rector as "sir," partly because it seemed to him to be appropriate,
partly because he knew that the older man expected him to do so. It was
one of Oliver's most engaging characteristics that he usually adapted
himself with perfect ease to whatever life or other people expected of
him.
While they were carrying the baskets into the passage at the back of the
dining-room, Mrs. Pendleton, whose nervous longing had got at last
beyond her control, deserted Susan, with an apology, and flitted up the
stairs.
"Come up and tell Jinny good-night before you go, dear," she added; "I'm
afraid she will not get down again to see you."
"Oh, don't worry about me," replied Susan. "I want to say a few words to
Oliver, and then I'm coming up to see Harry. Harry appears to me to be a
man of personality."
"He's a darling child," replied Mrs. Pendleton, a little vaguely, "and
Jinny says she never saw him so headstrong before. He is usually as good
as gold."
"Well, well, it's a fine family," said the rector, beaming upon his
son-in-law, when they returned from the passage. "I never saw three
healthier children. It's a pity you lost the other one," he added in a
graver tone, "but as he lived such a short time, Virginia couldn't take
it so much to heart as if he had been older. She seems to have got over
the disappointment."
"Yes, I think she's got over it," said Oliver.
"It will be good for her to be back in Dinwiddie. I never felt satisfied
to think of her so far away."
"Yes, I'm glad we could come back," agreed Oliver pleasantly, though he
appeared to Susan's quick eye to be making an effort.
"By the way, I haven't spoken of your literary work," remarked the
rector, with the manner of a man who is saying something very agreeable.
"I have never been to the theatre, but I understand that it is losing a
great deal of its ill odour. I always remember when anything is said
about the stage that, after all, Shakespeare was an actor. We may be
old-fashioned in Dinwiddie," he pursued in the complacent tone in which
the admission of this failing is invariably made, "but I don't think we
can have any objection to sweet, clean plays, with an elevating moral
tone to them. They are no worse, anyway, than novels."
Though Oliver kept his face under such admirable control, Susan,
glancing at him quickly, saw a shade of expression, too fine for
amusement, too cordial for resentment, pass over his features. His
colour, which was always high, deepened, and raising his head, he
brushed the smooth dark hair back from his forehead. Through some
intuitive strain of sympathy, Susan understood, while she watched him,
that his plays were as vital a matter in his life as the children were
in Virginia's.
"I must run up and see Harry before he goes to sleep," she said, feeling
instinctively that the conversation was becoming a strain.
At the allusion to his grandson, the rector's face lost immediately its
expression of forced pleasantness and relapsed into its look of genial
charm.
"You ought to be proud of that boy, Oliver," he observed, beaming.
"There's the making of a fine man in him, but you mustn't let Jinny
spoil him. It took all my strength and authority to keep Lucy from
ruining Jinny, and I've always said that my brother-in-law Tom Bland
would have been a first-rate fellow if it hadn't been for the way his
mother raised him. God knows, I like a woman to be wrapped up heart and
soul in her household--and I don't suppose anybody ever accused the true
Southern lady of lacking in domesticity--but if they have a failing,
which I refuse to admit, it is that they are almost too soft-hearted
where their children--especially their sons--are concerned."
"I used to tell Virginia that she gave in to Harry too much when he was
a baby," said Oliver, who was evidently not without convictions
regarding the rearing of his offspring; "but she hasn't been nearly so
bad about it since Jenny came. Jenny is the one I'm anxious about now.
She is a headstrong little beggar and she has learned already how to get
around her mother when she wants anything. It's been worse, too," he
added, "since we lost the last poor little chap. Ever since then
Virginia has been in mortal terror for fear something would happen to
the others."
"It was hard on her," said the rector. "We men can't understand how
women feel about a thing like that, though," he added gently. "I
remember when we lost our babies--you know we had three before Virginia
came, but none of them lived more than a few hours--that I thought Lucy
would die of grief and disappointment. You see they have all the burden
and the anxiety of it, and I sometimes think that a child begins to live
for a woman a long time before a man ever thinks of it as a human
being."
"I suppose you're right," returned Oliver in the softened tone which
proved to Susan that he was emotionally stirred. "I tried to be as
sympathetic with Virginia as I could, but--do you know?--I stopped to
ask myself sometimes if I could really understand. It seemed to her so
strange that I wasn't knocked all to pieces by the thing--that I could
go on writing as if nothing had happened."
"I am not sure that it isn't beyond the imagination of a man to enter
into a woman's most sacred feeling," remarked the rector, with a touch
of the sentimentality in which he religiously shrouded the feminine sex.
So ineradicable, indeed, was his belief in the inherent virtue of every
woman, that he had several times fallen a helpless victim in the
financial traps of conscienceless Delilahs. But since his innocence was
as temperamental a quality as was Virginia's maternal passion,
experience had taught him nothing, and the fact that he had been
deceived in the past threw no shadow of safeguard around his steps in
the present. This endearing trait, which made him so successful as a
husband, was probably the cause of his unmitigated failure as a
reformer. In looking at a woman, it was impossible for him to see
anything except perfection.
When Susan reached the top of the staircase, Mrs. Pendleton called to
her, through the half open door of the nursery, to come in and hear how
beautifully Lucy was saying her prayers. Her voice was full of a
suppressed excitement; there was a soft pink flush in her cheeks; and it
seemed to Susan that the presence of her grandchildren had made her
almost a girl again. She sat on the edge of a trundle-bed slipping a
nightgown over the plump shoulders of little Lucy, who held herself very
still and prim, for she was a serious child, with a natural taste for
propriety. Her small plain face, with its prominent features and pale
blue eyes, had a look of intense earnestness and concentration, as
though the business of getting to bed absorbed all her energies; and the
only movement she made was to toss back the slender and very tight
braid of brown hair from her shoulders. She said her prayer as if it
were the multiplication table, and having finished, slid gently into
bed, and held up her face to be kissed.
"Jenny wouldn't drink but half of her bottle, Miss Virginia," said
Marthy, appearing suddenly on the threshold of Virginia's bedroom, for
the youngest child slept in the room with her mother. "She dropped off
to sleep so sound that I couldn't wake her."
"I hope she isn't sick, Marthy," responded Virginia in an anxious tone.
"Did she seem at all feverish?"
"Naw'm, she ain't feverish, she's jest sleepy headed."
"Well, I'll come and look at her as soon as I can persuade Harry to
finish his prayers. He stopped in the middle of them, and he refuses to
bless anybody but himself."
She spoke gravely, gazing with her exhaustless patience over the impish
yellow head of Harry, who knelt, in his little nightgown, on the rug at
her feet. His roving blue eyes met Susan's as she came over to him,
while his chubby face broke into a delicious smile.
"Don't notice him, Susan," said Virginia, in her lovely voice which was
as full of tenderness and as lacking in humour as her mother's. "Harry,
you shan't speak to Aunt Susan until you've been good and finished your
prayers."
"Don't want to speak to Aunt Susan," retorted the monster of infant
depravity, slipping his bare toes through a rent in the rug, and
doubling up with delight at his insubordination.
"I never knew him to behave like this before," said Virginia, almost in
tears from shame and weariness. "It must be the excitement of getting
here. He is usually so good. Now, Harry, begin all over again. 'God
bless dear papa, God bless dear mamma, God bless dear grandmamma, God
bless dear grandpapa, God bless dear Lucy, God bless dear Jenny, God
bless all our dear friends.'"
"God bless dear Harry," recited the monster.
"He has gone on like that ever since I started," said poor Virginia. "I
don't know what to do about it. It seems dreadful to let him go to bed
without saying his prayers properly. Now, Harry, please, please be good;
poor mother is so tired, and she wants to go and kiss little Jenny
good-night. 'God bless dear papa,' and I'll let you get in bed."
"God bless Harry," was the imperturbable rejoinder to this pleading.
"Don't you want your poor mother to have some supper, Harry?" inquired
Susan severely.
"Harry wants supper," answered the innocent.
"I suppose I'll have to let him go," said Virginia, distractedly, "but
Oliver will be horrified. He says I don't reason with them enough.
Harry," she concluded sternly, "don't you understand that it is naughty
of you to behave this way and keep mamma away from poor little Jenny?"
"Bad Jenny," said Harry.
"If you don't say your prayers this minute, you shan't have any
preserves on your bread to-morrow."
"Bad preserves," retorted Harry.
"Well, if he won't, I don't see how I can make him," said Virginia.
"Come, then, get into bed, Harry, and go to sleep. You have been a bad
boy and hurt poor mamma's feelings so that she is going to cry. She
won't be able to eat her supper for thinking of the way you have
disobeyed her."
Jumping into bed with a bound, Harry dug his head into the pillows,
gurgled, and then sat up very straight.
"God bless dear papa, God bless dear mamma, God bless dear grandmamma,
God bless dear grandpapa, God bless dear Lucy, God bless dear Jenny, God
bless our dear friends everywhere," he repeated in a resounding voice.
"Oh, you precious lamb!" exclaimed Virginia. "He couldn't bear to hurt
poor mamma, could he?" and she kissed him ecstatically before hastening
to the slumbering Jenny in the adjoining room.
"I like the little scamp," said Susan, when she reported the scene to
John Henry on the way home, "but he manages his mother perfectly.
Already his sense of humour is better developed than hers."
"I can't get over seeing Virginia with children," observed John Henry,
as if the fact of Virginia's motherhood had just become evident to him.
"It suits her, though. She looked happier than I ever saw her--and so,
for that matter, did Aunt Lucy."
"It made me wonder how Mrs. Pendleton had lived away from them for seven
years. Why, you can't imagine what she is--she doesn't seem to have any
life at all until you see her with Virginia's children."
"It's a wonderful thing," said John Henry slowly, "and it taught me a
lot just to look at them. I don't know why, but it seemed to make me
understand how much I care about you, Susan."
"Hadn't you suspected it before?" asked Susan as calmly as he had
spoken. Emotionalism, she knew, she would never find in John Henry's
wooing, and, though she could not have explained the reason of it to
herself, she liked the brusque directness of his courtship. It was part
of that large sincerity of nature which had first attracted her to him.
"Of course, in a way I knew I cared more for you than for anybody
else--but I didn't realize that you were more to me than Virginia had
ever been. I had got so in the habit of thinking I was in love with her
that it came almost as a surprise to me to find that it was over."
"I knew it long ago," said Susan.
"Why didn't you make me see it?"
"Oh, I waited for you to find it out yourself. I was sure that you would
some day."
"Do you think you could ever care for me, Susan?"
A smile quivered on Susan's lips as she looked up at him, but with the
reticence which had always characterized her, she answered simply:
"I think I could, John Henry."
His hand reached down and closed over hers, and in the long look which
they exchanged under the flickering street lamp, she felt suddenly that
perfect security which is usually the growth of happy years. Whatever
the future brought to them, she knew that she could trust John Henry's
love for her.
"And we've lost seven years, dearest," he said, with a catch in his
voice. "We've lost seven years just because I happened to be born a
fool."
"But we've got fifty ahead of us," she replied with a joyous laugh.
As she spoke, her heart cried out, "Fifty years of the thing I want!"
and she looked up into the kind, serious face of John Henry as if it
were the face of incarnate happiness. A tremendous belief in life
surged from her brain through her body, which felt incredibly warm and
young. She thought exultantly of herself as of one who did not accept
destiny, but commanded it.
They walked the rest of the way in silence, but he held her hand pressed
closely against his heart, and once or twice he turned in the deserted
street and looked into her eyes as if he found there all the words that
he needed.
"We won't waste any more time, will we, Susan?" he asked when they
reached the house. "Let's be married in December."
"If mother is better by then. She hasn't been well, and I am anxious
about her."
"We'll go to housekeeping at once. I'll begin looking about to-morrow.
God bless you, darling, for what you are giving me."
She caressed his hand gently with her fingers, and he was about to speak
again, when the door behind them opened and the head of Cyrus appeared
like that of a desolate bird of prey.
"Is that you, Susan?" he inquired. "Where have you been all this time?
Your mother was taken ill more than an hour ago, and the doctor says
that she has been paralyzed."
Breaking away from John Henry, Susan ran up the steps and past her
father into the hall, where Miss Willy stood weeping.
"I was all by myself with her. There wasn't another living soul in the
house," sobbed the little dressmaker. "She fell over just like that,
with her face all twisted, while I was talking to her."
"Oh, poor mother, poor mother!" cried the girl as she ran upstairs. "Is
she in her room, and who is with her?"
"The doctor has been there for over an hour, and he says that she'll
never be able to move again. Oh, Susan, how will she stand it?"
But Susan had already outstripped her, and was entering the sick-room,
where Mrs. Treadwell lay unconscious, with her distorted face turned
toward the door, as though she were watching expectantly for some one
who would never come. As the girl fell on her knees beside the couch,
her happiness seemed to dissolve like mist before the grim facts of
mortal anguish and death. It was not until dawn, when the night's watch
was over and she stood alone beside her window, that she said to herself
with all the courage she could summon:
"And it's over for me, too. Everything is over for me, too. Oh, poor,
poor mother!"
Love, which had seemed to her last night the supreme spirit in the
universe, had surrendered its authority to the diviner image of Duty.
CHAPTER IV
HER CHILDREN
"Poor Aunt Belinda was paralyzed last night, Oliver," said Virginia the
next morning at breakfast. "Miss Willy Whitlow just brought me a message
from Susan. She spent the night there and was on her way this morning to
ask mother to go."
Oliver had come downstairs in one of his absent-minded moods, but by the
time Virginia had repeated her news he was able to take it in, and to
show a proper solicitude for his aunt.
"Are you going there?" he asked. "I am obliged to do a little work on my
play while I have the idea, but tell Susan I'll come immediately after
dinner."
"I'll stop to inquire on my way back from market, but I won't be able to
stay, because I've got all my unpacking to do. Can you take the children
out this afternoon so Marthy can help me?"
"I'm sorry, but I simply can't. I've got to get on with this idea while
I have control of it, and if I go out with the children I shan't be able
to readjust my thoughts for twenty-fours hours."
"I'd like to go out with papa," said Lucy, who sat carefully drinking
her cambric tea, so that she might not spill a drop on the mahogany
table.
"I want to go with papa," remarked Harry obstreperously, while he began
to drum with his spoon on the red tin tray which protected the table
from his assaults.
"Papa can't go with you, darling, but if mamma finishes her unpacking in
time, she'll come out into the park and play with you a little while. Be
careful, Harry, you are spilling your milk. Let mamma take your spoon
out for you."
Her coffee, which she had poured out a quarter of an hour ago, stood
untasted and tepid beside her plate, but from long habit she had grown
to prefer it in that condition. When the waffles were handed to her, she
had absent-mindedly helped herself to one, while she watched Harry's
reckless efforts to cut up his bacon, and it had grown sodden before she
remembered that it ought to be buttered. She wore the black skirt and
blue blouse in which she had travelled, for she had neglected to unpack
her own clothes in her eagerness to get out the things that Oliver and
the children might need. Her hair had been hastily coiled around her
head, without so much as a glance in the mirror, but the expression of
unselfish goodness in her face lent a charm even to the careless fashion
in which she had put on her clothes. She was one of those women whose
beauty, being essentially virginal, belongs, like the blush of the rose,
to a particular season. The delicacy of her skin invited the mark of
time or of anxiety, and already fine little lines were visible, in the
strong light of the morning, at the corners of her eyes and mouth. Yet
neither the years or her physical neglect of herself could destroy the
look of almost angelic sweetness and love which illumined her features.
"Are you obliged to go to New York next week, Oliver?" she asked,
dividing her attention equally between him and Harry's knife and fork.
"Can't they rehearse 'The Beaten Road' just as well without you?"
"No, I want to be there. Is there any reason why I shouldn't?"
"Of course not. I was only thinking that Harry's birthday comes on
Friday, and we should miss you."
"Well, I'm awfully sorry, but he'll have to grow old without me. By the
way, why can't you run on with me for the first night, Virginia? Your
mother can look after the babies for a couple of days, can't she?"
But the absent-minded look of young motherhood had settled again on
Virginia's face, for the voice of Jenny, raised in exasperated demand,
was heard from the nursery above.
"I wonder what's the matter?" she said, half rising in her chair, while
she glanced nervously at the door. "She was so fretful last night,
Oliver, that I'm afraid she is going to be sick. Will you keep an eye on
Harry while I run up and see?"
Ten minutes later she came down again, and began, with a relieved
manner, to stir her cold coffee.
"What were you saying, Oliver?" she inquired so sweetly that his
irritation vanished.
"I was just asking you if you couldn't let your mother look after the
youngsters for a day or two and come on with me."
"Oh, I'd give anything in the world to see it, but I couldn't possibly
leave the children. I'd be so terribly anxious for fear something would
happen."
"Sometimes I get in a blue funk about that play," he said seriously.
"I've staked so much on it that I'll be pretty well cut up, morally and
financially, if it doesn't go."
"But of course it will go, Oliver. Anybody could tell that just to read
it. Didn't Mr. Martin write you that he thought it one of the strongest
plays ever written in America--and I'm sure that is a great deal for a
manager to say. Nobody could read a line of it without seeing that it is
a work of genius."
For an instant he appeared to draw assurance from her praise; then his
face clouded, and he responded doubtfully:
"But you thought just as well of 'April Winds,' and nobody would look at
that."
"Well, that was perfect too, of its kind, but of course they are
different."
"I never thought much of that," he said, "but I honestly believe that
'The Beaten Road' is a great play. That's my judgment, and I'll stand by
it."
"Of course it's great," she returned emphatically. "No, Harry, you can't
have any more syrup on your buckwheat cake. You have eaten more already
than sister Lucy, and she is two years older than you are."
"Give it to the little beggar. It won't hurt him," said Oliver
impatiently, as Harry began to protest.
"But he really oughtn't to have it, Oliver. Well, then, just a drop. Oh,
Oliver, you've given him a great deal too much. Here, take mamma's plate
and give her yours, Harry."
But Harry made no answer to her plea, because he was busily eating the
syrup as fast as he could under pressure of the fear that he might lose
it all if he procrastinated.
"He'll be sick before night and you'll have yourself to blame, Oliver,"
said Virginia reproachfully.
Ever since the babies had come she had assumed naturally that Oliver's
interest in the small details of his children's clothes or health was
perpetually fresh and absorbing like her own, and her habit of not
seeing what she did not want to see in life had protected her from the
painful discovery that he was occasionally bored. Once he had even tried
to explain to her that, although he loved the children better than
either his plays or the political fate of nations, there were times when
the latter questions interested him considerably more; but the humour
with which he inadvertently veiled his protest had turned the point of
it entirely away from her comprehension. A deeper impression was made
upon her by the fact that he had refused to stop reading about the last
Presidential campaign long enough to come and persuade Harry to swallow
a dose of medicine. She, who seldom read a newspaper, and was innocent
of any desire to exert even the most indirect influence upon the
elections, had waked in the night to ask herself if it could possibly be
true that Oliver loved the children less passionately than she did.
"I've got to get to work now, dear," he said, rising. "I haven't had a
quiet breakfast since Harry first came to the table. Don't you think
Marthy might feed him upstairs again?"
"Oh, Oliver! It would break his heart. He would think that he was in
disgrace."
"Well, I'm not sure that he oughtn't to be. Now, Lucy's all right. She
behaves like a lady--but if you consider Harry an appetizing table
companion, I don't."
"But, dearest, he's only a baby! And boys are different from girls. You
can't expect them to have as good manners."
"I can't remember that I ever made a nuisance of myself."
"Your father was very strict with you. But surely you don't think it is
right to make your children afraid of you?"
The genuine distress in her voice brought a laugh from him.
"Oh, well, they are your children, darling, and you may do as you please
with them."
"Bad papa!" said Harry suddenly, chasing the last drop of syrup around
his plate with a bit of bread crumb.
"Oh, no, precious; good papa! You must promise papa to be a little
gentleman or he won't let you breakfast with him any more."
It was Virginia's proud boast that Harry's smile would melt even his
great-uncle, Cyrus, and she watched him with breathless rapture as he
turned now in his high chair and tested the effect of this magic charm
on his father. His baby mouth broadened deliciously, showing two rows of
small irregular teeth; his blue eyes shone until they seemed full of
sparkles; his roguish, irresistible face became an incarnation of infant
entreaty.
"I want to bekfast wid papa, an' I want more 'lasses," he remarked.
"He's a fascinating little rascal, there's no doubt of that," observed
Oliver, in response to Virginia's triumphant look. Then, bending over,
he kissed her on the cheek, before he picked up his newspapers and went
into his study at the back of the parlour.
Some hours later, at their early dinner, she reported the result of her
visit to the Treadwells.
"It is too awful, Oliver. Aunt Belinda has not spoken yet, and she can't
move the lower part of her body at all. The doctor says she may live for
years, but he doesn't think she will ever be able to walk again. I feel
so sorry for her and for poor Susan. Do you know, Susan engaged herself
to John Henry last night just before her mother was paralyzed, and they
were to be married in December. But now she says she will give him up."
"John Henry!" exclaimed Oliver in amazement. "Why, what in the world
does she see in John Henry?"
"I don't know--one never knows what people see in each other, but she
has been in love with him all her life, I believe."
"Well, it's rough on her. Is she obliged to break off with him now?"
"She says it wouldn't be fair to him not to. Her whole time must be
given to nursing her mother. There's something splendid about Susan,
Oliver. I never realized it as much as I did to-day. Whatever she does,
you may be sure it will be because it is right to do it. She sees
everything so clearly, and her wishes never obscure her judgment."
"It's a pity. She'd make a great mother, wouldn't she? But life doesn't
seem able to get along without a sacrifice of the fittest."
In the afternoon Mrs. Pendleton came over, but the two women were so
busy arranging the furniture in its proper place, and laying away
Oliver's and the children's things in drawers and closets, that not
until the entire house had been put in order, did they find time to sit
down for a few minutes in the nursery and discuss the future of Susan.
"I believe John Henry will want to marry her and go to live at the
Treadwells', if Susan will let him," remarked Mrs. Pendleton.
"How on earth could he get on with Uncle Cyrus?" Ever since her marriage
Virginia had followed Oliver's habit and spoken of Cyrus as "uncle."
"Well, I don't suppose even John Henry could do that, but perhaps he
thinks anything would be better than losing Susan."
"And he's right," returned Virginia loyally, while she got out her
work-bag and began sorting the array of stockings that needed darning.
"Do you know, mother, Oliver seems to think that I might go to New York
with him."
"And leave the children, Jinny?"
"Of course I've told him that I can't, but he's asked me two or three
times to let you look after them for a day or two."
"I'd love to do it, darling--but you've never spent a night away from
one of them since Lucy was born, have you?"
"No, and I'd be perfectly miserable--only I can't make Oliver understand
it. Of course, they'd be just as safe with you as with me, but I'd keep
imagining every minute that something had happened."
"I know exactly how you feel, dear. I never spent a night outside my
home after my first child came until you grew up. I don't see how any
true woman could bear to do it, unless, of course, she was called away
because of a serious illness."
"If Oliver were ill, or you, or father, I'd go in a minute unless one of
the children was really sick--but just to see a play is different, and
I'd feel as if I were neglecting my duty. The funny part is that Oliver
is so wrapped up in this play that he doesn't seem to be able to get his
mind off it, poor darling. Father was never that way about his sermons,
was he?"
"Your father never thought of himself or of his own interests enough,
Jinny. If he ever had a fault, it was that. But I suppose he approaches
perfection as nearly as a man ever did."
Slipping the darning gourd into the toe of one of Lucy's little white
stockings, Virginia gazed attentively at a small round hole while she
held her needle arrested slightly above it. So exquisitely Madonna-like
was the poise of her head and the dreaming, prophetic mystery in her
face, that Mrs. Pendleton waited almost breathlessly for her words.
"There's not a single thing that I would change in Oliver, if I could,"
she said at last.
"It is so beautiful that you feel that way, darling. I suppose all
happily married women do."
A week later, across Harry's birthday cake, which stood surrounded by
four candles in the centre of the rectory table, Virginia offered her
cheerful explanation of Oliver's absence, in reply to a mild inquiry
from the rector. "He was obliged to go to New York yesterday about the
rehearsal of 'The Beaten Road,' father. We were both so sorry he
couldn't be here to-day, but it was impossible for him to wait over."
"It's a pity," said the rector gently. "Harry will never be just four
years old again, will you, little man?" Even the substantial fact that
Oliver's play would, it was hoped, provide a financial support for his
children, did not suffice to lift it from the region of the unimportant
in the mind of his father-in-law.
"But he'll have plenty of other birthdays when papa will be here,"
remarked Virginia brightly. Though she had been a little hurt to find
that Oliver had arranged to leave home the night before, and that he had
appeared perfectly blind to the importance of his presence at Harry's
celebration, her native good sense had not permitted her to make a
grievance out of the matter. On her wedding day she had resolved that
she would not be exacting of Oliver's time or attention, and the
sweetness of her disposition had smoothed away any difficulties which
had intervened between her and her ideal of wifehood. From the first,
love had meant to her the opportunity of giving rather than the
privilege of receiving, and her failure to regard herself as of supreme
consequence in any situation had protected her from the minor troubles
and disillusionments of marriage.
"It is too bad to think that dear Oliver will have to be away for two
whole weeks," said Mrs. Pendleton.
"Is he obliged to stay that long?" asked the rector, sympathetically.
Never having missed an anniversary since the war, he could look upon
Oliver's absence as a fit subject for condolence.
"He can't possibly come home until the play is produced, and that won't
be for two weeks yet," replied Virginia.
"But I thought it rested with the actors now. Couldn't they go on just
as well without him?"
"He thinks not, and, of course, it is such a great play that he doesn't
want to take any risks with it."
"Of course he doesn't," assented Mrs. Pendleton, who had believed that
the stage was immoral until Virginia's husband began to write for it.
"I know he'll come back the very first minute that he can get away,"
said Virginia with conviction, before she stooped to comfort Harry, who
was depressed by the discovery that he was not expected to eat his
entire cake, but instantly hopeful when he was promised a slice of
sister Lucy's in the summer.
Late in the afternoon, when the children, warmly wrapped in extra shawls
by Mrs. Pendleton, were led back through the cold to the house in Prince
Street, one and all of the party agreed that it was the nicest birthday
that had ever been. "I like grandma's cake better than our cake,"
announced Harry above his white muffler. "Why can't we have cake like
that, mamma?"
He was trotting sturdily, with his hand in Virginia's, behind the
perambulator, which contained a much muffled Jenny, and at his words
Mrs. Pendleton, who walked a little ahead, turned suddenly and hugged
him tight for an instant.
"Just listen to the darling boy!" she exclaimed, in a choking voice.
"Because nobody else can make such good cake as grandma's," answered
Virginia, quite as pleased as her mother. "And she's going to give you
one every birthday as long as you live."
"Can't I have another birthday soon, mamma?"
"Not till after sister Lucy's. You want sister Lucy to have one, don't
you? and dear little Jenny?"
"But why can't I have a cake without a birthday, mamma?"
"You may, precious, and grandma will make you one," said Mrs. Pendleton,
as she helped Marthy wheel the perambulator over the slippery crossing
and into the front gate.
On the hall table there was a telegram from Oliver, and Virginia tore it
open while her mother and Marthy unfastened the children's wraps.
"He's at the Hotel Bertram," she said joyously, "and he says the
rehearsals are going splendidly."
"Did he mention Harry's birthday?" asked Mrs. Pendleton, trying to hide
the instinctive dread which the sight of a telegram aroused in her.
"He must have forgotten it. Can't you come upstairs to the nursery with
us, mother?"
"No, your father is all alone. I must be getting back," replied Mrs.
Pendleton gently.
An hour or two later, when Virginia sat in her rocking-chair before the
nursery fire, with Harry, worn out with his play and forgetful of the
dignity of his four years, asleep in her lap, she opened the telegram
again and reread it hungrily while the light of love shone in her face.
She knew intuitively that Oliver had sent the telegram because he had
not written--and would not write, probably, until he had finished with
the hardest work of his play. It was an easy thing to do--it took
considerably less of his time than a letter would have done; but she had
inherited from her mother the sentimental vision of life which
unconsciously magnifies the meaning of trivial attentions. She looked
through her emotions as through a prism on the simple fact of his
telegraphing, and it became immediately transfigured. How dear it was of
him to realize that she would be anxious until she heard from him! How
lonely he must be all by himself in that great city! How much he must
have wanted to be with Harry on his birthday! Sitting there in the
fire-lit nursery, her heart sent out waves of love and sympathy to him
across the distance and the twilight. On the rug at her feet Lucy rocked
in her little chair, crooning to her doll with the beginnings of the
mother instinct already softening her voice, and in the adjoining room
Jenny lay asleep in her crib while the faithful Marthy watched by her
side. Beyond the window a fine icy rain had begun to fall, and down the
long street she could see the lamps flickering in revolving circles of
frost. In the midst of the frozen streets, that little centre of red
firelight separated her as completely from the other twenty-one thousand
human beings among whom she lived as did the glow of personal joy that
suffused her thoughts. From the dusk below she heard the tapping of a
blind beggar's stick on the pavement, and the sound made, while it
lasted, a plaintive accompaniment to the lullaby she was singing. "Two
whole weeks," she thought, while her longing reached out to that unknown
room in which she pictured Oliver sitting alone. "Two whole weeks. How
hard it will be for him." In her guarded ignorance of the world she
could not imagine that Oliver was suffering less from this enforced
absence from all he loved than she herself would have suffered had she
been in his place. Of course, men were different from women--that
ancient dogma was embodied in the leading clause of her creed of life;
but she had always understood that this difference vanished in some
miraculous way after marriage. She knew that Oliver had to work, of
course--how otherwise could he support his family?--but the idea that
his work might ever usurp the place in his heart that belonged to her
and the children would have been utterly incomprehensible to her had she
ever thought of it. Jealousy was an alien weed, which could not take
root in the benign soil of her nature.
For a week there was no letter from Oliver, and at the end of that time
a few lines scrawled on a sheet of hotel paper explained that he spent
every minute of his time at the theatre.
"Poor fellow, it's dreadfully hard on him, isn't it?" Virginia said to
her mother, when she showed her the imposing picture of the hotel at the
head of his letter.
There was no hint of compassion for herself in her voice. Her pity was
entirely for Oliver, constrained to be away for two whole weeks from his
children, who grew more interesting and delightful every day that they
lived. "Harry has gone into the first reader," she added, turning from
the storeroom shelves on which she was laying strips of white oilcloth.
"He will be able to read his lesson to Oliver when he comes home."
"I have always understood that your father could read his Bible at the
age of four," remarked Mrs. Pendleton, who passionately treasured this
solitary proof of the rector's brilliancy.
"I am afraid Harry is backward. He hates his letters--especially the
letter A--so much that it takes me an hour sometimes to get him to say
it after me. My only comfort is that Oliver says he couldn't read a line
until he was over seven years old. Would you scallop this oilcloth,
mother, or leave it plain?"
"I always scallop mine. Mrs. Treadwell must be better, Jinny; Susan sent
me a dessert yesterday."
"Yes, but she will never be able to move herself. Do you think that poor
Susan will marry John Henry now?"
"I wonder?" replied Mrs. Pendleton vaguely. Then the sound of Harry's
laughter floated in suddenly from the backyard, and her eyes, following
Virginia's, turned automatically to the pantry window.
"They've come home for a snack, I suppose?" she said. "Shall I fix some
bread and preserves for them?"
"Oh, I'll do it," responded Virginia, while she reached for the crock of
blackberry jam on the shelf at her side.
Another week passed and there was no word from Oliver, until Mrs.
Pendleton came in at dusk one evening, with an anxious look on her face
and a folded newspaper held tightly in her hand.
"Have you seen any of the accounts of Oliver's play, Jinny?" she asked.
"No, I haven't had time to look at the papers to-day--Harry has hurt his
foot."
She spoke placidly, looking up from the nursery floor, where she knelt
beside a basin of warm water at Harry's feet. "Poor little fellow, he
fell on a pile of bricks," she added, "but he's such a hero he never
even whimpered, did he, darling?"
"But it hurt bad," said Harry eagerly.
"Of course, it hurt dreadfully, and if he hadn't been a man he would
have cried."
"Sister would have cried," exulted the hero.
"Indeed, sister would have cried. Sister is a girl," responded Virginia,
smothering him with kisses over the basin of water.
But Mrs. Pendleton refused to be diverted from her purpose even by the
heroism of her grandson.
"John Henry found this in a New York paper and brought it to me. He
thought you ought to see it, though, of course, it may not be so
serious as it sounds."
"Serious?" repeated Virginia, letting the soapy washrag fall back into
the basin while she stretched out her moist and reddened hand for the
paper.
"It says that the play didn't go very well," pursued her mother
guardedly. "They expect to take it off at once, and--and Oliver is not
well--he is ill in the hotel----"
"Ill?" cried Virginia, and as she rose to her feet the basin upset and
deluged Harry's shoes and the rug on which she had been kneeling. Her
mind, unable to grasp the significance of a theatrical failure, had
seized upon the one salient fact which concerned her. Plays might
succeed or fail, and it made little difference, but illness was another
matter--illness was something definite and material. Illness could
neither be talked away by religion nor denied by philosophy. It had its
place in her mind not with the shadow, but with the substance of things.
It was the one sinister force which had always dominated her, even when
it was absent, by the sheer terror it aroused in her thoughts.
"Let me see," she said chokingly. "No, I can't read it--tell me."
"It only says that the play was a failure--nobody understood it, and a
great many people said it was--oh, Virginia--_immoral!_--There's
something about its being foreign and an attack on American ideals--and
then they add that the author refused to be interviewed and they
understood that he was ill in his room at the Bertram."
The charge of immorality, which would have crushed Virginia at another
time, and which, even in the intense excitement of the moment, had been
an added stab to Mrs. Pendleton, was brushed aside as if it were the
pestiferous attack of an insect.
"I am going to him now--at once--when does the train leave, mother?"
"But, Jinny, how can you? You have never been to New York. You wouldn't
know where to go."
"But he is ill. Nothing on earth is going to keep me away from him. Will
you please wipe Harry's feet while I try to get on my clothes?"
"But, Jinny, the children?"
"You and Marthy must look after the children. Of course I can't take
them with me. Oh, Harry, won't you please hush and let poor mamma dress?
She is almost distracted."
Something--a secret force of character which even her mother had not
suspected that she possessed--had arisen in an instant and dominated the
situation. She was no longer the gentle and doting mother of a minute
ago, but a creature of a fixed purpose and an iron resolution. Even her
face appeared to lose its soft contour and hardened until Mrs. Pendleton
grew almost frightened. Never had she imagined that Virginia could look
like this.
"I am sure there is some mistake about it. Don't take it so terribly to
heart, Jinny," she pleaded, while she knelt down, cowed and obedient, to
wipe Harry's feet.
Virginia, who had already torn off her house dress, and was hurriedly
buttoning the navy blue waist in which she had travelled, looked at her
calmly without pausing for an instant in her task.
"Will you bind up his foot with some arnica?" she asked. "There's an
old handkerchief in my work basket. I want you and father to come here
and stay until I get back. It will be less trouble than moving all their
things over to the rectory."
"Very well, darling," replied Mrs. Pendleton meekly. "We'll do
everything that we can, of course," and she added timidly, "Have you
money enough?"
"I have thirty dollars. I just got it out of the bank to-day to pay
Marthy and my housekeeping bills. Do you think that will be as much as
I'll need?"
"I should think so, dear. Of course, if you find you want more, you can
telegraph your father."
"The train doesn't leave for two hours, so I'll have plenty of time to
get ready. It's just half-past six now, and Oliver didn't leave the
house till eight o'clock."
"Won't you take a little something to eat before you go?"
"I couldn't swallow a morsel, but I'll sit with you and the children as
soon as I've put the things in my satchel. I couldn't possibly need but
this one dress, could I? If Oliver isn't really ill, I hope we can start
home to-morrow. That will be two nights that I'll spend away. Oh,
mother, ask father to pray that he won't be ill."
Her voice broke, but she fiercely bit back the sob before it escaped her
lips.
"I will, dear, I promise you. We will both think of you and pray for you
every minute. Jinny, are you sure it's wise? Couldn't we send some
one--John Henry would go, I know--in your place?"
A spasm of irritation contracted Virginia's features. "Please don't,
mother," she begged, "it just worries me. Whatever happens, I am
going." Then she sobbed outright. "He wanted me to go with him at first,
and I wouldn't because I thought it was my duty to stay at home with the
children. If anything should happen to him, I'd never forgive myself."
She was slipping her black cloth skirt over her head as she spoke, and
her terror-stricken face disappeared under the pleats before Mrs.
Pendleton could turn to look at her. When her head emerged again above
the belt of her skirt, the expression of her features had grown more
natural.
"You'll go down in a carriage, won't you?" inquired her mother, whose
mind achieved that perfect mixture of the sentimental and the practical
which is rarely found in any except Southern women.
"I suppose I'll have to. Then I can take my satchel with me, and that
will save trouble. You won't forget, mother, that I give Lucy a
teaspoonful of cod-liver oil after each meal, will you? She has had that
hacking cough for three weeks, and I want to break it up."
"I'll remember, Jinny, but I'm so miserable about your going alone."
Turning to the closet, Virginia unearthed an old black satchel from
beneath a pile of toys, and began dusting it inside with a towel. Then
she took out some underclothes from a bureau drawer and a few toilet
articles, which she wrapped in pieces of tissue paper. Her movements
were so methodical that the nervousness in Mrs. Pendleton's mind slowly
gave way to astonishment. For the first time in her life, perhaps, the
mother realized that her daughter was no longer a child, but a woman,
and a woman whose character was as strong and as determined as her own.
Vaguely she understood, without analyzing the motives that moved
Virginia, that this strength and this determination which so impressed
her had arisen from those deep places in her daughter's soul where
emotion and not thought had its source. Love was guiding her now as
surely as it had guided her when she had refused to go with Oliver to
New York, or when, but a few minutes ago, she had knelt down to wash and
bandage Harry's little earth-stained feet. It was the only power to
which she would ever surrender. No other principle would ever direct or
control her.
Marthy, who appeared with Jenny's supper, was sent out to order the
carriage and to bear a message to the rector, and Virginia took the
little girl in her lap and began to crumble the bread into the bowl of
milk.
"Wouldn't you like me to do that, dear?" asked Mrs. Pendleton, with a
submission in her tone which she had never used before except to the
rector. "Don't you want to fix your hair over?"
"Oh, no, I'll keep on my hat till I go to bed, so it doesn't matter. I'd
rather you'd finish my packing if you don't mind. There's nothing more
to go in except some collars and my bedroom slippers and that red
wrapper hanging behind the door in the closet."
"Are you going to take any medicine?"
"Only that bottle of camphor and some mustard plasters. Yes, you'd
better put in the brandy flask and the aromatic ammonia. You can never
tell when you will need them. Now, my darlings, mother is going away and
you must keep well and be as good as gold until she comes back."
To the amazement of Mrs. Pendleton (who reflected that you really never
knew what to expect of children), this appeal produced an immediate and
extraordinary result. Lucy, who had been fidgeting about and trying to
help with the packing, became suddenly solemn and dignified, while an
ennobling excitement mounted to Harry's face. Never particularly
obedient before, they became, as soon as the words were uttered, as
amenable as angels. Even Jenny stopped feeding long enough to raise
herself and pat her mother's cheek with ten caressing, milky fingers.
"Mother's going away," said Lucy in a solemn voice, and a hush fell on
the three of them.
"And grandma's coming here to live," added Harry after the silence had
grown so depressing that Virginia had started to cry.
"Not to live, precious," corrected Mrs. Pendleton quickly. "Just to
spend two days with you. Mother will be home in two days."
"Mother will be home in two days," repeated Lucy. "May I stay away from
school while you're away, mamma?"
"And may I stop learning my letters?" asked Harry.
"No, darlings, you must do just as if I were here. Grandma will take
care of you. Now promise me that you will be good."
They promised obediently, awed to submission by the stupendous
importance of the change. It is probable that they would have observed
with less surprise any miraculous upheaval in the orderly phenomena of
nature.
"I don't see how I can possibly leave them--they are so good, and they
behave exactly as if they realized how anxious I am," wept Virginia,
breaking down when Marthy came to announce that the rector had come and
the carriage was at the door.
"Suppose you give it up, Jinny. I--I'll send your father," pleaded Mrs.
Pendleton, in desperation as she watched the tragedy of the parting.
But that strange force which the situation had developed in Virginia
yielded neither to her mother's prayers nor to the last despairing wails
of the children, who realized, at the sight of the black bag in Marthy's
hands, that their providence was actually deserting them. The deepest of
her instincts--the instinct that was at the root of all her mother
love--was threatened, and she rose to battle. The thing she loved best,
she had learned, was neither husband nor child, but the one that needed
her.
CHAPTER V
FAILURE
She had lain down in her clothes, impelled by the feeling that if there
were to be a wreck she should prefer to appear completely dressed; so
when the chill dawn came at last and the train pulled into Jersey City,
she had nothing to do except to adjust her veil and wait patiently until
the porter came for her bag. His colour, which was black, inspired her
with confidence, and she followed him trustfully to the platform, where
he delivered her to another smiling member of his race. The cold was so
penetrating that her teeth began to chatter as she turned to obey the
orders of the dusky official who had assumed command of her. Never had
she felt anything so bleak as the atmosphere of the station. Never in
her life had she been so lonely as she was while she hurried down the
long dim platform in the direction of a gate which looked as if it led
into a prison. She was chilled through; her skin felt as if it had
turned to india rubber; there was a sickening terror in her soul; and
she longed above all things to sit down on one of the inhospitable
tracks and burst into tears; but something stronger than impulse urged
her shivering body onward and controlled the twitching muscles about her
mouth. "In a few minutes I shall see Oliver. Oliver is ill and I am
going to him," she repeated over and over to herself as if she were
reciting a prayer.
Inside the station she declined the offer of breakfast, and was
conducted to the ferry, where she was obliged to run in order to catch
the boat that was just leaving. Seated on one of the long benches in the
saloon, with her bag at her feet and her umbrella grasped tightly in her
hand, she gazed helplessly at the other passengers and wondered if any
one of them would tell her what to do when she reached the opposite
side. The women, she thought, looked hard and harassed, and the men she
could not see because of the rows of newspapers behind which they were
hidden. Once her wandering gaze caught the eyes of a middle-aged woman
in rusty black, who smiled at her above the head of a sleeping child.
"That's a pretty woman," said a man carelessly, as he put down his
paper, and she realized that he was talking about her to his companion.
Then, as the terrible outlines of the city grew more distinct on the
horizon, he got up and strolled as carelessly past her to the deck. He
had spoken of her as indifferently as he might have spoken of the
weather.
As the tremendous battlements (which were not tremendous to any of the
other passengers) emerged slowly from the mist and cleft the sombre
low-hanging clouds, from which a few flakes of snow fell, her terror
vanished suddenly before the excitement which ran through her body. She
forgot her hunger, her loneliness, her shivering flesh, her benumbed and
aching feet. A sensation not unlike the one with which the rector had
marched into his first battle, fortified and exhilarated her. The
fighting blood of of her ancestors grew warm in her veins. New York
developed suddenly from a mere spot on a map into a romance made into
brick; and when a ray of sunlight pierced the heavy fog, and lay like a
white wing aslant the few falling snowflakes, it seemed to her that the
shadowy buildings lost their sinister aspect and softened into a
haunting and mysterious beauty. Somewhere in that place of mystery and
adventure Oliver was waiting for her! He was a part of that vast
movement of life into which she was going. Then, youth, from which hope
is never long absent, flamed up in her, and she was glad that she was
still beautiful enough to cause strangers to turn and look at her.
But this mood, also, passed quickly, and a little later, while she
rolled through the grey streets, into which the slant sunbeams could
bring no colour, she surrendered again to that terror of the unknown
which had seized her when she stood in the station. The beauty had
departed from the buildings; the pavements were dirty; the little
discoloured piles of snow made the crossings slippery and dangerous; and
she held her breath as they passed through the crowded streets on the
west side, overcome by the fear of "catching" some malign malady from
the smells and the filth. The negro quarters in Dinwiddie were dirty
enough, but not, she thought with a kind of triumph, quite so dirty as
New York. When the cab turned into Fifth Avenue, she took her
handkerchief from her nostrils; but this imposing street, which had not
yet emerged from its evil dream of Victorian brownstone, impressed her
chiefly as a place of a thousand prisons. It was impossible to believe
that those frowning walls, undecorated by a creeper or the shadow of a
tree, could really be homes where people lived and children were born.
At first she had gazed with a childish interest and curiosity on the
houses she was passing; then the sense of strangeness gave place
presently to the exigent necessity of reaching Oliver as soon as
possible. But the driver appeared indifferent to her timid taps on the
glass at his back, while the horse progressed with the feeble activity
of one who had spent a quarter of a century ineffectually making an
effort. Her impatience, which she had at first kept under control, began
to run in quivers of nervousness through her limbs. The very richness of
her personal life, which had condensed all experience into a single
emotional centre, and restricted her vision of the universe to that
solitary window of the soul through which she looked, prevented her now
from seeing in the city anything except the dreary background of
Oliver's illness and failure. The naïve wonder with which she had
watched the gigantic outlines shape themselves out of the white fog, had
faded utterly from her mind. She ached with longing to reach Oliver and
to find him well enough to take the first train back to Dinwiddie.
At the hotel her bag and umbrella were wrested from her by an imperious
uniformed attendant, and in what seemed to her an incredibly short space
of time, she was following him along a velvet lined corridor on the
tenth floor. The swift ascent in the elevator had made her dizzy, and
the physical sensation reminded her that she was weak for food. Then the
attendant rapped imperatively at a door just beyond a shining staircase,
and she forgot herself as completely as it had been her habit to do
since her marriage.
"Come in!" responded a muffled voice on the inside, and as the door
swung open, she saw Oliver, in his dressing-gown, and with an unshaved
face, reading a newspaper beside a table on which stood an untasted cup
of coffee.
"I didn't ring," he began impatiently, and then starting to his feet, he
uttered her name in a voice which held her standing as if she were
suddenly paralyzed on the threshold. "Virginia!"
A sob rose in her throat, and her faltering gaze passed from him to the
hotel attendant, who responded to her unspoken appeal as readily as if
it were a part of his regular business. Pushing her gently inside, he
placed her bag and umbrella on an empty chair, took up the breakfast
tray from the table, and inquired, with a kindness which strangely
humbled her, if she wished to give an order. When she had helplessly
shaken her head, he bowed and went out, closing the door softly upon
their meeting.
"What in thunder, Virginia?" began Oliver, and she realized that he was
angry.
"I heard you were sick--that the play had failed. I was so sorry I
hadn't come with you--" she explained; and then, understanding for the
first time the utter foolishness of what she had done, she put her hands
up to her face and burst into tears.
He had risen from his chair, but he made no movement to come nearer to
her, and when she took down her hands in order to wipe her eyes, she saw
an expression in his face which frightened her by its strangeness. She
had caught him when that guard which every human being--even a
husband--wears, had fallen away, though in her ignorance it seemed to
her that he had become suddenly another person. That she had entered
into one of those awful hours of self-realization, when the soul must
face its limitations alone and make its readjustments in silence, did
not occur to her, because she, who had lived every minute of her life
under the eyes of her parents or her children, could have no
comprehension of the hunger for solitude which was devouring Oliver's
heart. She saw merely that he did not want her--that she had not only
startled, but angered him by coming; and the bitterness of that instant
seemed to her more than she was able to bear. Something had changed him;
he was older, he was harder, he was embittered.
"I--I am so sorry," she stammered; and because even in the agony of this
moment she could not think long of herself, she added almost humbly,
"Would you rather that I should go back again?" Then, by the haggard
look of his face as he turned away from her towards the window, she saw
that he, also, was suffering, and her soul yearned over him as it had
yearned over Harry when he had had the toothache. "Oh, Oliver!" she
cried, and again, "Oh, Oliver, won't you let me help you?"
But he was in the mood of despairing humiliation when one may support
abuse better than pity. His failure, he knew, had been undeserved, and
he was still smarting from the injustice of it as from the blows of a
whip. For twenty-four hours his nerves had been on the rack, and his one
desire had been to hide himself in the spiritual nakedness to which he
was stripped. Had he been obliged to choose a witness to his suffering,
it is probable that he would have selected a stranger from the street
rather than his wife. The one thing that could have helped him, an
intelligent justification of his work, she was powerless to give. In his
need she had nothing except love to offer; and love, she felt
instinctively, was not the balm for his wound.
Afraid and yet passionately longing to meet his eyes, she let her gaze
fall away from him and wander timidly, as if uncertain where to rest,
about the disordered room, with its dull red walls, its cheap Nottingham
lace curtains tied back with cords, its elaborately carved walnut
furniture, and its litter of days old newspapers upon the bed. She saw
his neckties hanging in an uneven row over the oblong mirror, and she
controlled a nervous impulse to straighten them out and put them away.
"Why didn't you telegraph me?" he asked, after a pause in which she had
struggled vainly to look as if it were the most natural thing in the
world that he should receive her in this way. "If I had known you were
coming, I should have met you."
"Father wanted to, but I wouldn't let him," she answered. "I--I thought
you were sick."
In spite of his despair, it is probable that at the moment she was
suffering more than he was--since a wound to love strikes deeper, after
all, than a wound to ambition. Where she had expected to find her
husband, she felt vaguely that she had encountered a stranger, and she
was overwhelmed by that sense of irremediable loss which follows the
discovery of terrible and unfamiliar qualities in those whom we have
known and loved intimately for years. The fact that he was plainly
struggling to disguise his annoyance, that he was trying as hard as she
to assume a manner he did not feel, only added a sardonic humour to
poignant tragedy.
"Have you had anything to eat?" he asked abruptly, and remembering that
he had not kissed her when she entered, he put his arm about her and
brushed her cheek with his lips.
"No, I waited to breakfast with you. I was in such a hurry to get here."
"By Jove!" he exclaimed, and going over to the bell, he touched it with
the manner of a man who is delighted that anything so perfectly
practical as food exists in the world.
While he was speaking to the waiter, she took off her hat, and washed
the stains of smoke and tears from her face. Her hair was a sight, she
thought, but while she gazed back at her stricken eyes in the little
mirror over the washstand, she recalled with a throb of gratitude that
the stranger on the boat had said she was pretty. She felt so humble
that she clung almost with desperation to the thought that Oliver always
liked to have people admire her.
When she turned from the washstand, he was reading the newspaper again,
and he put it aside with a forced cheerfulness to arrange the table for
breakfast.
"Aren't you going to have something too?" she asked, looking
disconsolately at the tray, for all her hunger had departed. If he would
only be natural she felt that she could bear anything! If he would only
stop trying to pretend that he was not miserable and that nothing had
happened! After all, it couldn't be so very bad, could it? It wasn't in
the least as if one of the children were ill.
She poured out a cup of coffee for him before drinking her own, and
putting it down on the table at his side, waited patiently until he
should look up again from his paper. A lump as hard as lead had risen
in her throat and was choking her.
"Are the children well?" he asked presently, and she answered with an
affected brightness more harrowing than tears, "Yes, mother is taking
care of them. Lucy still has the little cough, but I'm giving her
cod-liver oil. And, what do you think? I have a surprise for you. Harry
can read the first lesson in his reader."
He smiled kindly back at her, but from the vacancy in his face, she
realized that he had not taken in a word that she had said. His trouble,
whatever it was, could absorb him so utterly that he had ceased even to
be interested in his children. He, who had borne so calmly the loss of
that day-old baby for whom she had grieved herself to a shadow, was
plunged into this condition of abject hopelessness merely because his
play was a failure! It was not only impossible for her to share his
suffering; she realized, while she watched him, that she could not so
much as comprehend it. Her limitations, of which she had never been
acutely conscious until to-day, appeared suddenly insurmountable. Love,
which had seemed to her to solve all problems and to smooth all
difficulties, was helpless to enlighten her. It was not love--it was
something else that she needed now, and of this something else she knew
not even so much as the name.
She drank her coffee quickly, fearing that if she did not take food she
should lose control of herself and anger him by a display of hysterics.
"I don't wonder you couldn't drink your coffee," she said with a
quivering little laugh. "It must have been made yesterday." Then, unable
to bear the strain any longer, she cried out sharply: "Oh, Oliver,
won't you tell me what is the matter?"
His look grew hard, while a spasm of irritation contracted his mouth.
"There's nothing you need worry about--except that I've borrowed money,
and I'm afraid we'll have to cut down things a bit until I manage to pay
it back."
"Why, of course we'll cut down things," she almost laughed in her
relief. "We can live on a great deal less, and I'll market so carefully
that you will hardly know the difference. I'll put Marthy in the kitchen
and take care of the children myself. It won't be the least bit of
trouble."
She knew by his face that he was grateful to her, though he said merely:
"I'm a little knocked up, I suppose, so you mustn't mind. I've got a
beast of a headache. Martin is going to take 'The Beaten Road' off at
the end of the week, you know, and he doesn't think now that he will
produce the other. There wasn't a good word for me from the critics, and
yet, damn them, I know that the play is the best one that's ever come
out of America. But it's real--that's why they fell foul of it--it isn't
stuffed with sugar plums."
"Why, what in the world possessed them?" she returned indignantly. "It
is a beautiful play."
She saw him flinch at the word, and the sombre irritation which his
outburst had relieved for a minute, settled again on his features. Her
praise, she understood, only exasperated him, though she did not realize
that it was the lack of discrimination in it which aroused his
irritation. At the moment, intelligent appreciation of his work would
have been bread and meat to him, but her pitiful attempts at flattery
were like bungling touches on raw flesh. Had he written the veriest rags
of sentimental rubbish, he knew she would as passionately have defended
their "beauty."
"I'll get dressed quickly and look after some business," he said, "and
we'll go home to-night."
Her eyes shone, and she began to eat her eggs with a resolution born of
the consoling memory of Dinwiddie. If only they could be at home again
with the children, she felt that all this trouble and misunderstanding
would vanish. With a strange confusion of ideas, it seemed to her that
Oliver's suffering had been in some mysterious way produced by New York,
and that it existed merely within the circumscribed limits of this
dreadful city.
"Oh, Oliver, that will be lovely!" she exclaimed, and tried to subdue
the note of joy in her voice.
"I shan't be able to get back to lunch, I'm afraid. What will you do
about it?"
"Don't bother about me, dearest. I'll dress and take a little walk just
to see what Fifth Avenue is like. I can't get lost if I go perfectly
straight up the street, can I?"
"Fifth Avenue is only a block away. You can't miss it. Now I'll hurry
and be off."
She knew that he was anxious to be alone, and so firmly was she
convinced that this mood of detachment would leave him as soon as he was
in the midst of his family again, that she was able to smile tolerantly
when he kissed her hastily, and seizing his hat, rushed from the room.
For a time after he had gone she amused herself putting his things in
order and packing the little tin trunk he had brought with him; but the
red walls and the steam heat in the room sickened her at last, and when
she had bathed and dressed and there seemed nothing left for her to do
except get out her work-bag and begin darning his socks, she decided
that she would put on her hat and go out for a walk. It did not occur to
her to feel hurt by the casual manner in which Oliver had shifted the
responsibility of her presence--partly owing to a personal inability to
take a selfish point of view about anything, and partly because of that
racial habit of making allowances for the male in which she had been
sedulously trained from her infancy.
At the door the porter directed her to Fifth Avenue, and she ventured
cautiously as far as the flowing rivulet at the corner, where she would
probably have stood until Oliver's return, if a friendly policeman had
not observed her stranded helplessness and assisted her over. "How on
earth am I to get back again?" she thought, smiling up at him; and this
anxiety engrossed her so completely that for a minute she forgot to look
at the amazing buildings and the curious crowds that hurried frantically
in their shadows. Then a pale finger of sunlight pointed suddenly across
the high roofs in front of her, and awed, in spite of her preoccupation,
by the strangeness of the scene, she stopped and watched the moving
carriages in the middle of the street and the never ending stream of
people that passed on the wet pavements. Occasionally, while she stood
there, some of the passers-by would turn and look at her with friendly
admiring eyes, as though they found something pleasant in her lovely
wistful face and her old-fashioned clothes; and this pleased her so much
that she lost her feeling of loneliness. It was a kindly crowd, and
because she was young and pretty and worth looking at, a part of the
exhilaration of this unknown life passed into her, and she felt for a
little while as though she belonged to it. The youth in her responded to
the passing call of the streets, to this call which fluted like the
sound of pipes in her blood, and lifted her for a moment out of the
narrow track of individual experience. It was charming to feel that all
these strangers looked kindly upon her, and she tried to show that she
returned their interest by letting a little cordial light shine in her
eyes. For the first time in her life the personal boundaries of sympathy
fell away from her, and she realized, in a fleeting sensation, something
of the vast underlying solidarity of human existence. A humble baby in a
go-cart waited at one of the crossings for the traffic to pass, and
bending over, she hugged him ecstatically, not because he reminded her
of Harry, but simply because he was a baby.
"He is so sweet I just had to squeeze him," she said to his mother, a
working woman in a black shawl, who stood behind him.
Then the two women smiled at each other in that freemasonry of
motherhood of which no man is aware, and Virginia wondered why people
had ever foolishly written of the "indifference of a crowd." The chill
which had lain over her heart since her meeting with Oliver melted
utterly in the glow with which she had embraced the baby at the
crossing. With the feeling of his warm little body in her arms,
everything had become suddenly right again. New York was no longer a
dreadful city, and Oliver's failure appeared as brief as the passing
pang of a toothache. Her natural optimism had returned like a rosy mist
to embellish and obscure the prosaic details of the situation. Like the
cheerful winter sunshine, which transfigured the harsh outlines of the
houses, her vision adorned the reality in the mere act of beholding it.
Midway of the next block there was a jeweller's window full of gems set
in intricate patterns, and stopping before it, she studied the trinkets
carefully in the hope of being able to describe them to Lucy. Then a man
selling little automatic pigs at the corner attracted her attention, and
she bought two for Harry and Jenny, and carried them triumphantly away
in boxes under her arm. She knew that she looked countrified and
old-fashioned, and that nobody she met was wearing either a hat or a
dress which in the least resembled the style of hers; but the knowledge
of this did not trouble her, because in her heart she preferred the kind
of clothes which were worn in Dinwiddie. The women in New York seemed to
her artificial and affected in appearance, and they walked, she thought,
as if they were trying to make people look at them. The bold way they
laced in their figures she regarded as almost indecent, and she noticed
that they looked straight into the eyes of men instead of lowering their
lashes when they passed them. Her provincialism, like everything else
which belonged to her and had become endeared by habit and association,
seemed to her so truly beautiful and desirable that she would not have
parted with it for worlds.
Turning presently, she walked down Fifth Avenue as far as Twenty-third
Street, and then, confused by the crossing, she passed into Broadway,
without knowing that it was Broadway, until she was enlightened by a
stranger to whom she appealed. When she began to retrace her steps, she
discovered that she was hungry, and she longed to go into one of the
places where she saw people eating at little tables; but her terror of
what she had heard of the high prices of food in New York restaurants
restrained her. General Goode still told of paying six dollars and a
half for a dinner he had ordered in a hotel in Fifth Avenue, and her
temperamental frugality, reinforced by anxiety as to Oliver's debts,
preferred to take no unnecessary risks with the small amount in her
pocket book. Oliver, of course, would have laughed at her petty
economies, and have ordered recklessly whatever attracted his appetite;
but, as she gently reminded herself again, men were different. On the
whole, this lordly prodigality pleased her rather than otherwise. She
felt that it was in keeping with the bigness and the virility of the
masculine ideal; and if there were pinching and scraping to be done, she
immeasurably preferred that it should fall to her lot to do it and not
to Oliver's.
At the hotel she found that Oliver had not come in, and after a belated
luncheon of tea and toast in the dining-room, she went upstairs and sat
down to watch for his return between the Nottingham lace curtains at the
window. From the terrific height, on which she felt like a sparrow, she
could see a row of miniature puppets passing back and forth at the
corner of Fifth Avenue. For hours she tried in vain to distinguish the
figure of Oliver in the swiftly moving throng, and in spite of herself
she could not repress a feeling of pleasant excitement. She knew that
Oliver would think that she ought to be depressed by his failure, yet
she could not prevent the return of a child-like confidence in the
profound goodness of life. Everything would be right, everything was
eternally bound to be right from the beginning. That inherited casuistry
of temperament, which had confused the pleasant with the true for
generations, had become in her less a moral conviction than a fixed
quality of soul. To dwell even for a minute on "the dark side of things"
awoke in her the same instinct of mortal sin that she had felt at the
discovery that Oliver was accustomed to "break" the Sabbath by reading
profane literature.
When, at last, as the dusk fell in the room, she heard his hasty step in
the corridor, a wave of joyful expectancy rose in her heart and trembled
for utterance on her lips. Then the door opened; he came from the gloom
into the pale gleam of light that shone in from the window, and with her
first look into his face her rising joy ebbed quickly away. A new
element, something for which neither her training nor her experience had
prepared her, entered at that instant into her life. Not the external
world, but the sacred inner circle in which they had loved and known
each other was suddenly clouded. Everything outside of this was the
same, but the fact confronted her there as grimly as a physical sore.
The evil struck at the very heart of her love, since it was not life,
but Oliver that had changed.
CHAPTER VI
THE SHADOW
Oliver had changed; for months this thought had lain like a stone on her
heart. She went about her life just as usual, yet never for an instant
during that long winter and spring did she lose consciousness of its
dreadful presence. It was the first thing to face her in the morning,
the last thing from which she turned when, worn out with perplexity, she
fell asleep at night. During the day the children took her thoughts away
from it for hours, but never once, not even while she heard Harry's
lessons or tied the pink or the blue bows in Lucy's and Jenny's curls,
did she ever really forget it. Since the failure of Oliver's play, which
had seemed to her such a little thing in itself, something had gone out
of their marriage, and this something was the perfect understanding
which had existed between them. There were times when her sympathy
appeared to her almost to infuriate him. Even her efforts towards
economy--for since their return from New York she had put Marthy into
the kitchen and had taken entire charge of the children--irritated
rather than pleased him. And the more she irritated him, the more she
sought zealously, by innumerable small attentions, to please and to
pacify him. Instead of leaving him in the solitude which he sought, and
which might have restored him to his normal balance of mind, she became
possessed, whenever he shut himself in his study or went alone for a
walk, with a frenzied dread lest he should permit himself to "brood"
over the financial difficulties in which the wreck of his ambition had
placed them. She, who feared loneliness as if it were the smallpox,
devised a thousand innocent deceptions by which she might break in upon
him when he sat in his study and discover whether he was actually
reading the papers or merely pretending to do so. In her natural
simplicity, it never occurred to her to penetrate beneath the surface
disturbances of his mood. These engrossed her so completely that the
cause of them was almost forgotten. Dimly she realized that this
strange, almost physical soreness, which made him shrink from her
presence as a man with weak eyes shrinks from the light, was the outward
sign of a secret violence in his soul, yet she ministered helplessly to
each passing explosion of temper as if it were the cause instead of the
result of his suffering. Introspection, which had lain under a moral ban
in a society that assumed the existence of an unholy alliance between
the secret and the evil, could not help her because she had never
indulged in it. Partly because of the ingenuous candour of the Pendleton
nature, and partly owing to the mildness of a climate which made it more
comfortable for Dinwiddians to live for six months of the year on their
front porches and with their windows open, she shared the ingrained
Southern distrust of any state of mind which could not cheerfully
support the observation of the neighbours. She knew that he had turned
from his work with disgust, and if he wasn't working and wasn't reading,
what on earth could he be doing alone unless he had, as she imagined in
desperation, begun wilfully to "nurse his despondency?" Even the rector
couldn't help her here--for his knowledge of character was strictly
limited to the types of the soldier and the churchman, and his
son-in-law did not belong, he admitted, in either of these familiar
classifications. At the bottom of his soul the good man had always
entertained for Oliver something of the kindly contempt with which his
generation regarded a healthy male, who, it suspected, would decline
either to preach a sermon or to kill a man in the cause of morality. But
on one line of treatment father and daughter were passionately
agreed--whatever happened, it was not good that Oliver should be left by
himself for a minute. When he was in the bank, of course, where Cyrus
had found him a place as a clerk on an insignificant salary, it might be
safely assumed that he was cheered by the unfailing company of his
fellow-workers; but when he came home, the responsibility of his
distraction and his cure rested upon Virginia and the children. And
since her opinion of her own power to entertain was modest, she fell
back with a sublime confidence on the unrivalled brilliancy and the
infinite variety of the children's prattle. During the spring, as he
grew more and more indifferent and depressed, she arranged that the
children should be with him every instant while he was in the house. She
brought Jenny's high chair to the table in order that the adorable
infant might breakfast with her father; she kept Harry up an hour later
at night so that he might add the gaiety of his innocent mirth to their
otherwise long and silent evenings. Though she would have given anything
to drop into bed as soon as the babies were undressed, she forced
herself to sit up without yawning until Oliver turned out the lights,
bolted the door, and remarked irritably that she ought to have been
asleep hours ago.
"You aren't used to sitting up so late, Virginia; it makes you dark
under the eyes," he said one June night as he came in from the porch
where he had been to look up at the stars.
"But I can't go to bed until you do, darling. I get so worried about
you," she answered.
"Why in heaven's name, should you worry about me? I am all right," he
responded crossly.
She saw her mistake, and with her unvarying sweetness, set out to
rectify it.
"Of course, I know you are--but we have so little time together that I
don't want to miss the evenings."
"So little!" he echoed, not unkindly, but in simple astonishment.
"I mean the children sit up late now, and of course we can't talk while
they are playing in the room."
"Don't you think you might get them to bed earlier? They are becoming
rather a nuisance, aren't they?"
He said it kindly enough, yet tears rushed to her eyes as she looked at
him. It was impossible for her to conceive of any mood in which the
children would become "rather a nuisance" to her, and the words hurt her
more than he was ever to know. It seemed the last straw that she could
not bear, said her heart as she turned away from him. She had borne the
extra work without a complaint; she had pinched and scraped, if not
happily, at least with a smile; she had sat up while her limbs ached
with fatigue and the longing to be in bed--and all these things were as
nothing to the tragic confession that the children had become "rather a
nuisance." Of the many trials she had had to endure, this, she told
herself, was the bitterest.
Though her feet burned and her muscles throbbed with fatigue, she lay
awake for hours, with her eyes wide open in the moonlight. All the small
harassing duties of the morrow, which usually swarmed like startled bees
through her brain at night, were scattered now by this vague terror
which assumed no definite shape. The delicacy of Lucy's chest, Harry's
stubborn refusal to learn to spell, and even the harrowing certainty
that the children's appetites were fast outstripping the frugal fare she
provided--these stinging worries had flown before a new anxiety which
was the more poignant, she felt, because she could not give it a name.
The Pendleton idealism was powerless to dispel this malign shadow which
corresponded so closely to that substance of evil whose very existence
the Pendleton idealism eternally denied. To battle with a delusion was
virtually to admit one's belief in its actuality, and this, she
reflected passionately, lying awake there in the darkness, was the last
thing she was prepared at the moment to do. Oliver was changed, and yet
her duty was plainly to fortify herself with the consoling assurance
that, whatever happened, Oliver could never really change. Deep down in
her that essential fibre of her being which was her soul--which drew its
vitality from the racial structure of which it was a part, and yet which
distinguished and separated her from every other person and object in
the universe--this essential fibre was compacted of innumerable
Pendleton refusals to face the reality. Even with Lucy's chest and
Harry's lessons and the cost of food, she had always felt a soothing
conviction that by thinking hard enough about them she could make them
every one come out right in the morning. As a normal human being in a
world which was not planned on altruistic principles, it was out of the
question that she should entirely escape an occasional hour of
despondency; but with the narrow outlook of women who lead intense
personal lives, it would have been impossible for her to see anything
really wrong in the universe while Oliver and all the children were
well. God was in His heaven as long as the affairs of her household
worked together for good. "It can't be that he is different--I must have
imagined it," she thought now, breathing softly lest she should disturb
the sleeping Oliver. "It is natural that he should be worried about his
debts, and the failure of the play went very hard with him, of
course--but if he appears at times to have grown bitter, it must be only
that I have come to exact too much of him. I oughtn't to expect him to
take the same interest in the children that I do----"
Then, rising softly on her elbow, she smoothed the sheet over Jenny's
dimpled little body, and bent her ear downward to make sure that the
child was breathing naturally in her sleep. In spite of her depression
that rosy face framed in hair like spun yellow silk, aroused in her a
feeling of ecstasy. Whenever she looked at one of her children--at her
youngest child especially--her maternal passion seemed to turn to flame
in her blood. Even first love had not been so exquisitely satisfying, so
interwoven of all imaginable secret meanings of bliss. Jenny's thumb was
in her mouth, and removing it gently, Virginia bent lower and laid her
hot cheek on the soft shining curls. Some vital power, an emanation
from that single principle of Love which ruled her life, passed from the
breath of the sleeping child into her body. Peace descended upon her,
swift and merciful like sleep, and turning on her side, she lay with her
hand on Jenny's crib, as though in clinging to her child she clung to
all that was most worth while in the universe.
The next night Oliver telephoned from the Treadwells' that he would not
be home to supper, and when he came in at eleven o'clock, he appeared
annoyed to find her sitting up for him.
"You ought to have gone to bed, Virginia. You look positively haggard,"
he said.
"I wasn't sleepy. Mother came in for a few minutes, and we put the
children to bed. Jenny wanted to say good-night to you, and she cried
when I told her you had gone out. I believe she loves you better than
she does anybody in the world, Oliver."
He smiled with something of the casual brilliancy which had first
captivated her imagination. In spite of the melancholy which had clouded
his charm of late, he had lost neither his glow of physical well-being
nor the look of abounding intellectual energy which distinguished him
from all other men whom she knew. It was this intellectual energy, she
sometimes thought, which purified his character of that vein of
earthiness which she had looked upon as the natural, and therefore the
pardonable, attribute of masculine human nature.
"If she keeps her looks, she'll leave her mother behind some day," he
answered. "You need a new dress, Jinny. I hate that old waist and skirt.
Why don't you wear the swishy blue silk I always liked on you?"
"I made it over for Lucy, dear. She had to have a dress to wear to Lily
Carrington's birthday party, and I didn't want to buy one. It looks ever
so nice on her."
"Doubtless, but I like it better on you."
"It doesn't matter what I wear, but Lucy is so fond of pretty things,
and children dress more now than they used to do. What did Susan have to
say?"
He had turned to bolt the front door, and while his back was towards
her, she raised her hand to smother a yawn. All day she had been on her
feet, except for the two hours when she had worked at her
sewing-machine, while Harry and Jenny were taking their morning nap. She
had not had time to change her dress until after supper, and she had
felt so tired then that it had not seemed worth while to do so. There
was, in fact, nothing to change to, since she had made over the blue
silk, except an old black organdie, cut square in the neck, which she
had worn in the months before Jenny's birth. As a girl she had loved
pretty clothes; but there were so many other things to think about now,
and from the day that her first child had come to her it had seemed to
matter less and less what she wore or how she appeared. Nothing had
really counted in life except the supreme privilege of giving herself,
body and soul, in the service of love. All that she was--all that she
had--belonged to Oliver and to his children, so what difference could it
make to them, since she gave herself so completely, whether she wore new
clothes or old?
When he turned to her, she had smothered the yawn, and was smiling. "Is
Aunt Belinda just the same?" she asked, for he had not answered her
question about Susan.
"To tell the truth, I forgot to ask," he replied, with a laugh. "Susan
seemed very cheerful, and John Henry was there, of course. It wouldn't
surprise me to hear any day that they are to be married. By the way,
Virginia, why did you never tell me what a good rider you are? Abby
Goode says you would have been a better horsewoman than she is if you
hadn't given up riding."
"Why, I haven't been in the saddle for years. I stopped when we had to
sell my horse Bess, and that was before you came back to Dinwiddie. How
did Abby happen to be there?"
"She stopped to see Susan about something, and then we got to
talking--the bunch of us. John Henry asked me to exercise his horse for
him when he doesn't go. I rather hope I'll get a chance to go
fox-hunting in the autumn. Abby was talking about it."
"Has she changed much? I haven't seen her for years. She is hardly ever
in Dinwiddie."
"Well, she's fatter, but it's becoming to her. It makes her look softer.
She's a bit coarse, but she tells a capital story. I always liked Abby."
"Yes, I always liked Abby, too," answered Virginia, and it was on the
tip of her tongue to add that Abby had always liked Oliver. "If he
hadn't seen me, perhaps he might have married her," she thought, and the
remote possibility of such bliss for poor defrauded Abby filled her with
an incredible tenderness. She would never have believed that bouncing,
boisterous Abby Goode could have aroused in her so poignant a sympathy.
He appeared so much more cheerful than she had seen him since his
disastrous trip to New York, that, moved by an unselfish impulse of
gratitude towards the cause of it, she put out her hand to him, while he
raised his arm to extinguish the light.
"I am so glad about the horse, dear," she said. "It will be nice for you
to go sometimes with Abby."
"Why couldn't you come too, Jinny?"
"Oh, I shouldn't have time--and, besides, I gave it up long ago. I don't
think a mother has any business on horseback."
"All the same I wish you wouldn't let yourself go to pieces. What have
you done to your hands? They used to be so pretty."
She drew them hastily away, while the tears rose in a mist to her eyes.
It was like a man--it was especially like Oliver--to imagine that she
could clean up half a house and take charge of three children, yet keep
her hands as white and soft as they had been when she was a girl and did
nothing except wait for a lover. In a flash of memory, she saw the
reddened and knotted hands of her mother, and then a procession of hands
belonging to all the mothers of her race that had gone before her. Were
her own but a single pair in that chain of pathetic hands that had
worked in the exacting service of Love?
"It is so hard to keep them nice," she said; but her heart cried, "What
do my hands matter when it is for your sake that I have spoiled them?"
With her natural tendency to undervalue the physical pleasures of life,
she had looked upon her beauty as a passing bloom which would attract
her lover to the veiled wonders of her spirit. Fleshly beauty as an end
in itself would have appeared to her as immoral a cult as the wilful
pursuit of a wandering desire in the male.
"I never noticed until to-night what pretty hands Abby has," he said,
innocently enough, as he turned off the gas.
A strange sensation--something which was so different from anything she
had ever felt before that she could not give it a name--pierced her
heart like an arrow. Then it fled as suddenly as it had come, and left
her at ease with the thought: "Abby has had nothing to hurt her hands.
Why shouldn't they be pretty?" But not for Abby's hands would she have
given up a single hour when she had washed Jenny's little flannels or
dug enchanted garden beds with Harry's miniature trowel.
"She used to have a beautiful figure," she said with perfect sincerity.
"Well, she's got it still, though she's a trifle too large for my taste.
You can't help liking her--she's such jolly good company, but, somehow,
she doesn't seem womanly. She's too fond of sport and all that sort of
thing."
His ideal woman still corresponded to the type which he had chosen for
his mate; for true womanliness was inseparably associated in his mind
with those qualities which had awakened for generations the impulse of
sexual selection in the men of his race. Though he enjoyed Abby, he
refused stubbornly to admire her, since evolution, which moves rapidly
in the development of the social activities, had left his imagination
still sacredly cherishing the convention of the jungle in the matter of
sex. He saw woman as dependent upon man for the very integrity of her
being, and beyond the divine fact of this dependency, he did not see her
at all. But there was nothing sardonic in his point of view, which had
become considerably strengthened by his marriage to Virginia, who shared
it. It was one of those mental attitudes, indeed, which, in the days of
loose thinking and of hazy generalizations, might have proved its divine
descent by its universality. Oliver, his Uncle Cyrus, the rector, and
honest John Henry, however they may have differed in their views of the
universe or of each other, were one at least in accepting the historical
dogma of the supplementary being of woman.
And yet, so strange is life, so inexplicable are its contradictions,
there were times when Oliver's ideal appeared almost to betray him, and
the intellectual limitations of Virginia bored rather than delighted
him. Habit, which is a sedative to a phlegmatic nature, acts not
infrequently as a positive irritant upon the temperament of the artist;
and since he had turned from his work in a passion of disgust at the
dramatic obtuseness of his generation, he had felt more than ever the
need of some intellectual outlet for the torrent of his imagination. As
a wife, Virginia was perfect; as a mental companion, she barely existed
at all. She was, he had come to recognize, profoundly indifferent to the
actual world. Her universe was a fiction except the part of it that
concerned him or the children. He had never forgotten that he had read
his play to her one night shortly after Jenny's birth, and she had
leaned forward with her chin on her palm and a look in her face as if
she were listening for a cry which never came from the nursery. Her
praise had had the sound of being recited by rote, and had aroused in
him a sense of exasperation which returned even now whenever she
mentioned his work. In the days of his courtship the memory of her
simplicities clung like an exquisite bouquet to the intoxicating image
of her; but in eight years of daily intimacy the flavour and the
perfume of mere innocence had evaporated. The quality which had first
charmed him was, perhaps, the first of which he had grown weary. He
still loved Virginia, but he had ceased to talk to her. "If you go into
the refrigerator, Oliver, don't upset Jenny's bottle of milk," she said,
looking after him as he turned towards the dining-room.
Her foot was already on the bottom step of the staircase, for she had
heard, or imagined that she had heard, a sound from the nursery, and she
was impatient to see if one of the children had awakened and got out of
bed. All the evening, while she had changed the skin-tight sleeves of
the eighties to the balloon ones of the nineties in an old waist which
she had had before her marriage and had never worn because it was
unbecoming, her thoughts had been of Harry, whom she had punished for
some act of flagrant rebellion during the afternoon. Now she was eager
to comfort him if he was awake and unhappy, or merely to cuddle and kiss
him if he was fast asleep in his bed.
At the top of the staircase she saw the lowered lamp in the nursery, and
beside it stood Harry in his little nightgown, with a toy ship in his
arms.
"Mamma, I'm tired of bed and I want to play."
"S--sush, darling, you will wake Jenny. It isn't day yet. You must go
back to bed."
"But I'm tired of bed."
"You won't be after I tuck you in."
"Will you sit by me and tell me a story?"
"Yes, darling, I'll tell you a story if you'll promise not to talk."
Her eyes were heavy with sleep, and her limbs trembled from the
exhaustion of the long June day; but she remembered the punishment of
the afternoon, and as she looked at him her heart seemed melting with
tenderness.
"And you'll promise not to go away until I'm fast asleep?--you'll
promise, mamma?"
"I'll promise, precious. No, you mustn't take your ship to bed with you.
That's a darling."
Then, as Oliver was heard coming softly up the stairs for fear of
arousing the children, she caught Harry's moist hand in hers and stole
with him into the nursery.
To Virginia in the long torrid days of that summer there seemed time for
neither anxiety nor disappointment. Every minute of her eighteen waking
hours was spent in keeping the children washed, dressed, and
good-humoured. She thought of herself so little that it never occurred
to her to reflect whether she was happy or unhappy--hardly, even,
whether she was awake or asleep. Twice a week John Henry's horse carried
Oliver for a ride with Abby and Susan, and on these evenings he stayed
so late that Virginia ceased presently even to make a pretence of
waiting supper. Several times, on September afternoons, when the country
burned with an illusive radiance as if it were seen through a mirage,
she put on her old riding-habit, which she had hunted up in the attic at
the rectory, and mounting one of Abby's horses, started to accompany
them; but her conscience reproached her so bitterly at the thought that
she was seeking pleasure away from the children, that she hurried
homeward across the fields before the others were ready to turn. As with
most women who are born for motherhood, that supreme fact had not only
absorbed the emotional energy of her girlhood, but had consumed in its
ecstatic flame even her ordinary capacities for enjoyment. While
fatherhood left Oliver still a prey to dreams and disappointments, the
more exclusive maternal passion rendered Virginia profoundly indifferent
to every aspect of life except the intimate personal aspect of her
marriage. She couldn't be happy--she couldn't even be at ease--while she
remembered that the children were left to the honest, yet hardly tender,
mercies of Marthy.
"I shall never go again," she thought, as she slipped from her saddle at
the gate, and, catching up her long riding-skirt, ran up the short walk
to the steps. "I must be getting old. Something has gone out of me."
And there was no regret in her heart for this _something_ which had fled
out of her life, for the flashing desires and the old breathless
pleasures of youth which she had lost. For a month this passive joy
lasted--the joy of one whose days are full and whose every activity is
in useful service. Then there came an October afternoon which she never
forgot because it burned across her life like a prairie fire and left a
scarred track of memory behind it. It had been a windless day, filled
with glittering blue lights that darted like birds down the long
ash-coloured roads, and spun with a golden web of air which made the
fields and trees appear as thin and as unsubstantial as dreams. The
children were with Marthy in the park, and Virginia, attired in the old
waist with the new sleeves, was leaning on the front gate watching the
slow fall of the leaves from the gnarled mulberry tree at the corner,
when Mrs. Pendleton appeared on the opposite side of the street and
crossed the cobblestones of the road with her black alpaca skirt
trailing behind her.
"I wonder why in the world mother doesn't hold up her skirt?" thought
Virginia, swinging back the little wooden gate while she waited.
"Mother, you are letting your train get all covered with dust!" she
called, as soon as Mrs. Pendleton came near enough to catch her
half-whispered warning.
Reaching down indifferently, the older woman caught up a handful of her
skirt and left the rest to follow ignominiously in the dust. From the
carelessness of the gesture, Virginia saw at once that her mother's mind
was occupied by one of those rare states of excitement or of distress
when even the preservation of her clothes had sunk to a matter of
secondary importance. When the small economies were banished from Mrs.
Pendleton's consciousness, matters had assumed indeed a serious aspect.
"Why, mother, what on earth has happened?" asked Virginia, hurrying
toward her.
"Let me come in and speak to you, Jinny. I mean inside the house. One
can never be sure that some of the neighbours aren't listening," she
said in a whisper.
Hurrying past her daughter, she went into the hall, and, then turning,
faced her with her hand on the door-knob. In the dim light of the hall
her face showed white and drawn, like the face of a person who has been
suddenly stricken with illness. "Jinny, I've just had a visit from Mrs.
Carrington--you know what a gossip she is--but I think I ought to tell
you that she says people are talking about Oliver's riding so much with
Abby."
A pain as sharp as if the teeth of a beast had fastened in her heart,
pierced Virginia while she stood there, barring the door with her hands.
Her peace, which had seemed indestructible a moment ago, was shattered
by a sensation of violent anger--not against Abby, not against Oliver,
not even against the gossiping old women of Dinwiddie--but against her
own blindness, her own inconceivable folly! At the moment the
civilization of centuries was stripped from her, and she was as simple
and as primitive as a female of the jungle. On the surface she was still
calm, but to her own soul she felt that she presented the appalling
spectacle of a normal woman turned fury. It was one of those instants
that are so unexpected, so entirely unnatural and out of harmony with
the rest of life, that they obliterate the boundaries of character which
separate the life of the individual from the ancient root of the race.
Not Virginia, but the primeval woman in her blood, shrieked out in
protest as she saw her hold on her mate threatened. The destruction of
the universe, as long as it left her house standing in its bit of
ground, would have overwhelmed her less utterly.
"But what on earth can they say, mother? It was all my fault. I made him
go. He never lifted his finger for Abby."
"I know, darling, I know. Of course, Oliver is not to blame, but people
will talk, and I think Abby ought to have known better."
For an instant only Virginia hesitated. Then something stronger than the
primitive female in her blood--the spirit of a lady--spoke through her
lips.
"I don't believe Abby was to blame, either," she said.
"But women ought to know better, Jinny, and Abby is nearly thirty."
"She always wanted me to go, mother. I don't believe she thought for a
minute that she was doing anything wrong. Abby is a little coarse, but
she's perfectly good. Nobody will make me think otherwise."
"Well, it can't go on, dear. You must stop Oliver's riding with her. And
Mrs. Carrington says she hears that he is going to Atlantic City with
them in General Goode's private car on Thursday."
"Abby asked me, too, but of course I couldn't leave the children."
"Of course not. Oliver must give it up, too. Oh, Jinny, a scandal, even
where one is innocent, is so terrible. A woman--a true woman--would
endure death rather than be talked about. I remember your cousin Jane
Pendleton made an unhappy marriage, and her husband used to get drunk
and beat her and even carry on dreadfully with the coloured
servants--but she said that was better than the disgrace of a
separation."
"But all that has nothing to do with me, mother. Oliver is an angel, and
this is every bit my fault, not Abby's." The violence in her soul had
passed, and she felt suddenly calm.
"Of course, darling, of course. Now that you see what it has led to, you
can stop it immediately."
They were so alike as they stood there facing each other, mother and
daughter, that they might have represented different periods of the same
life--youth and age meeting together. Both were perfect products of that
social order whose crowning grace and glory they were. Both were
creatures trained to feel rather than think, whose very goodness was the
result not of reason, but of emotion. And, above all, both were
gentlewomen to the innermost cores of their natures. Passion could not
banish for long that exquisite forbearance which generations had
developed from a necessity into an art.
"I can't stop his going with her, because that would make people think I
believed the things they say--but I can go, too, mother, and I will.
I'll borrow Susan's horse and go fox-hunting with them to-morrow."
Once again, as on the afternoon when she had heard of Oliver's illness
in New York, Mrs. Pendleton realized that her daughter's strength was
more than a match for hers when the question related to Oliver.
"But the children, dear--and then, oh, Jinny, you might get hurt."
To her surprise Jinny laughed.
"I shan't get hurt, mother--and if I did----"