THE IDES OF MARCH
"Love's second summer," was the name Mammy Lou bestowed on the
troubled period of my engagement with Richard Chalmers which followed
the portentous events chronicled in the last few chapters.
"A love affair ain't no different from a baby," she would say to me
sometimes, as her quick eye saw that all was not going well, and her
maternal pity for me caused her to forgive the disappointment I had
given her in my choice of a lover. "It's bound to have some miz'ry as
well as joy mixed along with it. Why, you can't no more make true love
run smooth than you can play a 'juice harp' with false teeth."
True love! Oh the irony of the words! So many months have passed since
the happenings that I last recorded that I can look back now and
dispassionately dissect even the motives of many things which
transpired during that gilded year. For it proved to be only a gilded
year, while I thought at the time that it was a golden one. And I can
see, among many other strange and bewildering things, that at the
moment I saw Alfred Morgan stand up and bravely defy Richard's selfish
tyranny, the scales seemed to fall from my eyes and I knew then which
was the false and which the true. That I did not act upon this
knowledge and follow the dictates of my intuition, I afterward
regretted more poignantly than it often befalls the lot of a girl to
rue a guiltless deed.
On that November night when I stood in the dining-room and counted out
and stored away the Chalmers' family silver while Richard stood by and
suggested appeasing Alfred's outraged pride by a gift of money, I felt
an almost overpowering desire to fly precipitately away from the
great, gleaming house with its Midas-like master, who, as I remembered
for the first time with a shudder, was also _my_ master.
The storm without, which had broken so violently at the hour of the
equally violent storm within, and between those two strong and
determined spirits, had spent its force during the afternoon, and
when the dreary night closed down there was a sharp wind from the
east, and the rain changed into a driving sleet.
Out into this Alfred went, and I stood at the door with him as we said
good-by, until the piercing wind blew in and brought with it a little
shower of light sleet, which it scattered over the inlaid floor.
"I'll be in the city for a day or two next week," I said as he held
out his hand and looked with a slight shiver out into the icy
blackness through which he must pass. "I'll see you then."
For the moment I had forgotten that Alfred and I no longer saw each
other when I was in the city. I had failed to remember the fact, and
also the circumstances leading up to it.
"But I'm leaving for New York Saturday night," he said briefly, as he
pulled a little closer the big storm collar of his heavy coat, and
slipped on his long automobile gauntlets. He had left the city so
hurriedly that he had not had time to exchange these for ordinary
gloves. "--And I sail on the following Wednesday."
"Oh! So this is good-by then?"
"Yes--for all time, I suppose. You'll be married long before I get
back."
We were standing alone at the door which led out to the driveway and
there was a motor-car a few feet away puffing softly a warning to
hurry; Richard was somewhere near, in the front part of the house--but
I thought not of his anger if he should find me in such a plight; I
did not stop to remember that Alfred was in danger of missing his
train; above all I did not recall that only a few months before I had
had the chance of making a decision which, if differently made, would
have put such a different aspect upon the world's cold blackness this
miserable night--I remembered nothing, except that Alfred was going
away from me--and I had already seen my mistake. Giving way completely
as this mighty knowledge came bearing down upon the tired, aching
nerves of my brain, which had already been working at over-tension for
the past many days, I covered my face with my hands and gave vent to
the sobs and tears which seemed to have been gathering in my heart
since I had last seen Alfred. Now he was going away, and I was to see
him no more!
"Ann," he begged, as he quickly stripped off the long gauntlets and
started to put out his hand, "_don't_! For God's sake don't cry! I've
stood a lot to-day, but I'll swear I can't stand that."
"If you've stood a lot, don't you think that I have, too?" I demanded
in a low voice, the convulsive little catches in my throat making
speech difficult. I had lost all power of self-control for the moment,
and I think that if Richard had come out into the hall at that instant
and demanded an explanation I should have frankly given it. Many times
through the succeeding months I regretted bitterly that he had not.
Alfred's hand started out toward me again at my passionate words, and
caught mine this time, dragging them gently down from my face as he
compelled my eyes to meet his.
"What do you mean?" he demanded. "Is he unkind to _you_, too?"
"Oh, no, not unkind," I stammered, half frightened at the sudden turn
of our conversation. "Certainly not unkind. He is the soul of
generosity--but we don't--get along well--together." I broke down
weakly in my speech, for the sense of disloyalty was strong upon me,
and I felt that it was almost as grave a crime to recount the faults
of a lover as those of a husband.
But Alfred's face was very serious, and if my perfidy made any impress
upon him it was lost in the mazes of a greater problem.
"That is what I've been afraid of," he said in almost the same tones
he had used when he made a similar remark upon my telling him I cared
for Richard. "I thought you would find that your natures
are--incompatible."
"Incompatible? Oh, Alfred, if we marry we'll _fight_!" I sobbed,
burying my face in my hands again, and forgetting the _lover_ Alfred
in the dear friend whom I could always go to with a trouble. And I
would be willing to stake anything in life that, in that moment, he,
too, had forgotten that he was my lover.
"Well, that is a very serious question, and one which you will have
thoroughly to thresh out before it is too late," he said, his bright
brown eyes anxious and troubled. He looked down upon me with infinite
sympathy.
"And you are going away so soon--and for so long?"
"Well, if I were not going away I could no longer be a--a friend to
you, Ann; for I am not capable of giving you unbiased advice, and that
is what you need. It would be a great temptation to make capital for
myself out of your troubles with--him; and I can't lower myself this
way. So don't grieve over my going away, and--take council with your
mother and Mrs. Clayborne. I am not the one to advise you in this
case."
So he went out into the blackness!
* * * * *
From New York, the day he sailed, he wrote me a note saying that he
could not leave without telling me some things which he could not
honorably speak of while we were in Richard Chalmers' house that
night; and those things were that his own feeling for me would never
change; if years passed before I ever felt that I needed him I was to
send for him just as confidently as I would to-day. No matter what
decision I came to in regard to my marriage with Richard Chalmers he
would never approach me again in the light of a lover until I sent for
him, the note ran on; and, as I read this last I looked up and smiled
into vacancy over the thought of how proud and high-minded he is. He
gave me the address of a London hospital and said that if I cared to
write to him at any time within the next few weeks the letter would
reach him there.
But I did not write to him within the next few weeks.
On the morning after Alfred's departure from Charlotteville I came
down-stairs early and found Richard in the breakfast-room. He was
smiling radiantly as he looked up and saw me; then he threw aside his
morning paper and pulled up a chair close to the fire.
"Evelyn is doing splendidly; the political news is to my liking; there
are fresh trout for breakfast, and--here's a rose for your hair, my
lady-love," he said, holding out to me a perfect bud of pearly
whiteness. A box of them had come on the early train from a friend of
Evelyn's in the city, and Richard had purloined the most beautiful one
for me.
The ground outside was white and there was the sharp little sound of
sleet against the window-pane, but the breakfast-room was a scene of
glowing cheer. A Japanese tea-service was on the table, and the trout,
which Richard had been fortunate enough to secure from a passing
fisherman that morning, was broiled to a most delicious brown and
seemed to be enjoying its repose upon its bed of water-cress. A
steaming pot of hot water was presently brought in and placed beside
my plate, and the tea-ball was brought to me. I was to make the tea
and Richard and I were to breakfast together.
"This strikes me as being a happy arrangement," he said, smiling what
I had often called his "twenty-one-year-old smile," for when he wore
it it was difficult for me to believe that he was as far advanced in
the thirties as I knew him to be. "This looks quite married and
home-like, doesn't it--Mrs. Chalmers?"
Richard seldom jested about our marriage, and he never, but this one
time, made reference to the name which would be mine when we married.
Such a jest on the morning before, when he had just come in from his
trip and was the personification of gentlemanly grouch, would have
made all the world radiant to me; but, as it was, I blushed painfully
as he spoke the name--and he took the blush at its face value.
"Ah, madam, I see that the thought pleases you!" he kept on
banteringly as my hand trembled a little over the tea-ball. "Perhaps
this is my opportunity for pressing my suit--isn't that what they call
it in novels? It smacks too much of the tailor shop to suit my taste,
however.--But honestly, Ann, I do want us to make arrangements for our
marriage the first minute this nomination business is over. What do
you say, dear heart?"
Again, if the question had been asked yesterday morning it would have
made a startlingly different impression, but, as it was this morning,
I parried.
"I say that we are two very selfish and thoughtless young people to be
talking about such things while Evelyn is lying up-stairs so ill--and
your mother in such distress, Richard," I answered.
"Well, we'll not say another word about it, if it troubles you,
sweetheart," he said gently. Then after a moment he added: "I never
expect to do anything to hurt you, even a little bit, again."
"You mean--?"
"I mean as I did yesterday--about Morgan, you know. Did you notice how
I stayed clear away last night while you went to the door with him?
But," resuming his tone of persiflage, "you were there an unreasonable
time, it seems to me. Now, tell your rightful lord what you two
cronies were talking about."
"About his trip," I said quickly, spilling a little tea upon the cloth
and vigorously mopping it up with my napkin. "He's going to Europe
next week."
"Well, he's a pretty decent chap, although he does look deucedly young
to be cutting into people--don't you think so?" he asked, not that he
really did think so, for Alfred is quite old-looking for his years,
but he thought it would place him in a better light--the way he acted
yesterday.
"Oh, you'd like a bearded old surgeon who learned so much technique
before the war that he hasn't needed to learn any since," I answered,
and the breakfast-hour passed away with this kind of light, bantering
talk.
From that day Richard set about being the most agreeable companion
when we were together, and the most devoted lover when we were
separated that it has ever been my lot to meet in fact or fiction. I
left Charlotteville the next day and he followed me up to the city on
the fourth day thereafter, as soon as the doctors pronounced Evelyn
out of danger. I had not intended stopping over in the city any length
of time, but I found Cousin Eunice in a state of despair over the
progress, or lack of progress, of her new book.
"Do stay," she begged, as I announced this intention to her, "at least
until I get through with the proposal. It's as hard to get your hero
to propose nicely as it is to get the gathers of a sleeve to set
right. There's always either too much or too little in a given spot.
And it's so provoking, when I'm right in the midst of such a delicate
situation, to have Pearl call out to me from the foot of the steps:
'Mrs. Clayborne, here's a jepman at the do' want's to know if your
husban's a householder and a freeholder.'
"'Tell him yes, and a _slave-holder_,' I yell back at her; for any
woman who really keeps house _is_ a slave."
"What do 'jepmen' want to ask such fool questions for?" I asked
wonderingly.
"To avoid election frauds. You see there is so much deviltry right now
in politics that the law-enforcement faction is sending men around all
over the city to find out every voter, and if he has the right to
vote."
"Well, what good does it all do?"
"None; but it gives the poor, overworked housewives one more trip to
the front door, in the course of the day.--Then there are agents
selling non-rustible wired bust-forms. Pearl never knows what to say
to them, either."
"Mercy, what should one say?" I demanded, thinking all of a sudden
that maybe my task was going to be too large for me.
"Say anything that comes to your mind, just so it's unfit for
publication--nothing milder will do for them," she answered bitterly.
"And Waterloo doesn't give you any trouble while you're trying to
work, does he?" I inquired.
"Happily no, for Grapefruit is his consolation and his joy. Never were
there such ways of a nursemaid with a man child. Never has anybody
invented such tales and games--"
"And spitting contests," I interpolated.
"It's true she taught him that ugly habit," she responded with some
dignity, "but all boys learn it sooner or later."
So I stayed and the book grew like a soap-bubble the first week. Then
Pearl's brother got into that condition which is always described by
our colored servants with much gusto and rolling of white eyeballs as
"'bout ter die," and, whether he ever dies or not, is a matter that
the housekeeper knows nothing of. But the servant always leaves, and
she did in this case; and upon the Sunday morning thereafter the gas
stove in the Clayborne home looked as if gangrene had set in on it. I
had magnanimously insisted on doing the cooking; and I didn't know
before that a gas stove had to be washed as often as a new-born baby.
Cousin Eunice came out of her cataleptic state on Sunday morning, for
she is ashamed to write on the type-writer that day for fear Waterloo
will tell it at Sunday-school--and she showed me how to dispose of the
week-old egg-shells and concentrated soup cans which had accumulated
amazingly around the fenders of the range.
"Oh, I think a literary ambition is an evil thing sometimes," she said
with a deep sigh, looking around at the house, which she declared was
enough to give us all bubonic plague.
"It is--er, disheartening to have you shut up all the week in the
little back room up-stairs," Rufe admitted, fishing one of his best
gloves out from behind the coal-box. "When you're locked away up there
the house looks as empty as a hotel bureau-drawer--and that's the
emptiest thing on earth."
"I know it," she answered, looking at him sympathetically. "--Besides,
it's wearing to have a book for ever in your mind. Inspiration is so
uncertain--and so urgent. I've had it strike me while I was washing my
hair; and it's far from pleasant to have to dash the soap out of your
eyes while you search all over the house for your note-book and
pencil--and the water drips down all over the furniture."
"It must be," Rufe agreed.
"And here lately I've grown so absent-minded that when I go down-town
for a little shopping I have to dress with my memorandum in my mouth
to keep from going off and forgetting it."
But on Monday morning genius was burning again, and I stayed through
that week, but only in the capacity of a protection against
interruptions. We got another cook, for Pearl's brother, like Charles
II., was "an unconscionable time a-dying." Richard came every day and
every night and was so attentive to the whole family that Rufe rather
sarcastically asked one day: "Ann, is Chalmers courting you or me?"
Rufe's words meant little to me then, but later they kept recurring to
my mind with a persistency that would make Banquo's ghost appear like
a tame and laggard thing. Was Richard hoping to gain, through his
friendship with me, the support of the _Times_? He knew that if Rufe's
personal influence could not bring about an actual support of him in
the coming campaign it would be a factor in having the paper judge his
manipulations with a lenient eye.
And now this finally brings me up to that miserable day the following
spring, the Ides of March, it was, when the skies fell; and they never
fell upon a more wretched, more humiliated, more bitterly disciplined
young woman.
As I have said, Richard had made an ideal fiancé throughout the time
which followed that miserable parting with Alfred, and I had occasion
many times to wonder if, after all, I might not have been mistaken
about the incompatibility of our natures. Besides, the fascination of
the handsome, physical Richard Chalmers was still there; perhaps it
was never so strongly and bitterly there as on the fifteenth of March
that I have just mentioned.
As the winter wore away, Richard's visits down home here, in the
country, had been much further apart, especially since the time for
the actual political fight drew nearer; and, from this fact and from
the newspapers' more volcanic outbursts, I knew that a gubernatorial
contest was about to take place.
But I should never have known it from the man who was most concerned
in the race, for, during all this time, Richard never confided one
hope nor fear of his to me; and I see now that it was not because he
"didn't want to bother my pretty little head about such things," as
he occasionally stated, with a fond smile, but because he judged me to
be exactly of the same intellectual stripe as his mother and Evelyn.
He thought that I would not have sense enough to understand the
situation.
Richard had been out of town a good deal lately on business trips, and
the meeting that morning in March, at Rufe's office, was in the nature
of an accident. Richard had not known that I was in the city for a
day's shopping, so when we accidentally ran across each other on the
street, the _Times_ building was the nearest place we might drop into
for a little talk.
"Well, you are taking your campaign hard," I said, as I looked at him
critically after Rufe had assured us that we might have the whole
morning without interruption, in his own particular little den, as he
was going to be out in town. Then Richard had asked him to give orders
that we were not to be interrupted, as he particularly wished for a
little talk with me.
"Ann, I've had enough to run any man crazy since I saw you last,
dear," he said wearily, in answer to my comment on his looks. He
dropped down into the nearest chair and put up one hand to shade his
eyes from the brilliant morning glare. "This political business is the
most infernal--"
"What, Richard?"
He was looking steadily into my eyes, but at my question he looked
away; then after a moment moved his chair over closer and caught up my
left hand.
"I'm in a devil of a mess, love," he said after a little inward
struggle--then with that charming directness of his he ventured--"I
want you to promise to help me out."
"Of course I will," I readily agreed.
"Oh, that's not the kind of promise I want," he instantly objected.
"Say it solemnly. Say, 'I'll promise to stick to you.'"
"Why, Richard, you make me fear that something is seriously wrong," I
cried in sudden alarm, for my sense of oneness with him had grown so
amazingly since those months between the time of my visit to
Charlotteville and then, and I felt as entirely identified with his
interests as if we were already married. His attitude toward me at the
breakfast-table the morning after Alfred's departure was a key-note to
the manner in which he strove every day after that to cement this
relation; and I know now that this was an immense factor in causing
me to allow the engagement to exist through those days of doubt. I had
always felt that an engagement was very nearly as binding as a
marriage--and Richard had always exercised such a charming right of
possession.
"Something is seriously wrong, Ann," he said gravely, and his eyes
held mine in a sort of fascinated wonder; "and I expect you to stand
by me."
His manner was very grave; and he seemed to be in a serious doubt as
to whether or not I would stand by him.
"Tell me about it," I suggested as patiently as I could, for I was
trembling with uneasy eagerness.
"Give me your hand and swear that you will stick to me."
"Oh, sweetheart, I'll stick to you if you're a horse-thief," I said,
trying to force a laugh.
"Then listen! You know that I want to be governor of this state--"
I nodded my head.
"--And the temperance party is about to go back on me because they
think that Major Blake and I are going to form a separate faction and
leave out the liquor question."
"Yes, I know."
"Well, that is just what we are going to do--to save the state from
the Republicans."
"Well?"
"And Blake is going to work up the campaign _for me_--on the
condition--"
My blood was pounding like fire through my veins, but I felt
absolutely unable to move. I knew what he was going to say and my
heart was pleading for mercy, but my lips were mute. They could not
even move enough to say, "I know it all. Don't say the hideous words."
Richard had grown painfully embarrassed, and he stammered awkwardly:
"--on the condition that I become his son-in-law."
Just what happened after this I do not know. I might sit here all
night trying to recall his explanations and protestations, but I shall
get through with it all as speedily as possible, for all I really
remember about that terrible day is that I felt dreadfully ill--and
_benumbed_. I listened in a sort of trance to his recital of how
Berenice Blake had labored under an hallucination for some time that
he cared for her; and she had learned to return the fancied affection;
how very ill she was, so ill that when she came home for Thanksgiving
it was found that she would have to go right back to Denver--
"And you went as far as St. Louis with them--and brought me a string
of pearls," I said in a dazed fashion.
"Yes, I always think of you first--no matter where I am," he answered,
looking at me fondly. "And our love-affair will not even be suspended
for very long," he went on. "She can't possibly live six months; and
her father wants, above everything on earth, that she shall be happy
for the little while that she has to live."
"By marrying you."
"By being engaged to me. I would _not_ marry her--there is no
necessity for that."
"And you are asking me to release you?"
"I am _not_," he said very firmly. "I am asking you to give me--a
leave of absence."
Some unknown power seemed to put the words into my mouth, for I was
not conscious of any effort toward thinking.
"But I release you, Richard. I could not be--mixed up in that kind of
thing."
He sprang from his chair and caught me violently in his arms.
"That's just what you're not going to do. You are _mine_. You are
going to stick to me."
"I said that I would stick to you if you were a horse-thief," I said
slowly. "--But not--_this_."
"Oh, Ann, you are breaking my heart," he cried, as he caught me close
to him and buried his head on my shoulder. "You can't mean to throw me
over."
"You are kind to put it that way, Richard," I said.
"You are a sensible girl," he exclaimed suddenly as he raised his head
and looked at me again. "You must listen to reason and do exactly as I
tell you in this matter. Then all will be well. The affair will be
nothing more than a make-believe between us all, for Major Blake knows
that I do not love the poor, homely, half-dead creature; the betrothal
will have no more feeling in it than a stage kiss. The only deception
you will have to practise will be to announce your own engagement to
some one else this week, so that--"
"This week? My own engagement? Richard, what do you mean?"
"I mean just this, my poor little girl," he began, his deep gray eyes
full of tears, and his hands, as they held mine, trembling piteously,
"--that if the story gets noised abroad that I--I hate even to
suggest such a thing, Ann, it is so far from truth, darling--but if
the story gets noised abroad that I jilted you it will harm my
prospects, as well as being a humiliation to you."
"Oh, I see."
"So I thought you might announce your engagement to some one else--of
course, just for a pose, but--"
"But there isn't any one else."
His eyes glanced into mine for a moment, then sought the floor.
"I've thought of all that," he said easily. "But you know that Alfred
Morgan would--would--"
"Would let me use his name?"
"Oh, Ann, don't look so queer and unnatural, dear; you frighten me!
You're not going to faint, nor--anything, are you?" he began, looking
around helplessly.
"I'm not going to faint," I assured him with a little smile that was
forced up from somewhere in the depths of my misery. "But I'm not
going to use Alfred's--nor any other man's name in the way you
suggest."
"It is only to save yourself humiliation, dear," he said, looking
annoyed and relieved at the same time.
"Oh, I'll take the humiliation for my part," I said but with no
evidence of anger nor reproach. I was still stunned and benumbed. "I
can stand the humiliation--but I hate a liar."
* * * * *
So it ended this way--that beautiful dream of mine; and I should not
tell the truth if I pretended that I did not wish many times in the
bitter weeks which followed to close my eyes to the cruel reality and
dream again, even knowing all the while that it was a dream.
No, there was no sense of thankful relief that I had found my knight
of the lion heart to be a poor-spirited, craven, selfish thing. Not
then! At the time of the revelation and for many days following I gave
myself up to a bitter, longing sorrow for the man whom I had created
out of my own fancy and had named King Richard. I had made the image
as entirely as ever Pygmalion made Galatea, and I had worshipped it. I
had loved it so that if its coming to life could have been brought
about through my giving up my own I should gladly have let it live.
But it would not come to life, for it was nothing--it was a
dream-creature. Even as such, its image continued with me, and I
sorrowed for it with such an aching, lonely hopelessness that more
times than once during the spring months of that year I felt that it
was not within my nature to keep up the struggle any longer. I must
give it up and send for Richard to come back.
The pale blue of the flowers which came up and blossomed in thousands
along the hillsides of the "garden" back of the village, and the deep
blue of the April skies were both turned to gray this spring--the
cold, piercing gray of his eyes. They had not been cold for me!
And then a little later there was the "humiliation" he had mentioned.
Possibly he did what he could to make this as light as it might be
made, for his engagement to Major Blake's daughter was not publicly
announced until several weeks after I felt sure the understanding had
been reached. But he could not ask her to keep the betrothal a secret,
as he had asked me, for his capital must be quickly and surely made
from its brief existence.
Taking a new lease on life from this sudden and mighty happiness of
hers, the poor, dying creature came home from Colorado and set about a
feverish enjoyment of the brief span of time which was left her.
There were crowded arrangements made for the wedding, which was
announced for June--after the primaries were well over--and she had
the satisfaction of having her full-length picture appear in all the
prominent newspapers of the state, all bearing the legend that she was
Mr. Richard Chalmers' fiancée. The sight of these pictures, homely as
they were, was no consolation to me, for I had never been jealous of
her. And now I felt an infinite pity.
I used often to think with a laugh of scorn of the man I had imagined
Richard Chalmers to be, making love to the poor, ugly, emaciated
thing, in hopes of gaining her father's political favor! For of course
he had made love to her all along, just as he had to me, in the same
beautiful language, and with the same beautiful smile--but he had not
kissed her. I could fancy him telling her of his great admiration and
his mighty respect, and how unworthy he was to touch the hem of her
garment--when all the while he was thinking how ugly she was and what
a risk there might be of his catching tuberculosis!
Poor girl! She was happy, though, for her little while, tagging around
the country with her father and Richard, and watching him adoringly as
he made his pretty speeches to the enthusiastic crowds of
constituents. But she played the game too quick and fast, and with
such a studied disregard for consequences that it was no wonder the
end came so soon. She spent the most uncertain, changeable weeks of
the time which is ever an ominous one for consumptives in driving
through long stretches of damp country roads, then sitting for hours
in stuffy, ill-ventilated little assembly rooms, where the foul air
did its deadly work for her. She contracted pneumonia and died; and
Mr. Chalmers canceled all speaking dates for one week!
But she died still thinking her Richard was a lion-hearted king, so
who can say that Fate was not kind to her?
That there was an aftermath to my own affair with Richard was almost
inevitable, for only in books do such bubbles burst and vanish
entirely, leaving nothing in their wake. But this is the true record
of what happened that spring and summer, and undignified and
inartistic enough these happenings ofttimes were. If Fate had wished
to bring the matter to a beautiful and aesthetic close she would never
let Richard and me meet again in this world, for oh, those
after-meetings are bitter dregs of romance! But we met again--on the
night of his defeat, a strange chance meeting it was, for he was
standing at the door of his headquarters hotel, which is just across
the street from the _Times_ building, trying to make way for his
mother and Evelyn, when I passed with the Claybornes. Evelyn saw me
and called out a surprised greeting, so I was forced to stop for a
moment, while Rufe and Cousin Eunice, never missing me, continued
threading their way slowly across the street.
Richard stood very pale and weary looking, with his hat in his hand,
while I spoke to Mrs. Chalmers and Evelyn; then seeing that I had been
left alone he gravely suggested that I could never make my way through
the crowd by myself, so he sent his mother and sister up-stairs and
constituted himself my temporary knight errant. His hand, which
tightly clutched my arm, as we struggled on, was icy cold; and the
lines around his eyes made him look decidedly middle-aged. Clearly he
had already realized his defeat, although the returns were only
beginning to be flashed before the eyes of the cheering throng.
He walked with me to the elevator of the _Times_ building, and the
great mirror in the back of the car held our two images a moment as he
lifted his hat and turned to leave me. The reflection held a wholesome
lesson as I gazed for an instant upon the features of the handsome,
blasé, middle-aged man, then glanced at myself in my short-sleeved
white gown, with my rounded elbows showing youthfully. Yes, I was
undeniably _young_; and I felt, even in the midst of my sorrow for
him, a little thrill of satisfaction that it was so.
It was a week or two after his defeat that Richard began a renewal of
his lover-like attitude toward me, calling me on the telephone and
asking permission to come, and again bombarding the express office
with boxes of candy and flowers. When I gave abnormally polite
refusals to these requests he would usually acquiesce with his half
amused smile, which I could see just as plainly as if only a few feet
lay between us, instead of many miles.
"You are a stubborn little vixen," he would say sometimes. "How long
do you expect to keep this up?"
And if he had studied the matter over carefully and tried to hit on a
means of curing me of my fancy for him he could never have found
anything more effectual than this. Then one day in the early autumn
when all the world was dreary and the state was so evidently going
Republican that no doubt he had cause for his odd temper, Richard
called me again and asked that a meeting might be arranged, either at
home or in the city. I began giving my usual reasons for not seeing
him, when he cut me short with quick impatience.
"Oh, that's all right, if you don't want to see me," he said harshly,
his rich drawl entirely obliterated in the sudden anger which tinted
his speech. "And I'll promise never to give you the chance again of
turning me down. But, my dear Ann, you must remember there was a time
when I didn't have to _beg_ you for every little favor I got."
"There was a time!" Ungenerous, despicable as this was, coming from
Richard, I took it with a sort of calmness born of the knowledge that
it was only what I deserved. For I don't believe that a woman ever
acts a fool over a man but that she lives to have the unwholesome fact
cast up to her while she is drinking the dregs of her folly. "There
was a time," the man is always ready to remind her, ofttimes hoping
to use this memory as a lever to remove the aftergrowth of
indifference or positive hatred.
In this case the words caused me to feel something very nearly akin to
hatred for Richard, and I quickly ran away up-stairs, where I threw
myself across my bed and gave way to the storm of tears which had been
brought on by the angry selfishness of his act. But tears, while they
are bitter and scalding, are also _cleansing_, and they acted that day
as a purifying flood which washed my soul clean from all thoughts of
Richard Chalmers. When, late in the afternoon of that rainy day, I
arose from my bed I was weak from weeping, and unutterably saddened
over this final, ugly blow which Reality had dealt the fragments of my
house which was built upon the sands; but, weak and sad and
world-wise, as I felt myself to be, there was a great joy singing in
my heart, for I knew, for the first time, I _knew_ that I was free.
The next day I wrote a letter to Jean asking her to get me several
boxes of the latest style gold-edged note paper with my monogram
embossed thereon, and insisted that she have the stationer hurry the
order through. "I want the very newest and most exquisite style you
can find," I wrote her, "for I am about to begin a most particular
correspondence and if you will take pity upon my loneliness enough to
run down any time within the next few weeks I'll tell you the name of
my distant correspondent. Yet, for fear you will not be able to get
here before your curiosity consumes you, I'll let you into the secret
enough to satisfy you that the gentleman is a 'medicine man' and he is
now wandering on a foreign strand. And if you should hear that I have
done such an unladylike thing as to _send_ for him, you will know in
your heart that it is not entirely on account of father's rheumatism
and Mammy Lou's still threatening right side.
"But come, dear Jean, if you love me, for I am very lonesome, with
absolutely nobody but Neva and her mother to divert my mind."
Poor little Neva! I must not wind up this chapter without some little
word about her, for there is going to be only one more chapter after
this, and there will be no room for Neva in that. This final word may
be written next week--it may not be written until a whole year has
passed, but whenever it is it will be the last, for I know that if
Mammy Lou's definition of the period is correct it will wind up the
age of Eve.
But Neva! We left her a lovelorn lass grieving over the perfidies of
Hiram, the fickle. We find her again a college girl, breathing
academic atmosphere from the tassel of her mortar-board down to the
rubber heel of her "gym" shoes. She cares for nothing but school, and
the sororities therein. She knows all the places up in the city where
one is most likely to come across the college boys one desires most to
see; and the class of ices that take the longest time to consume while
one is sitting watching these boys pass by. She sometimes does not
know the name of a certain desirable young man, but she always knows
the name of his high-sounding Greek letter brotherhood.
"She don't talk about nothing but 'frats' and 'spats' and things like
that," her mother one time complained after a brief visit from Neva.
"And she calls some of her mates by the curiousest names I ever heard.
There's one she likes a good deal that she says is a _new Phi Chi_;
and another one that she has to look to some because she's a '_old
Tau!_'"
"The stage has to be passed through," mother said to Mrs. Sullivan
comfortingly, "for it's as certain and as harmless as chicken-pox."
But Mammy Lou takes a much more serious view of Neva's collegiate
career and high-flown talk.
"Education ain't no good for girls," she often declares emphatically,
"for it spoils their powers of emmanuel labor. You can just as shore
count on a educated girl makin' a lazy wife as you can count on damp
weather makin' a baby's hair curl an' a ol' woman's feet hurt!"