"If I thought you believed that, Mademoiselle, if I thought you were like
so many of your countrywomen in this respect, I should leave to-morrow,"
he declared.
"Don't be too sure, Vicomte," she cautioned him.
If one possessed a sense of humour and a certain knowledge of mankind,
the spectacle of a young and successful Wall Street broker at Silverdale
that week was apt to be diverting. Mr. Spence held his own. He advised
the architect to make a specialty of country houses, and promised some
day to order one: he disputed boldly with the other young man as to the
practical uses of settlement work, and even measured swords with the
missionary. Needless to say, he was not popular with these gentlemen. But
he was also good-natured and obliging, and he did not object to repeating
for the English lady certain phrases which she called "picturesque
expressions," and which she wrote down with a gold pencil.
It is evident, from the Vicomte's remarks, that he found time to continue
Honora's lessons in golf--or rather that she found time, in the midst of
her manifold and self-imposed duties, to take them. And in this diversion
she was encouraged by Mrs. Holt herself. On Saturday morning, the heat
being unusual, they ended their game by common consent at the fourth hole
and descended a wood road to Silver Brook, to a spot which they had
visited once before and had found attractive. Honora, after bathing her
face in the pool, perched herself on a boulder. She was very fresh and
radiant.
This fact, if she had not known it, she might have gathered from Mr.
Silence's expression. He had laid down his coat; his sleeves were rolled
up and his arms were tanned, and he stood smoking a cigarette and gazing
at her with approbation. She lowered her eyes.
"Well, we've had a pretty good time, haven't we?" he remarked.
Lightning sometimes fails in its effect, but the look she flashed back at
him from under her blue lashes seldom misses.
"I'm afraid I haven't been a very apt pupil," she replied modestly.
"You're on the highroad to a cup," he assured her. "If I could take you
on for another week" He paused, and an expression came into his eyes
which was not new to Honora, nor peculiar to Mr. Silence. "I have to go
back to town on Monday."
If Honora felt any regret at this announcement, she did not express it.
"I thought you couldn't stand Silverdale much longer," she replied.
"You know why I stayed," he said, and paused again--rather awkwardly for
Mr. Spence. But Honora was silent. "I had a letter this morning from my
partner, Sidney Dallam, calling me back."
"I suppose you are very busy," said Honora, detaching a copper-green
scale of moss from the boulder.
"The fact is," he explained, "that we have received an order of
considerable importance, for which I am more or less responsible.
Something of a compliment--since we are, after all, comparatively young
men."
"Sometimes," said Honora, "sometimes I wish I were a man. Women are so
hampered and circumscribed, and have to wait for things to happen to
them. A man can do what he wants. He can go into Wall Street and fight
until he controls miles of railroads and thousands and thousands of men.
That would be a career!"
"Yes," he agreed, smilingly, "it's worth fighting for."
Her eyes were burning with a strange light as she looked down the vista
of the wood road by which they had come. He flung his cigarette into the
water and took a step nearer her.
"How long have I known you?" he asked.
She started.
"Why, it's only a little more than a week," she said.
"Does it seem longer than that to you?"
"Yes," admitted Honora, colouring; "I suppose it's because we've been
staying in the same house."
"It seems to me," said Mr. Spence, "that I have known you always."
Honora sat very still. It passed through her brain, without comment, that
there was a certain haunting familiarity about this remark; some other
voice, in some other place, had spoken it, and in very much the same
tone.
"You're the kind of girl I admire," he declared. "I've been watching
you--more than you have any idea of. You're adaptable. Put you down any
place, and you take hold. For instance, it's a marvellous thing to me how
you've handled all the curiosities up there this week."
"Oh, I like people," said Honora, "they interest me." And she laughed a
little, nervously. She was aware that Mr. Spence was making love, in his
own manner: the New fork manner, undoubtedly; though what he said was
changed by the new vibrations in his voice. He was making love, too, with
a characteristic lack of apology and with assurance. She stole a glance
at him, and beheld the image of a dominating man of affairs. He did not,
it is true, evoke in her that extreme sensation which has been called a
thrill. She had read somewhere that women were always expecting thrills,
and never got them. Nevertheless, she had not realized how close a bond
of sympathy had grown between them until this sudden announcement of his
going back to New York. In a little while she too would be leaving for
St. Louis. The probability that she would never see him again seemed
graver than she would have believed.
"Will you miss me a little?" he asked.
"Oh, yes," she said breathlessly, "and I shall be curious to know how
your--your enterprise succeeds."
"Honora," he said, "it is only a week since I first met you, but I know
my own mind. You are the woman I want, and I think I may say without
boasting that I can give you what you desire in life--after a while. I
love you. You are young, and just now I felt that perhaps I should have
waited a year before speaking, but I was afraid of missing altogether
what I know to be the great happiness of my life. Will you marry me?"
She sat silent upon the rock. She heard him speak, it is true; but, try
as she would, the full significance of his words would not come to her.
She had, indeed, no idea that he would propose, no notion that his heart
was involved to such an extent. He was very near her, but he had not
attempted to touch her. His voice, towards the end of his speech, had
trembled with passion--a true note had been struck. And she had struck
it, by no seeming effort! He wished to marry her!
He aroused her again.
"I have frightened you," he said.
She opened her eyes. What he beheld in them was not fright--it was
nothing he had ever seen before. For the first time in his life, perhaps,
he was awed. And, seeing him helpless, she put out her hands to him with
a gesture that seemed to enhance her gift a thousand-fold. He had not
realized what he was getting.
"I am not frightened," she said. "Yes, I will marry you."
He was not sure whether--so brief was the moment!--he had held and kissed
her cheek. His arms were empty now, and he caught a glimpse of her poised
on the road above him amidst the quivering, sunlit leaves, looking back
at him over her shoulder.
He followed her, but she kept nimbly ahead of him until they came out
into the open golf course. He tried to think, but failed. Never in his
orderly life had anything so precipitate happened to him. He caught up
with her, devoured her with his eyes, and beheld in marriage a delirium.
"Honora," he said thickly, "I can't grasp it."
She gave him a quick look, and a smile quivered at the corners of her
mouth.
"What are you thinking of?" he asked.
"I am thinking of Mrs. Holt's expression when we tell her," said Honora.
"But we shan't tell her yet, shall we, Howard? We'll have it for our own
secret a little while."
The golf course being deserted, he pressed her arm.
"We'll tell her whenever you like, dear," he replied.
In spite of the fact that they drove Joshua's trotter to lunch--much too
rapidly in the heat of the day, they were late.
"I shall never be able to go in there and not give it away," he whispered
to her on the stairs.
"You look like the Cheshire cat in the tree," whispered Honora, laughing,
"only more purple, and not so ghostlike."
"I know I'm smiling," replied Howard, "I feel like it, but I can't help
it. It won't come off. I want to blurt out the news to every one in the
dining-room--to that little Frenchman, in particular."
Honora laughed again. Her imagination easily summoned up the tableau
which such a proceeding would bring forth. The incredulity, the chagrin,
the indignation, even, in some quarters. He conceived the household, with
the exception of the Vicomte, precipitating themselves into his arms.
Honora, who was cool enough herself (no doubt owing to the superior
training which women receive in matters of deportment), observed that his
entrance was not a triumph of dissimulation. His colour was high, and his
expression, indeed, a little idiotic; and he declared afterwards that he
felt like a sandwich-man, with the news printed in red letters before and
behind. Honora knew that the intense improbability of the truth would
save them, and it did. Mrs. Holt remarked, slyly, that the game of golf
must have hidden attractions, and regretted that she was too old to learn
it.
"We went very slowly on account of the heat," Howard declared.
"I should say that you had gone very rapidly, from your face," retorted
Mrs. Holt. In relaxing moods she indulged in banter.
Honora stepped into the breach. She would not trust her newly acquired
fiance to extricate himself.
"We were both very much worried, Mrs. Holt," she explained, "because we
were late for lunch once before."
"I suppose I'll have to forgive you, my dear, especially with that
colour. I am modern enough to approve of exercise for young girls, and I
am sure your Aunt Mary will think Silverdale has done you good when I
send you back to her."
"Oh, I'm sure she will," said Honora.
In the meantime Mr. Spence was concentrating all of his attention upon a
jellied egg. Honora glanced at the Vicomte. He sat very stiff, and his
manner of twisting his mustache reminded her of an animal sharpening its
claws. It was at this moment that the butler handed her a telegram,
which, with Mrs. Holt's permission, she opened and read twice before the
meaning of it came to her.
"I hope it is no bad news, Honora," said Mrs. Holt.
"It's from Peter Erwin," she replied, still a little dazed. "He's in New
York. And he's corning up on the five o'clock train to spend an hour with
me."
"Oh," said Susan; "I remember his picture on your bureau at Sutcliffe. He
had such a good face. And you told me about him."
"He is like my brother," Honora explained, aware that Howard was looking
at her. "Only he is much older than I. He used to wheel me up and down
when I was a baby. He was, an errand boy in the bank then, and Uncle Tom
took an interest in him, and now he is a lawyer. A very good one, I
believe."
"I have a great respect for any man who makes his own way in life," said
Mrs. Holt. "And since he is such an old friend, my dear, you must ask him
to spend the night."
"Oh, thank you, Mrs. Bolt," Honora answered.
It was, however, with mingled feelings that she thought of Peter's
arrival at this time. Life, indeed, was full of strange coincidences!
There was a little door that led out of the house by the billiard room,
Honora remembered, and contrived, after luncheon, to slip away and reach
it. She felt that she must be alone, and if she went to her room she was
likely to be disturbed by Susan or Mrs. Joshua--or indeed Mrs. Holt
herself. Honora meant to tell Susan the first of all. She crossed the
great lawn quickly, keeping as much as possible the trees and masses of
shrubbery between herself and the house, and reached the forest. With a
really large fund of energy at her disposal, Honora had never been one to
believe in the useless expenditure of it; nor did she feel the intense
desire which a girl of another temperament might have had, under the same
conditions, to keep in motion. So she sat down on a bench within the
borders of the wood.
It was not that she wished to reflect, in the ordinary meaning of the
word, that she had sought seclusion, but rather to give her imagination
free play. The enormity of the change that was to come into her life did
not appall her in the least; but she had, in connection with it, a sense
of unreality which, though not unpleasant, she sought unconsciously to
dissipate. Howard Spence, she reflected with a smile, was surely solid
and substantial enough, and she thought of him the more tenderly for the
possession of these attributes. A castle founded on such a rock was not a
castle in Spain!
It did not occur to Honora that her thoughts might be more of the castle
than of the rock: of the heaven he was to hold on his shoulders than of
the Hercules she had chosen to hold it.
She would write to her Aunt Mary and her Uncle Tom that very afternoon
--one letter to both. Tears came into her eyes when she thought of them,
and of their lonely life' without her. But they would come on to New York
to visit her often, and they would be proud of her. Of one thing she was
sure--she must go home to them at once--on Tuesday. She would tell Mrs.
Holt to-morrow, and Susan to-night. And, while pondering over the
probable expression of that lady's amazement, it suddenly occurred to her
that she must write the letter immediately, because Peter Erwin was
coming.
What would he say? Should she tell him? She was surprised to find that
the idea of doing so was painful to her. But she was aroused from these
reflections by a step on the path, and raised her head to perceive the
Vicomte. His face wore an expression of triumph.
"At last," he cried, "at last!" And he sat down on the bench beside her.
Her first impulse was to rise, yet for some inexplicable reason she
remained.
"I always suspected in you the qualities of a Monsieur Lecoq," she
remarked. "You have an instinct for the chase."
"Mon dieu?" he said. "I have risked a stroke of the sun to find you. Why
should you so continually run away from me?"
"To test your ingenuity, Vicomte."
"And that other one--the stock-broker--you do not avoid him. Diable, I am
not blind, Mademoiselle. It is plain to me at luncheon that you have made
boil the sluggish blood of that one. As for me--"
"Your boiling-point is lower," she said, smiling.
"Listen, Mademoiselle," he pursued, bending towards her. "It is not for my
health that I stay here, as I have told you. It is for the sight of you,
for the sound of the music of that low voice. It is in the hope that you
will be a little kinder, that you will understand me a little better. And
to-day, when I learn that still another is on his way to see you, I could
sit still no longer. I do not fear that Spence,--no. But this other--what
is he like?"
"He is the best type of American," replied Honora. "I am sure you will be
interested in him, and like him."
The Vicomte shrugged his shoulders.
"It is not in America that you will find your destiny, Mademoiselle. You
are made to grace a salon, a court, which you will not find in this
country. Such a woman as you is thrown away here. You possess
qualities--you will pardon me--in which your countrywomen are lacking,
--esprit, imagination, elan, the power to bind people to you. I have read
you as you have not read yourself. I have seen how you have served
yourself by this famille Holt, and how at the same time you have kept
their friendship."
"Vicomte!" she exclaimed.
"Ah, do not get angry," he begged; "such gifts are rare--they are
sublime. They lead," he added, raising his arms, "to the heights."
Honora was silent. She was, indeed, not unmoved by his voice, into which
there was creeping a vibrant note of passion. She was a little
frightened, but likewise puzzled and interested. This was all so
different from what she had expected of him. What did he mean? Was she
indeed like that?
She was aware that he was speaking again, that he was telling her of a
chateau in France which his ancestors had owned since the days of Louis
XII; a grey pile that stood upon a thickly wooded height,--a chateau with
a banquet hall, where kings had dined, with a chapel where kings had
prayed, with a flowering terrace high above a gleaming river. It was
there that his childhood had been passed. And as he spoke, she listened
with mingled feelings, picturing the pageantry of life in such a place.
"I tell you this, Mademoiselle," he said, "that you may know I am not
what you call an adventurer. Many of these, alas! come to your country.
And I ask you to regard with some leniency customs which must be strange
to Americans. When we marry in France, it is with a dot, and especially
is it necessary amongst the families of our nobility."
Honora rose, the blood mounting to her temples.
"Mademoiselle," he cried, "do not misunderstand me. I would die rather
than hurt your feelings. Listen, I pray. It was to tell you frankly that
I came to this country for that purpose,--in order that I might live as
my ancestors have lived, with a hotel in Paris: But the chateau, grace a
dieu, is not mortgaged, nor am I wholly impoverished. I have soixante
quinze mille livres de rente, which is fifteen thousand dollars a year in
your money, and which goes much farther in France. At the proper time, I
will present these matters to your guardians. I have lived, but I have a
heart, and I love you madly. Rather would I dwell with you in Provence,
where I will cultivate the soil of my forefathers, than a palace on the
Champs Elysees with another. We can come to Paris for two months, at
least. For you I can throw my prospects out of the window with a light
heart. Honore--how sweet is your name in my language--I love you to
despair."
He seized her hand and pressed it to his lips, but she drew it gently
away. It seemed to her that he had made the very air quiver with feeling,
and she let herself wonder, for a moment, what life with him would be.
Incredible as it seemed, he had proposed to her, a penniless girl! Her
own voice was not quite steady as she answered him, and her eyes were
filled with compassion.
"Vicomte," she said, "I did not know that you cared for me--that way. I
thought--I thought you were amusing yourself."
"Amusing myself!" he exclaimed bitterly. "And you--were you amusing
yourself?"
"I--I tried to avoid you," she replied, in a low voice.
"I am engaged."
"Engaged!" He sprang to his feet. "Engaged! Ah, no, I will not believe
it. You were engaged when you came here?"
She was no little alarmed by the violence which he threw into his words.
At the same time, she was indignant. And yet a mischievous sprite within
her led her on to tell him the truth.
"No, I am going to marry Mr. Howard Spence, although I do not wish it
announced."
For a moment he stood motionless, speechless, staring at her, and then he
seemed to sway a little and to choke.
"No, no," he cried, "it cannot be! My ears have deceived me. I am not
sane. You are going to marry him--? Ah, you have sold yourself."
"Monsieur de Toqueville," she said, "you forget yourself. Mr. Spence is
an honourable man, and I love him."
The Vicomte appeared to choke again. And then, suddenly, he became
himself, although his voice was by no means natural. His elaborate and
ironic bow she remembered for many years.
"Pardon, Mademoiselle," he said, "and adieu. You will be good enough to
convey my congratulations to Mr. Spence."
With a kind of military "about face" he turned and left her abruptly, and
she watched him as he hurried across the lawn until he had disappeared
behind the trees near the house. When she sat down on the bench again,
she found that she was trembling a little. Was the unexpected to occur to
her from now on? Was it true, as the Vicomte had said, that she was
destined to be loved amidst the play of drama?
She felt sorry for him because he had loved her enough to fling to the
winds his chances of wealth for her sake--a sufficient measure of the
feelings of one of his nationality and caste. And she permitted, for an
instant, her mind to linger on the supposition that Howard Spence had
never come into her life; might she not, when the Vicomte had made his
unexpected and generous avowal, have accepted him? She thought of the
romances of her childish days, written at fever heat, in which ladies
with titles moved around and gave commands and rebuked lovers who slipped
in through wicket gates. And to think that she might have been a
Vicomtesse and have lived in a castle!
A poor Vicomtesse, it is true.
CHAPTER XI
WHAT MIGHT HAVE BEEN
Honora sat still upon the bench. After an indefinite period she saw
through the trees a vehicle on the driveway, and in it a single
passenger. And suddenly it occurred to her that the passenger must be
Peter, for Mrs. Holt had announced her intention of sending for him. She
arose and approached the house, not without a sense of agitation.
She halted a moment at a little distance from the porch, where he was
talking with Howard Spence and Joshua, and the fact that he was an
unchanged Peter came to her with a shock of surprise. So much, in less
than a year, had happened to Honora! And the sight of him, and the sound
of his voice, brought back with a rush memories of a forgotten past. How
long it seemed since she had lived in St. Louis!
Yes, he was the same Peter, but her absence from him had served to
sharpen her sense of certain characteristics. He was lounging in his
chair with his long legs crossed, with one hand in his pocket, and talking
to these men as though he had known them always. There was a quality
about him which had never struck her before, and which eluded exact
definition. It had never occurred to her, until now, when she saw him out
of the element with which she had always associated him, that Peter Erwin
had a personality. That personality was a mixture of simplicity and
self-respect and--common sense. And as Honora listened to his cheerful
voice, she perceived that he had the gift of expressing himself clearly
and forcibly and withal modestly; nor did it escape her that the other
two men were listening with a certain deference. In her sensitive state
she tried to evade the contrast thus suddenly presented to her between
Peter and the man she had promised, that very morning, to marry.
Howard Spence was seated on the table, smoking a cigarette. Never, it
seemed, had he more distinctly typified to her Prosperity. An attribute
which she had admired in him, of strife without the appearance of strife,
lost something of its value. To look at Peter was to wonder whether there
could be such a thing as a well-groomed combatant; and until to-day she
had never thought of Peter as a combatant. The sight of his lean face
summoned, all undesired, the vague vision of an ideal, and perhaps it was
this that caused her voice to falter a little as she came forward and
called his name. He rose precipitately.
"What a surprise, Peter!" she said, as she took his hand. "How do you
happen to be in the East?"
"An errand boy," he replied. "Somebody had to come, so they chose me.
Incidentally," he added, smiling down at her, "it is a part of my
education."
"We thought you were lost," said Howard Spence, significantly.
"Oh, no," she answered lightly, evading his look. "I was on the bench at
the edge of the wood." She turned again to Peter. "How good of you to
come up and see me!"
"I couldn't have resisted that," he declared, "if it were only for an
hour."
"I've been trying to persuade him to stay a while with us," Joshua put in
with unusual graciousness. "My mother will be disappointed not to see
you."
"There is nothing I should like better, Mr. Holt," said Peter, simply,
gazing off across the lawn. "Unfortunately I have to leave for the West
to-night."
"Before you go," said Honora, "you must see this wonderful place. Come,
we'll begin with the garden."
She had a desire now to take him away by himself, something she had
wished, an hour ago, to avoid.
"Wouldn't you like a runabout?" suggested Joshua, hospitably.
Honora thanked him.
"I'm sure Mr. Erwin would rather walk," she replied.
"Come, Peter, you must tell me all the news of home."
Spence accepted his dismissal with a fairly good grace, and gave no
evidence of jealousy. He put his hand on Peter's shoulder.
"If you're ever in New York, Erwin," said he, "look me up Dallam and
Spence. We're members of the Exchange, so you won't have any trouble in
finding us. I'd like to talk to you sometime about the West."
Peter thanked him.
For a little while, as they went down the driveway side by side, he was
meditatively silent. She wondered what he thought of Howard Spence, until
suddenly she remembered that her secret was still her own, that Peter had
as yet no particular reason to single out Mr. Spence for especial
consideration. She could not, however, resist saying, "New Yorkers are
like that."
"Like what?" he asked.
She coloured.
"Like--Mr. Spence. A little--self-assertive, sure of themselves." She
strove to keep out of her voice any suspicion of the agitation which was
the result of the events of an extraordinary day, not yet ended. She knew
that it would have been wiser not to have mentioned Howard; but Peter's
silence, somehow, had impelled her to speak. "He has made quite an
unusual success for so young a man."
Peter looked at her and shook his head.
"New York--success! What is to become of poor old St. Louis?" he
inquired.
"Oh, I'm going back next week," Honora cried. "I wish I were going with
you."
"And leave all this," he said incredulously, "for trolley rides and
Forest Park and--and me?"
He stopped in the garden path and looked upon the picture she made
standing in the sunlight against the blazing borders, her wide hat
casting a shadow on her face. And the smile which she had known so well
since childhood, indulgent, quizzical, with a touch of sadness, was in
his eyes. She was conscious of a slight resentment. Was there, in fact,
no change in her as the result of the events of those momentous ten
months since she had seen him? And rather than a tolerance in which there
was neither antagonism nor envy, she would have preferred from Peter an
open disapproval of luxury, of the standards which he implied were hers.
She felt that she had stepped into another world, but he refused to be
dazzled by it. He insisted upon treating her as the same Honora.
"How did you leave Uncle Tom and Aunt Mary?" she asked.
They were counting the days, he said, until she should return, but they
did not wish to curtail her visit. They did not expect her next week, he
knew.
Honora coloured again.
"I feel--that I ought to go to them," she said.
He glanced at her as though her determination to leave Silverdale so soon
surprised him.
"They will be very happy to see you, Honora," he said. "They have been
very lonesome."
She softened. Some unaccountable impulse prompted her to ask: "And you?
Have you missed me--a little?"
He did not answer, and she saw that he was profoundly affected. She laid
a hand upon his arm.
"Oh, Peter, I didn't mean that," she cried. "I know you have. And I have
missed you--terribly. It seems so strange seeing you here," she went on
hurriedly. "There are so many' things I want to show you. Tell me how it
happened hat you came on to New York."
"Somebody in the firm had to come," he said.
"In the firm!" she repeated. She did not grasp the full meaning of this
change in his status, but she remembered that Uncle Tom had predicted it
one day, and that it was an honour. "I never knew any one so secretive
about their own affairs! Why didn't you write me you had been admitted to
the firm? So you are a partner of Judge Brice."
"Brice, Graves, and Erwin," said Peter; "it sounds very grand, doesn't
it? I can't get used to it myself."
"And what made you call yourself an errand boy?" she exclaimed
reproachfully. "When I go back to the house I intend to tell Joshua Holt
and--and Mr. Spence that you are a great lawyer."
Peter laughed.
"You'd better wait a few years before you say that," said he.
He took an interest in everything he saw, in Mr. Holt's flowers, in
Joshua's cow barn, which they traversed, and declared, if he were ever
rich enough, he would live in the country. They walked around the pond,
--fringed now with yellow water-lilies on their floating green pads,
--through the woods, and when the shadows were lengthening came out at
the little summer-house over the valley of Silver Brook--the scene of
that first memorable encounter with the Vicomte. At the sight of it the
episode, and much else of recent happening, rushed back into Honora's
mind, and she realized with suddenness that she had, in his
companionship, unconsciously been led far afield and in pleasant places.
Comparisons seemed inevitable.
She watched him with an unwonted tugging at her heart as he stood for a
long time by the edge of the railing, gazing over the tree-tops of the
valley towards the distant hazy hills. Nor did she understand what it was
in him that now, on this day of days when she had definitely cast the die
of life, when she had chosen her path, aroused this strange emotion. Why
had she never felt it before? She had thought his face homely--now it
seemed to shine with a transfiguring light. She recalled, with a pang,
that she had criticised his clothes: to-day they seemed the expression of
the man himself. Incredible is the range of human emotion! She felt a
longing to throw herself into his arms, and to weep there.
He turned at length from the view.
"How wonderful!" he said.
"I didn't know--you cared for nature so much, Peter."
He looked at her strangely and put out his hand and drew her,
unresisting, to the bench beside him.
"Are you in trouble, Honora?" he asked.
"Oh, no," she cried, "oh, no, I am--very happy."
"You may have thought it odd that I should have come here without knowing
Mrs. Holt," he said gravely, "particularly when you were going home so
soon. I do not know myself why I came. I am a matter-of-fact person, but
I acted on an impulse."
"An impulse!" she faltered, avoiding the troubled, searching look in his
eyes.
"Yes," he said, "an impulse. I can call it by no other name. I should
have taken a train that leaves New York at noon; but I had a feeling this
morning, which seemed almost like a presentiment, that I might be of some
use to you."
"This morning?" She felt herself trembling, and she scarcely recognized
Peter with such words on his lips. "I am happy--indeed I am. Only--I am
overwrought--seeing you again--and you made me think of home."
"It was no doubt very foolish of me," he declared. "And if my coming has
upset you--"
"Oh, no," she cried. "Please don't think so. It has given me a sense
of--of security. That you were ready to help me if--if I needed you."
"You should always have known that," he replied. He rose and stood gazing
off down the valley once more, and she watched him with her heart
beating, with a sense of an impending crisis which she seemed powerless
to stave off. And presently he turned to her, "Honora, I have loved you
for many years," he said. "You were too young for me to speak of it. I
did not intend to speak of it when I came here to-day. For many years I
have hoped that some day you might be my wife. My one fear has been that
I might lose you. Perhaps--perhaps it has been a dream. But I am willing
to wait, should you wish to see more of the world. You are young yet, and
I am offering myself for all time. There is no other woman for me, and
never can be."
He paused and smiled down at her. But she did not speak. She could not.
"I know," he went on, "that you are ambitious. And with your gifts I do
not blame you. I cannot offer you great wealth, but I say with confidence
that I can offer you something better, something surer. I can take care
of you and protect you, and I will devote my life to your happiness. Will
you marry me?"
Her eyes were sparkling with tears,--tears, he remembered afterwards,
that were like blue diamonds.
"Oh, Peter," she cried, "I wish I could! I have always--wished that I
could. I can't."
"You can't?"
She shook her head.
"I--I have told no one yet--not even Aunt Mary. I am going to marry Mr.
Spence."
For a long time he was silent, and she did not dare to look at the
suffering in his face.
"Honora," he said at last, "my most earnest wish in life will be for your
happiness. And whatever may, come to you I hope that you will remember
that I am your friend, to be counted on. And that I shall not change.
Will you remember that?"
"Yes," she whispered. She looked at him now, and through the veil of her
tears she seemed to see his soul shining in his eyes. The tones of a
distant church bell were borne to them on the valley breeze.
Peter glanced at his watch.
"I am afraid," he said, "that I haven't time to go back to the house--my
train goes at seven. Can I get down to the village through the valley?"
Honora pointed out the road, faintly perceptible through the trees
beneath them.
"And you will apologize for my departure to Mrs. Holt?"
She nodded. He took her hand, pressed it, and was gone. And presently, in
a little clearing far below, he turned and waved his hat at her bravely.
CHAPTER XII
WHICH CONTAINS A SURPRISE FOR MRS. HOLT
How long she sat gazing with unseeing eyes down the valley Honora did not
know. Distant mutterings of thunder aroused her; the evening sky had
darkened, and angry-looking clouds of purple were gathering over the
hills. She rose and hurried homeward. She had thought to enter by the
billiard-room door, and so gain her own chamber without encountering the
household; but she had reckoned without her hostess. Beyond the billiard
room, in the little entry filled with potted plants, she came face to
face with that lady, who was inciting a footman to further efforts in his
attempt to close a recalcitrant skylight. Honora proved of more interest,
and Mrs. Holt abandoned the skylight.
"Why, my dear," she said, "where have you been all afternoon?"
"I--I have been walking with Mr. Erwin, Mrs. Holt. I have been showing
him Silverdale."
"And where is he? It seems to me I invited him to stay all night, and
Joshua tells me he extended the invitation."
"We were in the little summer-house, and suddenly he discovered that it
was late and he had to catch the seven o'clock train," faltered Honora,
somewhat disconnectedly. "Otherwise he would have come to you himself and
told you--how much he regretted not staying. He has to go to St. Louis
to-night."
"Well," said Mrs. Holt, "this is an afternoon of surprises. The Vicomte
has gone off, too, without even waiting to say good-by."
"The Vicomte!" exclaimed Honora.
"Didn't you see him, either, before he left?" inquired Mrs. Holt; "I
thought perhaps you might be able to give me some further explanation of
it."
"I?" exclaimed Honora. She felt ready to sink through the floor, and Mrs.
Holt's delft-blue eyes haunted her afterwards like a nightmare.
"Didn't you see him, my dear? Didn't he tell you anything?"
"He--he didn't say he was going away."
"Did he seem disturbed about anything?" Mrs. Holt insisted.
"Now I think of it, he did seem a little disturbed."
"To save my life," said Mrs. Holt, "I can't understand it. He left a note
for me saying that he had received a telegram, and that he had to go at
once. I was at a meeting of my charity board. It seems a very strange
proceeding for such an agreeable and polite man as the Vicomte, although
he had his drawbacks, as all Continentals have. And at times I thought he
was grave and moody,--didn't you?"
"Oh, yes, he was moody," Honora agreed eagerly.
"You noticed it, too," said Mrs. Holt. "But he was a charming man, and so
interested in America and in the work we are doing. But I can't
understand about the telegram. I had Carroll inquire of every servant in
the house, and there is no knowledge of a telegram having come up from
the village this afternoon."
"Perhaps the Vicomte might have met the messenger in the grounds,"
hazarded Honora.
At this point their attention was distracted by a noise that bore a
striking resemblance to a suppressed laugh. The footman on the
step-ladder began to rattle the skylight vigorously.
"What on earth is the matter with you, Woods?" said Mrs. Holt.
"It must have been some dust off the skylight, Madam, that got into my
throat," he stammered, the colour of a geranium.
"Nonsense," said Mrs. Holt, "there is no dust on the skylight."
"It may be I swallowed the wrong way, looking up like, as I was, Madam,"
he ventured, rubbing the frame and looking at his finger to prove his
former theory.
"You are very stupid not to be able to close it," she declared; "in a few
minutes the place will be flooded. Tell Carroll to come and do it."
Honora suffered herself to be led limply through the library and up the
stairs into Mrs. Holt's own boudoir, where a maid was closing the windows
against the first great drops of the storm, which the wind was pelting
against them. She drew the shades deftly, lighted the gas, and retired.
Honora sank down in one of the upholstered light blue satin chairs and
gazed at the shining brass of the coal grate set in the marble mantel,
above which hung an engraving of Sir Joshua Reynolds' cherubs. She had an
instinct that the climax of the drama was at hand.
Mrs. Holt sat down in the chair opposite.
"My dear," she began, "I told you the other day what an unexpected and
welcome comfort and help you have been to me. You evidently inherit"
(Mrs. Holt coughed slightly) "the art of entertaining and pleasing, and I
need not warn you, my dear, against the dangers of such a gift. Your aunt
has evidently brought you up with strictness and religious care. You have
been very fortunate."
"Indeed I have, Mrs. Holt," echoed Honora, in bewilderment.
"And Susan," continued Mrs. Holt, "useful and willing as she is, does not
possess your gift of taking people off my hands and entertaining them."
Honora could think of no reply to this. Her eyes--to which no one could
be indifferent--were riveted on the face of her hostess, and how was the
good lady to guess that her brain was reeling?
I was about to say, my dear, that I expect to have a great deal of--well,
of rather difficult company this summer. Next week, for instance, some
prominent women in the Working Girls' Relief Society are coming, and on
July the twenty-third I give a garden party for the delegates to the
Charity Conference in New York. The Japanese Minister has promised to pay
me a visit, and Sir Rupert Grant, who built those remarkable tuberculosis
homes in England, you know, is arriving in August with his family. Then
there are some foreign artists."
"Oh, Mrs. Holt," exclaimed Honora; "how many interesting people you see!"
"Exactly, my dear. And I thought that, in addition to the fact that I
have grown very fond of you, you would be very useful to me here, and
that a summer with me might not be without its advantages. As your aunt
will have you until you are married, which, I may say, without denying
your attractions, is likely to be for some time, I intend to write to her
to-night--with your consent--and ask her to allow you to remain with me
all summer."
Honora sat transfixed, staring painfully at the big pendant ear-rings.
"It is so kind of you, Mrs. Holt--" she faltered.
"I can realize, my dear, that you would wish to get back to your aunt.
The feeling does you infinite credit. But, on the other hand, besides the
advantages which would accrue to you, it might, to put the matter
delicately, be of a little benefit to your relations, who will have to
think of your future."
"Indeed, it is good of you, but I must go back, Mrs. Holt."
"Of course," said Mrs. Holt, with a touch of dignity--for ere now people
had left Silverdale before she wished them to--"of course, if you do not
care to stay, that is quite another thing."
"Oh, Mrs. Holt, don't say that!" cried Honora, her face burning; "I
cannot thank you enough for the pleasure you have given me. If--if things
were different, I would stay with you gladly, although I should miss my
family. But now,--now I feel that I must be with them. I--I am engaged to
be married."
Honora still remembers the blank expression which appeared on the
countenance of her hostess when she spoke these words. Mrs. Holt's cheeks
twitched, her ear-rings quivered, and her bosom heaved-once.
"Engaged to be married!" she gasped.
"Yes," replied our heroine, humbly, "I was going to tell you--to-morrow."
"I suppose," said Mrs. Holt, after a silence, "it is to the young man who
was here this afternoon, and whom I did not see. It accounts for his
precipitate departure. But I must say, Honora, since frankness is one of
my faults, that I feel it my duty to write to your aunt and disclaim all
responsibility."
"It is not to Mr. Erwin," said Honora, meekly; "it is--it is to Mr.
Spence."
Mrs. Holt seemed to find difficulty in speaking, Her former symptoms,
which Honora had come to recognize as indicative of agitation, returned
with alarming intensity. And when at length her voice made itself heard,
it was scarcely recognizable.
"You are engaged--to--Howard Spence?"
"Oh, Mrs. Holt," exclaimed Honora, "it was as great a surprise to me
--believe me--as it is to you."
But even the knowledge that they shared a common amazement did not
appear, at once, to assuage Mrs. Holt's emotions.
"Do you love him?" she demanded abruptly.
Whereupon Honora burst into tears.
"Oh, Mrs. Holt," she sobbed, "how can you ask?"
From this time on the course of events was not precisely logical. Mrs.
Holt, setting in abeyance any ideas she may have had about the affair,
took Honora in her arms, and against that ample bosom was sobbed out the
pent-up excitement and emotion of an extraordinary day.
"There, there, my dear," said Mrs. Holt, stroking the dark hair, "I
should not have asked you that-forgive me." And the worthy lady,
quivering with sympathy now, remembered the time of her own engagement to
Joshua. And the fact that the circumstances of that event differed
somewhat from those of the present--in regularity, at least, increased
rather than detracted from Mrs. Holt's sudden access of tenderness. The
perplexing questions as to the probable result of such a marriage were
swept away by a flood of feeling. "There, there, my dear, I did not mean
to be harsh. What you told me was such a shock--such a surprise, and
marriage is such a grave and sacred thing."
"I know it," sobbed Honora.
"And you are very young."
"Yes, Mrs. Holt."
"And it happened in my house."
"No," said Honora, "it happened--near the golf course."
Mrs. Holt smiled, and wiped her eyes.
"I mean, my dear, that I shall always feel responsible for bringing you
together---for your future happiness. That is a great deal. I could have
wished that you both had taken longer to reflect, but I hope with all my
heart that you will be happy."
Honora lifted up a tear-stained face.
"He said it was because I was going away that--that he spoke," she said.
"Oh, Mrs. Holt, I knew that you would be kind about it."
"Of course I am kind about it, my dear," said Mrs. Holt. "As I told you,
I have grown to have an affection for you. I feel a little as though you
belonged to me. And after this--this event, I expect to see a great deal
of you. Howard Spence's mother was a very dear friend of mine. I was one
of the first who knew her when she came to New York, from Troy, a widow,
to educate her son. She was a very fine and a very courageous woman."
Mrs. Holt paused a moment. "She hoped that Howard would be a lawyer."
"A lawyer!" Honora repeated.
"I lost sight of him for several years," continued Mrs. Holt, "but before
I invited him here I made some inquiries about him from friends of mine
in the financial world. I find that he is successful for so young a man,
and well thought of. I have no doubt he will make a good husband, my
dear, although I could wish he were not on the Stock Exchange. And I hope
you will make him happy."
Whereupon the good lady kissed Honora, and dismissed her to dress for
dinner.
"I shall write to your aunt at once," she said.
........................
Requited love, unsettled condition that it is supposed to bring, did not
interfere with Howard Spence's appetite at dinner. His spirits, as usual,
were of the best, and from time to time Honora was aware of his glance.
Then she lowered her eyes. She sat as in a dream; and, try as she might,
her thoughts would not range themselves. She seemed to see him but dimly,
to hear what he said faintly; and it conveyed nothing to her mind.
This man was to be her husband! Over and over she repeated it to herself.
His name was Howard Spence, and he was on the highroad to riches and
success, and she was to live in New York. Ten days before he had not
existed for her. She could not bring herself to believe that he existed
now. Did she love him? How could she love him, when she did not realize
him? One thing she knew, that she had loved him that morning.
The fetters of her past life were broken, and this she would not realize.
She had opened the door of the cage for what? These were the fragments of
thoughts that drifted through her mind like tattered clouds across an
empty sky after a storm. Peter Erwin appeared to her more than once, and
he was strangely real. But he belonged to the past. Course succeeded
course, and she talked subconsciously to Mr. Holt and Joshua--such is the
result of feminine training.
After dinner she stood on the porch. The rain had ceased, a cool damp
breeze shook the drops from the leaves, and the stars were shining.
Presently, at the sound of a step behind her, she started. He was
standing at her shoulder.
"Honora!" he said.
She did not move.
"Honora, I haven't seen you--alone--since morning. It seems like a
thousand years. Honora?"
"Yes."
"Did you mean it?
"Did I mean what?"
"When you said you'd marry me." His voice trembled a little. "I've been
thinking of nothing but you all day. You're not--sorry? You haven't
changed your mind?"
She shook her head.
"At dinner when you wouldn't look at me, and this afternoon--"
"No, I'm not sorry," she said, cutting him short. "I'm not sorry."
He put his arm about her with an air that was almost apologetic. And,
seeing that she did not resist, he drew her to him and kissed her.
Suddenly, unaccountably to her, she clung to him.
"You love me!" he exclaimed.
"Yes," she whispered, "but I am tired. I--I am going upstairs, Howard. I
am tired."
He kissed her again.
"I can't believe it!" he said. "I'll make you a queen. And we'll be
married in the autumn, Honora." He nodded boyishly towards the open
windows of the library. "Shall I tell them?" he asked. "I feel like
shouting it. I can't hold on much longer. I wonder what the old lady will
say!"
Honora disengaged herself from his arms and fled to the screen door. As
she opened it, she turned and smiled back at him.
"Mrs. Holt knows already," she said.
And catching her skirt, she flew quickly up the stairs.
BOOK II
Volume 3.
CHAPTER I
SO LONG AS YE BOTH SHALL LIVE!
It was late November. And as Honora sat at the window of the drawing-room
of the sleeping car, life seemed as fantastic and unreal as the moss-hung
Southern forest into which she stared. She was happy, as a child is happy
who is taken on an excursion into the unknown. The monotony of existence
was at last broken, and riven the circumscribing walls. Limitless
possibilities lay ahead.
The emancipation had not been without its pangs of sorrow, and there were
moments of retrospection--as now. She saw herself on Uncle Tom's arm,
walking up the aisle of the old church. How many Sundays of her life had
she sat watching a shaft of sunlight strike across the stone pillars of
its gothic arches! She saw, in the chancel, tall and grave and pale,
Peter Erwin standing beside the man with the flushed face who was to be
her husband. She heard again the familiar voice of Dr. Ewing reciting the
words of that wonderful introduction. At other weddings she had been
moved. Why was her own so unrealizable?
"Honora, wilt thou have this man to thy wedded husband, to live
together after God's ordinance in the holy state of Matrimony? Wilt
thou obey him, and serve him, love, honour, and keep him in sickness
and in health; and, forsaking all others, keep thee only unto him,
so long as ye both shall live?"
She had promised. And they were walking out of the church, facing the
great rose window with its blended colours, and the vaults above were
ringing now with the volume of an immortal march.
After that an illogical series of events and pictures passed before her.
She was in a corner of the carriage, her veil raised, gazing at her
husband, who had kissed her passionately. He was there beside her,
looking extremely well in his top hat and frock-coat, with a white flower
in his buttonhole. He was the representative of the future she had
deliberately chosen. And yet, by virtue of the strange ceremony through
which they had passed, he seemed to have changed. In her attempt to seize
upon a reality she looked out of the window. They were just passing the
Hanbury mansion in Wayland Square, and her eyes fell upon the playroom
windows under the wide cornice; and she wondered whether the doll's house
were still in its place, its mute inhabitants waiting to be called by the
names she had given them, and quickened into life once more.
Next she recalled the arrival at the little house that had been her home,
summer and winter, for so many years of her life. A red and white awning,
stretching up the length of the walk which once had run beside the tall
pear trees, gave it an unrecognizable, gala air. Long had it stood there,
patient, unpretentious, content that the great things should pass it by!
And now, modest still, it had been singled out from amongst its
neighbours and honoured. Was it honoured? It seemed to Honora, so
fanciful this day, that its unwonted air of festival was unnatural. Why
should the hour of departure from such a harbour of peace be celebrated?
She was standing beside her husband in the little parlour, while carriage
doors slammed in the dusk outside; while one by one--a pageant of the
past which she was leaving forever the friends of her childhood came and
went. Laughter and tears and kisses! And then, in no time at all, she
found herself changing for the journey in the "little house under the
hill." There, locked up in the little desk Cousin Eleanor had given her
long ago, was the unfinished manuscript of that novel written at fever
heat during those summer days in which she had sought to escape from a
humdrum existence. And now--she had escaped. Aunt Mary, helpful under the
most trying circumstances, was putting her articles in a bag, the
initials on which she did not recognize--H. L. S.--Honora Leffingwell
Spence; while old Catherine, tearful and inefficient, knelt before her,
fumbling at her shoes. Honora, bending over, took the face of the
faithful old servant and kissed it.
"Don't feel badly, Catherine," she said; "I'll be coming back often to
see you, and you will be coming to see me."
"Will ye, darlint? The blessing of God be on you for those words--and you
to be such a fine lady! It always was a fine lady ye were, with such a
family and such a bringin' up. And now ye've married a rich man, as is
right and proper. If it's rich as Croesus he was, he'd be none too good
for you."
"Catherine," said Aunt Mary, reprovingly, "what ideas you put into the
child's head!"
"Sure, Miss Mary," cried Catherine, "it's always the great lady she was,
and she a wee bit of a thing. And wasn't it yerself, Miss Mary, that
dressed her like a princess?"
Then came the good-bys--the real ones. Uncle Tom, always the friend of
young people, was surrounded by a group of bridesmaids in the hall. She
clung to him. And Peter, who had the carriage ready. What would her
wedding have been without Peter? As they drove towards the station, his
was the image that remained persistently in her mind, bareheaded on the
sidewalk in the light of the carriage lamps. The image of struggle.
She had married Prosperity. A whimsical question, that shocked her,
irresistibly presented itself: was it not Prosperity that she had
promised to love, honour, and obey?
It must not be thought that Honora was by any means discontented with her
Prosperity. He was new--that was all. Howard looked new. But she
remembered that he had always looked new; such was one of his greatest
charms. In the long summer days since she had bade him good-by on her way
through New York from Silverdale, Honora had constructed him: he was
perpetual yet sophisticated Youth; he was Finance and Fashion; he was
Power in correctly cut clothes. And when he had arrived in St. Louis to
play his part in the wedding festivities, she had found her swan a swan
indeed--he was all that she had dreamed of him. And she had tingled with
pride as she introduced him to her friends, or gazed at him across the
flower-laden table as he sat beside Edith Hanbury at the bridesmaids'
dinner in Wayland Square.
The wedding ceremony had somehow upset her opinion of him, but Honora
regarded this change as temporary. Julius Caesar or George Washington
himself must have been somewhat ridiculous as bridegrooms: and she had
the sense to perceive that her own agitations as a bride were partly
responsible. No matter how much a young girl may have trifled with that
electric force in the male sex known as the grand passion, she shrinks
from surrendering herself to its dominion. Honora shrank. He made love to
her on the way to the station, and she was terrified. He actually forgot
to smoke cigarettes. What he said was to the effect that he possessed at
last the most wonderful and beautiful woman in the world, and she
resented the implication of possession.
Nevertheless, in the glaring lights of the station, her courage and her
pride in him revived, and he became again a normal and a marked man.
Although the sex may resent it, few women are really indifferent to
clothes, and Howard's well-fitting check suit had the magic touch of the
metropolis. His manner matched his garments. Obsequious porters grasped
his pig-skin bag, and seized Honora's; the man at the gate inclined his
head as he examined their tickets, and the Pullman conductor himself
showed them their stateroom, and plainly regarded them as important
people far from home. Howard had the cosmopolitan air. He gave the man a
dollar, and remarked that the New Orleans train was not exactly the
Chicago and New York Limited.
"Not by a long shot," agreed the conductor, as he went out, softly
closing the door behind him.
Whereupon the cosmopolitan air dropped from Mr. Howard Spence, not
gracefully, and he became once more that superfluous and awkward and
utterly banal individual, the husband.
"Let's go out and walk on the platform until the train starts," suggested
Honora, desperately. "Oh, Howard, the shades are up! I'm sure I saw some
one looking in!"
He laughed. But there was a light in his eyes that frightened her, and
she deemed his laughter out of place. Was he, after all, an utterly
different man than what she had thought him? Still laughing, he held to
her wrist with one hand, and with the other pulled down the shades.
"This is good enough for me," he said. "At last--at last," he whispered,
"all the red tape is over, and I've got you to myself! Do you love me
just a little, Honora?"
"Of course I do," she faltered, still struggling, her face burning as
from a fire.
"Then what's the matter?" he demanded.
"I don't know--I want air. Howard, please let me go. It's-it's so hot
inhere. You must let me go."
Her release, she felt afterwards, was due less to a physical than a
mental effort. She seemed suddenly to have cowed him, and his resistance
became enfeebled. She broke from him, and opened the door, and reached
the cement platform and the cold air. When he joined her, there was
something jokingly apologetic about his manner, and he was smoking a
cigarette; and she could not help thinking that she would have respected
him more if he had held her.
"Women beat me," he said. "They're the most erratic stock in the market."
It is worthy of remark how soon the human, and especially the feminine
brain adjusts itself to new conditions. In a day or two life became real
again, or rather romantic.
For the American husband in his proper place is an auxiliary who makes
all things possible. His ability to "get things done," before it ceases
to be a novelty, is a quality to be admired. Honora admired. An
intimacy--if the word be not too strong--sprang up between them. They
wandered through the quaint streets of New Orleans, that most foreign of
American cities, searching out the tumbledown French houses; and Honora
was never tired of imagining the romances and tragedies which must have
taken place in them. The new scenes excited her,--the quaint cafes with
their delicious, peppery Creole cooking,--and she would sit talking for a
quarter of an hour at a time with Alphonse, who outdid himself to please
the palate of a lady with such allure. He called her "Madame"; but well
he knew, this student of human kind, that the title had not been of long
duration.
Madame came from New York, without doubt? such was one of his questions,
as he stood before them in answer to Howard's summons, rubbing his hands.
And Honora, with a little thrill, acknowledged the accuracy of his guess.
There was no dish of Alphonse's they did not taste. And Howard smilingly
paid the bills. He was ecstatically proud of his wife, and although he
did justice to the cooking, he cared but little for the mysterious
courtyards, the Spanish buildings, and the novels of Mr. George W. Cable,
which Honora devoured when she was too tired to walk about. He followed
her obediently to the battle field of New Orleans, and admired as
obediently the sunset, when the sky was all silver-green through the
magnolias, and the spreading live oaks hung with Spanish moss, and a
silver bar lay upon the Father of Waters. Honora, with beating heart and
flushed cheeks, felt these things: Howard felt them through her and
watched--not the sunset--but the flame it lighted in her eyes.
He left her but twice a day, and then only for brief periods. He even
felt a joy when she ventured to complain.
"I believe you care more for those horrid stocks than for me," she said.
"I--I am just a novelty."
His answer, since they were alone in their sitting-room, was obvious.
"Howard," she cried, "how mean of you! Now I'll have to do my hair all
over again. I've got such a lot of it--you've no idea how difficult it
is."
"You bet I have!" he declared meaningly, and Honora blushed.
His pleasure of possession was increased when people turned to look at
her on the street or in the dining room--to think that this remarkable
creature was in reality his wife! Nor did the feeling grow less intense
with time, being quite the same when they arrived at a fashionable resort
in the Virginia mountains, on their way to New York. For such were the
exactions of his calling that he could spare but two weeks for his
honeymoon.
Honora's interest in her new surroundings was as great, and the sight of
those towering ridges against the soft blue of the autumn skies inspired
her. It was Indian summer here, the tang of wood smoke was in the air; in
the valleys--as they drove--the haze was shot with the dust of gold, and
through the gaps they looked across vast, unexplored valleys to other
distant, blue-stained ridges that rose between them and the sunset.
Honora took an infinite delight in the ramshackle cabins beside the
red-clay roads, in the historic atmosphere of the ancient houses and
porticoes of the Warm Springs, where the fathers of the Republic had come
to take the waters. And one day, when a north wind had scattered the
smoke and swept the sky, Howard followed her up the paths to the ridge's
crest, where she stood like a Victory, her garments blowing, gazing off
over the mighty billows to the westward. Howard had never seen a Victory,
but his vision of domesticity was untroubled.
Although it was late in the season, the old-fashioned, rambling hotel was
well filled, and people interested Honora as well as scenery--a proof of
her human qualities. She chided Howard because he, too, was not more
socially inclined.
"How can you expect me to be--now?" he demanded.
She told him he was a goose, although secretly admitting the justice of
his defence. He knew four or five men in the hotel, with whom he talked
stocks while waiting for Honora to complete her toilets; and he gathered
from two of these, who were married, that patience was a necessary
qualification in a husband. One evening they introduced their wives.
Later, Howard revealed their identity--or rather that of the husbands.
"Bowker is one of the big men in the Faith Insurance Company, and Tyler
is president of the Gotham Trust." He paused to light a cigarette, and
smiled at her significantly. "If you can dolly the ladies along once in a
while, Honora, it won't do any harm," he added. "You have a way with you,
you know,--when you want to."
Honora grew scarlet.
"Howard!" she exclaimed.
He looked somewhat shamefaced.
"Well," he said, "I was only joking. Don't take it seriously. But it
doesn't do any harm to be polite."
"I am always polite," she answered a little coldly.
Honeymoons, after all, are matters of conjecture, and what proportion of
them contain disenchantments will never be known. Honora lay awake for a
long time that night, and the poignant and ever recurring remembrance of
her husband's remark sent the blood to her face like a flame. Would
Peter, or George Hanbury, or any of the intimate friends of her childhood
have said such a thing?
A new and wistful feeling of loneliness was upon her. For some days, with
a certain sense of isolation and a tinge of envy which she would not
acknowledge, she had been watching a group of well-dressed, clean-looking
people galloping off on horseback or filling the six-seated buckboards.
They were from New York--that she had discovered; and they did not mix
with the others in the hotel. She had thought it strange that Howard did
not know them, but for a reason which she did not analyze she hesitated
to ask him who they were. They had rather a rude manner of staring
--especially the men--and the air of deriving infinite amusement from
that which went on about them. One of them, a young man with a lisp who
was addressed by the singular name of "Toots," she had overheard
demanding as she passed: who the deuce was the tall girl with the dark
hair and the colour? Wherever she went, she was aware of them. It was
foolish, she knew, but their presence seemed--in the magnitude which
trifles are wont to assume in the night-watches--of late to have poisoned
her pleasure.
Enlightenment as to the identity of these disturbing persons came, the
next day, from an unexpected source. Indeed, from Mrs. Tyler. She loved
brides, she said, and Honora seemed to her such a sweet bride. It was
Mrs. Tyler's ambition to become thin (which was hitching her wagon to a
star with a vengeance), and she invited our heroine to share her
constitutional on the porch. Honora found the proceeding in the nature of
an ordeal, for Mrs. Tyler's legs were short, her frizzled hair very
blond, and the fact that it was natural made it seem, somehow, all the
more damning.
They had scarcely begun to walk before Honora, with a sense of dismay of
which she was ashamed, beheld some of the people who had occupied her
thoughts come out of the door and form a laughing group at the end of the
porch. She could not rid herself of the feeling that they were laughing
at her. She tried in vain to drive them from her mind, to listen to Mrs.
Tyler's account of how she, too, came as a bride to New York from some
place with a classical name, and to the advice that accompanied the
narration. The most conspicuous young woman in the group, in riding
clothes, was seated on the railing, with the toe of one boot on the
ground. Her profile was clear-cut and her chestnut hair tightly knotted
behind under her hat. Every time they turned, this young woman stared at
Honora amusedly.
"Nasty thing!" exclaimed Mrs. Tyler, suddenly and unexpectedly in the
midst of a description of the delights of life in the metropolis.
"Who?" asked Honora.
"That young Mrs. Freddy Maitland, sitting on the rail. She's the rudest
woman in New York."
A perversity of spirit which she could not control prompted Honora to
reply:
"Why, I think she is so good-looking, Mrs. Tyler. And she seems to have
so much individuality and independence."
"There!" cried Mrs. Tyler, triumphantly. "Once--not so very long ago--I
was just as inexperienced as you, my dear. She belongs to that horribly
fast set with which no self-respecting woman would be seen. It's an
outrage that they should come to a hotel like this and act as though it
belonged to them. She knows me quite as well as I know her, but when I am
face to face she acts as though I was air."
Honora could not help thinking that this, at least, required some
imagination on Mrs. Maitland's part. Mrs. Tyler had stopped for breath.
"I have been introduced to her twice," she continued, "but of course I
wouldn't speak to her. The little man with the lisp, next to her, who is
always acting in that silly way, they call Toots Cuthbert. He gets his
name in the newspapers by leading cotillons in New York and Newport. And
the tall, slim, blond one, with the green hat and the feather in it, is
Jimmy Wing. He's the son of James Wing, the financier."
"I went to school at Sutcliffe with his sister," said Honora.
It seemed to Honora that Mrs. Tyler's manner underwent a change.
"My dear," she exclaimed, "did you go to Sutcliffe? What a wonderful
school it is! I fully intend to send my daughter Louise there."
An almost irresistible desire came over Honora to run away. She excused
herself instead, and hurried back towards her room. On the way she met
Howard in the corridor, and he held a telegram in his hand.
"I've got some bad news, Honora," he said. "That is, bad from the point
of view of our honeymoon. Sid Dallam is swamped with business, and wants
me in New York. I'm afraid we've got to cut it short."
To his astonishment she smiled.
"Oh, I'm so glad, Howard," she cried. "I--I don't like this place nearly
so well as New Orleans. There are--so many people here."
He looked relieved, and patted her on the arm.
"We'll go to-night, old girl," he said.
CHAPTER II
"STAFFORD PARK"
There is a terrifying aspect of all great cities. Rome, with its
leviathan aqueducts, its seething tenements clinging to the hills, its
cruel, shining Palatine, must have overborne the provincial traveller
coming up from Ostia. And Honora, as she stood on the deck of the
ferry-boat, approaching New York for the second time in her life, could
not overcome a sense of oppression. It was on a sharp December morning,
and the steam of the hurrying craft was dazzling white in the early sun.
Above and beyond the city rose, overpowering, a very different city,
somehow, than that her imagination had first drawn. Each of that
multitude of vast towers seemed a fortress now, manned by Celt and Hun
and, Israelite and Saxon, captained by Titans. And the strife between
them was on a scale never known in the world before, a strife with modern
arms and modern methods and modern brains, in which there was no mercy.
Hidden somewhere amidst those bristling miles of masonry to the northward
of the towers was her future home. Her mind dwelt upon it now, for the
first time, and tried to construct it. Once she had spoken to Howard of
it, but he had smiled and avoided discussion. What would it be like to
have a house of one's own in New York? A house on Fifth Avenue, as her
girl friends had said when they laughingly congratulated her and begged
her to remember that they came occasionally to New York. Those of us who,
like Honora, believe in Providence, do not trouble ourselves with mere
matters of dollars and cents. This morning, however, the huge material
towers which she gazed upon seemed stronger than Providence, and she
thought of her husband. Was his fibre sufficiently tough to become
eventually the captain of one of those fortresses, to compete with the
Maitlands and the Wings, and others she knew by name, calmly and
efficiently intrenched there?
The boat was approaching the slip, and he came out to her from the cabin,
where he had been industriously reading the stock reports, his newspapers
thrust into his overcoat pocket.
"There's no place like New York, after all," he declared, and added,
"when the market's up. We'll go to a hotel for breakfast."
For some reason she found it difficult to ask the question on her lips.
"I suppose," she said hesitatingly, "I suppose we couldn't go--home,
Howard. You--you have never told me where we are to live."
As before, the reference to their home seemed to cause him amusement. He
became very mysterious.
"Couldn't you pass away a few hours shopping this morning, my dear?"
"Oh, yes," replied Honora.
"While I gather in a few dollars," he continued. "I'll meet you at lunch,
and then we'll go-home."
As the sun mounted higher, her spirits rose with it. New York, or that
strip of it which is known to the more fortunate of human beings, is a
place to raise one's spirits on a sparkling day in early winter. And
Honora, as she drove in a hansom from shop to shop, felt a new sense of
elation and independence. She was at one, now, with the prosperity that
surrounded her: her purse no longer limited, her whims existing only to
be gratified. Her reflections on this recently attained state alternated
with alluring conjectures on the place of abode of which Howard had made
such a mystery. Where was it? And why had he insisted, before showing it
to her, upon waiting until afternoon?
Newly arrayed in the most becoming of grey furs, she met him at that
hitherto fabled restaurant which in future days--she reflected--was to
become so familiar--Delmonico's. Howard was awaiting her in the
vestibule; and it was not without a little quiver of timidity and
excitement and a consequent rise of colour that she followed the waiter
to a table by the window. She felt as though the assembled fashionable
world was staring at her, but presently gathered courage enough to gaze
at the costumes of the women and the faces of the men. Howard, with a
sang froid of which she felt a little proud, ordered a meal for which he
eventually paid a fraction over eight dollars. What would Aunt Mary have
said to such extravagance? He produced a large bunch of violets.
"With Sid Dallam's love," he said, as she pinned them on her gown. "I
tried to get Lily--Mrs. Sid--for lunch, but you never can put your finger
on her. She'll amuse you, Honora."
"Oh, Howard, it's so much pleasanter lunching alone to-day. I'm glad you
didn't. And then afterwards--?"
He refused, however, to be drawn. When they emerged she did not hear the
directions he gave the cabman, and it was not until they turned into a
narrow side street, which became dingier and dingier as they bumped their
way eastward, that she experienced a sudden sinking sensation.
"Howard!" she cried. "Where are you going? You must tell me."
"One of the prettiest suburbs in New Jersey--Rivington," he said. "Wait
till you see the house."
"Suburbs! Rivington! New Jersey!" The words swam before Honora's eyes,
like the great signs she had seen printed in black letters on the tall
buildings from the ferry that morning. She had a sickening sensation, and
the odour of his cigarette in the cab became unbearable. By an ironic
trick of her memory, she recalled that she had told the clerks in the
shops where she had made her purchases that she would send them her
address later. How different that address from what she had imagined it!
"It's in the country!" she exclaimed.
To lunch at Delmonico's for eight dollars and live in Rivington
Howard appeared disturbed. More than that, he appeared astonished,
solicitous.
"Why, what's the matter, Honora?" he asked. "I thought you'd like it.
It's a brand new house, and I got Lily Dallam to furnish it. She's a
wonder on that sort of thing, and I told her to go ahead--within reason.
I talked it over with your aunt and uncle, and they agreed with me you'd
much rather live out there for a few years than in a flat."
"In a flat!" repeated Honora, with a shudder.
"Certainly," he said, flicking his ashes out of the window. "Who do you
think I am, at my age? Frederick T. Maitland, or the owner of the
Brougham Building?"
"But--Howard," she protested, "why didn't you talk it over with me?"
"Because I wanted to surprise you," he replied. "I spent a month and a
half looking for that house. And you never seemed to care. It didn't
occur to me that you would care--for the first few years," he added, and
there was in his voice a note of reproach that did not escape her. "You
never seemed inclined to discuss business with me, Honora. I didn't think
you were interested. Dallam and I are making money. We expect some day to
be on Easy Street--so to speak--or Fifth Avenue. Some day, I hope, you
can show some of these people the road. But just now what capital we have
has to go into the business."
Strangely enough, in spite of the intensity of her disappointment, she
felt nearer to her husband in that instant than at any time since their
marriage. Honora, who could not bear to hurt any one's feelings, seized
his hand repentantly. Tears started in her eyes.
"Oh, Howard, I must seem to you very ungrateful," she cried. "It was such
a--such a surprise. I have never lived in the country, and I'm sure it
will be delightful--and much more healthful than the city. Won't you
forgive me?"
If he had known as much about the fluctuations of the feminine
temperament as of those of stocks, the ease with which Honora executed
this complete change of front might have disturbed him. Howard, as will
be seen, possessed that quality which is loosely called good nature. In
marriage, he had been told (and was ready to believe), the wind blew
where it listed; and he was a wise husband who did not spend his time in
inquiry as to its sources. He kissed her before he helped her out of the
carriage. Again they crossed the North River, and he led her through the
wooden ferry house on the New Jersey side to where the Rivington train
was standing beside a platform shed.
There was no parlour car. Men and women--mostly women--with bundles were
already appropriating the seats and racks, and Honora found herself
wondering how many of these individuals were her future neighbours. That
there might have been an hysterical element in the lively anticipation
she exhibited during the journey did not occur to Howard Spence.
After many stops,--in forty-two minutes, to be exact, the brakeman
shouted out the name of the place which was to be her home, and of which
she had been ignorant that morning. They alighted at an old red railroad
station, were seized upon by a hackman in a coonskin coat, and thrust
into a carriage that threatened to fall to pieces on the frozen macadam
road. They passed through a village in which Honora had a glimpse of the
drug store and grocery and the Grand Army Hall; then came detached houses
of all ages in one and two-acre plots some above the road, for the
country was rolling; a very attractive church of cream-coloured stone,
and finally the carriage turned sharply to the left under an archway on
which were the words "Stafford Park," and stopped at a very new curbstone
in a very new gutter on the right.
"Here we are!" cried Howard, as he fished in his trousers pockets for
money to pay the hackman.
Honora looked around her. Stafford Park consisted of a wide centre-way of
red gravel, not yet packed, with an island in its middle planted with
shrubbery and young trees, the bare branches of which formed a black
tracery against the orange-red of the western sky. On both sides of this
centre-way were concrete walks, with cross-walks from the curbs to the
houses. There were six of these--three on each side--standing on a raised
terrace and about two hundred feet apart. Beyond them, to the northward,
Stafford Park was still a wilderness of second-growth hardwood,
interspersed with a few cedars.
Honora's house, the first on the right, was exactly like the other five.
If we look at it through her eyes, we shall find this similarity its main
drawback. If we are a little older, however, and more sophisticated, we
shall suspect the owner of Stafford Park and his architect of a design to
make it appear imposing. It was (indefinite and much-abused term)
Colonial; painted white; and double, with dormer windows of diagonal
wood-surrounded panes in the roof. There was a large pillared porch on
its least private side--namely, the front. A white-capped maid stood in
the open doorway and smiled at Honora as she entered.
Honora walked through the rooms. There was nothing intricate about the
house; it was as simple as two times four, and really too large for her
and Howard. Her presents were installed, the pictures and photograph
frames and chairs, even Mr. Isham's dining-room table and Cousin
Eleanor's piano. The sight of these, and of the engraving which Aunt Mary
had sent on, and which all her childhood had hung over her bed in the
little room at home, brought the tears once more to her eyes. But she
forced them back bravely.
These reflections were interrupted by the appearance of the little maid
announcing that tea was ready, and bringing her two letters. One was from
Susan Holt, and the other, written in a large, slanting, and angular
handwriting, was signed Lily Dallam. It was dated from New York.
"My dear Honora," it ran, "I feel that I must call you so, for Sid and
Howard, in addition to being partners, are such friends. I hesitated so
long about furnishing your house, my dear, but Howard insisted, and said
he wished to surprise you. I am sending you this line to welcome you, and
to tell you that I have arranged with the furniture people to take any or
all things back that you do not like, and exchange them. After all, they
will be out of date in a few years, and Howard and Sid will have made so
much money by that time, I hope, that I shall be able to leave my
apartment, which is dear, and you will be coming to town."
Honora laid down the sheet, and began to tidy her hair before the glass
of the highly polished bureau in her room. A line in Susan's letter
occurred to her: "Mother hopes to see you soon. She asked me to tell you
to buy good things which will last you all your life, and says that it
pays."
The tea-table was steaming in the parlour in front of the wood fire in
the blue tiled fireplace. The oak floor reflected its gleam, and that of
the electric lights; the shades were drawn; a slight odour of steam heat
pervaded the place. Howard, smoking a cigarette, was reclining on a sofa
that evidently was not made for such a purpose, reading the evening
newspapers.
"Well, Honora," he said, as she took her seat behind the tea-table, "you
haven't told me how you like it. Pretty cosey, eh? And enough spare room
to have people out over Sundays."
"Oh, Howard, I do like it," she cried, in a desperate attempt--which
momentarily came near succeeding to convince herself that she could have
desired nothing more. "It's so sweet and clean and new--and all our own."
She succeeded, at any rate, in convincing Howard. In certain matters, he
was easily convinced.
"I thought you'd be pleased when you saw it, my dear," he said.
CHAPTER III
THE GREAT UNATTACHED
It was the poet Cowper who sang of domestic happiness as the only bliss
that has survived the Fall. One of the burning and unsolved questions of
to-day is,--will it survive the twentieth century? Will it survive rapid
transit and bridge and Woman's Rights, the modern novel and modern drama,
automobiles, flying machines, and intelligence offices; hotel, apartment,
and suburban life, or four homes, or none at all? Is it a weed that will
grow anywhere, in a crevice between two stones in the city? Or is it a
plant that requires tender care and the water of self-sacrifice? Above
all, is it desirable?
Our heroine, as may have been suspected, has an adaptable temperament.
Her natural position is upright, but like the reed, she can bend
gracefully, and yields only to spring back again blithely. Since this
chronicle regards her, we must try to look at existence through her eyes,
and those of some of her generation and her sex: we must give the four
years of her life in Rivington the approximate value which she herself
would have put upon it--which is a chapter. We must regard Rivington as a
kind of purgatory, not solely a place of departed spirits, but of those
which have not yet arrived; as one of the many temporary abodes of the
Great Unattached.
No philosophical writer has as yet made the attempt to define the change
--as profound as that of the tadpole to the frog--between the lover and
the husband. An author of ideals would not dare to proclaim that this
change is inevitable: some husbands--and some wives are fortunate enough
to escape it, but it is not unlikely to happen in our modern
civilization. Just when it occurred in Howard Spence it is difficult to
say, but we have got to consider him henceforth as a husband; one who
regards his home as a shipyard rather than the sanctuary of a goddess; as
a launching place, the ways of which are carefully greased, that he may
slide off to business every morning with as little friction as possible,
and return at night to rest undisturbed in a comfortable berth, to ponder
over the combat of the morrow.
It would be inspiring to summon the vision of Honora, in rustling
garments, poised as the figurehead of this craft, beckoning him on to
battle and victory. Alas! the launching happened at that grimmest and
most unromantic of hours-ten minutes of eight in the morning. There was a
period, indeterminate, when she poured out his coffee with wifely zeal; a
second period when she appeared at the foot of the stairs to kiss him as
he was going out of the door; a third when, clad in an attractive
dressing-gown, she waved him good-by from the window; and lastly, a
fourth, which was only marked by an occasional protest on his part, when
the coffee was weak.
"I'd gladly come down, Howard, if it seemed to make the least difference
to you," said Honora. "But all you do is to sit with your newspaper
propped up and read the stock reports, and growl when I ask you a polite
question. You've no idea how long it makes the days out here, to get up
early."
"It seems to me you put in a good many days in town," he retorted.
"Surely you don't expect me to spend all my time in Rivington!" she cried
reproachfully; "I'd die. And then I am always having to get new cooks for
you, because they can't make Hollandaise sauce like hotel chefs. Men have
no idea how hard it is to keep house in the country,--I just wish you had
to go to those horrid intelligence offices. You wouldn't stay in
Rivington ten days. And all the good cooks drink."
Howard, indeed, with the aid of the village policeman, had had to expel
from his kitchen one imperious female who swore like a dock hand, and who
wounded Honora to the quick by remarking, as she departed in durance,
that she had always lived with ladies and gentlemen and people who were
somebody. The incident had tended further to detract from the romance of
the country.
It is a mistake to suppose that the honeymoon disappears below the
horizon with the rapidity of a tropical sun. And there is generally an
afterglow. In spite of cooks and other minor clouds, in spite of visions
of metropolitan triumphs (not shattered, but put away in camphor), life
was touched with a certain novelty. There was a new runabout and a horse
which Honora could drive herself, and she went to the station to meet her
husband. On mild Saturday and Sunday afternoons they made long
excursions, into the country--until the golf season began, when the
lessons begun at Silverdale were renewed. But after a while certain male
competitors appeared, and the lessons were discontinued. Sunday, after
his pile of newspapers had religiously been disposed of, became a field
day. Indeed, it is impossible, without a twinge of pity, to behold Howard
taking root in Rivington, for we know that sooner or later he will be dug
up and transplanted. The soil was congenial. He played poker on the train
with the Rivington husbands, and otherwise got along with them famously.
And it was to him an enigma--when occasionally he allowed his thoughts to
dwell upon such trivial matters--why Honora was not equally congenial
with the wives.
There were, no doubt, interesting people in Rivington about whom many
stories could be written: people with loves and fears and anxieties and
joys, with illnesses and recoveries, with babies, but few grandchildren.
There were weddings at the little church, and burials; there were dances
at the golf club; there were Christmas trees, where most of the presents
--like Honora's--came from afar, from family centres formed in a social
period gone by; there were promotions for the heads of families, and
consequent rejoicings over increases of income; there were movings; there
were--inevitable in the ever grinding action of that remorseless law, the
survival of the fittest--commercial calamities, and the heartrending
search for new employment.
Rivington called upon Honora in vehicles of all descriptions, in
proportion to the improvidence or prosperity of the owners. And Honora
returned the calls, and joined the Sewing Circle, and the Woman's
Luncheon Club, which met for the purpose of literary discussion. In the
evenings there were little dinners of six or eight, where the men talked
business and the women house rent and groceries and gossip and the
cheapest places in New York City to buy articles of the latest fashion.
Some of them had actually built or were building houses that cost as much
as thirty thousand dollars, with the inexplicable intention of remaining
in Rivington the rest of their lives!
Honora was kind to these ladies. As we know, she was kind to everybody.
She almost allowed two or three of them to hope that they might become
her intimates, and made excursions to New York with them, and lunched in
fashionable restaurants. Their range of discussion included babies and
Robert Browning, the modern novel and the best matinee. It would be
interesting to know why she treated them, on the whole, like travellers
met by chance in a railroad station, from whom she was presently forever
to depart. The time and manner of this departure were matters to be
determined in the future.
It would be interesting to know, likewise, just at what period the
intention of moving away from Rivington became fixed in Honora's mind.
Honora circumscribed, Honora limited, Honora admitting defeat, and this
chronicle would be finished. The gods exist somewhere, though many
incarnations may, be necessary to achieve their companionship. And no
prison walls loom so high as to appall our heroine's soul. To exchange
one prison for another is in itself something of a feat, and an argument
that the thing may be done again. Neither do the wise ones beat
themselves uselessly against brick or stone. Howard--poor man!--is
fatuous enough to regard a great problem as being settled once and for
all by a marriage certificate and a benediction; and labours under the
delusion that henceforth he may come and go as he pleases, eat his
breakfast in silence, sleep after dinner, and spend his Sundays at the
Rivington Golf Club. It is as well to leave him, at present, in blissful
ignorance of his future.
Our sympathies, however, must be with Honora, who has paid the price for
heaven, and who discovers that by marriage she has merely joined the
ranks of the Great Unattached. Hitherto it had been inconceivable to her
that any one sufficiently prosperous could live in a city, or near it and
dependent on it, without being socially a part of it. Most momentous of
disillusions! With the exception of the Sidney Dallams and one or two
young brokers who occasionally came out over Sunday, her husband had no
friends in New York. Rivington and the Holt family (incongruous mixture)
formed the sum total of her acquaintance.
On Monday mornings in particular, if perchance she went to town, the huge
signs which she read across the swamps, of breakfast foods and other
necessaries, seemed, for some reason, best to express her isolation.
Well-dressed, laughing people descended from omnibuses at the prettier
stations, people who seemed all-sufficient to themselves; people she was
sure she should like if only she knew them. Once the sight of her school
friend, Ethel Wing, chatting with a tall young man, brought up a flood of
recollections; again, in a millinery establishment, she came face to face
with the attractive Mrs. Maitland whom she had seen at Hot Springs.
Sometimes she would walk on Fifth Avenue, watching, with mingled
sensations, the procession there. The colour, the movement, the sensation
of living in a world where every one was fabulously wealthy, was at once
a stimulation and a despair. Brougham after brougham passed, victoria
after victoria, in which beautifully gowned women chatted gayly or sat
back, impassive, amidst the cushions. Some of them, indeed, looked bored,
but this did not mar the general effect of pleasure and prosperity. Even
the people--well-dressed, too--in the hansom cabs were usually animated
and smiling. On the sidewalk athletic, clear-skinned girls passed her,
sometimes with a man, sometimes in groups of two and three, going in and
out of the expensive-looking shops with the large, plate-glass windows.
All of these women, apparently, had something definite to do, somewhere
to go, some one to meet the very next, minute. They protested to
milliners and dressmakers if they were kept waiting, and even seemed
impatient of time lost if one by chance bumped into them. But Honora had
no imperative appointments. Lily Dallam was almost sure to be out, or
going out immediately, and seemed to have more engagements than any one
in New York.
"I'm so sorry, my dear," she would say, and add reproachfully: "why
didn't you telephone me you were coming? If you had only let me know we
might have lunched together or gone to the matinee. Now I have promised
Clara Trowbridge to go to a lunch party at her house."
Mrs. Dallam had a most convincing way of saying such things, and in spite
of one's self put one in the wrong for not having telephoned. But if
indeed Honora telephoned--as she did once or twice in her innocence--Lily
was quite as distressed.
"My dear, why didn't you let me know last night? Trixy Brent has given
Lula Chandos his box at the Horse Show, and Lula would never, never
forgive me if I backed out."
Although she lived in an apartment--in a most attractive one, to be sure
--there could be no doubt about it that Lily Dallam was fashionable. She
had a way with her, and her costumes were marvellous. She could have made
her fortune either as a dressmaker or a house decorator, and she bought
everything from "little" men and women whom she discovered herself. It
was a curious fact that all of these small tradespeople eventually became
fashionable, too. Lily was kind to Honora, and gave her their addresses
before they grew to be great and insolent and careless whether one
patronized them or not.
While we are confessing the trials and weaknesses of our heroine, we
shall have to admit that she read, occasionally, the society columns of
the newspapers. And in this manner she grew to have a certain familiarity
with the doings of those favourites of fortune who had more delightful
engagements than hours in which to fulfil them. So intimate was Lily
Dallam with many of these Olympians that she spoke of them by their first
names, or generally by their nicknames. Some two years after Honora's
marriage the Dallams had taken a house in that much discussed colony of
Quicksands, where sport and pleasure reigned supreme: and more than once
the gown which Mrs. Sidney Dallam had worn to a polo match had been
faithfully described in the public prints, or the dinners which she had
given at the Quicksands Club. One of these dinners, Honora learned, had
been given in honour of Mr. Trixton Brent.
"You ought to know Trixy, Honora," Mrs. Dallam declared; "he'd be crazy
about you."
Time passed, however, and Mrs. Dallam made no attempt to bring about this
most desirable meeting. When Honora and Howard went to town to dine with
the Dallams, it was always at a restaurant, a 'partie carree'. Lily
Dallam thought it dull to dine at home, and they went to the theatre
afterwards--invariably a musical comedy. Although Honora did not care
particularly for musical comedies, she always experienced a certain
feverish stimulation which kept her wide awake on the midnight train to
Rivington. Howard had a most exasperating habit of dozing in the corner
of the seat.
"You are always sleepy when I have anything interesting to talk to you
about," said Honora, "or reading stock reports. I scarcely see anything
at all of you."
Howard roused himself.
"Where are we now?" he asked.
"Oh," cried Honora, "we haven't passed Hydeville. Howard, who is Trixton
Brent?"
"What about him?" demanded her husband.
"Nothing--except that he is one of Lily's friends, and she said she knew
--I should like him. I wish you would be more interested in people. Who
is he?"
"One of the best-known operators in the market," Howard answered, and his
air implied that a lack of knowledge of Mr. Brent was ignorance indeed;
"a daring gambler. He cornered cotton once, and raked in over a million.
He's a sport, too."
"How old is he?"
"About forty-three."
"Is he married?" inquired Honora.
"He's divorced," said Howard. And she had to be content with so much of
the gentleman's biography, for her husband relapsed into somnolence
again. A few days later she saw a picture of Mr. Brent, in polo costume,
in one of the magazines. She thought him good-looking, and wondered what
kind of a wife he had had.
Honora, when she went to town for the day, generally could be sure of
finding some one, at least, of the Holt family at home at luncheon time.
They lived still in the same house on Madison Avenue to which Aunt Mary
and Uncle Tom had been invited to breakfast on the day of Honora's
arrival in her own country. It had a wide, brownstone front, with a
basement, and a high flight of steps leading up to the door. Within,
solemnity reigned, and this effect was largely produced by the
prodigiously high ceilings and the black walnut doors and woodwork. On
the second floor, the library where the family assembled was more
cheerful. The books themselves, although in black-walnut cases, and the
sun pouring in, assisted in making this effect.
Here, indeed, were stability and peace. Here Honora remade the
acquaintance of the young settlement worker, and of the missionary, now
on the Presbyterian Board of Missions. Here she charmed other friends and
allies of the Holt family; and once met, somewhat to her surprise, two
young married women who differed radically from the other guests of the
house. Honora admired their gowns if not their manners; for they ignored
her, and talked to Mrs. Holt about plans for raising money for the
Working Girl's Relief Society.
"You should join us, my dear," said Mrs. Holt; "I am sure you would be
interested in our work."
"I'd be so glad to, Mrs. Holt," replied Honora, "if only I didn't live in
the country."
She came away as usual, feeling of having run into a cul de sac. Mrs.
Holt's house was a refuge, not an outlet; and thither Honora directed her
steps when a distaste for lunching alone or with some of her Rivington
friends in the hateful, selfish gayety of a fashionable restaurant
overcame her; or when her moods had run through a cycle, and an
atmosphere of religion and domesticity became congenial.
"Howard," she asked unexpectedly one evening, as he sat smoking beside
the blue tiled mantel, "have you got on your winter flannels?"
"I'll bet a hundred dollars to ten cents," he cried, "that you've been
lunching with Mrs. Holt."
"I think you're horrid," said Honora.
Something must be said for her. Domestic virtue, in the face of such
mocking heresy, is exceptionally difficult of attainment.
Mrs. Holt had not been satisfied with Honora's and Susan's accounts of
the house in Stafford Park. She felt called upon to inspect it. And for
this purpose, in the spring following Honora's marriage, she made a
pilgrimage to Rivington and spent the day. Honora met her at the station,
and the drive homeward was occupied in answering innumerable questions on
the characters, conditions, and modes of life of Honora's neighbours.
"Now, my dear," said Mrs. Holt, when they were seated before the fire
after lunch, "I want you to feel that you can come to me for everything.
I must congratulate you and Howard on being sensible enough to start your
married life simply, in the country. I shall never forget the little
house in which Mr. Holt and I began, and how blissfully happy I was." The
good lady reached out and took Honora's hand in her own. "Not that your
deep feeling for your husband will ever change. But men are more
difficult to manage as they grow older, my dear, and the best of them
require a little managing for their own good. And increased
establishments bring added cares and responsibilities. Now that I am
here, I have formed a very fair notion of what it ought to cost you to
live in such a place. And I shall be glad to go over your housekeeping
books with you, and tell you if you are being cheated as I dare say you
are."
"Oh, Mrs. Holt," Honora faltered, "I--I haven't kept any books. Howard
just pays the bills."
"You mean to say he hasn't given you any allowance!" cried Mrs. Holt,
aghast. "You don't know what it costs to run this house?"
"No," said Honora, humbly. "I never thought of it. I have no idea what
Howard's income may be."
"I'll write to Howard myself--to-night," declared Mrs. Holt.
"Please don't, Mrs. Holt. I'll--I'll speak to him," said Honora.
"Very well, then," the good lady agreed, "and I will send you one of my
own books, with my own system, as soon as I get home. It is not your
fault, my dear, it is Howard's. It is little short of criminal of him. I
suppose this is one of the pernicious results of being on the Stock
Exchange. New York is nothing like what it was when I was a girl--the
extravagance by everybody is actually appalling. The whole city is bent
upon lavishness and pleasure. And I am afraid it is very often the wives,
Honora, who take the lead in prodigality. It all tends, my dear, to
loosen the marriage tie--especially this frightful habit of dining in
hotels and restaurants."
Before she left Mrs. Holt insisted on going over the house from top to
bottom, from laundry to linen closet. Suffice it to say that the
inspection was not without a certain criticism, which must be passed
over.
"It is a little large, just for you and Howard, my dear," was her final
comment. "But you are wise in providing for the future."
"For the future?" Honora repeated.
Mrs. Holt playfully pinched her cheek.
"When the children arrive, my dear, as I hope they will--soon," she said,
smiling at Honora's colour. "Sometimes it all comes back to me--my own
joy when Joshua was a baby. I was very foolish about him, no doubt. Annie
and Gwendolen tell me so. I wouldn't even let the nurse sit up with him
when he was getting his teeth. Mercy!" she exclaimed, glancing at the
enamelled watch on her gown,--for long practice had enabled her to tell
the time upside down,--"we'll be late for the train, my dear."
After returning from the station, Honora sat for a long time at her
window, looking out on the park. The afternoon sunlight had the silvery
tinge that comes to it in March; the red gravel of the centre driveway
was very wet, and the grass of the lawns of the houses opposite already a
vivid green; in the back-yards the white clothes snapped from the lines;
and a group of children, followed by nurses with perambulators, tripped
along the strip of sidewalk.
Why could not she feel the joys and desires of which Mrs. Holt had
spoken? It never had occurred to her until to-day that they were lacking
in her. Children! A home! Why was it that she did not want children? Why
should such a natural longing be absent in her? Her mind went back to the
days of her childhood dolls, and she smiled to think of their large
families. She had always associated marriage with children--until she got
married. And now she remembered that her childhood ideals of the
matrimonial state had been very much, like Mrs. Holt's own experience of
it: Why then had that ideal gradually faded until, when marriage came to
her, it was faint and shadowy indeed? Why were not her spirit and her
hopes enclosed by the walls in which she sat?
The housekeeping book came from Mrs. Holt the next morning, but Honora
did not mention it to her husband. Circumstances were her excuse: he had
had a hard day on the Exchange, and at such times he showed a marked
disinclination for the discussion of household matters. It was not until
the autumn, in fact, that the subject of finance was mentioned between
them, and after a period during which Howard had been unusually
uncommunicative and morose. Just as electrical disturbances are said to
be in some way connected with sun spots, so Honora learned that a certain
glumness and tendency to discuss expenses on the part of her husband were
synchronous with a depression in the market.
"I wish you'd learn to go a little slow, Honora," he said one evening.
"The bills are pretty stiff this month. You don't seem to have any idea
of the value of money."
"Oh, Howard," she exclaimed, after a moment's pause for breath, "how can
you say such a thing, when I save you so much?"
"Save me so much!" he echoed.
"Yes. If I had gone to Ridley for this suit, he would have charged me two
hundred dollars. I took such pains--all on your account--to find a little
man Lily Dallam told me about, who actually made it for one hundred and
twenty-five."
It was typical of the unreason of his sex that he failed to be impressed
by this argument.
"If you go on saving that way," said he, "we'll be in the hands of a
receiver by Christmas. I can't see any difference between buying one suit
from Ridley--whoever he may be--and three from Lily Dallam's 'little
man,' except that you spend more than three times as much money."
"Oh, I didn't get three!--I never thought you could be so unjust, Howard.
Surely you don't want me to dress like these Rivington women, do you?"
"I can't see anything wrong with their clothes," he maintained.
"And to think that I was doing it all to please you!" she cried
reproachfully.
"To please me!"
"Who else? We-we don't know anybody in New York. And I wanted you to be
proud of me. I've tried so hard and--and sometimes you don't even look at
my gowns, and say whether you like them and they are all for you."
This argument, at least, did not fail of results, combined as it was with
a hint of tears in Honora's voice. Its effect upon Howard was peculiar
--he was at once irritated, disarmed, and softened. He put down his
cigarette--and Honora was on his knee! He could not deny her attractions.
"How could you be so cruel, Howard?" she asked.
"You know you wouldn't like me to be a slattern. It was my own idea to
save money--I had a long talk about economy one day with Mrs. Holt. And
you act as though you had such a lot of it when we're in town for dinner
with these Rivington people. You always have champagne. If--if you're
poor, you ought to have told me so, and I shouldn't have ordered another
dinner gown."
"You've ordered another dinner gown!"
"Only a little one," said Honora, "the simplest kind. But if you're
poor--"
She had made a discovery--to reflect upon his business success was to
touch a sensitive nerve.
"I'm not poor," he declared. "But the bottom's dropped out of the market,
and even old Wing is economizing. We'll have to put on the brakes for
awhile, Honora."
It was shortly after this that Honora departed on the first of her three
visits to St. Louis.
CHAPTER IV
THE NEW DOCTRINE
This history concerns a free and untrammelled--and, let us add, feminine
--spirit. No lady is in the least interesting if restricted and contented
with her restrictions,--a fact which the ladies of our nation are fast
finding out. What would become of the Goddess of Liberty? And let us mark
well, while we are making these observations, that Liberty is a goddess,
not a god, although it has taken us in America over a century to realize
a significance in the choice of her sex. And--another discovery!--she is
not a haus frau. She is never domiciled, never fettered. Even the French,
clever as they are, have not conceived her: equality and fraternity are
neither kith nor kin of hers, and she laughs at them as myths--for she is
a laughing lady. She alone of the three is real, and she alone is
worshipped for attributes which she does not possess. She is a coquette,
and she is never satisfied. If she were, she would not be Liberty: if she
were, she would not be worshipped of men, but despised. If they
understood her, they would not care for her. And finally, she comes not
to bring peace, but a sword.
At quarter to seven one blustery evening of the April following their
fourth anniversary Honora returned from New York to find her husband
seated under the tall lamp in the room he somewhat facetiously called his
"den," scanning the financial page of his newspaper. He was in his
dressing gown, his slippered feet extended towards the hearth, smoking a
cigarette. And on the stand beside him was a cocktail glass--empty.
"Howard," she cried, brushing his ashes from the table, "how can you be so
untidy when you are so good-looking dressed up? I really believe you're
getting fat. And there," she added, critically touching a place on the
top of his head, "is a bald spot!"
"Anything else?" he murmured, with his eyes still on the sheet.
"Lots," answered Honora, pulling down the newspaper from before his face.
"For one thing, I'm not going to allow you to be a bear any more. I don't
mean a Stock Exchange bear, but a domestic bear--which is much worse.
You've got to notice me once in a while. If you don't, I'll get another
husband. That's what women do in these days, you know, when the one they
have doesn't take the trouble to make himself sufficiently agreeable. I'm
sure I could get another one quite easily," she declared.
He looked up at her as she stood facing him in the lamplight before the
fire, and was forced to admit to himself that the boast was not wholly
idle. A smile was on her lips, her eyes gleamed with health; her furs
--of silver fox--were thrown back, the crimson roses pinned on her mauve
afternoon gown matched the glow in her cheeks, while her hair mingled
with the dusky shadows. Howard Spence experienced one of those startling,
illuminating moments which come on occasions to the busy and
self-absorbed husbands of his nation. Psychologists have a name for such
a phenomenon. Ten minutes before, so far as his thoughts were concerned,
she had not existed, and suddenly she had become a possession which he
had not, in truth, sufficiently prized. Absurd though it was, the
possibility which she had suggested aroused in him a slight uneasiness.
"You are a deuced good-looking woman, I'll say that for you, Honora," he
admitted.
"Thanks," she answered, mockingly, and put her hands behind her back. "If
I had only known you were going to settle down in Rivington and get fat
and bald and wear dressing gowns and be a bear, I never should have
married you--never, never, never! Oh, how young and simple and foolish I
was! And the magnificent way you talked about New York, and intimated
that you were going to conquer the world. I believed you. Wasn't I a
little idiot not--to know that you'd make for a place like this and dig a
hole and stay in it, and let the world go hang?"
He laughed, though it was a poor attempt. And she read in his eyes, which
had not left her face, that he was more or less disturbed.
"I treat you pretty well, don't I, Honora?" he asked. There was an
amorous, apologetic note in his voice that amused her, and reminded her
of the honeymoon. "I give you all the money you want or rather--you take
it,--and I don't kick up a row, except when the market goes to pieces--"
"When you act as though we'd have to live in Harlem--which couldn't be
much worse," she interrupted. "And you stay in town all day and have no
end of fun making money,--for you like to make money, and expect me to
amuse myself the best part of my life with a lot of women who don't know
enough to keep thin."
He laughed again, but still uneasily. Honora was still smiling.
"What's got into you?" he demanded. "I know you don't like Rivington, but
you never broke loose this way before."
"If you stay here," said Honora, with a new firmness, "it will be alone.
I can't see what you want with a wife, anyway. I've been thinking you
over lately. I don't do anything for you, except to keep getting you
cooks--and anybody could do that. You don't seem to need me in any
possible way. All I do is to loiter around the house and read and play
the piano, or go to New York and buy clothes for nobody to look at except
strangers in restaurants. I'm worth more than that. I think I'll get
married again."
"Great Lord, what are you talking about?" he exclaimed when he got his
breath.
"I think I'll take a man next time," she continued calmly, "who has
something to him, some ambition. The kind of man I thought I was getting
when I took you only I shouldn't be fooled again. Women remarry a good
deal in these days, and I'm beginning to see the reason why. And the
women who have done it appear to be perfectly happy--much happier than
they were at first. I saw one of them at Lily Dallam's this afternoon.
She was radiant. I can't see any particular reason why a woman should be
tied all her life to her husband's apron strings--or whatever he wears
--and waste the talents she has. It's wicked, when she might be the
making of some man who is worth something, and who lives somewhere."
Her husband got up.
"Jehosaphat!" he cried, "I never heard such talk in my life."
The idea that her love for him might have ebbed a little, or that she
would for a moment consider leaving him, he rejected as preposterous, of
course: the reputation which the majority of her sex had made throughout
the ages for constancy to the marriage tie was not to be so lightly
dissipated. Nevertheless, there was in her words a new undertone of
determination he had never before heard--or, at least, noticed.
There was one argument, or panacea, which had generally worked like a
charm, although some time had elapsed since last he had resorted to it.
He tried to seize and kiss her, but she eluded him. At last he caught
her, out of breath, in the corner of the room.
"Howard--you'll knock over the lamp--you'll ruin my gown--and then you'll
have to buy me another. I DID mean it," she insisted, holding back her
head; "you'll have to choose between Rivington and me. It's--it's an
ultimatum. There were at least three awfully attractive men at Lily
Dallam's tea--I won't tell you who they were--who would be glad to marry
me in a minute."
He drew her down on the arm of his chair.
"Now that Lily has a house in town," he said weakly, "I suppose you think
you've got to have one."
"Oh, Howard, it is such a dear house. I had no idea that so much could be
done with so narrow a front. It's all French, with mirrors and big white
panels and satin chairs and sofas, and a carved gilt piano that she got
for nothing from a dealer she knows; and church candlesticks. The mirrors
give it the effect of being larger than it really is. I've only two
criticisms to make: it's too far from Fifth Avenue, and one can scarcely
turn around in it without knocking something down--a photograph frame or
a flower vase or one of her spindle-legged chairs. It was only a hideous,
old-fashioned stone front when she bought it. I suppose nobody but Reggie
Farwell could have made anything out of it."
"Who's Reggie Farwell?" inquired her husband.
"Howard, do you really mean to say you've never heard of Reggie Farwell?
Lily was so lucky to get him--she says he wouldn't have done the house if
he hadn't been such a friend of hers. And he was coming to the tea this
afternoon--only something happened at the last minute, and he couldn't.
She was so disappointed. He built the Maitlands' house, and did over the
Cecil Graingers'. And he's going to do our house--some day."
"Why not right away?" asked Howard.
"Because I've made up my mind to be very, very reasonable," she replied.
"We're going to Quicksands for a while, first."
"To Quicksands!" he repeated. But in spite of himself he experienced a
feeling of relief that she had not demanded a town mansion on the spot.
Honora sprang to her feet.
"Get up, Howard," she cried, "remember that we're going out for
dinner-and you'll never be ready."
"Hold on," he protested, "I don't know about this Quicksands proposition.
Let's talk it over a little more--"
"We'll talk it over another time," she replied. "But--remember my
ultimatum. And I am only taking you there for your own good."
"For my own good!"
"Yes. To get you out of a rut. To keep you from becoming commonplace and
obscure and--and everything you promised not to be when you married me,"
she retorted from the doorway, her eyes still alight with that disturbing
and tantalizing fire. "It is my last desperate effort as a wife to save
you from baldness, obesity, and nonentity." Wherewith she disappeared
into her room and closed the door.
We read of earthquakes in the tropics and at the ends of the earth with
commiseration, it is true, yet with the fond belief that the ground on
which we have built is so firm that our own 'lares' and 'penates' are in
no danger of being shaken down. And in the same spirit we learn of other
people's domestic cataclysms. Howard Spence had had only a slight shock,
but it frightened him and destroyed his sense of immunity. And during the
week that followed he lacked the moral courage either to discuss the
subject of Quicksands thoroughly or to let it alone: to put down his foot
like a Turk or accede like a Crichton.
Either course might have saved him. One trouble with the unfortunate man
was that he realized but dimly the gravity of the crisis. He had laboured
under the delusion that matrimonial conditions were still what they had
been in the Eighteenth Century--although it is doubtful whether he had
ever thought of that century. Characteristically, he considered the
troublesome affair chiefly from its business side. His ambition, if we
may use so large a word for the sentiment that had filled his breast, had
been coincident with his prenuptial passion for Honora. And she had
contrived, after four years, in some mysterious way to stir up that
ambition once more; to make him uncomfortable; to compel him to ask
himself whether he were not sliding downhill; to wonder whether living at
Quicksands might not bring him in touch with important interests which
had as yet eluded him. And, above all,--if the idea be put a little more
crudely and definitely than it occurred in his thoughts, he awoke to the
realization that his wife was an asset he had hitherto utterly neglected.
Inconceivable though it were (a middle-of-the-night reflection), if he
insisted on trying to keep such a woman bottled up in Rivington she might
some day pack up and leave him. One never could tell what a woman would
do in these days. Les sacrees femmes.
We are indebted to Honora for this view of her husband's mental
processes. She watched them, as it were, through a glass in the side of
his head, and incidentally derived infinite amusement therefrom. With
instinctive wisdom she refrained from tinkering.
An invitation to dine with the Dallams', in their own house, arrived a
day or two after the tea which Honora had attended there. Although Lily
had always been cordial, Honora thought this note couched in terms of
unusual warmth. She was implored to come early, because Lily had so much
to talk to her about which couldn't be written on account of a splitting
headache. In moderate obedience to this summons Honora arrived, on the
evening in question, before the ornamental ironwork of Mrs. Dallam's
front door at a few minutes after seven o'clock. Honora paused in the
spring twilight to contemplate the house, which stood out incongruously
from its sombre, brownstone brothers and sisters with noisy basement
kitchens. The Third Avenue Elevated, "so handy for Sid," roared across
the gap scarcely a block away; and just as the door was opened the
tightest of little blue broughams, pulled by a huge chestnut horse and
driven by the tiniest of grooms in top boots, drew up at the curb. And
out of it burst a resplendent lady--Mrs. Dallam.
"Oh, it's you, Honora," she cried. "Am I late? I'm so sorry. But I just
couldn't help it. It's all Clara Trowbridge's fault. She insisted on my
staying to meet that Renee Labride who dances so divinely in Lady
Emmeline. She's sweet. I've seen her eight times." Here she took Honora's
arm, and faced her towards the street. "What do you think of my turnout?
Isn't he a darling?"
"Is he--full grown?" asked Honora.
Lilly Dallam burst out laughing.
"Bless you, I don't mean Patrick,--although I had a terrible time finding
him. I mean the horse. Trixy Brent gave him to me before he went abroad."
"Gave him to you!" Honora exclaimed.
"Oh, he's always doing kind things like that, and he hadn't any use for
him. My dear, I hope you don't think for an instant Trixy's in love with
me! He's crazy about Lula Chandos. I tried so hard to get her to come to
dinner to-night, and the Trowbridges' and the Barclays'. You've no idea
how difficult it is in New York to get any one under two weeks. And so
we've got just ourselves."
Honora was on the point of declaring, politely, that she was very glad,
when Lily Dallam asked her how she liked the brougham.
"It's the image of Mrs. Cecil Grainger's, my dear, and I got it for a
song. As long as Trixy gave me the horse, I told Sid the least he could
do was to give me the brougham and the harness. Is Master Sid asleep?"
she inquired of the maid who had been patiently waiting at the door. "I
meant to have got home in time to kiss him."
She led Honora up the narrow but thickly carpeted stairs to a miniature
boudoir, where Madame Adelaide, in a gilt rococo frame, looked
superciliously down from the walls.
"Why haven't you been in to see me since my tea, Honora? You were such a
success, and after you left they were all crazy to know something about
you, and why they hadn't heard of you. My dear, how much did little
Harris charge you for that dress? If I had your face and neck and figure
I'd die before I'd live in Rivington. You're positively wasted, Honora.
And if you stay there, no one will look at you, though you were as
beautiful as Mrs. Langtry."
"You're rather good-looking yourself, Lily," said Honora.
"I'm ten years older than you, my dear, and I have to be so careful. Sid
says I'm killing myself, but I've found a little massage woman who is
wonderful. How do you like this dress?"
"All your things are exquisite."
"Do you think so?" cried Mrs. Dallam, delightedly.