"FOR EVERY MAN THERE IS JUST ONE WOMAN"
When Sophie, having donned a smoke-gray kimono and brushed her shining
hair, went down to Diana, she expected to find her pensive. She found
her, instead, with various little white jars and silver bottles set
before her on her dressing table.
"When a woman takes to cold cream, Sophie," she remarked, as her friend
came in, "it's a deadly sign. It shows that she has found her first
wrinkle."
"Diana, how can you! You know that you are beautiful without such aids."
"When I was in Paris," Diana continued, "I was persuaded into buying
these. I was told that they held the secret of perpetual youth."
"Perpetual youth is from the heart, Diana."
"Then my heart is as old as the ages."
Diana was gazing into the mirror, which reflected her tired face.
"I can't think of anything but that child, dancing in the candle-light.
Oh, youth, youth, Sophie; is there anything like it in the whole wide
world!"
"Diana," Sophie's voice was sharpened by her solicitude, "come away from
that mirror."
Diana obediently turned her back on her dressing table, and presently
she said, "I wonder if it was wise to have her here?"
"Bettina?"
"Yes."
Sophie was thoughtful. "I'm not sure. Yet it seemed to me to-night that
perhaps--you had been wise----"
"What made you think that?"
"Anthony's face when you played, Diana."
"Oh!" Diana crossed the room and dropped down on the rug at her friend's
feet. "Tell me how he looked," she said, softly, with her arm outflung
across the other's knees.
"It was just in a flash that I saw his face--under the search-light from
the ferry. It was the face of a man who had lost the one woman in the
world for him, Diana."
"If I could believe that," said Diana, tensely, "nothing else would
matter."
"Yet, believing it, how can it be right for him to marry some one else?"
Diana, with her chin propped between her hands, stared with wide eyes
into space. "It isn't right--but she loves him, Sophie."
"Yet she's not the one woman--oh, what a muddle, Diana."
"What a muddle," and for a time they sat in silence.
Then Sophie said, "Perhaps it's because I was so happy in my
marriage--that I can see so clearly. I've worked it out this way,
dearest, dear--that in all the world there's just one woman for one man.
If he meets and marries her, no matter how hard their life may be, they
will be drawn together, not separated, by the hardness; no matter how
the world may use them, they will cling together against the world. But
when a man marries the wrong woman, he goes through life a half-man,
crippled in mind and spirit, because of his mistake. Sometimes the man
finds the one woman in a second marriage; sometimes he finds her too
late; sometimes he is too blind to know that she is the one woman, and
he lets her go, to discover afterward that no other can fill his life.
That's the pity of it. If Anthony marries Bettina, she will know some
day--that she is--the wrong woman----"
Diana rose and moved restlessly about the room. "But she's so slim and
white and young--and no man can resist that sort of thing long. She has
youth to give him, Sophie, and I, why, soon I'll be middle-aged."
"You--oh, Diana----"
Diana's laugh had a sob in it. "Well, I shall be."
"You'll never be anything but lovely--when you're an old lady you'll be
stately and distinguished, and your eyes will shine like stars, and men
will still fall in love with you----"
"Oh, Sophie, you're such a comfort----"
* * * * *
The next morning Delia sent up three breakfasts on trays.
"If it wasn't for that pretty child," she said to little Jane Trefry,
who helped her in the kitchen, "there wouldn't be any satisfaction in
getting things ready. Miss Sophie has learned foreign ways and wants
rolls and coffee, and Miss Diana wants grape fruit. I don't know what's
the matter with her appetite; she hasn't eaten enough for a bird since
she came, and yet that first night she said to me, 'Oh, Delia, I'm just
dying for some of your good New England cooking!'"
"Maybe she's in love," said little Jane, who was romantic.
Delia turned her omelette deftly. "Of course she is. Everybody knows she
just about worships Dr. Blake, only she won't marry him till she gets
good and ready. That's the house he's building for her--up the road,
with the red-tiled roof and the wide stone porches. He had the window of
her room toward Minot's, so that the light could say, 'I love you' to
her at night."
"She'd better look out," stated little Jane, with provincial frankness;
"if she waits too long he'll be finding some one else to say 'I love
you' to."
"You keep your mind on that toast," Delia was dishing up the omelette,
"and don't you forget that Miss Diana isn't the kind that a man goes
back on. She could have had a dozen richer men than the doctor. But she
didn't want them, and maybe she doesn't want him, but don't you get it
into your head that he wants anybody else."
Little Jane sniffed. "You can't tell about men," she said, as she went
out of the door with Bettina's tray.
Bettina, sitting up in bed, welcomed little Jane with enthusiasm. She
ate everything from strawberries to omelette with a hearty appetite,
then she lay comfortably, looking out toward the eastern horizon where
the smoky streak of a steamer showed faintly.
Presently Sophie came in with a gown of white serge--of simple lines,
with wide collar and cuffs of sheer embroidered muslin. "Diana insisted
that I should get some white things in Paris," she said, as she laid it
over a chair. "She hoped that I might be induced to dress in something
besides black, but I can't, and so I am sure that you will be willing to
wear these out for me, my dear."
Bettina put one bare foot on the floor, then the other, then she
fluttered across the room like a white butterfly and embraced Mrs.
Martens.
"It's lovely, only it doesn't seem quite right for me to take
everything."
"It is right. They would lie in my trunks until they were out of
fashion. There's a white felt hat that goes with this, and a long white
coat, and Diana is going to take you over to town this morning to get
white shoes and gloves and a veil."
"I thought we were to lunch on Bobbie Tucker's yacht."
"We were--but Bobbie has just telephoned that his yacht has to go to the
yard for repairs--something happened last night--so Justin will take us
for a ride."
"Oh," said Bettina. "Mr. Ford?"
"Yes. Justin has put his car at our disposal. He'll drive us to-day, but
when he can't there's the chauffeur--it's very kind of him."
"He's awfully good looking," said Bettina in a cool little voice, "but
don't you think he's terribly conceited, Mrs. Martens?"
Sophie nodded. "He's been spoiled. But back of it all he's a man. His
lightness is on the surface. I know, for he was in Berlin when my
husband was living. I saw the other side then. He was poor; it was
before he came so unexpectedly into his uncle's money. You know the old
man and his son were drowned in a dreadful accident. Justin was studying
aviation when we first knew him. He lived in shabby rooms, and ate at
shabby little places, and he used to come in the afternoons to call on
me, and I'd fill him up with thick bread and butter and coffee, and we'd
talk for hours of America. He was lonely poor lad, and I was like a big
sister. I shall never forget one bitter cold afternoon, when he came in
with his hands all red and rough, and with a hoarse cough, and I had the
maid bring him a bowl of soup hot from the kitchen, and he tried to make
a joke of it, but his voice broke, and presently he said, 'Dear big
sister, some day I can thank you, but not now.'
"And when my husband died," she went on, softly, "he did thank me in a
most generous way. He had just received his fortune when he heard of
my--trouble. He sent a wonderful cross to mark where my husband
sleeps--and I could have afforded only a little stone--and there are
flowers every week, even when I am far away, and there will always be
flowers because of his great generosity."
Here was a background for the light-hearted young Justin which appealed
to Bettina's imagination. "Why, how lovely," she said with her eyes
shining; "he didn't seem like that to me. He seemed so--shallow."
"But he isn't," Sophie defended; "if it had not been for him and for
Diana I should have lost heart many times--the world knows Justin as a
rich young man, ready for a good time, but I know him as the Knight of
the Tender Heart."
"How old is he?"
"Twenty-six. I didn't realize until I reached here that he was flying
again. He does such dangerous things. I saw the aeroplane yesterday
morning, and found out afterward that he was up--and since then my heart
seems to stop every time I think of him in the air----"
With all the optimism of youth, Bettina tried to reassure her.
"He said last night that he was very careful. He wants to take me up."
"Oh, don't ever do anything so dreadful."
"I couldn't if I wanted to. Anthony made me promise last night that I
wouldn't----"
She said it with a comfortable sense of her lover's care for her; "I'd
rather ride any day with Anthony in his little car."
"My dear," Sophie said with some hesitation, "I'm going to suggest that
except to Diana and myself, you try not to seem too much interested
in--your doctor--the world might suspect--and you don't want to announce
your engagement yet, Diana tells me----"
Bettina shrugged her white shoulders. "I don't care if everybody knows,"
she said; "but Diana thought that Anthony's friends might like to get
acquainted with me first. But if you could know what he's been to me,
Mrs. Martens--why, when I waked this morning it seemed like a dream to
think that I wasn't in the top floor of the old Lane house, with Miss
Matthews making her breakfast coffee over an alcohol stove, and a little
impatient because I hadn't the toast ready, and with the prospect ahead
of me of another lonely day, when I should try to read and try not to
think, and miss mother until I nearly died.
"Do you wonder that I love him?" She came up to Mrs. Martens and put her
hands on her shoulders. "He's so wonderful and good--and he loves
me----"
Sophie could not meet the frank young eyes. "It's nice that you feel
that way," she said, "and I hope you don't mind what I said--it was only
that it might save you some future--embarrassment."
"I'll be careful," said Bettina, "only I'm perfectly sure that everybody
will know every time I look at Anthony that he's the one man in the
world for me. You can't imagine how uninteresting other men seem beside
him--and then his manner, isn't it lovely and protecting and--sure?"
Sophie had a sudden sense of the comedy which was intermingled with the
tragic of the situation. Diana and Bettina each harped incessantly on
one string, "Anthony, Anthony, Anthony," and she must play listener to
their ecstatic songs of praise.
During the trip to town, Bettina sat beside Justin.
"Since Bobbie's yacht is out of commission," suggested Justin, "why not
extend our ride up the North Shore road? There's a war-ship anchored
just off Beverly, and a tea room where we can have lunch."
"I must stop at the sanatorium first," said Diana. "Anthony has a
patient there who is to be operated on. She's a little young thing, and
she's afraid, and I want to take her some lilacs. I told Jane to pick
some and have them ready when we returned, so perhaps you'd better go
first to our house, and then to the sanatorium, then we can do as we
please----"
"A sanatorium," said Justin to Bettina, "always used to suggest vague
horrors. But Dr. Anthony's doesn't. He has a wonderful way with his
patients, puts their hands to work, because it's their minds that make
them sick; they weave and make pottery. The last time I was there an
anxious-eyed, beautifully-gowned woman was working on a rug, with three
rabbits as a design. She was having trouble with the bunnies' ears when
Dr. Blake came up.
"'I simply can't do it, doctor,' she said, and began to cry.
"Anthony stood very still for a moment, then in his quiet, strong voice,
he said, 'Dear lady, it must be done--for your soul's sake.'
"She looked up at him in a startled way. 'Why my soul?' she asked. 'It's
my body that's sick.'
"He shook his head. 'It's deeper than that,' he answered; 'you've lost
your grip because life has never meant labor to you. The people who work
have healthy minds and healthy bodies. Those who do not, waver between
weakness and wickedness. That's what's the matter with society
to-day--that's what's the matter with you. You must finish your bunnies'
ears, therefore, for the sake of your soul--your body will respond----'
"She went back to her loom," Justin continued, "with a different look on
her face. The lines were smoothed out from her forehead. Neither of them
had seemed to notice that I was there. It was a psychological moment
when the doctor had to speak, and it was wonderful to hear him talk like
that."
Bettina's puzzled eyes met his. "Oh, but do you think that people have
to work to be happy?" she said. "I hate work. I like to be warm and
comfortable, and have pretty clothes, and--everything."
"Of course you do," said Justin, responding to her mood, lightly, "but
you don't want to get Dr. Blake after you--he preaches a gospel of
endeavor."
"Oh!" There was a note of dismay in Bettina's voice. "But not all of us
can be bees. Some of us must be the butterflies."
Justin spoke, somewhat seriously: "I've been a butterfly for three
years, and I give you my word I'm not getting much out of it. Seeing
Mrs. Martens has brought back the days when I worked over there in
Germany to get the money to finish my studies. Has she told you how I
used to go to her and drink her delicious coffee and eat thick bread and
butter, and bask in her sympathy until I got the courage to go on again?
Yet I felt all the time that I was getting somewhere, and here I'm
stagnating----"
Bettina settled herself back comfortably in her cushioned seat. "Well, I
don't think it's anything to worry about. It seems perfectly wonderful
to me not to have anything to do--if I had mother back," her voice
trembled, "I wouldn't care how much I had to work for her--but after
she--left me, everything seemed so--so sordid, and hard--and----Oh, I
hated it--and then----" She drew herself up sharply.
"Then----?" Justin prompted her.
"Diana came," she went on, after a moment's hesitation, "and now
everything will be different."
Justin had a baffled sense of some mystery from the solution of which he
was shut out, but he merely said, heartily, "I hope you'll stay
forever," and felt his heart leap as the ends of her white veil
fluttered against his lips.