Linda thought about Dodge Pleydon on a warm evening of the following
May. At four o'clock, in a hotel, Pansy had been married; and the entire
Feldt connection had risen to a greater height of clamorous cheer than
ever before. Extravagant unseasonable dishes, wines and banked flowers
were lavishly mingled with sentimental speeches, healths and tears.
Linda had been acutely restless, impatient of all the loud good humor
and stupid compliments. The sense of her isolation from their life was
unbearably keen. She would have a very different wedding with a man in
no particular like Pansy's.
After dinner--an occasion, with Pansy absent, where Mr. Moses Feldt's
tears persisted in flowing--she had strayed into the formal chamber
across from the dining-room and leaned out of a window, gazing into the
darkening court. Directly below was where Pleydon had kissed her. She
often re-examined her feelings about that; but only to find that they
had dissolved into an indefinite sense of the inevitable. Not alone had
it failed to shock her--she hadn't even been surprised. Linda thought
still further about kissing, with the discovery that if, while it was
happening, she was conscious of the kiss, it was a failure; successful,
it carried her as far as possible from the actuality.
Pleydon, of course, had not written to her; he had intimated nothing to
the contrary, only asking her to let him know, at the Harvard Club, if
she changed address. That wasn't necessary, and now, probably, he was
back from South America. Where, except by accident, might she see him?
Markue, with his parties, had dropped from Judith's world, his place
taken by a serious older dealer in Dutch masters with an impressive
gallery just off Fifth Avenue.
That she would see him Linda was convinced; this feeling absorbed any
desire; it was no good wanting it or not wanting it; consequently she
was undisturbed. She considered him gravely and in detail. Had there
been any more Susanna Nodas in his stay south? She had heard somewhere
that the women of Argentine were irresistible. Her life had taught her
nothing if not the fact that a number of women figured in every man's
history. It was deplorable but couldn't be avoided; and whether or not
it continued after marriage depended on the cunning of any wife.
Now, however, Linda felt weary already at the prospect of a married life
that rested on the constant play of her ingenuity. A great many things
that, but a little before, she had willingly accepted, seemed to her
probably not less necessary but distinctly tiresome. Linda began to
think that she couldn't really bother; the results weren't sufficiently
important.
Dodge Pleydon.
She slept in a composed order until the sun was well up. It was warmer
than yesterday; and, going to an afternoon concert with Judith, she
decided to walk. Linda strolled, in a short severe jacket and skirt, a
black straw hat turned back with a cockade and a crisp flushed mass of
sweet peas at her waist. The occasion, as it sometimes happened, found
her in no mood for music. The warmth of the sunlight, the open city
windows and beginning sounds of summer, had enveloped her in a mood in
which the jangling sentimentality of a street organ was more potent than
the legato of banked violins.
She was relieved when the concert was over, but lingered at her seat
until the crowd had surged by; it made Linda furious to be shoved
or indiscriminately touched. Judith had gone ahead, when Linda was
conscious of the scrutiny of a pale well-dressed woman of middle age.
It became evident that the other was debating whether or not to speak;
clearly such an action was distasteful to her; and Linda had turned away
before a restrained voice addressed her:
“You will have to forgive me if I ask your name ... because of a certain
resemblance. Seeing you I--I couldn't let you go.”
“Linda Condon,” she replied.
The elder, Linda saw, grew even paler. She put out a gloved hand. “Then
I was right,” she said in a slightly unsteady voice. “But perhaps, when
I explain, you will think it even stranger, inexcusable. My dear child,
I am your father's sister.”
Linda was invaded by a surprise equally made up of interest and
resentment. The first was her own and the second largely borrowed
from her mother. Besides, why had her father's family never made the
slightest effort to see her. This evidently had simultaneously occurred
to the other.
“Of course,” she added, quite properly, “we can't undertake family
questions here. I shouldn't blame you a bit, either, if you went
directly away. I had to speak, to risk that, because you were so
unmistakably a Lowrie. It is not a common appearance. We--I--” she
floundered for a painful moment; then she gathered herself with a
considerable dignity. “Seeing you has affected me tremendously, changed
everything. I have nothing to say in our defense, you must understand
that. I am certain, too, that my sister will feel the same--we live
together in Philadelphia. I hope you will give me your address and let
us write to you. Elouise will join with me absolutely.”
Linda told her evenly where she lived, and then allowed Miss Lowrie to
precede her toward the entrance. She said nothing of this to Judith,
nor, momentarily, to her mother. She wanted to consider it undisturbed
by a flood of talk and blame. It was evident to her that the Lowries had
behaved very badly, but just how she couldn't make out. She recalled her
father's sister--her aunt--minutely, forced to the realization that she
was a person of entire superiority. Here, she suddenly saw, had been
the cause of all their difficulties--the Lowries hadn't approved of the
marriage, they had objected to her mother.
Five years ago she would have been incensed at this; but now,
essentially, she was without personal indignation. She wanted, for
herself, to discover as much as possible about her father and his
family. A need independent of maternal influences stirred her. Linda was
reassured by the fact that her father had been gently born; while she
realized that she had always taken this for granted. Her mother must
know nothing about the meeting with Miss Lowrie until the latter had
written.
That was Friday and the letter came the following Tuesday. Linda, alone
at the breakfast-table, instantly aware of the source of the square
envelope addressed in a delicate regular writing, opened it and read in
an unusual mental disturbance:
“My dear Linda,
I hope you will not consider it peculiar for me to call you this,
for nothing else seems possible. Meeting you in that abrupt manner upset
me, as you must have noticed. Of course I knew of you, and even now I
can not go into our long unhappy affair, but until I saw you, and so
remarkably like the Lowries, I did not realize how wicked Elouise and I
had been. But I am obliged to add only where you were concerned. We have
no desire to be ambiguous in that.
However, I am writing to say that we should love to have you visit us
here. It is possible under the circumstances that your mother will not
wish you to come. Yet I know the Lowries, a very independent and
decided family, and although it is my last intention to be the cause of
difficulty with your mother, still I hope it may be arranged.
In closing I must add how happy I was at the evidence of your blood.
But that, I now see, was a certainty. You will have to forgive us for a
large measure of blindness. Affectionately,