II

Thus it shortly came about that Mrs. Pendomer mounted, in meditative

mood, to Mrs. Musgrave's rooms; and that Mrs. Pendomer, recovering her

breath, entered, without knocking, into a gloom where cologne and

menthol and the odor of warm rubber contended for mastery. For Patricia

had decided that she was very ill indeed, and was sobbing softly in bed.

Very calmly, Mrs. Pendomer opened a window, letting in a flood of fresh

air and sunshine; very calmly, she drew a chair--a substantial

arm-chair--to the bedside, and, very calmly, she began:

"My dear, Rudolph has told me of this ridiculous affair, and--oh, you

equally ridiculous girl!"

She removed, with deft fingers, a damp and clinging bandage from about

Patricia's head, and patted the back of Patricia's hand, placidly.

Patricia was by this time sitting erect in bed, and her coppery hair was

thick about her face, which was colorless; and, altogether, she was very

rigid and very indignant and very pretty, and very, very young.

"How dare he tell you--or anybody else!" she cried.

"We are such old friends, remember," Mrs. Pendomer pleaded, and

rearranged the pillows, soothingly, about her hostess; "and I want to

talk to you quietly and sensibly."

Patricia sank back among the pillows, and inhaled the fresh air, which,

in spite of herself, she found agreeable. "I--somehow, I don't feel very

sensible," she murmured, half sulky and half shame-faced.

Mrs. Pendomer hesitated for a moment, and then plunged into the heart of

things. "You are a woman, dear," she said, gently, "though heaven knows

it must have been only yesterday you were playing about the nursery--and

one of the facts we women must face, eventually, is that man is a

polygamous animal. It is unfortunate, perhaps, but it is true.

Civilization may veneer the fact, but nothing will ever override it, not

even in these new horseless carriages. A man may give his wife the best

that is in him--his love, his trust, his life's work--but it is only the

best there is left. We give our hearts; men dole out theirs, as people

feed bread to birds, with a crumb for everyone. His wife has the

remnant. And the best we women can do is to remember we are credibly

informed that half a loaf is preferable to no bread at all."

Her face sobered, and she added, pensively: "We might contrive a better

universe, we sister women, but this is not permitted us. So we must take

it as it is."

Patricia stirred, as talking died away. "I don't believe it," said she;

and she added, with emphasis: "And, anyhow, I hate that nasty trollop!"

"Ah, but you do believe it." Mrs. Pendomer's voice was insistent. "You

knew it years before you went into long frocks. That knowledge is, I

suppose, a legacy from our mothers."

Patricia frowned, petulantly, and then burst into choking sobs. "Oh!"

she cried, "it's damnable! Some other woman has had what I can never

have. And I wanted it so!--that first love that means everything--the

love he gave her when I was only a messy little girl, with pig-tails and

too many hands and feet! Oh, that--that hell-cat! She's had everything!"

There was an interval, during which Mrs. Pendomer smiled crookedly, and

Patricia continued to sob, although at lengthening intervals. Then, Mrs.

Pendomer lifted the packet of letters lying on the bed, and cleared her

throat.

"H'm!" said she; "so this is what caused all the trouble? You don't

mind?"

And, considering silence as equivalent to acquiescence, she drew out a

letter at hazard, and read aloud:

"'Just a line, woman of all the world, to tell you ... but what have I

to tell you, after all? Only the old, old message, so often told that it

seems scarcely worth while to bother the postman about it. Just three

words that innumerable dead lips have whispered, while life was yet good

and old people were unreasonable and skies were blue--three words that

our unborn children's children will whisper to one another when we too

have gone to help the grasses in their growing or to nourish the

victorious, swaying hosts of some field of daffodils. Just three

words--that is my message to you, my lady.... Ah, it is weary waiting

for a sight of your dear face through these long days that are so much

alike and all so empty and colorless! My heart grows hungry as I think

of your great, green eyes and of the mouth that is like a little wound.

I want you so, O dearest girl in all the world! I want you.... Ah, time

travels very slowly that brings you back to me, and, meanwhile, I can

but dream of you and send you impotent scrawls that only vex me with

their futility. For my desire of you--'

"The remainder," said Mrs. Pendomer, clearing her throat once more,

"appears to consist of insanity and heretical sentiments, in about equal

proportions, all written at the top of a boy's breaking voice. It isn't

Colonel Musgrave's voice--quite--is it?"

During the reading, Patricia, leaning on one elbow, had regarded her

companion with wide eyes and flushed cheeks. "Now, you see!" she cried

indignantly; "he loved her! He was simply crazy about her."

"Why, yes." Mrs. Pendomer replaced the letter, carefully, almost

caressingly, among its companions. "My dear, it was years ago. I think

time has by this wreaked a vengeance far more bitter than you could ever

plan on the woman who, after all, never thought to wrong you. For the

bitterest of all bitter things to a woman--to some women, at least--is

to grow old."

She sighed, and her well-manicured fingers fretted for a moment with the

counterpane.

"Ah, who will write the tragedy of us women who were 'famous Southern

beauties' once? We were queens of men while our youth lasted, and

diarists still prattle charmingly concerning us. But nothing was

expected of us save to be beautiful and to condescend to be made much

of, and that is our tragedy. For very few things, my dear, are more

pitiable than the middle-age of the pitiful butterfly woman, whose mind

cannot--cannot, because of its very nature--reach to anything higher!

Middle-age strips her of everything--the admiration, the flattery, the

shallow merriment--all the little things that her little mind longs

for--and other women take her place, in spite of her futile, pitiful

efforts to remain young. And the world goes on as before, and there is a

whispering in the moonlit garden, and young people steal off for wholly

superfluous glasses of water, and the men give her duty dances, and she

is old--ah, so old!--under the rouge and inane smiles and dainty

fripperies that caricature her lost youth! No, my dear, you needn't envy

this woman! Pity her, my dear!" pleaded Clarice Pendomer, and with a

note of earnestness in her voice.

"Such a woman," said Patricia, with distinctness, "deserves no pity."

"Well," Mrs. Pendomer conceded, drily, "she doesn't get it. Probably,

because she always grows fat, from sheer lack of will-power to resist

sloth and gluttony--the only agreeable vices left her; and by no stretch

of the imagination can a fat woman be converted into either a pleasing

or heroic figure."

Mrs. Pendomer paused for a breathing-space, and smiled, though not very

pleasantly.

"It is, doubtless," said she, "a sight for gods--and quite certainly for

men--to laugh at, this silly woman striving to regain a vanished

frugality of waist. Yes, I suppose it is amusing--but it is also

pitiful. And it is more pitiful still if she has ever loved a man in the

unreasoning way these shallow women sometimes do. Men age so slowly; the

men a girl first knows are young long after she has reached

middle-age--yes, they go on dancing cotillions and talking nonsense in

the garden, long after she has taken to common-sense shoes. And the man

is still young--and he cares for some other woman, who is young and has

all that she has lost--and it seems so unfair!" said Mrs. Pendomer.

Patricia regarded her for a moment. The purple eyes were alert, their

glance was hard. "You seem to know all about this woman," Patricia

began, in a level voice. "I have heard, of course, what everyone in

Lichfield whispers about you and Rudolph. I have even teased Rudolph

about it, but until to-day I had believed it was a lie."

"It is often a mistake to indulge in uncommon opinions," said Mrs.

Pendomer. "You get more fun and interest out of it, I don't deny, but

the bill, my dear, is unconscionable."

"So! you confess it!"

"My dear, and who am I to stand aside like a coward and see you make a

mountain of this boy-and-girl affair--an affair which Rudolph and I had

practically forgotten--oh, years ago!--until to-day? Why--why, you

_can't_ be jealous of me!" Mrs. Pendomer concluded, half-mockingly.

Patricia regarded her with deliberation.

In the windy sunlight, Mrs. Pendomer was a well-preserved woman, but,

unmistakably, preserved; moreover, there was a great deal of her, and

her nose was in need of a judicious application of powder, of which

there was a superfluity behind her ears. Was this the siren Patricia had

dreaded? Patricia clearly perceived that, whatever had been her

husband's relations with this woman, he had been manifestly entrapped

into the imbroglio--a victim to Mrs. Pendomer's inordinate love of

attention, which was, indeed, tolerably notorious; and Patricia's anger

against Rudolph Musgrave gave way to a rather contemptuous pity and a

half-maternal remorse for not having taken better care of him.

"No," answered Mrs. Pendomer, to her unspoken thought; "no woman could

be seriously jealous of me. Yes, I dare say, I am _passée_ and vain and

frivolous and--harmless. But," she added, meditatively, "you hate me,

just the same."

"My dear Mrs. Pendomer----" Patricia began, with cool courtesy; then

hesitated. "Yes," she conceded; "I dare say, it is unreasonable--but I

do hate you like the very old Nick."

"Why, then," spoke Mrs. Pendomer, with cheerfulness, "everything is as

it should be." She rose and smiled. "I am sorry to say I must be leaving

Matocton to-day; the Ullwethers are very pressing, and I really don't

know how to get out of paying them a visit----"

"So sorry to lose you," cooed Patricia; "but, of course, you know best.

I believe some very good people are visiting the Ullwethers nowadays?"

She extended the letters, blandly. "May I restore your property?" she

queried, with utmost gentleness.

"Thanks!" Clarice Pendomer took them, and kissed her hostess, not

without tenderness, on the brow. "My dear, be kind to Rudolph. He--he is

rather an attractive man, you know,--and other women are kind to him. We

of Lichfield have always said that he and Jack Charteris were the most

dangerous men that even Lichfield has ever produced----"

"Why, do people really find Mr. Charteris particularly attractive?"

Patricia demanded, so quickly and so innocently that Mrs. Pendomer could

not deny herself the glance of a charlatan who applauds his fellow's

legerdemain.

And Patricia colored.

"Oh, well--! You know how Lichfield gossips," said Mrs. Pendomer.