OF MENTAL PROCESSES--FEMININE AND INSOLUBLE
Honora may be pardoned for finally ascribing to Mr. Brent's somewhat
sardonic sense of humour his remarks concerning her husband's elevation
to a conspicuous position in the world of finance. Taken in any other
sense than a joke, they were both insulting and degrading, and made her
face burn when she thought of them. After he had gone--or rather after
she had dismissed him--she took a book upstairs to wait for Howard, but
she could not read. At times she wished she had rebuked Trixton Brent
more forcibly, although he was not an easy person to rebuke; and again
she reflected that, had she taken the matter too seriously, she would
have laid herself open to his ridicule. The lion was often unwittingly
rough, and perhaps that was part of his fascination.
If Howard had come home before midnight it is possible that she might
have tried to sound him as to his relations with Trixton Brent. That
gentleman, she remembered, had the reputation of being a peculiarly
hardheaded business man, and it was of course absurd that he should offer
her husband a position merely to please her. And her imagination failed
her when she tried to think of Howard as the president of a trust
company. She was unable to picture him in a great executive office:
This tram of thought led her to the unaccustomed task of analyzing his
character. For the first time since her marriage comparisons crept into
her mind, and she awoke to the fact that he was not a masterful man--even
among men. For all his self-confidence-self-assurance, perhaps, would be
the better word--he was in reality a follower, not a leader; a gleaner.
He did not lack ideas. She tried to arrest the process in her brain when
she got as far as asking herself whether it might not be that he lacked
ideals. Since in business matters he never had taken her into his
confidence, and since she would not at any rate have understood such
things, she had no proof of such a failing. But one or two vague remarks
of Trixton Brent's which she recalled, and Howard's own request that she
should be friendly with Brent, reenforced her instinct on this point.
When she heard her husband's footstep on the porch, she put out her
light, but still lay thinking in the darkness. Her revelations had
arrived at the uncomfortable stage where they began to frighten her, and
with an effort she forced herself to turn to the other side of the
account. The hour was conducive to exaggerations. Perfection in husbands
was evidently a state not to be considered by any woman in her right
senses. He was more or less amenable, and he was prosperous, although
definite news of that prosperity never came from him--Quicksands always
knew of it first. An instance of this second-hand acquisition of
knowledge occurred the very next morning, when Lily Dallam, with much
dignity, walked into Honora's little sitting-room. There was no apparent
reason why dignity should not have been becoming to Lily Dallam, for she
was by no means an unimpressive-looking woman; but the assumption by her
of that quality always made her a little tragic or (if one chanced to be
in the humour--Honora was not) a little ridiculous.
"I suppose I have no pride," she said, as she halted within a few feet of
the doorway.
"Why, Lily!" exclaimed Honora, pushing back the chair from her desk, and
rising.
But Mrs. Dallam did not move.
"I suppose I have no pride," she repeated in a dead voice, "but I just
couldn't help coming over and giving you a chance."
"Giving me a chance?" said Honora.
"To explain--after the way you treated me at the polo game. If I hadn't
seen it with my own eyes, I shouldn't have believed it. I don't think I
should have trusted my own eyes," Mrs. Dallam went so far as to affirm,
"if Lula Chandos and Clara Trowbridge and others hadn't been there and
seen it too; I shouldn't have believed it."
Honora was finding penitence a little difficult. But her heart was kind.
"Do sit down, Lily," she begged. "If I've offended you in any way, I'm
exceedingly sorry--I am, really. You ought to know me well enough to
understand that I wouldn't do anything to hurt your feelings."
"And when I counted on you so, for my tea and dinner at the club!"
continued Mrs. Dallam. "There were other women dying to come. And you
said you had a headache, and were tired."
"I was," began Honora, fruitlessly.
"And you were so popular in Quicksands--everybody was crazy about you.
You were so sweet and so unspoiled. I might have known that it couldn't
last. And now, because Abby Kame and Cecil Grainger and--"
"Lily, please don't say such things!" Honora implored, revolted.
"Of course you won't be satisfied now with anything less than Banbury or
Newport. But you can't say I didn't warn you, Honora, that they are a
horrid, selfish, fast lot," Lily Dallam declared, and brushed her eyes
with her handkerchief. "I did love you."
"If you'll only be reasonable a moment, Lily,--" said Honora.
"Reasonable! I saw you with my own eyes. Five minutes after you left me
they all started for your house, and Lula Chandos said it was the
quickest cure of a headache she had ever seen."
"Lily," Honora began again, with exemplary patience, when people invite
themselves to one's house, it's a little difficult to refuse them
hospitality, isn't it?"
"Invite themselves?"
"Yes," replied Honora. "If I weren't--fond of you, too, I shouldn't make
this explanation. I was tired. I never felt less like entertaining
strangers. They wanted to play bridge, there wasn't a quiet spot in the
Club where they could go. They knew I was on my way home, and they
suggested my house. That is how it happened."
Mrs. Dallam was silent a moment.
"May I have one of Howard's cigarettes?" she asked, and added, after this
modest wish had been supplied, that's just like them. They're willing to
make use of anybody."
"I meant," said Honora, "to have gone to your house this morning and to
have explained how it happened."
Another brief silence, broken by Lily Dallam.
"Did you notice the skirt of that suit Abby Kame had on?", she asked.
"I'm sure she paid a fabulous price for it in Paris, and it's exactly
like one I ordered on Tuesday."
The details of the rest of this conversation may be omitted. That Honora
was forgiven, and Mrs. Dallam's spirits restored may be inferred from her
final remark.
"My dear, what do you think of Sid and Howard making twenty thousand
dollars apiece in Sassafras Copper? Isn't it too lovely! I'm having a
little architect make me plans for a conservatory. You know I've always
been dying for one--I don't see how I've lived all these years without
it."
Honora, after her friend had gone, sat down in one of the wicker chairs
on the porch. She had a very vague idea as to how much twenty thousand
dollars was, but she reflected that while they had lived in Rivington
Howard must have made many similar sums, of which she was unaware.
Gradually she began to realize, however, that her resentment of the lack
of confidence of her husband was by no means the only cause of the
feeling that took possession of and overwhelmed her. Something like it
she had experienced before: to-day her thoughts seemed to run through her
in pulsations, like waves of heat, and she wondered that she could have
controlled herself while listening to Lily Dallam.
Mrs. Dallam's reproaches presented themselves to Honora in new aspects.
She began to feel now, with an intensity that frightened her, distaste
and rebellion. It was intolerable that she should be called to account
for the people she chose to have in her house, that any sort of pressure
should be brought to bear on her to confine her friends to Quicksands.
Treason, heresy, disloyalty to the cult of that community--in reality
these, and not a breach of engagement, were the things of which she had
been accused. She saw now. She would not be tied to Quicksands--she would
not, she would not, she would not! She owed it no allegiance. Her very
soul rebelled at the thought, and cried out that she was made for
something better, something higher than the life she had been leading.
She would permit no one forcibly to restrict her horizon.
Just where and how this higher and better life was to be found Honora did
not know; but the belief of her childhood--that it existed somewhere--was
still intact. Her powers of analysis, we see, are only just budding, and
she did not and could not define the ideal existence which she so
unflaggingly sought. Of two of its attributes only she was sure--that it
was to be free from restraint and from odious comparisons. Honora's
development, it may be remarked, proceeds by the action of irritants, and
of late her protest against Quicksands and what it represented had driven
her to other books besides the treatise on bridge. The library she had
collected at Rivington she had brought with her, and was adding to it
from time to time. Its volumes are neither sufficiently extensive or
profound to enumerate.
Those who are more or less skilled in psychology may attempt to establish
a sequence between the events and reflections just related and the fact
that, one morning a fortnight later, Honora found herself driving
northward on Fifth Avenue in a hansom cab. She was in a pleasurable state
of adventurous excitement, comparable to that Columbus must have felt
when the shores of the Old World had disappeared below the horizon.
During the fortnight we have skipped Honora had been to town several
times, and had driven and walked through certain streets: inspiration,
courage, and decision had all arrived at once this morning, when at the
ferry she had given the cabman this particular address on Fifth Avenue.
The cab, with the jerking and thumping peculiar to hansoms, made a circle
and drew up at the curb. But even then a moment of irresolution
intervened, and she sat staring through the little side window at the
sign, T. Gerald Shorter, Real Estate, in neat gold letters over the
basement floor of the building.
"Here y'are, Miss," said the cabman through the hole in the roof.
Honora descended, and was almost at the flight of steps leading down to
the office door when a familiar figure appeared coming out of it. It was
that of Mr. Toots Cuthbert, arrayed in a faultless morning suit, his tie
delicately suggestive of falling leaves; and there dangled over his arm
the slenderest of walking sticks.
"Mrs. Spence!" he lisped, with every appearance of joy.
"Mr. Cuthbert!" she cried.
"Going in to see Jerry?" he inquired after he had put on his hat, nodding
up at the sign.
"I--that is, yes, I had thought of it," she answered.
"Town house?" said Mr. Cuthbert, with a knowing smile.
"I did have an idea of looking at houses," she confessed, somewhat taken
aback.
"I'm your man," announced Mr. Cuthbert.
"You!" exclaimed Honora, with an air of considering the lilies of the
field. But he did not seem to take offence.
"That's my business," he proclaimed,--"when in town. Jerry gives me a
commission. Come in and see him, while I get a list and some keys. By the
way, you wouldn't object to telling him you were a friend of mine, would
you?"
"Not at all," said Honora, laughing.
Mr. Shorter was a jovial gentleman in loose-fitting clothes, and he was
exceedingly glad to meet Mr. Cuthbert's friend.
"What kind of a house do you want, Mrs. Spence?" he asked. "Cuthbert
tells me this morning that the Whitworth house has come into the market.
You couldn't have a better location than that, on the Avenue between the
Cathedral and the Park."
"Oh," said Honora with a gasp, "that's much too expensive, I'm sure. And
there are only two of us." She hesitated, a little alarmed at the
rapidity with which affairs were proceeding, and added: "I ought to tell
you that I've not really decided to take a house. I wished to--to see
what there was to be had, and then I should have to consult my husband."
She gazed very seriously into Mr. Shorter's brown eyes, which became very
wide and serious, too. But all the time it seemed to her that other parts
of him were laughing.
"Husbands," he declared, "are kill-joys. What have they got to do with a
house--except to sleep in it? Now I haven't the pleasure of knowing you
as well as I hope to one of these days, Mrs. Spence--"
"Oh, I say!" interrupted Mr. Cuthbert.
"But I venture to predict, on a slight acquaintance," continued Mr.
Shorter, undisturbed, "that you will pick out the house you want, and
that your husband will move into it."
Honora could not help laughing. And Mr. Shorter leaned back in his
revolving chair and laughed, too, in so alarming a manner as to lead her
to fear he would fall over backwards. But Mr. Cuthbert, who did not
appear to perceive the humour in this conversation, extracted some keys
and several pasteboard slips from a rack in the corner. Suddenly Mr.
Shorter jerked himself upright again, and became very solemn.
"Where's my hat?" he demanded.
"What do you want with your hat?" Mr. Cuthbert inquired.
"Why, I'm going with you, of course," Mr. Shorter replied. "I've decided
to take a personal interest in this matter. You may regard my presence,
Cuthbert, as justified by an artistic passion for my profession. I should
never forgive myself if Mrs. Spence didn't get just the right house."
"Oh," said Mr. Cuthbert, "I'll manage that all right. I thought you were
going to see the representative of a syndicate at eleven."
Mr. Shorter, with a sigh, acknowledged this necessity, and escorted
Honora gallantly through the office and across the sidewalk to the
waiting hansom. Cuthbert got in beside her.
"Jerry's a joker," he observed as they drove off, "you mustn't mind him."
"I think he's delightful," said Honora.
"One wouldn't believe that a man of his size and appearance could be so
fond of women," said Mr. Cuthbert. "He's the greatest old lady-killer
that ever breathed. For two cents he would have come with us this
morning, and let a five thousand dollar commission go. Do you know Mrs.
Shorter?"
"No," replied Honora. "She looks most attractive. I caught a glimpse of
her at the polo that day with you."
"I've been at her house in Newport ever since. Came down yesterday to try
to earn some money," he continued, cheerfully making himself agreeable.
"Deuced clever woman, much too clever for me and Jerry too. Always in a
tete-a-tete with an antiquarian or a pathologist, or a psychologist, and
tells novelists what to put into their next books and jurists how to
decide cases. Full of modern and liberal ideas--believes in free love and
all that sort of thing, and gives Jerry the dickens for practising it."
"Oh!" exclaimed Honora.
Mr. Cuthbert, however, did not appear to realize that he had shocked her.
"By the way," he asked, "have you seen Cecil Grainger since the
Quicksands game?"
"No," she replied. "Has Mr. Grainger been at Quicksands since?"
"Nobody knows where he's been," answered Mr. Cuthbert. "It's a mystery.
He hasn't been home--at Newport, I mean-for a fortnight. He's never
stayed away so long without letting any one know where he is. Naturally
they thought he was at Mrs. Kame's in Banbury, but she hasn't laid eyes
on him. It's a mystery. My own theory is that he went to sleep in a
parlour car and was sent to the yards, and hasn't waked up."
"And isn't Mrs. Grainger worried?" asked Honora.
"Oh, you never can tell anything about her," he said. "Do you know her?
She's a sphinx. All the Pendletons are Stoics. And besides, she's been so
busy with this Charities Conference that she hasn't had time to think of
Cecil. Who's that?"
"That" was a lady from Rivington, one of Honora's former neighbours, to
whom she had bowed. Life, indeed, is full of contrasts. Mr. Cuthbert,
too, was continually bowing and waving to acquaintances on the Avenue.
Thus pleasantly conversing, they arrived at the first house on the list,
and afterwards went through a succession of them. Once inside, Honora
would look helplessly about her in the darkness while her escort would
raise the shades, admitting a gloomy light on bare interiors or shrouded
furniture.
And the rents: Four, five, six, and seven and eight thousand dollars a
year. Pride prevented her from discussing these prices with Mr. Cuthbert;
and in truth, when lunch time came, she had seen nothing which realized
her somewhat vague but persistent ideals.
"I'm so much obliged to you," she said, "and I hope you'll forgive me for
wasting your time."
Mr. Cuthbert smiled broadly, and Honora smiled too.
Indeed, there was something ludicrous in the remark. He assumed an
attitude of reflection.
"I imagine you wouldn't care to go over beyond Lexington Avenue, would
you? I didn't think to ask you."
"No," she replied, blushing a little, "I shouldn't care to go over as far
as that."
He pondered a while longer, when suddenly his face lighted up.
"I've got it!" he cried, "the very thing--why didn't. I think of it?
Dicky Farnham's house, or rather his wife's house. I'll get it straight
after a while,--she isn't his wife any more, you know; she married
Eustace Rindge last month. That's the reason it's for rent. Dicky says
he'll never get married again--you bet! They planned it together, laid
the corner-stone and all that sort of thing, and before it was finished
she had a divorce and had gone abroad with Rindge. I saw her before she
sailed, and she begged me to rent it. But it isn't furnished."
"I might look at it," said Honora, dubiously.
"I'm sure it will just suit you," he declared with enthusiasm. "It's a
real find. We'll drive around by the office and get the keys."
The house was between Fifth Avenue and Madison, on a cross street not far
below Fifty-Ninth, and Honora had scarcely entered the little
oak-panelled hall before she had forgotten that Mr. Cuthbert was a real
estate agent--a most difficult thing to remember.
Upstairs, the drawing-room was flooded with sunlight that poured in
through a window with stone mullions and leaded panes extending the
entire width of the house. Against the wall stood a huge stone mantel of
the Tudor period, and the ceiling was of wood. Behind the little hall a
cosey library lighted by a well, and behind that an ample dining-room.
And Honora remembered to have seen, in a shop on Fourth Avenue, just the
sideboard for such a setting.
On the third floor, as Mr. Cuthbert pointed out, there was a bedroom and
boudoir for Mrs. Spence, and a bedroom and dressing-room for Mr. Spence.
Into the domestic arrangement of the house, however important, we need
not penetrate. The rent was eight thousand dollars, which Mr. Cuthbert
thought extremely reasonable.
"Eight thousand dollars!" As she stood with her back turned, looking out
on the street, some trick of memory brought into her mind the fact that
she had once heard her uncle declare that he had bought his house and lot
for that exact sum. And as cashier of Mr. Isham's bank, he did not earn
so much in a year.
She had found the house, indeed, but the other and mightier half of the
task remained, of getting Howard into it. In the consideration of this
most difficult of problems Honora, who in her exaltation had beheld
herself installed in every room, grew suddenly serious. She was startled
out of her reflections by a remark of almost uncanny penetration on the
part of Mr. Cuthbert.
"Oh, he'll come round all right, when he sees the house," that young
gentleman declared.
Honora turned quickly, and, after a moment of astonishment, laughed in
spite of herself. It was impossible not to laugh with Mr. Cuthbert, so
irresistible and debonair was he, so confiding and sympathetic, that he
became; before one knew it, an accomplice. Had he not poured out to
Honora, with a charming gayety and frankness, many of his financial
troubles?
"I'm afraid he'll think it frightfully expensive," she answered, becoming
thoughtful once more. And it did not occur to her that neither of them
had mentioned the individual to whom they referred.
"Wait until he's feeling tiptop," Mr. Cuthbert advised, "and then bring
him up here in a hurry. I say, I hope you do take the house," he added,
with a boyish seriousness after she had refused his appeal to lunch with
him, "and that you will let me come and see you once in a while."
She lunched alone, in a quiet corner of the dining-room of one of the
large hotels, gazing at intervals absently out of the window. And by the
middle of the afternoon she found herself, quite unexpectedly, in the
antique furniture shop, gazing at the sideboard and a set of
leather-seated Jacobean chairs, and bribing the dealer with a smile to
hold them for a few days until she could decide whether she wished them.
In a similar mood of abstraction she boarded the ferry, but it was not
until the boat had started on its journey that she became aware of a
trim, familiar figure in front of her, silhouetted against the ruffed
blue waters of the river--Trixton Brent's. And presently, as though the
concentration of her thoughts upon his back had summoned him, he turned.
"Where have you been all this time?" she asked. "I haven't seen you for
an age."
"To Seattle."
"To Seattle!" she exclaimed. "What were you doing there?"
"Trying to forget you," he replied promptly, "and incidentally attempting
to obtain control of some properties. Both efforts, I may add, were
unsuccessful."
"I'm sorry," said Honora.
"And what mischief," he demanded, "have you been up to?"
"You'll never guess!" she exclaimed.
"Preparing for the exodus," he hazarded.
"You surely don't expect me to stay in Quicksands all winter?" she
replied, a little guiltily.
"Quicksands," he declared, "has passed into history."
"You always insist upon putting a wrong interpretation upon what I do,"
she complained.
He laughed.
"What interpretation do you put on it?" he asked.
"A most natural and praiseworthy one," she answered. "Education,
improvement, growth--these things are as necessary for a woman as for a
man. Of course I don't expect you to believe that--your idea of women not
being a very exalted one."
He did not reply, for at that instant the bell rang, the passengers
pressed forward about them, and they were soon in the midst of the
confusion of a landing. It was not until they were seated in adjoining
chairs of the parlour-car that the conversation was renewed.
"When do you move to town?" he inquired.
However simple Mr. Brent's methods of reasoning may appear to others, his
apparent clairvoyance never failed to startle Honora.
"Somebody has told you that I've been looking at houses!" she exclaimed.
"Have you found one?"
She hesitated.
"Yes--I have found one. It belongs to some people named Farnham--they're
divorced."
"Dicky Farnham's ex-wife," he supplied. "I know where it is
--unexceptionable neighbourhood and all that sort of thing."
"And it's just finished," continued Honora, her enthusiasm gaining on her
as she spoke of the object which had possessed her mind for four hours.
"It's the most enchanting house, and so sunny for New York. If I had
built it myself it could not have suited me better. Only--"
"Only--" repeated Trixton Brent, smiling.
"Well," she said slowly, "I really oughtn't to talk about it. I--I
haven't said anything to Howard yet, and he may not like it. I ran across
it by the merest accident."
"What will you give me," he said, "if I can induce Howard to like it?"
"My eternal friendship," she laughed.
"That's not enough," said Trixton Brent.