_In Which Mary Faces the Winter of Her Discontent; and in Which Delilah
Sees Things in a Crystal Ball._
The summer slipped by, monotonously hot, languidly humid. And it was
on these hot and humid days that Mary felt the grind of her new
occupation. She grew to dread her entrance into the square close
office room, with its gaunt desks and its unchanging occupants. She
waxed restless through the hours of confinement, escaping thankfully at
the end of a long day.
She longed for a whiff of the sea, for the deeps of some forest, for
the fields of green which must be somewhere beyond the blue-gray haze
which had settled over the shimmering city.
She began to show the effects of her unaccustomed drudgery. She grew
pale and thin. Aunt Isabelle was worried. The two women sat much by
the fountain. Mary had begged Aunt Isabelle to go away to some cooler
spot. But the gentle lady had refused.
"This is home to me, my dear," she had said, "and I don't mind the
heat. And there's no happiness for me in big hotels."
"There'd be happiness for me anywhere that I could get a breath of
coolness," Mary said, restlessly. "I can hardly wait for the fall
days."
Yet when the cooler days came, there was the dreariness of rain and of
sighing winds. And now it was November, and Roger Poole had been away
a year.
The garden was dead, and Mary was glad. Dead gardens seemed to fit
into her mood better than those which bloomed. Resolutely she set
herself to be cheerful; conscientiously, she told herself that she must
live up to the theories which she had professed; sternly, she called
herself to account that she did not exult in the freedom which she had
craved. Constantly her mind warred with her heart, and her heart won;
and she faced the truth that all seasons would be dreary without Roger
Poole.
Her letters to him of late had lacked the spontaneity which had at
first characterized them. She knew it, and tried to regain her old
sense of ease and intimacy. But the doubts which Porter had planted
had borne fruit. Always between her and Roger floated the vision of
the little saint in red.
It was inevitable that Roger's letters should change. He ceased to
show her the side which for a time he had so surprisingly revealed.
Their correspondence became perfunctory--intermittent.
"It is my own fault," Mary told herself, yet the knowledge did not make
things easier.
And now began the winter of her discontent. If any one had told her in
her days of buoyant self-confidence that she would ever go to bed weary
and wake up hopeless, she would have scorned the idea; yet the fact
remained that the fruit of her independence was Dead Sea apples.
It was a letter from Barry which again brought her head up, and made
her life march once more to a martial tune.
"I have found the work for which I am fitted," he wrote; "you don't
know how good it seems. For so many years I went to my desk like a boy
driven to school. But now--why, I work after hours for the sheer love
of it--and because it seems to bring me nearer to Leila."
This from Barry, the dawdler! And she who had preached was whimpering
about heat and cold, about long hours and hard work--as if these things
matter!
Why, life was a Great Adventure, and she had forgotten!
And now she began to look about her--to find, if she could, some ray to
illumine her workaday world.
She found it in the friendliness and companionship of her office
comrades--good comrades they were--fighting the battle of drudgery
shoulder to shoulder, sharing the fortunes of the road, needing, some
of them, the uplift of her courage, giving some of them more than they
asked.
As Mary grew into their lives, she grew away somewhat from her old
crowd. And if, at times, her gallant fight seemed futile--if at times
she could not still the cry of her heart, it was because she was a
woman, made to be loved, fitted for finer things and truer things than
writing cabalistic signs on a tablet and transcribing them, later, on
the typewriter.
Leila had refused to be dropped from Mary's life. She came, whenever
she could, to walk a part of the way home with her friend, and the two
girls would board a car and ride to the edge of the town, preferring to
tramp along the edges of the Soldiers' Home or through the Park to the
more formal promenade through the city streets.
It was during these little adventures that Mary became conscious of
certain reserves in the younger girl. She was closely confidential,
yet the open frankness of the old days was gone.
Once Mary spoke of it. "You've grown up, all in a minute, Leila," she
said. "You're such a quiet little mouse."
Leila sighed. "There's so much to think about."
Watching her, Mary decided. "It is harder for her than for Barry. He
has his work. But she just waits and longs for him."
In waiting and longing, Little-Lovely Leila grew more mouse-like than
ever. And at last Mary spoke to the General. "She needs a change."
He nodded. "I know it. I am thinking of taking her over in the
spring."
"How lovely. Have you told her?"
"No--I thought it would be a grand surprise."
"Tell her now, dear General. She needs to look forward."
So the General, who had been kept in the house nearly all winter by his
rheumatism, spoke of certain baths in Germany.
"I thought I'd go over and try them," he informed his small daughter,
on the day after his talk with Mary, "and you could stop and call on
Barry."
"Barry!" She made a little rush toward him. "Dad, _Dad_, do you mean
it?"
"Yes."
She tucked her head into his shoulder and cried for happiness. "Dad,
I've missed him so."
With this hope held out to her, Little-Lovely Leila grew radiant. Once
more her feet danced along the halls, and the music of her voice
trilled bird-like in the big rooms.
Delilah, discussing it with her artist, said: "Leila makes me believe
in Romance with a big R. But I couldn't love like that."
Colin smiled. "You'd love like a lioness. I've subdued you outwardly,
but within you are still primitive."
"I wonder----" Delilah mused.
"The man for you," Colin turned to her suddenly, "is Porter Bigelow.
Of course I'm taking it from the artist's point of view. You're made
for each other--a pair of young gods--his red head just topping your
black one--It was that way at the garden party; any one could see it."
Delilah laughed. "His eyes aren't for me. With him it is Mary
Ballard. If I were in love with him, I should hate Mary. But I don't;
I love her. And she's in love with Roger Poole."
Colin looked up from the samples from which he and Delilah were
choosing her spring wardrobe.
"Poole? I knew his wife," he said abruptly; "it was her picture that I
showed you the other night--the little saint in the Fra Angelico
pose--it didn't come to me until afterward that he might be the same
Poole of whom I had heard you speak."
Delilah swept across the room, and turned the canvas outward. "Roger
Poole's wife," she said, "of all things!" Then she stood staring
silently.
"You didn't tell us who she was."
"No," he was weighing mentally Porter's attitude in the matter, "no one
knew but Bigelow."
"And he showed this to Mary?" They looked at each other, and laughed.
"Perhaps all's fair in love," Delilah murmured, at last, "but I
wouldn't have believed it of him."
As she turned the picture toward the wall, Delilah decided, "Mary
Ballard is worth a hundred of such women as this."
"A woman like you is worth a hundred of them," Colin stated
deliberately.
Delilah flushed faintly. Colin Quale was giving to her something which
no other man had given. And she liked it.
"Do you know what you are doing to me?" she said, as she sat down by
the window. "You are making me think that I am like the pictures you
paint of me."
"You are," was the quiet response; "it's just a matter of getting
beneath the surface."
There was a pause during which his fingers and eyes were busy with the
shining samples--then Delilah said: "If Leila and her father go to
Germany in May, I'm going to get Dad to go too. I don't suppose you'd
care to join us? You'll want to get back to that girl in Amesbury or
Newburyport, or whatever it is."
"What girl?"
"The one you are going to marry."
"There is no girl," said Colin quietly, "in Amesbury or Newburyport;
there never has been and there never will be." Coming close, he held
against her cheek a sample of soft pale yellow. "Leila Dick wears that
a lot, but it's not for you." He stood back and gazed at her
meditatively.
"Colin," she protested, "when you look at me that way, I feel like a
wooden model."
He smiled, "That's what you have come to mean to me," he said; "I don't
want to think of you as a woman."
"Why not?" asked daring Delilah.
"Because it is, to say the least, disturbing."
He occupied himself with his samples, shaking his head over them.
"None of these will do for the Secretary's dinner. You must have lace
with many flounces caught up in the new fashion. And I shall want your
hair different. Take it down."
She was used to him now, and presently it fell about her in all its
shining sable beauty; and as he separated the strands, it was like a
thing alive under his hands.
He crowned her head with the braids in a sort of old-fashioned coronet.
And so arranged, the old fashion became a new fashion, and Delilah was
like a queen.
"You see--with the lace and your pearl ornaments. There is nothing
startling; but no one will be like you."
And there was no one like her. And because of the dress, which Colin
had planned, and because of the way which he had taught her to do her
hair, Delilah annexed to her train of admirers on the night of the
Secretary's dinner a distinguished titled gentleman, who was looking
for a wife to grace his ancestral halls--and who was impressed mightily
by the fact that Delilah looked the part to perfection.
He proposed to her in three weeks, and was so sure of his ability to
get what he wanted that he was stunned by her answer:
"Perhaps I'll make up my mind to it. I'll give you your answer when I
come over in the spring."
"But I want my answer now."
"I'm sorry. But I can't."
When she told Colin of her abrupt dismissal of the discomfited
gentleman, she asked, almost plaintively, "Why couldn't I say 'yes' at
once? It is the thing I've always wanted."
"Have you really wanted it?"
"Of course."
"Not of course. You want other things more."
"What for example?"
"I think you know."
She did know, and she drew a quick breath. Then laughed.
"You're trying to teach me to understand my--emotions, Colin, as you
have taught me to understand my clothes."
"You're an apt pupil."
Tea came in, just then, and she poured for him, telling his fortune
afterward in his teacup.
"Are you superstitious?" she asked him, having worked out a future of
conventional happiness and success.
"Not enough to believe what you have told me." He was flickering his
pale lashes and smiling. "Life shall bring me what I want because I
shall make it come."
"Oh, you think that?"
"Yes. All things are possible to those of us who believe they are
possible."
"Perhaps to a man. But--to a woman. There's Leila, for example. I'm
afraid----"
"You mustn't be. Life will come right for her."
"How do you know?"
"It comes right for all of us, in one way or another. You'll find it
works out. You're afraid for your little friend because of
Ballard--he's pretty gay, eh?"
"Yes. More, I think, than she understands. But everybody else knows
that they sent him away for that. And I can't see any way out. If he
marries her he'll break her heart; if he doesn't marry her he'll break
it--and there you have it."
"You must not put these 'ifs' in their way. There'll be some way out."
She rose and went to a table to a little cabinet which she unlocked.
"You wouldn't let me have my crystal ball in evidence," she said,
"because it doesn't fit in with the rest of my new furnishings--but it
tells things."
"What things?"
"I'll show you." She set it on the table between them. "Put your hand
on each side of it."
He grasped it with his flexible fingers. "Don't invent----" he warned.
She began to speak slowly, and she was still at it when Porter's big
car drove up to the door, and he came in with Mary and Leila.
"I picked up these two on their way home," Porter explained; "it is
raining pitchforks, and I'm in my open car. And so, kind lady, dear
lady, will you give us tea?"
Colin and Delilah, each a little pale, breathing quickly, rose to greet
their guests.
"She's been telling my fortune," Colin informed them, while Delilah
gave orders for more hot water and cups. "It's a queer business."
Porter scoffed. "A fake, if there ever was one."
Colin mused. "Perhaps. But she has the air of a seeress when she says
it all--and she has me slated for a--masterpiece--and marriage."
Leila, standing by the table, touched the crystal globe with doubtful
fingers. "Do you really see things, Delilah?"
"Sit down, and I'll prove it."
Leila shrank. "Oh, no."
But Porter insisted. "Be a sport, Leila."
So she settled herself in the chair which Colin had occupied, her curly
locks half hiding her expectant eyes.
And now Delilah looked, bending over the ball.
There was a long silence. Then Delilah seemed to shake herself, as one
shakes off a trance. She pushed the ball away from her with a sudden
gesture. "There's nothing," she said, in a stifled voice; "there's
really nothing to tell, Leila."
"I knew that you'd back out with all of us here to listen," Porter
triumphed.
But Colin saw more than that.
"I think we want our tea," he said, "while it is hot," and he handed
Delilah the cups, and busied himself to help her with the sugar and
lemon, and to pass the little cakes, and all the time he talked in his
pleasant half-cynical, half-earnest fashion, until their minds were
carried on to other things.
When at last they had gone, he came back to her quickly.
"What was it?" he asked. "What did you see in the ball?"
She shivered. "It was Barry. Oh, Colin, I don't really believe in
it--perhaps it was just my imagination because I am worried about
Leila, but I saw Barry looking at me with such a white strange face out
of the dark."