hand-mirror from the shelves whereon glowed her green cups. She touched
each cup caressingly in passing; and that which she found in the mirror,
too, she regarded not unappreciatively, from varying angles.... Yes
after all, dark hair and a pale skin had their advantages at a court
where pink and yellow women were so much the fashion as to be common.
Men remembered you more distinctively. Though nobody cared for men, in
view of their unreasonable behaviour, and their absolute
self-centeredness.... Oh, it was pitiable, it was grotesque, she
reflected sadly, how Pevensey and Kitt Marlowe had both failed her,
after so many pretty speeches.
Still, there was a queer pleasure in being wooed by Kit: his insane
notions went to one's head like wine. She would send Meg for him again
to-morrow. And Pevensey was, of course, the best match imaginable....
No, it would be too heartless to dismiss George Bulmer outright. It was
unreasonable of him to desert her because a Gascon threatened to go to
mass; but, after all, she would probably marry George in the end. He was
really almost unendurably silly, though, about England and freedom and
religion, and right and wrong things like that. Yes, it would be tedious
to have a husband who often talked to you as though he were addressing a
public meeting.... However, he was very handsome, particularly in his
highflown and most tedious moments; that year-old son of his was sickly
and would probably die soon, the sweet, forlorn little pet, and not be a
bother to anybody: and her dear old father would be profoundly delighted
by the marriage of his daughter to a man whose wife could have at will a
dozen céladon cups, and anything else she chose to ask for....
But now the sun had set, and the room was growing quite dark. So Cynthia
stood a-tiptoe, and replaced the mirror upon the shelves, setting it
upright behind those wonderful green cups which had anew reminded her of
Pevensey's wealth and generosity. She smiled a little, to think of what
fun it had been to hold George back, for two whole weeks, from
discharging that horrible old queen's stupid errands.
IV
TREATS PHILOSOPHICALLY OF BREAKAGE
The door opened. Stalwart young Captain Edward Musgrave came with a
lighted candle, which he placed carefully upon the table in the room's
centre.
He said: "They told me you were here. I come from London. I bring news
for you."
"You bring no pleasant tidings, I fear--"
"As Lord Pevensey rode through the Strand this afternoon, on his way
home, the Plague smote him. That is my sad news. I grieve to bring such
news, for your cousin was a worthy gentleman and universally respected."
"Ah," Cynthia said, very quiet, "so Pevensey is dead. But the Plague
kills quickly!"
"Yes, yes, that is a comfort, certainly. Yes, he turned quite black in
the face, they report, and before his men could reach him had fallen
from his horse. It was all over almost instantly. I saw him afterward,
hardly a pleasant sight. I came to you as soon as I could. I was
vexatiously detained--"
"So George Bulmer is dead, in a London gutter! It seems strange, because
he was here, befriended by monarchs, and very strong and handsome and
self-confident, hardly two hours ago. Is that his blood upon your
sleeve?"
"But of course not! I told you I was vexatiously detained, almost at
your gates. Yes, I had the ill luck to blunder into a disgusting
business. The two rapscallions tumbled out of a doorway under my horse's
very nose, egad! It was a near thing I did not ride them down. So I
stopped, naturally. I regretted stopping, afterward, for I was too late
to be of help. It was at the Golden Hind, of course. Something really
ought to be done about that place. Yes, and that rogue Marler bled all
over a new doublet, as you see. And the Deptford constables held me with
their foolish interrogatories--"
"So one of the fighting men was named Marlowe! Is he dead, too, dead in
another gutter?"
"Marlowe or Marler, or something of the sort--wrote plays and sonnets
and such stuff, they tell me. I do not know anything about him--though,
I give you my word now, those greasy constables treated me as though I
were a noted frequenter of pot-houses. That sort of thing is most
annoying. At all events, he was drunk as David's sow, and squabbling
over, saving your presence, a woman of the sort one looks to find in
that abominable hole. And so, as I was saying, this other drunken rascal
dug a knife into him--"
But now, to Captain Musgrave's discomfort, Cynthia Allonby had begun to
weep heartbrokenly.
So he cleared his throat, and he patted the back of her hand. "It is a
great shock to you, naturally--oh, most naturally, and does you great
credit. But come now, Pevensey is gone, as we must all go some day, and
our tears cannot bring him back, my dear. We can but hope he is better
off, poor fellow, and look on it as a mysterious dispensation and that
sort of thing, my dear--"
"Oh, Ned, but people are so cruel! People will be saying that it was I
who kept poor Cousin George in London this past two weeks, and that but
for me he would have been in France long ago. And then the Queen,
Ned!--why, that pig-headed old woman will be blaming it on me, that
there is nobody to prevent that detestable French King from turning
Catholic and dragging England into new wars, and I shall not be able to
go to any of the court dances! nor to the masque!" sobbed Cynthia, "nor
anywhere!"
"Now you talk tender-hearted and angelic nonsense. It is noble of you to
feel that way, of course. But Pevensey did not take proper care of
himself, and that is all there is to it. Now I have remained in London
since the Plague's outbreak. I stayed with my regiment, naturally. We
have had a few deaths, of course. People die everywhere. But the Plague
has never bothered me. And why has it never bothered me? Simply because
I was sensible, took the pains to consult an astrologer, and by his
advice wear about my neck, night and day, a bag of dried toad's blood
and powdered cinnamon. It is an infallible specific for men born in
February. No, not for a moment do I wish to speak harshly of the dead,
but sensible persons cannot but consider Lord Pevensey's death to have
been caused by his own carelessness."
"Now, certainly that is true," the girl said, brightening. "It was
really his own carelessness, and his dear, lovable rashness. And
somebody could explain it to the Queen. Besides, I often think that wars
are good for the public spirit of a nation, and bring out its true
manhood. But then it upset me, too, a little, Ned, to hear about this
Marlowe--for I must tell you that I knew the poor man, very slightly. So
I happen to know that today he flung off in a rage, and began drinking,
because somebody, almost by pure accident, had burned a packet of his
verses--"
Thereupon Captain Musgrave raised heavy eyebrows, and guffawed so
heartily that the candle flickered. "To think of the fellow's putting it
on that plea! when he could so easily have written some more verses.
That is the trouble with these poets, if you ask me: they are not
practical even in their ordinary, everyday lying. No, no, the truth of
it was that the rogue wanted a pretext for making a beast of himself,
and seized the first that came to hand. Egad, my dear, it is a daily
practice with these poets. They hardly draw a sober breath. Everybody
knows that."
Cynthia was looking at him in the half-lit room with very flattering
admiration.... Seen thus, with her scarlet lips a little
parted--disclosing pearls--and with her naïve dark eyes aglow, she was
quite incredibly pretty and caressable. She had almost forgotten until
now that this stalwart soldier, too, was in love with her. But now her
spirits were rising venturously, and she knew that she liked Ned
Musgrave. He had sensible notions; he saw things as they really were,
and with him there would never be any nonsense about top-lofty ideas.
Then, too, her dear old white-haired father would be pleased, because
there was a very fair estate....
So Cynthia said: "I believe you are right, Ned. I often wonder how they
can be so lacking in self-respect. Oh, I am certain you must be right,
for it is just what I felt without being able quite to express it You
will stay for supper with us, of course. Yes, but you must, because it
is always a great comfort for me to talk with really sensible persons. I
do not wonder that you are not very eager to stay, though, for I am
probably a fright, with my eyes red, and with my hair all tumbling down,
like an old witch's. Well, let us see what can be done about it, sir!
There was a hand-mirror--"
And thus speaking, she tripped, with very much the reputed grace of a
fairy, toward the far end of the room, and standing a-tiptoe, groped at
the obscure shelves, with a resultant crash of falling china.
"Oh, but my lovely cups!" said Cynthia, in dismay. "I had forgotten they
were up there: and now I have smashed both of them, in looking for my
mirror, sir, and trying to prettify myself for you. And I had so fancied
them, because they had not their like in England!"
She looked at the fragments, and then at Musgrave, with wide, innocent
hurt eyes. She was honestly grieved by the loss of her quaint toys. But
Musgrave, in his sturdy, common-sense way, only laughed at her
seriousness over such kickshaws.
"I am for an honest earthenware tankard myself!" he said, jovially, as
the two went in to supper.
THE HIGH COST OF CONSCIENCE
_BY BEATRICE RAVENEL_
From _Harper's Magazine_
"Any woman who can accept money from a gentleman who is in no way
related to her--" Miss Fowler delivered judgment.
"My dear Aunt Maria, you mean a gentleman's disembodied spirit," Hugh's
light, pleasant tones intervened.
"A legacy, Maria, is not quite the same thing. Mr. Winthrop Fowler's
perfect intonation carried its usual implication that the subject was
closed.
"---- is what I call an adventuress," Miss Fowler summed up. She had a
way of ignoring objections, of reappearing beyond them like a submarine
with the ultimate and detonating answer. "And now she wants to reopen
the matter when the whole thing's over and done with. After three years.
Extraordinary taste." She hitched her black-velvet Voltaire arm-chair a
little away from the fire and spread a vast knitting-bag of Chinese
brocade over her knees. "I suppose she isn't satisfied; she wants more."
"Naturally. I cannot imagine what other reason she could have for
insisting on a personal interview," her brother agreed, dryly. He
retired into the _Transcript_ as a Trappist withdraws into his vows. A
chastened client of Mr. Fowler's once observed that a half-hour's
encounter with him resulted in a rueful of asphyxiated topics.
Miss Maria, however, preferred disemboweling hers, "I shouldn't have
consented," she snapped. "Hugh, if you would be so good as to sit down.
You are obstructing the light. And the curtain-cord. If you could
refrain from twisting it for a few moments."
Hugh let his long, high-shouldered figure lapse into the window-seat.
"And besides, we're all dying to know what she looks like," he
suggested.
"Speak for yourself, please," said Miss Fowler, with the vivacity of the
lady who protests too much.
"I do, I do! Good Lord! I'm just as bad as the rest of you. All my life
I've been consumed to know what Uncle Hugh could have seen in a
perfectly obscure little person to make him do what he did. There must
have been something." His eyes travelled to a sketch in pencil of a
man's head which hung in the shadow of the chimneypiece, a sketch whose
uncanny suggestion might have come from the quality of the sitter or
merely from a smudging of the medium. "Everything he did always seemed
to me perfectly natural," he went on, as though conscious of new
discovery. "Even those years when he was knocking about the world,
hiding his address. Even when he had that fancy that people were
persecuting him. Most people did worry him horribly."
A glance flashed between the two middle-aged listeners. It was a
peculiar glance, full of a half-denied portent. Then Miss Fowler's
fingers, true to their traditions, loosened their grip on her needles
and casually smoothed out her work.
"I have asked you not to speak of that," she mentioned, quietly.
"I know. But of course there was no doubt at all that he was sa--was
entirely recovered before his death. Don't you think so, sir?"
His uncle laid down the paper and fixed the young man with the gray,
unsheathed keenness that had sent so many witnesses grovelling to the
naked truth. "No doubt whatever. I always held, and so did both the
physicians, that his lack of balance was a temporary and sporadic thing,
brought on by overwork--and certain unhappy conditions of his life.
There has never been any such taint in our branch of the family."
"No-o, so they say," Hugh agreed. "One of our forebears did see ghosts,
but that was rather the fashion. And his father, that old Johnnie over
the fireplace--you take after him, Aunt Maria--he was the prize
witch-smeller of his generation, and he condemned all the young and
pretty ones. That hardly seems well-balanced."
"Collaterals on the distaff side," Mr. Fowler put in hastily. "If you
would read Mendel--"
"Mendel? I have read about him." He raised the forefinger of his right
hand. "Very suggestive. If your father was a black rabbit"--he raised
the forefinger of his left--"and your mother was a white rabbit, then
your male children would be"--he raised all the other fingers and paused
as though taken aback by the size of the family--"would be blue
guinea-pigs, with a tendency to club-foot and astigmatism, but your
female children might only be rather clumsy tangoists with a weakness
for cutting their poor relations. That's all I remember, but I _do_ know
that because I studied the charts."
"Very amusing," said Mr. Fowler, indulgently.
Hugh flushed.
"I am sure it can't be that way." Miss Maria flapped her knitting over.
"But everything has changed since my day, and _not_ for the better. The
curtain-cord."
"Beg pardon," muttered Hugh. His mind went on churning nonsense. "There
are two days it is useless to flee from--the day of your death and the
day when your family doesn't care for your jokes.
"For a joke is an intellectual thing,
And a _mot_ is the sword of an angel king.
"Good old Blake. Why do the best people always see jokes? Why does a
really good one make a whole frozen crowd feel jolly and united all of a
sudden?" He pondered on the beneficence of the comic spirit. Hugh was a
born Deist. It gave him no trouble at all to believe that since the
paintings of Velasquez and the great outdoors which he had seen, were
beautiful, so much the more beautiful must be that God whom he had not
seen. It seemed reasonable. As for the horrors like Uncle Hugh's
affair--well, they must be put in for chiaroscuro. A thing couldn't be
all white without being blank. The thought of the shadows, however,
always made him profoundly uncomfortable, and his instinct
right-about-faced to the lighter surface of life. "Anyhow," he broke
silence, "the daughter of Heth must be game. Three to one, and on our
native heath."
He looked appraisingly about the room, pausing at the stiff,
distinguished, grey-haired couple, one on either side of the fire. The
effect was of a highly finished genre picture: the rich wainscot between
low book-shelves, the brooding portraits, the black-blue rug bordered by
a veiled Oriental motive, the black-velvet cushions that brought out the
watery reflections of old Sheraton as even the ancient horsehair had not
done; the silver candlesticks, the miniatures, and on the mantel those
two royal flower-pots whose precarious existence was to his aunt a very
fearful joy. Even the tortoise-shell cat, sprawled between the two
figures like a tiny tiger-skin, was in the picture. It was a room that
gently put you into your place. Hugh recalled with a faint grin certain
meetings here of philanthropic ladies whose paths had seldom turned into
the interiors of older Beacon Street. The state of life to which it had
pleased their Maker to call them, he reflected, would express itself
preferably in gilding and vast pale-tinted upholstery and pink
bibelots--oh, quite a lot of pink. This place had worried them into a
condition of disconcerted awe.
He tried to fancy what it was going to do to the unbidden, resented
guest. A queer protest against its enmity, an impulse to give her a
square deal, surged up in him from nowhere. After all, whatever else she
might be, she was Uncle Hugh's girl. Like all the world, Hugh loved the
dispossessed lover. He knew what it felt like. One does not reach the
mature age of twenty-four without having at least begun the passionate
pilgrimage. His few tindery and tinselly affairs suspected of following
the obvious formula: three parts curiosity, three parts the literary
sense, three parts crude young impulse, one part distilled moonshine.
The real love of his life had been Uncle Hugh.
He sprang up with an abruptness to which his elders seemed to be used.
He stopped before a brass-trimmed desk and jerked at the second drawer.
"Where are those letters, sir?"
"You mean--"
"Yes, the one you wrote her about the money, and her answer. You put
them with his papers, didn't you? Where's the key?"
The older man drew from his waistcoat pocket a carved bit of brass.
"What do you want with them?" he asked, cautiously.
"I want to refresh my memory--and Aunt Maria's." He took out a neat
little pile of papers and began to sort them intently. "Here they are on
top." He laid out a docketed envelope on the desk. "And here are the
essays and poems that you wouldn't publish. I considered them the best
things he ever did."
"You were not his literary executor," said his uncle, coldly. Another
stifled glance passed between the seniors, but this time Miss Maria made
no effort to restore the gloss of the surface. She sat idle, staring at
the papers with a sort of horror.
"Put them back," she said. "Winthrop, I do think you might burn them. If
you keep things like that too long the wrong people are sure to get
them."
"Wait a bit. I haven't seen them for years, not since you published the
collected works--with Hamlet left out." The young man lifted a worn
brown-morocco portfolio tied with a frazzled red ribbon. "And here"--his
voice dropped--"here is It--the letters he wrote to her and never sent.
It was a sort of diary, wasn't it, going on for years? What a howling
pity we couldn't print that!"
"Hugh!"
"Don't faint, Aunt Maria. You wouldn't catch me doing anything so
indecent. But suppose Dante's dear family had suppressed the _Vita
Nuova_. And it ought to be one of the most extraordinary human documents
in the world, perfectly intimate, all the bars down, full of those
flashes of his. Just the man, _ipsissimus_, that never happened but that
once. Uncle Winthrop, don't you think that I might read it?"
"Do you think so? I never did."
"Oh, if you put it up to me like that! Of course I can't. But what luck
that he didn't ask you to send it to her--supposing she's the wrong
kind--wasn't it ..." His voice trailed off, leaving his lips foolishly
open. "You don't mean--he did?"
"Yes, at the end, after you had left the room," said Mr. Fowler, firmly.
"And you--didn't? Why not?"
"As you said, for fear she was the wrong kind"
"It was too much to hope that she would be anything else," his aunt
broke in, harshly. "Shut your mouth, Hugh; you look like a fool. Think
what she might have done with them--she and some of those unspeakable
papers."
"Oh, I see! I see!" groaned the young man. "But how awful not to do the
very last thing he wanted! Did you ever try to find out what kind of a
person she was?"
"She took the money. That was enough," cried Miss Fowler. "She got her
share, just as though she had been his legal wife."
Hugh gave her a dazed look. "You don't mean that she was his illegal
one? I never--"
"Oh no, no!" Mr. Fowler interposed. "We have no reason to think that she
was otherwise than respectable. Maria, you allow most unfortunate
implications to result from your choice of words. We know very little,
really."
"He met her in Paris when he gave that course of lectures over there. We
know that much. And she was an American student--from Virginia, wasn't
it? But that was over twenty years ago. Didn't he see her after that?"
"I am sure he did not."
"She wasn't with him when he was knocking about Europe?"
"Certainly not. She came home that very year and married. As her letter
states, she was a widow with three children at the time of his death."
"I have always considered it providential that he didn't know she was a
widow," observed Miss Maria, primly.
Her nephew shot her a look that admitted his intermittent amusement in
his aunt Maria, but definitely gave her up. He carefully leaned the
portfolio inside the arm of the sofa that neighboured the desk, and
picked up the long envelope.
"A copy of my letter," said Mr. Fowler.
To his sister, watching him as he watched Hugh, came the unaccountable
impression that his sure and chiselled surface covered a nervous
anxiety. Then Miss Maria, being a product of the same school, dismissed
the idea as absurd.
Hugh raised bewildered eyes from the letters. "I can't exactly
remember," he said. "I was so cut up at the time. Did I ever actually
read this before or was I merely told about it? I went back for
Midyear's, you know, almost at once. I know my consent was asked, but--"
"You--did not see it."
"And you, Aunt Maria, of course you knew about it!"
"Certainly," said Miss Fowler, on the defensive. "As usual in business
matters, your uncle decided for me. We have been accustomed to act as a
family always. To me the solidarity of the family it more than the
interest of any member of it."
"Oh, I know that the Fowler family is the noblest work of God." The
young man looked from one to the other as he might have regarded two
strangers whose motives it was his intention to find out. "I've been
brought up on that. But what I want to know now is the whyness of this
letter."
"What do you mean?" Mr. Fowler's voice cut the pause like a trowel
executing the middle justice on an earthworm.
"Why--why--" Hugh began, desperately. "I mean, why wasn't the money
turned over to her at once--all of it?"
"It is customary to notify legatees."
"And she wasn't even a legatee," added Miss Maria, grimly. He never made
a will."
"No," said Hugh, with an ugly laugh, "he merely trusted to our
promises."
There was a brief but violent silence.
"I think, Winthrop," Miss Maria broke it, "that instead of questioning
the propriety of my language, you might do well to consider your
nephew's."
Hugh half-tendered the letter. "You're so confoundedly clever. Uncle
Winthrop. You--you just put the whole thing up to the poor woman. I
can't pick out a word to show where you said it, but the tone of your
letter is exactly this, 'Here's the money for you, and if you take it
you're doing an unheard-of thing.' _She_ saw it right enough. Her answer
is just defence of why she has to take it--some of it. She's a mother
with three children, struggling to keep above water. She's a human
animal fighting for her young. So she takes, most apologetically, most
unhappily, a part of what he left her, and she hates to take that. It's
the most pitiful thing--"
"Piteous," corrected Miss Maria, in a tone like a bite.
Mr. Fowler laid the tips of his fingers very delicately on his nephew's
knee. "Will you show me the place or places where I make these very
damaging observations?"
"That's just it. I can't pick them out, but--"
"I am sure that you cannot, because they exist only in your
somewhat--shall we say, lyrical imagination? I laid the circumstances
before the woman and she acted as she saw fit to act. Hugh, my dear boy,
I wish that you would try to restrain your--your growing tendency to
excitability. I know that this is a trying day for all of us."
"O Lord, yes! It brings it all back," said Hugh, miserably. "I'm sorry
if I said anything offensive sir, but--" He gave it up. "You know I have
a devil, sometimes." He gave a half-embarrassed laugh.
"Offensive--if you have said anything offensive?" Miss Fowler boiled
over. "Is that all you are going to say, Winthrop? If so--"
Mr. Fowler lifted a warning hand. The house door was opening. Then the
discreet steps of Gannett came up the hall, followed by something
lighter and more resilient.