The Virginia mountains made a narrow horizon of brilliant blue. On their
lower slopes the misty outlines of early spring had begun with the budding
trees. Here and there the feathery forest was spotted by dashes of pink
coolness where the wild peach and plum had blossomed, and the faint blue of
the rhododendron bushes mounted to the sky-line. The morning was brilliant
after a rain and the fresh mountain air blew invigoratingly, as Isabelle
left the car on her husband's arm. With the quick change of mood of the
nervous invalid she already felt stronger, more hopeful. There was color in
her thin face, and her eyes had again the vivacious sparkle that had been
so largely her charm.
"We must find some good horses," she said to her father as they approached
the hotel cottage which had been engaged; "I want to get up in those hills.
Margaret promised to come for a week.... Oh, I am going to be all right
now!"
The hotel was one of those huge structures dropped down in the mountains or
by the sea to provide for the taste for fresh air, the need for
recuperation, of a wealthy society that crams its pleasures and its
business into small periods,--days and hours. It rambled over an acre or
two and provided as nearly as possible the same luxuries and occupations
that its frequenters had at home. At this season it was crowded with rich
people, who had sought the balm of early spring in the Virginia mountains
after their weeks of frantic activity in the cities, instead of taking the
steamers to Europe. They were sitting, beautifully wrapped in furs, on the
long verandas, or smartly costumed were setting out for the links or for
horseback excursions. The Colonel and Lane quickly discovered acquaintances
in the broker's office where prominent "operators" were sitting, smoking
cigars and looking at the country through large plate-glass windows, while
the ticker chattered within hearing. There was music in the hall, and fresh
arrivals with spotless luggage poured in from the trains. This mountain inn
was a little piece of New York moved out into the country.
But it was peaceful on the piazza of the cottage, which was somewhat
removed from the great caravansary, where Isabelle lay and watched the blue
recesses of the receding hills. Here her husband found her when it was time
to say good-by.
"You'll be very well off," he remarked, laying his hand affectionately on
his wife's arm. "The Stantons are here--you remember him at Torso?--and the
Blakes from St. Louis, and no doubt a lot more people your father
knows,--so you won't be lonely. I have arranged about the horses and
selected a quiet table for you."
"That is very good of you,--I don't want to see people," she replied, her
eyes still on the hills. "When will you be back?"
"In a week or ten days I can run up again and stay for a couple of days,
over Sunday."
"You'll telegraph about Marian?"
"Of course."
And bending over to kiss her forehead, he hurried away. It seemed to her
that he was always leaving, always going somewhere. When he was away, he
wrote or telegraphed her each day as a matter of course, and sent her
flowers every other day, and brought her some piece of jewellery when he
went to New York. Yes, he was very fond of her, she felt, and his was a
loyal nature,--she never need fear that in these many absences from his
wife he might become entangled with women, as other men did. He was not
that kind....
The Colonel crossed the lawn in the direction of the golf links with a
party of young old men. It was fortunate that the Colonel had become
interested, almost boyishly, in golf; for since that morning when his son
had left him he had lost all zest for business. A year ago he would never
have thought it possible to come away like this for a month in the busy
season. To Isabelle it was sad and also curious the way he took this matter
of Vickers. He seemed to feel that he had but one child now, had put his
boy quite out of his mind. He was gradually arranging his affairs--already
there was talk of incorporating the hardware business and taking in new
blood. And he had aged still more. But he was so tremendously vital,--the
Colonel! No one could say he was heart-broken. He took more interest than
ever in public affairs, like the General Hospital, and the Park Board. But
he was different, as Isabelle felt,--abstracted, more silent, apparently
revising his philosophy of life at an advanced age, and that is always
painful. If she had only given him a man child, something male and vital
like himself! He was fond of John, but no one could take the place of his
own blood. That, too, was a curious limitation in the eyes of the younger
generation.
"Isabelle!"
She was wakened from her brooding by a soft Southern voice, and perceived
Margaret Pole coming up the steps. With the grasp of Margaret's small
hands, the kiss, all the years since St. Mary's seemed to fall away. The
two women drew off and looked at each other, Margaret smiling
enigmatically, understanding that Isabelle was trying to read the record of
the years, the experience of marriage on her. Coloring slightly, she turned
away and drew up a chair.
"Is your husband with you?" Isabelle asked. "I do so want to meet him."
"No; I left him at my father's with the children. He's very good with the
children," she added with a mocking smile, "and he doesn't like little
trips. He doesn't understand how I can get up at five in the morning and
travel all day across country to see an old friend.... Men don't understand
things, do you think?"
"So you are going abroad to live?"
"Yes," Margaret answered without enthusiasm. "We are going to study
music,--the voice. My husband doesn't like business!"
Isabelle had heard that Mr. Pole, agreeable as he was, had not been
successful in business. But the Poles and the Lawtons were all comfortably
off, and it was natural that he should follow his tastes.
"He has a very good voice," Margaret added.
"How exciting--to change your whole life like that!" Isabelle exclaimed,
fired by the prospect of escape from routine, from the known.
"Think so?" Margaret remarked in a dull voice. "Well, perhaps. Tell me how
you are--everything."
And they began to talk, and yet carefully avoided what was uppermost in the
minds of both,--'How has it been with you? How has marriage been? Has it
given you all that you looked for? Are you happy?' For in spite of all the
education, the freedom so much talked about for women, that remains the
central theme of their existence,--the emotional and material satisfaction
of their natures through marriage. Margaret Pole was accounted intellectual
among women, with bookish tastes, thoughtful, and she knew many women who
had been educated in colleges. "They are all like us," she once said to
Isabelle; "just like us. They want to marry a man who will give them
everything, and they aren't any wiser in their choice, either. The only
difference is that a smaller number of them have the chance to marry, and
when they can't be married, they have something besides cats and maiden
aunts to fall back upon. But interests in common with their husbands,
intellectual interests,--rubbish! A man who amounts to anything is always a
specialist, and he doesn't care for feminine amateurishness. An
acquaintance with Dante and the housing of the poor doesn't broaden the
breakfast table, not a little bit."
When Margaret Pole talked in this strain, men thought her intelligent and
women cynical. Isabelle felt that this cynicism had grown upon her. It
appeared in little things, as when she said: "I can stay only a week. I
must see to breaking up the house and a lot of business. We shall never
sail if I don't go back and get at it. Men are supposed to be practical and
attend to the details, but they don't if they can get out of them." When
Isabelle complimented her on her pretty figure, Margaret said with a
mocking grimace: "Yes, the figure is there yet. The face goes first
usually." Isabelle had to admit that Margaret's delicate, girlish face had
grown strangely old and grave. The smile about the thin lips was there, but
it was a mocking or a wistful smile. The blue eyes were deeper underneath
the high brow. Life was writing its record on this fine face,--a record not
easily read, however. They fell to talking over the St. Mary's girls.
"Aline,--have you seen much of her?" Margaret asked.
"Not as much as I hoped to,--I have been so useless," Isabelle replied.
"She's grown queer!"
"Queer?"
"She is rather dowdy, and they live in such a funny way,--always in a mess.
Of course they haven't much money, but they needn't be so--squalid,--the
children and the mussy house and all."
"Aline doesn't care for things," Margaret observed.
"But one must care enough to be clean! And she has gone in for fads,--she
has taken to spinning and weaving and designing jewellery and I don't know
what."
"That is her escape," Margaret explained.
"Escape? It must be horrid for her husband and awful for the children."
"What would you have her do? Scrub and wash and mend and keep a tidy house?
That would take all the poetry out of Aline, destroy her personality. Isn't
it better for her husband and for the children that she should keep herself
alive and give them something better than a good housewife?"
"Keep herself alive by making weird cloths and impossible bracelets?"
Margaret laughed at Isabelle's philistine horror of the Goring household,
and amused herself with suggesting more of the philosophy of the
Intellectuals, the creed of Woman's Independence. She pointed out that
Aline did not interfere with Goring's pursuit of his profession though it
might not interest her or benefit her. Why should Goring interfere with
Aline's endeavors to develop herself, to be something more than a mother
and a nurse?
"She has kept something of her own soul,--that is it!"
"Her own soul!" mocked Isabelle. "If you were to take a meal with them, you
would wish there was less soul, and more clean table napkins."
"My dear little _bourgeoise_," Margaret commented with amusement, "you must
get a larger point of view. The housewife ideal is doomed. Women won't
submit to it,--intelligent ones. And Goring probably likes Aline better as
she is than he would any competent wife of the old sort."
"I don't believe any sane man likes to see his children dirty, and never
know where to find a clean towel,--don't tell me!"
"Then men must change their characters," Margaret replied vaguely; "we
women have been changing our characters for centuries to conform to men's
desires. It's time that the men adjusted themselves to us."
"I wonder what John would say if I told him he must change his character,"
mused Isabelle.
"There is Cornelia Woodyard," Margaret continued; "she combines the two
ideals--but she is very clever."
"We never thought so at St. Mary's."
"That's because we judged her by woman's standards, sentimental
ones,--old-fashioned ones. But she is New."
"How new?" asked Isabelle, who felt that she had been dwelling in a dark
place the past three years.
"Why, she made up her mind just what she wanted out of life,--a certain
kind of husband, a certain kind of married life, a certain set of
associates,--and she's got just what she planned. She isn't an opportunist
like most of us, who take the husbands we marry because they are there, we
don't know why, and take the children they give us because they come, and
live and do what turns up in the circumstances chosen for us by the Male.
No, Conny is very clever!"
"But how?"
"Eugene Woodyard is not a rich man,--Conny was not after money,--but he is
a clever lawyer, well connected,--in with a lot of interesting people, and
has possibilities. Conny saw those and has developed them,--that has been
her success. You see she combines the old and the new. She makes the mould
of their life, but she works through him. As a result she has just what she
wants, and her husband adores her,--he is the outward and visible symbol of
Conny's inward and material strength!"
Isabelle laughed, and Margaret continued in her pleasant drawl, painting
the Woodyard firmament.
"She understood her man better than he did himself. She knew that he would
never be a great money-getter, hadn't the mental or the physical
qualifications for it. So she turns him deftly into a reformer, a kind of
gentlemanly politician. She'll make him Congressman or better,--much
better! Meantime she has given him a delightful home, one of the nicest I
know,--on a street down town near a little park, where the herd does not
know enough to live. And there Conny receives the best picked set of people
I ever see. It is all quite wonderful!"
"And we thought her coarse," mused Isabelle.
"Perhaps she is,--I don't think she is fine. But a strong hand is rarely
fine. I don't think she would hesitate to use any means to arrive,--and
that is Power, my dear little girl!"
Margaret Pole rose, the enigmatic smile on her lips.
"I must leave you now to your nap and the peace of the hills," she said
lightly. "We'll meet at luncheon. By the way, I ran across a cousin of mine
coming in on the train,--a Virginian cousin, which means that he is close
enough to ask favors when he wants them. He wishes to meet you,--he is a
great favorite of the Woodyards, of Conny, I should say,--Tom Cairy.... He
was at college with your brother, I think. I will bring him over in the
afternoon if you say so. He's amusing, Thomas; but I don't vouch for him.
Good-by, girl."
Isabelle watched Margaret Pole cross the light green of the lawn, walking
leisurely, her head raised towards the mountains. 'She is not happy,'
thought Isabelle. 'There is something wrong in her marriage. I wonder if it
is always so!' Margaret had given her so much to think about, with her
sharp suggestions of strange, new views, that she felt extraordinarily
refreshed. And Margaret, her eyes on the blue hills, was thinking, 'She is
still the girl,--she doesn't know herself yet, does not know life!' Her
lips smiled wistfully, as though to add: 'But she is eager. She will have
to learn, as we all do.' Thus the two young women, carefully avoiding any
reference to the thought nearest their hearts, discovered in a brief half
hour what each wanted to know....
After the noisy luncheon, with its interminable variety of food, in the
crowded, hot dining room, Isabelle and Margaret with Cairy sought refuge in
one of the foot-paths that led up into the hills. Cairy dragged his left
leg with a perceptible limp. He was slight, blond hair with auburn tinge,
smooth shaven, with appealing eyes that, like Margaret's, were recessed
beneath delicate brows. He had pleased Isabelle by talking to her about
Vickers, whom he had known slightly at the university, talking warmly and
naturally, as if nothing had happened to Vickers. Now he devoted himself to
her quite personally, while Margaret walked on ahead. Cairy had a way of
seeing but one woman at a time, no matter what the circumstances might be,
because his emotional horizon was always limited. That was one reason why
he was liked so much by women. He had a good deal to say about the
Woodyards, especially Conny.
"She is so sure in her judgments," he said. "I always show her everything I
write!" (He had already explained that he was a literary "jobber," as he
called it, at the Springs to see a well-known Wall Street man for an
article on "the other side" that he was preparing for _The People's
Magazine_, and also hinted that his ambitions rose above his magazine
efforts.)
"But I did not know that Conny was literary," Isabelle remarked in
surprise.
The young Southerner smiled at her simplicity.
"I don't know that she is what _you_ mean by literary; perhaps that is the
reason she is such a good judge. She knows what people want to read, at
least what the editors think they want and will pay for. If Con--Mrs.
Woodyard likes a thing, I know I shall get a check for it. If she throws it
down, I might as well save postage stamps."
"A valuable friend," Margaret called back lightly, "for a struggling man of
letters!"
"Rather," Cairy agreed. "You see," turning to Isabelle again, "that sort of
judgment is worth reams of literary criticism."
"It's practical."
"Yes, that is just what she is,--the genius of the practical; it's an
instinct with her. That is why she can give really elaborate dinners in her
little house, and you have the feeling that there are at least a dozen
servants where they ought to be, and all that."
From the Woodyards they digressed to New York and insensibly to Cairy's
life there. Before they had turned back for tea Isabelle knew that the lame
young Southerner had written a play which he hoped to induce some actress
to take, and that meantime he was supporting himself in the various ways
that modern genius has found as a substitute for Grub Street. He had also
told her that New York was the only place one could live in, if one was
interested in the arts, and that in his opinion the drama was the coming
art of America,--"real American drama with blood in it"; and had said
something about the necessity of a knowledge of life, "a broad
understanding of the national forces," if a man were to write anything
worth while.
"You mean dinner-parties?" Margaret asked at this point....
When he left the women, he had arranged to ride with Isabelle.
"It's the only sport I can indulge in," he said, referring to his physical
infirmity, "and I don't get much of it in New York."
As he limped away across the lawn, Margaret asked mischievously:--
"Well, what do you think of Cousin Thomas? He lets you know a good deal
about himself all at once."
"He is so interesting--and appealing, don't you think so, with those eyes?
Isn't it a pity he is lame?"
"I don't know about that. He's used that lameness of his very effectively.
It's procured him no end of sympathy, and sympathy is what Thomas
likes,--from women. He will tell you all about it some time,--how his negro
nurse was frightened by a snake and dropped him on a stone step when he was
a baby."
"We don't have men like him in St. Louis," Isabelle reflected aloud; "men
who write or do things that are really interesting--it is all business or
gossip. I should like to see Conny,--it must be exciting to live in New
York, and be somebody!"
"Come and try it; you will, I suppose?"
In spite of Margaret's gibes at her distant cousin, Isabelle enjoyed Cairy.
He was the kind of man she had rarely seen and never known: by birth a
gentleman, by education and ambition a writer, with a distinct social sense
and the charm of an artist. In spite of his poverty he had found the means
to run about the world--the habited part of it--a good deal, and had always
managed to meet the right people,--the ones "whose names mean something."
He was of the parasite species, but of the higher types. To Isabelle his
rapid talk, about plays, people, pictures, the opera, books, was a
revelation of some of that flowing, stream of life which she felt she was
missing. And he gave her the pleasant illusion of "being worth while." The
way he would look at her as he rolled a cigarette on the veranda steps,
awaiting her least word, flattered her woman's sympathy. When he left for
Washington, going, as he said, "where the _People's_ call me," she missed
him distinctly.
"I hope I shall meet him again!"
"You will," Margaret replied. "Thomas is the kind one meets pretty often if
you are his sort. And I take it you are!"
Isabelle believed that Margaret Pole was jealous of her young cousin or
piqued because of a sentimental encounter in their youth. Cairy had hinted
at something of this kind. Margaret patted Isabella's pretty head.
"My little girl," she mocked, "how wonderful the world is, and all the
creatures in it!"
* * * * *
From this month's visit at the Springs the Colonel got some good golf, Mrs.
Price a vivid sense of the way people threw their money about these days
("They say that Wall Street broker gave the head waiter a hundred dollar
bill when he left!"). And Isabelle had absorbed a miscellaneous assortment
of ideas, the dominant one being that intelligent Americans who really
wished to have interesting lives went East to live, particularly to New
York. And incidentally there was inserted in the nether layers of her
consciousness the belief that the world was changing its ideas about women
and marriage, "and all that." She desired eagerly to be in the current of
these new ideas.