with Tina to which the little boudoir would have lent itself. While her
own daughter inhabited the room, Mrs. Ralston had been in the habit of
spending an hour there every evening, chatting with the two girls while
they undressed, and listening to their comments on the incidents of the
day. She always knew beforehand exactly what her own girl would say; but
Tina’s views and opinions were a perpetual delicious shock to her. Not
that they were strange or unfamiliar; there were moments when they
seemed to well straight up from the dumb depths of Delia’s own past.
Only they expressed feelings she had never uttered, ideas she had hardly
avowed to herself: Tina sometimes said things which Delia Ralston, in
far-off self-communions, had imagined herself saying to Clement Spender.
And now there would be an end to these evening talks: if Charlotte had
asked to be lodged next to her daughter, might it not conceivably be
because she wished them to end? It had never before occurred to Delia
that her influence over Tina might be resented; now the discovery
flashed a light far down into the abyss which had always divided the two
women. But a moment later Delia reproached herself for attributing
feelings of jealousy to her cousin. Was it not rather to herself that
she should have ascribed them? Charlotte, as Tina’s mother, had every
right to wish to be near her, near her in all senses of the word; what
claim had Delia to oppose to that natural privilege? The next morning
she gave the order that Charlotte’s things should be taken down to the
room next to Tina’s.
* * * * *
That evening, when bedtime came, Charlotte and Tina went upstairs
together; but Delia lingered in the drawing-room, on the pretext of
having letters to write. In truth, she dreaded to pass the threshold
where, evening after evening, the fresh laughter of the two girls used
to waylay her while Charlotte Lovell already slept her old-maid sleep on
the floor above. A pang went through Delia at the thought that
henceforth she would be cut off from this means of keeping her hold on
Tina.
An hour later, when she mounted the stairs in her turn, she was guiltily
conscious of moving as noiselessly as she could along the heavy carpet
of the corridor, and of pausing longer than was necessary over the
putting out of the gas-jet on the landing. As she lingered she strained
her ears for the sound of voices from the adjoining doors behind which
Charlotte and Tina slept; she would have been secretly hurt at hearing
talk and laughter from within. But none came, nor was there any light
beneath the doors. Evidently Charlotte, in her hard methodical way, had
said goodnight to her daughter, and gone straight to bed as usual.
Perhaps she had never approved of Tina’s vigils, of the long undressing
punctuated with mirth and confidences; she might have asked for the room
next to her daughter’s simply because she did not want the girl to miss
her “beauty sleep.”
Whenever Delia tried to explore the secret of her cousin’s actions she
returned from the adventure humiliated and abashed by the base motives
she found herself attributing to Charlotte. How was it that she, Delia
Ralston, whose happiness had been open and avowed to the world, so often
found herself envying poor Charlotte the secret of her scanted
motherhood? She hated herself for this movement of envy whenever she
detected it, and tried to atone for it by a softened manner and a more
anxious regard for Charlotte’s feelings; but the attempt was not always
successful, and Delia sometimes wondered if Charlotte did not resent any
show of sympathy as an indirect glance at her misfortune. The worst of
suffering such as hers was that it left one sore to the gentlest
touch....
Delia, slowly undressing before the same lace-draped toilet-glass which
had reflected her bridal image, was turning over these thoughts when
she heard a light knock. She opened the door, and there stood Tina, in a
dressing-gown, her dark curls falling over her shoulders.
With a happy heart-beat Delia held out her arms.
“I had to say goodnight, Mamma,” the girl whispered.
“Of course, dear.” Delia pressed a long kiss on her lifted forehead.
“Run off now, or you might disturb your aunt. You know she sleeps badly,
and you must be as quiet as a mouse now she’s next to you.”
“Yes, I know,” Tina acquiesced, with a grave glance that was almost of
complicity.
She asked no further question, she did not linger: lifting Delia’s hand
she held it a moment against her cheek, and then stole out as
noiselessly as she had come.
VIII
“But you must see,” Charlotte Lovell insisted, laying aside the _Evening
Post_, “that Tina has changed. You do see that?”
The two women were sitting alone by the drawing-room fire in Gramercy
Park. Tina had gone to dine with her cousin, young Mrs. John Junius
Halsey, and was to be taken afterward to a ball at the Vandergraves’,
from which the John Juniuses had promised to see her home. Mrs. Ralston
and Charlotte, their early dinner finished, had the long evening to
themselves. Their custom, on such occasions, was for Charlotte to read
the news aloud to her cousin, while the latter embroidered; but
tonight, all through Charlotte’s conscientious progress from column to
column, without a slip or an omission, Delia had felt her, for some
special reason, alert to take advantage of her daughter’s absence.
To gain time before answering, Mrs. Ralston bent over a stitch in her
delicate white embroidery.
“Tina changed? Since when?” she questioned.
The answer flashed out instantly. “Since Lanning Halsey has been coming
here so much.”
“Lanning? I used to think he came for Delia,” Mrs. Ralston mused,
speaking at random to gain still more time.
“It’s natural you should suppose that every one came for Delia,”
Charlotte rejoined dryly; “but as Lanning continues to seek every
chance of being with Tina--”
Mrs. Ralston raised her head and stole a swift glance at her cousin. She
had in truth noticed that Tina had changed, as a flower changes at the
mysterious moment when the unopened petals flush from within. The girl
had grown handsomer, shyer, more silent, at times more irrelevantly gay.
But Delia had not associated these variations of mood with the presence
of Lanning Halsey, one of the numerous youths who had haunted the house
before young Delia’s marriage. There had, indeed, been a moment when
Mrs. Ralston’s eye had been fixed, with a certain apprehension, on the
handsome Lanning. Among all the sturdy and stolid Halsey cousins he was
the only one to whom a prudent mother might have hesitated to entrust
her daughter; it would have been hard to say why, except that he was
handsomer and more conversable than the rest, chronically unpunctual,
and totally unperturbed by the fact. Clem Spender had been like that;
and what if young Delia--?
But young Delia’s mother was speedily reassured. The girl, herself arch
and appetizing, took no interest in the corresponding graces except when
backed by more solid qualities. A Ralston to the core, she demanded the
Ralston virtues, and chose the Halsey most worthy of a Ralston bride.
Mrs. Ralston felt that Charlotte was waiting for her to speak. “It will
be hard to get used to the idea of Tina’s marrying,” she said gently. “I
don’t know what we two old women shall do, alone in this empty
house--for it will be an empty house then. But I suppose we ought to
face the idea.”
“I _do_ face it,” said Charlotte Lovell gravely.
“And you dislike Lanning? I mean, as a husband for Tina?”
Miss Lovell folded the evening paper, and stretched out a thin hand for
her knitting. She glanced across the citron-wood work-table at her
cousin. “Tina must not be too difficult--” she began.
“Oh--” Delia protested, reddening.
“Let us call things by their names,” the other evenly pursued. “That’s
my way, when I speak at all. Usually, as you know, I say nothing.”
The widow made a sign of assent, and Charlotte went on: “It’s better so.
But I’ve always known a time would come when we should have to talk this
thing out.”
“Talk this thing out? You and I? What thing?”
“Tina’s future.”
There was a silence. Delia Ralston, who always responded instantly to
the least appeal to her sincerity, breathed a deep sigh of relief. At
last the ice in Charlotte’s breast was breaking up!
“My dear,” Delia murmured, “you know how much Tina’s happiness concerns
me. If you disapprove of Lanning Halsey as a husband, have you any other
candidate in mind?”
Miss Lovell smiled one of her faint hard smiles. “I am not aware that
there is a queue at the door. Nor do I disapprove of Lanning Halsey as a
husband. Personally, I find him very agreeable; I understand his
attraction for Tina.”
“Ah--Tina _is_ attracted?”
“Yes.”
Mrs. Ralston pushed aside her work and thoughtfully considered her
cousin’s sharply-lined face. Never had Charlotte Lovell more completely
presented the typical image of the old maid than as she sat there,
upright on her straight-backed chair, with narrowed elbows and clicking
needles, and imperturbably discussed her daughter’s marriage.
“I don’t understand, Chatty. Whatever Lanning’s faults are--and I don’t
believe they’re grave--I share your liking for him. After all--” Mrs.
Ralston paused--“what is it that people find so reprehensible in him?
Chiefly, as far as I can hear, that he can’t decide on the choice of a
profession. The New York view about that is rather narrow, as we know.
Young men may have other tastes ... artistic ... literary ... they may
even have difficulty in deciding....”
Both women coloured slightly, and Delia guessed that the same
reminiscence which shook her own bosom also throbbed under Charlotte’s
strait bodice.
Charlotte spoke. “Yes: I understand that. But hesitancy about a
profession may cause hesitancy about ... other decisions....”
“What do you mean? Surely not that Lanning--?”
“Lanning has not asked Tina to marry him.”
“And you think he’s hesitating?”
Charlotte paused. The steady click of her needles punctuated the silence
as once, years before, it had been punctuated by the tick of the
Parisian clock on Delia’s mantel. As Delia’s memory fled back to that
scene she felt its mysterious tension in the air.
Charlotte spoke. “Lanning is not hesitating any longer: he has decided
_not_ to marry Tina. But he has also decided--not to give up seeing
her.”
Delia flushed abruptly; she was irritated and bewildered by Charlotte’s
oracular phrases, doled out between parsimonious lips.
“You don’t mean that he has offered himself and then drawn back? I can’t
think him capable of such an insult to Tina.”
“He has not insulted Tina. He has simply told her that he can’t afford
to marry. Until he chooses a profession his father will allow him only a
few hundred dollars a year; and that may be suppressed if--if he marries
against his parents’ wishes.”
It was Delia’s turn to be silent. The past was too overwhelmingly
resuscitated in Charlotte’s words. Clement Spender stood before her,
irresolute, impecunious, persuasive. Ah, if only she had let herself be
persuaded!
“I’m very sorry that this should have happened to Tina. But as Lanning
appears to have behaved honourably, and withdrawn without raising false
expectations, we must hope ... we must hope....” Delia paused, not
knowing what they must hope.
Charlotte Lovell laid down her knitting. “You know as well as I do,
Delia, that every young man who is inclined to fall in love with Tina
will find as good reasons for not marrying her.”
“Then you think Lanning’s excuses are a pretext?”
“Naturally. The first of many that will be found by his successors--for
of course he will have successors. Tina--attracts.”
“Ah,” Delia murmured.
Here they were at last face to face with the problem which, through all
the years of silence and evasiveness, had lain as close to the surface
as a corpse too hastily buried! Delia drew another deep breath, which
again was almost one of relief. She had always known that it would be
difficult, almost impossible, to find a husband for Tina; and much as
she desired Tina’s happiness, some inmost selfishness whispered how much
less lonely and purposeless the close of her own life would be should
the girl be forced to share it. But how say this to Tina’s mother?
“I hope you exaggerate, Charlotte. There may be disinterested
characters.... But, in any case, surely Tina need not be unhappy here,
with us who love her so dearly.”
“Tina an old maid? Never!” Charlotte Lovell rose abruptly, her closed
hand crashing down on the slender work-table. “My child shall have her
life ... her own life ... whatever it costs me....”
Delia’s ready sympathy welled up. “I understand your feeling. I should
want also ... hard as it will be to let her go. But surely there is no
hurry--no reason for looking so far ahead. The child is not twenty.
Wait.”
Charlotte stood before her, motionless, perpendicular. At such moments
she made Delia think of lava struggling through granite: there seemed no
issue for the fires within.
“Wait? But if _she_ doesn’t wait?”
“But if he has withdrawn--what do you mean?”
“He has given up marrying her--but not seeing her.”
Delia sprang up in her turn, flushed and trembling.
“Charlotte! Do you know what you’re insinuating?”
“Yes: I know.”
“But it’s too outrageous. No decent girl--”
The words died on Delia’s lips. Charlotte Lovell held her eyes
inexorably. “Girls are not always what you call decent,” she declared.
Mrs. Ralston turned slowly back to her seat. Her tambour frame had
fallen to the floor; she stooped heavily to pick it up. Charlotte’s
gaunt figure hung over her, relentless as doom.
“I can’t imagine, Charlotte, what is gained by saying such things--even
by hinting them. Surely you trust your own child.”
Charlotte laughed. “My mother trusted me,” she said.
“How dare you--how dare you?” Delia began; but her eyes fell, and she
felt a tremor of weakness in her throat.
“Oh, I dare anything for Tina, even to judging her as she is,” Tina’s
mother murmured.
“As she is? She’s perfect!”
“Let us say then that she must pay for my imperfections. All I want is
that she shouldn’t pay too heavily.”
Mrs. Ralston sat silent. It seemed to her that Charlotte spoke with the
voice of all the dark destinies coiled under the safe surface of life;
and that to such a voice there was no answer but an awed acquiescence.
“Poor Tina!” she breathed.
“Oh, I don’t intend that she shall suffer! It’s not for that that I’ve
waited ... waited. Only I’ve made mistakes: mistakes that I understand
now, and must remedy. You’ve been too good to us--and we must go.”
“Go?” Delia gasped.
“Yes. Don’t think me ungrateful. You saved my child once--do you suppose
I can forget? But now it’s my turn--it’s I who must save her. And it’s
only by taking her away from everything here--from everything she’s
known till now--that I can do it. She’s lived too long among
unrealities: and she’s like me. They won’t content her.”
“Unrealities?” Delia echoed vaguely.
“Unrealities for her. Young men who make love to her and can’t marry
her. Happy households where she’s welcomed till she’s suspected of
designs on a brother or a husband--or else exposed to their insults. How
could we ever have imagined, either of us, that the child could escape
disaster? I thought only of her present happiness--of all the
advantages, for both of us, of being with you. But this affair with
young Halsey has opened my eyes. I must take Tina away. We must go and
live somewhere where we’re not known, where we shall be among plain
people, leading plain lives. Somewhere where she can find a husband, and
make herself a home.”
Charlotte paused. She had spoken in a rapid monotonous tone, as if by
rote; but now her voice broke and she repeated painfully: “I’m not
ungrateful.”
“Oh, don’t let’s speak of gratitude! What place has it between you and
me?”
Delia had risen and begun to move uneasily about the room. She longed to
plead with Charlotte, to implore her not to be in haste, to picture to
her the cruelty of severing Tina from all her habits and associations,
of carrying her inexplicably away to lead “a plain life among plain
people.” What chance was there, indeed, that a creature so radiant would
tamely submit to such a fate, or find an acceptable husband in such
conditions? The change might only precipitate a tragedy. Delia’s
experience was too limited for her to picture exactly what might happen
to a girl like Tina, suddenly cut off from all that sweetened life for
her; but vague visions of revolt and flight--of a “fall” deeper and more
irretrievable than Charlotte’s--flashed through her agonized
imagination.
“It’s too cruel--it’s too cruel,” she cried, speaking to herself rather
than to Charlotte.
Charlotte, instead of answering, glanced abruptly at the clock.
“Do you know what time it is? Past midnight. I mustn’t keep you sitting
up for my foolish girl.”
Delia’s heart contracted. She saw that Charlotte wished to cut the
conversation short, and to do so by reminding her that only Tina’s
mother had a right to decide what Tina’s future should be. At that
moment, though Delia had just protested that there could be no question
of gratitude between them, Charlotte Lovell seemed to her a monster of
ingratitude, and it was on the tip of her tongue to cry out: “Have all
the years then given me no share in Tina?” But at the same instant she
had put herself once more in Charlotte’s place, and was feeling the
mother’s fierce terrors for her child. It was natural enough that
Charlotte should resent the faintest attempt to usurp in private the
authority she could never assert in public. With a pang of compassion
Delia realized that she herself was literally the one being on earth
before whom Charlotte could act the mother. “Poor thing--ah, let her!”
she murmured inwardly.
“But why should you sit up for Tina? She has the key, and Delia is to
bring her home.”
Charlotte Lovell did not immediately answer. She rolled up her knitting,
looked severely at one of the candelabra on the mantelpiece, and crossed
over to straighten it. Then she picked up her work-bag.
“Yes, as you say--why should any one sit up for her?” She moved about
the room, putting out the lamps, covering the fire, assuring herself
that the windows were bolted, while Delia passively watched her. Then
the two cousins lit their bedroom candles and walked upstairs through
the darkened house. Charlotte seemed determined to make no further
allusion to the subject of their talk. On the landing she paused,
bending her head toward Delia’s nightly kiss.
“I hope they’ve kept up your fire,” she said, with her capable
housekeeping air; and on Delia’s hasty reassurance the two murmured a
simultaneous “Goodnight,” and Charlotte turned down the passage to her
room.
IX
Delia’s fire had been kept up, and her dressing-gown was warming on an
arm-chair near the hearth. But she neither undressed nor yet seated
herself. Her conversation with Charlotte had filled her with a deep
unrest.
For a few moments she stood in the middle of the floor, looking slowly
about her. Nothing had ever been changed in the room which, even as a
bride, she had planned to modernize. All her dreams of renovation had
faded long ago. Some deep central indifference had gradually made her
regard herself as a third person, living the life meant for another
woman, a woman totally unrelated to the vivid Delia Lovell who had
entered that house so full of plans and visions. The fault, she knew,
was not her husband’s. With a little managing and a little wheedling she
would have gained every point as easily as she had gained the capital
one of taking the foundling baby under her wing. The difficulty was
that, after that victory, nothing else seemed worth trying for. The
first sight of little Tina had somehow decentralized Delia Ralston’s
whole life, making her indifferent to everything else, except indeed the
welfare of her own husband and children. Ahead of her she saw only a
future full of duties, and these she had gaily and faithfully
accomplished. But her own life was over: she felt as detached as a
cloistered nun.
The change in her was too deep not to be visible. The Ralstons openly
gloried in dear Delia’s conformity. Each acquiescence passed for a
concession, and the family doctrine was fortified by such fresh proofs
of its durability. Now, as Delia glanced about her at the Léopold Robert
lithographs, the family daguerreotypes, the rosewood and mahogany, she
understood that she was looking at the walls of her own grave.
The change had come on the day when Charlotte Lovell, cowering on that
very lounge, had made her terrible avowal. Then for the first time
Delia, with a kind of fearful exaltation, had heard the blind forces of
life groping and crying underfoot. But on that day also she had known
herself excluded from them, doomed to dwell among shadows. Life had
passed her by, and left her with the Ralstons.
Very well, then! She would make the best of herself, and of the
Ralstons. The vow was immediate and unflinching; and for nearly twenty
years she had gone on observing it. Once only had she been not a Ralston
but herself; once only had it seemed worth while. And now perhaps the
same challenge had sounded again; again, for a moment, it might be worth
while to live. Not for the sake of Clement Spender--poor Clement,
married years ago to a plain determined cousin, who had hunted him down
in Rome, and enclosing him in an unrelenting domesticity, had obliged
all New York on the grand tour to buy his pictures with a resigned
grimace. No, not for Clement Spender, hardly for Charlotte or even for
Tina; but for her own sake, hers, Delia Ralston’s, for the sake of her
one missed vision, her forfeited reality, she would once more break down
the Ralston barriers and reach out into the world.
A faint sound through the silent house disturbed her meditation.
Listening, she heard Charlotte Lovell’s door open and her stiff
petticoats rustle toward the landing. A light glanced under the door and
vanished; Charlotte had passed Delia’s threshold on her way downstairs.
Without moving, Delia continued to listen. Perhaps the careful Charlotte
had gone down to make sure that the front door was not bolted, or that
she had really covered up the fire. If that were her object, her step
would presently be heard returning. But no step sounded; and it became
gradually evident that Charlotte had gone down to wait for her daughter.
Why?
Delia’s bedroom was at the front of the house. She stole across the
heavy carpet, drew aside the curtains and cautiously folded back the
inner shutters. Below her lay the empty square, white with moon-night,
its tree-trunks patterned on a fresh sprinkling of snow. The houses
opposite slept in darkness; not a footfall broke the white surface, not
a wheel-track marred the brilliant street. Overhead a heaven full of
stars swam in the moonlight.
Of the households around Gramercy Park Delia knew that only two others
had gone to the ball: the Petrus Vandergraves and their cousins the
young Parmly Ralstons. The Lucius Lannings had just entered on their
three years of mourning for Mrs. Lucius’s mother (it was hard on their
daughter Kate, just eighteen, who would be unable to “come out” till she
was twenty-one); young Mrs. Marcy Mingott was “expecting her third,” and
consequently secluded from the public eye for nearly a year; and the
other denizens of the square belonged to the undifferentiated and
uninvited.
Delia pressed her forehead against the pane. Before long carriages
would turn the corner, the sleeping square ring with hoof-beats, fresh
laughter and young farewells mount from the door-steps. But why was
Charlotte waiting for her daughter downstairs in the darkness?
The Parisian clock struck one. Delia came back into the room, raked the
fire, picked up a shawl, and, wrapped in it, returned to her vigil. Ah,
how old she must have grown, that she should feel the cold at such a
moment! It reminded her of what the future held for her: neuralgia,
rheumatism, stiffness, accumulating infirmities. And never had she kept
a moonlight watch with a lover’s arms to warm her....
The square still lay silent. Yet the ball must surely be ending: the
gayest dances did not last long after one in the morning, and the drive
from University Place to Gramercy Park was a short one. Delia leaned in
the embrasure and listened.