In her room Linda thought, momentarily, of Arnaud Hallet; whatever might
have been serious in her attitude toward him dissolved by the lightness
of his speech. Dodge Pleydon appealed irresistibly to her deepest
feelings. Now her mental confusion was at least clear in that she knew
what troubled her. It was not new, it extended even to times before
Pleydon had entered her life--the difficulties presented by the term
“love.”
In her mind it was divided into two or three widely different aspects,
phases which she was unable to reconcile. Her mother, in the beginning,
had informed her that love was a nuisance. To be happy, a man must love
you without any corresponding return; this was necessary to his complete
management, the securing of the greatest possible amount of new clothes.
It was as far as love should be allowed to enter marriage. But that
reality, with a complete expression in shopping, was distant from the
immaterial and delicate emotions that in her responded to Pleydon.
Linda had been familiar with the materials, the processes, of what, she
had been assured, was veritable love since early childhood. Her mother's
dressing, the irritable hours of fittings and at her mirror, the paint
she put on her cheeks, the crimping of her hair were for the favor of
men. These struggles had absorbed the elder, all the women Linda had
encountered, to the exclusion of everything else. This, it seemed, must,
from its overwhelming predominance, be the greatest thing in life.
There was nothing mysterious about it. You did certain things
intelligently, if you had the figure to do them with, for a practical
end. The latter, carefully controlled, like an essence of which a drop
was delightful and more positively stifling, was as real as the
methods of approach. Oatmeal or scented soap! The force of example and
association combined to bathe such developments in the sanest light
possible, and Linda had every intention of the successful grasping of an
easy and necessary luxury. She had, until--vaguely--now, been entirely
willing to accept the unescapable conditions of love used as a means or
the element of pleasure at parties. Now, however, the unexpected element
of Dodge Pleydon disturbed her philosophy.
Suddenly all the lacing and painting and crimping, the pretense and lies
and carefully planned accidental effects, filled her with revolt. The
insinuations of women, the bareness of their revelations, her
mother returning unsteady and mussed from a dinner, were unutterably
disgusting. Even to think of them hurt her fundamentally: so much of
what she was, of what she had determined, had been destroyed by an
emotion apparently as slight as echoed music.
Here was the real mystery and for which nothing in her experience had
prepared her. She began to see why it was called a nuisance--if this
were love--and wondered if she had better not suppress it at once. It
wouldn't be suppressed. Her thoughts continually came back to Pleydon,
and the warmth, the disturbing thrill, always resulted. It led her away
from herself, from Linda Condon; a sufficiently strange accomplishment.
A concern for Dodge Pleydon, little schemes for his happiness and
well-being, put aside her clothes and complexion and her future.
Until the present her acts had been the result of deliberation. She had
been impressed by the necessity for planning with care; but, in the cool
gloom of the covered bed, a sharp joy held her at the possibility of
flinging caution away. Yet she couldn't quite, no matter how much she
desired it, lose herself. Linda was glad that Pleydon was rich; and
there were, she remembered, moments for surrender.
As usual these problems, multiplying toward night, were fewer in the
bright flood of morning. She laughed at the memory of Arnaud Hallet's
humor; and then, it was late afternoon, the maid told her that Pleydon
was in the drawing room. Her appearance satisfactory she was able to see
him at once. To her great pleasure neither Pleydon nor his clothes had
changed. He was dressed in light-gray flannels; a big easy man with a
crushing palm, large features and an expression of intolerance.
“Linda,” he said, “what a splendid place to find you. So much better
than Markue's.” He was, she realized, very glad to see her, and dropped
at once, as if they had been uninterruptedly together, into intimate
talk. “My work has been going badly,” he proceeded; “or rather not at
all. I made a rather decent fountain at Newport; but--remember what
Susanna said?--it's not in the first rank. A happy balance and strong
enough conception; yet it is like a Cellini ewer done in granite. The
truth is, too much interests me; an artist ought to be the victim of a
monomania. I'm a normal animal.” He studied her contentedly:
“How lovely you are. I came over--in an automobile at last--because I
was certain you couldn't exist as I remembered you. But you could and
do. Lovely Linda! And what a gem of a letter. It might have been copied
from 'The Perfect Correspondent for Young Females.' You're not going to
lose me again. When I was a little boy I had a passion for sherbets.”
She smiled at him with half-closed eyes and the conviction that, with
Pleydon, she could easily be different. He leaned forward and his voice
startled her with the impression that he had read her mind:
“If you could care for any one a lifetime would be short to get you.
Look, you have never been out of my thoughts--or within my reach. It
seems a myth that I kissed you; impossible ... Linda.”
“But you did,” she told him, gaining happiness from the mere assurance.
They were alone in the drawing-room, and he rose, sweeping her up
into his arms. Yet the expected joy evaded her desire and the sudden
determination to lose utterly her reserve. It was evident that he as
well was conscious of this, for he released her and stood frowning, his
protruding lower lip uglier than ever.
“A lifetime would be nothing,” he said again; “or it might be everything
wasted. Which are you--all soul and spirit, or none?”
“I don't know,” she replied, in her bitter disappointment, her heart
pinched by the sharpest pain she remembered. There was the stir of
skirts at the door; Linda turned with a sense of relief to Amelia
Lowrie. However, dinner progressed very well indeed. “Then your aunt,”
Elouise said to Pleydon, “was Carrie Dodge. I recall her perfectly.”
That established, the Lowrie women talked with a gracious freedom,
exploring the furthermost infiltrations of blood and marriages.
Linda was again serene. She watched Pleydon with an extraordinary
formless conviction--each of them was a part of the other's life; while
in some way marriage and love were now hopelessly confused. It was
beyond effort or planning. That was all she could grasp, but she was
contented. Sometimes when he talked he made the familiar descriptive
gesture with his hand, as if he were shaping the form of his speech: a
sculptor's gesture, Linda realized.
Later they wandered into the garden, a dark enclosure with the long
ivy-covered façade of the house broken by the lighted spaces of windows.
Beyond the fence at regular intervals an electric car passed with
an increasing and diminishing clangor. The white petals of the
magnolia-tree had fallen and been wheeled away; the blossoms of the
rhododendron were dead on their stems. It was, Linda felt, a very old
garden that had known many momentary emotions and lives.
Dodge Pleydon, standing before her, put his hands on her shoulders.
“Would I have any success?” he asked. “Do you think you'd care for me?”
She smiled confidently up at his intent face. “Oh, yes.” Yet she hoped
that he would not kiss her--just then. The delicacy of her longing and
need were far removed from material expressions. This, of course, meant
marriage; but marriage was money, comfort, the cold thing her mother had
impressed on her. Love, her love, was a mistake here. But in a little
it would all come straight and she would understand. She no longer had
confidence in her mother's wisdom.
In spite of her shrinking, of a half articulate appeal, he crushed her
against his face. Whatever that had filled her with hope, she thought,
was being torn from her. A sickening aversion over which she had no
control made her stark in his arms. The memories of the painted coarse
satiety of women and the sly hard men for which they schemed, the loose
discussions of calculated advances and sordid surrenders, flooded her
with a loathing for what she passionately needed to be beautiful.
Yet deep within her, surprising in its vitality, a fragile ardor
persisted. If she could explain, not only might he understand, but be
able to make her own longing clear and secure. But all she managed
to say was, “If you kiss me again I think it will kill me.” Even that
failed to stop him. “You were never alive,” he asserted. “I'll put some
feeling into you. It has been done before with marble.”
Linda, unresponsive, suffered inordinately.
Again on her feet she saw that Pleydon was angry, his face grim. He
seemed changed, threatening and unfamiliar; it was exactly as if, in
place of Dodge Pleydon, a secretive impersonal ugliness stood disclosed
before her. He said harshly:
“When will you marry me?”
It was what, above all else, she had wanted; and Linda realized that to
marry him was still the crown of whatever happiness she could imagine.
But her horror of the past recreated by his beating down of her
gossamer-like aspiration, the vision of him flushed and ruthless, an
image of indiscriminate nameless man, made it impossible for her to
reply. An abandon of shrinking fear numbed her heart and lips.
“You won't get rid of me as you do the others about you,” he continued.
“This time you made a mistake. I haven't any pride that you can insult;
but I have all that you--with your character--require. I have more money
even than you can want.” She cried despairingly:
“It isn't that now! I had forgotten everything to do with money and
depended on you to take me away from it always.”
“When will you marry me?”
In a flash of blinding perception, leaving her as dazed as though it had
been a physical actuality, she realized that marrying him had become an
impossibility. At the barest thought of it the dread again closed about
her like ice. She tried, with all the force of old valuations, with even
an effort to summon back the vanquished thrill, to give herself to
him. But a quality overpowering and instinctive, the response of her
incalculable injury, made any contact with him hateful. It was
utterly beyond her power to explain. A greater mystery still partly
unfolded--whatever she had hoped from Pleydon belonged to the special
emotion that had possessed her since earliest childhood.
In the immediate tragedy of her helplessness, with Dodge Pleydon
impatient for an assurance, she paused involuntarily to wonder about
that hidden imperative sense. There was a broken mental fantasy of--of a
leopard bearing a woman in shining hair. This was succeeded by a bright
thrust of happiness and, all about her, a surging like the imagined
beat of the wings of the Victory in Markue's room. Almost Pleydon had
explained everything, almost he was everything; and then the other,
putting him aside, had swept her back into the misery of doubt and
loneliness.
“I can't marry you,” she said in a flat and dragged voice. He demanded
abruptly:
“Why not?”
“I don't know.” She recognized his utter right to the temper that
mastered him. For a moment Linda thought Pleydon would shake her. “You
feel that way now,” he declared; “and perhaps next month; but you will
change; in the end I'll have you.”
“No,” she told him, with a certainty from a source outside her
consciousness. “It has been spoiled.”
He replied, “Time will discover which of us is right. I'm almost willing
to stay away till you send for me. But that would only make you more
stubborn. What a strong little devil you are, Linda. I have no doubt I'd
do better to marry a human being. Then I think we both forget how young
you are--you can't pretend to be definite yet.”
He captured her hands; too exhausted for any resentment or feeling she
made no effort to evade him. “I'll never say good-bye to you.”
His voice had the absolute quality of her own conviction. To her
amazement her cheeks were suddenly wet with tears. “I want to go now,”
she said unsteadily; “and--and thank you.”
His old easy formality returned as he made his departure. In reply to
Pleydon's demand she told him listlessly that she would be here for,
perhaps, a week longer. Then he'd see her, he continued, in New York, at
the Feldts'.
In her room all emotion faded. Pleydon had said that she was still
young; but she was sure she could never, in experience or feeling, be
older. She became sorry for herself; or rather for the illusions, the
Linda, of a few hours ago. She examined her features in the limited
uncertain mirror--strong sensations, she knew, were a charge on the
appearance--but she was unable to find any difference in her regular
pallor. Then, mechanically conducting her careful preparations for the
night, her propitiation of the only omnipotence she knew, she put out
the candles of her May.