“Well, we’ve bought two—this one and the one at Rosyth. But before buying
either we rented each for a season to see whether or not we liked it.”
“And you did.”
“But we’ve rented others which we didn’t. So you see.”
“I see that experiments are justified. Is that what you mean?”
“If one is satisfied with anything that comes along, by all means take
it. But if one only wants what one wants—”
“And you know what you want?”
Her eyes were all fire; her lips had the daring scarlet of a poppy.
“I’ve never got beyond knowing what I don’t want.”
“That is, you’ve never taken anything up except in the long run to throw
it down?”
“Your expressions are too harsh. One doesn’t throw down everything one
doesn’t want. One sets it aside.”
“And would it be discreet to ask why you—why you set certain things—and
people—aside?”
She looked at the fire as if considering.
“Do you mean—men?”
“To narrow the inquiry down, suppose I say I do.”
“And”—she threw me a swift, daring glance—“and marriage?”
“That defines the question still further.”
Her words came as the utterance of long, long thoughts.
“One couldn’t marry a man one didn’t trust.”
“No; of course not.”
“Nor a milksop.”
“You couldn’t.”
“Nor a man who wasn’t a thoroughbred.”
“Just what do you mean by that?”
“Oh, don’t you know? If not I can’t explain. All I can say is that there
are things a thoroughbred couldn’t do.”
“What sort of things?”
“Why should you want me to tell you? You know as well as I do. The things
that make a man impossible—mean things—ignoble things.”
“Criminal things?”
“Criminal things, too, I suppose. I don’t know so much about them; but I
do see a lot of meanness and pettiness and— Oh, well, the sort of lack of
the fastidious in honor that—that puts a man out of the question.”
“Aren’t you very hard to please?”
“Possibly.”
“And if you don’t find what—what you’re looking for?”
“I shall do without it, I suppose.”
“And if you think you find it—and then discover that, after all—”
She shrugged her shoulders.
“I don’t know. I’ve never been absolutely disillusioned so far. When
disillusion has come to me—as it has—I could see it on the way. But if
I—I cared for some one and found I was deceived in him— But what’s the
use in talking of it?” she laughed. “Please don’t think I’m putting forth
a claim to be treated better than the average. It’s only when I see the
average—”
“The average of men?”
“No, the average of women. When I see what they’re willing to take—and
marry—and live with—I can only say that I find myself very well off as I
am.”
This conversation did not make it easier for me to go back to the
starting-point of our acquaintance; but the moment came when I did it.
_CHAPTER XVI_
I did not, however, do it that spring, since the event that compelled me
at last to the step took up all my attention.
It was toward the end of April that I received a telegram signed by my
sister’s name:
“Mother seriously ill. Wants to see you. Come at once.”
In spite of my alarm at this summons I saw the opportunity of putting
up a good front before my relatives. Taking Lovey with me as valet, and
stopping at the best hotel, I presented the appearance of a successful
man.
Though anxiety on my mother’s account made my return a matter of
secondary interest, I could see the surprise and relief my apparent
prosperity created. My brothers had been expecting one of whom they would
have to be ashamed. Furthermore, they had not been too confident as to
my attitude with regard to my father’s will. Looking for me to contest
it, they had suspected that behind my acquiescence lay a ruse. When they
saw that there was none, that I made no complaint, that I seemed to have
plenty of money, that I traveled with a servant, that I had the air of a
man of means—a curious note of wonder and respect stole into their manner
toward me. I know that in private they were saying to each other that
they couldn’t make me out; and I gave them no help in doing so.
I gave them no help during all the month I remained in Montreal. I
arranged with Coningsby to take that time, and my little stock of savings
was sufficient to finance me. Though I was once more putting up a bluff,
it was a bluff that I felt to be justified; and in the end it found its
justification.
I have no intention of giving you the details of those four weeks of
watching beside a bed where the end was apparent from the first. Now that
I look back upon them, I can see that they were not without their element
of happiness, since to my mother at least it was happiness to know that
I was beside her. The joy in heaven over one sinner that repenteth was
on her face from the day I appeared, and never left it up to that moment
when we took our last look at her dear smiling features.
When the lawyer came to read us her will I found, to my amazement, that
she had left me everything she possessed.
It was then that I reaped that which I had sown at Andy Christian’s
suggestion. Since with a good grace I had accepted my father’s will, the
rest of the family could hardly do otherwise with regard to my mother’s.
She left a note saying that, had my father lived a few months longer,
he would have seen that I had re-established myself sufficiently to be
allowed to share equally with the rest of the family in what he had to
leave; but, as it was too late for that, she was endeavoring to right the
seeming injustice—which he had not meant as an injustice—as far as lay in
her power. These words from her pen being much more emphatic than any I
could remember from her lips, my brothers and sisters, whatever they felt
inwardly, could only give their assent to them.
What my mother possessed included not only the personal estate she
had inherited from her father, considerably augmented by her husband’s
careful management, but books, furniture, and jewelry. The books and
furniture I made over to my sister to remain in the two houses, the one
in Montreal, the other on the Ottawa. Some of the jewelry I gave to her,
to my sister in England, and to my two sisters-in-law, though keeping the
bulk for my wife—when I got one.
For I was now in a position to marry. Though my mother had had no great
wealth, what she left me, together with the trust fund established by my
father and what I earned, would assure me enough to live in at least as
much comfort as Ralph Coningsby. I could, therefore, propose to Regina
Barry and feel I could make a home for her.
I had again come to the conclusion that if I asked her she would accept
me. I make no attempt to analyze this feeling on her part, because I saw
plainly enough that it was founded on mistake. That is to say, having
developed an ideal of the man whom she could marry, she had nursed
herself into the belief that I came up to it, when, as a matter of fact,
I did not.
Now I had seen enough of husbands and wives to know that in most
marriages there is some such illusion as this, and that it can be
successfully maintained for years. When the illusion itself has faded
it can live on as the illusion of an illusion. By the time there is no
illusion or shadow of illusion left at all it has ceased in the majority
of cases to matter. Time has welded what mutual distaste might have put
asunder, and the married state remains undisturbed.
I was, therefore, obliged to face the consideration that if I married
the woman I loved she would probably never discover what I felt it my
duty to confess. Was it really, then, my duty to confess it? Since no
one knew it but myself, was it not rather my duty to keep it concealed?
Other men had secrets from their wives—especially those that concerned
the days when they were unmarried—and all were probably the happier for
the secrecy. Even Ralph Coningsby, who was the most model husband I could
think of, had said that if he were to tell his wife all he could tell her
about himself he would be ashamed to go home. There were weeks when I
debated these questions every day and night, arriving at one conclusion
by what I may call my rough horse sense, and at another by my instinct.
Horse sense said, “Marry her and keep mum.” Instinct warned, “You can
never marry her and be safe and happy with such a secret as this to come
between you.”
Throughout this wavering of opinion I knew that when the time came I
should act from instinct. It wasn’t merely that I wanted to be safe; it
was also that, all pros and cons apart, there was such a thing as honor.
Not even to be happy—not even to make the woman I cared for happy—could I
ignore that.
I am not sure how much Andrew Christian understood of the circumstances
when, without giving him the facts or mentioning a name, I asked his
advice. He only said:
“You’ve had some experience, Frank, of the potency of love, haven’t you?
Well, love has a twin sister—truth. In love and truth together there’s a
power which, if we have the patience to wait for its working out, will
solve all difficulties and meet all needs.”
My experiences during the past few months having given me some reason to
believe this, I decided, so far as I came actively to a decision, to let
it rule my course; but in the end the critical moment came by what you
would probably call an accident.
It was the last Sunday in June. My work in Atlantic City being over, Mrs.
Grace had asked me to come down for the week-end to her little place in
Long Island. It was not exactly a party, though there were two or three
other people staying in the house. My chief reason for accepting the
invitation—as I think it was the chief reason for its being given—was
that the Barry family were in residence on the old Hornblower estate,
which was the adjoining property.
As a matter of fact, Mrs. Grace and her guests were all asked to
Idlewild, as the late Mrs. Hornblower had named her house, to Sunday
lunch.
The path from the one dwelling to the other was down the gentle slope
of Mrs. Grace’s gardens, across a meadow, at the other side of which it
joined the Idlewild avenue, and then up a steep hill to the rambling
red-and-yellow house. Here one dominated the Sound for a great part of
the hundred and twenty miles between Montauk Point and Brooklyn.
Sauntering idly through the hot summer noon, I found myself beside Mrs.
Grace, while the rest of the party straggled on ahead. As my hostess was
not more free than other women from the match-making instinct, it was
natural that she should give to the conversation a turn that she knew
would not be distasteful to me.
“She’s a wonderful girl,” she observed, “with just that danger to
threaten her that comes from being over-fastidious.”
“I know what you mean by her being over-fastidious; but why is it a
danger?”
“In the first place, because people misunderstand her. They’ve ascribed
to light-mindedness what has only been the thing that literary people
call the divine searching for perfection.”
“And do you know the kind of thing she’d consider perfect?”
It was so stupid a question that I couldn’t be surprised to see a gleam
of quiet mischief in her glance as she replied, “From little hints she’s
dropped to me, quite confidentially, I rather think I do.”
Fair men blush easily, but I tried to ignore the fact that I was doing it
as I said, “That’s quite a common delusion at one stage of the game; but
suppose she were to find that she was mistaken?”
The answer shelved the question, though she did it disconcertingly: “Oh,
well, in the case she’s thinking of I don’t believe she will.”