have always been out or engaged. You must lead a busy life."
"I do," said Lynn, smiling faintly. "But I am sorry you thought I didn't
want to see you. It wasn't that."
"Wasn't it?"
Amherst's voice changed.
"Do you know that you have avoided me ever since that night at the
Burns'?"
"I--I hadn't thought about it."
"Is that the truth?"
Lynn was silent: then--
"Not exactly," she said with a faint effort.
"I tried to say something to you that evening--you remember?"
"Yes."
"Why wouldn't you let me say it?"
"I thought you had better not," said Lynn in a low voice.
"Don't say that; not unless you mean me to understand that"--
"Mr. Amherst," broke in Mrs. Hadwell, imperatively, "you are a horrid
man! First you refuse to give me Ricossia's address, next you stand and
talk to Miss Thayer in a low voice without giving me a chance to show
her my portrait. She's dying to see it, aren't you, Lynn? and it's
getting so dark. Can't you drive back with me and take dinner? then you
can talk to Lynn as much as ever you want and Mr. Hadwell and I will sit
by like deaf-mutes and play propriety. Won't you?"
"Awfully sorry!" said Amherst with genuine regret in his voice. "I have
an engagement of long standing, so it's impossible. But if you'll only
repeat the invitation, I'd love to come. Will you?"
"I will," responded Mrs. Hadwell. "I'll look up my engagement book and
see if we can find an evening when we shall all be free. In the
meantime, let me ask you what this means, this little wrinkle in my
brow? I've puzzled over it for at least ten minutes and I demand to have
it explained. If it is copied from life, you must simply paint it out,
that's all!"
*CHAPTER XII*
*THE VIEWS OF TWO WOMEN*
"Is it your moral of Life?
Such a web, simple and subtle,
Weave we on earth here in impotent strife,
Backward and forward each throwing his shuttle,
Death ending all with a knife."
--_Browning_.
"The time has come, the Walrus said, to talk of many things," quoted
Mrs. Hadwell, settling back in her easy-chair with intense satisfaction.
If, as the poet asserts, "a sorrow's crown of sorrow is remembering
happier things" certainly a joy's crown of joy may be remembering
unhappier things. One principal reason for Mrs. Hadwell's calm and
unlimited enjoyment of her life lay in the fact that her youth had been
spent in other people's easy-chairs. It is noteworthy that it had been
spent in easychairs; women of her type always do spend their lives in
easy-chairs, metaphorical and literal; but an easy-chair bestowed upon
one by a doting husband, and an easy-chair occupied by sufferance in
other people's homes are, as will readily be perceived, two very
different pieces of furniture.
"What do you want to talk about in particular?" Lynn asked, regarding
her hostess lazily. Dinner was over; Mr. Hadwell had betaken himself to
his club; and the two sat at their ease in a softly shaded luxurious
library, filled with unread books in half-calf. Polished mahogany,
heavy damask curtains, thick, soft carpets, scent of mignonette and
roses, all added to its comfort.
"I want to talk about all sorts of things," returned Estelle, in answer
to her friend's question. "Interesting things--things that
matter--yourself for instance! I wonder why it is that so few people
talk interestingly about ordinary things! I believe it must be because
they simply will not tell the truth about them; they stick to platitudes
for fear of blundering on some thought they feel they oughtn't to have.
Don't you think that is it? Now we always look things right in the face
and say just what we think about them; and that is why we're so
queer--and so nice--and so interesting to one another. And this is such
a good opportunity for a talk. We've had such a lovely dinner--wasn't
that soup delicious? and, as for that muscatel! Don't you simply dote on
things to eat? I do. I never agree with that man--Solomon, wasn't
it?--who said that he would rather have a dinner of herbs and peace than
a stalled ox and strife therewith. Let him have the herbs! and give me
the stalled ox every time. If it were nicely served and properly cooked
I wouldn't care if there were seven bad-tempered married couples and
sixteen cross cats and twenty squalling parrots all rowing together at
my elbow. That's what it is to be practical. Give me things to eat and
a good appetite and I don't care much what happens. There's something
about a dinner which appeals to me in a way that sunsets and sonatas
don't. And yet some one described me the other day as being
'spirituelle.' Fancy!"
"Some one who didn't know you very well, evidently."
"Some one who has called me 'Estelle' all his life except the four years
of it when I wasn't born; but, as you say, some one who doesn't know me
very well because he happens to be a man and a man who used to be in
love with me. Poor thing! And yet he's happy in his way and I'm happy
in mine. He has his ideals and I have my dinners. The only really
happy people are the people who have the sense to prefer dinners to
ideals and who steadily set to work to get them."
"I suppose you are happy. If dinners could make anyone happy you ought
to be. But, tell me, Del, do you never want anything else?"
"Oh, yes. I want silk dresses and diamond brooches and the feeling that
every snob in town will kow-tow as soon as my snub nose appears. And
I've got them all--thank goodness! I very easily might not have, you
know. There are so many others looking out for just the opportunity I
seized. And every one said that Henry wasn't a marrying man.
Ridiculous! As if every one wasn't a marrying man as soon as the right
woman came along; the woman who made love to him unremittingly and
tactfully without letting him see that she was doing it. It was an
awful bore, sometimes, to make love to Henry. It had to be done so
carefully. O dear, he was so surly and snubby and so scared of being
hooked. But it didn't do any good: _I intended to marry him and I
married him_--and so could you if you had any gumption!" she exclaimed,
veering around and fixing Lynn with a look of intense determination.
"What? Marry Henry?"
"Not my Henry, no; but some other Henry. There are plenty of them and
if you don't take them somebody else will. They all like to be admired
and courted. And oh, lucky girl! Fate has dropped an ideal Henry right
in your lap."
"Don't, Del! My poor lap! And as for 'ideal,' why, he has green teeth
and goggly eyes."
"I am sure you are not so good-looking, yourself."
"Now, Del! Have I goggly eyes and green teeth? Let us be accurate
before we are aggravating. Besides, it was horrid of me to speak of his
appearance. Only his appearance is so exactly like him that it grates
on me, some way."
"He is a great deal too good for you," said her friend, indignantly.
"So every one has already told me. Anything is too good for an old, ugly
school-teacher, I dare say; but I don't want him, even if he is too good
for me."
"Now, Lynn, we'll talk this over. I want to have the whole thing out
with you."
"As you please."
"Very well, then. We will assume that you are quite determined not to
marry Lighton. Two other courses are open to you; the first, to go on
teaching all your life; the second, to marry some one else. We will
examine these two alternatives--with your permission."
"Or without it!"
"Or, as you say, without it. Let us begin then. We will suppose that
you stay as you are and go on teaching. You are not at all young,
now--you needn't grin. I know I am two years older, but that has
nothing to do with it; I'm married. You are not, I repeat, young.
Every year you become a little older and a little older."
"The truth of your remarks is only equalled by their unpleasantness."
"I don't care. You go on getting older and older. Your aunt, who has
been good to you and of whom you are fond, will be very much
disappointed in you. She feels that it is disgraceful not to marry and
criminal not to marry Lighton, and I am strongly inclined to agree with
her. So, as the years go by and you get older and plainer and less
desirable your aunt will grow less and less fond of you. You are not a
great favourite with your uncle; to be sure, he has only one supreme
favourite in the universe and I needn't say who that is!--and your aunt
will probably die in time. What a happy home you will have, then!
Suppose on the other hand, that he should die. You wouldn't have money
enough to live in that big house and you would have to be cooped up in a
flat and come home, after teaching all day, to listen to your aunt's
lamentations about the nice establishment you might have had"--
"Thank fortune there are always the poison and the dagger."
"There are; but they're the refuge of the coward, and ordinary
respectable people don't commit suicide, however much they want to.
Now, having fully disposed of that alternative, let us turn to the
other--that you marry some one else. Who else is there? You are a
general favourite and lots of men like to talk to you; but who, besides
Lighton, is in love with you? I mean of course, that is in a position
to marry. We will suppose, though, that you have several other
proposals in the next few years--what then? Whom would you rather
marry?"
Lynn said nothing and turned her head away.
"The fact is that there is no one you would rather marry and there are
very few who could offer you what he does. The trouble with you is that
you don't face things. You know that, if you don't marry him, you have
nothing in life to look forward to; yet, because it isn't an ideal
arrangement, you refuse to consider it. Surely you have outgrown the
silly, pretty, childish idea of marrying for love? Look at the people
who do marry for love! How many of them are as happy as I am? I, who
deliberately angled to catch the richest man of my acquaintance and did
it. You could not have managed matters for yourself in the way that I
did; and then, Fate, instead of punishing you for being stupid, offers
you a prize--and you throw it away. Why?"
"It is a little hard to explain why, Del," returned her friend, slowly.
"I don't know whether I could make you understand."
"I don't know that I have much heart, Lynn, but I have a mind. Try me."
"Long ago, then, I 'faced things' as you call it. I looked right at
them hard and baldly and I saw that Life is very hard on woman. Life,
Society--even Nature--all seem to be leagued against her. Her one
chance of happiness is to make a happy marriage; and in order to make a
happy marriage how many things are needed--and how few are forthcoming!
Even then she must make up her mind to face certain torture and possible
death; and when, after bearing two or three children, she loses her
youth, her strength, her good looks, she has the satisfaction of knowing
that her husband is as attractive as he was the day she married him.
So, practically, in the majority of cases, she has nothing but her
children. I am not thinking of you, you monkey; you are a great
exception. Of course the children must be worth a great deal to her,
but, apart from them, the average woman has precious little. Her
husband is usually fond of her--I am speaking, now, of happy
marriages--but all the idealism and the romance die very quickly. If,
on the other hand, she does as so many do and marries some one who is in
love with her but for whom she cares little--what then? All the usual
hindrances and no compensations. There is left only spinsterhood.
Putting aside the lucky few who have some art, some profession, which
means everything to them, unmarried women are, as you have said, simply
incumbrances and not happy incumbrances at that. The one happy thing
for a woman is to fall in love when she is young, marry some one who
adores her, and become so absorbed in her children that she won't mind
the rest. Of course there are a few ideal marriages here and there;
cases where people fall in love and stay in love and have satisfactory
children and enjoy life; but you know as well as I do how many of these
there are. Four altogether; and I have sometimes doubted the fourth."
"Well, of all the cynics"--
"Not a bit of it; I don't cherish useless illusions in the face of
facts, that's all. Well, as I began to say, long ago I 'faced things'
and saw them as they were. The best thing to do was to fall in love and
make a happy marriage; that I couldn't do. The next was to marry some
one I didn't want, or to do something that would support me, and remain
unmarried. Of the two, the last seemed the only possible thing. I can
get along for the present just as I am and I do not look into the
future. As far as I can see, it is bound to be a wretched one, anyway;
but I may die--a thousand things may happen. In the meantime I do not
worry because of realizing that life is a tragic thing; and I take
things very coolly and don't make a fuss about anything that can't be
helped. When I feel down in the mouth I always console myself with the
reflection, first, that it can't last forever; and, secondly, that
however industriously Fate may knock me, she can't compel me to squeal
about it."
"What a truly cheerful and comforting reflection."
"Well, do you know anyone more cheerful than I?"
"No, I can't say that I do; but appearances are certainly deceptive.
Then you really prefer unmarried unhappiness to married
unhappiness--that is your final choice?"
"That is my final choice."
"It is an extraordinary one, that is all I can say, when one thinks of
all the money that is thrown in with the married unhappiness."
"Money can't buy happiness."
"No, but it can buy some mighty good substitutes for it, my dear. And
as far as I can see, you are not going to get anything at all with the
unmarried unhappiness."
"Nothing at all? Freedom, a peaceful mind and an independent income.
I'd rather have my liberty than all the houses in Christendom and all
the men. Of course I am human; I should prefer to make a happy
marriage; but how many people do, and why should I be picked out for a
happy fate when so many kinder and better people than I have nothing but
trouble from beginning to end of their lives? No; I complain of
nothing."
"Don't you think you will be sorry for this, some day?"
"If I am, no one will ever know it."
"If you think all this about your future, why do you want to live?"
"I don't want to live. Do you? Does any mature person? But I must
live and so must you. There is probably some reason for the world and
for Nature and for Sin and for all the other queer works of God and of
the Devil. Perhaps we shall find it all out some day and then again
perhaps we shall sleep so soundly that we shall not care to find out
anything at all. That would be nice. It would be still nicer, though,
to find out that everything was for the best, really, and that
everything about the world was necessary. 'God's in his heaven, all's
right with the world,' you know, and all that sort of thing. That
phrase about the 'best of all possible worlds,' when applied to this, is
such rubbish and such inhuman rubbish at that; such an insult to the
intelligence and humanity of mankind; yet one can't help hoping that
there will be a 'best of all possible worlds' and the mere fact that we
want it and look forward to it so instinctively shows that there must be
one, somewhere, I think. What do you think?"
"I think I should like to have a brandy and soda," said Mrs. Hadwell,
forlornly. "Positively you have given me the blues. I do hate thinking
of heaven and poets and metaphysics and things. This earth is all right
if you only have sense. The trouble is, you haven't any. Oh! I have
just thought of something. I have a lovely box of Huyler's that I
haven't touched. We'll eat that and Thomas shall light us a little fire
and you can have the latest magazine and I'll read the book of that
woman's--you know! the one that they are making all the fuss about.
It's frightfully amusing and very improper and it doesn't make one think
the least little bit. That's the sort of book I like, and it's the sort
of book most people like, too, only they won't say so. Yes, it is, Lynn.
You needn't say it isn't. Else why is it always out at the library,
though they have seven copies, and why is its author able to travel all
over the world on her earnings? You don't understand human nature. All
it wants is to be amused and _not_ to be improved. We all like to slide
down hill, comfortably, without being obliged to climb up again. And we
would all slide down much faster if it wasn't that the company at the
foot of the hill is so unpleasant and the people at the top throw things
at you and you can't throw them back. And the reason that the people at
the top throw things is that they are so cross because they don't really
like being stuck up there and they have to pretend they do."
"Well, you're not at all cross, yet, Del, and you haven't slid down hill
very fast," said Lynn, laughing.
"Oh, yes, I have. Anyway I didn't have far to slide from. I began
pretty low down, you know. Oh, I have no illusions about myself. But,
even so I have slidden. But you see, if you are clad in gold armour,
you can slide as much as you like; for that renders you bullet-proof.
If I were a nursery-governess slaving over spoilt brats for the sake of
getting a miserable living, I should be thought a very shady character.
Just suppose I had said what I said just now about only liking improper
things that didn't make me think! Why, I should be turned out of doors
without a character, I suppose. But I am Mrs. Henry Hadwell and so I
can slide just as much as I please--within limits. Perhaps it is just
as well that there are limits to everything. Otherwise I dare say I
should be even worse than I am. And I'm pretty bad, you know. I
haven't any conscience and very little affection. And I have _no_
ideals. But then, as I said before, I have dinners--lovely dinners!
How glad I am to think that I am going to have another one to-morrow.
Some way, when I think of that, I quite forget all the horrid things you
have put into my head to-night. Just think! I--_I_ might have been a
nursery-governess. _I!_ I hadn't brains or industry enough to become a
teacher. Ugh! Oh, what horrible lives there are in the world and how
lovely to think that I have a lovely home and a doting husband and three
darling children _and_ my dinners! What are you thinking about, now?"
"I was just thinking that we were awfully like the lower animals,
really," replied Lynn, with a half-laugh. "A little more complex, but
just about like them, otherwise. What does the average bear want? A
mate, cubs,--and dinners. If he gets them he is happy; if he doesn't,
he is miserable. If Bob could talk, he would say just about what you
have been saying, now."
"Bob is a sensible dog," said Mrs. Hadwell, solemnly. "I don't like
dogs and I do like you but justice compels me to state that Bob has a
lot more sense than you have. Never mind! you will get wise when it is
too late and then you will wish that you had had the sense to imitate me
and Bob and all the other practical people in the world. You needn't
think I mind being called a lower animal. If being a lower animal means
getting what you want and being a higher animal means getting what you
don't want,--well, I want to be a lower animal, thank you! Lynn! these
marron glaces are simply the most delicious things you ever thought of.
_Do_ have one!"
*CHAPTER XIII*
*REJECTED ADDRESSES*
"The Heart's Desire hath led me
In barren lands and vain."
--Theodosia Garrison.
"I suppose it sounds brutal to say so," said Lynn Thayer, "but you know
you ought really to be very grateful to me for refusing you. You will
thank me for it, ten years hence."
Mr. Harold Lighton, who was sitting opposite, frowned angrily and made
no response.
"We are not in the least suited to one another," she continued, gently.
"You--I would make you very unhappy. You are young and rich, and when
you get over this, you will be able to marry some nice, young, pretty
girl."
"I don't want a nice, young, pretty girl," returned Mr. Lighton, glumly.
"I want you."
Lynn's eyes suddenly danced but she very properly refrained from
comment.
"Oh, I say, won't you think this over?" burst forth Mr. Lighton, quite
unconscious of the doubtful compliment he had just paid the object of
his affections. "I'm most awfully in love with you, indeed I am. You
know that, don't you?"
"I know that you think you are in love with me, just now," answered
Lynn, gravely. "But, in my twenty-eight years of life, quite a few
people have told me that they were in love with me and would never be
happy without me. And they have married some one else in a few years'
time and have never thought of me, again."
"I'm not like that," said Mr. Lighton, eagerly. "Upon my soul, I'm not.
You may think I'm fickle or easily suited. I'm not. I don't like
anybody but you and I never will. It seems pretty hard when a fellow's
waited until over thirty before he has run across any one he
fancied--and then to be turned down, after all."
"It has happened before."
"Why, no, it hasn't!" said Lighton, indignantly.
"I mean to other people."
"Oh! See here, why won't you have me? I suppose I'm not clever enough
for you. Is that the trouble?"
"No, no indeed. I'm stupid, myself, frightfully stupid in lots of ways.
That isn't it, at all. It's just that I don't care enough about you."
Mr. Lighton regarded her with some perplexity.
"I say--I'd like awfully to say something if you won't think it rude."
"Very well--what is it?"
"You're twenty-eight--you don't mind my mentioning it, do you?" queried
Mr. Lighton, tactfully. "You've always spoken so openly of it,
yourself."
"Oh, I can never keep even the most damaging facts about myself hidden,"
said Lynn, solemnly.
"Eh?--what's that? Oh, well, never mind! What I wanted to say was
this: Don't you mean to marry?"
"I haven't quite made up my mind, yet. Perhaps I may marry somebody a
few years hence--but not you," she hastily added, seeing Mr. Lighton
look up with sudden interest.
"Why not me?"
"I have told you twenty times over why not."
"And you're serious about it? You're sure you won't change your mind?
Well, what I wanted to say was this. Suppose, a few years hence when
you've decided that you will marry--now, you won't be offended?"
"I don't think I will. What you want to say is, what will I do if no
one wants to marry me, then?"
"Yes," confessed Mr. Lighton, looking a little embarrassed but sticking
to his guns, manfully. "You're an awfully stunning girl, but a girl
often doesn't get another offer after thirty; and what if you don't?"
"I won't marry."
"But--but"--
"I won't marry, anyway, unless I see some one I like better than I do
you," said Lynn, deliberately. "It is best to be explicit, isn't it? I
don't want to hurt you, but this is the plain truth of the matter. The
idea of marrying just for the sake of being called 'Mrs.' doesn't appeal
to me, at all; and I could not marry you for any other reason. Oh yes,
of course I might marry you for the sake of living in a nice house and
getting my clothes in Paris; but I don't care much about that, either.
You see what I mean?"
"Oh, yes, I see. I thought, some way--you see I have a fairly good
income and you're fond of horses"--
"You thought I might marry you for the pleasure of seeing something of
your horses; is that it?"
"Oh, I say, Miss Thayer, let up! It's bad enough to be refused without
being made game of."
"I suppose it is," said Lynn, slowly. She looked at him as though a new
idea had occurred to her. "I wonder why you want to marry me," she said
at last.
"Why I want to marry you?"
"Yes. I'm not very young, I'm not at all pretty and I have no money.
It seems a most curious thing that you should have taken this violent
fancy to me. Why did you? Do you know?"
"I say! you _are_ a queer girl."
"In other words I'm not a sheep," returned Lynn, composedly. "Don't you
think most people are very like sheep? They travel in flocks and all
bleat in unison at the same things and get up in the morning and eat and
drink and go to sleep, again--and, in time, they die. I suppose they
might as well be doing that as something else, but if it amuses me to do
something else, why shouldn't I? Now, for instance, if I had been a
well-regulated, conventional sheep I should have bleated out, 'Oh, Mr.
Lighton, this is so sudden!' and then I should have thought lovingly of
your good house and your nice furniture and should have simpered and
accepted you. But, not being a sheep, I want to know why on earth you
did it."
"Because I--like you so awfully," explained Mr. Lighton, eagerly.
"But why on earth should you like me?"