She stammered that she went to these teas herself, when invited. I saw
that she went to look at Nicholas who went to look at Eva. I sighed
for Eva: the phalanx was unbroken. She pretended to be drawn off the
subject by one of our necessary ventures at street intersections, and I
could not decide whether her immediate return to it was bravery or the
tenacity which would finally dash out her moth life. She stated: “Nick
detests the sort of person who hangs around Eva at those parties.”
“Aha!” I sniffed. “Considering that they are distinguished men and
women----”
Pushed into a corner, she brought out what she had been driving at
during the length of our stroll. “He dislikes Spencer Mapes.”
“He tells you these things against his wife?”
She was quick in his defense. “His mother told me. At the tea--you were
talking about the tea at luncheon, Mrs. Avery--his mother saw Mr. Mapes
for the first time; and I’m sure she has never stopped worrying about
him since. Tony was looking for Nick--although he wasn’t really looking
because we knew that he and Eva were talking. And Mrs. Van Suydam said
to me ‘Who is that youngish man with the dark face who seems to be in
expectation of something from the room beyond?’” She looked at me from
the corner of her eye. “Mr. Mapes was waiting for Eva. Everyone knew
that, except Mrs. Van Suydam.”
I saw the implacable lady sitting on her sofa without the feminine
relief of tapping her foot on the floor and speculating about Spencer
Mapes as he waited for Eva and Nicholas, saying to her heart that it
was far-fetched to believe that he waited for Nicholas but knowing in
spite of herself that he waited for something inimical to Nicholas. She
must have said to herself: “But this is an enemy!” And she probably
said aloud, surprised that the incident of discovering him had affected
her voice: “Who is that?” She would have given full weight to each of
her three words. Gertrude Cuyler was without the dramatic sense, and
had used a more involved phraseology than Mrs. Van Suydam under the
circumstances would have employed.
I regarded Gertrude with a quickened interest: was love, then, such a
stimulus that she was becoming perceptive? For she said now: “I beg
your pardon, Mrs. Avery, for repeating it--but Mrs. Van Suydam said
something else. She said that she had always fancied artists were weak
creatures, and that she was now afraid that Nick was weaker than his
new friends. This was what frightened her, I suspect.” But her thoughts
becoming confused, she gave her little gasp and started again. “She
said that in Eva’s friends she seemed to have discovered a toughness
of fibre, a tenacity of aim, and the will to succeed. This was what
frightened her, I think,” she wound up.
Anthony Bloodgood was surprised. He expostulated with Gertrude: “I
didn’t know she felt that way about that bounder Mapes. How could he
affect her? It seemed to me that it was Eva who knocked her breath
out. I remember I came up and told her that Nick was coming. I
explained that he hadn’t known she was there because he was talking to
Eva Litchfield. And she looked dashed, to me. I mean, the name, Eva
Litchfield, seemed to do something to her. I give you my word, she
almost jumped!”
They disputed above my head, leaving me free to do the thing that all
along I had known I would do: I began attributing to Mrs. Van Suydam
those reactions that she should have felt and that I was sure she had
felt in the depths of her bosom so decently restricted by its buckram
and black silk. The name, Eva Litchfield, tolling in her head when the
young man had ceased speaking, must have drawn together into a design
all her premonitions of disaster. This triumphant name took possession
of her imagination, seemed, at once, to become part of her life because
it menaced her son. So strong must this feeling have been--so swayed
by it must she instantly have become--that the garish reception rooms
might have darkened. I was sure that she felt old, and helpless, in
face of this victorious name. She must have closed her eyes, in her
temporary weakness, before opening them to gaze profoundly at her son.
In my game of visualizing this fragmentary story, I said to myself:
What a gorgeous scene! In her son’s bright blue eyes she must have
seen what she had always seen in their sparkling depths, belief that
life would be good to him. Sure that his mother adored him--sure that
the girl walking beside him was the most exquisite creature in the
world--convinced, as every man has been convinced at one time, that
the two women he loved would love each other--Nicholas must almost
have hurried in his eagerness to bring them together. But his mother’s
mind, leaping beyond this appeal, fastened upon Spencer Mapes’ looming
fixed regard. She sat, therefore, upon her sofa composed to all outward
seeming, smiling at her son and his companion and meeting the eyes of
neither; for she was engaged in her duel with Spencer Mapes.
Gertrude, who was watching me out of the tail of her eye, advanced
tentatively: “Nick’s so fond of his mother. I heard him saying to
Eva--at that same tea----”
I shut my ears to what Nicholas had actually said in favour of what he
should have said. Holding Eva’s arm, urging her forward, his own eyes
without reservation in his complete reliance on his mother’s devotion,
“See!” he must almost have boasted. “Here is my mother!” I had no doubt
that what he said was “Hello! How did you get here?” This was what
Gertrude quoted--maybe: I did not listen; she was incapable of reaching
out beyond five-finger exercises. But she told me fairly: “Eva was
lovely about it. She said to Nick ‘But she’s splendid! She’s splendid!’”
It would have been a matter of indifference to Mrs. Van Suydam that
Eva, seeming to shrink, to become in a moment blighted by this
calculated inattention, had still fixed on the older woman eyes that
expanded for a sight that charmed her. “Did Mrs. Van Suydam look at Eva
through that _lorgnette_?” I asked.
Gertrude’s mouth fell open. “How did you know?”
I knew that she would have put up her _lorgnette_ that she might not be
scorched by the flame of an approaching passion. I said: “Ah poor Eva!”
Behind those glasses, narrowly but covertly, she would have inspected
Eva. But on Eva’s bloodless little face, in her clear eyes, there would
have been no flame; there would have been, as always under a challenge,
only assertion of herself, only belief in herself. I was, suddenly,
very wearied and said firmly: “This is a footless discussion. And
here’s my street. Goodbye.” I extended a resolute hand and marched down
a side street.
But floating helplessly after me came Gertrude Cuyler’s pleading voice:
“Won’t you do something about it?”
[Illustration]