BUT Lena did not respond right away. Instead, she allowed a fortnight to
elapse, during which her state of mind was one of indecision and her
continuous emotion a sharp irritation; both of these symptoms being
manifest in an interview she had with her brother George, one day, when
she finally decided to consult him. “It’s so indecently unfair!” she
complained. “It _is_ forcing me; and his letter was a perfectly abject
confession of it. He admits himself he’s compelling me to go out to that
awful place and live with him.”
“How do you know it’s awful?” George inquired mildly. “He’s the most
likable chap I ever knew, and _he_ comes from there. Doesn’t that look
as if——”
“No, it doesn’t. Just think of being compelled to listen to everybody
speaking with that awful Western accent! I can stand it in him because I
like his voice, and he’s only one; but imagine hearing nothing _else_!”
Lena shivered, flinging out her beautiful little hands in a despairing
gesture, illuminated by tiny stars of fire from her rings. “Just imagine
having hundreds of ’em talking about ‘wat_urr_’ and ‘butt_urr_’ all day
long!”
“Oh, I dare say they speak of other matters at intervals,” George said.
“If that’s the supremest agony you have to face, Lena, I don’t see why
you’re kicking up such a row with yourself. I’d rather like to go out
there, myself.”
“What in the world for?”
“Well, for one reason,” he answered seriously, “because I like Dan, but
principally because I’d do well to get away from New York.”
“To live?” she cried incredulously. “I could understand that, if you
meant you’d like to get away in order to live in Paris, but to want to
go out and bury yourself in one of those awful Western——”
“Paris!” George exclaimed. “For me? I suppose your idea is a short life
but a merry one!”
“Why not? It might be better than living to a hundred on ‘watt_urr_’ and
‘butt_urr_!’ What’s the matter with you and New York?”
“Nothing’s the matter with New York except that it’s got so many sides
it can be whatever one chooses to make it, so that a weak character like
me gets too many chances to increase his weaknesses here. There’s no
question about it, Lena; I’m a weak character. I’ve proved it to myself
too many times to doubt it. A smaller city is pretty much one thing, but
New York is anything because it’s everything. The trouble is with me
I’ve slid into making a New York for myself that I can’t break away from
unless I emigrate. My New York is Uncle Nick’s offices for as few hours
a day as I can fool ’em with; and after that it’s three clubs and the
Waldorf, the Holland House, Martin’s, Jack’s, two or three roulette
holes, incidental bars, and sometimes the stage door of the Casino. The
rest of the time I live in a hansom cab. A pretty thing, isn’t it!”
“Then why don’t you change it?”
“Because I can’t. I can’t get myself away from the crowd I’ve picked up,
and that’s the life they lead. Funny, too, I don’t really like one of
’em, yet I can’t keep away from ’em because I’m in the same ruts and
talk the same lingo and drink the same drinks. That’s the real trouble,
I suppose, and there’s a certain future ahead of me—a pleasant one to
look forward to!”
“What is?”
“Drunken stockbroker,” George replied with laconic despondency. “That’s
me, if I live to forty.”
“I’d rather be one than buried in a mudhole on the prairie,” said Lena.
“I’d rather be anything than that; yet it’s precisely what my thoughtful
fiancé informs me I have no choice about. I think perhaps he’ll _learn_
whether I have or not, though!”
“Better think it over,” George advised, with a thoughtful glance at his
sister’s flushed and petulant face. “It might be the best thing for
you.”
“What!”
“It might,” he insisted. “You’ve made a pretty quick-stepping New York
of your own, Lena. Tea at Sherry’s means mighty little tea for you, my
dear. A man told me the other day he’d never met a human being who could
survive as many Benedictines in the afternoon as you can. Besides that,
you get too much music.”
“You’re crazy!” Lena cried. “I _live_ on music!”
“No, you don’t,” he said. “You keep yourself woozy with it. You go on
music debauches, Lena. You don’t take it as an art; you take it as an
excitement. You keep your emotions frothing with it, and that’s why you
can’t get along without it. If you hadn’t been in the habit of getting
yourself woozy with music, that Venable affair would never have
happened.”
“George!” she said sharply, and her eyes, already angry, grew more
brilliant with increased emotion. “Shame on you!”
“Oh, well——” he said placatively.
“It’s a thing you have no right to make me remember.”
“Other people remember it,” he said, with a brother’s grimness. “You
needn’t think because nobody outside the family ever speaks of it to you
it isn’t thought of and referred to when you’re spoken _of_.”
She looked pathetic at this, and reproached him in a broken voice.
“Unmanly! One would think my own—my own brother——”
“Your own brother is about the only person that _could_ speak of it to
you in a friendly way, Lena. You know how the rest of the family speak
of it to you—when they do.”
“It’s so unfair!” she moaned. “Nobody ever understood——”
“We needn’t to go into that,” George said gently. “I think myself it was
your musical emotions on top of a constitutional lack of discretion. Oh,
I don’t blame you! I’ve spent too much time trying to cover my own
indiscretions from the family. I’m really more the family black sheep
than you are, only you had worse luck; that’s all. I only mention it to
get you to think a little before you talk of throwing Dan Oliphant over
rather than to go and live in the town he’s so proud of.”
She wiped her eyes, choked a little, and protested feebly: “But the two
things haven’t any connection. What—what’s Venable got to do with——”
“Well, you make me say it,” George remarked as she paused. “I think you
understand as well as I do; but if you want me to be definite, I will.”
“Not _too_ definite, please, George!”
“How can I be anything else? There isn’t any tactful way to say some
things, Lena. You may get proposals from some of these men you meet at
parties and father don’t know about——”
“Never mind, please, George. Do you have to be quite so——”
“Yes,” he said decisively. “Quite. The family have made it clear what
they’ll do, if you ever try again to marry one of the wrong sort, like
Venable.”
“‘The wrong sort!’” she echoed pathetically, though with some bitterness
toward her brother. “He was the most interesting man I ever knew, and a
great artist. He was——”
“Unfortunate in his domestic experiences,” George interrupted,
concluding the sentence for her dryly. “And you were unfortunate in
overlooking—well, to put it tactlessly, in seeming to have no objection
to what I’m afraid I must call his somewhat bigamous tendencies, Lena.”
“George!”
“My dear, I’m trying to say something helpful. Eligibles of our own walk
in life enjoy dancing with you or buying Benedictines for you, but after
Venable, none of ’em would be likely to——”
“That’s enough, please, George!”
“No,” he said, “I’m explaining that Dan’s the best thing in sight. The
family weren’t too pleased about him, I admit; but they couldn’t help
seeing that. For my part, I think it might be the making of you.”
“I don’t care to be made, thanks.”
“I mean you might have a chance to improve, living somewhere else,” he
explained calmly. “But more than that, Dan Oliphant looks up to you so
worshipfully—he pictures you as such spotless perfection—it seems to
me you’d just have to live up to his idea of you. If you want to know
the truth, I took such a fancy to him I wasn’t too delighted on his
account when I saw he was getting serious about you; but when he seemed
to be so much so, I thought maybe it might turn out pretty well for both
of you. It’s good sometimes for a man to have such ideals, and it’s
always good for a woman to live up to ’em. Besides, you do care about
him, don’t you?”
“Yes,” she said. “I wouldn’t have said I’d marry him if I didn’t. I
really did fall a lot in love with him, but that’s not being in love
with spending my life in some terrible _place_, is it? And besides I’m
not going to live up to his ideals; nothing bores me more than
pretending to be somebody I’m not. I get enough of that with the family,
thanks!”
“You think you won’t try to be the girl he believes you are?” George
asked gravely.
“Don’t be silly! Why on earth should I pretend to be anybody but
myself?”
“In that case,” George said, “I hope you’ll write poor Dan that you
refuse to be compelled and have decided to break your engagement. He’ll
be pretty sick over it, I’m afraid, but I think you’d both live
happier—and longer!”
With this brotherly tribute, spoken in a rueful humour, he departed,
leaving her at her small French desk, where the sheet of blue-tinted
note paper before her remained blank, except for a few teardrops. In
spite of his parting advice, George had relieved neither her indecision
nor her conviction that she was being ill-treated by her lover.
Nevertheless, except for one thing, she was inclined to accept that
advice.
The one deterrent was the group of people defined by George and herself,
in tones never enthusiastic, as “the family.” Aunts, uncles, and cousins
were included, all of them persons of weight, and some of them of such
prodigious substance in wealth as to figure as personages in the
metropolis; though all McMillans were personages to themselves, on the
score of what they believed to be clan greatness due to historical
descent and hereditary merit. To their view, New York was a conglomerate
background for the McMillans and a not extensive additional gentry,
principally English and Dutch in origin. Beyond the conglomerate
background, the McMillans permitted themselves to be aware of certain
foreigners as gentry, and also of some flavourings of gentry, similar to
their own, in Philadelphia, Boston, and one or two smaller cities, but
there perfected civilization ended. All else they believed to be a kind
of climbing barbarism, able to show forth talent or power, perhaps, in a
spasmodic way, or even isolated greatness, as in Abraham Lincoln, but
never gentry, except in imitations laughably pinchbeck.
To the McMillan view, Lena’s adventure with that dashing sculpture, half
genius and half Grecian-shaped meat, Perry Venable, had placed her
gentryship in jeopardy, damaged her as a McMillan;—in fact, her
infatuation for so conspicuous a baritone could not avoid being itself
conspicuous; it “made talk,” and in answer to the talk she had announced
her engagement to him. Then, in the face of the family’s formidable
opposition, she made preparations for a clandestine wedding, which Mr.
Venable was unable to attend on account of his wife’s arrival from
Poland. Thereupon, standing alone against the shock of heavy McMillan
explosives, Lena’s impulsive loyalty in defending the godlike baritone
led her to make an unfortunate statement: great artists were not to be
bound by the ordinary fetters upon conduct, she said;—and this prelude
not being accepted as of any great force and originality, she followed
it hotly with the declaration that she had long been aware of the Polish
lady’s existence.
It was in great part to this admission of hers that the unwitting Dan
Oliphant owed the family’s consent to his suit for the hand of a
McMillan. A McMillan who got herself talked about, and then confessed,
not in the manner of confession but with anger, that she had not been
deceived—such a McMillan would conceivably do such a thing again, and a
respectable barbarian bridegroom might be the best substitute for those
unfortunately obsolete family resources in times of youthful revolt,
_lettres de cachet_ and the enforced taking of veils. But, in good
truth, Dan may have owed to Lena’s celebrated admission more than the
family’s consent, for the family’s austerity of manner toward Lena
became so protracted an oppression that she was the readier to be
pleased with anything as cheerfully different from that family as Dan
was.
Without doubt, too, he owed it to this McMillan austerity that she did
not write to him now and break her engagement with him. The Venable
affair was two years past, but the austerity went on, unabated. Dan was
at least an avenue of escape, and, as Lena had said to her brother, she
was “a lot in love” with him. Yet she hesitated, angry with him because
he could not offer what she wanted, and half convinced that escape from
what she hated might be an escape into what she would hate more. So she
wrote to him finally:
You said you loved me! That isn’t quite easy to believe just
now. Why did you let me go on counting upon our having a year
abroad? I’m afraid I’ll never be able to understand it. I don’t
know what to say or what to do. I think the best thing you could
do would be to come East at once. Maybe I could understand
better if we talked it over together. It seems to me that you
couldn’t have cared for me with any depth or you wouldn’t have
allowed things to be as you say they are. A man can always do
anything he really wants to, and if you had _really_ wanted—oh,
I know it’s futile to be writing of _that_! You simply didn’t
care enough, and I thought you did! The only thing for you to do
is to come at once. We must settle what’s to be done, because I
can’t go on in the state of unhappiness I’ve suffered since your
last letter. Maybe you can convince me that you do care a little
in spite of having forced me to give up what I counted on. If
you do convince me, I suppose there’s no use putting off
things—I don’t want a large, fussy wedding. If we _are_ going
ahead with it, we might as well get it over. I don’t know what
to do, I admit that; but I’m still
_Your_ half-heartbroken
LENA.