Nona tiptoed forward and looked down on her. Who said that sleep

revealed people's true natures? It only made them the more enigmatic by

the added veil of its own mystery. Lita's head was nested in the angle

of a thin arm, her lids rounded heavily above the sharp cheek-bones just

swept by their golden fringe, the pale bow of the mouth relaxed, the

slight steel-strong body half shown in the parting of a flowered

dressing-gown. Thus exposed, with gaze extinct and loosened muscles, she

seemed a mere bundle of contradictory whims tied together by a frail

thread of beauty. The hand of the downward arm hung open, palm up. In

its little hollow lay the fate of three lives. What would she do with

them? How could one conceive of her knowing, or planning, or

imagining--conceive of her in any sort of durable human relations to any

one or anything?

Her eyes opened and a languid curiosity floated up through them.

"That you? I must have fallen asleep. I was trying to count up the

number of months we've been here, and numbers always make me go to

sleep."

Nona laughed and sat down at the foot of the lounge. "Dear me--just as I

thought you were beginning to be happy!"

"Well, isn't this what you call being happy--in the country?"

"Lying on your back, and wondering how many months there are in a week?"

"A week? Is it only a week? How on earth can you be sure, when one day's

so exactly like another?"

"Tomorrow won't be. There's the blow-out for Amalasuntha, and dancing

afterward. Mother's idea of the simple life."

"Well, all your mother's ideas _are_ simple." Lita yawned, her pale pink

mouth drooping like a faded flower. "Besides, it's ages till tomorrow.

Where's your father? He was going to take me for a spin in the new

Buick."

"He's broken his promise, then. Deserted us all and sneaked off to

Greystock on his lone."

A faint redness rose to Lita's cheek-bones. "Greystock and Gladys Toy?

Is that _his_ idea of the simple life? About on a par with your mother's...

Did you ever notice the Toy ankles?"

Nona smiled. "They're not unnoticeable. But you forget that father's

getting to be an old gentleman... Fathers mustn't be choosers..."

Lita made a slight grimace. "Oh, he could do better than that. There's

old Cosby, who looks heaps older--didn't he want to marry you? ...

Nona, you darling, let's take the Ford and run over to Greenwich for

dinner. Would your mother so very much mind? Does she want us here the

whole blessed time?"

"I'll go and ask her. But on a Friday night the Country Club will be as

dead as the moon. Only a few old ladies playing bridge."

"Well, then we'll have the floor to ourselves. I want a good practice,

and it's a ripping floor. We can dance with the waiters. It'll be fun to

shock the old ladies. I noticed one of the waiters the other day--must

be an Italian--built rather like Tommy Ardwin... I'm sure he dances..."

That was all life meant to Lita--would ever mean. Good floors to

practise new dance-steps on, men--any men--to dance with and be

flattered by, women--any women--to stare and envy one, dull people to

startle, stupid people to shock--but never any one, Nona questioned,

whom one wanted neither to startle nor shock, neither to be envied nor

flattered by, but just to lose one's self in for good and all? Lita lose

herself--? Why, all she wanted was to keep on finding herself,

immeasurably magnified, in every pair of eyes she met!

And here were Nona and her father and mother fighting to preserve this

brittle plaything for Jim, when somewhere in the world there might be a

real human woman for him... What was the sense of it all?

XXIV

THE Marchesa di San Fedele's ideas about the country were perfectly

simple; in fact she had only one. She regarded it as a place in which

there was more time to play bridge than in town. Thank God for

that!--and the rest one simply bore with... Of course there was the

obligatory going the rounds with host or hostess: gardens, glass, dairy,

chicken-hatchery, and heaven knew what besides (stables, thank goodness,

were out of fashion--even if people rode they no longer, unless they

kept hounds, dragged one between those dreary rows of box stalls, or

made one admire the lustrous steel and leather of the harness room, or

the monograms stencilled in blue and red on the coach-house floor).

The Marchesa's life had always been made up of doing things as dull as

going over model dairies in order to get the chance, or the money, to do

others as thrilling to her as dancing was to Lita. It was part of the

game: one had to pay for what one got: the thing was to try and get a

great deal more than the strict equivalent.

"Not that I don't marvel at your results, Pauline; we all do. But

they make me feel so useless and incapable. All this wonderful

creation--baths and swimming-pools and hatcheries and fire-engines, and

everything so perfect, indoors and out! Sometimes I'm glad you've never

been to our poor old San Fedele. But of course bathrooms will have to be

put in at San Fedele if Michelangelo finds an American bride when he

comes over..."

Pauline laid down the pen she had taken up to record the exact terms in

which she was to address the Cardinal's secretary. ("A _personal_ note,

dear; yes, in your own writing; they don't yet understand your new

American ways at the Vatican...")

"When Michelangelo comes over?" Pauline echoed.

The Marchesa's face was sharper than a knife. "It's my little surprise.

I didn't mean you or Dexter to know till the contract was signed..."

"What contract?"

"My boy's to do Cæsar Borgia in the new film. Klawhammer cabled a

definite offer the day you left for the country. And of course I

insisted on Michelangelo's sailing instantly, though he'd planned to

spend the spring in Paris and was rather cross at having to give it up.

But as I told him, now is the moment to secure a lovely American bride.

We all know what your rich papas-in-law over here always ask: 'What

debts? What prospects? What other women?' The woman matter can generally

be arranged. The debts _are_, in this case--thanks to your generosity. But

the prospects--what were _they_, I ask you? Months of green mould at San

Fedele for a fortnight's splash in Rome ... oh, I don't disguise it!

And what American bride would accept _that_? The San Fedele pearls,

yes--but where is the San Fedele plumbing? But now, my dear,

Michelangelo presents himself as an equal ... superior, I might say,

if I weren't afraid of being partial. Cæsar Borgia in a Klawhammer

film--no one knows how many millions it may mean! And of course

Michelangelo is the very type..."

"_To do me the favour to transmit to his Eminence_... Yes; this really

is a surprise, Amalasuntha." Inwardly Pauline was saying: "After all,

why not? If his own mother doesn't mind seeing him all over the place on

film posters. And perhaps now he may pay us back--in common decency

he'll have to!"

She saw no serious reason for displeasure, once she had dropped her

carefully cultivated Wyant attitude. "If only it doesn't upset Lita

again, and make her restless!" But they really couldn't hope to keep all

Lita's friends and relations off the screen.

"Arthur was amazed--and awfully pleased, after the first recoil. Dear

Arthur, you know, always recoils at first," the Marchesa continued, with

her shrewd deprecating smile, which insinuated that Pauline of course

wouldn't. (It was odd, Pauline reflected; the Marchesa always looked

like a peasant when she was talking business.)

"Arthur? You've already written to him about it?"

"No, dear. I ran across him yesterday in town. You didn't know Arthur'd

come back? I thought he said he'd telephoned to Nona, or somebody. A

touch of gout--got fidgety because he couldn't see his doctor. But he

looked remarkably well, I thought--so handsome still, in his _élancé_

Wyant way; only a little too flushed, perhaps. Yes ... poor Eleanor...

Oh, no; he said Jim was still on the island. Perfectly contented

fishing. Jim's the only person I know who's always perfectly contented ...

such a lesson..." The Marchesa's sigh seemed to add: "Very

restful--but how I should despise him if he were my Michelangelo!"

Pauline could hear--oh, how distinctly!--all that her former husband

would have to say about Michelangelo's projects. They would be food for

an afternoon's irony. But that did not greatly trouble her--nor did

Wyant's unexpected return. He was always miserable out of reach of his

doctor. And the fact that Jim hadn't come back proved that there was

nothing seriously wrong. Pauline thought: "I'll write to Jim again, and

tell him how perfect Dexter has been about Lita and the baby, and that

will convince him there's no need to hurry back."

Complacency returned to her. How should it not, with the list for the

Cardinal's reception nearly complete, and the telephonic assurance of

the Bishop of New York and the Chief Rabbi that both these dignitaries

would be present? Socially also, though the season was over, the

occasion promised to be brilliant. Lots of people were coming back just

to see how a Cardinal was received. Even the Rivingtons were coming--she

had it from the Bishop. Yes, the Rivingtons had certainly been more

cordial since she and Manford had thrown them over at the last minute.

That was the way to treat people who thought themselves so awfully

superior. What wouldn't the Rivingtons have given to capture the

Cardinal? But he was sailing for Italy the day after Pauline's

reception--that was the beauty of it! No one else could possibly have

him. Amalasuntha had stage-managed the whole business very cleverly. She

had even overcome the Cardinal's scruples when he heard that Mrs.

Manford was chairman of the Birth Control committee... And tonight, at

the dinner, how pleasant everybody's congratulations would be! Pauline

gloried in her achievement for Manford's sake. Despite his assurance to

the contrary she could never imagine, for more than a moment at a time,

that such successes were really indifferent to him.

Lita appeared in the drawing-room after almost everybody had arrived.

She was always among the last; and in the country, as she said, there

was no way of knowing what time it was. Even at Cedarledge, where all

the clocks agreed to a second, one could never believe them, and always

suspected they must have stopped together, twelve hours before.

"Besides, what's the use of knowing what time it is in the country? Time

for _what_?"

She came in quietly, almost unnoticeably, with the feathered gait that

was half-way between drifting and floating; and at once, in spite of the

twenty people assembled, had the shining parquet and all the mirrors to

herself. That was her way: that knack of clearing the floor no matter

how quietly she entered. And tonight--!

Well; perhaps, Manford thought, all the other women _were_ a little

overdressed. Women always had a tendency to overdress when they dined

with the Manfords; to wear too many jewels, and put on clothes that

glistened. Even at Cedarledge Pauline's parties had a New York

atmosphere. And Lita, in her straight white slip, slim and unadorned as

a Primitive angel, with that close coif of goldfish-coloured hair, and

not a spangle, a jewel, a pearl even, made the other women's clothes

look like upholstery.

Manford, by the hearth, slightly bored in anticipation, yet bound to

admit that, like all his wife's shows, it was effectively done--Manford

received the shock of that quiet entrance, that shimmer widening into

light, and then turned to Mrs. Herman Toy. Full noon there; the usual

Rubensy redundance flushed by golfing in a high wind, by a last cocktail

before dressing, by the hurried wriggle into one of those elastic

sheaths the women--the redundant women--wore. Well; he liked ripeness in

a fruit to be eaten as soon as plucked. And Gladys' corn-yellow hair was

almost as springy and full of coloured shadows as the other's red. But

the voice, the dress, the jewels, the blatant jewels! A Cartier

show-case spilt over a strawberry mousse... And the quick possessive

look, so clumsily done--brazen, yet half-abashed! When a woman's first

business was to make up her mind which it was to be... Chances were

the man didn't care, as long as her ogling didn't make him ridiculous...

Why couldn't some women always be in golf clothes--if any? Gala get-up

wasn't in everybody's line... There was Lita speaking to Gladys

now--with auburn eyebrows lifted just a thread. The contrast--! And

Gladys purpler and more self-conscious--God, why did she have her

clothes so tight? And that drawing-room drawl! Why couldn't she just

sing out: "Hul_lo_!" as she did in the open?

The Marchesa--how many times more was he to hear Pauline say:

"Amalasuntha on your right, dear." Oh, to get away to a world where

nobody gave dinners, and there were no Marchesas on one's right! He knew

by heart the very look of the little cheese soufflés, light as cherubs'

feathers, that were being handed around before the soup on silver-gilt

dishes with coats-of-arms. Everything at Cedarledge was silver-gilt.

Pauline, as usual, had managed to transplant the party to New York, when

all he wanted was to be quiet, smoke his pipe, and ride or tramp with

Nona and Lita. Why couldn't she see it? Her vigilant eye sought his--was

it for approval or admonition? What was she saying? "The Cardinal? Oh,

yes. It's all settled. So sweet of him! Of course you must all promise

to come. But I've got another little surprise for you after dinner. No;

not a word beforehand; not if you were to put me on the rack." What on

earth did she mean?

"A surprise? Is this a surprise party?" It was Amalasuntha now. "Then I

must produce mine. But I daresay Pauline's told you. About Michelangelo

and Klawhammer... Cæsar Borgia ... such a sum that I don't dare to

mention it--you'd think I was mixing up the figures. But I've got them

down in black and white. Of course, as the producers say, Michelangelo's

so supremely the type--it's more than they ever could have hoped for."

What was the woman raving about? "He sails tomorrow," she said. Sailing

again--was that damned Michelangelo always sailing? Hadn't his debts

been paid on the express condition--? But no; there's been nothing, as

the Marchesa called it, "in black and white." The transaction had been

based on the implicit understanding that nothing but dire necessity

would induce Michelangelo to waste his charms on New York. Dire

necessity--or the chance to put himself permanently beyond it! A fortune

from a Klawhammer film. As Amalasuntha said, it was incalculable...

"It's the type, you see: between ourselves, there's always been a rumour

of Borgia blood on the San Fedele side. A naughty ancestress! Perhaps

you've noticed the likeness? You remember that wonderful profile

portrait of Cæsar Borgia in black velvet? What gallery is it in? Oh, I

know--it came out in 'Vogue'!" Amalasuntha visibly bridled at her

proficiency. She was aware that envious people said the Italians knew

nothing of their own artistic inheritance. "I remember being so struck

by it at the time--I said to Venturino: 'But it's the image of our boy!'

Though Michelangelo will have to grow a beard, which makes him furious...

But then the millions!"

Manford, looking up, caught a double gaze bent in his direction. Gladys

Toy's vast blue eyes had always been like searchlights; but tonight they

seemed actually to be writing her private history over his head, like an

advertising aeroplane. The fool! But was the other look also meant for

him? That half-shaded glint of Lita's--was it not rather attached to the

Marchesa, strung like a telephone wire to her lips? Klawhammer ...

Michelangelo ... a Borgia film... Those listening eyes missed not a

syllable...

"The offers those fellows make--right and left--nobody takes much

account of them. Wait till I see your contract, as you call it... If

you really think it's a job for a gentleman," Manford growled.

"But, my friend, gentlemen can't be choosers! Who are the real

working-class today? Our old aristocracies, alas! And besides, is it

ever degrading to create a work of art? I thought in America you made so

much of creativeness--constructiveness--what do you call it? Is it less

creative to turn a film than to manufacture bathtubs? Can there be a

nobler mission than to teach history to the millions by means of

beautiful pictures? ... Yes! I see Lita listening, and I know she

agrees with me... Lita! What a Lucrezia for his Cæsar! But why look

shocked, dear Dexter? Of course you know that Lucrezia Borgia has been

entirely rehabilitated? I saw that also in 'Vogue.' She was a perfectly

pure woman--and her hair was exactly the colour of Lita's."

They were finishing coffee in the drawing-room, the doors standing open

into the tall library where the men always smoked--the library which (as

Stanley Heuston had once remarked) Pauline's incorruptible honesty had

actually caused her to fill with books.

"Oh, what is it? Not a fire? ... A chimney in the house? ... But

it's actually here... Not a ..."

The women, a-flutter at the sudden siren-shriek, the hooting, rushing

and clattering up the drive, surged across the parquet, flowed with

startled little cries out into the hall, and saw the unsurprisable

Powder signalling to two perfectly matched footmen to throw open the

double doors.

"A fire? The engine ... the ... oh, it's a _fire-drill_! ... A

_parade_! How realistic! How lovely of you! What a beauty the engine is!"

Pauline stood smiling, watch in hand, as the hook-and-ladder motor

clattered up the drive and ranged itself behind the engine. The big

lantern over the front door illuminated fresh scarlet paint and

super-polished brasses, the firemen's agitated helmets and perspiring

faces, the flashing hoods of the lamps.

"Just five minutes to the second! Wonderful!" She was shaking hands with

each member of the amateur brigade in turn. "I can't tell you how I

congratulate you--every one of you! Such an achievement ... you really

manœuvre like professionals. No one would have believed it was the

first time! Dexter, will you tell them a hot supper has been prepared

downstairs!" To the guests she was explaining in a triumphant undertone:

"I wanted to give them the chance to show off their new toy ... Yes, I

believe it's absolutely the most perfected thing in fire-engines. Dexter

and I thought it was time the village was properly equipped. It's really

more on account of the farmers--such a sense of safety for the

neighbourhood... Oh, Mr. Motts, I think you're simply wonderful, all

of you. Mr. Manford and my daughter are going to show you the way to

supper... Yes, yes, you _must_! Just a sandwich and something hot."

She dominated them all, grave and glittering as a goddess of Velocity.

"She enjoys it as much as other women do love-making," Manford muttered

to himself.

XXV

MANFORD didn't know what first gave him the sense that Lita had slipped

out among the departing guests; slipped out, and not come back. When the

idea occurred to him it was already lodged in his mind, hard and

definite as a verified fact. She had vanished from among them into the

darkness.

But only a moment ago; there was still time to dash round to the shed in

the service court, where motors were sometimes left for the night, and

where he had dropped his Buick just in time to rush in and dress for

dinner. He would have no trouble in overtaking her.

The Buick was gone.

Hatless and coatless in the soft night air, he rushed down the drive on

its track. No moon tonight, but a deceptive velvet mildness, such as

sometimes comes in spring before the wind hauls round to a frosty

quarter. He hurried on, out of the open gate, along the road toward the

village; and there, at the turn of the New York turnpike--just the road

he had expected her to take--stood his Buick, a figure stooping over it

in the lamp-glare. A furious stab of jealousy shot through him--"There's

a man with her; who?" But the man was only his own overcoat, which he

had left on the seat of the car when he dashed home for dinner, and

which was now drawn over Lita's shoulders. It was she who stood in the

night, bent over the mysteries of the car's insides.

She looked up and called out: "Oh, look here--give me a hand, will you?

The thing's stuck." Manford moved around within lamp-range, and she

stared a moment, her little face springing out at him uncannily from the

darkness. Then she broke into a laugh. "You?"

"Were you asking a total stranger to repair your motor? Rather risky, on

a country road in the middle of the night."

She shrugged and smiled. "Not as risky as doing it myself. The chances

are that even a total stranger would know more about the inside of this

car than I do."

"Lita, you're mad! Damn the car. What are you doing here anyhow?"

She paused, one hand on the bonnet, while with the other she pushed back

a tossed lock from her round forehead. "Running away," she said simply.

Manford took a quick breath. The thing was, he admonished himself, to

take this lightly, as nearly as possible in her own key--above all to

avoid protesting and exclaiming. But his heart was beating like a

trip-hammer. She was more of a fool than he had thought.

"Running away from that dinner? I don't blame you. But it's over. Still,

if you want to wash out the memory of it, get into the motor and we'll

go for a good spin--like that one when we came back from Greenwich."

Her lips parted in a faint smile. "Oh, but that ended up at Cedarledge."

"Well--?"

"Bless you; I'm not going back."

"Where _are_ you going?"

"To New York first--after that I don't know... Perhaps my aunt's...

Perhaps Hollywood..."

The rage in him exploded. "Perhaps Dawnside--eh? Own up!"

She laughed and shrugged again. "Own up? Why not? Anywhere where I can

dance and laugh and be hopelessly low-lived and irresponsible."

"And get that blackguard crew about you again, all those--. Lita! Listen

to me. Listen. You've got to."

"Got to?" She rounded on him in a quick flare of anger. "I wonder who

you think you're talking to? I'm not Gladys Toy."

The unexpectedness of the challenge struck him dumb. For challenge it

was, unmistakably. He felt a rush of mingled strength and fear--fear at

this inconceivable thing, and the strength her self-betrayal gave him.

He returned with equal violence: "No--you're not. You're something so

utterly different..."

"Oh," she burst in, "don't tell me I'm too sacred, and all that. I'm fed

up with the sanctities--that's the trouble with me. Just own up you like

'em artificially fattened. Why, that woman's ankles are half a yard

round. Can't you _see_ it? Or is that really the way you admire 'em? I

thought you wanted to be with me... I thought that was why you were

here... Do you suppose I'd have come all this way just to be taught to

love fresh air and family life? The hypocrisy--!"

Her little face was flashing on him furiously, red lips parted on a

glitter of bright teeth. "She must have a sausage-machine, to cram her

into that tube she had on tonight. No human maid could do it...

'Utterly different'? I should hope so! I'd like to see _her_ get a job

with Klawhammer--unless he means to do a 'Barnum,' and wants a Fat

Woman... I ..."

"_Lita_!"

"You're _stupid_ ... you're stupider than anything on God's earth!"

"Lita--" He put his hand over hers. Let the whole world crash, after

this...

Pauline sat in her upstairs sitting-room, full of that sense of repose

which comes of duties performed and rewards laid up. How could it be

otherwise, at the close of a day so rich in moral satisfactions? She

scanned it again, from the vantage of her midnight vigil in the sleeping

house, and saw that all was well in the little world she had created.

Yes; all was well, from the fire-drill which had given a rather

languishing dinner its requisite wind-up of excitement to the

arrangements for the Cardinal's reception, Amalasuntha's skilful

turning of that Birth Control obstacle, and the fact that Jim

was philosophically remaining in the south in spite of his

father's unexpected return. The only shadow on the horizon was

Michelangelo's--Dexter would certainly be angry about that. But she was

not going to let Michelangelo darken her holiday, when everything else

in life was so smooth and sunshiny.

She remembered her resolve to write to Jim, and took up her pen with a

smile.

"I can guess what heavenly weather you must be having from the delicious

taste of spring we're having here. The baby is out in the sunshine all

day: he's gained nearly a pound, and is getting almost as brown as if it

were summer. Lita looks ever so much better too, though she'd never

forgive my suggesting that she had put on even an ounce. But I don't

believe she has, for she and Nona and Dexter are riding or golfing or

racing over the country from morning to night like a pack of children.

You can't think how jolly and hungry and sleepy they all are when they

get home for tea. It was a wonderful invention of Dexter's to bring Lita

and the baby here while you were having your holiday, and you'll agree

that it has worked miracles when you see them.

"Amalasuntha tells me your father is back. I expected to hear that he

had got restless away from his own quarters; but she says he's looking

very well. Nona will go in and see him next week, and report. Meanwhile

I'm so glad you're staying on and making the most of your holiday. Do

get all the rest and sunshine you can, and trust your treasures a little

longer to your loving old

"MOTHER."

There--that would certainly reassure him. It had reassured her merely to

write it: given her the feeling, to which she always secretly inclined,

that a thing was so if one said it was, and doubly so if one wrote it

down.

She sealed the letter, pushed back her chair, and glanced at the little

clock on her writing-table. A quarter to two! She had a right to feel

sleepy, and even to curtail her relaxing exercises. The country

stillness was so deep and soothing that she hardly needed them...

She opened the window, and stood drinking in the hush. The spring night

was full of an underlying rustle and murmur that was a part of the

silence. But suddenly a sharp sound broke on her--the sound of a motor

coming up the drive. In the stillness she caught it a long way off,

probably just after the car turned in at the gate. The sound was so

unnatural, breaking in on the deep nocturnal dumbness of dim trees and

starlit sky, that she drew back startled. She was not a nervous woman,

but she thought irritably of a servants' escapade--something that the

chauffeur would have to be spoken to about the next day. Queer,

though--the motor did not turn off toward the garage. Standing in the

window she followed its continued approach; then heard it slow down and

stop--somewhere near the service court, she conjectured.

Could it be that Lita and Nona had been off on one of their crazy trips

since the guests had left? She must really protest at such imprudence...

She felt angry, nervous, uncertain. It was uncanny, hearing that

invisible motor come so near the house and stop... She hesitated a

moment, and then crossed to her own room, opened the door of the little

anteroom beyond, and stood listening at her husband's bedroom door. It

was ajar, all dark within. She hesitated to speak, half fearing to wake

him; but at length she said in a low voice: "Dexter--."

No answer. She pronounced his name again, a little louder, and then

cautiously crossed the threshold and switched on the light. The room was

empty, the bed undisturbed. It was evident that Manford had not been up

to his room since their guests had left. It was he, then, who had come

back in the motor... She extinguished the light and turned back into

her own room. On her dressing-table stood the little telephone which

communicated with the servants' quarters, with Maisie Bruss's office,

and with Nona's room. She stood wavering before the instrument. Why

shouldn't she call up Nona, and ask--? Ask what? If the girls had been

off on a lark they would be sure to tell her in the morning. And if it

was Dexter alone, then--

She turned from the telephone, and slowly began to undress. Presently

she heard steps in the hall, then in the anteroom; then her husband

moving softly about in his own room, and the unmistakable sounds of his

undressing... She drew a long breath, as if trying to free her lungs

of some vague oppression... It was Dexter--well, yes, only Dexter ...

and he hadn't cared to leave the motor at the garage at that hour...

Naturally... How glad she was that she hadn't rung up Nona! Suppose

her doing so had startled Lita or the baby...

After all, perhaps she'd better do her relaxing exercises. She felt

suddenly staring wide awake. But she was glad she'd written that

reassuring letter to Jim--she was glad, because it was _true_...

XXVI

WHEN Nona told her mother that she wanted to go to town the next day to

see Mrs. Bruss and Maisie, Mrs. Manford said: "It's only what I expected

of you, darling," and added after a moment: "Do you think I ought--?"

"No, of course not. It would simply worry Maisie."

Nona knew it was the answer that her mother awaited. She knew that

nothing frightened and disorganized Pauline as much as direct contact

with physical or moral suffering--especially physical. Her whole life

(if one chose to look at it from a certain angle) had been a long

uninterrupted struggle against the encroachment of every form of pain.

The first step, always, was to conjure it, bribe it away, by every

possible expenditure--except of one's self. Cheques, surgeons, nurses,

private rooms in hospitals, X-rays, radium, whatever was most costly and

up-to-date in the dreadful art of healing--that was her first and

strongest line of protection; behind it came such lesser works as

rest-cures, change of air, a seaside holiday, a whole new set of teeth,

pink silk bed-spreads, lace cushions, stacks of picture papers, and

hot-house grapes and long-stemmed roses from Cedarledge. Behind these

again were the final, the verbal defenses, made of such phrases as: "If

I thought I could do the least good"--"If I didn't feel it might simply

upset her"--"_Some_ doctors still consider it contagious"--with the

inevitable summing-up: "The fewer people she sees the better..."

Nona knew that this attitude was not caused by lack of physical courage.

Had Pauline been a pioneer's wife, and seen her family stricken down by

disease in the wilderness, she would have nursed them fearlessly; but

all her life she had been used to buying off suffering with money, or

denying its existence with words, and her moral muscles had become so

atrophied that only some great shock would restore their natural

strength...

"Great shock! People like mother never have great shocks," Nona mused,

looking at the dauntless profile, the crisply waving hair, reflected in

the toilet-mirror. "Unless I were to give her one ..." she added with

an inward smile.

Mrs. Manford restored her powder-puff to its crystal box. "Do you know,

darling, I believe I'll go to town with you tomorrow. It was very brave

of Maisie to make the effort of coming here the other day, but of

course, I didn't like to burden her with too many details at such a time

(when's the operation--tomorrow?), and there are things I could

perfectly well attend to myself, without bothering her; without her even

knowing. Yes; I'll motor up with you early."

"She'll always delegate her anxieties," Nona mused, not unenviously, as

Cécile slipped Mrs. Manford's spangled teagown over her firm white

shoulders. Pauline turned a tender smile on her daughter. "It's so like

you, Nona, to want to be with Maisie for the operation--so _fine_, dear."

Voice and smile were full of praise; yet behind the praise (Nona also

knew) lurked the unformulated apprehension: "All this running after sick

people and unhappy people--is it going to turn into a vocation?" Nothing

could have been more distasteful to Mrs. Manford than the idea that her

only daughter should be not only good, but merely good: like poor Aggie

Heuston, say... Nona could hear her mother murmuring: "I can't imagine

where on earth she got it from," as if alluding to some physical defect

unaccountable in the offspring of two superbly sound progenitors.

They started early, for forty-eight hours of accumulated leisure had

reinforced Pauline's natural activity. Amalasuntha, mysteriously smiling

and head-shaking over the incommunicable figures of Klawhammer's offer,

had bustled back to town early on Monday, leaving the family to

themselves--and a certain feeling of flatness had ensued. Dexter, his

wife thought, seemed secretly irritated, but determined to conceal his

irritation from her. It was about Michelangelo, no doubt. Lita was

silent and sleepy. No one seemed to have anything particular to do. Even

in town Mondays were always insipid. But in the afternoon Manford "took

Lita off their hands," as his wife put it, by carrying her away for the

long-deferred spin in the Buick; and Pauline plunged back restfully into

visiting-lists and other domestic preoccupations. She certainly had

nothing to worry about, and much to rejoice in, yet she felt languid and

vaguely apprehensive. She began to wonder if Alvah Loft's treatment were

of the lasting sort, or if it lost its efficacy, like an uncorked drug.

Perhaps the Scientific Initiate she had been told about would have a new

panacea for the mind as well as for the epiderm. She would telephone and

make an appointment; it always stimulated her to look forward to seeing

a new healer. As Mrs. Swoffer said, one ought never to neglect a

spiritual opportunity; and one never knew on whom the Spirit might have

alighted. Mrs. Swoffer's conversation was always soothing and yet

invigorating, and Pauline determined to see her too. And there was

Arthur--poor Exhibit A!--on Jim's account it would be kind to look him

up if there were time; unless Nona could manage that too, in the

intervals of solacing Maisie. It was so depressing--and so useless--to

sit in a hospital parlour, looking at old numbers of picture papers,

while those awful white-sleeved rites went on in the secret sanctuary of

tiles and nickel-plating. It would do Nona good to have an excuse for

slipping away.

Pauline's list of things-to-be-done had risen like a spring tide as soon

as she decided to go to town for the day. There was hair-waving,

manicuring, dressmaking--her dress for the Cardinal's reception. How was

she ever to get through half the engagements on her list? And of course

she must call at the hospital with a big basket of grapes and flowers...

On the steps of the hospital Nona paused and looked about her. The

operation was over--everything had "gone beautifully," as beautifully as

it almost always does on these occasions. Maisie had been immensely

grateful for her coming, and as surprised as if an angel from the

seventh heaven had alighted to help her through. The two girls had sat

together, making jerky attempts at talk, till the nurse came and said:

"All right--she's back in bed again"; and then Maisie, after a burst of

relieving tears, had tiptoed off to sit in a corner of her mother's

darkened room and await the first sign of returning consciousness. There

was nothing more for Nona to do, and she went out into the April

freshness with the sense of relief that the healthy feel when they

escape back to life after a glimpse of death.

On the hospital steps she ran into Arthur Wyant.

"Exhibit, dear! What are you doing here?"

"Coming to inquire for poor Mrs. Bruss. I heard from Amalasuntha..."

"That's kind of you. Maisie'll be so pleased."

She gave him the surgeon's report, saw that his card was entrusted to

the right hands, and turned back into the street with him. He looked

better than when he had left for the south; his leg was less stiff, and

he carried his tall carefully dressed figure with a rigid jauntiness.

But his face seemed sharper yet higher in colour. Fever or cocktails?

She wondered. It was lucky that their meeting would save her going to

the other end of the town to see him.

"Just like you, Exhibit, to remember poor Maisie..."

He raised ironic eyebrows. "Is inquiring about ill people obsolete? I

see you still keep up the tradition."

"Oh, I've been seeing it through with Maisie. Some one had to."

"Exactly. And your mother held aloof, but financed the whole business?"

"Splendidly. She always does."

He frowned, and stood hesitating, and tapping his long boot-tip with his

stick. "I rather want to have a talk with your mother."

"With mother?" Nona was on the point of saying: "She's in town today--"

then, remembering Pauline's crowded list, she checked the impulse.

"Won't I do as a proxy? I was going to suggest your carrying me off to

lunch."

"No, my dear, you won't--as a proxy. But I'll carry you off to lunch."

The choice of a restaurant would have been laborious--for Wyant, when

taken out of his rut, became a mass of manias, prejudices and

inhibitions--but Nona luckily remembered a new Bachelor Girls' Club

("The Singleton") which she had lately joined, and packed him into a

taxi still protesting.

They found a quiet corner in a sociable low-studded dining-room, and she

leaned back, listening to his disconnected monologue and smoking one

cigarette after another in the nervous inability to eat.

The ten days on the island? Oh, glorious, of course--hot sunshine--a

good baking for his old joints. Awfully kind of her father to invite

him ... he'd appreciated it immensely ... was going to write a line of

thanks... Jim, too, had appreciated his father's being included...

Only, no, really; he couldn't stay; in the circumstances he couldn't...

"What circumstances, Exhibit? Getting the morning papers twenty-four

hours late?"

Wyant frowned, looked at her sharply, and then laughed an uneasy

wrinkled laugh. "Impertinent chit!"

"Own up, now; you were bored stiff. Communion with Nature was too much

for you. You couldn't stick it. Few can."

"I don't say I'm as passive as Jim."

"Jim's just loving it down there, isn't he? I'm so glad you persuaded

him to stay."

Wyant frowned again, and stared past her at some invisible antagonist.

"It was about the only thing I _could_ persuade him to do."

Nona's hand hung back from the lighting of another cigarette. "What else

did you try to?"

"What else? Why to _act_, damn it ... take a line ... face things ...

face the music." He stopped in a splutter of metaphors, and dipped his

bristling moustache toward his coffee.

"What things?"

"Why: is he going to keep his wife, or isn't he?"

"He thinks that's for Lita to decide."

"For Lita to decide! A pretext for his damned sentimental inertness. A

man--my son! God, what's happened to the young men? Sit by and see ...

see... Nona, couldn't I manage to have a talk with your mother?"

"You're having one with me. Isn't that enough for the moment?"

He gave another vague laugh, and took a light from her extended

cigarette. She knew that, though he found her mother's visits

oppressive, he kept a careful record of their number, and dimly resented

any appearance of being "crowded out" by Pauline's other engagements. "I

suppose she comes up to town sometimes, doesn't she?"

"Sometimes--but in such a rush! And we'll be back soon now. She's got to

get ready for the Cardinal's reception."

"Great doings, I hear. Amalasuntha dropped in on me yesterday. She says

Lita's all agog again since that rotten Michelangelo's got a film

contract, and your father's in an awful state about it. Is he?"

"The family are not used yet to figuring on the posters. Of course it's

only a question of time."

"I don't mean in a state about Michelangelo, but about Lita."

"Father's been a perfect brick about Lita."

"Oh, he has, has he? Very magnanimous.--Thanks; no--no cigar... Of

course, if anybody's got to be a brick about Lita, I don't see why it's

not her husband's job; but then I suppose you'll tell me..."

"Yes; I shall; please consider yourself told, won't you? Because I've

got to get back to the hospital."

"The modern husband's job is a purely passive one, eh? That's your idea

too? If you go to him and say: 'How about that damned scoundrel and your

wife'--"

"What damned scoundrel?"

"Oh, I don't say ... anybody in particular ... and he answers:

'Well, what am I going to do about it?' and you say: 'Well, and your

honour, man; what about your honour?' and he says: 'What's my honour got

to do with it if my wife's sick of me?' and you say: 'God! But _the other

man_ ... aren't you going to break his bones for him?' and he sits and

looks at you and says: 'Get up a prize-fight for her?'... God! I give

it up. My own son! We don't speak the same language, that's all."

He leaned back, his long legs stretched under the table, his tall

shambling body disjointed with the effort at a military tautness, a kind

of muscular demonstration of what his son's moral attitude ought to be.

"Damn it--there was a good deal to be said for duelling."

"And to whom do you want Jim to send his seconds? Michelangelo or

Klawhammer?"

He stared, and echoed her laugh. "Ha! Ha! That's good. Klawhammer! Dirty

Jew ... the kind we used to horsewhip... Well, I don't understand

the new code."

"Why do you want to, Exhibit? Come along. You've got me to look after in

the meantime. If you want to be chivalrous, tuck me under your arm and

see me back to the hospital."

"A prize-fight--get up a prize-fight for her! God--I should understand

even that better than lying on the beach smoking a pipe and saying:

'What can a fellow do about it?' _Do_!"

Act--act--act! How funny it was, Nona reflected, as she remounted the

hospital steps: the people who talked most of acting seldom did more

than talk. Her father, for instance, so resolute and purposeful, never

discoursed about action, but quietly went about what had to be done.

Whereas poor Exhibit, perpetually inconsequent and hesitating, was never

tired of formulating the most truculent plans of action for others.

"Poor Exhibit indeed--incorrigible amateur!" she thought, understanding

how such wordy dilettantism must have bewildered and irritated the young

and energetic Pauline, fresh from the buzzing motor works at Exploit.

Nona felt a sudden exasperation against Wyant for trying to poison Jim's

holiday by absurd insinuations and silly swagger. It was lucky that he

had got bored and come back, leaving the poor boy to bask on the sands

with his pipe and his philosophy. After all, it was to be supposed that

Jim knew what he wanted, and how to take care of it, now he had it.

"At all events," Nona concluded, "I'm glad he didn't get hold of mother

and bother her with his foolish talk." She shot up in the lift to the

white carbolic-breathing passage where, with a heavy whiff of ether,

Mrs. Bruss's door opened to receive her.

XXVII

THE restorative effect of a day away from the country was visible in

Pauline's face and manner when she dawned on the breakfast-table the

next morning. The mere tone in which she murmured: "How lovely it is to

get back!" showed how lovely it had been to get away--and she lingered

over the new-laid eggs, the golden cream, all the country freshnesses

and succulences, with the sense of having richly earned them by a long

day spent in arduous and agreeable labours.

"When there are tiresome things to be done the great thing is to do them

at once," she announced to Nona across the whole-wheat toast and

scrambled eggs. "I simply hated to leave all this loveliness yesterday;

but how much more I'm going to enjoy it today because I did!"

Her day in town had in truth been exceptionally satisfactory. All had

gone well, from her encounter, at Amalasuntha's, with one of the

Cardinal's secretaries, to the belated glimpse of Maisie Bruss, haggard

but hopeful on the hospital steps, receiving the hamper of fruit and

flowers with grateful exclamations, and assurances that the surgeon was

"perfectly satisfied," and that there was "no reason why the dreadful

thing should ever reappear." In a wave of sympathetic emotion Pauline

had leaned from the motor to kiss her and say: "Your mother must have a

good rest at Atlantic City as soon as she can be moved--I'll arrange it.

Sea air is such a tonic ..." and Maisie had thanked and wept again...

It was pleasant to be able, in a few words, to make any one so happy...

She had found Mrs. Swoffer too; found her in a super-terrestrial mood,

beaming through inspired eye-glasses, and pouring out new torrents of

stimulation.

Yes: Alvah Loft was a great man, Mrs. Swoffer said. She, for her part,

had never denied it for a moment. How could Pauline have imagined that

her faith in Alvah Loft had failed her? No--but there were periods of

spiritual aridity which the brightest souls had to traverse, and she had

lately had reason to suspect, from her own experience and from

Pauline's, that perhaps Alvah Loft was at present engaged in such a

desert. Certainly to charge a hundred dollars for a "triple treatment"

(which was only three minutes longer than the plain one), and then

produce no more lasting results--well, Mrs. Swoffer preferred not to say

anything uncharitable... Then again, she sometimes suspected that

Alvah Loft's doctrine might be only for beginners. That was what Sacha

Gobine, the new Russian Initiate, plainly intimated. Of course there

were innumerable degrees in the spiritual life, and it might be that

sometimes Alvah Loft's patients got beyond his level--got above

it--without his being aware of the fact. Frankly, that was what Gobine

thought (from Mrs. Swoffer's report) must have happened in the case of

Pauline. "I believe your friend has reached a higher plane"--that was

the way the Initiate put it. "She's been at the gate" (he called the

Mahatma and Alvah Loft "gatekeepers"), "and now the gate has opened, and

she has entered in--entered into ..." But Mrs. Swoffer said she'd

rather not try to quote him because she couldn't put it as beautifully

as he did, and she wanted Pauline to hear it in his own mystical

language. "It's eternal rejuvenation just to sit and listen to him," she

breathed, laying an electric touch on her visitor's hand.

Rejuvenation! The word dashed itself like cool spray against Pauline's

strained nerves and parched complexion. She could never hear it without

longing to plunge deep into its healing waters. Between manicure and

hair-waver she was determined to squeeze in a moment with Gobine.

And the encounter, as she told Nona, had been like "a religious

experience"--apparently forgetful of the fact that every other meeting

with a new prophet had presented itself to her in identical terms.

"You see, my dear, it's something so entirely new, so completely

different ... so emotional; yes, emotional; that's the word. The

Russians, of course, are emotional; it's their peculiar quality. Alvah

Loft--and you understand that I don't in the least suggest any loss of

faith in him; but Alvah Loft has a mind which speaks to the _mind_; there

is no appeal to the feelings. Whereas in Gobine's teaching there is a

mystic strain, a kind of Immediacy, as Mrs. Swoffer calls it...

Immediacy..." Pauline lingered on the term. It captivated her, as any

word did when she first heard it used in a new connection. "I don't know

how one could define the sensation better. 'Soul-unveiling' is Gobine's

expression... But he insists on time, on plenty of time... He says

we are all parching our souls by too much hurry. Of course I always felt

that with Alvah Loft. I felt like one of those cash-boxes they shoot

along over your head in the department stores. Number one, number two,

and so on--always somebody treading on your heels. Whereas Gobine

absolutely refuses to be hurried. Sometimes he sees only one patient a

day. When I left him he told me he thought he would not see any one else

till the next morning. 'I don't want to mingle your soul with any

other.' Rather beautiful, wasn't it? And he does give one a wonderful

dreamy sense of rest..."

She closed her eyes and leaned back, evoking the gaunt bearded face and

heavy-lidded eyes of the new prophet, and the moist adhesive palm he had

laid in benediction on her forehead. How different from the thick-lipped

oily Mahatma, and from the thin dry Alvah Loft, who seemed more like an

implement in a laboratory than a human being! "Perhaps one needs them

all in turn," Pauline murmured half-aloud, with the self-indulgence of

the woman who has never had to do over an out-of-fashion garment.

"One ought to be able to pass on last year's healers to one's poor

relations, oughtn't one, mother?" Nona softly mocked; but her mother

disarmed her with an unresentful smile.

"Darling! I know you don't understand these things yet--only, child, I

do want you to be a little on your guard against becoming bitter, won't

you? There--you don't mind your old mother's just suggesting it?"

Really Nona worried her at times--or would, if Gobine hadn't shed over

her this perfumed veil of Peace. Yes--Peace: that was what she had

always needed. Perfect confidence that everything would always come

right in the end. Of course the other healers had taught that too; some

people might say that Gobine's evangel was only the Mahatma's doctrine

of the Higher Harmony. But the resemblance was merely superficial, as

the Scientific Initiate had been careful to explain to her. Her previous

guides had not been Initiates, and had no scientific training; they

could only guess, whereas he _knew_. That was the meaning of Immediacy:

direct contact with the Soul of the Invisible. How clear and beautiful

he made it all! How all the little daily problems shrivelled up and

vanished like a puff of smoke to eyes cleared by that initiation! And he

had seen at once that Pauline was one of the few who _could_ be initiated;

who were worthy to be drawn out of the senseless modern rush and taken

in Beyond the Veil. She closed her eyes again, and felt herself there

with him... "Of course he treats hardly anybody," Mrs. Swoffer had

assured her; "not one in a hundred. He says he'd rather starve than

waste his time on the unmystical. (He saw at once that you were

mystical.) Because he takes time--he must have it... Days, weeks, if

necessary. Our crowded engagements mean nothing to him. He won't have a

clock in the house. And he doesn't care whether he's paid or not; he

says he's paid in soul-growth. Marvellous, isn't it?"

Marvellous indeed! And how different from Alvah Loft's Taylorized

treatments, his rapidly rising scale of charges, and the unbroken stream

of patients succeeding each other under his bony touch! And how one came

back from communion with the Invisible longing to help others, to draw

all one's dear ones with one Beyond the Veil. Pauline had gone to town

with an unavowed burden on her mind. Jim, Lita, her husband, that

blundering Amalasuntha, that everlasting Michelangelo; and Nona,

too--Nona, who looked thinner and more drawn every day, and whose tongue

seemed to grow sharper and more derisive; who seemed--at barely

twenty--to be turning from a gay mocking girl into a pinched

fault-finding old maid...

All these things had weighed on Pauline more than she cared to

acknowledge; but now she felt strong enough to lift them, or rather they

had become as light as air. "If only you Americans would persuade

yourselves of the utter unimportance of the Actual--of the total

non-existence of the Real." That was what Gobine had said, and the words

had thrilled her like a revelation. Her eyes continued to rest with an

absent smile on her daughter's ironic face, but what she was really

thinking of was: "How on earth can I possibly induce him to come to the

Cardinal's reception?"

That was one of the things that Nona would never understand her caring

about. She would credit--didn't Pauline know!--her mother with the

fatuous ambition to use her united celebrities for a social "draw," as a

selfish child might gather all its toys into one heap; she would never

see how important it was to bring together the representatives of the

conflicting creeds, the bearers of the multiple messages, in the hope of

drawing from their contact the flash of revelation for which the whole

creation groaned. "If only the Cardinal could have a quiet talk with

Gobine," Pauline thought; and, immediately dramatizing the possibility,

saw herself steering his Eminence toward the innermost recess of her

long suite of drawing-rooms, where the Scientific Initiate, shaggy but

inspired, would suddenly stand before the Prince of the Church while she

guarded the threshold from intruders. What new life it might put into

the ossified Roman dogmas if the Cardinal could be made to understand

that beautiful new doctrine of Immediacy! But how could she ever

persuade Gobine to kiss the ring?

"And Mrs. Bruss--any news? I thought Maisie seemed really hopeful."

"Yes; the night wasn't bad. The doctors think she'll go on all

right--for the present."

Pauline frowned; it was distasteful to have the suggestion of suffering

and decay obtruded upon her beatific mood. She was living in a world

where such things were not, and it seemed cruel--and unnecessary--to

suggest to her that perhaps all Mrs. Bruss had already endured might not

avail to spare her future misery.

"I'm sure we ought to try to resist looking ahead, and creating

imaginary suffering for ourselves or others. Why should the doctors say

'for the present'? They can't possibly tell if the disease will ever

come back."

"No; but they know it generally does."

"Can't you see, Nona, that that's just what _makes_ it? Being prepared to

suffer is really the way to create suffering. And creating suffering is

creating sin, because sin and suffering are really one. We ought to

refuse ourselves to pain. All the great Healers have taught us that."

Nona lifted her eyebrows in the slightly disturbing way she had. "Did

Christ?"

Pauline felt her colour rise. This habit of irrelevant and rather

impertinent retort was growing on Nona. The idea of stirring up the

troublesome mysteries of Christian dogma at the breakfast-table! Pauline

had no intention of attacking any religion. But Nona was really getting

as querulous as a teething child. Perhaps that was what she was,

morally; perhaps some new experience was forcing its way through the

tender flesh of her soul. The suggestion was disturbing to all Pauline's

theories; yet confronted with her daughter's face and voice she could

only take refuge in the idea that Nona, unable to attain the Higher

Harmony, was struggling in a crepuscular wretchedness from which she

refused to be freed.

"If you'd only come to Gobine with me, dear, these problems would never

trouble you any more."

"They don't now--not an atom. What troubles me is the plain human

tangle, as it remains after we've done our best to straighten it out.

Look at Mrs. Bruss!"

"But the doctors say there's every chance--"

"Did you ever know them not to, after a first operation for cancer?"

"Of course, Nona, if you take sorrow and suffering for granted--"

"I don't, mother; but, apparently, Somebody does, judging from their

diffusion and persistency, as the natural history books say."

Pauline felt her smooth brows gather in an unwelcome frown. The child

had succeeded in spoiling her breakfast and in unsettling the happy

equilibrium which she had imparted to her world. She didn't know what

ailed Nona, unless she was fretting over Stan Heuston's disgraceful

behaviour; but if so, it was better that she should learn in time what

he was, and face her disillusionment. She might actually have ended by

falling in love with him, Pauline reflected, and that would have been

very disagreeable on account of Aggie. "What she needs is to marry,"

Pauline said to herself, struggling back to serenity.

She glanced at her watch, wondered if it were worth while to wait any

longer for her husband, and decided to instruct Powder to keep his

breakfast hot, and produce fresh coffee and rice-cakes when he rang.

Dexter, the day before, had taken Lita off on another long excursion.

They had turned up so late that dinner had to be postponed for them, and

had been so silent and remote all the evening that Pauline had ventured

a jest on the soporific effects of country air, and suggested that every

one should go to bed early. This morning, though it was past ten

o'clock, neither of the two had appeared; and Nona declared herself

ignorant of their plans for the day.

"It's a mercy Lita is so satisfied here," Pauline sighed, resigning

herself to another dull day at the thought of the miracle Manford was

accomplishing. She had felt rather nervous when Amalasuntha had appeared

with her incredible film stories, and her braggings about the

irresistible Michelangelo; but Lita did not seem to have been unsettled

by them.

"Jim will have a good deal to be grateful for when he gets home,"

Pauline smiled to her daughter. "I do hope he'll appreciate what your

father has done. His staying on the island seems to show that he does.

By the way," she added, with another smile, "I didn't tell you, did I,

that I ran across Arthur yesterday?"

Nona hesitated a moment. "So did I."

"Oh, did you? He didn't mention it. He looks better, don't you think so?

But I found him excited and restless--almost as if another attack of

gout were coming on. He was annoyed because I wouldn't go and see him

then and there, though it was after six, and I should have had to dine

in town."

"It's just as well you didn't, after such a tiring day."

"He was so persistent--you know how he is at times. He insisted that he

must have a talk with me, though he wouldn't tell me about what."

"I don't believe he knows. As you say, he's always nervous when he has

an attack coming on."

"But he seemed so hurt at my refusing. He wanted me to promise to go

back today. And when I told him I couldn't he said that if I didn't he'd

come out here."

Nona gave an impatient shrug. "How absurd! But of course he won't. I

don't exactly see dear old Exhibit walking up to the front door of

Cedarledge."

Pauline's colour rose again; she too had pictured the same possibility,

only to reject it. Wyant had always refused to cross her threshold in

New York, though she lived in a house bought after her second marriage;

surely he would be still more reluctant to enter Cedarledge, where he

and she had spent their early life together, and their son had been

born. There were certain things, as he was always saying, that a man

didn't do: that was all.

Nona was still pondering. "I wouldn't go to town to see him, mother; why

should you? He was excited, and rather cross, yesterday, but he really

hadn't anything to say. He just wanted to hear himself talk. As long as

we're here he'll never come, and when this mood passes off he won't even

remember what it was about. If you like I'll write and tell him that

you'll see him as soon as we get back."

"Thank you, dear. I wish you would."

How sensible the child could be when she chose! Her answer chimed

exactly with her mother's secret inclination, and the latter, rising

from the breakfast-table, decided to slip away to a final revision of

the Cardinal's list. It was pleasant, for once, to have time to give so

important a matter all the attention it deserved.

XXVIII

WHEN Nona came down the next morning it was raining--a cold blustery

rain, lashing the branches about and driving the startled spring back

into its secret recesses.

It was the first rain since their arrival at Cedarledge, and it seemed

to thrust them back also--back into the wintry world of town, of

dripping streets, early lamplight and crowded places of amusement.

Mrs. Manford had already breakfasted and left the dining-room, but her

husband's plate was still untouched. He came in as Nona was finishing,

and after an absent-minded nod and smile dropped silently into his

place. He sat opposite the tall rain-striped windows, and as he stared

out into the grayness it seemed as if some of it, penetrating into the

room in spite of the red sparkle of the fire, had tinged his face and

hair. Lately Nona had been struck by his ruddiness, and the vigour of

the dark waves crisping about his yellow-brown temples; but now he had

turned sallow and autumnal. "What people call looking one's age, I

suppose--as if we didn't have a dozen or a hundred ages, all of us!"

Her father had withdrawn his stare from the outer world and turned it

toward the morning paper on the book-stand beside his plate. With lids

lowered and fixed lips he looked strangely different again--rather like

his own memorial bust in bronze. She shivered a little...

"Father! Your coffee's getting cold."

He pushed aside the paper, glanced at the letters piled by his plate,

and lifted his eyes to Nona's. The twinkle she always woke seemed to

struggle up to her from a long way off.

"I missed my early tramp and don't feel particularly enthusiastic about

breakfast."

"It's not enthusiastic weather."

"No." He had grown absent-minded again. "Pity; when we've so few days

left."

"It may clear, though."

What stupid things they were saying! Much either he or she cared about

the weather, when they were in the country and had the prospect of a

good tramp or a hard gallop together. Not that they had had many such

lately; but then she had been busy with her mother, trying to make up

for Maisie's absence; and there had been the interruption caused by the

week-end party; and he had been helping to keep Lita amused--with

success, apparently.

"Yes... I shouldn't wonder if it cleared." He frowned out toward the

sky again. "Round about midday." He paused, and added: "I thought of

running Lita over to Greystock."

She nodded. They would no doubt stay and dine, and Lita would get her

dance. Probably Mrs. Manford wouldn't mind, though she was beginning to

show signs of wearying of tête-à-tête dinners with her daughter. But

they could go over the reception list again; and Pauline could talk

about her new Messiah.

Nona glanced down at her own letters. She often forgot to look at them

till the day was nearly over, now that she knew the one writing her eyes

thirsted for would not be on any of the envelopes. Stanley Heuston had

made no sign since they had parted that night on the doorstep...

The door opened, and Lita came in. It was the first time since their

arrival that she had appeared at breakfast. She faced Manford as she

entered, and Nona saw her father's expression change. It was like those

funny old portraits in the picture-restorers' windows, with a veil of

age and dust removed from one half to show the real surface underneath.

Lita's entrance did not make him look either younger or happier; it

simply removed from his face the soul-disguising veil which life

interposes between a man's daily world and himself. He looked

stripped--exposed ... exposed ... that was it. Nona glanced at Lita,

not to surprise her off her guard, but simply to look away from her

father.

Lita's face was what it always was: something so complete and

accomplished that one could not imagine its being altered by any

interior disturbance. It was like a delicate porcelain vase, or a smooth

heavy flower, that a shifting of light might affect, but nothing from

within would alter. She smiled in her round-eyed unseeing way, as a

little gold-and-ivory goddess might smile down on her worshippers, and

said: "I got up early because there wasn't any need to."

The reason was one completely satisfying to herself, but its effect on

her hearers was perhaps disappointing. Nona made no comment, and Manford

merely laughed--a vague laugh addressed, one could see, less to her

words, which he appeared not to have noticed, than to the mere luminous

fact of her presence; the kind of laugh evoked by the sight of a

dazzling fringed fish or flower suddenly offered to one's admiration.

"I think the rain will hold off before lunch," he said, communicating

the fact impartially to the room.

"Oh, what a pity--I wanted to get my hair thoroughly drenched. It's

beginning to uncurl with the long drought," Lita said, her hand wavering

uncertainly between the dishes Powder had placed in front of her.

"Grape-fruit, I think--though it's so awfully ocean-voyagy. Promise me,

Nona--!" She turned to her sister-in-law.

"Promise you what?"

"Not to send me a basket of grape-fruit when I sail."

Manford looked up at her impenetrable porcelain face. His lips half

parted on an unspoken word; then he pushed back his chair and got up.

"I'll order the car at eleven," he said, in a tone of aimless severity.

Lita was scooping a spoonful of juice out of the golden bowl of the

grape-fruit. She seemed neither to heed nor to hear. Manford laid down

his napkin and walked out of the room.

Lita threw back her head to let the liquid slip slowly down between her

lips. Her gold-fringed lids fluttered a little, as if the fruit-juice

were a kiss.

"When are you sailing?" Nona asked, reaching for the cigarette-lighter.

"Don't know. Next week, I shouldn't wonder."

"For any particular part of the globe?"

Lita's head descended, and she turned her chestnut-coloured eyes softly

on her sister-in-law. "Yes; but I can't remember what it's called."

Nona was looking at her in silence. It was simply that she was so

beautiful. A vase? No--a lamp now: there was a glow from the interior.

As if her red corpuscles had turned into millions of fairy lamps...

Her glance left Nona's and returned to her plate. "Letters. What a bore!

Why on earth don't people telephone?"

She did not often receive letters, her congenital inability to answer

them having gradually cooled the zeal of her correspondents; of all,

that is, excepting her husband. Almost every day Nona saw one of Jim's

gray-blue envelopes on the hall table. That particular colour had come

to symbolize to her a state of patient expectancy.

Lita was turning over some impersonal looking bills and advertisements.

From beneath them the faithful gray-blue envelope emerged. Nona thought:

"If only he wouldn't--!" and her eyes filled.

Lita looked pensively at the post-mark and then laid the envelope down

unopened.

"Aren't you going to read your letter?"

She raised her brows. "Jim's? I did--yesterday. One just like it."

"Lita! You're--you're perfectly beastly!"

Lita's languid mouth rounded into a smile. "Not to you, darling. Do you

want me to read it?" She slipped a polished finger-tip under the flap.

"Oh, no; no! Don't--not like that!" It made Nona wince. "I wish she

_hated_ Jim--I wish she wanted to kill him! I could bear it better than

this," the girl stormed inwardly. She got up and turned toward the door.

"Nona--wait! What's the matter? Don't you really want to hear what he

says?" Lita stood up also, her eyes still on the open letter. "He--oh..."

She turned toward her sister-in-law a face from which the inner glow

had vanished.

"What is it? Is he ill? What's wrong?"

"He's coming home. He wants me to go back the day after tomorrow." She

stood staring in front of her, her eyes fixed on something invisible to

Nona, and beyond her.

"Does he say why?"

"He doesn't say anything but that."

"When did you expect him?"

"I don't know. Not for ages. I never can remember about dates. But I

thought he liked it down there. And your father said he'd arranged--"

"Arranged what?" Nona interrupted.

Lita seemed to become aware of her again, and turned on her a smooth

inaccessible face. "I don't know: arranged with the bank, I suppose."

"To keep him there?"

"To let him have a good long holiday. You all thought he needed it so

awfully, didn't you?"

Nona stood motionless, staring out of the window. She saw her father

drive up in the Buick. The rain had diminished to a silver drizzle shot

with bursts of sun, and through the open window she heard him call:

"It's going to clear after all. We'd better start."

Lita went out of the door, humming a tune.

"Lita!" Nona called out, moved by some impulse to arrest, to warn--she

didn't know what. But the door had closed, and Lita was already out of

hearing.

All through the day it kept on raining at uncomfortable intervals.

Uncomfortable, that is, for Pauline and Nona. Whenever they tried to get

out for a walk a deluge descended; then, as soon as they had splashed

back to the house with the dripping dogs, the clouds broke and mocked

them with a blaze of sunshine. But by that time they were either

revising the list again, or had settled down to Mah-jongg in the

library.

"Really, I can't go up and change into my walking shoes _again_!" Pauline

remonstrated to the weather; and a few minutes later the streaming

window-panes had justified her.

"April showers," she remarked with a slightly rigid smile. She looked

deprecatingly at her daughter. "It was selfish of me to keep you here,

dear. You ought to have gone with your father and Lita."

"But there were all those notes to do, mother. And really I'm rather

fed-up with Greystock."

Pauline executed a repetition of her smile. "Well, I fancy we shall have

them back for tea. No golf this afternoon, I'm afraid," she said,

glancing with a certain furtive satisfaction at the increasing downpour.

"No; but Lita may want to stay and dance."

Pauline made no comment, but once more addressed her disciplined

attention to the game.

The fire, punctually replenished, continued to crackle and drowse. The

warmth drew out the strong scent of the carnations and rose-geraniums,

and made the room as languid as a summer garden. Dusk fell from the

cloud-laden skies, and in due course the hand which tended the fire drew

the curtains on their noiseless rings and lit the lamps. Lastly Powder

appeared, heading the processional entrance of the tea-table.

Pauline roused herself from a languishing Mah-jongg to take her expected

part in the performance. She and Nona grouped themselves about the

hearth, and Pauline lifted the lids of the little covered dishes with a

critical air.

"I ordered those muffins your father likes so much," she said, in a tone

of unwonted wistfulness. "Perhaps we'd better send them out to be kept

hot."

Nona agreed that it would be better; but as she had her hand on the bell

the sound of an approaching motor checked her. The dogs woke with a

happy growling and bustled out. "There they are after all!" Pauline

said.

There was a minute or two of silence, unmarked by the usual yaps of

welcome; then a sound like the depositing of wraps and an umbrella; then

Powder on the threshold, for once embarrassed and at a loss.

"Mr. Wyant, madam."

"Mr. Wyant?"

"Mr. Arthur Wyant. He seemed to think you were probably expecting him,"

Powder continued, as if lengthening the communication in order to give

her time.

Mrs. Manford, seizing it, rose to the occasion with one of her heroic

wing-beats. "Yes--I was. Please show him in," she said, without risking

a glance at her daughter.

Arthur Wyant came in, tall and stooping in his shabby well-cut clothes,

a nervous flush on his cheekbones. He paused, and sent a half-bewildered

stare about the room--a look which seemed to say that when he had made

up his mind that he must see Pauline he had failed to allow for the

familiarity of the setting in which he was to find her.

"You've hardly changed anything here," he said abruptly, in the far-off

tone of a man slowly coming back to consciousness.

"How are you, Arthur? I'm sorry you've had such a rainy day for your

trip," Mrs. Manford responded, with an easy intonation intended to reach

the retreating Powder.

Her former husband took no notice. His eyes continued to travel about

the room in the same uncertain searching way.

"Hardly anything," he repeated, still seemingly unaware of any presence

in the room but his own. "That Raeburn, though--yes. That used to be in

the dining-room, didn't it?" He passed his hand over his forehead, as if

to brush away some haze of oblivion, and walked up to the picture.

"Wait a bit. It's in the place where the Sargent of Jim as a youngster

used to hang--Jim on his pony. Just over my writing-table, so that I saw

it whenever I looked up..." He turned to Pauline. "Jolly picture. What

have you done with it? Why did you take it away?"

Pauline coloured, but a smile of conciliation rode gallantly over her

blush. "I didn't. That is--Dexter wanted it. It's in his room; it's been

there for years." She paused, and then added: "You know how devoted

Dexter is to Jim."

Wyant had turned abruptly from the contemplation of the Raeburn. The

colour in Pauline's cheek was faintly reflected in his own. "Stupid of

me ... of course... Fact is, I was rather rattled when I came in,

seeing everything so much the same... You must excuse my turning up in

this way; I had to see you about something important... Hullo, Nona--"

"Of course I excuse you, Arthur. Do sit down--here by the fire. You must

be cold after your wet journey ... so unseasonable, after the weather

we've been having. Nona will ring for tea," Pauline said, with her

accent of indomitable hospitality.

XXIX

NONA, that night, in her mother's doorway, wavered a moment and then

turned back.

"Well, then--goodnight, mother."

"Goodnight, child."

But Mrs. Manford seemed to waver too. She stood there in her rich dusky

draperies, and absently lifted a hand to detach one after the other of

her long earrings. It was one of Mrs. Manford's rules never to keep up

her maid to undress her.

"Can I unfasten you, mother?"

"Thanks, dear, no; this teagown slips off so easily. You must be tired..."

"No; I'm not tired. But you..."

"I'm not either." They stood irresolute on the threshold of the warm

shadowy room lit only by a waning sparkle from the hearth. Pauline

switched on the lamps.

"Come in then, dear." Her strained smile relaxed, and she laid a hand on

her daughter's shoulder. "Well, it's over," she said, in the weary yet

satisfied tone in which Nona had sometimes heard her pronounce the

epitaph of a difficult but successful dinner.

Nona followed her, and Pauline sank down in an armchair near the fire.

In the shaded lamplight, with the glint of the fire playing across her

face, and her small head erect on still comely shoulders, she had a

sweet dignity of aspect which moved her daughter incongruously.

"I'm so thankful you've never bobbed your hair, mother."

Mrs. Manford stared at this irrelevancy; her stare seemed to say that

she was resigned to her daughter's verbal leaps, but had long since

renounced the attempt to keep up with them.

"You're so handsome just as you are," Nona continued. "I can understand

dear old Exhibit's being upset when he saw you here, in the same

surroundings, and looking, after all, so much as you must have in his

day... And when he himself is so changed..."

Pauline lowered her lids over the vision. "Yes. Poor Arthur!" Had she

ever, for the last fifteen years, pronounced her former husband's name

without adding that depreciatory epithet? Somehow pity--an indulgent

pity--was always the final feeling he evoked. She leaned back against

the cushions, and added: "It was certainly unfortunate, his taking it

into his head to come out here. I didn't suppose he would have

remembered so clearly how everything looked... The Sargent of Jim on

the pony... Do you think he minded?"

"Its having been moved to father's room? Yes; I think he did."

"But, Nona, he's always been so grateful to your father for what he's

done for Jim--and for Lita. He _admires_ your father. He's often told me

so."

"Yes."

"At any rate, once he was here, I couldn't do less than ask him to stay

to dine."

"No; you couldn't. Especially as there was no train back till after

dinner."

"And, after all, I don't, to this minute, know what he came for!"

Nona lifted her eyes from an absorbed contemplation of the fire. "You

don't?"

"Oh, of course, in a vague way, to talk about Jim and Lita. The same old

things we've heard so many times. But I quieted him very soon about

that. I told him Lita had been perfectly happy here--that the experiment

had been a complete success. He seemed surprised that she had given up

all her notions about Hollywood and Klawhammer ... apparently

Amalasuntha has been talking a lot of nonsense to him ... but when I

said that Lita had never once spoken of Hollywood, and that she was

going home the day after tomorrow to join her husband, it seemed to

tranquillize him completely. Didn't he seem to you much quieter when he

drove off?"

"Yes; he was certainly quieter. But he seemed to want particularly to

see Lita."

Pauline drew a quick breath. "Yes. On the whole I was glad she wasn't

here. Lita has never known how to manage Arthur, and her manner is

sometimes so irritating. She might have said something that would have

upset him again. It was really a relief when your father telephoned that

they had decided to dine at Greystock--though I could see that Arthur

thought that funny too. His ideas have never progressed an inch; he's

always remained as old-fashioned as his mother." She paused a moment,

and then went on: "I saw you were a little startled when I asked him if

he wouldn't like to spend the night. But I didn't want to appear

inhospitable."

"No; not in this house," Nona agreed with her quick smile. "And of

course one knew he wouldn't--"

Pauline sighed. "Poor Arthur! He's always so punctilious."

"It wasn't only that. He was suffering horribly."

"About Lita? So foolish! As if he couldn't trust her to us--"

"Not only about Lita. But just from the fact of being here--of having

all his old life thrust back on him. He seemed utterly unprepared for

it--as if he'd really succeeded in not thinking about it at all for

years. And suddenly there it was: like the drowning man's vision. A

drowning man--that's what he was like."

Pauline straightened herself slightly, and Nona saw her brows gather in

a faint frown. "What dreadful ideas you have! I thought I'd never seen

him looking better; and certainly he didn't take too much wine at

dinner."

"No; he was careful about that."

"And I was careful too. I managed to give a hint to Powder." Her frown

relaxed, and she leaned back with another sigh, this time of

appeasement. After all, her look seemed to say, she was not going to let

herself be unsettled by Nona's mortuary images, now that the whole

business was over, and she had every reason to congratulate herself on

her own share in it.

Nona (but it was her habit!) appeared less sure. She hung back a moment,

and then said: "I haven't told you yet. On the way down to dinner..."

"What, dear?"

"I met him on the upper landing. He asked to see the baby ... that was

natural..."

Pauline drew her lips in nervously. She had thought she had all the

wires in her hands; and here was one--She agreed with an effort:

"Perfectly natural."

"The baby was asleep, looking red and jolly. He stood over the crib a

long time. Luckily it wasn't the old nursery."

"Really, Nona! He could hardly expect--"

"No; of course not. Then, just as we were going downstairs, he said:

'Funny, how like Jim the child is growing. Reminds me of that old

portrait.' And he jerked out at me: 'Could I see it?'"

"What--the Sargent?"

Nona nodded. "Could I refuse him?"

"I suppose that was natural too."

"So I took him into father's study. He seemed to remember every step of

the way. He stood and looked and looked at the picture. He didn't say

anything ... didn't answer when I spoke... I saw that it went

through and through him."

"Well, Nona, byegones are byegones. But people do bring things upon

themselves, sometimes--"

"Oh, I know, mother."

"Some people might think it peculiar, his rambling about the house like

that--his coming here at all, with his ideas of delicacy! But I don't

blame him; and I don't want you to," Pauline continued firmly. "After

all, it's just as well he came. He may have been a little upset at the

moment; but I managed to calm him down; and I certainly proved to him

that everything's all right, and that Dexter and I can be trusted to

know what's best for Lita." She paused, and then added: "Do you know,

I'm rather inclined not to mention his visit to your father--or to Lita.

Now it's over, why should they be bothered?"

"No reason at all." Nona rose from her crouching attitude by the fire,

and stretched her arms above her head. "I'll see that Powder doesn't say

anything. And besides, he wouldn't. He always seems to know what needs

explaining and what doesn't. He ought to be kept to avert cataclysms,

like those fire-extinguishers in the passages... Goodnight,

mother--I'm beginning to be sleepy."

Yes; it was all over and done with; and Pauline felt that she had a

right to congratulate herself. She had not told Nona how "difficult"

Wyant had been for the first few minutes, when the girl had slipped out

of the library after tea and left them alone. What was the use of going

into all that? Pauline had been a little nervous at first--worried, for

instance, as to what might happen if Dexter and Lita should walk in

while Arthur was in that queer excited state, stamping up and down the

library floor, and muttering, half to himself and half to her: "Damn it,

am I in my own house or another man's? Can anybody answer me that?"

But they had not walked in, and the phase of excitability had soon been

over. Pauline had only had to answer: "You're in my house, Arthur,

where, as Jim's father, you're always welcome..." That had put a stop

to his ravings, shamed him a little, and so brought him back to his

sense of what was due to the occasion, and to his own dignity.

"My dear--you must excuse me. I'm only an intruder here, I know--"

And when she had added: "Never in my house, Arthur. Sit down, please,

and tell me what you want to see me about--" why, at that question,

quietly and reasonably put, all his bluster had dropped, and he had sat

down as she bade him, and begun, in his ordinary tone, to rehearse the

old rigmarole about Jim and Lita, and Jim's supineness, and Lita's

philanderings, and what would the end of it be, and did she realize that

the woman was making a laughing-stock of their son--yes, that they were

talking about it at the clubs?

After that she had had no trouble. It had been easy to throw a little

gentle ridicule over his apprehensions, and then to reassure him by her

report of her own talk with Lita (though she winced even now at its

conclusion), and the affirmation that the Cedarledge experiment had been

entirely successful. Then, luckily, just as his questions began to be

pressing again--as he began to hint at some particular man, she didn't

know who--Powder had come in to show him up to one of the spare-rooms to

prepare for dinner; and soon after dinner the motor was at the door, and

Powder (again acting for Providence) had ventured to suggest, sir, that

in view of the slippery state of the roads it would be well to get off

as promptly as possible. And Nona had taken over the seeing-off, and

with a long sigh of relief Pauline had turned back into the library,

where Wyant's empty whisky-and-soda glass and ash-tray stood, so

uncannily, on the table by her husband's armchair. Yes; she had been

thankful when it was over...

And now she was thankful that it had happened. The encounter had

fortified her confidence in her own methods and given her a new proof of

her power to surmount obstacles by smiling them away. She had literally

smiled Arthur out of the house, when some women, in a similar emergency,

would have made a scene, or stood on their dignity. Dignity! Hers

consisted, more than ever, in believing the best of every one, in

persuading herself and others that to impute evil was to create it, and

to disbelieve it was to prevent its coming into being. Those were the

Scientific Initiate's very words: "We manufacture sorrow as we do all

the other toxins." How grateful she was to him for that formula! And how

light and happy it made her feel to know that she had borne it in mind,

and proved its truth, at so crucial a moment! She looked back with pity

at her own past moods of distrust, her wretched impulses of jealousy and

suspicion, the moments when even those nearest her had not been proof

against her morbid apprehensions...

How absurd and far away it all seemed now! Jim was coming back the day

after tomorrow. Lita and the baby were going home to him. And the day

after that they would all be going back to town; and then the last

touches would be put to the ceremonial of the Cardinal's reception. Oh,

she and Powder would have their hands full! All of the big silver-gilt

service would have to be got out of the safety vaults and gone over...

Luckily the last reports of Mrs. Bruss's state were favourable, and no

doubt Maisie would be back as usual... Yes, life was really falling

into its usual busy and pleasurable routine. Rest in the country was all

very well; but rest, if overdone, became fatiguing...

She found herself in bed, the lights turned off, and sleep descending on

her softly.

Before it held her, she caught, through misty distances, the sound of

her husband's footfall, the opening and shutting of his door, and the

muffled noises of his undressing. Well ... so he was back ... and

Lita ... silly Lita ... no harm, really... Just as well they

hadn't met poor Arthur... Everything was all right ... the Cardinal...

XXX

PAULINE sat up suddenly in bed. It was as if an invisible hand had

touched a spring in her spinal column, and set her upright in the

darkness before she was aware of any reason for it.

No doubt she had heard something through her sleep; but what? She

listened for a repetition of the sound.

All was silence. She stretched out her hand to an onyx knob on the table

by her bed, and instantly the face of a miniature clock was illuminated,

and the hour chimed softly; two strokes followed by one. Half-past

two--the silentest hour of the night; and in the vernal hush of

Cedarledge! Yet certainly there had been a sound--a sharp explosive

sound... Again! There it was: a revolver shot ... somewhere in the

house...

Burglars?

Her feet were in her slippers, her hand on the electric light switch.

All the while she continued to listen intently. Dead silence everywhere...

But how had burglars got in without starting the alarm? Ah--she

remembered! Powder had orders never to set it while any one was out of

the house; it was Dexter who should have seen that it was connected when

he got back from Greystock with Lita. And naturally he had forgotten to.

Pauline was on her feet, her hair smoothed back under her fillet-shaped

cap of silver lace, her "rest-gown" of silvery silk slipped over her

night-dress. This emergency garb always lay at her bedside in case of

nocturnal alarms, and she was equipped in an instant, and had already

reconnected the burglar-alarm, and sounded the general summons for

Powder, the footmen, the gardeners and chauffeurs. Her hand played

irresolutely over the complicated knobs of the glittering switchboard

which filled a panel of her dressing-room; then she pressed the button

marked "Engine-house." Why not? There had been a series of bad suburban

burglaries lately, and one never knew... It was just as well to rouse

the neighbourhood... Dexter was so careless. Very likely he had left

the front door open.

Silence still--profounder than ever. Not a sound since that second shot,

if shot it was. Very softly she opened her door and paused in the

anteroom between her room and her husband's. "Dexter!" she called.

No answer; no responding flash of light. Men slept so heavily. She

opened, lighted--"Dexter!"

The room was empty, her husband's bed unslept in. But then--what? Those

sounds of his return? Had she been dreaming when she thought she heard

them? Or was it the burglars she had heard, looting his room, a few feet

off from where she lay? In spite of her physical courage a shiver ran

over her...

But if Dexter and Lita were not yet back, whence had the sound of the

shot come, and who had fired it? She trembled at the thought of

Nona--Nona and the baby! They were alone with the baby's nurse on the

farther side of the house. And the house seemed suddenly so immense, so

resonant, so empty...

In the shadowy corridor outside her room she paused again for a second,

straining her ears for a guiding sound; then she sped on, pushing back

the swinging door which divided the farther wing from hers, turning on

the lights with a flying hand as she ran... On the deeply carpeted

floors her foot-fall made no sound, and she had the sense of skimming

over the ground inaudibly, like something ghostly, disembodied, which

had no power to break the hush and make itself heard...

Half way down the passage she was startled to see the door of Lita's

bedroom open. Sounds at last--sounds low, confused and terrified--issued

from it. What kind of sounds? Pauline could not tell; they were rushing

together in a vortex in her brain. She heard herself scream "Help!" with

the strangled voice of a nightmare, and was comforted to feel the rush

of other feet behind her: Powder, the men-servants, the maids. Thank God

the system worked! Whatever she was coming to, at least they would be

there to help...

She reached the door, pushed it--and it unexpectedly resisted. Some one

was clinging to it on the inner side, struggling to hold it shut, to

prevent her entering. She threw herself against it with all her

strength, and saw her husband's arm and hand in the gap. "Dexter!"

"Oh, God." He fell back, and the door with him. Pauline went in.

All the lights were on--the room was a glare. Another man stood

shivering and staring in a corner, but Pauline hardly noticed him, for

before her on the floor lay Lita's long body, in a loose spangled robe,

flung sobbing over another body.

"Nona--Nona!" the mother screamed, rushing forward to where they lay.

She swept past her husband, dragged Lita back, was on her knees on the

floor, her child pressed to her, Nona's fallen head against her breast,

Nona's blood spattering the silvery folds of the rest-gown, destroying

it forever as a symbol of safety and repose.

"Nona--child! What's happened? Are you hurt? Dexter--for pity's sake!

Nona, look at me! It's mother, darling, mother--"

Nona's eyes opened with a flutter. Her face was ashen-white, and empty

as a baby's. Slowly she met her mother's agonized stare. "All right ...

only winged me." Her gaze wavered about the disordered room, lifting

and dropping in a butterfly's bewildered flight. Lita lay huddled on the

couch in her spangles, twisted and emptied, like a festal garment flung

off by its wearer. Manford stood between, his face a ruin. In the corner

stood that other man, shrinking, motionless. Pauline's eyes, following

her child's, travelled on to him.

"Arthur!" she gasped out, and felt Nona's feeble pressure on her arm.

"Don't ... don't... It was an accident. Father--an accident!

_Father_!"

The door of the room was wide now, and Powder stood there, unnaturally

thin and gaunt in his improvised collarless garb, marshalling the gaping

footmen, with gardeners, chauffeurs and maids crowding the corridor

behind them. It was really marvellous, how Pauline's system had worked.

Manford turned to Arthur Wyant, his stony face white with revenge. Wyant

still stood motionless, his arms hanging down, his body emptied of all

its strength, a broken word that sounded like "honour" stumbling from

his bedraggled lips.

"_Father_!" At Nona's faint cry Manford's arm fell to his side also, and

he stood there as powerless and motionless as the other.

"All an accident ..." breathed from the white lips against Pauline.

Powder had stepped forward. His staccato orders rang back over his

shoulder. "Ring up the doctor. Have a car ready. Scour the gardens...

One of the women here! Madam's maid!"

Manford suddenly roused himself and swung about with dazed eyes on the

disheveled group in the doorway. "Damn you, what are you doing here, all

of you? Get out--get out, the lot of you! Get out, I say! Can't you hear

me?"

Powder bent a respectful but controlling eye on his employer. "Yes, sir;

certainly, sir. I only wish to state that the burglar's mode of entrance

has already been discovered." Manford met this with an unseeing stare,

but the butler continued imperturbably: "Thanks to the rain, sir. He got

in through the pantry window; the latch was forced, and there's muddy

footprints on my linoleum, sir. A tramp was noticed hanging about this

afternoon. I can give evidence--"

He darted swiftly between the two men, bent to the floor, and picked up

something which he slipped quickly and secretly into his pocket. A

moment later he had cleared his underlings from the threshold, and the

door was shut on them and him.

"Dexter," Pauline cried, "help me to lift her to the bed."

Outside, through the watchful hush of the night, a rattle and roar came

up the drive. It filled the silence with an unnatural clamour, immense,

mysterious and menacing. It was the Cedarledge fire-brigade, arriving

double quick in answer to their benefactress's summons.

Pauline, bending over her daughter's face, fancied she caught a wan

smile on it...

XXXI

NONA MANFORD'S room was full of spring flowers. They had poured in, sent

by sympathizing friends, ever since she had been brought back to town

from Cedarledge.

That was two weeks ago. It was full spring now, and her windows stood

wide to the May sunset slanting across the room, and giving back to the

tall branches of blossoming plum and cherry something of their native

scent and freshness.

The reminder of Cedarledge would once have doubled their beauty; now it

made her shut her eyes sharply, in the inner recoil from all the name

brought back.

She was still confined to her room, for the shot which had fractured her

arm near the shoulder had also grazed her lung, and her temperature

remained obstinately high. Shock, the doctors said, chiefly ... the

appalling sight of a masked burglar in her sister-in-law's bedroom; and

being twice fired at--twice!

Lita corroborated the story. She had been asleep when her door was

softly opened, and she had started up to see a man in a mask, with a

dark lantern... Yes; she was almost sure he had a mask; at any rate

she couldn't see his face; the police had found the track of muddy feet

on the pantry linoleum, and up the back stairs.

Lita had screamed, and Nona had dashed to the rescue; yes, and Mr.

Manford--Lita thought Mr. Manford had perhaps got there before Nona. But

then again, she wasn't sure... The fact was that Lita had been

shattered by the night's experience, and her evidence, if not

self-contradictory, was at least incoherent.

The only really lucid witnesses were Powder, the butler, and Nona

Manford herself. Their statements agreed exactly, or at least dovetailed

into each other with perfect precision, the one completing the other.

Nona had been first on the scene: she had seen the man in the room--she

too thought that he was masked--and he had turned on her and fired. At

that moment her father, hearing the shots, had rushed in, half-dressed;

and as he did so the burglar fled. Some one professed to have seen him

running away through the rain and darkness; but no one had seen his

face, and there was no way of identifying him. The only positive proof

of his presence--except for the shot--was the discovery by Powder, of

those carefully guarded footprints on the pantry floor; and these, of

course, might eventually help to trace the criminal. As for the

revolver, that also had disappeared; and the bullets, one of which had

been found lodged in the door, the other in the panelling of the room,

were of ordinary army calibre, and offered no clue. Altogether it was an

interesting problem for the police, who were reported to be actively at

work on it, though so far without visible results.

Then, after three days of flaming headlines and journalistic

conjectures, another sensation crowded out the Cedarledge burglary. The

newspaper public, bored with the inability of the police to provide

fresh fuel for their curiosity, ceased to speculate on the affair, and

interest in it faded out as quickly as it had flared up.

During the last few days Nona's temperature had gradually dropped, and

she had been allowed to see visitors; first one in the day, then two or

three, then four or five--so that by this time her jaws were beginning

to feel a little stiff with the continual rehearsal of her story,

embellished (at the visitors' request) with an analysis of her own

emotions. She always repeated her narrative in exactly the same terms,

and presented the incidents in exactly the same order; by now she had

even learned to pause at the precise point where she knew her

sympathizing auditors would say: "But, my dear, how perfectly

awful--what did it feel like?"

"Like being shot in the arm."

"Oh, Nona, you're so cynical! But before that--when you _saw the

man_--weren't you absolutely sick with terror?"

"He didn't give me time to be sick with anything but the pain in my

shoulder."

"You'll never get her to confess that she was frightened!"

And so the dialogue went on. Did her listeners notice that she recited

her tale with the unvarying precision of a lesson learned by heart?

Probably not; if they did, they made no sign. The papers had all been

full of the burglary at Cedarledge: a masked burglar--and of the

shooting of Miss Manford, and the would-be murderer's escape. The

account, blood-curdling and definite, had imposed itself on the public

credulity with all the authority of heavy headlines and continual

repetition. Within twenty-four hours the Cedarledge burglary was an

established fact, and suburban millionaires were doubling the number of

their night watchmen, and looking into the newest thing in

burglar-alarms. Nona, leaning back wearily on her couch, wondered how

soon she would be allowed to travel and get away from it all.

The others were all going to travel. Her mother and father were off that

very evening to the Rocky Mountains and Vancouver. From there they were

going to Japan and, in the early autumn, to Ceylon and India. Pauline

already had letters to all the foremost Native Princes, and was

regretting that there was not likely to be a Durbar during their visit.

The Manfords did not expect to be back till January or February;

Manford's professional labours had become so exhausting that the

doctors, fearing his accumulated fatigue might lead to a nervous

break-down, had ordered a complete change and prolonged absence from

affairs. Pauline hoped that Nona would meet them in Egypt on their way

home. A sunny Christmas together in Cairo would be so lovely...

Arthur Wyant had gone also--to Canada, it was said, with cousin Eleanor

in attendance. Some insinuated that a private inebriate asylum in Maine

was the goal of his journey; but no one really knew, and few cared. His

remaining cronies, when they heard that he had been ill, and was to

travel for a change, shrugged or smiled, and said: "Poor old

Arthur--been going it too strong again," and then forgot about him. He

had long since lost his place in the scheme of things.

Even Lita and Jim Wyant were on a journey. They had sailed the previous

week for Paris, where they would arrive in time for the late spring

season, and Lita would see the Grand Prix, the new fashions and the new

plays. Jim's holiday had been extended to the end of August: Manford,

ever solicitous for his stepson, had arranged the matter with the bank.

It was natural, every one agreed, that Jim should have been dreadfully

upset by the ghastly episode at Cedarledge, in which his wife might have

been a victim as well as Nona; and his intimates knew how much he had

worried about his father's growing intemperance. Altogether, both Wyants

and Manfords had been subjected to an unusual strain; and when rich

people's nerves are out of gear the pleasant remedy of travel is the

first prescribed.

Nona turned her head uneasily on the cushions. She felt incurably weary,

and unable to rebound to the spring radiance which usually set her blood

in motion. Her immobility had begun to wear on her. At first it had been

a relief to be quiescent, to be out of things, to be offered up as the

passive victim and the accepted evidence of the Cedarledge burglary. But

now she was sick to nausea of the part, and envious of the others who

could escape by flight--by perpetual evasion.

Not that she really wanted to be one of them; she was not sure that she

wanted to go away at all--at least in the body. Spiritual escape was

what she craved; but by what means, and whither? Perhaps it could best

be attained by staying just where she was, by sticking fast to her few

square feet of obligations and responsibilities. But even this idea made

no special appeal. Her obligations, her responsibilities--what were

they? Negative, at best, like everything else in her life. She had

thought that renunciation would mean freedom--would mean at least

escape. But today it seemed to mean only a closer self-imprisonment. She

was tired, no doubt...

There was a tap on the door, and her mother entered. Nona raised her

listless eyes curiously. She always looked at her mother with curiosity

now: curiosity not so much as to what had changed in her, but as to what

had remained the same. And it was extraordinary how Pauline, the old

Pauline, was coming to the surface again through the new one, the

haggard and stricken apparition of the Cedarledge midnight...

"My broken arm saved her," Nona thought, remembering, with a sort of

ironical admiration, how that dishevelled spectre had become Pauline

Manford again, in command of herself and the situation, as soon as she

could seize on its immediate, its practical, sides; could grasp those

handles of reality to which she always clung.

Now even that stern and disciplined figure had vanished, giving way, as

the days passed and reassurance grew, to the usual, the everyday

Pauline, smilingly confident in herself and in the general security of

things. Had that dreadful night at Cedarledge ever been a reality to

her? If it had, Nona was sure, it had already faded into the realms of

fable, since its one visible result had been her daughter's injury, and

that was on the way to healing. Everything else connected with it had

happened out of sight and under ground, and for that reason was now as

if it had never existed for Pauline, who was more than ever resolutely

two-dimensional.

Physically, at least, the only difference Nona could detect was that a

skilful make-up had filled in the lines which, in spite of all the arts

of the face-restorers, were weaving their permanent web about her

mother's lips and eyes. Under this delicate mask Pauline's face looked

younger and fresher than ever, and as smooth and empty as if she had

just been born again--"And she _has_, after all," Nona concluded.

She sat down by the couch, and laid a light hand caressingly on her

daughter's.

"Darling! Had your tea? You feel really better, don't you? The doctor

says the massage is to begin tomorrow. By the way--" she tossed a

handful of newspaper cuttings onto the coverlet--"perhaps some of these

things about the reception may amuse you. Maisie's been saving them to

show you. Of course most of the foreign names are wrong; but the

description of the room is rather good. I believe Tommy Ardwin wrote the

article for the 'Looker-on.' Amalasuntha says the Cardinal will like it.

It seems he was delighted with the idea of the flash-light photographs.

Altogether he was very much pleased."

"Then you ought to be, mother." Nona forced her pale lips into a smile.

"I _am_, dear. If I do a thing at all I like to do it well. That's always

been my theory, you know: the best or nothing. And I do believe it was a

success. But perhaps I'm tiring you--." Pauline stood up irresolutely.

She had never been good at bedsides unless she could play some active

and masterful part there. Nona was aware that her mother's moments alone

with her had become increasingly difficult as her strength had returned,

and there was nothing more to be done for her. It was as well that the

Manfords were starting on their journey that evening.

"Don't stay, mother; I'm all right, really. It's only that things still

tire me a little--"

Pauline lingered, looking down on the girl with an expression of anxiety

struggling through her smooth rejuvenation.

"I wish I felt happier about leaving you, darling. I know you're all

right, of course; but the idea of your staying in this house all by

yourself--"

"It's just what I shall like. And on father's account you ought to get

away."

"It's what I feel," Pauline assented, brightening.

"You must be awfully busy with all the last things to be done. I'm as

comfortable as possible; I wish you'd just go off and forget about me."

"Well, Maisie is clamouring for me," Pauline confessed from the

threshold.

The door shut, and Nona closed her eyes with a sigh. Tomorrow--tomorrow

she would be alone! And in a week, perhaps, she would get back to

Cedarledge, and lie on the terrace with the dogs about her, and no one

to ask questions, to hint and sympathize, or be discreet and evasive...

Yes, in spite of everything, the idea of returning to Cedarledge now

seemed more bearable than any other...

In a restless attempt to ease her position she stretched her hand out,

and it came in contact with the bundle of newspaper cuttings. She shrank

back with a little grimace; then she smiled. After the night at

Cedarledge every one had supposed--even Maisie and Powder had--that the

Cardinal's reception would have to be given up, since, owing to his

Eminence's impending departure, it could not be deferred. But it had

come off on the appointed day--only the fourth after the burglary--and

Pauline had made it a success. The girl really admired her mother for

that. Something in her own composition responded to the energy with

which the older woman could meet an emergency when there was no way of

turning it. The party had been not only brilliant but entertaining.

Every one had been there, all the official and ecclesiastical

dignitaries, including the Bishop of New York and the Chief Rabbi--yes,

even the Scientific Initiate, looking colossal and Siberian in some

half-priestly dress that added its note to the general picturesqueness;

and yet there had been no crush, no confusion, nothing to detract from

the dignity and amenity of the evening. Nona suspected her mother of

longing to invite the Mahatma, whose Oriental garb would have been so

effective, and who would have been so flattered, poor man! But she had

not risked it, and her chief lion, after the great ecclesiastics, had

turned out to be Michelangelo, the newly arrived, with the film-glamour

enhancing his noble Roman beauty, and his mother at his side, explaining

and parading him.

"The pity is that dear Jim and Lita have sailed," the Marchesa declared

to all who would give ear. "That's really a great disappointment. I did

hope Lita would have been here tonight. She and my Michelangelo would

have made such a glorious couple: the Old World and the New. Or as

Antony and Cleopatra--only fancy! My boy tells me that Klawhammer is

looking for a Cleopatra. But dear Lita will be back before long--." And

she mingled her hopes and regrets with Mrs. Percy Landish's.

XXXII

NONA shut her eyes again. Ever since that intolerable night she had

ached with the incessant weariness of not being able to sleep, and of

trying to hide from those about her how brief her intervals of oblivion

had been. During the hours of darkness she seemed to be forever toiling

down perspectives of noise and glare, like a wanderer in the labyrinth

of an unknown city. Even her snatches of sleep were so crowded with

light and noise, so dazzled with the sense of exposure, that she was not

conscious of the respite till it was over. It was only by day, alone in

her room, that her lids, in closing, sometimes shut things out...

Such a respite came to her now; and she started up out of nothingness to

find her father at her side. She had not expected to see him alone

before they parted. She had fancied that her parents would contrive to

postpone their joint farewells till after dinner, just before driving

off to their train. For a moment she lay and looked up at Manford

without being clearly conscious that he was there, and without knowing

what to say if he were.

It appeared that he did not know either. Perhaps he had been led to her

side, almost in spite of himself, by a vague craving to be alone with

her just once before they parted; or perhaps he had come because he

suspected she might think he was afraid to. He sat down without speaking

in the chair which Pauline had left.

Dusk had fallen, and Nona was aware of the presence at her side only as

a shadowy bulk. After a while her father put out his hand and laid it on

hers.

"Why, it's nearly dark," she said. "You'll be off in an hour or so now."

"Yes. Your mother and I are dining early."

She wound her fingers into his, and they sat silent again. She liked to

have him near her in this way, but she was glad, for his sake and her

own, that the twilight made his face indistinct. She hoped their silence

might be unbroken. As long as she neither saw nor heard him there was an

unaccountable comfort in feeling him near--as if the living warmth he

imparted were something they shared indissolubly.

"In a couple of hours now--" he began, with an attempt at briskness. She

was silent, and he went on: "I wanted to be with you alone for a minute

like this. I wanted to say--"

"Father--."

He turned suddenly in his chair, and bending down over her pressed his

forehead against the coverlet. She freed her hand and passed it through

the thin hair on his temples.

"Don't. There's nothing to say."

She felt a tremor of his shoulders as they pressed against her, and the

tremor ran through her own body and seemed to loosen the fibres of her

heart.

"Old dad."

"Nona."

After that they remained again without speaking till a clock chimed out

from somewhere in the shadows. Manford got up. He gave himself one of

his impatient shakes, and stooped to kiss his daughter on the forehead.

"I don't believe I'll come up again before we go."

"No."

"It's no use--"

"No."

"I'll look after your mother--do all I can... Goodbye, dear."

"Goodbye, father."

He groped for her forehead again, and went out of the room; and she

closed her eyes and lay in the darkness, her heart folded like two hands

around the thought of him.

"Nona, darling!" There were still the goodbyes to her mother to be gone

through. Well, that would be comparatively easy; and in a lighted room

too, with Pauline on the threshold, slim, erect and consciously equipped

for travel--complete and wonderful! Yes; it would be almost easy.

"Child, it's time; we're off in a few minutes. But I think I've left

everything in order. Maisie's downstairs; she has all my directions, and

the list of stations to which she's to wire how you are while we're

crossing the continent."

"But, mother, I'm all right; it's not a bit necessary--"

"Dear! You can't help my wanting to hear about you."

"No; I know. I only meant you're not to worry."

"Of course I won't worry; I wouldn't _let_ myself worry. You know how I

feel about all that. And besides," added Mrs. Manford victoriously,

"what in the world is there to worry about?"

"Nothing," Nona acquiesced with a smile.

Pauline bent down and placed a lingering kiss where Manford's lips had

just brushed his daughter's forehead. Pauline played her part

better--and made it correspondingly easier for her fellow-actors to play

theirs.

"Goodbye, mother dear. Have all sorts of a good time, won't you?"

"It will be a very interesting trip--with a man as clever and cultivated

as your father... If only you could have come with us! But you'll

promise to join us in Egypt?"

"Don't ask me to promise anything yet, mother."

Pauline raised herself to her full height and stood looking down

intently at her daughter. Under her smooth new face Nona again seemed to

see the flicker of anxiety pass back and forward, like a light moving

from window to window in a long-uninhabited house. The glimpse startled

the girl and caught her by the heart. Suddenly something within her

broke up. Her lips tightened like a child's, and she felt the tears

running down her cheeks.

"Nona! You're not crying?" Pauline was kneeling at her side.

"It's nothing, mother--nothing. Go! Please go!"

"Darling--if I could only see you happy one of these days."

"Happy?"

"Well, I mean like other people. Married--" the mother hastily ventured.

Nona had brushed away her tears. She raised her head and looked straight

at Pauline.

"Married? Do you suppose being married would make me happy? I wonder why

you should! I don't want to marry--there's nobody in the world I would

marry." She continued to stare up at her mother with hard unwavering

eyes. "Marry! I'd a thousand times rather go into a convent and have

done with it," she exclaimed.

"A convent--Nona! Not a _convent_?"

Pauline had got to her feet and stood before her daughter with distress

and amazement breaking through every fissure of her paint. "I never

heard anything so horrible," she said.

Deeper than all her eclectic religiosity, deeper than her pride in

receiving the Cardinal, deeper than the superficial contradictions and

accommodations of a conscience grown elastic from too much use, Nona

watched, with a faint smile, the old Puritan terror of gliding priests

and incense and idolatry rise to the surface of her mother's face.

Perhaps that terror was the only solid fibre left in her.

"I sometimes think you want to break my heart, Nona. To tell me this

now! ... Go into a convent ..." the mother groaned.

The girl let her head drop back among the cushions.

"Oh, but I mean a convent where nobody believes in anything," she said.

THE END