XII.

Pauline was surprised, during the several ensuing days, to find how

greatly her indignation toward Miss Cragge had diminished. The new

happiness which had come to her looked in a way resultant, as she

reflected upon it, from that most trying and oppressive interview.

"I could almost find it in my heart to forgive her completely," she told

Kindelon, with a beaming look.

"I wish that my forgiveness were to be secured as easily," replied

Kindelon.

"Your forgiveness from whom?" asked Pauline, with a pretty start of

amazement.

"Oh, you know. From your aunt, the vastly conservative Mrs.

Poughkeepsie, and her equally conservative daughter."

Pauline gave a laugh of mock irritation. She could not be really

irritated; she was too drenched with the wholesome sunshine of good

spirits. "It is so ridiculous, Ralph," she said, "for you to speak of my

relations as if they were my custodians or my patrons. I am completely

removed from them as regards all responsibility, all independence. I

wish to keep friends with them, of course; we are of the same blood, and

quarrels between kinspeople are always in odious taste. But any very

insolent opposition would make me break with them to-morrow."

"And also with your cousin, Courtlandt Beekman?" asked Kindelon,

smiling, though not very mirthfully.

Pauline put her head on one side. "I draw a sharp line between him and

the Poughkeepsies," she said, either seeming to deliberate or else doing

so in good earnest. "We were friends since children, Court and I," she

proceeded. "I should hate not to keep friends with Court always."

"You must make up your mind to break with him," said Kindelon, with

undoubted gravity.

"And why?" she quickly questioned.

"He abominates me."

"Oh, nonsense! And even if he does, he will change in time ... I thought

of writing him to-day," Pauline slowly proceeded. "But I did not. I have

put off all that sort of thing shamefully."

"All that sort of thing?"

"Yes--writing to people that I am engaged, you know. That is the

invariable custom. You must announce your intended matrimonial step in

due form."

He looked at her with a pitying smile which she thought became him most

charmingly. "And you have procrastinated from sheer dread, my poor

Pauline!" he murmured, lifting her hand to his lips and letting it rest

against them. "Dread of an explosion--of a distressing nervous ordeal.

How I read your adroit little deceits!"

She withdrew her hand, momentarily counterfeiting annoyance. "You absurd

would-be seer!" she exclaimed. "No, I'll call you a raven. But you can't

depress me by your ominous wing-flapping! I thought Aunt Cynthia would

drop in yesterday; I thought most _certainly_ that she would drop in

to-day. That is my reason for not making our engagement transpire

through letter."

"I see," said Kindelon, with a comic, quizzical sombreness. "You didn't

want to open your guns on the enemy; you were waiting for at least a

show of offensive attack...."

But, as it chanced, Mrs. Poughkeepsie did drop in upon Pauline at about

two o'clock the next day. She came unattended by Sallie, but she had

important and indeed momentous news to impart concerning Sallie. As

regarded Pauline's engagement, she was, of course, in total ignorance

of it. But she chose to deliver her own supreme tidings with no

suggestion of impulsive haste.

"You are looking very well," she said to Pauline, as they sat on a

yielding cachemire lounge together, in the little daintily-decked lower

reception-room. "And, my dear niece," she continued, "you must let me

tell you that I am full of congratulations at your not being made ill by

what happened here the other evening. Sallie and I felt for you deeply.

It was so apparent to us that you would never have done it if you had

known how dreadfully it would turn out.... But there is no use of raking

up old by-gones. You have seen the folly of the whole thing, of course.

My dear, it has naturally got abroad. The Hackensacks know it, and the

Tremaines, and those irrepressible gossips, the Desbrosses girls. But

Sallie and I have silenced all stupid scandals as best we could, and

merely represented the affair as a capricious little pleasantry on your

part. You haven't lost caste a particle by it--don't fancy that you

have. You were a Van Corlear, and you're now Mrs. Varick, with a great

fortune; and such a whim is to be pardoned accordingly."

Pauline was biting her lips, now. "I don't want it to be pardoned, Aunt

Cynthia," she said, "and I don't hold it either as a capricious

pleasantry or a whim. It was very serious with me. I told you that

before."

"Truly you did, my dear," said Mrs. Poughkeepsie. She laughed a mellow

laugh of amusement, and laid one gloved hand upon Pauline's arm. "But

you saw those horrible people in your drawing-rooms, and I am sure that

this must have satisfied you that the whole project was impossible ...

_en l'air_, my dear, as it unquestionably was. Why, I assure you that

Sallie and I laughed together for a whole hour after we got home. They

were nearly all such droll creatures! It was like a fancy-ball without

the mask, you know. Upon my word, I enjoyed it after a fashion, Pauline;

so did Sallie. One woman always addressed me as 'ma'am.' Another asked

me if I '_resided_ on _the_ Fifth Avenue.' Still another ... (no, by the

way, that wasn't a woman; it was a man) ... inquired of Sallie whether

she danced the Lancers much in fashionable circles.... Oh, how funny it

all was! And they didn't talk of books in the least. I supposed that we

were to be pelted with quotations from living and dead authors, and

asked all kinds of radical questions as to what we had read. But they

simply talked to us of the most ordinary matters, and in a _very_

extraordinary way.... However, let us not concern ourselves with them

any more, my dear. They were horrid, and you know they were horrid, and

it goes without saying that you will have no more to do with them."

"I thought some of them horrid," said Pauline, with an ambiguous

coolness, "though perhaps I found them so in a different way from

yourself."

Mrs. Poughkeepsie repeated her mellow laugh, and majestically nodded

once or twice as she did so.

"Well, well, my dear," she recommenced, "let us dismiss them and forget

them.... I hope you are going out again. You have only to signify a

wish, you know. There will not be the slightest feeling in society--not

the slightest."

"Really?" said Pauline, with an involuntary sarcasm which she could not

repress.

But her aunt received the sarcasm in impervious good faith. "Oh, not the

slightest feeling," she repeated. "And I do hope, Pauline," she went on,

with a certain distinct yet unexplained alteration of manner, "that you

will make your _rentree_, as it were, at a little dinner I shall give

Sallie next Thursday. It celebrates an event." Here Mrs. Poughkeepsie

paused and looked full at her niece. "I mean Sallie's engagement."

"Sallie's engagement?" quickly murmured Pauline. The latter word had

carried an instant personal force of reminder.

"Yes--to Lord Glenartney. You met him once or twice, I believe."

"Lord Glenartney!" softly iterated Pauline. She was thinking what a gulf

of difference lay, for the august social intelligence of her aunt,

between the separate bits of tidings which she and Mrs. Poughkeepsie had

been waiting to impart, each to each.

"Yes, Glenartney has proposed to dear Sallie," began the lady, waxing

promptly and magnificently confidential. "Of course it is a great match,

even for Sallie. There can be no doubt of that. I don't deny it; I don't

for an instant shut my eyes to it; I consider that it would justly

subject me to ridicule if I did. Lord Glenartney was not expected to

marry in this country; there was no reason why he should do so. He is

immensely rich; he has three seats, in England and Scotland. He is twice

a Baron, besides being once an Earl, and is first cousin to the Duke of

Devergoil. Sallie has done well; I wish everybody to clearly understand,

my dear Pauline, that I _think_ Sallie has done brilliantly

and wonderfully well. A mother always has ambitious dreams for her

child ... can a mother's heart help having them? But in my very wildest

dreams I never calculated upon such a marriage for my darling child as

this!"

Pauline sat silent before her aunt's final outburst of maternal fervor.

She was thinking of the silly caricature upon all manly worthiness that

the Scotch peer just named had seemed to her. She was thinking of her

own doleful, mundane marriage in the past. She was wondering what malign

power had so crooked and twisted human wisdom and human sense of

fitness, that a woman endowed with brains, education, knowledge of right

and wrong, should thus exult (and in the sacred name of maternity as

well!) over a union of this wofully sordid nature.

"I--I hope Sallie will be happy," she said, feeling that any real doubt

on the point might strike her aunt as a piece of personal envy.

"Curiously enough," she continued, "_I_, also have to tell you of an

engagement, Aunt Cynthia."

Mrs. Poughkeepsie raised her brows in surprise. "Oh, you mean poor dear

Lily Schenectady. I've heard of it. It has come at last, my dear, and he

is only a clerk on about two thousand a year, besides not being of the

_direct_ line of the Auchinclosses, as one might say, but merely a sort

of obscure relation. Still, it is said that he has fair expectations;

and then you know that poor dear Lily's freckles _are_ a drawback, and

that she has been called a _spotted_ lily by some witty persons, and

that it has really become a nickname in society, and"--

"I did not refer to Lily Schenectady," here interrupted Pauline. "I

spoke of myself."

The mine had been exploded. Pauline and Mrs. Poughkeepsie looked at each

other.

"Pauline!" presently came the faltered answer.

"Yes, Aunt Cynthia, I spoke of myself. I am engaged to Mr. Kindelon."

"Mr. Kindelon!"

"Yes. I am sure you know who he is."

"Oh, I know who he is." Mrs. Poughkeepsie spoke these words with a

ruminative yet astonished drawl.

"Well, I am engaged to him," said Pauline, stoutly but not

over-assertively. She had never looked more composed, more simply

womanly than now.

Mrs. Poughkeepsie rose. It always meant something when this lady rose.

It meant a flutter of raiment, a deliberation of readjustment, a kind of

superb, massive dislocation.

"I am horrified!" exclaimed the mother of the future Countess

Glenartney.

Pauline rose, then, with a dry, chill gleam in her eyes. "I think that

there is nothing to horrify you," she said.

Mrs. Poughkeepsie gave a kind of sigh that in equine phrase we might

call a snort. Her large body visibly trembled. She rapidly drew forth a

handkerchief from some receptacle in her ample-flowing costume, and

placed it at her lips. Pauline steadily watched her, with hands crossed

a little below the waist.

"I do so hope that you are not going to faint, Aunt Cynthia," she said,

with a satire that partook of strong belligerence.

Mrs. Poughkeepsie, with her applied handkerchief, did not look at all

like fainting as she glanced above the snowy cambric folds toward her

niece.

"I--I never faint, Pauline ... it is not my way. I--I know how to bear

calamities. But this is quite horrible ... it agitates me accordingly.

I--I have nothing to say and yet I--I have a great deal to say."

"Then don't say it!" now sharply rang Pauline's retort.

"Ah! you lose your temper? It is just what I might have thought--under

the circumstances!"

Pauline clenched her teeth together for a short space, to keep from any

futile disclosure of anger. And presently she said, with a shrill yet

even directness,--

"What, pray, _are_ the circumstances? I tell you that I am to marry the

man whom I choose to marry. You advised me--you nearly _forced_ me,

once--to marry the man whom it was an outrage to make my husband!"

"Pauline!"

"What I tell you is true! He whom I select is not of your world! And, by

the way, what is your world? A little throng of mannerists, snobs, and

triflers! I care nothing for such a world! I want a larger and a better.

You say that I have failed in my effort to break down this barrier of

conservatism which hedged me about from my birth.... Well, allow that I

_have_ failed in that! I have not failed in finding some true gold from

all that you sneer at as tawdry dross!... Tawdry! I did well to chance

upon the word! What was that gentlemanly bit of vice whom you were so

willing I should marry a few years ago? You've just aired your tenets to

me; I'll air a few of mine to you now. We live in New York, you and I.

Do you know what New York means? It means what America means--or what

America _ought_ to mean, from Canada to the Gulf! And that is--exemption

from the hateful bonds of self-glorifying snobbery which have disgraced

Europe for centuries! You call yourself an aristocrat. How dare you do

so? You dwell in a land which was washed with the blood, less than a

century ago, of men who died to kill just what you boast of and exalt!

Look more to your breeding and your brains, and less to your so-called

caste! I come of your own race, and can speak with right about it. What

was it, less than four generations ago? You call it Dutch, and with a

grand air. It flowed in the veins of immigrant Dutchmen, who would have

opened their eyes with wonder to see the mansion you dwell in, the

silver forks you eat with! _They_ dwelt in wooden shanties and ate with

pewter forks.... Your objection to my marriage with Ralph Kindelon is

horrible--that and nothing more! He towers above the idiot whom you are

glad to have Sallie marry! What do I care for the little 'lord'? You bow

before it; I despise it. You call my project, my dream, my desire, a

failure ... I grant that it is. But it is immeasurably above that petty

worship of the Golden Calf, which _you_ name respectability and which

_I_ denounce as only a pitiful sham! The world is growing older, but you

don't grow old with it. You close your eyes to all progress. You get a

modish milliner, you keep your pew in Grace Church, you drop a big coin

into the plate when a millionaire hands it to you, and you are content.

Your contentment is a pitiful fraud. Your purse could do untold good,

and yet you keep it clasped--or, if you loose the clasp, you do it with

a flourish, a vogue, an _eclat_.... Mrs. Amsterdam has done the same for

this or that asylum or hospital, and so you, with fashionable

acquiescence, do likewise. And you--you, Cynthia Poughkeepsie, who tried

to wreck my girlish life and almost succeeded--you, who read nothing of

what great modern minds in their grandly helpful impulse toward humanity

are trying to make humanity hear--you, who think the fit set of a

patrician's gown above the big struggle of men and women to live--you,

who immerse yourself in idle vanities and talk of everyone outside your

paltry pale as you would talk of dogs--_you_ dare to upbraid me because

I announce to you that I will marry a man whom power of mind makes your

superior, and whom natural gifts of courtesy make far more than your

equal!"

As Pauline hotly finished she saw her aunt recede many steps from her.

"Oh, this--this is frightful!" gasped Mrs. Poughkeepsie. "It--it is the

_theatre_! You will go on the stage, I suppose. It seems to me you have

done everything but go on the stage, already! That would be the crowning

insult to yourself--to your family!"

"I shan't go on the stage," shot Pauline, "because I have no talent for

it. If I had talent, perhaps I would go. I think it a far better life

for an American woman than to prate triumphantly about marrying her

daughter to a titled English fool!"

Mrs. Poughkeepsie uttered a cry, at this point. She passed from the

room, and Pauline, overcome with the excess of her disclaimer, soon

afterward sank upon a chair....

An almost hysterical fit of weeping at once followed.... It must have

been a half-hour later when she felt Kindelon's face lowered to her own.

He had nearly always come, since their engagement, at more or less

unexpected hours.

"Some hateful thing has happened," he said very tenderly; "whom have you

seen? Why do you sob so, Pauline? Have you seen _her_? Has Cora Dares

been here?"

Pauline almost sprang from her chair, facing him. "Cora Dares," she

cried, plaintively and with passion. "Why do you mention her name now?"

Kindelon folded her in his strong arms. "Pauline," he expostulated, "be

quiet! I merely thought of what you yourself had told me, and of what I

myself had told _you_? What is it, then, since it is not she? Tell me,

and I will listen as best I can."

She soon began to tell him, leaning her head upon his broad breast,

falteringly and with occasional severe effort.

"I--I was wrong," she at length finished. "I should not have spoken so

rashly, so madly.... But it was all because of you, Ralph--because of my

love for you!"

He pressed her more closely within the arms that held her.

"I don't blame you!" he exclaimed. "You were wrong, as you admit that

you were wrong ... but I don't blame you!"