It was perfectly true, as Conny surmised, that Cairy went to Isabelle. But
not that evening--the blow was too hard and too little expected--nor on the
whole more frequently than he had been in the habit of going during the
winter. Isabelle interested him,--"her problem," as he called it; that is,
given her husband and her circumstances, how she would settle herself into
New York,--how far she might go there. It flattered him also to serve as
intellectual and aesthetic mentor to an attractive, untrained woman, who
frankly liked him and bowed to his opinion. It was Cairy, through Isabelle,
much more than Lane, who decided on the house in that up-town cross street,
on the "right" side of the Park, which the Lanes finally bought. It was in
an excellent neighborhood, "just around the corner" from a number of houses
where well-known people lived. In the same block the Gossoms had
established themselves, on the profits of _The People's_, and only two
doors away, on the same side of the street, a successful novelist had
housed himself behind what looked like a Venetian facade. Close by were the
Rogerses,--he was a fashionable physician; the Hillary Peytons; the
Dentons,--all people, according to Cairy, "one might know."
When Isabelle came to look more closely into this matter of settling
herself in the city, she regretted the Colonel's illiberal will. They might
easily have had a house nearer "the Avenue," instead of belonging to the
polite poor-rich class two blocks east. Nevertheless, she tried to comfort
herself by the thought that even with the Colonel's millions at their
disposal they would have been "little people" in the New York scale of
means. And the other thing, the "interesting," "right" society was much
better worth while. "You make your own life,--it isn't made for you," Cairy
said.
Isabelle was very busy these days. Thanks to the Potts regime, she was
feeling almost well generally, and when she "went down," Dr. Potts was
always there with the right drug to pull her up to the level. So she
plunged into the question of altering the house, furnishing it, and getting
it ready for the autumn. Her mother and John could not understand her
perplexity about furnishing. What with the contents of two houses on hand,
it seemed incomprehensible that the new home should demand a clean sweep.
But Isabelle realized the solid atrocity of the Torso establishment and of
the St. Louis one as well. She was determined that this time she should be
right. With Cairy for guide and adviser she took to visiting the old
furniture shops, selecting piece by piece what was to go into the new
house. She was planning, also, to make that deferred trip to Europe to see
her brother, and she should complete her selection over there, although
Cairy warned her that everything she was likely to buy in Europe these days
would be "fake." Once launched on the sea of household art, she found
herself in a torturing maze. What was "right" seemed to alter with
marvellous rapidity; the subject, she soon realized, demanded a culture, an
experience that she had never suspected. Then there was the matter of the
Farm at Grafton, which must be altered. The architect, who was making over
the New York house, had visited Grafton and had ideas as to what could be
done with the rambling old house without removing it bodily. "Tear down the
barn--throw out a beautiful room here--terrace it--a formal garden there,"
etc. In the blue prints the old place was marvellously transformed.
"Aren't you doing too much, all at once?" Lane remonstrated in the mild way
of husbands who have experienced nervous prostration with their wives.
"Oh, no; it interests me so! Dr. Potts thinks I should keep occupied
reasonably, with things that really interest me.... Besides I am only
directing it all, you know."
And glad to see her once more satisfied, eager, he went his way to his
work, which demanded quite all his large energy. After all, women had to do
just about so much, and find their limit themselves.
Isabelle had learned to "look after herself," as she phrased it, by which
she meant exercise, baths, massage, days off when she ran down to Lakewood,
electricity,--all the physical devices for keeping a nervous people in
condition. It is a science, and it takes time,--but it is a duty, as
Isabelle reflected. Then there was the little girl. She was four now, and
though the child was almost never on her hands, thanks to the excellent
Miss Butts, Molly, as they called her, had her place in her mother's busy
thoughts: what was the best regimen, whether she ought to have a French or
a German governess next year, how she should dress, and in the distance the
right school to be selected. Isabelle meant to do her best for the little
girl, and looked back on her own bringing up--even the St. Mary's part of
it--as distressingly haphazard, and limiting. Her daughter should be fitted
"to make the most of life," which was what Isabelle felt that she herself
was now beginning to do.
So Isabelle was occupied, as she believed profitably, spending her new
energy wisely, and though she was getting worn, it was only a month to the
date she had set for sailing. Vickers had promised to meet her at Genoa and
take her into the Dolomites and then to San Moritz, where she could rest.
As her life filled up, she saw less of her husband than ever, for he, too,
was busy, "with that railroad thing," as she called the great Atlantic and
Pacific. She made him buy a horse and ride in the Park afternoons when he
could get the time, because he was growing too heavy. He had developed
laziness socially, liked to go to some restaurant for dinner with chance
friends that were drifting continually through New York, and afterwards to
the theatre,--"to see something lively," as he put it, preferably Weber and
Fields', or Broadway opera. Isabelle felt that this was not the right
thing, and boring, too; but it would all be changed when they were
"settled." Meantime she went out more or less by herself, as the wives of
busy men have to do.
"It is so much better not to bring a yawning husband home at midnight," she
laughed to Cairy on one of these occasions when she had given him a seat
down town in her cab. "By the way, you haven't spoken of Conny
lately,--don't you see her any more?"
Isabelle still had her girlish habit of asking indiscreet, impertinent
questions. She carried them off with a lively good nature, but they
irritated Cairy occasionally.
"I have been busy with my play," he replied shortly.
As a matter of fact he had been attacked by one of those fits of intense
occupation which came upon him in the intervals of his devotions. At such
times he worked to better effect, with a kind of abandoned fury, than when
his thoughts and feelings were engaged, as if to make up to his muse for
his periods of neglect. The experience, he philosophized, which had stored
itself, was now finding vent,--the spiritual travail as well as the
knowledge of life. A man, an artist, had but one real passion, he told
Isabelle,--and that was his work. Everything else was mere fertilizer or
waste. Since the night that Conny had turned him from the door, he had
completed his new play, which had been hanging fire all winter, and he was
convinced it was his best. "Yes, a man's work, no matter what it may be, is
God's solace for living." In response to which Isabelle mischievously
remarked:--
"So you and Conny really have had a tiff? I must get her to tell me about
it."
"Do you think she would tell you the truth?"
"No."
Isabelle, in spite of Cairy's protestations about his work, was gratified
with her discovery, as she called it. She had decided that Conny was "a bad
influence" on the Southerner; that Cairy was simple and ingenuous,--"really
a nice boy," so she told her husband. Just what evil Conny had done to
Cairy Isabelle could not say, ending always with the phrase, "but I don't
trust her," or "she is so selfish." She had made these comments to Margaret
Pole, and Margaret had answered with one of her enigmatic smiles and the
remark:--
"Conny's no more selfish than most of us women,--only her methods are more
direct--and successful."
"That is cynical," Isabelle retorted. "Most of us women are not selfish; I
am not!"
And in her childlike way she asked her husband that very night:--
"John, do you think I am selfish?"
John answered this large question with a laugh and a pleasant compliment.
"I suppose Margaret means that I don't go in for charities, like that Mrs.
Knop of the Relief and Aid, or for her old Consumers' League. Well, I had
enough of that sort of thing in St. Louis. And I don't believe it does any
good; it is better to give money to those who know how to spend it.... Have
you any poor relatives we could be good to, John? ... Any cousins that
ought to be sent to college, any old aunts pining for a trip to
California?"
"Lots of 'em, I suppose," her husband responded amiably. "They turn up
every now and then, and I do what I can for them. I believe I am sending
two young women to college to fit themselves for teaching."
Lane was generous, though he had the successful man's suspicion of all
those who wanted help. He had no more formulated ideas about doing for
others than his wife had. But when anything appealed to him, he gave and
had a comfortable sense that he was helping things along.
Isabelle, in spite of the disquiet caused by Margaret's statement, felt
convinced that she was doing her duty in life broadly, "in that station
where Providence had called her." 'She was sure that she was a good wife, a
good daughter, a good mother. And now she meant to be more than these
humdrum things,--she meant to be Somebody, she meant to live! ...
When she found time to call at the Woodyards', she saw that the house was
closed, and the caretaker, who was routed out with difficulty, informed her
that the master and mistress had sailed for Europe the week before.
'Very sudden,' mused Isabelle. 'I don't see how Percy could get away.'
Half the houses on the neighboring square were closed already, however, and
she thought as she drove up town that it was time for her to be going. The
city was becoming hot and dusty, and she was rather tired of it, too. Mrs.
Price was to open the Farm for the summer and have Miss Butts and the
little girl with her. John promised "to run over and get her" in September,
if he could find time. Her little world was all arranged for, she reflected
complacently. John would stay at the hotel and go up to Grafton over
Sundays, and he had joined a club. Yes, the Lanes were shaking into place
in New York.
Cairy sent her some roses when she sailed and was in the mob at the pier to
bid her good-by.
"Perhaps I shall be over myself later on," he said, "to see if I can place
the play."
"Oh, do!" Isabelle exclaimed. "And we'll buy things. I am going to ruin
John."
Lane smiled placidly, as one not easily ruined. When the visitors were
driven down the gangway, Isabelle called to Cairy:--
"Come on and go back in the tug with John!"
So Cairy limped back. Isabelle was nervous and tired, and now that she was
actually on the steamer felt sad at seeing accustomed people and things
about to slip away. She wanted to hold on to them as long as possible.
Presently the hulking steamer was pulled out into the stream and headed for
the sea. It was a hot June morning and through the haze the great buildings
towered loftily. The long city raised a jagged sky-line of human immensity,
and the harbor swarmed with craft,--car ferries, and sailing vessels
dropping down stream carefully to take the sea breeze, steamers lined with
black figures, screeching tugs, and occasionally a gleaming yacht. The
three stood together on the deck looking at the scene.
"It always gives me the same old thrill," Cairy said. "Coming or going, it
makes no difference,--it is the biggest fact in the modern world."
"I love it!" murmured Isabelle, her eyes fastened on the serried walls
about the end of the island. "I shall never forget when I saw it as a
child, the first time. It was mystery, like a story-book then, and it has
been the same ever since."
Lane said nothing, but watched the city with smiling lips. To him the squat
car ferries, the lighters, the dirty tramp steamers, the railroad yards
across the river, as well as the lofty buildings of the long city--all the
teeming life here at the mouth of the country--meant Traffic, the
intercourse of men. And he, too, loved the great roaring city. He looked at
it with a vista that reached from the Iowa town where he had first
"railroaded it," up through the intervening steps at St. Louis and Torso,
to his niche in the largest of these buildings,--all the busy years which
he had spent dealing with men.
Isabelle touched his arm.
"I wish you were coming, too, John," she said as the breeze struck in from
the open sea. "Do you remember how we talked of going over when we were in
Torso?"
What a stretch of time there was between those first years of marriage and
to-day! She would never have considered in the Torso days that she could
sail off like this alone with a maid and leave her husband behind.
"Oh, it will be only a few weeks,--you'll enjoy yourself," he replied. He
had been very good about her going over to join Vickers, made no objections
to it this time. They were both growing more tolerant, as they grew older
and saw more of life.
"What is in the paper?" she asked idly, as her husband rolled it up.
"There's a dirty roast on your friend, Percy Woodyard,--nothing else!"
"See, that must be the tug!" exclaimed Isabelle, pushing up her veil to
kiss her husband. "Good-by--I wish you were going, too--I shall miss you
so--be sure you exercise and keep thin!"...
She watched the two men climb down into the bobbing tug and take places
beside the pilot room,--her tall, square-shouldered husband, and the
slighter man, leaning on a cane, both looking up at her with smiles. John
waved his paper at her,--the one that had the "roast" about Percy Woodyard.
She had meant to read that,--she might see the Woodyards in Paris. Then the
tug moved off, both men still waving to her. She hurried to the rear deck
to get a last look, sentimental forlornness at leaving her husband coming
over her afresh. As she gazed back at the retreating tug there was also in
her heart a warm feeling for Cairy. "Poor Tom!" she murmured without
knowing why.
On this great ship, among the thousand or more first-class passengers,
there were a goodly number of women like her, leaving home and husband for
a foreign trip. After all, as she had often said, it was a good idea for
husbands and wives to have vacations from each other. There was no real
reason why two people should stick together in an endless daily intimacy
because they were married....
Thus the great city--the city of her ambitions--sank mistily on the
horizon.
PART FOUR