusal.
Sylvia looked at the piece of paper. It was a check for fifteen
thousand dollars. She held there in her hand seven years of her
father's life, as much money as they all had lived on from the years
she was sixteen until now. And this man had but to dip pen into ink to
produce it. There was something stupefying about the thought to her.
She no longer saw the humor and tenderness of his mouth. She looked up
at him and thought, "What an immensely rich man he is!" She said to
him wonderingly, "You can't imagine how strange it is--like magic--not
to be believed--to have money like that!"
His face clouded. He looked down uncertainly at his feet and away at
the lighted electric bulb. "I thought it might please your sister," he
said and turned away.
Sylvia was aghast to think that she had perhaps wounded him. He seemed
to fear that he had flaunted his fortune in her face. He looked
acutely uncomfortable. She found that, as she had thought, she could
say anything, anything to him, and say it easily. She went to him
quickly and laid her hand on his arm. "It's splendid," she said,
looking deeply and frankly into his eyes. "Judith will be too
rejoiced! It _is_ like magic. And nobody but you could have done it so
that the money seems the least part of the deed!"
He looked down at her, touched, moved, his eyes very tender, but sad
as though with a divination of the barrier his fortune eternally
raised between them.
The door opened suddenly and Mrs. Marshall-Smith came in quickly,
not looking at them at all. From the pale agitation of her face they
recoiled, startled and alarmed. She sat down abruptly as though her
knees had given way under her. Her gloved hands were perceptibly
trembling in her lap. She looked straight at Sylvia, and for an
instant did not speak. If she had rushed in screaming wildly, her
aspect to Sylvia's eyes would scarcely have been more eloquent of
portentous news to come. It was a fitting introduction to what she now
said to them in an unsteady voice: "I've just heard--a despatch
from Jamiaca--something terrible has happened. The news came to
the American Express office when I was there. It is awful. Molly
Sommerville driving her car alone--an appalling accident to the
steering-gear, they think. Molly found dead under the car."