Mrs. Walter Warner, in the most elaborate of mourning clothes, ordered
from New York, still held sway in her mother-in-law’s house. It seemed
probable that she always would be there now. Since his wife’s death, Mr.
Warner had come to “depend” on Walter, and if depending on Walter meant
inoculating himself to the elaborate black and white (mostly white) of
Walter’s wife’s costumes and enduring Della at his table, apparently he
was able to put up with that too. Della was nice to him. She said to her
friends that she meant to be “nice to poor old Mr. Warner,” and
proceeded to take charge of his house, enlarge his bills and with the
immense insolence that was hers also began to take to herself
considerable credit for doing so.
It was two months since her mother’s death and for the first time Cecily
felt able to begin the task of looking over her mother’s personal
possessions. Mr. Warner had given few directions, expressed few wishes,
but on that point he had been explicit.
He had closed and locked his wife’s room and said to Cecily, in giving
her the key to the room and to the little safe in it--“I have taken the
few things from it that I wish to have remind me of her. I have not
opened the safe. The things there and the other things are yours and
Dorothea’s. And, of course, Cecily, you are no less my daughter. You and
the boys are to share equally in my estate, which was also your
mother’s.”
“Not now--please,” answered Cecily. “I’ll go over the things when I
can.”
As Della said to Walter, it wasn’t as if Cecily could possibly wear all
that jewelry herself. It seemed a kind of waste. Walter gave her one of
the looks which he had learned how to give her when he was disgusted,
and she tossed her head and reserved her comments for her more intimate
woman friends.
So on this bright May morning Cecily sat in her mother’s room on the
little hassock by her mother’s chaise longue and looked about her at the
objects that had become freighted with memory, wondering just what her
mother’s inward life had been, where it had hurt her most, what she had
loved most.
The lovely gowns in their chintz wrappers each brought a pang of pain.
She could see her mother in them--lovely, gracious, charming, every
one--and now they could no longer be given life. They were empty,
meaningless decorations. The softest satins--the dresses which “looked
like her mother”--she laid away in a deep mahogany chest. They were to
be for Dorothea some day to carry her the spirit of a past. The dressing
table fittings she would take, too, and the little objects around the
room that her mother had loved to look at. She would hang that head of
the Madonna, which her mother had found in Italy, at the foot of her own
bed. It was a long, sad task for Cecily, but with flashes of comfort.
She had the sense of being close to her mother again.
At last she opened the little wall safe which her mother had had
constructed. The red jewel case of velvet was there with all but the few
jewels which Mrs. Warner had worn in California and which already had
been given to Cecily, to Della’s disgust. There was her mother’s pearl
necklace which Mr. Warner had given her; the diamonds which had been the
gifts of birthdays and anniversaries; the odd, exquisite things which
Mrs. Warner had brought for beauty’s sake; other jewels, too, which
Cecily had never seen; that other wedding ring, engraved with name and
date. It gave her a stir at her heart. That wedding ring had meant
her--Cecily.
A cabinet photograph of her father--handsome, queerly out of fashion.
She pondered the photograph. There was a look of her little Leslie,
named after Mr. Warner. Strange to have Mr. Warner’s name carried on
through this child who looked so much like Allgate Moore.
Envelopes with baby pictures of herself, that brought the tears to her
eyes. Letters. Letters which must have been written from her father to
her mother. Yes. She had kept those, then. She had wanted to preserve,
even through the pain, these letters which must have been letters of
love from her father. Even through the disappointment and the
infidelities. It did not occur to Cecily to read them. She took them to
her mother’s little fireplace and burned them there. They had no meaning
now to any one alive.
There were other pictures; a funny antiquated kodak picture of herself
held by her father and with her mother smiling at them. They looked so
happy! It hadn’t been all tragedy. She picked up a ring which she knew
her father had given her mother. She could remember that her mother had
worn it when she was a child and that she had loved to twist it on her
mother’s finger. It was a deep sapphire in a low odd setting of dull
gold. Cecily slipped it on her own finger.
“In memory of the happiness you gave my mother,” she said to the
handsome, smiling picture of Allgate Moore.
There was a knock on the closed door and Della entered forthwith.
“Nearly time for lunch, Cecily. How are you coming on? Is there anything
I can do to help you?” She spoke as if Cecily were packing a trunk.
“No, thank you, Della.”
“Can I see?”
There was no proper reason for refusal, but it was hard to let her see.
Hastily selecting those souvenirs of the first marriage of her mother,
Cecily pushed the collection of other jewelry over to Della. Della
gasped.
“What a lot! Are those real pearls? And you get everything! Of course
you’re awfully sad, Cecily, but you certainly are a lucky girl to get
all these lovely things.”
Cecily did not answer.
“It’s funny your mother didn’t make a will. She was awfully nice to me
always. I guess she was glad to have me take Walter in hand and get him
out of any wild ways. Mrs. Allenby was saying the other day----”
“Was saying something about my mother?”
“Oh, I forgot you don’t like her very well. I guess she’s hardly your
type. She’s so gay. But she’s awfully well liked and even if her family
doesn’t amount to much she always admits it. I was so surprised the
night you told everybody that her cousin was your cook. Ellen’s back
with you, isn’t she? Fliss isn’t hiding it, anyway. She tells it in such
a funny way.”
Cecily could imagine that. She could guess how Fliss’s sharp tongue
could make ridicule of Cecily out of the fact that Cecily had tried to
ridicule her.
“Walter and I were at her house the other night----”
“Surely, Della, you aren’t going out yet; you’re in mourning!”
“I can’t absolutely stop seeing every one, can I?” said Della
petulantly. “Of course you have to remember that I was cheated out of a
lot of things; and I was a bride and all and just beginning to be
entertained for.”
“Doesn’t father----”
“He never says a word. No, I think he’s glad to see Walter and me having
a little fun. I just told Walter that I felt that his first duty was to
me.” She stopped and bridled. “Of course, it’s your own business,
Cecily, but I think you’re making a mistake.”
The lift of irony was in Cecily’s voice. “I am?”
“Well, a man likes a good time and I should think Dick would get awfully
tired sitting around so much. Fliss says that when she first knew
him----”
“I can’t see any point to this kind of talk,” said Cecily, rising. “Did
you say that lunch was ready?”
She looked a little dowdy--felt a little dowdy beside the blond
completeness of Della. A disgust of all fashionable dress for mourning
had made her rather deliberately choose clothes that were not only not
in fashion, but which were somewhat clumsy. And she had cried a great
deal and her eyes were heavy and sad. Beautiful as she was, she excited
no envy in Della, except in so far as she possessed those jewels. Della
knew what to envy.
* * * * *
Cecily’s house was becoming a refuge for her. She felt it that afternoon
as she went back to it. The two eldest children were out in the garden
with their nurse, where the lilacs were beginning to bloom and the early
green of spring was so exciting and alluring. It cheered even Cecily’s
rather dark mood. Spring and healthy children and a home with Dick; what
was it she lacked--why was it that she and Dick lacked anything? It
ought to be right--it ought to be perfect; and it wasn’t right and it
wasn’t perfect. Was Dick cheap, or she deficient in charm? Was the
clamor of light living and noise eternally to make their home
discordant? She would make it right. With her and the children, with a
gayety that was not tawdry; yes, for Dick she would lighten her period
of mourning. She looked back on her one talk with her mother about
herself and Dick and felt that her mother would want her to make a
concession to him. He had been so wonderfully kind during those first
weeks. It was only lately that he had seemed restless again and surely
it must be possible to swing back again to the beauty of those first
years together.
* * * * *
She found no opening.
Dick had gone to Matthew’s house for dinner, so he telephoned. “We
didn’t get through in time at the office,” he explained, “and I thought
I’d drop off here and finish what I wanted to take up with him. Children
all right?”
“Quite.” She hung up the receiver. It would have been just as easy to
come home, but he didn’t want to come especially. He wanted to go to
Matthew’s house. She sat through her dinner, which seemed perfectly
tasteless.
That night she waited up for Dick, conscious that it was not what he
would wish. He came in humming a little. She tried to look casual and
succeeded in looking tragic--so tragic that the blithe smile on his face
faded quickly into an annoyed concern.
“What’s up?”
“Nothing. I just thought I’d read a while.”
“You should be in bed. It’s nearly midnight.”
“I know.”
“Sure nothing’s wrong?”
“No.”
He turned to go up the staircase, but she caught him back with a little
cry.
“Dick, why aren’t we like we used to be?”
He looked at her almost with dislike. “Isn’t it late for psychological
discussion? What do you mean?”
She faced him with the question which was clamoring in her mind, tugging
at her heart all the time.
“Dick--do you love me?”
It jarred on him unspeakably--this forcing of emotion.
“Isn’t that rather an unnecessary question?”
“I’m afraid it isn’t.”
“I wish you wouldn’t be so high strung all the time, Cecily. I realize
you’ve had a bad time lately; in fact, it seems to me you’ve had a bad
time ever since we were married. But it does wear on me--this atmosphere
of tragedy.”
“Then why must we have it? It wasn’t like that when we were first
married.”
He took an impatient turn up and down the room.
“No. But you can’t maintain a honeymoon attitude all your life, my dear.
I don’t suppose we feel the same way towards each other as we did then.”
That hurt. “But why don’t we?”
“Why, we’re older; people’s emotions cool naturally.”
“But they shouldn’t if they love one another.”
“There you go, you see. You want to have everything your way. You want
to force things. You don’t let life be natural, Cecily. You’re too
romantic.”
The tears in her eyes only irritated him. He went on, thinking that it
might be as well to have it out with her.
“I don’t want to be unkind, but you have the most artificial view of
things sometimes. You can’t tolerate any thing or person that isn’t on a
pedestal.”
“No, it isn’t that, Dick. I just hate to see things slip into
cheapness.”
“But almost everything normal to you is cheap.”
“No! All I want is to have you love me and the children--be content with
us.”
“You’re quite absurd, Cecily. I love the children as much as any man
could. If it’s hard to love you it’s because you scare me off by
frowning upon every harmless diversion--by wanting to shut us up
together. That isn’t the way people live nowadays. Marriage isn’t
prison. The trouble with us is that we aren’t congenial in our pursuits.
You like one kind of thing. I like another. And you won’t admit my kind
of thing at all.”
“I don’t want marriage to be prison, but if marriage is anything surely
it’s the concentration of two people on making a home and bringing up
their children.” She couldn’t add love.
“It’s a lot more than that nowadays, Cecily. I suppose that used to be
all that was expected of a woman--having her children and keeping her
house clean. Now things have broadened. Men need more, ask more; so do
most women.”
“I suppose,” said Cecily, coldly, “what you mean is that men want a lot
of noise and dissipation and promiscuous flirtations, and that they
expect their wives to tolerate and join them in such things.”
The scorn in her voice drove Dick on. “Well, perhaps the woman who is
willing to do that gets away with marriage better than the woman who
clings to an outworn domesticity. I know your scorn of Della--and of
girls like Della and Fliss. We aren’t any happier than Fliss and
Matthew, or Della and Walter.”
Cecily became purely instinctive. She burst into tears and tried to talk
through them.
“Then the fact that I have three children and they have none doesn’t
make any difference to you?”
“The children are beside the point. I’m glad we have them; so are you.
But you can’t justify everything, excuse all unhappiness, swallow
yourself up, even in children. For God’s sake be reasonable, Cecily.
Stick to the point at issue.”
But she couldn’t. She lost her case, sadly undeveloped as it was, by her
rapidly mounting hysteria. It ended by her being put to bed, being
soothed by Dick, assured of things which he didn’t mean in his heart and
which she knew he didn’t mean--by the sleep of exhaustion and day of
shamed apology which followed for both of them.