A CAST-OFF SLIPPER
A large sum would soon be available; so the carrying out of the plans to
extend, or, rather, to construct Tecumseh, must be begun. The trustees
commissioned young Hargrave to go abroad at once in search of educational
and architectural ideas, and to get apparatus that would make the
laboratories the best in America. Chemistry and its most closely related
sciences were to be the foundation of the new university, as they are at
the foundation of life. "We'll model our school, not upon what the
ignorant wise of the Middle Ages thought ought to be life, but upon life
itself," said Dr. Hargrave. "We'll build not from the clouds down, but
from the ground up." He knew in the broad outline what was wanted for the
Tecumseh of his dream; but he felt that he was too old, perhaps too
rusted in old-fashioned ways and ideas, himself to realize the dream; so
he put the whole practical task upon Dory, whom he had trained from
infancy to just that end.
When it was settled that Dory was to go, would be away a year at the
least, perhaps two years, he explained to Adelaide. "They expect me to
leave within a fortnight," he ended. And she knew what was in his
mind--what he was hoping she would say.
It so happened that, in the months since their engagement, an immense
amount of work had been thrust upon Dory. Part of it was a study of the
great American universities, and that meant long absences from home. All
of it was of the kind that must be done at once or not at all--and Work
is the one mistress who, if she be enamored enough of a man to resolve
to have him and no other, can compel him, whether he be enamored of her
or not. However, for the beginning of the artificial relation between
this engaged couple, the chief cause was not his work but his attitude
toward her, his not unnatural but highly unwise regard for the peculiar
circumstances in which they had become engaged. Respect for the real
feelings of others is all very well, if not carried too far; but respect
for the purely imaginary feelings of others simply encourages them to
plunge deeper into the fogs and bogs of folly. There was excuse for
Dory's withholding from his love affair the strong and firm hand he laid
upon all his other affairs; but it cannot be denied that he deserved what
he got, or, rather, that he failed to deserve what he did not get. And
the irony of it was that his unselfishness was chiefly to blame; for a
selfish man would have gone straight at Del and, with Dory's advantages,
would have captured her forthwith.
As it was, she drifted aimlessly through day after day, keeping close at
home, interested in nothing. She answered briefly or not at all the
letters from her old friends, and she noted with a certain blunted
bitterness how their importunities fainted and died away, as the news of
the change in her fortunes got round. If she had been seeing them face to
face every day, or if she had been persistent and tenacious, they would
have extricated themselves less abruptly; for not the least important
among the sacred "appearances" of conventionality is the "appearance" of
good-heartedness; it is the graceful cloak for that icy selfishness which
is as inevitable among the sheltered and pampered as sympathy and
helpfulness are among those naked to the joys and sorrows of real life.
Adelaide was far from her friends, and she deliberately gave them every
opportunity to abandon and to forget her without qualms or fears of
"appearing" mean and snobbish. There were two girls from whom she rather
hoped for signs of real friendship. She had sought them in the first
place because they were "of the right sort," but she had come to like
them for themselves and she believed they liked her for herself. And so
they did; but their time was filled with the relentless routine of the
fashionable life, and they had not a moment to spare for their own
personal lives; besides, Adelaide wouldn't have "fitted in" comfortably.
The men of their set would be shy of her now; the women would regard her
as a waste of time.
Her beauty and her cleverness might have saved her, had she been of one
of those "good families" whom fashionables the world over recognize,
regardless of their wealth or poverty, because recognition of them gives
an elegant plausibility to the pretense that Mammon is not the supreme
god in the Olympus of aristocracy. But--who were the Rangers? They might
be "all right" in Saint X, but where was Saint X? Certainly, not on any
map in the geography of fashion.
So Adelaide, sore but too lethargic to suffer, drifted drearily along,
feeling that if Dory Hargrave were not under the influence of that
brilliant, vanished past of hers, even he would abandon her as had the
rest, or, at least, wouldn't care for her. Not that she doubted his
sincerity in the ideals he professed; but people deceived themselves so
completely. There was her own case; had she for an instant suspected how
flimsily based was her own idea of herself and of her place in the
world?--the "world" meaning, of course, "the set." As is the rule in
"sets," her self-esteem's sole foundation had been what she had, or,
rather, what the family had, and now that that was gone, she held what
was left cheap indeed--and held herself the cheaper that she could feel
thus. At the outset, Arthur, after the familiar male fashion, was
apparently the weaker of the two. But when the test came, when the time
for courageous words was succeeded by the time for deeds, the shrinking
from action that, since the nation grew rich, has become part of the
education of the women of the classes which shelter and coddle their
women, caused Adelaide to seem feeble indeed beside her brother.
Also--and this should never be forgotten in judging such a woman--Arthur
had the advantage of the man's compulsion to act, while Adelaide had the
disadvantage of being under no material necessity to act--and what
necessity but the material is there?
Dory--his love misleading his passion, as it usually does when it has
much influence before marriage--reasoned that, in the interest of the
Adelaide that was to be, after they were married, and in his own interest
with her as well, the wise course for him to pursue was to wait until
time and the compulsion of new circumstances should drive away her mood,
should give her mind and her real character a chance to assert
themselves. In the commission to go abroad, he saw the external force for
which he had been waiting and hoping. And it seemed to him most
timely--for Ross's wedding invitations were out.
"Two weeks," said Adelaide absently. "You will sail in two weeks." Then
in two weeks she could be out of it all, could be far away in new
surroundings, among new ideas, among strangers. She could make the new
start; she could submerge, drown her old self in the new interests.
"Will you come?" he said, when he could endure the suspense no longer.
"Won't you come?"
She temporized. "I'm afraid I couldn't--oughtn't to leave--mother and
Arthur just now."
He smiled sadly. She might need her mother and her brother; but in the
mood in which she had been for the last few months, they certainly did
not need her. "Adelaide," said he, with that firmness which he knew so
well how to combine with gentleness, without weakening it, "our whole
future depends on this. If our lives are to grow together, we must begin.
This is _our_ opportunity."
She knew that Dory was not a man she could play fast and loose with, even
had she been so disposed. Clearly, she must decide whether she intended
to marry him, to make his life hers and her life his. She looked
helplessly round. What but him was there to build on? Without him--She
broke the long silence with, "That is true. We must begin." Then, after a
pause during which she tried to think and found she couldn't, "Make up my
mind for me."
"Let us be married day after to-morrow," said he. "We can leave for New
York on the one o'clock train and sail on Thursday."
"You had it planned!"
"I had several plans," he answered. "That's the best one."
What should she do? Impulsively--why, she did not know--she gave Dory her
answer: "Yes, that _is_ the best plan. I must begin--at once." And she
started up, in a fever to be doing.
Dory, dazed by his unexpected, complete victory, went immediately, lest
he should say or do something that would break or weaken the current of
her aroused energy. He went without as much as touching her hand.
Certainly, if ever man tempted fate to snatch from him the woman he
loved, Dory did then; and at that time Del must, indeed, have been
strongly drawn to him, or she would have been unable to persist.
The problem of the trousseau was almost as simple for her as for him. She
had been extravagant and luxurious, had accumulated really unmanageable
quantities of clothing of all kinds, far, far more than any woman without
a maid could take care of. The fact that she had not had a maid was in
part responsible for this superfluity. She had neither the time nor the
patience for making or for directing the thousand exasperating little
repairs that are necessary if a woman with a small wardrobe is always to
look well. So, whenever repairs were necessary, she bought instead; and
as she always kept herself fresh and perfect to the smallest detail she
had to buy profusely. As soon as a dress or a hat or a blouse or a
parasol, a pair of boots, slippers, stockings, or any of the costly,
flimsy, all but unlaunderable underwear she affected, became not quite
perfect, she put it aside against that vague day when she should have
leisure or inclination for superintending a seamstress. Within two hours
of her decision she had a seamstress in the house, and they and her
mother were at work. There was no necessity to bother about new dresses.
She would soon be putting off black, and she could get in Paris what she
would then need.
In the whirlwind of those thirty-six hours, she had not a moment to think
of anything but the material side of the wedding--the preparations for
the journey and for the long absence. She was half an hour late in
getting down to the front parlor for the ceremony, and she looked so
tired from toil and lack of sleep that Dory in his anxiety about her was
all but unconscious that they were going through the supposedly solemn
marriage rite. Looking back on it afterwards, they could remember little
about it--perhaps even less than can the average couple, under our social
system which makes a wedding a social function, not a personal rite. They
had once in jesting earnest agreed that they would have the word "obey"
left out of the vows; but they forgot this, and neither was conscious of
repeating "obey" after the preacher. Adelaide was thinking of her trunks,
was trying to recall the things she felt she must have neglected in the
rush; Dory was worrying over her paleness and the heavy circles under her
eyes, was fretting about the train--Del's tardiness had not been in the
calculations. Even the preacher, infected by the atmosphere of haste, ran
over the sentences, hardly waiting for the responses. Adelaide's mother
was hearing the trunks going down to the van, and was impatient to be
where she could superintend--there was a very important small trunk, full
of underclothes, which she was sure they were overlooking. Arthur was
gloomily abstracted, was in fierce combat with the bitter and melancholy
thoughts which arose from the contrast he could not but make--this simple
wedding, with Dory Hargrave as her groom, when in other circumstances
there would have been such pomp and grandeur. He and Mary the cook and
Ellen the upstairs girl and old Miss Skeffington, generalissimo of the
Hargrave household, were the only persons present keenly conscious that
there was in progress a wedding, a supposedly irrevocable union of a man
and woman for life and for death and for posterity. Even old Dr. Hargrave
was thinking of what Dory was to do on the other side, was mentally
going over the elaborate scheme for his son's guidance which he had drawn
up and committed to paper. Judge Torrey, the only outsider, was putting
into form the speech he intended to make at the wedding breakfast.
But there was no wedding breakfast--at least, none for bride and groom.
The instant the ceremony was over, Mary the cook whispered to Mrs.
Ranger: "Mike says they've just got time to miss the train."
"Good gracious!" cried Mrs. Ranger. And she darted out to halt the van
and count the trunks. Then she rushed in and was at Adelaide's arm.
"Hurry, child!" she exclaimed. "Here is my present for you."
And she thrust into her hand a small black leather case, the cover of a
letter of credit. Seeing that Del was too dazed to realize what was going
on, she snatched it away and put it into the traveling case which Mary
was carrying. Amid much shaking hands and kissing and nervous crying,
amid flooding commonplaces and hysterical repetitions of "Good-by! Good
luck!" the young people were got off. There was no time for Mary to bring
the rice from the kitchen table, but Ellen had sequestered one of
Adelaide's old dancing slippers under the front stair. She contrived to
get it out and into action, and to land it full in Adelaide's lap by a
lucky carom against the upright of the coach window.
Adelaide looked down at it vaguely. It was one of a pair of slippers she
had got for the biggest and most fashionable ball she had ever attended.
She remembered it all--the gorgeousness of the rooms, the flowers, the
dresses, the favors, her own ecstasy in being where it was supposed to be
so difficult to get; how her happiness had been marred in the early part
of the evening by Ross's attendance on Helen Galloway in whose honor the
ball was given; how he made her happy again by staying beside her the
whole latter part of the evening, he and more young men than any other
girl had. And here was the slipper, with its handsome buckle torn off,
stained, out of shape from having been so long cast aside. Where did it
come from? How did it get here? Why had this ghost suddenly appeared to
her? On the opposite seat, beside her traveling case, fashionable,
obviously expensive, with her initials in gold, was a bag marked
"T.H."--of an unfashionable appearance, obviously inexpensive, painfully
new. She could not take her fascinated eyes from it; and the hammering of
her blood upon her brain, as the carriage flew toward the station, seemed
to be a voice monotonously repeating, "Married--married--" She shuddered.
"My fate is settled for life," she said to herself. "I am _married_!"
She dared not look at her husband--Husband! In that moment of cruel
memory, of ghastly chopfallen vanity, it was all she could do not visibly
to shrink from him. She forgot that he was her best friend, her friend
from babyhood almost, Theodore Hargrave. She felt only that he was her
husband, her jailer, the representative of all that divided her forever
from the life of luxury and show which had so permeated her young blood
with its sweet, lingering poison. She descended from the carriage, passed
the crowd of gaping, grinning loungers, and entered the train, with
cheeks burning and eyes downcast, an ideal bride in appearance of shy and
refined modesty. And none who saw her delicate, aristocratic beauty of
face and figure and dress could have attributed to her the angry, ugly,
snobbish thoughts, like a black core hidden deep in the heart of a
bewitching flower.
As he sat opposite her in the compartment, she was exaggerating into
glaring faults the many little signs of indifference to fashion in his
dress. She had never especially noted before, but now she was noting as
a shuddering exhibition of "commonness," that he wore detachable
cuffs--and upon this detail her distraught mind fixed as typical. She
could not take her eyes off his wrists; every time he moved his arms so
that she could see the wristband within his cuff, she felt as if a piece
of sandpaper were scraping her skin. He laid his hand on her two gloved
hands, folded loosely in her lap. Every muscle, every nerve of her body
grew tense; she only just fought down the impulse to snatch her hands
away and shriek at him.
She sat rigid, her teeth set, her eyes closed, until her real self got
some control over the monstrous, crazy creature raving within her. Then
she said: "Please don't--touch me--just now. I've been on such a
strain--and I'm almost breaking down."
He drew his hand away. "I ought to have understood," he said. "Would you
like to be left alone for a while?"
Without waiting for her answer, he left the compartment to her. She
locked the door and let herself loose. When she had had her cry "out,"
she felt calm; but oh, so utterly depressed. "This is only a mood," she
said to herself. "I don't really feel that way toward him. Still--I've
made a miserable mistake. I ought not to have married him. I must hide
it. I mustn't make him suffer for what's altogether my own fault. I must
make the best of it."
When he came back, she proceeded to put her programme into action. All
the afternoon he strove with her sweet gentleness and exaggerated
consideration for him; he tried to make her see that there was no
necessity for this elaborate pose and pretense. But she was too absorbed
in her part to heed him. In the evening, soon after they returned to the
compartment from the dining car, he rose. "I am going out to smoke," he
said. "I'll tell the porter to make up your berth. You must be very
tired. I have taken another--out in the car--so that you will not be
disturbed."
She grew white, and a timid, terrified look came into her eyes.
He touched her shoulder--gently. "Don't--please!" he said quietly. "In
all the years we've known each other, have you ever seen anything in me
to make you feel--like--that?"
Her head drooped still lower, and her face became crimson.
"Adelaide, look at me!"
She lifted her eyes until they met his uncertainly.
He put out his hand. "We are friends, aren't we?"
She instantly laid her hand in his.
"Friends," he repeated. "Let us hold fast to that--and let the rest take
care of itself."
"I'm ashamed of myself," said she. And in her swift revulsion of
feeling there was again opportunity for him. But he was not in the mood
to see it.
"You certainly ought to be," replied he, with his frank smile that was so
full of the suggestions of health and sanity and good humor. "You'll
never get a martyr's crown at _my_ expense."
At New York he rearranged their steamer accommodations. It was no longer
diffidence and misplaced consideration that moved him permanently to
establish the most difficult of barriers between them; it was pride now,
for in her first stormy, moments in the train he had seen farther into
her thoughts than he dared let himself realize.