1
|It was mid-August and twenty minutes to eight in the evening. The
double rows of maples threw spreading shadows over the pavement,
sidewalk and lawns of Hazel Avenue. From dim houses, set far back amid
trees and shrubs, giving a homy village quality to the darkness, came
through screened doors and curtained 'bay' windows the yellow glow of
oil lamps and the whiter shine of electric lights. Here and there a
porch light softly illuminated a group of young people; their chatter
and laughter, with perhaps a snatch of song, floating pleasantly out
on the soft evening air. Around on a side street, sounding faintly,
a youthful banjoist with soft fingers and inadequate technique was
struggling with _The March Past_.
Moving in a curious, rather jerky manner along the street, now walking
swiftly, nervously, now hesitating, even stopping, in some shadowy spot,
came a youth of twenty (going on twenty-one). He wore--though all these
details were hardly distinguishable even in the patches of light at the
street corners, where arc lamps sputtered whitely--neatly pressed white
trousers, a 'sack' coat of blue serge, a five-dollar straw hat, silk
socks of a pattern and a silken 'four-in-hand' tie. He carried a cane of
thin bamboo that he whipped and flicked at the grass and rattled lightly
along the occasional picket fence except when he was fussing at the
light growth on his upper lip. Under his left arm was a square package
that any girl of Sunbury would have recognised instantly, even in the
shadows, as a two-pound box of Devoe's chocolates.
If you had chanced to be a resident of Sunbury at this period you would
have known that the youth was Henry Calverly, 3rd. Though you might have
had no means of knowing that he was about to 'call' on Cicely Hamlin.
Or, except perhaps from his somewhat spasmodic locomotion, that he was
in a state of considerable nervous excitement.
Not that Henry hadn't called on many girls in his day. He had. But he
had called only once before on Cicely (the other time had been that
invitation to dinner for which her aunt was really responsible) and had
then, in a burning glow of temperament, read her his stories!
How he had read! And read! And read! Until midnight and after. She had
been enthusiastic, too.
But he wasn't in a glow now. Certain small incidents had lately brought
him to the belief that Cicely Hamlin lacked the pairing-off instinct so
common among the young of Sunbury. She had been extra nice to him; true.
But the fact stood that she was not 'going with' him. Not in the
Sunbury sense of the phrase. A baffling, disturbing aura of impersonally
pleasant feeling held him at a distance.
So he was just a young fellow setting forth, with chocolates, to call on
a girl. A girl who could be extra nice to you and then go out of her
way to maintain pleasant acquaintance with the others, your rivals, your
enemies. Almost as if she felt she had been a little too nice and wished
to strike a balance; at least he had thought of that. A girl who had
been reared strangely in foreign convents; who didn't know _The Spanish
Cavalier_ or _Seeing Nellie Home_ or _Solomon Levi_, yet did know,
strangely, that the principal theme in Dvorak's extremely new 'New
World' symphony was derived from _Swing Low, Sweet Chariot_ (which
illuminating fact had stirred Henry to buy, regardless, the complete
piano score of that symphony and struggle to pick out the themes on
Humphrey's piano at the rooms). A girl who had never seen De Wolf Hopper
in _Wang_, or the Bostonians in _Robin Hood_, or Sothem in The Prisoner
of Zenda, or Maude Adams or Ethel Barrymore or _anything_. A girl who
had none of the direct, free and easy ways of the village young; you
couldn't have started a rough-house with her--mussed her hair, or
galloped her in the two-step. A girl who wasn't stuck up, or anything
like that, who seemed actually shy at times, yet subtly repressed you,
made you wish you could talk like the fellow's that had gone to Harvard.
In view of these rather remarkable facts I think it really was a tribute
to Cicely Hamlin that the many discussions of her as a conspicuous
addition to the youngest set had boiled down to the single descriptive
adjective, 'tactful.' Though the characterisation seems not altogether
happy; for the word, to me, connotes something of conscious skill
and management--as my Crabb put it: 'TACTFUL. See Diplomatic'--and
Cicely was not, certainly not in those days, a manager.
Henry, muttered softly, as he walked.
'I'll hand it to her when she comes in.
'No, she'll shake hands and it might get in the way.
'Put it on the table--that's the thing!--on a corner where she'll see
it.
'Then some time when we can't think of anything to talk about, I'll
say--“Thought you might like a few chocolates.” Sorta offhand. Prevent
there being a lull in the conversation.
'Better begin calling her Cicely.'
'Why not? Shucks! Can't go on with “You” and “Say!” Why can't I just do
it naturally? The way Herb would, or Elbow, or those fellows.
'“How'd' you do, Cicely! Come on, let's take a walk.”
'No. “Good-evening, Cicely. I thought maybe you'd like to take a walk.
There's a moonrise over the lake about half-past eight.” That's better.
'Wonder if Herb'll be there. He'd hardly think to come so early, though.
Be all right if I can get her away from the house by eight.'
He paused, held up his watch to the light from the corner, then rushed
on.
'Maybe she'd ask me to sit him out, anyway.'
But his lips clamped shut on this. It was just the sort of thing Cicely
wouldn't do. He knew it.
'What if she won't go out!'
This sudden thought brought bitterness. A snicker had run its course
about town--in his eager self-absorption he had wholly forgotten--when
Alfred Knight, confident in an engagement to call, had hired a horse and
buggy at McAllister's. The matter of an evening drive _a deux_ had
been referred to Cicely's aunt. As a result the horse had stood hitched
outside more than two hours only to be driven back to the livery, stable
by the gloomy Al.
'Shucks, though! Al's a fish! Don't blame her!'
He walked stiffly in among the trees and shrubs of the old Dexter Smith
place and mounted the rather imposing front steps.
That purchase of the Dexter Smith place was typical of Madame Watt at
the time. She was riding high. She had money. Two acres of lawn, fine
old trees, a great square house of Milwaukee brick, high spacious rooms
with elaborately moulded plaster ceilings and a built-on conservatory
and a barn that you could keep half a dozen carriages in! It was one of
only four or five houses in Sunbury that the _Voice_ and the _Gleaner_
rejoiced to call 'mansions.' And it was the only one that could have
been bought. The William B. Snows, like the Jenkinses and the de
Casselles (I don't know if it has been explained before that the
accepted local pronunciation was Dekasells,) lived in theirs. And even
after the elder Dexter Smith died Mrs Smith would hardly have sold the
place if the children hadn't nagged her into it. Young Dex wanted to
go to New York. And at that it was understood that Madame Watt paid two
prices.
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A uniformed butler showed Henry into the room that he would have called
the front parlour. Though there was another much like it across the wide
hall. There was a 'back parlour,' with portières between. Out there, he
knew, between centre table and fireplace, the Senator and Madame might
even now be sitting.
He listened, on the edge of a huge plush and walnut chair, for the
rustle of the Senator's paper, or Madame's deep, always startling voice.
There was no sound. Save that somewhere upstairs, far off, a door
opened; then footsteps very faint. And silence again.
Henry looked, fighting down misgivings, at the heavily framed
oil paintings on the wall. One, of a life-boat going out through
mountainous waves to a wreck, he had always heard was remarkably fine.
Fastened over the bow of the boat was a bit of real rope that had
provoked critical controversy when the picture was first exhibited in
Chicago.
He glanced down, discovered the box of chocolates on his knees, and
hurriedly placed it on the corner of the inevitable centre table. Then
he fussed nervously with his moustache; adjusted his tie, wondering
if the stick pin should be higher; pulled down his cuffs; and sat up
stiffly again.
'Maybe she ain't home,' he thought weakly. 'That fella said he'd see.'
'Maybe I oughta've asked if she'd be in.'
The silence deepened, spread, settled about him. He wished she would
come down. There was danger, he knew, that his few painfully thought-out
conversational openings would leave him. He would be an embarrassed,
quite speechless young man. For he was as capable, even now, at twenty,
almost at twenty-one, of speechlessness as of volubility. Either might
happen to him, at any moment, from the smallest, least foreseeable of
causes.
And there was something oppressive about the stillness of this cavernous
old house with its sound-proof partitions and its distances. And that
silent machine of a butler. It wasn't like calling at Martha Caldwell's,
in the old days, where you could hear the Swedish cook crashing around
in the kitchen and Martha moving around upstairs before she came down.
Here you wouldn't so much as know there was a kitchen.
Then, suddenly, sharp as a blow out of the stillness came a series of
sounds that froze the marrow in his bones, made him rigid on the edge of
that plush chair, his lips parted, his eyes staring, wrestling with
an impulse to dash out of the house; with another impulse to cough,
or shout, or play the piano, in some mad way to announce himself, yet
continuing to sit like a carved idol, in the grip of a paralysis of the
faculties.
There is nothing more painful to the young than the occasional
discovery, through the mask of social reticence, that the old have their
weak or violent moments.
Gossip, yes! But gossip rests lightly and briefly in young ears. Henry
had heard the Watts slyly ridiculed. There were whispers, of course.
Madame's career as a French countess--well, naturally Sunbury wondered.
And the long obscurity from which she had rescued Senator Watt raised
questions about that very quiet little man. So often men in political
life were tempted off the primly beaten track. And Henry, like the other
young people, had grinned in awed delight over the tale that Madame
swore at her servants. That was before he had so much as spoken to her
niece. And it had little or no effect on his attitude toward Madame
herself when he met her. She had at once taken her place in the
compartment of his thoughts reserved from earliest memory for his
elders, whose word was (at least in honest theory) law and to whom one
looked up with diffidence and a genuine if somewhat automatic respect.
The first of the disturbing sounds was Madame's voice, far-off but
ringing strong. Then a door opened--it must have been the dining-room
door; not the wide one that opened into the great front hall, but the
other, at the farther end of the 'back parlour.'
There was a brief lull. A voice could be heard, though--a man's voice,
low-pitched, deprecatory.
Then Madame's again. And stranger noises. The man's voice cried out in
quick protest; there was a rustle and then a crash like breaking china.
The Senator, hurrying a little, yet with a sort of dignity, walked out
into the hall. Henry could see him, first between the portières as he
left the room, then as he passed the hall door.
There was a rush and a torrent of passionately angry words from
the other room. An object--it appeared to be a paper weight or
ornament--came hurtling out into the hall. The Senator, who had
apparently gone to the closet by the door for his hat and stick--for he
came back into the hall with them--stepped back just in time to avoid
being struck. The object fell on the stair, landing with the sound of
solid metal.
'You come back here!' Madame's voice.
'I will not come back until you have had time to return to your senses,'
replied the Senator. He looked very small. He was always stilted
in speech; Humphrey had said that he talked like the _Congressional
Record_. 'This is a disgraceful scene. If you have the slightest regard
for my good name or your own you will at least make an effort to compose
yourself. Some one might be at the door at this moment. You are a
violent, ungoverned woman, and I am ashamed of you.'
'And you'--she was almost screaming now--'are the man who was glad to
marry me.'
He ignored this. 'If any one asks for me, I shall be at the Sunbury
Club.'
'Going to drink again, are you?'
'I think not.'
'If you do, you needn't come back. Do you hear? You needn't come back!'
He turned, and with a sort of strut went out the front door.
She started to follow. She did come as far as the portières. Henry had a
glimpse of her, her face red and distorted.
She turned back then, and seemed to be picking up the room. He could
hear sniffing and actually snorting as she moved about. There was a
brief silence. Then she crossed the hall, a big imposing person--even
in her tantrums she had presence--and went up the stairs, pausing on the
landing to pick up the object she had thrown. Her solid footfalls died
out on the thick carpets of the upper hall. A door opened, and slammed
faintly shut.
Silence again.
Henry found that he was clutching the arms of the chair.
'I must relax,' he thought vacantly; and drew a slow deep breath, as he
had been taught in a gymnasium class at the Y.M.C.A.
He brushed a hand across his eyes. Now that it was over, his temples
were pounding hotly, his nerves aquiver.
It was incredible. Yet it had happened. Before his eyes. A vulgar brawl;
a woman with a red face throwing things. And he was here in the house
with her. He might have to try to talk with her.
He considered again the possibility of slipping out. But that butler
had taken his name up. Cicely would be coming down any moment. Unless
she knew.
Did she know? Had she heard? Possibly not.
Henry got slowly, indecisively up and wandered to the piano; stood
leaning on it.
His eyes filled. All at once, in his mind's eye, he could see Cicely.
Particularly the sensitive mouth. And the alert brown eyes. And
the pretty way her eyebrows moved when she spoke or smiled or
listened--always with a flattering attention--to what you were saying.
He brought a clenched fist down softly on the piano.
3
'Oh,' cried the voice of Cicely--'there you are! How nice of you to
come!'
She was standing--for a moment--in the doorway.
White of face, eyes burning, his fist still poised on the piano, he
stared at her.