With a click, Mrs. Austen unfurled a fan and, with another click,
refurled it. "No. I will see him myself. I am quite in the humour."
Margaret looked after her mother, who was leaving the room. The sudden
tempest in a flowerpot surprised her. But the outer door closed.
Margaret reseated herself. Presently he would come and together they
would make those plans that lovers make--and then unmake, unless,
elsewhere, they have been made for them.
Meanwhile she waited. The incident at the Sandringham, the sight of
Cassy, her mother's facile insinuations, these things had distressed
her, because, and only because, they had prevented her from enjoying the
innocent pleasure of the innocent visit to the rooms of her betrothed,
whom she loved with a love that was too pure and too profound, to
harbour doubt and suspicion and that evil child of theirs which jealousy
is. Her faith was perfect. That faith showed in her face and heightened
her beauty with a candour that should have disarmed her mother, who, in
the hall below, was, at that moment, instructing a man and not about
flower-boxes either.
"Mr. Lennox, you may know him, by sight I mean, will be coming here
shortly. Please have him shown into that room there."
Mrs. Austen passed on. The little room at which she had glanced that
afternoon received her--a hospitality in which a mirror joined. The
latter welcomed her with a glimpse of herself. It was like meeting an
old friend. But no; a friend certainly, yet not an old one. Age had not
touched this lady, not impudently at least, though where it may have had
the impertinence to lay a finger, art had applied another, a moving
finger that had written a parody of youth on her face which was then
turning to some one behind her whom the mirror disclosed.
In turning, she smiled.
"It is so good of you, Mr. Lennox, to look in on me. The door-man told
you about Margaret, did he not? No? How careless of him. The dear child
has a headache and has gone to bed."
"Has she?" said Lennox. He found but that. But at least he understood
why Margaret had not come to his rooms. The headache had prevented her.
"It is nothing." Mrs. Austen was telling him. "To-morrow she will be
herself again. Nice weather we are having."
"Very," Lennox answered.
As he would have said the same thing if Mrs. Austen had declared that
the weather was beastly, the reply did not matter. It did not matter to
her; it did not matter to him. She was thinking of something else and he
was also. He was thinking of Margaret, wondering whether he might not go
to her. Were it not for the strait-jacket that conventionality is and
which pinions the sturdiest, he would have gone. He was a little afraid
of Mrs. Austen, as an intelligent man sometimes is afraid of an imbecile
woman. But his fear of her fainted beside the idea that if, disregarding
the bagatelles of the door, he made his way to Margaret, she herself
might not like it. That alone restrained him. Afterward he wished he had
let nothing prevent him. Afterward he regretted it. It is the misery of
life--and sometimes its reward--that regret should be futile.
But, at the moment, grim and virile, a hat in one hand, a stick in the
other, his white tie just showing between the lapels of his overcoat,
already he was consoling himself. He had not seen Margaret in the
afternoon, and he was not to see her this evening. No matter. The morrow
would repay--that morrow which is falser than the former day.
Pleasantly at him and at his thoughts, Mrs. Austen played the flute.
"Won't you sit down?" In speaking, she sank on a sofa which she occupied
amply.
Lennox, shifting his stick, took a chair. Later, in one of those evil
moods that come to the best, as well as to the worst, he wished he had
brained her with it.
With the magic flute, Mrs. Austen continued: "To-morrow is Sunday, is it
not? You must be sure to come. Dear me! I can remember when everybody
went to church on Sunday and then walked up and down Fifth Avenue. Fifth
Avenue had trees then instead of shops and on the trees were such funny
little worms. They used to hang down and crawl on you. The houses, too,
were so nice. They all had piazzas and on the piazzas were honeysuckles.
But I fear I am boasting. I don't really remember all that. It was my
father who told me. Those must have been the good old days!"
Lennox again shifted his stick. "To-day I had hoped that you would look
in on me."
The flute caressed the strain. "Yes. It was too bad! We had quite
counted on it. Bachelor quarters must be so exciting."
"Well, not mine at any rate. They are rather dark."
"But that must make them all the more exciting! Blindman's buff! Hide
and go seek! What fun you must have with your friends romping about!"
"My friends are too busy for that. Though to-day----"
"Yes?"
Lennox hesitated. He knew that this woman took no interest in him
whatever, but he had intended to tell Margaret about Cassy.