There is a song of parting, an intentionally pathetic song, which
contains the line, "All the tomorrows shall be as to-day," meaning
equally gloomy. Young singers, loving this line, take care to
pronounce the words with unusual distinctness: the listener may
feel that the performer has the capacity for great and consistent
suffering. It is not, of course, that youth loves unhappiness, but
the appearance of it, its supposed picturesqueness. Youth runs
from what is pathetic, but hangs fondly upon pathos. It is the
idea of sorrow, not sorrow, which charms: and so the young singer
dwells upon those lingering tomorrows, happy in the conception of
a permanent wretchedness incurred in the interest of sentiment.
For youth believes in permanence.
It is when we are young that we say, "I shall never," and "I shall
always," not knowing that we are only time's atoms in a crucible
of incredible change. An old man scarce dares say, "I have never,"
for he knows that if he searches he will find, probably, that he
has. "All, all is change."
It was an evening during the winter holidays when Mrs. Lindley,
coming to sit by the fire in her son's smoking-room, where Richard
sat glooming, narrated her legend of the Devil of Lisieux. It must
have been her legend: the people of Lisieux know nothing of it;
but this Richard the Guileless took it for tradition, as she
alleged it, and had no suspicion that she had spent the afternoon
inventing it.
She did not begin the recital immediately upon taking her chair,
across the hearth from her son; she led up to it. She was an
ample, fresh-coloured, lively woman; and like her son only in
being a kind soul: he got neither his mortal seriousness nor his
dreaminess from her. She was more than content with Cora's
abandonment of him, though, as chivalrousness was not demanded of
her, she would have preferred that he should have been the jilt.
She thought Richard well off in his release, even at the price of
all his savings. But there was something to hope, even in that
matter, Pryor wrote from Paris encouragingly: he believed that
Moliterno might be frightened or forced into at least a partial
restitution; though Richard would not count upon it, and had
"begun at the beginning" again, as a small-salaried clerk in a
bank, trudging patiently to work in the morning and home in the
evening, a long-faced, tired young man, more absent than ever,
lifeless, and with no interest in anything outside his own
broodings. His mother, pleased with his misfortune in love, was of
course troubled that it should cause him to suffer. She knew she
could not heal him; but she also knew that everything is healed in
time, and that sometimes it is possible for people to help time a
little.
Her first remark to her son, this evening, was that to the best of
her memory she had never used the word "hellion." And, upon his
saying gently, no, he thought it probable that she never had, but
seeking no farther and dropping his eyes to the burning wood,
apparently under the impression that the subject was closed, she
informed him brusquely that it was her intention to say it now.
"What is it you want to say, mother?"
"If I can bring myself to use the word `hellion'," she returned,
"I'm going to say that of all the heaven-born, whole-souled and
consistent ones I ever knew Hedrick Madison is the King."
"In what new way?" he inquired.
"Egerton Villard. Egerton used to be the neatest, best-mannered,
best-dressed boy in town; but he looks and behaves like a Digger
Indian since he's taken to following Hedrick around. Mrs. Villard
says it's the greatest sorrow of her life, but she's quite
powerless: the boy is Hedrick's slave. The other day she sent a
servant after him, and just bringing him home nearly ruined her
limousine. He was solidly covered with molasses, over his clothes
and all, from head to foot, and then he'd rolled in hay and
chicken feathers to be a _gnu_ for Hedrick to kodak in the African
Wilds of the Madisons' stable. Egerton didn't know what a gnu was,
but Hedrick told him that was the way to be one, he said. Then,
when they'd got him scraped and boiled, and most of his hair
pulled out, a policemen came to arrest him for stealing the jug of
molasses at a corner grocery."
Richard nodded, and smiled faintly for comment. They sat in
silence for a while.
"I saw Mrs. Madison yesterday," said his mother. "She seemed very
cheerful; her husband is able to talk almost perfectly again,
though he doesn't get downstairs. Laura reads to him a great
deal."
He nodded again, his gaze not moving from the fire.
"Laura was with her mother," said Mrs. Lindley. "She looked very
fetching in a black cloth suit and a fur hat--old ones her sister
left, I suspect, but very becoming, for all that. Laura's `going
out' more than usual this winter. She's really the belle of the
holiday dances, I hear. Of course she would be", she added,
thoughtfully--"now."
"Why should she be `now' more than before?"
"Oh, Laura's quite blossomed," Mrs. Lindley answered. "I think
she's had some great anxieties relieved. Of course both she and
her mother must have worried about Cora as much as they waited on
her. It must be a great burden lifted to have her comfortably
settled, or, at least, disposed of. I thought they both looked
better. But I have a special theory about Laura: I suppose you'll
laugh at me----"
"Oh, no."
"I wish you would sometimes," she said wistfully, "so only you
laughed. My idea is that Laura was in love with that poor little
Trumble, too."
"What?" He looked up at that.
"Yes; girls fall in love with anybody. I fancy she cared very
deeply for him; but I think she's a strong, sane woman, now. She's
about the steadiest, coolest person I know--and I know her better,
lately, than I used to. I think she made up her mind that she'd
not sit down and mope over her unhappiness, and that she'd get
over what caused it; and she took the very best remedy: she began
going about, going everywhere, and she went gayly, too! And I'm
sure she's cured; I'm sure she doesn't care the snap of her
fingers for Wade Trumble or any man alive. She's having a pretty
good time, I imagine: she has everything in the world except
money, and she's never cared at all about _that_. She's young, and
she dresses well--these days--and she's one of the handsomest
girls in town; she plays like a poet, and she dances well----"
"Yes," said Richard;--reflectively, "she does dance well."
"And from what I hear from Mrs. Villard," continued his mother, "I
guess she has enough young men in love with her to keep any girl
busy."
He was interested enough to show some surprise. "In love with
Laura?"
"Four, I hear." The best of women are sometimes the readiest with
impromptu statistics.
"Well, well!" he said, mildly.
"You see, Laura has taken to smiling on the world, and the world
smiles back at her. It's not a bad world about that, Richard."
"No," he sighed. "I suppose not."
"But there's more than that in this case, my dear son."
"Is there?"
The intelligent and gentle matron laughed as though at some
unexpected turn of memory and said:
"Speaking of Hedrick, did you ever hear the story of the Devil of
Lisieux, Richard?"
"I think not; at least, I don't remember it."
"Lisieux is a little town in Normandy," she said. "I was there a
few days with your father, one summer, long ago. It's a country
full of old stories, folklore, and traditions; and the people
still believe in the Old Scratch pretty literally. This legend was
of the time when he came to Lisieux. The people knew he was coming
because a wise woman had said that he was on the way, and
predicted that he would arrive at the time of the great fair.
Everybody was in great distress, because they knew that whoever
looked at him would become bewitched, but, of course, they had to
go to the fair. The wise woman was able to give them a little
comfort; she said some one was coming with the devil, and that the
people must not notice the devil, but keep their eyes fastened on
this other--then they would be free of the fiend's influence. But,
when the devil arrived at the fair, nobody even looked to see who
his companion was, for the devil was so picturesque, so vivid, all
in flaming scarlet and orange, and he capered and danced and sang
so that nobody could help looking at him--and, after looking once,
they couldn't look away until they were thoroughly under his
spell. So they were all bewitched, and began to scream and howl
and roll on the ground, and turn on each other and brawl, and
`commit all manner of excesses.' Then the wise woman was able to
exorcise the devil, and he sank into the ground; but his companion
stayed, and the people came to their senses, and looked, and they
saw that it was an angel. The angel had been there all the time
that the fiend was, of course. So they have a saying now, that
there may be angels with us, but we don't notice them when the
devil's about."
She did not look at her son as she finished, and she had hurried
through the latter part of her "legend" with increasing timidity.
The parallel was more severe, now that she put it to him, than she
intended; it sounded savage; and she feared she had overshot her
mark. Laura, of course, was the other, the companion; she had been
actually a companion for the vivid sister, everywhere with her at
the fair, and never considered: now she emerged from her
overshadowed obscurity, and people were able to see her as an
individual--heretofore she had been merely the retinue of a
flaming Cora. But the "legend" was not very gallant to Cora!
Mrs. Lindley knew that it hurt her son; she felt it without
looking at him, and before he gave a sign. As it was, he did not
speak, but, after a few moments, rose and went quietly out of the
room: then she heard the front door open and close. She sat by his
fire a long, long time and was sorry--and wondered.
When Richard came home from his cold night-prowl in the snowy
streets, he found a sheet of note paper upon his pillow:
"Dearest Richard, I didn't mean that anybody you ever cared for
was a d---l. I only meant that often the world finds out that
there are lovely people it hasn't noticed."
. . . He reproached himself, then, for the reproach his leaving
her had been; he had a susceptible and annoying conscience, this
unfortunate Richard. He found it hard to get to sleep, that night;
and was kept awake long after he had planned how he would make up
to his mother for having received her "legend" so freezingly. What
kept him awake, after that, was a dim, rhythmic sound coming from
the house next door, where a holiday dance was in progress--music
far away and slender: fiddle, 'cello, horn, bassoon, drums, all
rollicking away almost the night-long, seeping through the walls
to his restless pillow. Finally, when belated drowsiness came, the
throbbing tunes mingled with his half-dreams, and he heard the
light shuffling of multitudinous feet over the dancing-floor, and
became certain that Laura's were among them. He saw her, gliding,
swinging, laughing, and happy and the picture did not please him:
it seemed to him that she would have been much better employed
sitting in black to write of a hopeless love. Coquetting with four
suitors was not only inconsistent; it was unbecoming. It "suited
Cora's style," but in Laura it was outrageous. When he woke, in
the morning, he was dreaming of her: dressed as Parthenia,
beautiful, and throwing roses to an acclaiming crowd through which
she was borne on a shield upon the shoulders of four Antinouses.
Richard thought it scandalous.
His indignation with her had not worn off when he descended to
breakfast, but he made up to his mother for having troubled her.
Then, to cap his gallantry, he observed that several inches of
snow must have fallen during the night; it would be well packed
upon the streets by noon; he would get a sleigh, after lunch, and
take her driving. It was a holiday.
She thanked him, but half-declined. "I'm afraid it's too cold for
me, but there are lots of nice girls in town, Richard, who won't
mind weather."
"But I asked _you_!" It was finally left an open question for the
afternoon to settle; and, upon her urging, he went out for a walk.
She stood at the window to watch him, and, when she saw that he
turned northward, she sank into a chair, instead of going to give
Joe Varden his after-breakfast instructions, and fell into a deep
reverie.
Outdoors, it was a biting cold morning, wind-swept and gray; and
with air so frosty-pure no one might breathe it and stay bilious:
neither in body nor bilious in spirit. It was a wind to sweep the
yellow from jaundiced cheeks and make them rosy; a wind to clear
dulled eyes; it was a wind to lift foolish hearts, to lift them so
high they might touch heaven and go winging down the sky, the
wildest of wild-geese.
. . . When the bell rang, Laura was kneeling before the library
fire, which she had just kindled, and she had not risen when Sarah
brought Richard to the doorway. She was shabby enough, poor
Cinderella! looking up, so frightened, when her prince appeared.
She had not been to the dance.
She had not four suitors. She had none.
He came toward her. She rose and stepped back a little. Ashes had
blown upon her, and, oh, the old, old thought of the woman born to
be a mother! she was afraid his clothes might get dusty if he came
too close.
But to Richard she looked very beautiful; and a strange thing
happened: trembling, he saw that the firelight upon her face was
brighter than any firelight he had ever seen.