ONLY A MOOD
When Winn reached home, he found two messages awaiting him, one from
Ethel Sherman asking him to call, and another bidding him journey to the
home of his boyhood and attend to a business matter at once. His
birthplace, an almost worthless hillside farm, had been leased to
strangers, but they had scarce obtained a living and, finally, having
denuded it of about everything except the stones and the old
weather-beaten farmhouse, had deserted it, leaving three years' taxes
unpaid.
And Winn, the sole heir, was now asked to come and pay them, or allow
his boyhood home to be sold for that purpose.
This, following the bitter disappointment of his Rockhaven trip, seemed
the last straw; and when he called upon Ethel, as perforce he felt he
must, he was in an unenviable frame of mind.
But she was sweetness personified.
"Why, Winn, my dear friend," she said, "what have I done to you that
you should desert me so? It's been three weeks since I've set eyes upon
you except at church, and then you would not look at me."
"I don't imagine that you have suffered much," replied Winn, savagely,
looking at an immense bunch of American Beauty roses on the
centre-table, and thinking of Simmons. "I am a worker in the hive these
days, and 'sassiety' isn't for me."
Ethel looked at him and laughed.
"My dear boy," she said sweetly, "you ought to send your temper to the
laundry and feel grateful I wanted to see you. I refused an invitation
to the opera this eve just to have a visit with you, and you come cross
as two sticks."
"I'm sorry," he answered, "but I have troubles of my own, and life isn't
all a picnic. For instance, I've got to take a two-hundred-mile ride
into the country to-morrow, pay up the taxes, and find a tenant for the
old farm. I've just returned from a business trip, away five days, and
the editor told me this afternoon if I wanted more time off now I'd
better resign."
"He's a brute," said Ethel.
"No, he's a business man," replied Winn, "and I'm his servant, that is
all. I don't intend to be much longer, or any man's for that matter."
"I'm so glad," she asserted, in the cooing, sympathetic tone a woman
knows so well how to use; "you are capable of better things, Winn, and I
shall welcome the day when you are your own master."
Then Winn, his vexed spirit soothed by this woman's gentle sympathy, his
self-respect restored by her praise, looked at her admiringly. "Ethel,"
he said, "you can mark the two extremes of womankind--angel or
devil--with equal facility. If ever I attempt a novel, you shall be the
heroine."
"Better not," she laughed. "I've no sentiment, and a heroine without a
heart would be a flat failure. No," she continued musingly, "I've not
even a little one. I used to think I had, but I've outgrown it.
Sentiment on a woman's part these days is a weakness for men to trample
upon. Sister Grace had sentiment. Now she lives in four rooms and tends
baby, while hubby escapes to the club. No, thanks. No sentiment in mine,
please."
"I begin to think it's folly on either side," asserted Winn, soberly,
"and especially in business. Jack says 'be good and you'll be lonesome,'
and calls me a fool for being honest. You say I am out of my groove here
and that a woman with a heart is a stupid. I am inclined to think that
there is no such thing as truth, honor, and sentiment except among old
fogies and children."
"There isn't and there is," responded Ethel, philosophically; "no one is
all bad, or at least but few are, while not many are all good. Only, in
matters of the heart, a woman who has one is bound to suffer, unless she
meets and weds a young god, and gods are scarce in this day and
generation."
"But is she likely to be the happier by marrying for money and
position?" queried Winn, pointedly.
"To the best of my observation--yes," she answered, understanding
perfectly well what he meant. "And it's to obtain your opinion on that
very subject I asked you to call."
Winn looked at her long and fixedly.
Once he had thought this girl the incarnation of all that was lovely and
lovable. Young, handsome, and yet not of the Dresden china order, but
warm, passionate, full of life and good spirits. She was all that now,
but hard-hearted, cool-headed, a diamond among her sex, but not a pansy.
And so far as he could judge, one who would seek and accept only a
golden setting. Once he had loved her madly, now he enjoyed her keen
wit, her veiled flatteries, her perfect poise, her polished sarcasm,
realizing that she was likely to be an ornament to the man who won her,
but never a heart companion. And now he admired her intensely, but loved
her not at all.
"Winn," she said at last, smiling, "have you analyzed me sufficiently to
answer my question now?"
"No," he replied evasively, "and I never can. I've learned one thing,
and learned it well, and that is, it's folly to tell a woman truth in
such matters. They prefer lies that are flattering."
"Men never do, I suppose," she said, with a tinge of sarcasm.
"Oh, yes, they do," he admitted candidly; "men positively thirst for
flattery--especially from a woman. But it is safer to tell them the
truth. They will in time forgive that, even if it hurts, but a woman
never will."
"That's a man's estimate," she asserted, "not a woman's. My belief is,
truth is an unsafe knife to use in either case. But you have not
answered my question."
"It's hard to do that," he responded, "for it all depends upon what a
woman's idea of happiness is. You, who assert that you are without heart
and believe sentiment a folly, would be miserable, if mated to a poor
man, be he never so faithful in love. You want luxuries, fine gowns, and
plenty of them, since you have beauty; you move in a circle where show
is religion and extravagance a necessity. To you and your associates,
these wants have become habits and rule you all."
Ethel sighed.
"We are a hollow set, I'll admit," she said, "and leave the price tag on
all we give away; but still you do not answer my question."
"No, and no man or woman can," he responded. "As they say on the street,
'it's a gamble either way.' If you marry for love and secure a cottage,
you will sigh for a mansion. If you obtain the mansion and miss the
love, you will sigh for the cottage."
Then looking at the vase of roses standing near, as if they exhaled a
revelation, he added slowly, "You will be true to your surroundings,
Ethel, and whoever buys you will pay your price."
She flushed slightly.
"You put it into unvarnished words," she answered, laughing to conceal
the hurt, "but I can't complain. I asked you for the truth." Then, in
self-defence, she added, a little sadly, "It's not my fault, Winn, that
I am for sale; it's the fault of society and its dictum. I say at times,
as I said to-night, that sentiment is folly; and then again comes a
yearning for something sweeter, something better than this life of show
and shallow platitudes. Occasionally I feel it all a mistake, and envy
Grace. Last summer, when I was up in the mountains, we went driving one
day and stopped at a farmhouse to buy a glass of milk. The house was a
hovel almost; two little children barefooted and bareheaded played under
a tree, and inside a woman was singing. When she brought us the milk,
she, too, was barefoot. We passed that way later, on our return, and she
was still singing at her work. And, in spite of her surroundings, there
was something in her voice that awoke my envy. Her life was poverty
personified; there wasn't another house in sight, and yet she was
happy."
And Winn, wondering what this all meant and marvelling that this
imperative beauty, this leader of fashion, courted, flattered, and
sought by all, could have one such touch of human feeling, looked at her
in utter astonishment.
"Ethel," he said, "almost am I persuaded that you have a heart."
"You had better not," she answered, with a laugh that was a sneer, "you
might pity me, and then I should despise myself;" and, pulling out one
of the roses that drooped toward the table, she slowly picked it to
pieces.
"Life is but a succession of moods, Winn," she continued, after a pause;
"and some contain the rustle of angels' wings and some the clicking of
devils' teeth. At times I hate the whole world and envy the nuns I meet
in the street, and then again I think them fools."
Then she arose and seated herself at the piano. For a full ten minutes
she lightly touched the keys, now a few chords of dreamy waltz music,
then a low, plaintive love song, and finally a bit of Sousa, while Winn
quietly studied her.
Suddenly she turned.
"Winn," she said, looking him full in the face, "I am going to be very
rude. Tell me what made you go to Rockhaven?"
His eyes fell. "To see Jess Hutton," he answered, "and the quarry. I
bought it at the auction a month ago."
It was fairly well said, but not over well.
"Thanks," she replied, "and forgive my query. There is no need of
repeating it."
And it was weeks after before it dawned on him what she wished to find
out.