The maid who admitted Linda to Pleydon's apartment, first replying,
“Yes, Mrs. Hallet. No, Mrs. Hallet,” to her questions, continued in
fuller sentences expressing a triumph of sympathy over mere correctness.
She lingered at the door of the informal drawing-room, imparting the
information that Mr. Pleydon had become very irregular indeed about his
meals, and that his return for lunch was uncertain. Something, however,
would be prepared for her. Linda acknowledged this briefly. Often, with
Mr. Pleydon at home, he wouldn't so much as look at his dinner. Times,
too, it seemed as though he had been in the studio all night. He went
out but seldom now, and rarely remained away for more than an hour or
two. Linda heard this without an indication of responsive interest,
and the servant, returning abruptly from the excursion into humanity,
disappeared.
She was glad to have this opportunity alone to accustom herself to a
novel position. But she was once more annoyingly calm. Annoyingly, she
reiterated; the fervor of her anger, which at the same time had been
bitterly cold, had lessened. She was practically normal. She regarded
this, the loss of her unprecedented emotion, in the light of a fraud on
her sanguine decision. Linda had counted on its support, its generous
irresistible tide, to carry her through the remainder of her life with
the exhilaration she had so largely missed.
Here in Dodge's room she was as placid, almost, as though she were in
the library at home. That customary term took its place in her thoughts
before she recognized that, with her, it had shifted. However, it was
unimportant--home had never been a magical word to her; it belonged in
the vast category which, of such universal weight, left her unstirred.
She resembled those Eastern people restlessly and perpetually moving
across sandy deserts as they exhausted, one after another, widely
separated scanty oases.
She studied the objects around her with the pleased recognition that
they were unique, valuable, and in faultless taste. Then she fell to
wondering at the difference had Dodge been poor: she would have come to
him, Linda knew, just the same. But, she admitted frankly, it would
have been uncomfortable. Perhaps that--actual poverty, actual
deprivation--was what her character needed. A popular sentiment upheld
such a view; she decided it was without foundation. There was no reason
why beauty, finely appropriate surroundings, should damage the spirit.
Her mind turned to an examination of her desertion of Arnaud, but she
could find no trace of conventional regret; of what, she felt, her
sensation ought to be. The instinctive revolt from oblivion was an
infinitely stronger reality than any allegiance to abstract duty. She
was consumed by the passionate need to preserve the integrity of being
herself. The word selfish occurred to her but to be met unabashed by the
query, why not? Selfishness was a reproach applied by those who failed
to get what they wanted to all who succeeded. Linda wasn't afraid of
public opinion, censure; she didn't shrink even from the injury to her
husband. What Dodge would think, however, was hidden from her.
She had no doubt of his complete acceptance of all she offered; ordinary
obligations to society bound him as little as they held her. It would be
enough that she wanted to come to him.
She would bother him, change his habit of living, very little. Long
years of loneliness had taught her to be self-sufficient. Linda would
be too wise to insist on distasteful regularity in the interest of a
comparatively unimportant well-being. In short, she wouldn't bother him.
That must be made clear at once.
More than anything else he would be inexpressibly delighted to have her
with him, to find--at last--his love. Little intimacies of satin
mules, glimpses, charming to an artist! He'd be faultless, too, in the
relationships where Arnaud as well had never for a moment deviated from
beautiful consideration. Two remarkable men. While her deficiency in
humor was admitted, she saw a glimmer of the absurd in her attitude and
present situation. The combination, at least, was uncommon. There had
been no change in her feeling for either Arnaud or Dodge, their places
in her being were undisturbed; she liked her husband no less, Dodge no
better.
Lunch was announced, a small ceremony of covered silver dishes, heavy
crystal, Nankin china, and flowers. The linen, which was old, bore a
monogram unfamiliar to her--that of Dodge's mother, probably. When she
had finished, but was still lingering at the narrow refectory table, she
heard Pleydon enter the hall and the explanatory voice of the servant.
An unexpected embarrassment pervaded her, but she overcame it by the
realization that there was no need for an immediate announcement of
her purpose. Dodge would naturally suppose that she was in New York
shopping.
He did, to her intense relief, with a moving pleasure that she had
lunched with him. “It's seldom,” he went on, “that you are so sensible.
I hope you haven't any plans or concerts to drag you away immediately.
I owe you a million strawberries; but, aside from that, I'd like you to
stay as long as possible.”
“Very well,” she replied quietly; “I will.”
She hadn't seen him since the statue at Hesperia had been destroyed, and
she tried faintly to tell him how much that outrage had hurt her. It had
injured him too, she realized; just as Arnaud predicted. He showed his
age more gauntly, more absolutely, than the other. His skin was dry as
though the vitality of his countenance had been burned out by the flame
visible in his eyes.
“The drunken fools!” he exclaimed of the mob that had torn Simon Downige
from his eminence; “they came by way of all the saloons in the city.
Free drinks! That is the disturbing thing about what the optimistic call
civilization--the fact that it is always at the mercy of the ignorant
and the brutal. There is no security; none, that is, except in the
individual spirit. And they, mostly, are the victims of a singular
insane resentment--Savonarola and there were greater.
“But you mustn't think, you mustn't suppose, that I mean it's
hopeless. How could I? Who has had more from living? Love and complete
self-expression. That exhausts every possibility. Three words. Remember
Cottarsport. But the love--ah,” he smiled, but not directly at her.
Linda was at once reassured and disturbed; and she rose, proceeding into
the drawing-room.
There she sat gracefully composed and with still hands; she never
embroidered or employed her leisure with trivial useful tasks. Pleydon
was extended on a chair, his fingers caught beyond his head and his long
legs thrust out and crossed at the ankles. His gaze was fixed on her
unwaveringly; and yet, when she tried to meet its focus, it went behind
her as though it pierced the solidity of her body and the walls in the
contemplation of a far-removed shining image. Her disturbance grew to
the inclusion of a degree of fretfulness at his unbroken silence, his
apparent absorption in whatever his meditation projected or found.