"You didn't see them?"
"No. That is, excepting little Charlotte Wynn. That child is exquisite.
We had a talk before luncheon the day I arrived. But when her mother
found out that I was staying in the house she telephoned her to leave
immediately, and so I didn't see her again."
The colour rushed to Ide's sallow face. "I don't know where you get such
ideas!"
She pursued, as if she had not heard him: "Oh, and I saw Mary Giles for
a minute too. Susy Suffern brought her up to my room the last evening,
after dinner, when all the others were at bridge. She meant it
kindly--but it wasn't much use."
"But what were you doing in your room in the evening after dinner?"
"Why, you see, when I found out my mistake in coming,--how embarrassing
it was for Leila, I mean--I simply told her I was very tired, and
preferred to stay upstairs till the party was over."
Ide, with a groan, struck his hand against the arm of his chair. "I
wonder how much of all this you simply imagined!"
"I didn't imagine the fact of Harriet Fresbie's not even asking if
she might see me when she knew I was in the house. Nor of Mary Giles's
getting Susy, at the eleventh hour, to smuggle her up to my room when
the others wouldn't know where she'd gone; nor poor Leila's ghastly fear
lest Mrs. Lorin Boulger, for whom the party was given, should guess I
was in the house, and prevent her husband's giving Wilbour the second
secretaryship because she'd been obliged to spend a night under the same
roof with his mother-in-law!"
Ide continued to drum on his chair-arm with exasperated fingers. "You
don't _know_ that any of the acts you describe are due to the causes you
suppose."
Mrs. Lidcote paused before replying, as if honestly trying to measure
the weight of this argument. Then she said in a low tone: "I know that
Leila was in an agony lest I should come down to dinner the first night.
And it was for me she was afraid, not for herself. Leila is never afraid
for herself."
"But the conclusions you draw are simply preposterous. There are
narrow-minded women everywhere, but the women who were at Leila's knew
perfectly well that their going there would give her a sort of social
sanction, and if they were willing that she should have it, why on earth
should they want to withhold it from you?"
"That's what I told myself a week ago, in this very room, after my first
talk with Susy Suffern." She lifted a misty smile to his anxious eyes.
"That's why I listened to what you said to me the same evening, and why
your arguments half convinced me, and made me think that what had
been possible for Leila might not be impossible for me. If the new
dispensation had come, why not for me as well as for the others? I can't
tell you the flight my imagination took!"
Franklin Ide rose from his seat and crossed the room to a chair near her
sofa-corner. "All I cared about was that it seemed--for the moment--to
be carrying you toward me," he said.
"I cared about that, too. That's why I meant to go away without seeing
you." They gave each other grave look for look. "Because, you see, I
was mistaken," she went on. "We were both mistaken. You say it's
preposterous that the women who didn't object to accepting Leila's
hospitality should have objected to meeting me under her roof. And so it
is; but I begin to understand why. It's simply that society is much too
busy to revise its own judgments. Probably no one in the house with me
stopped to consider that my case and Leila's were identical. They only
remembered that I'd done something which, at the time I did it, was
condemned by society. My case has been passed on and classified: I'm the
woman who has been cut for nearly twenty years. The older people have
half forgotten why, and the younger ones have never really known: it's
simply become a tradition to cut me. And traditions that have lost their
meaning are the hardest of all to destroy."
Ide sat motionless while she spoke. As she ended, he stood up with
a short laugh and walked across the room to the window. Outside, the
immense black prospect of New York, strung with its myriad lines of
light, stretched away into the smoky edges of the night. He showed it to
her with a gesture.
"What do you suppose such words as you've been using--'society,'
'tradition,' and the rest--mean to all the life out there?"
She came and stood by him in the window. "Less than nothing, of course.
But you and I are not out there. We're shut up in a little tight round
of habit and association, just as we're shut up in this room. Remember,
I thought I'd got out of it once; but what really happened was that the
other people went out, and left me in the same little room. The only
difference was that I was there alone. Oh, I've made it habitable now,
I'm used to it; but I've lost any illusions I may have had as to an
angel's opening the door."
Ide again laughed impatiently. "Well, if the door won't open, why not
let another prisoner in? At least it would be less of a solitude--"
She turned from the dark window back into the vividly lighted room.
"It would be more of a prison. You forget that I know all about that.
We're all imprisoned, of course--all of us middling people, who don't
carry our freedom in our brains. But we've accommodated ourselves to our
different cells, and if we're moved suddenly into new ones we're likely
to find a stone wall where we thought there was thin air, and to knock
ourselves senseless against it. I saw a man do that once."
Ide, leaning with folded arms against the windowframe, watched her in
silence as she moved restlessly about the room, gathering together
some scattered books and tossing a handful of torn letters into the
paperbasket. When she ceased, he rejoined: "All you say is based on
preconceived theories. Why didn't you put them to the test by coming
down to meet your old friends? Don't you see the inference they would
naturally draw from your hiding yourself when they arrived? It looked as
though you were afraid of them--or as though you hadn't forgiven them.
Either way, you put them in the wrong instead of waiting to let them put
you in the right. If Leila had buried herself in a desert do you suppose
society would have gone to fetch her out? You say you were afraid for
Leila and that she was afraid for you. Don't you see what all these
complications of feeling mean? Simply that you were too nervous at the
moment to let things happen naturally, just as you're too nervous now
to judge them rationally." He paused and turned his eyes to her face.
"Don't try to just yet. Give yourself a little more time. Give _me_ a
little more time. I've always known it would take time."
He moved nearer, and she let him have her hand.
With the grave kindness of his face so close above her she felt like a
child roused out of frightened dreams and finding a light in the room.
"Perhaps you're right--" she heard herself begin; then something within
her clutched her back, and her hand fell away from him.
"I know I'm right: trust me," he urged. "We'll talk of this in Florence
soon."
She stood before him, feeling with despair his kindness, his patience
and his unreality. Everything he said seemed like a painted gauze let
down between herself and the real facts of life; and a sudden desire
seized her to tear the gauze into shreds.
She drew back and looked at him with a smile of superficial reassurance.
"You _are_ right--about not talking any longer now. I'm nervous and
tired, and it would do no good. I brood over things too much. As you
say, I must try not to shrink from people." She turned away and glanced
at the clock. "Why, it's only ten! If I send you off I shall begin
to brood again; and if you stay we shall go on talking about the same
thing. Why shouldn't we go down and see Margaret Wynn for half an hour?"
She spoke lightly and rapidly, her brilliant eyes on his face. As she
watched him, she saw it change, as if her smile had thrown a too vivid
light upon it.
"Oh, no--not to-night!" he exclaimed.
"Not to-night? Why, what other night have I, when I'm off at
dawn? Besides, I want to show you at once that I mean to be more
sensible--that I'm not going to be afraid of people any more. And I
should really like another glimpse of little Charlotte." He stood
before her, his hand in his beard, with the gesture he had in moments of
perplexity. "Come!" she ordered him gaily, turning to the door.
He followed her and laid his hand on her arm. "Don't you think--hadn't
you better let me go first and see? They told me they'd had a tiring day
at the dressmaker's* I daresay they have gone to bed."
"But you said they'd a young man of Charlotte's dining with them. Surely
he wouldn't have left by ten? At any rate, I'll go down with you and
see. It takes so long if one sends a servant first" She put him gently
aside, and then paused as a new thought struck her. "Or wait; my maid's
in the next room. I'll tell her to go and ask if Margaret will receive
me. Yes, that's much the best way."
She turned back and went toward the door that led to her bedroom; but
before she could open it she felt Ide's quick touch again.
"I believe--I remember now--Charlotte's young man was suggesting that
they should all go out--to a musichall or something of the sort. I'm
sure--I'm positively sure that you won't find them."
Her hand dropped from the door, his dropped from her arm, and as they
drew back and faced each other she saw the blood rise slowly through his
sallow skin, redden his neck and ears, encroach upon the edges of his
beard, and settle in dull patches under his kind troubled eyes. She had
seen the same blush on another face, and the same impulse of compassion
she had then felt made her turn her gaze away again.
A knock on the door broke the silence, and a porter put his head' into
the room.
"It's only just to know how many pieces there'll be to go down to the
steamer in the morning."
With the words she felt that the veil of painted gauze was torn in
tatters, and that she was moving again among the grim edges of reality.
"Oh, dear," she exclaimed, "I never _can_ remember! Wait a minute; I
shall have to ask my maid."