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diff --git a/.gitattributes b/.gitattributes new file mode 100644 index 0000000..d7b82bc --- /dev/null +++ b/.gitattributes @@ -0,0 +1,4 @@ +*.txt text eol=lf +*.htm text eol=lf +*.html text eol=lf +*.md text eol=lf diff --git a/LICENSE.txt b/LICENSE.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..6312041 --- /dev/null +++ b/LICENSE.txt @@ -0,0 +1,11 @@ +This eBook, including all associated images, markup, improvements, +metadata, and any other content or labor, has been confirmed to be +in the PUBLIC DOMAIN IN THE UNITED STATES. + +Procedures for determining public domain status are described in +the "Copyright How-To" at https://www.gutenberg.org. + +No investigation has been made concerning possible copyrights in +jurisdictions other than the United States. Anyone seeking to utilize +this eBook outside of the United States should confirm copyright +status under the laws that apply to them. diff --git a/README.md b/README.md new file mode 100644 index 0000000..badfc30 --- /dev/null +++ b/README.md @@ -0,0 +1,2 @@ +Project Gutenberg (https://www.gutenberg.org) public repository for +eBook #70844 (https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/70844) diff --git a/old/70844-0.txt b/old/70844-0.txt deleted file mode 100644 index 68615fc..0000000 --- a/old/70844-0.txt +++ /dev/null @@ -1,9754 +0,0 @@ -The Project Gutenberg eBook of Twilight sleep, by Edith Wharton - -This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and -most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions -whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms -of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at -www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you -will have to check the laws of the country where you are located before -using this eBook. - -Title: Twilight sleep - -Author: Edith Wharton - -Release Date: May 23, 2023 [eBook #70844] - -Language: English - -Produced by: Laura Natal Rodrigues (Images generously made available by - Hathi Trust Digital Library.) - -*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK TWILIGHT SLEEP *** - - - TWILIGHT SLEEP - - - - EDITH WHARTON - - - - - FAUST. _Und du, wer bist du_? - SORGE. _Bin einmal da_. - FAUST. _Entferne dich_! - SORGE. _Ich bin am rechten Ort_. - - Faust. Teil II. Akt V. - - - - - New York & London - D. APPLETON AND COMPANY - MCMXXVII - - - - -COPYRIGHT--1927--BY -D. APPLETON AND COMPANY -PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA - - - - -By EDITH WHARTON -TWILIGHT SLEEP -HERE AND BEYOND -THE MOTHER'S RECOMPENSE -OLD NEW YORK - False Dawn - The Old Maid - The Spark - New Year's Day -THE GLIMPSES OF THE MOON -THE AGE OF INNOCENCE -SUMMER -THE REEF -THE MARNE -FRENCH WAYS AND THEIR MEANING - - - - -CONTENTS -BOOK I -CHAPTER I -CHAPTER II -CHAPTER III -CHAPTER IV -CHAPTER V -CHAPTER VI -CHAPTER VII -CHAPTER VIII -CHAPTER IX -CHAPTER X -BOOK II -CHAPTER XI -CHAPTER XII -CHAPTER XIII -CHAPTER XIV -CHAPTER XV -CHAPTER XVI -CHAPTER XVII -CHAPTER XVIII -CHAPTER XIX -BOOK III -CHAPTER XX -CHAPTER XXI -CHAPTER XXII -CHAPTER XXIII -CHAPTER XXIV -CHAPTER XXV -CHAPTER XXVI -CHAPTER XXVII -CHAPTER XXVIII -CHAPTER XXIX -CHAPTER XXX -CHAPTER XXXI -CHAPTER XXXII - - - - -_BOOK I_ - - - - -I - - -MISS BRUSS, the perfect secretary, received Nona Manford at the door of -her mother's boudoir ("the office," Mrs. Manford's children called it) -with a gesture of the kindliest denial. - -"She wants to, you know, dear--your mother always wants to see you," -pleaded Maisie Bruss, in a voice which seemed to be thinned and -sharpened by continuous telephoning. Miss Bruss, attached to Mrs. -Manford's service since shortly after the latter's second marriage, had -known Nona from her childhood, and was privileged, even now that she was -"out," to treat her with a certain benevolent familiarity--benevolence -being the note of the Manford household. - -"But look at her list--just for this morning!" the secretary continued, -handing over a tall morocco-framed tablet, on which was inscribed, in -the colourless secretarial hand: "7.30 Mental uplift. 7.45 Breakfast. 8. -Psycho-analysis. 8.15 See cook. 8.30 Silent Meditation. 8.45 Facial -massage. 9. Man with Persian miniatures. 9.15 Correspondence. 9.30 -Manicure. 9.45 Eurythmic exercises. 10. Hair waved. 10.15 Sit for bust. -10.30 Receive Mothers' Day deputation. 11. Dancing lesson. 11.30 Birth -Control committee at Mrs.----" - -"The manicure is there now, late as usual. That's what martyrizes your -mother; everybody's being so unpunctual. This New York life is killing -her." - -"I'm not unpunctual," said Nona Manford, leaning in the doorway. - -"No; and a miracle, too! The way you girls keep up your dancing all -night. You and Lita--what times you two do have!" Miss Bruss was -becoming almost maternal. "But just run your eye down that list--. You -see your mother didn't _expect_ to see you before lunch; now did she?" - -Nona shook her head. "No; but you might perhaps squeeze me in." - -It was said in a friendly, a reasonable tone; on both sides the matter -was being examined with an evident desire for impartiality and -good-will. Nona was used to her mother's engagements; used to being -squeezed in between faith-healers, art-dealers, social service workers -and manicures. When Mrs. Manford did see her children she was perfect to -them; but in this killing New York life, with its ever-multiplying -duties and responsibilities, if her family had been allowed to tumble in -at all hours and devour her time, her nervous system simply couldn't -have stood it--and how many duties would have been left undone! - -Mrs. Manford's motto had always been: "There's a time for everything." -But there were moments when this optimistic view failed her, and she -began to think there wasn't. This morning, for instance, as Miss Bruss -pointed out, she had had to tell the new French sculptor who had been -all the rage in New York for the last month that she wouldn't be able to -sit to him for more than fifteen minutes, on account of the Birth -Control committee meeting at 11.30 at Mrs.---- - -Nona seldom assisted at these meetings, her own time being--through -force of habit rather than real inclination--so fully taken up with -exercise, athletics and the ceaseless rush from thrill to thrill which -was supposed to be the happy privilege of youth. But she had had -glimpses enough of the scene: of the audience of bright elderly women, -with snowy hair, eurythmic movements, and finely-wrinkled over-massaged -faces on which a smile of glassy benevolence sat like their rimless -pince-nez. They were all inexorably earnest, aimlessly kind and -fathomlessly pure; and all rather too well-dressed, except the -"prominent woman" of the occasion, who usually wore dowdy clothes, and -had steel-rimmed spectacles and straggling wisps of hair. Whatever the -question dealt with, these ladies always seemed to be the same, and -always advocated with equal zeal Birth Control and unlimited maternity, -free love or the return to the traditions of the American home; and -neither they nor Mrs. Manford seemed aware that there was anything -contradictory in these doctrines. All they knew was that they were -determined to force certain persons to do things that those persons -preferred not to do. Nona, glancing down the serried list, recalled a -saying of her mother's former husband, Arthur Wyant: "Your mother and -her friends would like to teach the whole world how to say its prayers -and brush its teeth." - -The girl had laughed, as she could never help laughing at Wyant's -sallies; but in reality she admired her mother's zeal, though she -sometimes wondered if it were not a little too promiscuous. Nona was the -daughter of Mrs. Manford's second marriage, and her own father, Dexter -Manford, who had had to make his way in the world, had taught her to -revere activity as a virtue in itself; his tone in speaking of Pauline's -zeal was very different from Wyant's. He had been brought up to think -there was a virtue in work _per se_, even if it served no more useful -purpose than the revolving of a squirrel in a wheel. "Perhaps your -mother tries to cover too much ground; but it's very fine of her, you -know--she never spares herself." - -"Nor us!" Nona sometimes felt tempted to add; but Manford's admiration -was contagious. Yes; Nona did admire her mother's altruistic energy; but -she knew well enough that neither she nor her brother's wife Lita would -ever follow such an example--she no more than Lita. They belonged to -another generation: to the bewildered disenchanted young people who had -grown up since the Great War, whose energies were more spasmodic and -less definitely directed, and who, above all, wanted a more personal -outlet for them. "Bother earthquakes in Bolivia!" Lita had once -whispered to Nona, when Mrs. Manford had convoked the bright elderly -women to deal with a seismic disaster at the other end of the world, the -repetition of which these ladies somehow felt could be avoided if they -sent out a commission immediately to teach the Bolivians to do something -they didn't want to do--not to _believe_ in earthquakes, for instance. - -The young people certainly felt no corresponding desire to set the -houses of others in order. Why shouldn't the Bolivians have earthquakes -if they chose to live in Bolivia? And why must Pauline Manford lie awake -over it in New York, and have to learn a new set of Mahatma exercises to -dispel the resulting wrinkles? "I suppose if we feel like that it's -really because we're too lazy to care," Nona reflected, with her -incorrigible honesty. - -She turned from Miss Bruss with a slight shrug. "Oh, well," she -murmured. - -"You know, pet," Miss Bruss volunteered, "things always get worse as the -season goes on; and the last fortnight in February is the worst of all, -especially with Easter coming as early as it does this year. I never -_could_ see why they picked out such an awkward date for Easter: perhaps -those Florida hotel people did it. Why, your poor mother wasn't even -able to see your father this morning before he went down town, though -she thinks it's _all wrong_ to let him go off to his office like that, -without finding time for a quiet little chat first... Just a cheery -word to put him in the right mood for the day... Oh, by the way, my -dear, I wonder if you happen to have heard him say if he's dining at -home tonight? Because you know he never _does_ remember to leave word -about his plans, and if he hasn't, I'd better telephone to the office to -remind him that it's the night of the big dinner for the Marchesa--" - -"Well, I don't think father's dining at home," said the girl -indifferently. - -"Not--not--not? Oh, my gracious!" clucked Miss Bruss, dashing across the -room to the telephone on her own private desk. - -The engagement-list had slipped from her hands, and Nona Manford, -picking it up, ran her glance over it. She read: "4 P.M. See A.--4.30 -P.M. Musical: Torfried Lobb." - -"4 P.M. See A." Nona had been almost sure it was Mrs. Manford's day for -going to see her divorced husband, Arthur Wyant, the effaced mysterious -person always designated on Mrs. Manford's lists as "A," and hence known -to her children as "Exhibit A." It was rather a bore, for Nona had meant -to go and see him herself at about that hour, and she always timed her -visits so that they should not clash with Mrs. Manford's, not because -the latter disapproved of Nona's friendship with Arthur Wyant (she -thought it "beautiful" of the girl to show him so much kindness), but -because Wyant and Nona were agreed that on these occasions the presence -of the former Mrs. Wyant spoilt their fun. But there was nothing to do -about it. Mrs. Manford's plans were unchangeable. Even illness and death -barely caused a ripple in them. One might as well have tried to bring -down one of the Pyramids by poking it with a parasol as attempt to -disarrange the close mosaic of Mrs. Manford's engagement-list. Mrs. -Manford herself couldn't have done it; not with the best will in the -world; and Mrs. Manford's will, as her children and all her household -knew, was the best in the world. - -Nona Manford moved away with a final shrug. She had wanted to speak to -her mother about something rather important; something she had caught a -startled glimpse of, the evening before, in the queer little half-formed -mind of her sister-in-law Lita, the wife of her half-brother Jim -Wyant--the Lita with whom, as Miss Bruss remarked, she, Nona, danced -away the nights. There was nobody on earth as dear to Nona as that same -Jim, her elder by six or seven years, and who had been brother, comrade, -guardian, almost father to her--her own father, Dexter Manford, who was -so clever, capable and kind, being almost always too busy at the office, -or too firmly requisitioned by Mrs. Manford, when he was at home, to be -able to spare much time for his daughter. - -Jim, bless him, always had time; no doubt that was what his mother meant -when she called him lazy--as lazy as his father, she had once added, -with one of her rare flashes of impatience. Nothing so conduced to -impatience in Mrs. Manford as the thought of anybody's having the least -fraction of unapportioned time and not immediately planning to do -something with it. If only they could have given it to _her_! And Jim, who -loved and admired her (as all her family did) was always conscientiously -trying to fill his days, or to conceal from her their occasional -vacuity. But he had a way of not being in a hurry, and this had been all -to the good for little Nona, who could always count on him to ride or -walk with her, to slip off with her to a concert or a "movie," or, more -pleasantly still, just to _be there_--idling in the big untenanted library -of Cedarledge, the place in the country, or in his untidy study on the -third floor of the town house, and ready to answer questions, help her -to look up hard words in dictionaries, mend her golf-sticks, or get a -thorn out of her Sealyham's paw. Jim was wonderful with his hands: he -could repair clocks, start up mechanical toys, make fascinating models -of houses or gardens, apply a tourniquet, scramble eggs, mimic his -mother's visitors--preferably the "earnest" ones who held forth about -"causes" or "messages" in her gilded drawing-rooms--and make delicious -coloured maps of imaginary continents, concerning which Nona wrote -interminable stories. And of all these gifts he had, alas, made no -particular use as yet--except to enchant his little half-sister. - -It had been just the same, Nona knew, with his father: poor useless -"Exhibit A"! Mrs. Manford said it was their "old New York blood"--she -spoke of them with mingled contempt and pride, as if they were the last -of the Capetians, exhausted by a thousand years of sovereignty. Her own -red corpuscles were tinged with a more plebeian dye. Her progenitors had -mined in Pennsylvania and made bicycles at Exploit, and now gave their -name to one of the most popular automobiles in the United States. Not -that other ingredients were lacking in her hereditary make-up: her -mother was said to have contributed southern gentility by being a Pascal -of Tallahassee. Mrs. Manford, in certain moods, spoke of "The Pascals of -Tallahassee" as if they accounted for all that was noblest in her; but -when she was exhorting Jim to action it was her father's blood that she -invoked. "After all, in spite of the Pascal tradition, there is no shame -in being in trade. My father's father came over from Scotland with two -sixpences in his pocket ..." and Mrs. Manford would glance with -pardonable pride at the glorious Gainsborough over the dining-room -mantelpiece (which she sometimes almost mistook for an ancestral -portrait), and at her healthy handsome family sitting about the -dinner-table laden with Georgian silver and orchids from her own -hot-houses. - -From the threshold, Nona called back to Miss Bruss: "Please tell mother -I shall probably be lunching with Jim and Lita--" but Miss Bruss was -passionately saying to an unseen interlocutor: "Oh, but Mr. Rigley, but -you _must_ make Mr. Manford understand that Mrs. Manford counts on him for -dinner this evening... The dinner-dance for the Marchesa, you know..." - - -The marriage of her half-brother had been Nona Manford's first real -sorrow. Not that she had disapproved of his choice: how could any one -take that funny irresponsible little Lita Cliffe seriously enough to -disapprove of her? The sisters-in-law were soon the best of friends; if -Nona had a fault to find with Lita, it was that she didn't worship the -incomparable Jim as blindly as his sister did. But then Lita was made to -be worshipped, not to worship; that was manifest in the calm gaze of her -long narrow nut-coloured eyes, in the hieratic fixity of her lovely -smile, in the very shape of her hands, so slim yet dimpled, hands which -had never grown up, and which drooped from her wrists as if listlessly -waiting to be kissed, or lay like rare shells or upcurved -magnolia-petals on the cushions luxuriously piled about her indolent -body. - -The Jim Wyants had been married for nearly two years now; the baby was -six months old; the pair were beginning to be regarded as one of the -"old couples" of their set, one of the settled landmarks in the -matrimonial quicksands of New York. Nona's love for her brother was too -disinterested for her not to rejoice in this: above all things she -wanted her old Jim to be happy, and happy she was sure he was--or had -been until lately. The mere getting away from Mrs. Manford's iron rule -had been a greater relief than he himself perhaps guessed. And then he -was still the foremost of Lita's worshippers; still enchanted by the -childish whims, the unpunctuality, the irresponsibility, which made life -with her such a thrillingly unsettled business after the clock-work -routine of his mother's perfect establishment. - -All this Nona rejoiced in; but she ached at times with the loneliness of -the perfect establishment, now that Jim, its one disturbing element, had -left. Jim guessed her loneliness, she was sure: it was he who encouraged -the growing intimacy between his wife and his half-sister, and tried to -make the latter feel that his house was another home to her. - -Lita had always been amiably disposed toward Nona. The two, though so -fundamentally different, were nearly of an age, and united by the -prevailing passion for every form of sport. Lita, in spite of her soft -curled-up attitudes, was not only a tireless dancer but a brilliant if -uncertain tennis-player, and an adventurous rider to hounds. Between her -hours of lolling, and smoking amber-scented cigarettes, every moment of -her life was crammed with dancing, riding or games. During the two or -three months before the baby's birth, when Lita had been reduced to -partial inactivity, Nona had rather feared that her perpetual -craving for new "thrills" might lead to some insidious form of -time-killing--some of the drinking or drugging that went on among the -young women of their set; but Lita had sunk into a state of smiling -animal patience, as if the mysterious work going on in her tender young -body had a sacred significance for her, and it was enough to lie still -and let it happen. All she asked was that nothing should "hurt" her: she -had the blind dread of physical pain common also to most of the young -women of her set. But all that was so easily managed nowadays: Mrs. -Manford (who took charge of the business, Lita being an orphan) of -course knew the most perfect "Twilight Sleep" establishment in the -country, installed Lita in its most luxurious suite, and filled her -rooms with spring flowers, hot-house fruits, new novels and all the -latest picture-papers--and Lita drifted into motherhood as lightly and -unperceivingly as if the wax doll which suddenly appeared in the cradle -at her bedside had been brought there in one of the big bunches of -hot-house roses that she found every morning on her pillow. - -"Of course there ought to be no Pain ... nothing but Beauty... It -ought to be one of the loveliest, most poetic things in the world to -have a baby," Mrs. Manford declared, in that bright efficient voice -which made loveliness and poetry sound like the attributes of an -advanced industrialism, and babies something to be turned out in series -like Fords. And Jim's joy in his son had been unbounded; and Lita really -hadn't minded in the least. - - - - -II - - -THE Marchesa was something which happened at irregular but inevitable -moments in Mrs. Manford's life. - -Most people would have regarded the Marchesa as a disturbance; some as a -distinct inconvenience; the pessimistic as a misfortune. It was a matter -of conscious pride to Mrs. Manford that, while recognizing these -elements in the case, she had always contrived to make out of it -something not only showy but even enviable. - -For, after all, if your husband (even an ex-husband) has a first cousin -called Amalasuntha degli Duchi di Lucera, who has married the Marchese -Venturino di San Fedele, of one of the great Neapolitan families, it -seems stupid and wasteful not to make some use of such a conjunction of -names and situations, and to remember only (as the Wyants did) that when -Amalasuntha came to New York it was always to get money, or to get her -dreadful son out of a new scrape, or to consult the family lawyers as to -some new way of guarding the remains of her fortune against Venturino's -systematic depredations. - -Mrs. Manford knew in advance the hopelessness of these quests--all of -them, that is, except that which consisted in borrowing money from -herself. She always lent Amalasuntha two or three thousand dollars (and -put it down to the profit-and-loss column of her carefully-kept private -accounts); she even gave the Marchesa her own last year's clothes, -cleverly retouched; and in return she expected Amalasuntha to shed on -the Manford entertainments that exotic lustre which the near relative of -a Duke who is also a grandee of Spain and a great dignitary of the Papal -Court trails with her through the dustiest by-ways, even if her mother -has been a mere Mary Wyant of Albany. - -Mrs. Manford had been successful. The Marchesa, without taking thought, -fell naturally into the part assigned to her. In her stormy and -uncertain life, New York, where her rich relations lived, and from which -she always came back with a few thousand dollars, and clothes that could -be made to last a year, and good advice about putting the screws on -Venturino, was like a foretaste of heaven. "Live there? Carina, _no_! It -is too--too uneventful. As heaven must be. But everybody is celestially -kind ... and Venturino has learnt that there are certain things my -American relations will not tolerate..." Such was Amalasuntha's -version of her visits to New York, when she recounted them in the -drawing-rooms of Rome, Naples or St. Moritz; whereas in New York, quite -carelessly and unthinkingly--for no one was simpler at heart than -Amalasuntha--she pronounced names, and raised suggestions, which cast a -romantic glow of unreality over a world bounded by Wall Street on the -south and Long Island in most other directions; and in this glow Pauline -Manford was always eager to sun her other guests. - -"My husband's cousin" (become, since the divorce from Wyant "my son's -cousin") was still, after twenty-seven years, a useful social card. The -Marchesa di San Fedele, now a woman of fifty, was still, in Pauline's -set, a pretext for dinners, a means of paying off social scores, a small -but steady luminary in the uncertain New York heavens. Pauline could -never see her rather forlorn wisp of a figure, always clothed in -careless unnoticeable black (even when she wore Mrs. Manford's old -dresses), without a vision of echoing Roman staircases, of the torchlit -arrival of Cardinals at the Lucera receptions, of a great fresco-like -background of Popes, princes, dilapidated palaces, cypress-guarded -villas, scandals, tragedies, and interminable feuds about inheritances. - -"It's all so dreadful--the wicked lives those great Roman families lead. -After all, poor Amalasuntha has good American blood in her--her mother -was a Wyant; yes--Mary Wyant married Prince Ottaviano di Lago Negro, the -Duke of Lucera's son, who used to be at the Italian Legation in -Washington; but what is Amalasuntha to do, in a country where there's no -divorce, and a woman just has to put up with _everything_? The Pope has -been most kind; he sides entirely with Amalasuntha. But Venturino's -people are very powerful too--a great Neapolitan family--yes, Cardinal -Ravello is Venturino's uncle ... so that altogether it's been dreadful -for Amalasuntha ... and such an oasis to her, coming back to her own -people..." - -Pauline Manford was quite sincere in believing that it was dreadful for -Amalasuntha. Pauline herself could conceive of nothing more shocking -than a social organization which did not recognize divorce, and let all -kinds of domestic evils fester undisturbed, instead of having people's -lives disinfected and whitewashed at regular intervals, like the cellar. -But while Mrs. Manford thought all this--in fact, in the very act of -thinking it--she remembered that Cardinal Ravello, Venturino's uncle, -had been mentioned as one of the probable delegates to the Roman -Catholic Congress which was to meet at Baltimore that winter, and -wondered whether an evening party for his Eminence could not be -organized with Amalasuntha's help; even got as far as considering the -effect of torch-bearing footmen (in silk stockings) lining the Manford -staircase--which was of marble, thank goodness!--and of Dexter Manford -and Jim receiving the Prince of the Church on the doorstep, and walking -upstairs backward carrying silver candelabra; though Pauline wasn't sure -she could persuade them to go as far as that. - -Pauline felt no more inconsistency in this double train of thought than -she did in shuddering at the crimes of the Roman Church and longing to -receive one of its dignitaries with all the proper ceremonial. She was -used to such rapid adjustments, and proud of the fact that whole -categories of contradictory opinions lay down together in her mind as -peacefully as the Happy Families exhibited by strolling circuses. And of -course, if the Cardinal _did_ come to her house, she would show her -American independence by inviting also the Bishop of New York--her own -Episcopal Bishop--and possibly the Chief Rabbi (also a friend of hers), -and certainly that wonderful much-slandered "Mahatma" in whom she still -so thoroughly believed... - -But the word pulled her up short. Yes; certainly she believed in the -"Mahatma." She had every reason to. Standing before the tall threefold -mirror in her dressing-room, she glanced into the huge bathroom -beyond--which looked like a biological laboratory, with its white tiles, -polished pipes, weighing machines, mysterious appliances for douches, -gymnastics and "physical culture"--and recalled with gratitude that it -was certainly those eurythmic exercises of the Mahatma's ("holy -ecstasy," he called them) which had reduced her hips after everything -else had failed. And this gratitude for the reduction of her hips was -exactly on the same plane, in her neat card-catalogued mind, with her -enthusiastic faith in his wonderful mystical teachings about -Self-Annihilation, Anterior Existence and Astral Affinities ... all so -incomprehensible and so pure... Yes; she would certainly ask the -Mahatma. It would do the Cardinal good to have a talk with him. She -could almost hear his Eminence saying, in a voice shaken by emotion: -"Mrs. Manford, I want to thank you for making me know that Wonderful -Man. If it hadn't been for you--" - -Ah, she did like people who said to her: "If it hadn't been for you--!" - -The telephone on her dressing-table rang. Miss Bruss had switched on -from the boudoir. Mrs. Manford, as she unhooked the receiver, cast a -nervous glance at the clock. She was already seven minutes late for her -Marcel-waving, and-- - -Ah: it was Dexter's voice! Automatically she composed her face to a -wifely smile, and her voice to a corresponding intonation. "Yes? -Pauline, dear. Oh--about dinner tonight? Why, you know, Amalasuntha... -You say you're going to the theatre with Jim and Lita? But, Dexter, you -can't! They're dining here--Jim and Lita are. But _of course_... Yes, it -must have been a mistake; Lita's so flighty... I know..." (The smile -grew a little pinched; the voice echoed it. Then, patiently): "Yes; what -else? ... _Oh_... oh, Dexter... what do you mean? ... The Mahatma? -_What_? I don't understand!" - -But she did. She was conscious of turning white under her discreet -cosmetics. Somewhere in the depths of her there had lurked for the last -weeks an unexpressed fear of this very thing: a fear that the people who -were opposed to the teaching of the Hindu sage--New York's great -"spiritual uplift" of the last two years--were gaining power and -beginning to be a menace. And here was Dexter Manford actually saying -something about having been asked to conduct an investigation into the -state of things at the Mahatma's "School of Oriental Thought," in which -all sorts of unpleasantness might be involved. Of course Dexter never -said much about professional matters on the telephone; he did not, to -his wife's thinking, say enough about them when he got home. But what -little she now gathered made her feel positively ill. - -"Oh, Dexter, but I must see you about this! At once! You couldn't come -back to lunch, I suppose? Not possibly? No--this evening there'll be no -chance. Why, the dinner for Amalasuntha--oh, please don't forget it -_again_!" - -With one hand on the receiver, she reached with the other for her -engagement-list (the duplicate of Miss Bruss's), and ran a nervous -unseeing eye over it. A scandal--another scandal! It mustn't be. She -loathed scandals. And besides, she did believe in the Mahatma. He had -"vision." From the moment when she had picked up that word in a magazine -article she had felt she had a complete answer about him... - -"But I must see you before this evening, Dexter. Wait! I'm looking over -my engagements." She came to "4 P.M. See A. 4.30 Musical--Torfried -Lobb." No; she couldn't give up Torfried Lobb: she was one of the fifty -or sixty ladies who had "discovered" him the previous winter, and she -knew he counted on her presence at his recital. Well, then--for once "A" -must be sacrificed. - -"Listen, Dexter; if I were to come to the office at 4? Yes; sharp. Is -that right? And don't do anything till I see you--promise!" - -She hung up with a sigh of relief. She would try to readjust things so -as to see "A" the next day; though readjusting her list in the height of -the season was as exhausting as a major operation. - -In her momentary irritation she was almost inclined to feel as if it -were Arthur's fault for figuring on that day's list, and thus unsettling -all her arrangements. Poor Arthur--from the first he had been one of her -failures. She had a little cemetery of them--a very small one--planted -over with quick-growing things, so that you might have walked all -through her life and not noticed there were any graves in it. To the -inexperienced Pauline of thirty years ago, fresh from the factory-smoke -of Exploit, Arthur Wyant had symbolized the tempting contrast between a -city absorbed in making money and a society bent on enjoying it. Such a -brilliant figure--and nothing to show for it! She didn't know exactly -what she had expected, her own ideal of manly achievement being at that -time solely based on the power of getting rich faster than your -neighbours--which Arthur would certainly never do. His father-in-law at -Exploit had seen at a glance that it was no use taking him into the -motor-business, and had remarked philosophically to Pauline: "Better -just regard him as a piece of jewellery: I guess we can afford it." - -But jewellery must at least be brilliant; and Arthur had somehow--faded. -At one time she had hoped he might play a part in state politics--with -Washington and its enticing diplomatic society at the end of the -vista--but he shrugged that away as contemptuously as what he called -"trade." At Cedarledge he farmed a little, fussed over the accounts, and -muddled away her money till she replaced him by a trained -superintendent; and in town he spent hours playing bridge at his club, -took an intermittent interest in racing, and went and sat every -afternoon with his mother, old Mrs. Wyant, in the dreary house near -Stuyvesant Square which had never been "done over," and was still lit by -Carcel lamps. - -An obstacle and a disappointment; that was what he had always been. -Still, she would have borne with his inadequacy, his resultless -planning, dreaming and dawdling, even his growing tendency to drink, as -the wives of her generation were taught to bear with such failings, had -it not been for the discovery that he was also "immoral." Immorality no -high-minded woman could condone; and when, on her return from a -rest-cure in California, she found that he had drifted into a furtive -love affair with the dependent cousin who lived with his mother, every -law of self-respect known to Pauline decreed his repudiation. Old Mrs. -Wyant, horror-struck, banished the cousin and pleaded for her son: -Pauline was adamant. She addressed herself to the rising divorce-lawyer, -Dexter Manford, and in his capable hands the affair was settled rapidly, -discreetly, without scandal, wrangling or recrimination. Wyant withdrew -to his mother's house, and Pauline went to Europe, a free woman. - -In the early days of the new century divorce had not become a social -institution in New York, and the blow to Wyant's pride was deeper than -Pauline had foreseen. He lived in complete retirement at his mother's, -saw his boy at the dates prescribed by the court, and sank into a sort -of premature old age which contrasted painfully--even to Pauline -herself--with her own recovered youth and elasticity. The contrast -caused her a retrospective pang, and gradually, after her second -marriage, and old Mrs. Wyant's death, she came to regard poor Arthur not -as a grievance but as a responsibility. She prided herself on never -neglecting her responsibilities, and therefore felt a not unnatural -vexation with Arthur for having figured among her engagements that day, -and thus obliged her to postpone him. - -Moving back to the dressing-table she caught her reflection in the tall -triple glass. Again those fine wrinkles about lids and lips, those -vertical lines between the eyes! She would not permit it; no, not for a -moment. She commanded herself: "Now, Pauline, _stop worrying_. You know -perfectly well there's no such thing as worry; it's only dyspepsia or -want of exercise, and everything's really all right--" in the insincere -tone of a mother soothing a bruised baby. - -She looked again, and fancied the wrinkles were really fainter, the -vertical lines less deep. Once more she saw before her an erect athletic -woman, with all her hair and all her teeth, and just a hint of rouge -(because "people did it") brightening a still fresh complexion; saw her -small symmetrical features, the black brows drawn with a light stroke -over handsome directly-gazing gray eyes, the abundant whitening hair -which still responded so crisply to the waver's wand, the firmly planted -feet with arched insteps rising to slim ankles. - -How absurd, how unlike herself, to be upset by that foolish news! She -would look in on Dexter and settle the Mahatma business in five minutes. -If there was to be a scandal she wasn't going to have Dexter mixed up in -it--above all not against the Mahatma. She could never forget that it -was the Mahatma who had first told her she was psychic. - -The maid opened an inner door an inch or two to say rebukingly: "Madam, -the hair-dresser; and Miss Bruss asked me to remind you--" - -"Yes, yes, yes," Mrs. Manford responded hastily; repeating below her -breath, as she flung herself into her kimono and settled down before her -toilet-table: "Now, I forbid you to let yourself feel hurried! You _know_ -there's no such thing as hurry." - -But her eye again turned anxiously to the little clock among her -scent-bottles, and she wondered if she might not save time by dictating -to Maisie Bruss while she was being waved and manicured. She envied -women who had no sense of responsibility--like Jim's little Lita. As for -herself, the only world she knew rested on her shoulders. - - - - -III - - -AT a quarter past one, when Nona arrived at her half-brother's house, -she was told that Mrs. Wyant was not yet down. - -"And Mr. Wyant not yet up, I suppose? From his office, I mean," she -added, as the young butler looked his surprise. - -Pauline Manford had been very generous at the time of her son's -marriage. She was relieved at his settling down, and at his seeming to -understand that marriage connoted the choice of a profession, and the -adoption of what people called regular habits. Not that Jim's -irregularities had ever been such as the phrase habitually suggests. -They had chiefly consisted in his not being able to make up his mind -what to do with his life (so like his poor father, that!), in his always -forgetting what time it was, or what engagements his mother had made for -him, in his wanting a chemical laboratory fitted up for him at -Cedarledge, and then, when it was all done, using it first as a kennel -for breeding fox-terriers and then as a quiet place to practise the -violin. - -Nona knew how sorely these vacillations had tried her mother, and how -reassured Mrs. Manford had been when the young man, in the heat of his -infatuation for Lita, had vowed that if she would have him he would turn -to and grind in an office like all the other husbands. - -_Lita have him_! Lita Cliffe, a portionless orphan, with no one to guide -her in the world but a harum-scarum and somewhat blown-upon aunt, the -"impossible" Mrs. Percy Landish! Mrs. Manford smiled at her son's -modesty while she applauded his good resolutions. "This experience has -made a man of dear Jim," she said, mildly triumphing in the latest -confirmation of her optimism. "If only it lasts--!" she added, relapsing -into human uncertainty. - -"Oh, it will, mother; you'll see; as long as Lita doesn't get tired of -him," Nona had assured her. - -"As long--? But, my dear child, why should Lita ever get tired of him? -You seem to forget what a miracle it was that a girl like Lita, with no -one but poor Kitty Landish to look after her, should ever have got such -a husband!" - -Nona held her ground. "Well--just look about you, mother! Don't they -almost all get tired of each other? And when they do, will anything ever -stop their having another try? Think of your big dinners! Doesn't Maisie -always have to make out a list of previous marriages as long as a -cross-word puzzle, to prevent your calling people by the wrong names?" - -Mrs. Manford waved away the challenge. "Jim and Lita are not like that; -and I don't like your way of speaking of divorce, Nona," she had added, -rather weakly for her--since, as Nona might have reminded her, her own -way of speaking of divorce varied disconcertingly with the time, the -place and the divorce. - -The young girl had leisure to recall this discussion while she sat and -waited for her brother and his wife. In the freshly decorated and -studiously empty house there seemed to be no one to welcome her. The -baby (whom she had first enquired for) was asleep, his mother hardly -awake, and the head of the house still "at the office." Nona looked -about the drawing-room and wondered--the habit was growing on her. - -The drawing-room (it suddenly occurred to her) was very expressive of -the modern marriage state. It looked, for all its studied effects, its -rather nervous attention to "values," complementary colours, and the -things the modern decorator lies awake over, more like the waiting-room -of a glorified railway station than the setting of an established way of -life. Nothing in it seemed at home or at ease--from the early kakemono -of a bearded sage, on walls of pale buff silk, to the three mourning -irises isolated in a white Sung vase in the desert of an otherwise empty -table. The only life in the room was contributed by the agitations of -the exotic goldfish in a huge spherical aquarium; and they too were but -transients, since Lita insisted on having the aquarium illuminated night -and day with electric bulbs, and the sleepless fish were always dying -off and having to be replaced. - -Mrs. Manford had paid for the house and its decoration. It was not what -she would have wished for herself--she had not yet quite caught up with -the new bareness and selectiveness. But neither would she have wished -the young couple to live in the opulent setting of tapestries and -"period" furniture which she herself preferred. Above all she wanted -them to keep up; to do what the other young couples were doing; she had -even digested--in one huge terrified gulp--Lita's black boudoir, with -its welter of ebony velvet cushions overlooked by a statue as to which -Mrs. Manford could only minimize the indecency by saying that she -understood it was Cubist. But she did think it unkind--after all she had -done--to have Nona suggest that Lita might get tired of Jim! - -The idea had never really troubled Nona--at least not till lately. Even -now she had nothing definite in her mind. Nothing beyond the vague -question: what would a woman like Lita be likely to do if she suddenly -grew tired of the life she was leading? But that question kept coming -back so often that she had really wanted, that morning, to consult her -mother about it; for who else was there to consult? Arthur Wyant? Why, -poor Arthur had never been able to manage his own poor little concerns -with any sort of common sense or consistency; and at the suggestion that -any one might tire of Jim he would be as indignant as Mrs. Manford, and -without her power of controlling her emotions. - -Dexter Manford? Well--Dexter Manford's daughter had to admit that it -really wasn't his business if his step-son's marriage threatened to be a -failure; and besides, Nona knew how overwhelmed with work her father -always was, and hesitated to lay this extra burden on him. For it would -be a burden. Manford was very fond of Jim (as indeed they all were), and -had been extremely kind to him. It was entirely owing to Manford's -influence that Jim, who was regarded as vague and unreliable, had got -such a good berth in the Amalgamated Trust Co.; and Manford had been -much pleased at the way in which the boy had stuck to his job. Just like -Jim, Nona thought tenderly--if ever you could induce him to do anything -at all, he always did it with such marvellous neatness and persistency. -And the incentive of working for Lita and the boy was enough to anchor -him to his task for life. - -A new scent--unrecognizable but exquisite. In its wake came Lita Wyant, -half-dancing, half-drifting, fastening a necklace, humming a tune, her -little round head, with the goldfish-coloured hair, the mother-of-pearl -complexion and screwed-up auburn eyes, turning sideways like a bird's on -her long throat. She was astonished but delighted to see Nona, -indifferent to her husband's non-arrival, and utterly unaware that lunch -had been waiting for half an hour. - -"I had a sandwich and a cocktail after my exercises. I don't suppose -it's time for me to be hungry again," she conjectured. "But perhaps you -are, you poor child. Have you been waiting long?" - -"Not much! I know you too well to be punctual," Nona laughed. - -Lita widened her eyes. "Are you suggesting that I'm not? Well, then, how -about your ideal brother?" - -"He's down town working to keep a roof over your head and your son's." - -Lita shrugged. "Oh, a roof--I don't care much for roofs, do you--or is -it _rooves_? Not this one, at any rate." She caught Nona by the shoulders, -held her at arm's-length, and with tilted head and persuasively narrowed -eyes, demanded: "This room is _awful_, isn't it? Now acknowledge that it -is! And Jim won't give me the money to do it over." - -"Do it over? But, Lita, you did it exactly as you pleased two years -ago!" - -"Two years ago? Do you mean to say you like anything that you liked two -years ago?" - -"Yes--you!" Nona retorted: adding rather helplessly: "And, besides, -everybody admires the room so much--." She stopped, feeling that she was -talking exactly like her mother. - -Lita's little hands dropped in a gesture of despair. "That's just it! -_Everybody_ admires it. Even Mrs. Manford does. And when you think what -sort of things _Everybody_ admires! What's the use of pretending, Nona? -It's the typical _cliché_ drawing-room. Every one of the couples who were -married the year we were has one like it. The first time Tommy Ardwin -saw it--you know he's the new decorator--he said: 'Gracious, how -familiar all this seems!' and began to whistle 'Home, _Sweet Home_'!" - -"But of course he would, you simpleton! When what he wants is to be -asked to do it over!" - -Lita heaved a sigh. "If he only could! Perhaps he might reconcile me to -this house. But I don't believe anybody could do that." She glanced -about her with an air of ineffable disgust. "I'd like to throw -everything in it into the street. I've been so bored here." - -Nona laughed. "You'd be bored anywhere. I wish another Tommy Ardwin -would come along and tell you what an old _cliché_ being bored is." - -"An old _cliché_? Why shouldn't it be? When life itself is such a bore? -You can't redecorate life!" - -"If you could, what would you begin by throwing into the street? The -baby?" - -Lita's eyes woke to fire. "Don't be an idiot! You know I adore my baby." - -"Well--then Jim?" - -"You know I adore my Jim!" echoed the young wife, mimicking her own -emotion. - -"Hullo--that sounds ominous!" Jim Wyant came in, clearing the air with -his fresh good-humoured presence. "I fear my bride when she says she -adores me," he said, taking Nona into a brotherly embrace. - -As he stood there, sturdy and tawny, a trifle undersized, with his -bright blue eyes and short blunt-nosed face, in which everything was so -handsomely modelled and yet so safe and sober, Nona fell again to her -dangerous wondering. Something had gone out of his face--all the wild -uncertain things, the violin, model-making, inventing, dreaming, -vacillating--everything she had best loved except the twinkle in his -sobered eyes. Whatever else was left now was all plain utility. Well, -better so, no doubt--when one looked at Lita! Her glance caught her -sister-in-law's face in a mirror between two panels, and the reflection -of her own beside it; she winced a little at the contrast. At her best -she had none of that milky translucence, or of the long lines which made -Lita seem in perpetual motion, as a tremor of air lives in certain -trees. Though Nona was as tall and nearly as slim, she seemed to herself -to be built, while Lita was spun of spray and sunlight. Perhaps it was -Nona's general brownness--she had Dexter Manford's brown crinkled hair, -his strong black lashes setting her rather usual-looking gray eyes; and -the texture of her dusky healthy skin, compared to Lita's, seemed rough -and opaque. The comparison added to her general vague sense of -discouragement. "It's not one of my beauty days," she thought. - -Jim was drawing her arm through his. "Come along, my girl. Is there -going to be any lunch?" he queried, turning toward the dining-room. - -"Oh, probably. In this house the same things always happen every day," -Lita averred with a slight grimace. - -"Well, I'm glad lunch does--on the days when I can make a dash up-town -for it." - -"On others Lita eats goldfish food," Nona laughed. - -"Luncheon is served, madam," the butler announced. - -The meal, as usual under Lita's roof, was one in which delicacies -alternated with delays. Mrs. Manford would have been driven out of her -mind by the uncertainties of the service and the incoherence of the -_menu_; but she would have admitted that no one did a pilaff better than -Lita's cook. Gastronomic refinements were wasted on Jim, whose -indifference to the possession of the Wyant madeira was one of his -father's severest trials. ("I shouldn't have been surprised if _you_ -hadn't cared, Nona; after all, you're a Manford; but that a Wyant -shouldn't have a respect for old wine!" Arthur Wyant often lamented to -her.) As for Lita, she either nibbled languidly at new health foods, or -made ravenous inroads into the most indigestible dish presented to her. -To-day she leaned back, dumb and indifferent, while Jim devoured what -was put before him as if unaware that it was anything but canned beef; -and Nona watched the two under guarded lids. - -The telephone tinkled, and the butler announced: "Mr. Manford, madam." - -Nona Manford looked up. "For me?" - -"No, miss; Mrs. Wyant." - -Lita was on her feet, suddenly animated. "Oh, all right... Don't wait -for me," she flung over her shoulder as she made for the door. - -"Have the receiver brought in here," Jim suggested; but she brushed by -without heeding. - -"That's something new--Lita sprinting for the telephone!" Jim laughed. - -"And to talk to father!" For the life of her, Nona could not have told -why she stopped short with a vague sense of embarrassment. Dexter -Manford had always been very kind to his stepson's wife; but then -everybody was kind to Lita. - -Jim's head was bent over the pilaff; he took it down in quick -undiscerning mouthfuls. - -"Well, I hope he's saying something that will amuse her: nothing seems -to, nowadays." - -It was on the tip of Nona's tongue to rejoin: "Oh, yes; it amuses her to -say that nothing amuses her." But she looked at her brother's face, -faintly troubled under its surface serenity, and refrained. - -Instead, she remarked on the beauty of the two yellow arums in a bronze -jar reflected in the mahogany of the dining-table. "Lita has a genius -for flowers." - -"And for everything else--when she chooses!" - -The door opened and Lita sauntered back and dropped into her seat. She -shook her head disdainfully at the proffered pilaff. There was a pause. - -"Well--what's the news?" Jim asked. - -His wife arched her exquisite brows. "News? I expect you to provide -that. I'm only just awake." - -"I mean--" But he broke off, and signed to the butler to remove his -plate. There was another pause; then Lita's little head turned on its -long interrogative neck toward Nona. "It seems we're banqueting tonight -at the Palazzo Manford. Did you know?" - -"Did I know? Why, Lita! I've heard of nothing else for weeks. It's the -annual feast for the Marchesa." - -"I was never told," said Lita calmly. "I'm afraid I'm engaged." - -Jim lifted his head with a jerk. "You were told a fortnight ago." - -"Oh, a fortnight! That's too long to remember anything. It's like Nona's -telling me that I ought to admire my drawing-room because I admired it -two years ago." - -Her husband reddened to the roots of his tawny hair. "Don't you admire -it?" he asked, with a sort of juvenile dismay. - -"There; Lita'll be happy now--she's produced her effect!" Nona laughed a -little nervously. - -Lita joined in the laugh. "Isn't he like his mother?" she shrugged. - -Jim was silent, and his sister guessed that he was afraid to insist on -the dinner engagement lest he should increase his wife's determination -to ignore it. The same motive kept Nona from saying anything more; and -the lunch ended in a clatter of talk about other things. But what -puzzled Nona was that her father's communication to Lita should have -concerned the fact that she was dining at his house that night. It was -unlike Dexter Manford to remember the fact himself (as Miss Bruss's -frantic telephoning had testified), and still more unlike him to remind -his wife's guests, even if he knew who they were to be--which he seldom -did. Nona pondered. "They must have been going somewhere together--he -told me he was engaged tonight--and Lita's in a temper because they -can't. But then she's in a temper about everything today." Nona tried to -make that cover all her perplexities. She wondered if it did as much for -Jim. - - - - -IV - - -IT would have been hard, Nona Manford thought, to find a greater -contrast than between Lita Wyant's house and that at which, two hours -later, she descended from Lita Wyant's smart Brewster. - -"You won't come, Lita?" The girl paused, her hand on the motor door. -"He'd like it awfully." - -Lita shook off the suggestion. "I'm not in the humour." - -"But he's such fun--he can be better company than anybody." - -"Oh, for you he's a fad--for me he's a duty; and I don't happen to feel -like duties." Lita waved one of her flower-hands and was off. - -Nona mounted the pock-marked brown steps. The house was old Mrs. -Wyant's, a faded derelict habitation in a street past which fashion and -business had long since flowed. After his mother's death Wyant, from -motives of economy, had divided it into small flats. He kept one for -himself, and in the one overhead lived his mother's former companion, -the dependent cousin who had been the cause of his divorce. Wyant had -never married her; he had never deserted her; that, to Nona's mind, gave -one a fair notion of his character. When he was ill--and he had -developed, rather early, a queer sort of nervous hypochondria--the -cousin came downstairs and nursed him; when he was well his visitors -never saw her. But she was reported to attend to his mending, keep some -sort of order in his accounts, and prevent his falling a prey to the -unscrupulous. Pauline Manford said it was probably for the best. She -herself would have thought it natural, and in fact proper, that her -former husband should have married his cousin; as he had not, she -preferred to decide that since the divorce they had been "only friends." -The Wyant code was always a puzzle to her. She never met the cousin when -she called on her former husband; but Jim, two or three times a year, -made it a point to ring the bell of the upper flat, and at Christmas -sent its invisible tenant an azalea. - -Nona ran up the stairs to Wyant's door. On the threshold a thin -gray-haired lady with a shadowy face awaited her. - -"Come in, do. He's got the gout, and can't get up to open the door, and -I had to send the cook out to get something tempting for his dinner." - -"Oh, thank you, cousin Eleanor." The girl looked sympathetically into -the other's dimly tragic eyes. "Poor Exhibit A! I'm sorry he's ill -again." - -"He's been--imprudent. But the worst of it's over. It will brighten him -up to see you. Your cousin Stanley's there." - -"Is he?" Nona half drew back, feeling herself faintly redden. - -"He'll be going soon. Mr. Wyant will be disappointed if you don't go -in." - -"But of course I'm going in." - -The older woman smiled a worn smile, and vanished upstairs while Nona -slipped off her furs. The girl knew it would be useless to urge cousin -Eleanor to stay. If one wished to see her one had to ring at her own -door. - -Arthur Wyant's shabby sitting-room was full of February sunshine, -illustrated magazines, newspapers and cigar ashes. There were some books -on shelves, shabby also: Wyant had apparently once cared for them, and -his talk was still coloured by traces of early cultivation, especially -when visitors like Nona or Stan Heuston were with him. But the range of -his allusions suggested that he must have stopped reading years ago. -Even novels were too great a strain on his attention. As far back as -Nona could remember he had fared only on the popular magazines, -picture-papers and the weekly purveyors of social scandal. He took an -intense interest in the private affairs of the world he had ceased to -frequent, though he always ridiculed this interest in talking to Nona or -Heuston. - -While he sat there, deep in his armchair, with bent shoulders, sunk head -and clumsy bandaged foot, Nona saw him, as she always did, as taller, -slimmer, more handsomely upstanding than any man she had ever known. He -stooped now, even when he was on his feet; he was prematurely aged; and -the fact perhaps helped to connect him with vanished institutions to -which only his first youth could have belonged. - -To Nona, at any rate, he would always be the Arthur Wyant of the -race-meeting group in the yellowing photograph on his mantelpiece: clad -in the gray frock-coat and topper of the early 'eighties, and tallest in -a tall line of the similarly garbed, behind ladies with puffed sleeves -and little hats tilting forward on elaborate hair. How peaceful, smiling -and unhurried they all seemed! Nona never looked at them without a pang -of regret that she had not been born in those spacious days of dogcarts, -victorias, leisurely tennis and afternoon calls... - -Wyant's face, even more than his figure, related him to that past: the -small shapely head, the crisp hair grown thin on a narrow slanting -forehead, the eyes in which a twinkle still lingered, eyes probably blue -when the hair was brown, but now faded with the rest, and the slight -fair moustache above an uncertain ironic mouth. - -A romantic figure; or rather the faded photograph of one. Yes; perhaps -Arthur Wyant had always been faded--like a charming reflection in a -sallow mirror. And all that length of limb and beauty of port had been -meant for some other man, a man to whom the things had really happened -which Wyant had only dreamed. - -His visitor, though of the same stock, could never have inspired such -conjectures. Stanley Heuston was much younger--in the middle -thirties--and most things about him were middling: height, complexion, -features. But he had a strong forehead, his mouth was curved for power -and mockery, and only his small quick eyes betrayed the uncertainty and -lassitude inherited from a Wyant mother. - -Wyant, at Nona's approach, held out a dry feverish hand. "Well, this is -luck! Stan was just getting ready to fly at your mother's approach, and -you turn up instead!" - -Heuston got to his feet, and greeted Nona somewhat ceremoniously. -"Perhaps I'd better fly all the same," he said in a singularly agreeable -voice. His eyes were intent on the girl's. - -She made a slight gesture, not so much to detain or dismiss as to -signify her complete indifference. "Isn't mother coming presently?" she -said, addressing the question to Wyant. - -"No; I'm moved on till tomorrow. There must have been some big upheaval -to make her change her plans at the last minute. Sit down and tell us -all about it." - -"I don't know of any upheaval. There's only the dinner-dance for -Amalasuntha this evening." - -"Oh, but that sort of thing is in your mother's stride. You underrate -her capacity. Stan has been giving me a hint of something a good deal -more volcanic." - -Nona felt an inward tremor; was she going to hear Lita's name? She -turned her glance on Heuston with a certain hostility. - -"Oh, Stan's hints--." - -"You see what Nona thinks of my views on cities and men," Heuston -shrugged. He had remained on his feet, as though about to take leave; -but once again the girl felt his eager eyes beseeching her. - -"Are you waiting to walk home with me? You needn't. I'm going to stay -for hours," she said, smiling across him at Wyant as she settled down -into one of the chintz armchairs. - -"Aren't you a little hard on him?" Wyant suggested, when the door had -closed on their visitor. "It's not exactly a crime to want to walk home -with you." - -Nona made an impatient gesture. "Stan bores me." - -"Ah, well, I suppose he's not enough of a novelty. Or not up-to-date -enough; _your_ dates. Some of his ideas seem to me pretty subversive; but -I suppose in your set and Lita's a young man who doesn't jazz all day -and drink all night--or vice versa--is a back number." - -The girl did not take this up, and after a moment Wyant continued, in -his half-mocking half-querulous voice: "Or is it that he isn't 'psychic' -enough? That's the latest, isn't it? When you're not high-kicking you're -all high-thinking; and that reminds me of Stan's news--" - -"Yes?" Nona brought it out between parched lips. Her gaze turned from -Wyant to the coals smouldering in the grate. She did not want to face -any one just then. - -"Well, it seems there's going to be a gigantic muck-raking--one of the -worst we've had yet. Into this Mahatma business; you know, the nigger -chap your mother's always talking about. There's a hint of it in the -last number of the 'Looker-on'; here ... where is it? Never mind, -though. What it says isn't a patch on the real facts, Stan tells me. It -seems the goings-on in that School of Oriental Thought--what does he -call the place: Dawnside?--have reached such a point that the Grant -Lindons, whose girl has been making a 'retreat' there, or whatever they -call it, are out to have a thorough probing. They say the police don't -want to move because so many people we know are mixed up in it; but -Lindon's back is up, and he swears he won't rest till he gets the case -before the Grand Jury..." - -As Wyant talked, the weight lifted from Nona's breast. Much she cared -for the Mahatma, or for the Grant Lindons! Stuffy old-fashioned -people--she didn't wonder Bee Lindon had broken away from such -parents--though she was a silly fool, no doubt. Besides, the Mahatma -certainly had reduced Mrs. Manford's hips--and made her less nervous -too: for Mrs. Manford sometimes was nervous, in spite of her breathless -pursuit of repose. Not, of course, in the same querulous uncontrolled -way as poor Arthur Wyant, who had never been taught poise, or mental -uplift, or being in tune with the Infinite; but rather as one agitated -by the incessant effort to be calm. And in that respect the Mahatma's -rhythmic exercises had without doubt been helpful. No; Nona didn't care -a fig for scandals about the School of Oriental Thought. And the relief -of finding that the subject she had dreaded to hear broached had -probably never even come to Wyant's ears, gave her a reaction of -light-heartedness. - -There were moments when Nona felt oppressed by responsibilities and -anxieties not of her age, apprehensions that she could not shake off and -yet had not enough experience of life to know how to meet. One or two of -her girl friends--in the brief intervals between whirls and thrills--had -confessed to the same vague disquietude. It was as if, in the beaming -determination of the middle-aged, one and all of them, to ignore sorrow -and evil, "think them away" as superannuated bogies, survivals of some -obsolete European superstition unworthy of enlightened Americans, to -whom plumbing and dentistry had given higher standards, and bi-focal -glasses a clearer view of the universe--as if the demons the elder -generation ignored, baulked of their natural prey, had cast their hungry -shadow over the young. After all, somebody in every family had to -remember now and then that such things as wickedness, suffering and -death had not yet been banished from the earth; and with all those -bright-complexioned white-haired mothers mailed in massage and optimism, -and behaving as if they had never heard of anything but the Good and the -Beautiful, perhaps their children had to serve as vicarious sacrifices. -There were hours when Nona Manford, bewildered little Iphigenia, -uneasily argued in this way: others when youth and inexperience -reasserted themselves, and the load slipped from her, and she wondered -why she didn't always believe, like her elders, that one had only to be -brisk, benevolent and fond to prevail against the powers of darkness. - -She felt this relief now; but a vague restlessness remained with her, -and to ease it, and prove to herself that she was not nervous, she -mentioned to Wyant that she had just been lunching with Jim and Lita. - -Wyant brightened, as he always did at his son's name. "Poor old Jim! He -dropped in yesterday, and I thought he looked overworked! I sometimes -wonder if that father of yours hasn't put more hustle into him than a -Wyant can assimilate." Wyant spoke good-humouredly; his first bitterness -against the man who had supplanted him (a sentiment regarded by Pauline -as barbarous and mediæval) had gradually been swallowed up in gratitude -for Dexter Manford's kindness to Jim. The oddly-assorted trio, Wyant, -Pauline and her new husband, had been drawn into a kind of inarticulate -understanding by their mutual tenderness for the progeny of the two -marriages, and Manford loved Jim almost as much as Wyant loved Nona. - -"Oh, well," the girl said, "Jim always does everything with all his -might. And now that he's doing it for Lita and the baby, he's got to -keep on, whether he wants to or not." - -"I suppose so. But why do you say 'whether'?" Wyant questioned with -one of his disconcerting flashes. "Doesn't he want to?" - -Nona was vexed at her slip. "Of course. I only meant that he used to be -rather changeable in his tastes, and that getting married has given him -an object." - -"How very old-fashioned! You _are_ old-fashioned, you know, my child; in -spite of the jazz. I suppose that's what I've done for _you_, in exchange -for Manford's modernizing Jim. Not much of an exchange, I'm afraid. But -how long do you suppose Lita will care about being an object to Jim?" - -"Why shouldn't she care? She'd go on caring about the baby, even if ... not -that I mean..." - -"Oh, I know. That's a great baby. Queer, you know--I can see he's going -to have the Wyant nose and forehead. It's about all we've left to give. -But look here--haven't you really heard anything more about the Mahatma? -I thought that Lindon girl was a pal of yours. Now listen--" - -When Nona Manford emerged into the street she was not surprised to meet -Stanley Heuston strolling toward her across Stuyvesant Square. Neither -surprised, nor altogether sorry; do what she would, she could never -quite repress the sense of ease and well-being that his nearness gave. -And yet half the time they were together she always spent in being angry -with him and wishing him away. If only the relation between them had -been as simple as that between herself and Jim! And it might have -been--ought to have been--seeing that Heuston was Jim's cousin, and -nearly twice her age; yes, and had been married before she left the -schoolroom. Really, her exasperation was justified. Yet no one -understood her as well as Stanley; not even Jim, who was so much dearer -and more lovable. Life was a confusing business to Nona Manford. - -"How absurd! I asked you not to wait. I suppose you think I'm not old -enough to be out alone after dark." - -"That hadn't occurred to me; and I'm not waiting to walk home with you," -Heuston rejoined with some asperity. "But I do want to say two words," -he added, his voice breaking into persuasion. - -Nona stopped, her heels firmly set on the pavement. "The same old two?" - -"No. Besides, there are three of those. You never _could_ count." He -hesitated: "This time it's only about Arthur--" - -"Why; what's the matter?" The sense of apprehension woke in her again. -What if Wyant really had begun to suspect that there was something, an -imponderable something, wrong between Jim and Lita, and had been too -shrewd to let Nona detect his suspicion? - -"Haven't you noticed? He looks like the devil. He's been drinking again. -Eleanor spoke to me--" - -"Oh, dear." There it was--all the responsibilities and worries always -closed in on Nona! But this one, after all, was relatively bearable. - -"What can I do, Stan? I can't imagine why you come to _me_!" - -He smiled a little, in his queer derisive way. "Doesn't everybody? The -fact is--I didn't want to bother Jim." - -She was silent. She understood; but she resented his knowing that she -understood. - -"Jim has got to be bothered. He's got to look after his father." - -"Yes; but I-- Oh, look here, Nona; won't you see?" - -"See what?" - -"Why--that if Jim is worried about his father now--Jim's a queer chap; -he's tried his hand at fifty things, and never stuck to one; and if he -gets a shock now, on top of everything else--" - -Nona felt her lips grow hard: all her pride and tenderness for her -brother stiffened into ice about her heart. - -"I don't know what you mean. Jim's grown up--he's got to face things." - -"Yes; I know. I've been told the same thing about myself. But there are -things one doesn't ever have a chance to face in this slippery sliding -modern world, because they don't come out into the open. They just lurk -and peep and mouth. My case exactly. What on earth is there about Aggie -that a fellow can _face_?" - -Nona stopped short with a jerk. "We don't happen to be talking about you -and Aggie," she said. - -"Oh, well; I was merely using myself as an example. But there are plenty -of others to choose from." - -Her voice broke into anger. "I don't imagine you're comparing your -married life to Jim's?" - -"Lord, no. God forbid!" He burst into a dry laugh. "When I think of -Aggie's life and Lita's--!" - -"Never mind about Lita's life. What do you know about it, anyhow? Oh, -Stan, why are we quarrelling again?" She felt the tears in her throat. -"What you wanted was only to tell me about poor Arthur. And I'd guessed -that myself--I know something ought to be done. But _what_? How on earth -can I tell? I'm always being asked by everybody what ought to be done ... -and sometimes I feel too young to be always the one to judge, to -decide..." - -Heuston stood watching her in silence. Suddenly he took her hand and -drew it through his arm. She did not resist, and thus linked they walked -on slowly and without further speech through the cold deserted streets. -As they approached more populous regions she freed her arm from his, and -signalled to a taxi. - -"May I come?" - -"No. I'm going to meet Lita at the Cubist Cabaret. I promised to be -there by four." - -"Oh, all right." He looked at her irresolutely as the taxi drew up. "I -wish to God I could always be on hand to help you when you're bothered!" - -She shook her head. - -"Never?" - -"Not while Aggie--" - -"That means never." - -"Then never." She held out her hand, but he had turned and was already -striding off in the opposite direction. She threw the address to the -chauffeur and got in. - -"Yes; I suppose it _is_ never," she said to herself. After all, instead of -helping her with the Wyant problem, Stan had only brought her another: -his own--and hers. As long as Aggie Heuston, a sort of lay nun, absorbed -in High Church practices and the exercise of a bleak but efficient -philanthropy, continued to set her face against divorce, Nona would not -admit that Heuston had any right to force it upon her. "It's her way of -loving him," the girl said to herself for the hundredth time. "She wants -to keep him for herself too--though she doesn't know it; but she does -above all want to save him. And she thinks that's the way to do it. I -rather admire her for thinking that there is a way to save people..." -She pushed that problem once more into the back of her mind, and turned -her thoughts toward the other and far more pressing one: that of poor -Arthur Wyant's growing infirmity. Stanley was probably right in not -wanting to speak to Jim about it at that particular moment--though how -did Stanley know about Jim's troubles, and what did he know?--and she -herself, after all, was perhaps the only person to deal with Arthur -Wyant. Another interval of anxious consideration made her decide that -the best way would be to seek her father's advice. After an hour's -dancing she would feel better, more alive and competent, and there would -still be time to dash down to Manford's office, the only place--as she -knew by experience--where Manford was ever likely to have time for her. - - - - -V - - -THE door of his private office clicked on a withdrawing client, and -Dexter Manford, giving his vigorous shoulders a shake, rose from his -desk and stood irresolute. - -"I must get out to Cedarledge for some golf on Saturday," he thought. He -lived among people who regarded golf as a universal panacea, and in a -world which believed in panaceas. - -As he stood there, his glance lit on the looking-glass above the mantel -and he mustered his image impatiently. Queer thing, for a man of his age -to gape at himself in a looking-glass like a dago dancing-master! He saw -a swarthy straight-nosed face, dark crinkling hair with a dash of gray -on the temples, dark eyes under brows that were beginning to beetle -across a deep vertical cleft. Complexion turning from ruddy to sallow; -eyes heavy--would he put his tongue out next? The matter with him was... - -He dropped back into his desk-chair and unhooked the telephone receiver. - -"Mrs. James Wyant? Yes... Oh--_out_? You're sure? And you don't know -when she'll be back? Who? Yes; Mr. Manford. I had a message for Mrs. -Wyant. No matter." - -He hung up and leaned back, stretching his legs under the table and -staring moodily at the heap of letters and legal papers in the -morocco-lined baskets set out before him. - -"I look ten years older than my age," he thought. Yet that last new -type-writer, Miss Vollard, or whatever her name was, really behaved as -if ... was always looking at him when she thought he wasn't looking... -"Oh, what rot!" he exclaimed. - -His day had been as all his days were now: a starting in with a great -sense of pressure, importance and authority--and a drop at the close -into staleness and futility. - -The evening before, he had stopped to see his doctor and been told that -he was over-working, and needed a nerve-tonic and a change of scene. -"Cruise to the West Indies, or something of the sort. Couldn't you get -away for three or four weeks? No? Well, more golf then, anyhow." - -Getting away from things; the perpetual evasion, moral, mental, -physical, which he heard preached, and saw practised, everywhere about -him, except where money-making was concerned! He, Dexter Manford, who -had been brought up on a Minnesota farm, paid his own way through the -State College at Delos, and his subsequent course in the Harvard Law -School; and who, ever since, had been working at the top of his pitch -with no more sense of strain, no more desire for evasion (shirking, he -called it) than a healthy able-bodied man of fifty had a right to feel! -If his task had been mere money-getting he might have known--and -acknowledged--weariness. But he gloried in his profession, in its -labours and difficulties as well as its rewards, it satisfied him -intellectually and gave him that calm sense of mastery--mastery over -himself and others--known only to those who are doing what they were -born to do. - -Of course, at every stage of his career--and never more than now, on its -slippery pinnacle--he had suffered the thousand irritations inseparable -from a hard-working life: the trifles which waste one's time, the fools -who consume one's patience, the tricky failure of the best-laid plans, -the endless labour of rolling human stupidity up the steep hill of -understanding. But until lately these things had been a stimulus: it had -amused him to shake off trifles, baffle bores, circumvent failure, and -exercise his mental muscles in persuading stupid people to do -intelligent things. There was pioneer blood in him: he was used to -starting out every morning to hack his way through a fresh growth of -prejudices and obstacles; and though he liked his big retaining fees he -liked arguing a case even better. - -Professionally, he was used to intellectual loneliness, and no longer -minded it. Outside of his profession he had a brain above the average, -but a general education hardly up to it; and the discrepancy between -what he would have been capable of enjoying had his mind been prepared -for it, and what it could actually take in, made him modest and almost -shy in what he considered cultivated society. He had long believed his -wife to be cultivated because she had fits of book-buying and there was -an expensively bound library in the New York house. In his raw youth, in -the old Delos days, he had got together a little library of his own in -which Robert Ingersoll's lectures represented science, the sermons of -the Reverend Frank Gunsaulus of Chicago, theology, John Burroughs, -natural history, and Jared Sparks and Bancroft almost the whole of -history. He had gradually discovered the inadequacy of these guides, but -without ever having done much to replace them. Now and then, when he was -not too tired, and had the rare chance of a quiet evening, he picked up -a book from Pauline's table; but the works she acquired were so -heterogeneous, and of such unequal value, that he rarely found one worth -reading. Mrs. Tallentyre's "Voltaire" had been a revelation: he -discovered, to his surprise, that he had never really known who Voltaire -was, or what sort of a world he had lived in, and why his name had -survived it. After that, Manford decided to start in on a course of -European history, and got as far as taking the first volume of Macaulay -up to bed. But he was tired at night, and found Macaulay's periods too -long (though their eloquence appealed to his forensic instinct): and -there had never been time for that course of history. - -In his early wedded days, before he knew much of his wife's world, he -had dreamed of quiet evenings at home, when Pauline would read -instructive books aloud while he sat by the fire and turned over his -briefs in some quiet inner chamber of his mind. But Pauline had never -known any one who wanted to be read aloud to except children getting -over infantile complaints. She regarded the desire almost as a symptom -of illness, and decided that Dexter needed "rousing," and that she must -do more to amuse him. As soon as she was able after Nona's birth she -girt herself up for this new duty; and from that day Manford's life, out -of office hours, had been one of almost incessant social activity. At -first the endless going out had bewildered, then for a while amused and -flattered him, then gradually grown to be a soothing routine, a sort of -mild drug-taking after the high pressure of professional hours; but of -late it had become simply a bore, a duty to be persisted in because--as -he had at last discovered--Pauline could not live without it. After -twenty years of marriage he was only just beginning to exercise his -intellectual acumen on his wife. - -The thought of Pauline made him glance at his clock: she would be coming -in a moment. He unhooked the receiver again, and named, impatiently, the -same number as before. "Out, you say? Still?" (The same stupid voice -making the same stupid answer!) "Oh, no; no matter. I say _it's no -matter_," he almost shouted, replacing the receiver. Of all idiotic -servants--! - -Miss Vollard, the susceptible type-writer, shot a shingled head around -the door, said "_All_ right" with an envious sigh to some one outside, and -effaced herself before the brisk entrance of her employer's wife. -Manford got to his feet. - -"Well, my dear--" He pushed an armchair near the fire, solicitous, still -a little awed by her presence--the beautiful Mrs. Wyant who had deigned -to marry him. Pauline, throwing back her furs, cast a quick -house-keeping glance about her. The scent she used always reminded him -of a superior disinfectant; and in another moment, he knew, she would -find some pretext for assuring herself, by the application of a gloved -finger-tip, that there was no dust on desk or mantelpiece. She had very -nearly obliged him, when he moved into his new office, to have concave -surbases, as in a hospital ward or a hygienic nursery. She had adopted -with enthusiasm the idea of the concave tiling fitted to every cove and -angle, so that there were no corners anywhere to catch the dust. -People's lives ought to be like that: with no corners in them. She -wanted to de-microbe life. - -But, in the case of his own office, Manford had resisted; and now, he -understood, the fad had gone to the scrap-heap--with how many others! - -"Not too near the fire." Pauline pushed her armchair back and glanced up -to see if the ceiling ventilators were working. "You _do_ renew the air at -regular intervals? I'm sure everything depends on that; that and -thought-direction. What the Mahatma calls mental deep-breathing." She -smiled persuasively. "You look tired, Dexter ... tired and drawn." - -"Oh, rot!--A cigarette?" - -She shook her small resolute head. "You forget that he's cured me of -that too--the Mahatma. Dexter," she exclaimed suddenly, "I'm sure it's -this silly business of the Grant Lindons' that's worrying you. I want to -talk to you about it--to clear it up with you. It's out of the question -that you should be mixed up in it." - -Manford had gone back to his desk-chair. Habit made him feel more at -home there, in fuller possession of himself; Pauline, in the seat facing -him, the light full on her, seemed no more than a client to be advised, -or an opponent to be talked over. He knew she felt the difference too. -So far he had managed to preserve his professional privacy and his -professional authority. What he did "at the office" was clouded over, -for his family, by the vague word "business," which meant that a man -didn't want to be bothered. Pauline had never really distinguished -between practising the law and manufacturing motors; nor had Manford -encouraged her to. But today he suspected that she meant her -interference to go to the extreme limit which her well-known "tact" -would permit. - -"You must not be mixed up in this investigation. Why not hand it over to -somebody else? Alfred Cosby, or that new Jew who's so clever? The -Lindons would accept any one you recommended; unless, of course," she -continued, "you could persuade them to drop it, which would be so much -better. I'm sure you could, Dexter; you always know what to say--and -your opinion carries such weight. Besides, what is it they complain of? -Some nonsense of Bee's, I've no doubt--she took a rest-cure at the -School. If they'd brought the girl up properly there'd have been no -trouble. Look at Nona!" - -"Oh--Nona!" Manford gave a laugh of pride. Nona was the one warm rich -spot in his life: the corner on which the sun always shone. Fancy -comparing that degenerate fool of a Bee Lindon to his Nona, and -imagining that "bringing-up" made the difference! Still, he had to admit -that Pauline--always admirable--had been especially so as a mother. Yet -she too was bitten with this theosophical virus! - -He lounged back, hands in pockets, one leg swinging, instinctively -seeking an easier attitude as his moral ease diminished. - -"My dear, it's always been understood, hasn't it, that what goes on in -this office is between me and my clients, and not--" - -"Oh, nonsense, Dexter!" She seldom took that tone: he saw that she was -losing her self-control. "Look here: I make it a rule never to -interfere; you've just said so. Well--if I interfere now, it's because -I've a right to--because it's a duty! The Lindons are my son's cousins: -Fanny Lindon was a Wyant. Isn't that reason enough?" - -"It was one of the Lindons' reasons. They appealed to me on that very -ground." - -Pauline gave an irritated laugh. "How like Fanny! Always pushing in and -claiming things. I wonder such an argument took you in. Do consider, -Dexter! I won't for a minute admit that there can be anything wrong -about the Mahatma; but supposing there were..." She drew herself up, -her lips tightening. "I hope I know how to respect professional secrecy, -and I don't ask you to repeat their nasty insinuations; in fact, as you -know, I always take particular pains to avoid hearing anything painful -or offensive. But, supposing there were any ground for what they say; do -they realize how the publicity is going to affect Bee's reputation? And -how shall you feel if you set the police at work and find them -publishing the name of a girl who is Jim's cousin, and a friend of your -own daughter's?" - -Manford moved restlessly in his chair, and in so doing caught his -reflexion in the mirror, and saw that his jaw had lost its stern -professional cast. He made an attempt to recover it, but unsuccessfully. - -"But all this is too absurd," Pauline continued on a smoother note. "The -Mahatma and his friends have nothing to fear. Whose judgment would you -sooner trust: mine, or poor Fanny's? What really bothers me is your -allowing the Lindons to drag you into an affair which is going to -discredit them, and not the Mahatma." She smiled her bright frosty -smile. "You know how proud I am of your professional prestige: I should -hate to have you associated with a failure." She paused, and he saw that -she meant to rest on that. - -"This is a pretty bad business. The Lindons have got their proofs all -right," he said. - -Pauline reddened, and her face lost its look of undaunted serenity. "How -can you believe such rubbish, Dexter? If you're going to take Fanny -Lindon's word against mine--" - -"It's not a question of your word or hers. Lindon is fully documented: -he didn't come to me till he was. I'm sorry, Pauline; but you've been -deceived. This man has got to be shown up, and the Lindons have had the -pluck to do what everybody else has shirked." - -Pauline's angry colour had faded. She got up and stood before her -husband, distressed and uncertain; then, with a visible effort at -self-command, she seated herself again, and locked her hands about her -gold-mounted bag. - -"Then you'd rather the scandal, if there is one, should be paraded -before the world? Who will gain by that except the newspaper reporters, -and the people who want to drag down society? And how shall you feel if -Nona is called as a witness--or Lita?" - -"Oh, nonsense--" He stopped abruptly, and got up too. The discussion was -lasting longer than he had intended, and he could not find the word to -end it. His mind felt suddenly empty--empty of arguments and formulas. -"I don't know why you persist in bringing in Nona--or Lita--" - -"I don't; it's you. You will, that is, if you take this case. Bee and -Nona have been intimate since they were babies, and Bee is always at -Lita's. Don't you suppose the Mahatma's lawyers will make use of that if -you _oblige_ him to fight? You may say you're prepared for it; and I -admire your courage--but I can't share it. The idea that our children -may be involved simply sickens me." - -"Neither Nona nor Lita has ever had anything to do with this charlatan -and his humbug, as far as I know," said Manford irritably. - -"Nona has attended his eurythmic classes at our house, and gone to his -lectures with me: at one time they interested her intensely." Pauline -paused. "About Lita I don't know: I know so little about Lita's life -before her marriage." - -"It was presumably that of any of Nona's other girl friends." - -"Presumably. Kitty Landish might enlighten us. But of course, if it -_was_--" he noted her faintly sceptical emphasis--"I don't admit that that -would preclude Lita's having known the Mahatma, or believed in him. And -you must remember, Dexter, that I should be the most deeply involved of -all! I mean to take a rest-cure at Dawnside in March." She gave the -little playful laugh with which she had been used, in old times, to -ridicule the naughtiness of her children. - -Manford drummed on his blotting-pad. "Look here, suppose we drop this -for the present--" - -She glanced at her wrist-watch. "If you can spare the time--" - -"Spare the time?" - -She answered softly: "I'm not going away till you've promised." - -Manford could remember the day when that tone--so feminine under its -firmness--would have had the power to shake him. Pauline, in her wifely -dealings, so seldom invoked the prerogative of her grace, her -competence, her persuasiveness, that when she did he had once found it -hard to resist. But that day was past. Under his admiration for -her brains, and his esteem for her character, he had felt, of -late, a stealing boredom. She was too clever, too efficient, too -uniformly sagacious and serene. Perhaps his own growing sense of -power--professional and social--had secretly undermined his awe of hers, -made him feel himself first her equal, then ever so little her superior. -He began to detect something obtuse in that unfaltering competence. And -as his professional authority grew he had become more jealous of -interference with it. His wife ought at least to have understood that! -If her famous tact were going to fail her, what would be left, he asked -himself? - -"Look here, Pauline, you know all this is useless. In professional -matters no one else can judge for me. I'm busy this afternoon; I'm sure -you are too--" - -She settled more deeply into her armchair. "Never too busy for you, -Dexter." - -"Thank you, dear. But the time I ask you to give me is outside of -business hours," he rejoined with a slight smile. - -"Then I'm dismissed?" She smiled back. "I understand; you needn't ring!" -She rose with recovered serenity and laid a light hand on his shoulder. -"Sorry to have bothered you; I don't often, do I? All I ask is that you -should think over--" - -He lifted the hand to his lips. "Of course, of course." Now that she was -going he could say it. - -"I'm forgiven?" - -He smiled: "You're forgiven;" and from the threshold she called, almost -gaily: "Don't forget tonight--Amalasuntha!" - -His brow clouded as he returned to his chair; and oddly enough--he was -aware of the oddness--it was clouded not by the tiresome scene he had -been through, but by his wife's reminder. "Damn that dinner," he swore -to himself. - -He turned to the telephone, unhooked it for the third time, and called -for the same number. - - -That evening, as he slipped the key into his front-door, Dexter Manford -felt the oppression of all that lay behind it. He never entered his -house without a slight consciousness of the importance of the act--never -completely took for granted the resounding vestibule, the big hall with -its marble staircase ascending to all the light and warmth and luxury -which skill could devise, money buy, and Pauline's ingenuity combine in -a harmonious whole. He had not yet forgotten the day when, after one of -his first legal successes, he had installed a bathroom in his mother's -house at Delos, and all the neighbours had driven in from miles around -to see it. - -But luxury, and above all comfort, had never weighed on him; he was too -busy to think much about them, and sure enough of himself and his powers -to accept them as his right. It was not the splendour of his house that -oppressed him but the sense of the corporative bonds it imposed. It -seemed part of an elaborate social and domestic structure, put together -with the baffling ingenuity of certain bird's-nests of which he had seen -the pictures. His own career, Pauline's multiple activities, the problem -of poor Arthur Wyant, Nona, Jim, Lita Wyant, the Mahatma, the tiresome -Grant Lindons, the perennial and inevitable Amalasuntha, for whom the -house was being illuminated tonight--all were strands woven into the -very pile of the carpet he trod on his way up the stairs. As he passed -the dining-room he saw, through half-open doors, the glitter of glass -and silver, a shirt-sleeved man placing bowls of roses down the long -table, and Maisie Bruss, wan but undaunted, dealing out dinner cards to -Powder, the English butler. - - - - -VI - - -PAULINE MANFORD sent a satisfied glance down the table. - -It was on such occasions that she visibly reaped her reward. No one else -in New York had so accomplished a cook, such smoothly running service, a -dinner-table so softly yet brightly lit, or such skill in grouping about -it persons not only eminent in wealth or fashion, but likely to find -pleasure in each other's society. - -The intimate reunion, of the not-more-than-the-Muses kind, was not -Pauline's affair. She was aware of this, and seldom made the -attempt--though, when she did, she was never able to discover why it was -not a success. But in the organizing and administering of a big dinner -she was conscious of mastery. Not the stupid big dinner of old days, -when the "crowned heads" used to be treated like a caste apart, and -everlastingly invited to meet each other through a whole monotonous -season: Pauline was too modern for that. She excelled in a judicious -blending of Wall Street and Bohemia, and her particular art lay in her -selection of the latter element. Of course there were Bohemians and -Bohemians; as she had once remarked to Nona, people weren't always -amusing just because they were clever, or dull just because they were -rich--though at the last clause Nona had screwed up her nose -incredulously... Well, even Nona would be satisfied tonight, Pauline -thought. It wasn't everybody who would have been bold enough to ask a -social reformer like Parker Greg with the very people least disposed to -encourage social reform, nor a young composer like Torfried Lobb (a -disciple of "The Six") with all those stolid opera-goers, nor that -disturbing Tommy Ardwin, the Cubist decorator, with the owners of the -most expensive "period houses" in Fifth Avenue. - -Pauline was not a bit afraid of such combinations. She knew in advance -that at one of her dinners everything would "go"--it always did. And her -success amused and exhilarated her so much that, even tonight, though -she had come down oppressed with problems, they slipped from her before -she even had time to remind herself that they were nonexistent. She had -only to look at the faces gathered about that subdued radiance of old -silver and scattered flowers to be sure of it. There, at the other end -of the table, was her husband's dark head, comely and resolute in its -vigorous middle-age; on his right the Marchesa di San Fedele, the famous -San Fedele pearls illuminating her inconspicuous black; on his left the -handsome Mrs. Herman Toy, magnanimously placed there by Pauline because -she knew that Manford was said to be "taken" by her, and she wanted him -to be in good-humour that evening. To measure her own competence she had -only to take in this group, already settling down to an evening's -enjoyment, and then let her glance travel on to the others, the young -and handsome women, the well-dressed confident-looking men. Nona, grave -yet eager, was talking to Manford's legal rival, the brilliant Alfred -Cosby, who was known to have said she was the cleverest girl in New -York. Lita, cool and aloof, drooped her head slightly to listen to -Torfried Lobb, the composer; Jim gazed across the table at Lita as if -his adoration made every intervening obstacle transparent; Aggie -Heuston, whose coldness certainly made her look distinguished, though -people complained that she was dull, dispensed occasional monosyllables -to the ponderous Herman Toy; and Stanley Heuston, leaning back with that -faint dry smile which Pauline found irritating because it was so -inscrutable, kept his eyes discreetly but steadily on Nona. Dear good -Stan, always like a brother to Nona! People who knew him well said he -wasn't as sardonic as he looked. - -It was a world after Pauline's heart--a world such as she believed its -Maker meant it to be. She turned to the Bishop on her right, wondering -if he shared her satisfaction, and encountered a glance of -understanding. - -"So refreshing to be among old friends... This is one of the few -houses left... Always such a pleasure to meet the dear Marchesa; I -hope she has better reports of her son? Wretched business, I'm afraid. -My dear Mrs. Manford, I wonder if you know how blessed you are in your -children? That wise little Nona, who is going to make some man so happy -one of these days--not Cosby, no? Too much difference in age? And your -steady Jim and his idol ... yes, I know it doesn't become my cloth to -speak indulgently of idolatry. But happy marriages are so rare nowadays: -where else could one find such examples as there are about this table? -Your Jim and his Lita, and my good friend Heuston with that saint of a -wife--" The Bishop paused, as if, even on so privileged an occasion, he -was put to it to prolong the list. "Well, you've given them the example..." -He stopped again, probably remembering that his hostess's -matrimonial bliss was built on the ruins of her first husband's. But in -divorcing she had invoked a cause which even the Church recognizes; and -the Bishop proceeded serenely: "_Her children shall rise up and call her -blessed_--yes, dear friend, you must let me say it." - -The words were balm to Pauline. Every syllable carried conviction: all -was right with her world and the Bishop's! Why did she ever need any -other spiritual guidance than that of her own creed? She felt a twinge -of regret at having so involved herself with the Mahatma. Yet what did -Episcopal Bishops know of "holy ecstasy"? And could any number of Church -services have reduced her hips? After all, there was room for all the -creeds in her easy rosy world. And the thought led her straight to her -other preoccupation: the reception for the Cardinal. She resolved to -secure the Bishop's approval at once. After that, of course the Chief -Rabbi would have to come. And what a lesson in tolerance and good-will -to the discordant world she was trying to reform! - - -Nona, half-way down the table, viewed its guests from another angle. She -had come back depressed rather than fortified from her flying visit to -her father. There were days when Manford liked to be "surprised" at the -office; when he and his daughter had their little jokes together over -these clandestine visits. But this one had not come off in that spirit. -She had found Manford tired and slightly irritable; Nona, before he had -time to tell her of her mother's visit, caught a lingering whiff of -Pauline's cool hygienic scent, and wondered nervously what could have -happened to make Mrs. Manford break through her tightly packed -engagements, and dash down to her husband's office. It was of course to -that emergency that she had sacrificed poor Exhibit A--little guessing -his relief at the postponement. But what could have obliged her to see -Manford so suddenly, when they were to meet at dinner that evening? - -The girl had asked no questions: she knew that Manford, true to his -profession, preferred putting them. And her chief object, of course, had -been to get him to help her about Arthur Wyant. That, she perceived, at -first added to his irritation: was he Wyant's keeper, he wanted to know? -But he broke off before the next question: "Why the devil can't his own -son look after him?" She had seen that question on his very lips; but -they shut down on it, and he rose from his chair with a shrug. "Poor -devil--if you think I can be of any use? All right, then--I'll drop in -on him tomorrow." He and Wyant, ever since the divorce, had met whenever -Jim's fate was to be discussed; Wyant felt a sort of humiliated -gratitude for Manford's generosity to his son. "Not the money, you know, -Nona--damn the money! But taking such an interest in him; helping him to -find himself: appreciating him, hang it! He understands Jim a hundred -times better than your mother ever did..." On this basis the two men -came together now and then in a spirit of tolerant understanding... - -Nona recalled her father's face as it had been when she left him: -worried, fagged, yet with that twinkle of gaiety his eyes always had -when he looked at her. Now, smoothed out, smiling, slightly replete, it -was hard as stone. "Like his own death-mask," the girl thought; "as if -he'd done with everything, once for all.--And the way those two women -bore him! Mummy put Gladys Toy next to him as a reward--for what?" She -smiled at her mother's simplicity in imagining that he was having what -Pauline called a "harmless flirtation" with Mrs. Herman Toy. That lady's -obvious charms were no more to him, Nona suspected, than those of the -florid Bathsheba in the tapestry behind his chair. But Pauline had -evidently had some special reason--over and above her usual diffused -benevolence--for wanting to put Manford in a good humour. "The Mahatma, -probably." Nona knew how her mother hated a fuss: how vulgar and -unchristian she always thought it. And it would certainly be -inconvenient to give up the rest-cure at Dawnside she had planned for -March, when Manford was to go off tarpon-fishing. - -Nona's glance, in the intervals of talk with her neighbours, travelled -farther, lit on Jim's good-humoured wistful face--Jim was always wistful -at his mother's banquets--and flitted on to Aggie Heuston's precise -little mask, where everything was narrow and perpendicular, like the -head of a saint squeezed into a cathedral niche. But the girl's eyes did -not linger, for as they rested on Aggie they abruptly met the latter's -gaze. Aggie had been furtively scrutinizing her, and the discovery gave -Nona a faint shock. In another instant Mrs. Heuston turned to Parker -Greg, the interesting young social reformer whom Pauline had -thoughtfully placed next to her, with the optimistic idea that all -persons interested in improving the world must therefore be in the -fullest sympathy. Nona, knowing Parker Greg's views, smiled at that too. -Aggie, she was sure, would feel much safer with her other neighbour, Mr. -Herman Toy, who thought, on all subjects, just what all his fellow -capitalists did. - -Nona caught Stan Heuston's smile, and knew he had read her thought; but -from him too she turned. The last thing she wanted was that he should -guess her real opinion of his wife. Something deep down and dogged in -Nona always, when it came to the touch, made her avert her feet from the -line of least resistance. - - -Manford lent an absent ear first to one neighbour, then the other. Mrs. -Toy was saying, in her flat uncadenced voice, like tepid water running -into a bath: "I don't see how people can live without lifts in their -houses, do you? But perhaps it's because I've never had to. Father's -house had the first electric lift at Climax. Once, in England, we went -to stay with the Duke of Humber, at Humber Castle--one of those huge -parties, royalties and everything--golf and polo all day, and a ball -every night; and, will you believe it, _we had to walk up and down -stairs_! I don't know what English people are made of. I suppose they've -never been used to what we call comfort. The second day I told Herman I -couldn't stand those awful slippery stairs after two rounds of golf, and -dancing till four in the morning. It was simply destroying my heart--the -doctor has warned me so often! I wanted to leave right away--but Herman -said it would offend the Duke. The Duke's such a sweet old man. But, any -way, I made Herman promise me a sapphire and emerald _plaque_ from -Carrier's before I'd agree to stick it out..." - -The Marchesa's little ferret face with sharp impassioned eyes darted -conversationally forward. "The Duke of Humber? I know him so well. Dear -old man! Ah, you also stayed at Humber? So often he invites me. We are -related ... yes, through his first wife, whose mother was a Venturini -of the Calabrian branch: Donna Ottaviana. Yes. Another sister, Donna -Rosmunda, the beauty of the family, married the Duke of Lepanto ... a -mediatized prince..." - -She stopped, and Manford read in her eyes the hasty inward -interrogation: "Will they think that expression queer? I'm not sure -myself just what 'mediatized' means. And these Americans! They stick at -nothing, but they're shocked at everything." Aloud she continued: "A -mediatized prince--but a man of the _very highest_ character." - -"Oh--" murmured Mrs. Toy, puzzled but obviously relieved. - -Manford's attention, tugging at its moorings, had broken loose again and -was off and away. - -The how-many-eth dinner did that make this winter? And no end in sight! -How could Pauline stand it? Why did she want to stand it? All those -rest-cures, massages, rhythmic exercises, devised to restore the health -of people who would have been as sound as bells if only they had led -normal lives! Like that fool of a woman spreading her blond splendours -so uselessly at his side, who couldn't walk upstairs because she had -danced all night! Pauline was just like that--never walked upstairs, and -then had to do gymnastics, and have osteopathy, and call in Hindu sages, -to prevent her muscles from getting atrophied... He had a vision of -his mother, out on the Minnesota farm, before they moved into Delos--saw -her sowing, digging potatoes, feeding chickens; saw her kneading, -baking, cooking, washing, mending, catching and harnessing the -half-broken colt to drive twelve miles in the snow for the doctor, one -day when all the men were away, and his little sister had been so badly -scalded... And there the old lady sat at Delos, in her nice little -brick house, in her hale and hearty old age, built to outlive them -all.--Wasn't that perhaps the kind of life Manford himself had been -meant for? Farming on a big scale, with all the modern appliances his -forbears had lacked, outdoing everybody in the county, marketing his -goods at the big centres, and cutting a swathe in state politics like -his elder brother? Using his brains, muscles, the whole of him, body and -soul, to do real things, bring about real results in the world, instead -of all this artificial activity, this spinning around faster and faster -in the void, and having to be continually rested and doctored to make up -for exertions that led to nothing, nothing, nothing... - -"Of course we all know _you_ could tell us if you would. Everybody knows -the Lindons have gone to you for advice." Mrs. Toy's large shallow eyes -floated the question toward him on a sea-blue wave of curiosity. "Not a -word of truth? Oh, of course you have to say that! But everybody has -been expecting there'd be trouble soon..." - -And, in a whisper, from the Marchesa's side: "Teasing you about that -mysterious Mahatma? Foolish woman! As long as dear Pauline believes in -him, I'm satisfied. That was what I was saying to Pauline before dinner: -'Whatever you and Dexter approve of, I approve of.' That's the reason -why I'm so anxious to have my poor boy come to New York ... my -Michelangelo! If only you could see him I know you'd grow as fond of him -as you are of our dear Jim: perhaps even take him into your office... -Ah, that, dear Dexter, has always been my dream!" - -... What sort of a life, after all, if not this one? For of course -that dream of a Western farm was all rubbish. What he really wanted was -a life in which professional interests as far-reaching and absorbing as -his own were somehow impossibly combined with great stretches of country -quiet, books, horses and children--ah, children! Boys of his -own--teaching them all sorts of country things; taking them for long -trudges, telling them about trees and plants and birds--watching the -squirrels, feeding the robins and thrushes in winter; and coming home in -the dusk to firelight, lamplight, a tea-table groaning with jolly -things, all the boys and girls (girls too, more little Nonas) grouped -around, hungry and tingling from their long tramp--and a woman lifting a -calm face from her book: a woman who looked so absurdly young to be -their mother; so-- - -"You're looking at Jim's wife?" The Marchesa broke in. "No wonder! _Très -en beauté_, our Lita!--that dress, the very same colour as her hair, and -those Indian emeralds ... how clever of her! But a little difficult to -talk to? Little too silent? No? Ah, not to _you_, perhaps--her dear -father! Father-in-law, I mean--" - -Silent! The word sent him off again. For in that other world, so ringing -with children's laughter, children's wrangles, and all the healthy -blustering noises of country life in a big family, there would somehow, -underneath it all, be a great pool of silence, a reservoir on which one -could always draw and flood one's soul with peace. The vision was vague -and contradictory, but it all seemed to meet and mingle in the woman's -eyes... - -Pauline was signalling from her table-end. He rose and offered his arm -to the Marchesa. - -In the hall the strains of the famous Somaliland orchestra bumped and -tossed downstairs from the ball-room to meet them. The ladies, headed by -Mrs. Toy, flocked to the mirror-lined lift dissembled behind forced -lilacs and Japanese plums; but Amalasuntha, on Manford's arm, set her -blunt black slipper on the marble tread. - -"I'm used to Roman palaces!" - - - - -VII - - -"AT least you'll take a turn?" Heuston said; and Nona, yielding, joined -the dancers balancing with slow steps about the shining floor. - -Dancing meant nothing; it was like breathing; what would one be doing if -one weren't dancing? She could not refuse without seeming singular; it -was simpler to acquiesce, and lose one's self among the couples absorbed -in the same complicated ritual. - -The floor was full, but not crowded: Pauline always saw to that. It was -easy to calculate in advance, for every one she asked always accepted, -and she and Maisie Bruss, in making out the list, allotted the requisite -space per couple as carefully as if they had been counting cubic feet in -a hospital. The ventilation was perfect too; neither draughts nor -stuffiness. One had almost the sense of dancing out of doors, under some -equable southern sky. Nona, aware of what it cost to produce this -illusion, marvelled once more at her tireless mother. - -"Isn't she wonderful?" - -Mrs. Manford, fresh, erect, a faint line of diamonds in her hair, stood -in the doorway, her slim foot advanced toward the dancers. - -"Perennially! Ah--she's going to dance. With Cosby." - -"Yes. I wish she wouldn't." - -"Wouldn't with Cosby?" - -"Dear, no. In general." - -Nona and Heuston had seated themselves, and were watching from their -corner the weaving of hallucinatory patterns by interjoined revolving -feet. - -"I see. You think she dances with a Purpose?" - -The girl smiled. "Awfully well--like everything else she does. But as if -it were something between going to church and drilling a scout brigade. -Mother's too--too tidy to dance." - -"Well--this is different," murmured Heuston. - -The floor had cleared as if by magic before the advance of a long slim -pair: Lita Wyant and Tommy Ardwin. The decorator, tall and supple, had -the conventional dancer's silhouette; but he was no more than a -silhouette, a shadow on the wall. All the light and music in the room -had passed into the translucent creature in his arms. He seemed to Nona -like some one who has gone into a spring wood and come back carrying a -long branch of silver blossom. - -"Good heavens! _Quelle plastique_!" piped the Marchesa over Nona's -shoulder. - -The two had the floor to themselves: every one else had stopped dancing. -But Lita and her partner seemed unaware of it. Her sole affair was to -shower radiance, his to attune his lines to hers. Her face was a small -still flower on a swaying stalk; all her expression was in her body, in -that long _legato_ movement like a weaving of grasses under a breeze, a -looping of little waves on the shore. - -"Look at Jim!" Heuston laughed. Jim Wyant, from a doorway, drank the -vision thirstily. "Surely," his eyes seemed to triumph, "this justifies -the Cubist Cabaret, and all the rest of her crazes." - -Lita, swaying near him, dropped a smile, and floated off on the bright -ripples of her beauty. - -Abruptly the music stopped. Nona glanced across the room and saw Mrs. -Manford move away from the musicians' balcony, over which the conductor -had just leaned down to speak to her. - -There was a short interval; then the orchestra broke into a fox-trot and -the floor filled again. Mrs. Manford swept by with a set smile--"the -kind she snaps on with her tiara," Nona thought. Well, perhaps it was -rather bad form of Lita to monopolize the floor at her mother-in-law's -ball; but was it the poor girl's fault if she danced so well that all -the others stopped to gaze? - -Ardwin came up to Nona. "Oh, no," Heuston protested under his breath. "I -wanted--" - -"There's Aggie signalling." - -The girl's arm was already on Ardwin's shoulder. As they circled toward -the middle of the room, Nona said: "You show off Lita's dancing -marvellously." - -He replied, in his high-pitched confident voice: "Oh, it's only a -question of giving her her head and not butting in. She and I each have -our own line of self-expression: it would be stupid to mix them. If only -I could get her to dance just once for Serge Klawhammer; he's scouring -the globe to find somebody to do the new 'Herodias' they're going to -turn at Hollywood. People are fed up with the odalisque style, and with -my help Lita could evolve something different. She's half promised to -come round to my place tonight after supper and see Klawhammer. Just six -or seven of the enlightened--wonder if you'd join us? He's tearing back -to Hollywood tomorrow." - -"Is Lita really coming?" - -"Well, she said yes and no, and ended on yes." - -"All right--I will." Nona hated Ardwin, his sleekness, suppleness, -assurance, the group he ruled, the fashions he set, the doctrines he -professed--hated them so passionately and undiscerningly that it seemed -to her that at last she had her hand on her clue. That was it, of -course! Ardwin and his crew were trying to persuade Lita to go into the -movies; that accounted for her restlessness and irritability, her -growing distaste for her humdrum life. Nona drew a breath of relief. -After all, if it were only that--! - -The dance over, she freed herself and slipped through the throng in -quest of Jim. Should she ask him to take her to Ardwin's? No: simply -tell him that she and Lita were off for a final spin at the decorator's -studio, where there would be more room and less fuss than at Pauline's. -Jim would laugh and approve, provided she and Lita went together; no use -saying anything about Klawhammer and his absurd "Herodias." - -"Jim? But, my dear, Jim went home long ago. I don't blame the poor boy," -Mrs. Manford sighed, waylaid by her daughter, "because I know he has to -be at the office so early; and it must be awfully boring, standing about -all night and not dancing. But, darling, you must really help me to find -your father. Supper's ready, and I can't imagine..." - -The Marchesa's ferret face slipped between them as she trotted by on Mr. -Toy's commodious arm. - -"Dear Dexter? I saw him not five minutes ago, seeing off that wonderful -Lita--" - -"Lita? Lita gone too?" Nona watched the struggle between her mother's -disciplined features and twitching nerves. "What impossible children I -have!" A smile triumphed over her discomfiture. "I do hope there's -nothing wrong with the baby? Nona, slip down and tell your father he -must come up. Oh, Stanley, dear, all my men seem to have deserted me. Do -find Mrs. Toy and take her in to supper..." - -In the hall below there was no Dexter. Nona cast about a glance for -Powder, the pale resigned butler, who had followed Mrs. Manford through -all her vicissitudes and triumphs, seemingly concerned about nothing but -the condition of his plate and the discipline of his footmen. Powder -knew everything, and had an answer to everything; but he was engaged at -the moment in the vast operation of making terrapin and champagne appear -simultaneously on eighty-five small tables, and was not to be found in -the hall. Nona ran her eye along the line of footmen behind the piled-up -furs, found one who belonged to the house, and heard that Mr. Manford -had left a few minutes earlier. His motor had been waiting for him, and -was now gone. Mrs. James Wyant was with him, the man thought. "He's -taken her to Ardwin's, of course. Poor father! After an evening of Mrs. -Toy and Amalasuntha--who can wonder? If only mother would see how her -big parties bore him!" But Nona's mother would never see that. - - -"It's just my indestructible faith in my own genius--nothing else," -Ardwin was proclaiming in his jumpy falsetto as Nona entered the -high-perched studio where he gathered his group of the enlightened. -These privileged persons, in the absence of chairs, had disposed -themselves on the cushions and mattresses scattered about a floor -painted to imitate a cunning perspective of black and white marble. Tall -lamps under black domes shed their light on bare shoulders, heads sleek -or tousled, and a lavish show of flesh-coloured legs and sandalled feet. -Ardwin, unbosoming himself to a devotee, held up a guttering -church-candle to a canvas which simulated a window open on a geometrical -representation of brick walls, fire escapes and back-yards. "Sham? Oh, -of course. I had the real window blocked up. It looked out on that -stupid old 'night-piece' of Brooklyn Bridge and the East River. -Everybody who came here said: 'A Whistler nocturne!' and I got so bored. -Besides, it was _really there_: and I hate things that are really where -you think they are. They're as tiresome as truthful people. Everything -in art should be false. Everything in life should be art. _Ergo_, -everything in life should be false: complexions, teeth, hair, wives ... -specially wives. Oh, Miss Manford, that you? Do come in. Mislaid -Lita?" - -"Isn't she here?" - -"_Is_ she?" He pivoted about on the company. When he was not dancing he -looked, with his small snaky head and too square shoulders, like a cross -between a Japanese waiter and a full-page advertisement for silk -underwear. "_Is_ Lita here? Any of you fellows got her dissembled about -your persons? Now, then, out with her! Jossie Keiler, _you_'re not Mrs. -James Wyant disguised as a dryad, are you?" There was a general guffaw -as Miss Jossie Keiler, the octoroon pianist, scrambled to her pudgy feet -and assembled a series of sausage arms and bolster legs in a provocative -pose. "Knew I'd get found out," she lisped. - -A short man with a deceptively blond head, thick lips under a stubby -blond moustache, and eyes like needles behind tortoiseshell-rimmed -glasses, stood before the fire, bulging a glossy shirtfront and -solitaire pearl toward the company. "Don't this lady dance?" he -enquired, in a voice like melted butter, a few drops of which seemed to -trickle down his lips and be licked back at intervals behind a thickly -ringed hand. - -"Miss Manford? Bet she does! Come along, Nona; shed your togs and let's -show Mr. Klawhammer here present that Lita's not the only peb--" - -"Gracious! Wait till I get into the saddle!" screamed Miss Keiler, tiny -hands like blueish mice darting out at the keyboard from the end of her -bludgeon arms. - -Nona perched herself on the edge of a refectory table. "Thanks. I'm not -a candidate for 'Herodias.' My sister-in-law is sure to turn up in a -minute." - - -Even Mrs. Dexter Manford's perfectly run house was not a particularly -appetizing place to return to at four o'clock on the morning after a -dance. The last motor was gone, the last overcoat and opera cloak had -vanished from hall and dressing-rooms, and only one hanging lamp lit the -dusky tapestries and the monumental balustrade of the staircase. But -empty cocktail glasses and ravaged cigar-boxes littered the hall tables, -wisps of torn tulle and trampled orchids strewed the stair-carpet, and -the thicket of forced lilacs and Japanese plums in front of the lift -drooped mournfully in the hot air. Nona, letting herself in with her -latch-key, scanned the scene with a feeling of disgust. What was it all -for, and what was left when it was over? Only a huge clearing-up for -Maisie and the servants, and a new list to make out for the next time... -She remembered mild spring nights at Cedarledge, when she was a little -girl, and she and Jim used to slip downstairs in stocking feet, go to -the lake, loose the canoe, and drift on a silver path among islets -fringed with budding dogwood. She hurried on past the desecrated shrubs. - -Above, the house was dark but for a line of light under the library -door. Funny--at that hour; her father must still be up. Very likely he -too had just come in. She was passing on when the door opened and -Manford called her. - -"'Pon my soul, Nona! That you? I supposed you were in bed long ago." - -One of the green-shaded lamps lit the big writing-table. Manford's -armchair was drawn up to it, an empty glass and half-consumed cigarette -near by, the evening paper sprawled on the floor. - -"Was that you I heard coming in? Do you know what time it is?" - -"Yes; worse luck! I've been scouring the town after Lita." - -"_Lita_?" - -"Waiting for her for hours at Tommy Ardwin's. Such a crew! He told me -she was going there to dance for Klawhammer, the Hollywood man, and I -didn't want her to go alone--" - -Manford's face darkened. He lit another cigarette and turned to his -daughter impatiently. - -"What the devil made you believe such a yarn? Klawhammer--!" - -Nona stood facing him; their eyes met, and he turned away with a shrug -to reach for a match. - -"I believed it because, just afterward, the servants told me that Lita -had left, and as they said you'd gone with her I supposed you'd taken -her to Ardwin's, not knowing that I meant to join her there." - -"Ah; I see." He lit the cigarette and puffed at it for a moment or two, -deliberately. "You're quite right to think she needs looking after," he -began again, in a changed tone. "Somebody's got to take on the job, -since her husband seems to have washed his hands of it." - -"Father! You know perfectly well that if Jim took on that job--running -after Lita all night from one cabaret to another--he'd lose the other, -the one that keeps them going. Nobody could carry on both." - -"Hullo, spitfire! Hands off our brother!" - -"Rather." She leaned against the table, her eyes still on him. "And when -Ardwin told me about this Klawhammer film--didn't Lita mention it to -you?" - -He appeared to consider. "She did say Ardwin was bothering her about -something of the kind; so when I found Jim had gone I took her home -myself." - -"Ah--you took her home?" - -Manford, settling himself back in his armchair, met the surprise in her -voice unconcernedly. "Why, of course. Did you really see me letting her -make a show of herself? Sorry you think that's my way of looking after -her." - -Nona, perched on the arm of his chair, enclosed him in a happy hug. "You -goose, you!" she sighed; but the epithet was not for her father. - -She poured herself a glass of cherry brandy, dropped a kiss on his -thinning hair, and ran up to her room humming Miss Jossie Keiler's -jazz-tune. Perhaps after all it wasn't such a rotten world. - - - - -VIII - - -THE morning after a party in her own house Pauline Manford always -accorded herself an extra half-hour's rest; but on this occasion she -employed it in lying awake and wearily reckoning up the next day's -tasks. Disenchantment had succeeded to the night's glamour. The glamour -of balls never did last: they so quickly became a matter for those -domestic undertakers, the charwomen, housemaids and electricians. And in -this case the taste of pleasure had soured early. When the doors were -thrown open on the beflowered supper tables not one of the hostess's -family was left to marshal the guests to their places! Her husband, her -daughter and son, her son's wife--all had deserted her. It needed, in -that chill morning vigil, all Pauline's self-control to banish the -memory. Not that she wanted any of them to feel under any -obligation--she was all for personal freedom, self-expression, or -whatever they called it nowadays--but still, a ball was a ball, a host -was a host. It was too bad of Dexter, really; and of Jim too. On Lita of -course no one could count: that was part of the pose people found so -fascinating. But Jim--Jim and Nona to forsake her! What a ridiculous -position it had put her in--but no, she mustn't think of that now, or -those nasty little wrinkles would creep back about her eyes. The -masseuse had warned her... Gracious! At what time was the masseuse -due? She stretched out her hand, turned on the light by the bed (for the -windows were still closely darkened), and reached for what Maisie Bruss -called the night-list: an upright porcelain tablet on which the -secretary recorded, for nocturnal study, the principal "fixtures" of the -coming day. - -Today they were so numerous that Miss Bruss's tight script had hardly -contrived to squeeze them in. Foremost, of course, poor Exhibit A, moved -on from yesterday; then a mysterious appointment with Amalasuntha, just -before lunch: something urgent, she had hinted. Today of all days! -Amalasuntha was so tactless at times. And then that Mahatma business: -since Dexter was inflexible, his wife had made up her mind to appeal to -the Lindons. It would be awkward, undoubtedly--and she did so hate -things that were awkward. Any form of untidiness, moral or material, was -unpleasant to her; but something must be done, and at once. She herself -hardly knew why she felt so apprehensive, so determined that the matter -should have no sequel; except that, if anything _did_ go wrong, it would -upset all her plans for a rest-cure, for new exercises, for all sorts of -promised ways of prolonging youth, activity and slenderness, and would -oblige her to find a new Messiah who would tell her she was psychic. - -But the most pressing item on her list was her address that very -afternoon to the National Mothers' Day Association--or, no; wasn't it -the Birth Control League? Nonsense! That was her speech at the banquet -next week: a big affair at the St. Regis for a group of International -Birth-controllers. Wakeful as she felt, she must be half asleep to have -muddled up her engagements like that! She extinguished the lamp and sank -hopefully to her pillow--perhaps now sleep would really come. But her -bed-lamp seemed to have a double switch, and putting it out in the room -only turned it on in her head. - -Well, she would try reciting scraps of her Mothers' Day address: she -seldom spoke in public, but when she did she took the affair seriously, -and tried to be at once winning and impressive. She and Maisie had gone -carefully over the typed copy; and she was sure it was all right; but -she liked getting the more effective passages by heart--it brought her -nearer to her audience to lean forward and speak intimately, without -having to revert every few minutes to the text. - -"Was there ever a hearth or a heart--a mother's heart--that wasn't big -enough for all the babies God wants it to hold? Of course there are days -when the mother is so fagged out that she thinks she'd give the world if -there were nothing at all to do in the nursery, and she could just sit -still with folded hands. But the only time when there's nothing at all -for a mother to do in the nursery is when there's a little coffin there. -It's all quiet enough _then_ ... as some of us here know..." (Pause, -and a few tears in the audience.) "Not that we want the modern mother to -wear herself out: no indeed! The babies themselves haven't any use for -worn-out mothers! And the first thing to be considered is what the -babies want, isn't it?" (Pause--smiles in the audience)... - -What on earth was Amalasuntha coming to bother her about? More money, of -course--but she really couldn't pay all that wretched Michelangelo's -debts. There would soon be debts nearer home if Lita went on dressing so -extravagantly, and perpetually having her jewellery reset. It cost -almost as much nowadays to reset jewels as to buy new ones, and those -emeralds... - -At that hour of the morning things did tend to look ash-coloured; and -she felt that her optimism had never been so sorely strained since the -year when she had had to read Proust, learn a new dance-step, master -Oriental philosophy, and decide whether she should really bob her hair, -or only do it to look so. She had come victoriously through those -ordeals; but what if worse lay ahead? - - -Amalasuntha, in one of Mrs. Manford's least successfully made-over -dresses, came in looking shabby and humble--always a bad sign. And of -course it was Michelangelo's debts. Racing, baccara, and a woman ... a -Russian princess; oh, my dear, _authentic_, quite! Wouldn't Pauline like -to see her picture from the "Prattler"? She and Michelangelo had been -snapped together in bathing tights at the Lido. - -No--Pauline wouldn't. She turned from the proffered effigy with a -disgust evidently surprising to the Marchesa, whose own prejudices were -different, and who could grasp other people's only piece-meal, one at a -time, like a lesson in mnemonics. - -"Oh, my boy doesn't do things by halves," the Marchesa averred, still -feeling that the occasion was one for boasting. - -Pauline leaned back wearily. "I'm as sorry for you as I can be, -Amalasuntha; but Michelangelo is not a baby, and if he can't be made to -understand that a poor man who wants to spend money must first earn -it--" - -"Oh, but he does, darling! Venturino and I have always dinned it into -him. And last year he tried his best to marry that one-eyed Miss Oxbaum -from Oregon, he really did." - -"I said _earn_," Pauline interposed. "We don't consider that marrying for -money is earning it--" - -"Oh, mercy--don't you? Not sometimes?" breathed the Marchesa. - -"What I mean by earning is going into an office--is--" - -"Ah, just so! It was what I said to Dexter last night. It is what -Venturino and I most long for: that Dexter should take Michelangelo into -his office. That would solve every difficulty. And once Michelangelo is -here I'm sure he will succeed. No one is more clever, you know: only, in -Rome, young men are in greater danger--there are more temptations--" - -Pauline pursed her lips. "I suppose there are." But, since temptations -are the privilege of metropolises, she thought it rather impertinent of -Amalasuntha to suggest that there were more in a one-horse little place -like Rome than in New York; though in a different mood she would have -been the first to pronounce the Italian capital a sink of iniquity, and -New York the model and prototype of the pure American city. All these -contradictions, which usually sat lightly on her, made her head ache -today, and she continued, nervously: "Take Michelangelo into his office! -But what preparations has he had, what training? Has he ever studied for -the law?" - -"No; I don't think he has, darling; but he _would_; I can promise you he -would," the Marchesa declared, in the tone of one saying: "In such -straits, he would become a street-cleaner." - -Pauline smiled faintly. "I don't think you understand. The law is a -_profession_." (Dexter had told her that.) "It requires years of training, -of preparation. Michelangelo would have to take a degree at Harvard or -Columbia first. But perhaps"--a glance at her wrist-watch told her that -her next engagement impended--"perhaps Dexter could suggest some other -kind of employment. I don't know, of course... I can't promise... -But meanwhile ..." She turned to her writing-table, and a cheque -passed between them, too small to make a perceptible impression on -Michelangelo's deficit, but large enough for Amalasuntha to murmur: "How -you do spoil me, darling! Well--for the boy's sake I accept in all -simplicity. And about the reception for the Cardinal--I'm sure a cable -to Venturino will arrange it. Would that kind Maisie send it off, and -sign my name?" - - -It was well after three o'clock when Pauline came down the Lindons' -door-step and said to her chauffeur: "To Mr. Wyant's." And she had still -to crowd in her eurythmic exercises (put off from the morning), and be -ready at half-past four, bathed, waved and apparelled, for the Mothers' -Day Meeting, which was to take place in her own ball-room, with a giant -tea to follow. - -Certainly, no amount of "mental deep-breathing," and all the other -exercises in serenity, could combat the nervous apprehension produced by -this breathless New York life. Today she really felt it to be too much -for her: she leaned back and closed her lids with a sigh. But she was -jerked back to consciousness by the traffic-control signal, which had -immobilized the motor just when every moment was so precious. The result -of every one's being in such a hurry to get everywhere was that nobody -could get anywhere. She looked across the triple row of motors in line -with hers, and saw in each (as if in a vista of mirrors) an expensively -dressed woman like herself, leaning forward in the same attitude of -repressed impatience, the same nervous frown of hurry on her brow. - -Oh, if only she could remember to relax! - -But how could one, with everything going wrong as it was today? The -visit to Fanny Lindon had been an utter failure. Pauline had apparently -overestimated her influence on the Lindons, and that discovery in itself -was rather mortifying. To be told that the Mahatma business was "a -family affair"--and thus be given to understand that she was no longer -of the family! Pauline, in her own mind, had never completely ceased to -be a Wyant. She thought herself still entitled to such shadowy -prerogatives as the name afforded, and was surprised that the Wyants -should not think so too. After all, she kept Amalasuntha for them--no -slight charge! - -But Mrs. Lindon had merely said it was "all too painful"--and had ended, -surprisingly: "Dexter himself has specially asked us not to say -anything." - -The implication was: "If you want to find out, go to him!"--when of -course Fanny knew well enough that lawyers' and doctors' wives are the -last people to get at their clients' secrets. - -Pauline rose to her feet, offended, and not averse from showing it. -"Well, my dear, I can only say that if it's so awful that you can't tell -_me_, I rather wonder at your wanting to tell Tom, Dick and Harry. Have -you thought of that?" - -Oh, yes, she had, Mrs. Lindon wailed. "But Grant says it's a duty ... -and so does Dexter..." - -Pauline permitted herself a faint smile. "Dexter naturally takes the -lawyer's view: that's _his_ duty." - -Mrs. Lindon's mind was not alert for innuendos. "Yes; he says we _ought_ -to," she merely repeated. - -A sudden lassitude overcame Pauline. "At least send Grant to me -first--let me talk to him." - -But to herself she said: "My only hope now is to get at them through -Arthur." And she looked anxiously out of the motor, watching for the -signal to shift. - -Everything at Arthur Wyant's was swept and garnished for her approach. -One felt that cousin Eleanor, whisking the stray cigarette-ends into the -fire, and giving the sofa cushions a last shake, had slipped out of the -back door as Mrs. Manford entered by the front. - -Wyant greeted her with his usual rather overdone cordiality. He had -never quite acquired the note on which discarded husbands should welcome -condescending wives. In this respect Pauline was his superior. She had -found the exact blend of gravity with sisterly friendliness; and the -need of having to ask about his health always helped her over the first -moments. - -"Oh, you see--still mummified." He pointed to the leg stretched out in -front of him. "Couldn't even see Amalasuntha to the door--" - -"Amalasuntha? Has she been here?" - -"Yes. Asked herself to lunch. Rather a to-do for me; I'm not used to -entertaining distinguished foreigners, especially when they have to -picnic on a tray at my elbow. But she took it all very good-naturedly." - -"I should think so," Pauline murmured; adding inwardly: "Trust -Amalasuntha not to pay for her own lunch." - -"Yes; she's in great feather. Said you'd been so kind to her--as usual." - -Pauline sounded the proper deprecation. - -"She's awfully pleased at your having promised that Manford would give -Michelangelo a leg up if he comes out to try his luck in New York." - -"Promised? Well--not quite. But I did say Dexter would do what he could. -It seems the only way left of disposing of Michelangelo." - -Wyant leaned back, a smile twitching under his moustache. "Yes--that -young man's a scourge. And I begin to see why. Did you see his picture -in bathing tights with the latest lady?" - -Pauline waved away the suggestion. How like Arthur not to realize, even -yet, that such things disgusted her! - -"Well, he's the best looking piece of human sculpture I've seen since I -last went through the Vatican galleries. Regular Apollo. Funny, the -Albany Wyants having a hand in turning out a heathen divinity. I was -showing the picture to Manford just now, and telling him the fond -mother's comment." - -Pauline looked up quickly. "Has Dexter been here too?" - -"Yes; trying to give _me_ a leg up." He glanced at his bandages. "Rather -more difficult, that. I must get it down first--to the floor. But -Manford's awfully kind too--it's catching. He wants me to go off with -Jim, down to that island of his, and get a fortnight's real sunshine. -Says he can get Jim off by a little wirepulling, some time just before -Easter, he thinks. It's tempting--" - -Pauline smiled: she was always pleased when the two men spoke of each -other in that tone; and certainly it _was_ kind of Dexter to offer the -hospitality of his southern island to poor Arthur... She thought how -easy life would be if only every one were kind and simple. - -"But about Michelangelo: I was going to tell you what is worrying -Amalasuntha. Of course what she means by Michelangelo's going into -business in America is marrying an heiress--" - -"Oh, of course. And I daresay he will." - -"Exactly. She's got her eye on one already. You haven't guessed? Nona!" - -Pauline's sense of humour was not unfailing, but this relaxed her taut -nerves, and she laughed. "Poor Michelangelo!" - -"I thought it wouldn't worry you. But what is worrying Amalasuntha is -that he won't be let--" - -"Be let?" - -"By Lita. Her theory is that Lita will fall madly in love with -Michelangelo as soon as she lays eyes on him--and that when they've had -one dance together she'll be lost. And Amalasuntha, for that -reason--though she daren't tell you so--thinks it might really be -cheaper in the end to pay Michelangelo's debts than to import him. As -she says, it's for the family to decide, now she's warned them." - -Their laughter mingled. It was the first time, perhaps, since they had -been young together; as a rule, their encounters were untinged with -levity. - -But Pauline dismissed the laugh hurriedly for the Grant Lindons. At the -name Wyant's eyes lit up: it was as if she had placed an appetizing -morsel before a listless convalescent. - -"But you're the very person to tell me all about it--or, no, you can't, -of course, if Manford's going to take it up. But no matter--after all, -it's public property by this time. Seen this morning's 'Looker-on'--with -pictures? Here, where--" In the stack of illustrated papers always at -his elbow he could never find the one he wanted, and now began to toss -over "Prattlers," "Listeners" and others with helpless hand. How that -little symptom of inefficiency took her back to the old days, when his -perpetual disorder, and his persistent belief that he could always put -his hand on everything, used to be such a strain on her nerves! - -"Pictures?" she gasped. - -"Rather. The nigger himself, in turban and ritual togs; and a lot of -mixed nudes doing leg-work round a _patio_. The place looks like a Palm -Beach Hotel. Fanny Lindon's in a stew because she's recognized Bee in -the picture. She says she's going to have the man in jail if they spend -their last penny on it. Hullo--here it is, after all." - -Pauline shrank back. Would people never stop trying to show her -disgusting photographs? She articulated: "You haven't seen Fanny Lindon -too?" - -"Haven't I? She spent the morning here. She told Amalasuntha -everything." - -Pauline, with a great effort, controlled her rising anger. "How idiotic! -Now it _will_ be spread to all the winds!" She saw Fanny and Amalasuntha -gloatingly exchanging the images of their progenies' dishonour. It was -too indecent ... and the old New Yorker was as shameless as the -demoralized foreigner. - -"I didn't know Fanny had been here before me. I've just left her. I've -been trying to persuade her to stop; to hush up the whole business -before it's too late. I suppose you gave her the same advice?" - -Wyant's face clouded: he looked perplexedly at his former wife, and she -saw he had lost all sense of the impropriety and folly of the affair in -his famished enjoyment of its spicy details. - -"I don't know--I understood it _was_ too late; and that Manford was urging -them to do it." - -Pauline made a slight movement of impatience. "Dexter--of course! When -he sees a 'case'! I suppose lawyers are all alike. At any rate, I can't -make him understand..." She broke off, suddenly aware that the rôles -were reversed, and that for the first time she was disparaging her -second husband to her first. "Besides," she hurried on, "it's no affair -of Dexter's if the Lindons choose to dishonour their child publicly. -They're not _his_ relations; Bee is not _his_ cousin's daughter. But you -and I--how can we help feeling differently? Bee and Nona and Jim were all -brought up together. You must help me to stop this scandal! You must -send for Grant Lindon at once. He's sure to listen to you ... you've -always had a great influence on Grant..." - -She found herself, in her extremity, using the very arguments she had -addressed to Manford, and she saw at once that in this case they were -more effective. Wyant drew himself up stiffly with a faint smile of -satisfaction. Involuntarily he ran a thin gouty hand through his hair, -and tried for a glimpse of himself in the mirror. - -"Think so--really? Of course when Grant was a boy he used to consider me -a great fellow. But now ... who remembers me in my dingy corner?" - -Pauline rose with her clear wintry smile. "A good many of us, it seems. -You tell me I'm the third lady to call on you today! You know well -enough, Arthur--" she brushed the name in lightly, on the extreme tip of -her smile--"that the opinion of people like you still counts in New -York, even in these times. Imagine what your mother would have felt at -the idea of Fanny and Bee figuring in all the daily headlines, with -reporters and photographers in a queue on the doorstep! I'm glad she -hasn't lived to see it." - -She knew that Wyant's facile irony always melted before an emotional -appeal, especially if made in his mother's name. He blinked unsteadily, -and flung away the "Looker-on." - -"You're dead right: they're a pack of fools. There are no standards -left. I'll do what I can; I'll telephone to Grant to look in on his way -home this evening... I say, Pauline: what's the truth of it all, -anyhow? If I'm to give him a talking to I ought to know." His eyes again -lit up with curiosity. - -"Truth of it? There isn't any--it's the silliest mare's-nest! Why, I'm -going to Dawnside for a rest-cure next month, while Dexter's -tarpon-fishing. The Mahatma is worlds above all this tattle--it's for -the Lindons I'm anxious, not him." - -The paper thrown aside by Wyant had dropped to the floor, face upward at -a full-page picture--_the_ picture. Pauline, on her way out, mechanically -yielded to her instinct for universal tidying, and bent to pick it up; -bent and looked. Her eyes were still keen; passing over the noxious -caption "Dawnside Co-Eds," they immediately singled out Bee Lindon from -the capering round; then travelled on, amazed, to another denuded nymph ... -whose face, whose movements... Incredible! ... For a second -Pauline refused to accept what her eyes reported. Sick and unnerved, she -folded the picture away and laid the magazine on a table. - -"Oh, don't bother about picking up that paper. Sorry there's no one to -show you out!" she heard Wyant calling. She went downstairs, blind, -unbelieving, hardly knowing how she got into her motor. - -Barely time to get home, change, and be in the Chair, her address before -her, when the Mothers arrived in their multitude... - - - - -IX - - -WELL, perhaps Dexter would understand _now_ the need of hushing up the -Grant Lindons... The picture might be a libel, of course--such things, -Pauline knew, could be patched up out of quite unrelated photographs. -The dancing circle might have been skilfully fitted into the Dawnside -_patio_, and goodness knew what shameless creatures have supplied the -bodies of the dancers. Dexter had often told her that it was a common -blackmailing trick. - -Even if the photograph were genuine, Pauline could understand and make -allowances. She had never seen anything of the kind herself at -Dawnside--heaven forbid!--but whenever she had gone there for a lecture, -or a new course of exercises, she had suspected that the bare -whitewashed room, with its throned Buddha, which received her and other -like-minded ladies of her age, all active, earnest and eager for -self-improvement, had not let them very far into the mystery. Beyond, -perhaps, were other rites, other settings: why not? Wasn't everybody -talking about "the return to Nature," and ridiculing the American -prudery in which the minds and bodies of her generation had been -swaddled? The Mahatma was one of the leaders of the new movement: the -Return to Purity, he called it. He was always celebrating the nobility -of the human body, and praising the ease of the loose Oriental dress -compared with the constricting western garb: but Pauline had supposed -the draperies he advocated to be longer and less transparent; above all, -she had not expected familiar faces above those insufficient scarves... - -But here she was at her own door. There was just time to be ready for -the Mothers; none in which to telephone to Dexter, or buy up the whole -edition of the "Looker-on" (fantastic vision!), or try and get hold of -its editor, who had once dined with her, and was rather a friend of -Lita's. All these possibilities and impossibilities raced through her -brain to the maddening tune of "too late" while she slipped off her -street-dress and sat twitching with impatience under the maid's -readjustment of her ruffled head. The gown prepared for the meeting, -rich, matronly and just the least bit old-fashioned--very different from -the one designed for the Birth Control committee--lay spread out beside -the copy of her speech, and Maisie Bruss, who had been hovering within -call, dashed back breathless from a peep over the stairs. - -"They're arriving--" - -"Oh, Maisie, rush down! Say I'm telephoning--" - -Her incurable sincerity made her unhook the receiver and call out -Manford's office number. Almost instantly she heard him. "Dexter, this -Mahatma investigation must be stopped! Don't ask me why--there isn't -time. Only promise--" - -She heard his impatient laugh. - -"No?" - -"Impossible," came back. - -She supposed she had hung up the receiver, fastened on her jewelled -"Motherhood" badge, slipped on rings and bracelets as usual. But she -remembered nothing clearly until she found herself on the platform at -the end of the packed ball-room, looking across rows and rows of earnest -confiding faces, with lips and eyes prepared for the admiring reception -of her "message." She was considered a very good speaker: she knew how -to reach the type of woman represented by this imposing -assemblage--delegates from small towns all over the country, united by a -common faith in the infinite extent of human benevolence and the -incalculable resources of American hygiene. Something of the moral -simplicity of her own bringing-up brought her close to these women, who -had flocked to the great perfidious city serenely unaware of its being -anything more, or other, than the gigantic setting of a Mothers' -Meeting. Pauline, at such times, saw the world through their eyes, and -was animated by a genuine ardour for the cause of motherhood and -domesticity. - -As she turned toward her audience a factitious serenity descended on -her. She felt in control of herself and of the situation. She spoke. - -"Personality--first and last, and at all costs. I've begun my talk to -you with that one word because it seems to me to sum up our whole case. -Personality--room to develop in: not only elbow-room but body-room and -soul-room, and plenty of both. That's what every human being has a right -to. No more effaced wives, no more drudging mothers, no more human -slaves crushed by the eternal round of housekeeping and child-bearing--" - -She stopped, drew a quick breath, met Nona's astonished gaze over rows -of bewildered eye-glasses, and felt herself plunging into an abyss. But -she caught at the edge, and saved herself from the plunge-- - -"That's what our antagonists say--the women who are afraid to be -mothers, ashamed to be mothers, the women who put their enjoyment and -their convenience and what they call their happiness before the -mysterious heaven-sent joy, the glorious privilege, of bringing children -into the world--" - -A round of applause from the reassured mothers. She had done it! She had -pulled off her effect from the very jaws of disaster. Only the swift -instinct of recovery had enabled her, before it was too late, to pass -off the first sentences of her other address, her Birth Control speech, -as the bold exordium of her hymn to motherhood! She paused a moment, -still inwardly breathless, yet already sure enough of herself to smile -back at Nona across her unsuspecting audience--sure enough to note that -her paradoxical opening had had a much greater effect than she could -have hoped to produce by the phrases with which she had meant to begin. - -A hint for future oratory-- - -Only--the inward nervousness subsisted. The discovery that she could -lose not only her self-control but her memory, the very sense of what -she was saying, was like a hand of ice pointing to an undecipherable -warning. - -Nervousness, fatigue, brain-exhaustion ... had her fight against them -been vain? What was the use of all the months and years of patient -Taylorized effort against the natural human fate: against anxiety, -sorrow, old age--if their menace was to reappear whenever events slipped -from her control? - -The address ended in applause and admiring exclamations. She had won her -way straight to those trustful hearts, still full of personal memories -of a rude laborious life, or in which its stout tradition lingered on in -spite of motors, money and the final word in plumbing. - - -Pauline, after the dispersal of the Mothers, had gone up to her room -still dazed by the narrowness of her escape. Thank heaven she had a free -hour! She threw herself on her lounge and turned her gaze inward upon -herself: an exercise for which she seldom had the leisure. - -Now that she knew she was safe, and had done nothing to discredit -herself or the cause, she could penetrate an inch or two farther into -the motive power of her activities; and what she saw there frightened -her. To be Chairman of the Mothers' Day Association, and a speaker at -the Birth Control banquet! It did not need her daughter's derisive -chuckle to give her the measure of her inconsequence. Yet to reconcile -these contradictions had seemed as simple as to invite the Chief Rabbi -and the Bishop of New York to meet Amalasuntha's Cardinal. Did not the -Mahatma teach that, to the initiated, all discords were resolved into a -higher harmony? When her hurried attention had been turned for a moment -on the seeming inconsistency of encouraging natality and teaching how to -restrict it, she had felt it was sufficient answer to say that the two -categories of people appealed to were entirely different, and could not -be "reached" in the same way. In ethics, as in advertising, the main -thing was to get at your public. Hitherto this argument had satisfied -her. Feeling there was much to be said on both sides, she had thrown -herself with equal zeal into the propagation of both doctrines; but now, -surveying her attempt with a chastened eye, she doubted its expediency. - -Maisie Bruss, appearing with notes and telephone messages, seemed to -reflect this doubt in her small buttoned-up face. - -"Oh, Maisie! Is there anything important? I'm dead tired." It was an -admission she did not often make. - -"Nothing much. Three or four papers have 'phoned for copies of your -address. It was a great success." - -A faint glow of satisfaction wavered through Pauline's perplexities. She -did not pretend to eloquence; she knew her children smiled at her -syntax. Yet she had reached the hearts of her audience, and who could -deny that that was success? - -"Oh, Maisie--I don't think it's good enough to appear in print ..." - -The secretary smiled, made a short-hand memorandum, and went on: "The -Marchesa telephoned that her son is sailing on Wednesday--and I've sent -off her cable about the Cardinal, answer paid." - -"Sailing on Wednesday? But it can't be--the day after tomorrow!" Pauline -raised herself on an anxious elbow. She had warned her husband, and he -wouldn't listen. "Telephone downstairs, please, Maisie--find out if Mr. -Manford has come in." But she knew well enough what the answer would be. -Nowadays, whenever there was anything serious to be talked over, Dexter -found some excuse for avoiding her. She lay back, her lids dropped over -her tired eyes, and waited for the answer: "Mr. Manford isn't in yet." - -Something had come over Dexter lately: no closing of her eyes would shut -that out! She supposed it was over-work--the usual reason. Rich men's -doctors always said they were over-worked when they became cross and -trying at home. - -"Dinner at the Toys' at 8.30." Miss Bruss continued her recital; and -Pauline drew in her lips on a faintly bitter smile. At the Toys'--he -wouldn't forget that! Whenever there was a woman who attracted him ... -why, Lita even ... she'd seen him in a flutter once when he was going -to the cinema with Lita, and thought she had forgotten to call for him! -He had stamped up and down, watch in hand... Well, she supposed it was -one of the symptoms of middle age: a passing phase. She could afford to -be generous, after twenty years of his devotion; and she meant to be. -Men didn't grow old as gracefully as women--she knew enough not to nag -him about his little flirtations, and was really rather grateful to that -silly Gladys Toy for making a fuss over him. - -But when it came to serious matters, like this of the Mahatma, it was -different, Dexter owed it to her to treat her opinions with more -consideration--a woman whose oratory was sought for by a dozen -newspapers! And that tiresome business of Michelangelo; another problem -he had obstinately shirked. Discouragement closed in on Pauline. Of what -use were eurythmics, cold douches, mental deep-breathings and all the -other panaceas? - -If things went on like this she would have to have her face lifted. - - - - -X - - -IT was exasperating, the way the Vollard girl lurked and ogled... -Undoubtedly she was their best typist: mechanically perfect, with a -smattering of French and Italian useful in linguistic emergencies. There -could be no question of replacing her. But, apart from her job, what a -poor Poll! And always--there was no denying it, the office smiled over -it--always finding excuses to intrude on Manford's privacy: a hurry -trunk-call, a signature forgotten, a final question to ask, a message -from one of the other members of the firm ... she seized her pretexts -cleverly... And when she left him nowadays, he always got up, squared -his shoulders, studied himself critically in the mirror over the -mantelpiece, and hated her the more for having caused him to do anything -so silly. - -This afternoon her excuse had been flimsier than usual: a new point to -be noted against her. "One of the gentlemen left it on his desk. There's -a picture in it that'll amuse you. Oh, you don't mind my bringing it -in?" she gasped. - -Manford was just leaving; overcoat on, hat and stick in hand. He -muttered: "Oh, thanks," and took the "Looker-on" in order to cut short -her effusions. A picture that might amuse him! The simpleton... -Probably some of those elaborate "artistic" studies of the Cedarledge -gardens. He remembered that his wife had allowed the "Looker-on" -photographers to take them last summer. She thought it a duty: it might -help to spread the love of gardening (another of her hobbies); and -besides it was undemocratic to refuse to share one's private privileges -with the multitude. He knew all her catch-words and had reached the -point of wondering how much she would have valued her privileges had the -multitude not been there to share them. - -He thrust the magazine under his arm, and threw it down, half an hour -later, in Lita Wyant's boudoir. It was so quiet and shadowy there that -he was almost glad Lita was not in, though sometimes her unpunctuality -annoyed him. This evening, after the rush and confusion of the day, he -found it soothing to await her in this half-lit room, with its heaped-up -cushions still showing where she had leaned, and the veiled light on two -arums in a dark bowl. Wherever Lita was, there were some of those smooth -sculptural arums. - -When she came, the stillness would hardly be disturbed. She had a way of -deepening it by her presence: noise and hurry died on her threshold. And -this evening all the house was quiet. Manford, as usual, had tiptoed up -to take a look at the baby, in the night nursery where there were such -cool silver-coloured walls, and white hyacinths in pots of silvery -lustre. The baby slept, a round pink Hercules with defiant rosy curls, -his pink hands clenched on the coverlet. Even the nurse by the lamp sat -quiet and silver-coloured as a brooding pigeon. - -A house without fixed hours, engagements, obligations ... where none -of the clocks went, and nobody was late, because there was no particular -time for anything to happen. Absurd, of course, maddeningly -unpractical--but how restful after a crowded day! And what a miracle to -have achieved, in the tight pattern of New York's tasks and -pleasures--in the very place which seemed doomed to collapse and vanish -if ever its clocks should stop! - -These late visits had begun by Manford's dropping in on the way home for -a look at the baby. He liked babies in their cribs, and especially this -fat rascal of Jim's. Next to Nona, there was no one he cared for as much -as Jim; and seeing Jim happily married, doing well at his bank, and with -that funny little chap upstairs, stirred in the older man all his old -regrets that he had no son. - -Jim seldom got back early enough to assist at these visits; and Lita -too, at first, was generally out. But in the last few months Manford had -more often found her--or at least, having fallen into the habit of -lingering over a cigarette in her boudoir, had managed to get a glimpse -of her before going on to that other house where all the clocks struck -simultaneously, and the week's engagements, in Maisie Bruss's hand, -jumped out at him as he entered his study. - -This evening he felt more than usually tired--of his day, his work, his -life, himself--oh, especially himself; so tired that, the deep armchair -aiding, he slipped into a half-doze in which the quietness crept up -round him like a tide. - -He woke with a start, imagining that Lita had entered, and feeling the -elderly man's discomfiture when beauty finds him napping... But the -room was empty: a movement of his own had merely knocked Miss Vollard's -magazine to the floor. He remembered having brought it in to show Lita -the photographs of Cedarledge which he supposed it to contain. Would -there be time? He consulted his watch--an anachronism in that house--lit -another cigarette, and leaned back contentedly. He knew that as soon as -he got home Pauline, who had telephoned again that afternoon about the -Mahatma, would contrive to corner him and reopen the tiresome question, -together with another, which threatened to be almost equally tiresome, -about paying that rotten Michelangelo's debts. "If we don't, we shall -have him here on our hands: Amalasuntha is convinced you'll take him -into the firm. You'd better come home in time to talk things over--." -Always talking over, interfering, adjusting! He had enough of that in -his profession. Pity Pauline wasn't a lawyer: she might have worked off -her steam in office hours. He would sit quietly where he was, taking -care to reach his house only just in time to dress and join her in the -motor. They were dining out, he couldn't remember where. - -For a moment his wife's figure stood out before him in brilliant stony -relief, like a photograph seen through a stereopticon; then it vanished -in the mist of his well-being, the indolence engendered by waiting there -alone and undisturbed for Lita. Queer creature, Lita! His lips twitched -into a reminiscent smile. One day she had come up noiselessly behind him -and surprised him by a light kiss on his hair. He had thought it was -Nona... Since then he had sometimes feigned to doze while he waited; -but she had never kissed him again... - -What sort of a life did she really lead, he wondered? And what did she -make of Jim, now the novelty was over? He could think of no two people -who seemed less made for each other. But you never could tell with a -woman. Jim was young and adoring; and there was that red-headed boy... - -Luckily Lita liked Nona, and the two were a good deal together. Nona was -as safe as a bank--and as jolly as a cricket. Everything was sure to be -right when she was there. But there were all the other hours, intervals -that Manford had no way of accounting for; and Pauline always said the -girl had had a queer bringing-up, as indeed any girl must have had at -the hands of Mrs. Percy Landish. Pauline had objected to the marriage on -that ground, though the modern mother's respect for the independence of -her children had reduced her objection to mere shadowy hints of which -Jim, in his transports, took no heed. - -Manford also disliked the girl at first, and deplored Jim's choice. He -thought Lita positively ugly, with her high cheekbones, her too small -head, her glaring clothes and conceited lackadaisical airs. Then, as -time passed, and the marriage appeared after all to be turning out well, -he tried to interest himself in her for Jim's sake, to see in her what -Jim apparently did. But the change had not come till the boy's birth. -Then, as she lay in her pillows, a new shadowiness under her golden -lashes, one petal of a hand hollowed under the little red head at her -side, the vision struck to his heart. The enchantment did not last; he -never recaptured it; there were days when what he called her "beauty -airs" exasperated him, others when he was chilled by her triviality. But -she never bored him, never ceased to excite in him a sort of irritated -interest. He told himself that it was because one could never be sure -what she was up to; speculating on what went on behind that smooth round -forehead and those elusive eyes became his most absorbing occupation. - -At first he used to be glad when Nona turned up, and when Jim came in -from his bank, fagged but happy, and the three young people sat talking -nonsense, and letting Manford smoke and listen. But gradually he had -fallen into the way of avoiding Nona's days, and of coming earlier -(extricating himself with difficulty from his professional engagements), -so that he might find Lita alone before Jim arrived. - -Lately she had seemed restless, vaguely impatient with things; and -Manford was determined to win her confidence and get at the riddle -behind that smooth round brow. He could not bear the idea that Jim's -marriage might turn out to be a mere unsuccessful adventure, like so -many others. Lita must be made to understand what a treasure she -possessed, and how easily she might lose it. Lita Cliffe--Mrs. Percy -Landish's niece--to have had the luck to marry Jim Wyant, and to risk -estranging him! What fools women were! If she could be got away from the -pack of frauds and flatterers who surrounded her, Manford felt sure he -could bring her to her senses. Sometimes, in her quiet moods, she seemed -to depend on his judgment, to defer rather touchingly to what he said... - -The thing would be to coax her from jazz and night-clubs, and the -pseudo-artistic rabble of house-decorators, cinema stars and theatrical -riff-raff who had invaded her life, to get her back to country joys, -golf and tennis and boating, all the healthy outdoor activities. She -liked them well enough when there were no others available. She had -owned to Manford that she was sick of the rush and needed a rest; had -half promised to come to Cedarledge with the boy for Easter. Jim would -be taking his father down to the island off the Georgia coast; and Jim's -being away might be a good thing. These modern young women soon tired of -what they were used to; Lita would appreciate her husband all the more -after a separation. - -Well, only a few weeks more, and perhaps it would come true. She had -never seen the Cedarledge dogwood in bud, the woods trembling into -green. Manford, smiling at the vision, stooped to pick up the -"Looker-on" and refresh his memory. - -But it wasn't the right number: there were no gardens in it. Why had -Miss Vollard given it to him? As he fluttered the pages they dropped -open at: "Oriental Sage in Native Garb"--. Oh, damn the Mahatma! -"Dawnside Co-Eds"--oh, damn... - -He stood up to thrust the paper under one of the heavily-shaded lamps. -At home, where Pauline and reason ruled, the lighting was disposed in -such a way that one could always read without moving from one's chair; -but in this ridiculous house, where no one ever opened a book, the lamps -were so perversely placed, and so deeply shrouded, that one had to hold -one's paper under the shade to make out anything. - -He scrutinized the picture, shrugged away his disgusted recognition of -Bee Lindon, looked again and straightened his eye-glasses on his nose to -be doubly sure--the lawyer's instinct of accuracy prevailing over a -furious inward tremor. - -He walked to the door, and then turned back and stood irresolute. To -study the picture he had lifted the border of the lampshade, and the -light struck crudely on the statue above Lita's divan; the statue of -which Pauline (to her children's amusement) always said a little -apprehensively that she supposed it must be Cubist. Manford had hardly -noticed the figure before, except to wonder why the young people admired -ugliness: half lost in the shadows of the niche, it seemed a mere bundle -of lumpy limbs. Now, in the glare--"Ah, you carrion, you!" He clenched -his fist at it. "_That's_ what they want--that's their brutish idol!" The -words came stammering from him in a blur of rage. It was on Jim's -account ... the shock, the degradation... The paper slipped to the -floor, and he dropped into his seat again. - -Slowly his mind worked its way back through the disgust and confusion. -Pauline had been right: what could one expect from a girl brought up in -that Landish house? Very likely no one had ever thought of asking where -she was, where she had been--Mrs. Landish, absorbed in her own silly -affairs, would be the last person to know. - -Well, what of that? The modern girl was always free, was expected to -know how to use her freedom. Nona's independence had been as -scrupulously respected as Jim's; she had had her full share of the -perpetual modern agitations. Yet Nona was firm as a rock: a man's heart -could build on her. If a woman was naturally straight, jazz and -night-clubs couldn't make her crooked... - -True, in Nona's case there had been Pauline's influence: Pauline who, -whatever her faults, was always good-humoured and usually wise with her -children. The proof was that, while they laughed at her, they adored -her: he had to do her that justice. At the thought of Pauline a breath -of freshness and honesty swept through him. He had been unfair to her -lately, critical, irritable. He had been absorbing a slow poison, the -poison emanating from this dusky self-conscious room, with all its -pernicious implications. His first impression of Lita, when he had -thought her ugly and pretentious, rushed back on him, dissipating the -enchantment. - -"Oh, I'm glad you waited--" She was there before him, her little -heart-shaped face deep in its furs, like a bird on the nest. "I wanted -to see you today; I _willed_ you to wait." She stood there, her head -slightly on one side, distilling her gaze through half-parted lids like -some rare golden liquid. - -Manford stared back. Her entrance had tangled up the words in his -throat: he stood before her choked with denunciation and invective. And -then it occurred to him how much easier it was just to say nothing--and -to go. Of course he meant to go. It was no business of his: Jim Wyant -was not his son. Thank God he could wash his hands of the whole affair. - -He mumbled: "Dining out. Can't wait." - -"Oh, but you must!" Her hand was on his arm, as light as a petal. "I -want you." He could just see the twinkle of small round teeth as her -upper lip lifted... "Can't ... can't." He tried to disengage his -voice, as if that too were tangled up in her. - -He moved away toward the door. The "Looker-on" lay on the floor between -them. So much the better; she would find it when he was gone! She would -understand then why he hadn't waited. And no fear of Jim's getting hold -of the paper; trust her to make it disappear! - -"Why, what's that?" She bent her supple height to pick it up and moved -to the lamp, her face alight. - -"You darling, you--did you bring me this? What luck! I've been all over -the place hunting for a copy--the whole edition's sold out. I had the -original photograph somewhere, but couldn't put my hand on it." - -She had reached the fatal page; she was spreading it open. Her smile -caressed it; her mouth looked like a pink pod bursting on a row of -pearly seeds. She turned to Manford almost tenderly. "After you -prevented my going to Ardwin's I had to swear to send this to -Klawhammer, to show that I really _can_ dance. Tommy telephoned at -daylight that Klawhammer was off to Hollywood, and that when I chucked -last night they all said it was because I knew I couldn't come up to the -scratch." She held out the picture with an air of pride. "Doesn't look -much like it, does it? ... Why, what are you staring at? Didn't you -know I was going in for the movies? Immobility was never my strong -point..." She threw the paper down, and began to undo her furs with a -lazy smile, sketching a dance step as she did so. "Why do you look so -shocked? If I don't do that I shall run away with Michelangelo. I -suppose you know that Amalasuntha's importing him? I can't stick this -sort of thing much longer... Besides, we've all got a right to -self-expression, haven't we?" - -Manford continued to look at her. He hardly heard what she was saying, -in the sickness of realizing what she was. Those were the thoughts, the -dreams, behind those temples on which the light laid such pearly -circles! - -He said slowly: "This picture--it's true, then? You've been there?" - -"Dawnside? Bless you--where'd you suppose I learnt to dance? Aunt Kitty -used to plant me out there whenever she wanted to go off on her -own--which was pretty frequently." She had tossed of her hat, slipped -out of her furs, and lowered the flounce of the lamp-shade; and there -she stood before him in her scant slim dress, her arms, bare to the -shoulder, lifted in an amphora-gesture to her little head. - -"Oh, children--but I'm bored!" she yawned. - - - - -_BOOK II_ - - - - -XI - - -PAULINE MANFORD was losing faith in herself; she felt the need of a new -moral tonic. Could she still obtain it from the old sources? - -The morning after the Toys' dinner, considering the advisability of -repairing to that small bare room at Dawnside where the Mahatma gave his -private audiences, she felt a chill of doubt. She would have preferred, -just then, not to be confronted with the sage; in going to him she -risked her husband's anger, and prudence warned her to keep out of the -coming struggle. If the Mahatma should ask her to intervene she could -only answer that she had already done so unsuccessfully; and such -admissions, while generally useless, are always painful. Yet guidance -she must have: no Papist in quest of "direction" (wasn't that what -Amalasuntha called it?) could have felt the need more acutely. Certainly -the sacrament of confession, from which Pauline's ingrained -Protestantism recoiled in horror, must have its uses at such moments. -But to whom, if not to the Mahatma, could she confess? - -Dexter had gone down town without asking to see her; she had been sure -he would, after their drive to and from the Toys' the evening before. -When he was in one of his moods of clenched silence--they were becoming -more frequent, she had remarked--she knew the uselessness of -interfering. Echoes of the Freudian doctrine, perhaps rather confusedly -apprehended, had strengthened her faith in the salutariness of "talking -things over," and she longed to urge this remedy again on Dexter; but -the last time she had done so he had wounded her by replying that he -preferred an aperient. And in his present mood of stony inaccessibility -he might say something even coarser. - -She sat in her boudoir, painfully oppressed by an hour of unexpected -leisure. The facial-massage artist had the grippe, and had notified her -only at the last moment. To be sure, she had skipped her "Silent -Meditation" that morning; but she did not feel in the mood for it now. -And besides, an hour is too long for meditation--an hour is too long for -anything. Now that she had one to herself, for the first time in years, -she didn't in the least know what to do with it. That was something -which no one had ever thought of teaching her; and the sense of being -surrounded by a sudden void, into which she could reach out on all sides -without touching an engagement or an obligation, produced in her a sort -of mental dizziness. She had taken plenty of rest-cures, of course; all -one's friends did. But during a rest-cure one was always busy resting; -every minute was crammed with passive activities; one never had this -queer sense of inoccupation, never had to face an absolutely featureless -expanse of time. It made her feel as if the world had rushed by and -forgotten her. An hour--why, there was no way of measuring the length of -an empty hour! It stretched away into infinity like the endless road in -a nightmare; it gaped before her like the slippery sides of an abyss. -Nervously she began to wonder what she could do to fill it--if there -were not some new picture show or dressmakers' opening or hygienic -exhibition that she might cram into it before the minute hand switched -round to her next engagement. She took up her list to see what that -engagement was. - -"11.45. Mrs. Swoffer." - -Oh, to be sure ... Mrs. Swoffer. Maisie had reminded her that morning. -The relief was instantaneous. Only, who _was_ Mrs. Swoffer? Was she the -President of the Militant Pacifists' League, or the Heroes' Day -delegate, or the exponent of the New Religion of Hope, or the woman who -had discovered a wonderful trick for taking the wrinkles out of the -corners of your eyes? Maisie was out on an urgent commission, and could -not be consulted; but whatever Mrs. Swoffer's errand was, her arrival -would be welcome--especially if she came before her hour. And she did. - -She was a small plump woman of indefinite age, with faded blond hair and -rambling features held together by a pair of urgent eye-glasses. She -asked if she might hold Pauline's hand just a moment while she looked at -her and reverenced her--and Pauline, on learning that this was the -result of reading her Mothers' Day speech in the morning papers, acceded -not unwillingly. - -Not that that was what Mrs. Swoffer had come for; she said it was just a -flower she wanted to gather on the way. A rose with the dew on it--she -took off her glasses and wiped them, as if to show where the dew had -come from. "You speak for so _many_ of us," she breathed, and recovered -Pauline's hand for another pressure. - -But she _had_ come for the children, all the same; and that was really -coming for the mothers, wasn't it? Only she wanted to reach the mothers -through the children--reversing the usual process. Mrs. Swoffer said she -believed in reversing almost everything. Standing on your head was one -of the most restorative physical exercises, and she believed it was the -same mentally and morally. It was a good thing to stand one's _soul_ -upside down. And so she'd come about the children... - -The point was to form a League--a huge International League of -Mothers--against the dreadful old practice of telling children they -were naughty. Had Mrs. Manford ever stopped to think what an abominable -thing it was to suggest to a pure innocent child that there was such a -thing in the world as Being Naughty? What did it open the door to? Why, -to the idea of Wickedness, the most awful idea in the whole world. - -Of course Mrs. Manford would see at once what getting rid of the idea of -Wickedness would lead to. How could there be bad men if there were no -bad children? And how could there be bad children if children were never -allowed to know that such a thing as badness existed? There was a -splendid woman--Orba Clapp; no doubt Mrs. Manford had heard of her?--who -was getting up a gigantic world-wide movement to boycott the -manufacturers and sellers of all military toys, tin soldiers, cannon, -toy rifles, water-pistols and so on. It was a grand beginning, and -several governments had joined the movement already: the Philippines, -Mrs. Swoffer thought, and possibly Montenegro. But that seemed to her -only a beginning: much as she loved and revered Orba Clapp, she couldn't -honestly say that she thought the scheme went deep enough. She, Mrs. -Swoffer, wanted to go right down to the soul: the collective soul of all -the little children. The great Teacher, Alvah Loft--she supposed Mrs. -Manford knew about _him_? No? She was surprised that a woman like Mrs. -Manford--"one of our beacon-lights"--hadn't heard of Alvah Loft. She -herself owed everything to him. No one had helped her as he had: he had -pulled her out of the very depths of scepticism. But didn't Mrs. Manford -know his books, even: "Spiritual Vacuum-Cleaning" and "Beyond God"? - -Pauline had grown a little listless while the children were to the fore. -She would help, of course; lend her name; subscribe. But that string had -been so often twanged that it gave out rather a deadened note: whereas -the name of a new Messiah immediately roused her. "Beyond God" was a -tremendous title; she would get Maisie to telephone for the books at -once. But what exactly did Alvah Loft teach? - -Mrs. Swoffer's eye-glasses flashed with inspiration. "He doesn't teach: -he absolutely refuses to be regarded as a _teacher_. He says there are too -many already. He's an Inspirational Healer. What he does is to act on -you--on your spirit. He simply relieves you of your frustrations." - -Frustrations! Pauline was fascinated by the word. Not that it was new to -her. Her vocabulary was fairly large, far more so, indeed, than that of -her daughter's friends, whose range was strictly limited to sport and -dancing; but whenever she heard a familiar word used as if it had some -unsuspected and occult significance it fascinated her like a phial -containing a new remedy. - -Mrs. Swoffer's glasses were following Pauline's thoughts as they formed. -"Will you let me speak to you as I would to an old friend? The moment I -took your hand I _knew_ you were suffering from frustrations. To any -disciple of Alvah Loft's the symptoms are unmistakeable. Sometimes I -almost wish I didn't see it all so clearly ... it gives one such a -longing to help..." - -Pauline murmured: "I _do_ want help." - -"Of course you do," Mrs. Swoffer purred, "and you want _his_ help. Don't -you know those wonderful shoe-shops where they stock every size and -shape the human foot can require? I tell Alvah Loft he's like that; he's -got a cure for everybody's frustrations. Of course," she added, "there -isn't time for everybody; he has to choose. But he would take you at -once." She drew back, and her glasses seemed to suck Pauline down as if -they had been quicksands. "You're psychic," she softly pronounced. - -"I believe I am," Pauline acknowledged. "But--" - -"Yes; I know; those frustrations! All the things you think you ought to -do, _and can't_; that's it, isn't it?" Mrs. Swoffer stood up. "Dear -friend, come with me. Don't look at your watch. Just come!" - -An hour later Pauline, refreshed and invigorated, descended the -Inspirational Healer's brown-stone doorstep with a springing step. It -had been worth while breaking three or four engagements to regain that -feeling of moral freedom. Why had she never heard of Alvah Loft before? -His method was so much simpler than the Mahatma's: no eurythmics, -gymnastics, community life, no mental deep-breathing, or long words to -remember. Alvah Loft simply took out your frustrations as if they'd been -adenoids; it didn't last ten minutes, and was perfectly painless. -Pauline had always felt that the Messiah who should reduce his message -to tabloid form would outdistance all the others; and Alvah Loft had -done it. He just received you in a boarding-house back-parlour, with -bunches of pampas-grass on the mantelpiece, while rows of patients sat -in the front room waiting their turn. You told him what was bothering -you, and he said it was just a frustration, and he could relieve you of -it, and make it so that it didn't exist, by five minutes of silent -communion. And he sat and held you by the wrist, very lightly, as if he -were taking your temperature, and told you to keep your eyes on the Ella -Wheeler Wilcox line-a-day on the wall over his head. After it was over -he said: "You're a good subject. The frustrations are all out. Go home, -and you'll hear something good before dinner. Twenty-five dollars." And -a pasty-faced young man with pale hair, who was waiting in the passage, -added: "Pass on, please," and steered Pauline out by the elbow. - -Of course she wasn't naturally credulous; she prided herself on always -testing everything by reason. But it _was_ marvellous, how light she felt -as she went down the steps! The buoyancy persisted all day, perhaps -strengthened by an attentive study of the reports of the Mothers' Day -Meeting, laid out by the vigilant Maisie for perusal. Alvah Loft had -told her that she would hear of something good before dinner, and when, -late in the afternoon, she went up to her boudoir, she glanced -expectantly at the writing-table, as if revelation might be there. It -was, in the shape of a telephone message. - -"Mr. Manford will be at home by seven. He would like to see you for a -few minutes before dinner." - -It was nearly seven, and Pauline settled herself by the fire and -unfolded the evening paper. She seldom had time for its perusal, but -today there might be some reference to the Mothers' Day Meeting; and her -newly-regained serenity made it actually pleasant to be sitting there -undisturbed, waiting for her husband. - -"Dexter--how tired you look!" she exclaimed when he came in. It occurred -to her at once that she might possibly insinuate an allusion to the new -healer; but wisdom counselled a waiting policy, and she laid down her -paper and smiled expectantly. - -Manford gave his shoulders their usual impatient shake. "Everybody looks -tired at the end of a New York day; I suppose it's what New York is -for." He sat down in the armchair facing hers, and stared at the fire. - -"I wanted to see you to talk about plans--a rearrangement," he began. -"It's so hard to find a quiet minute." - -"Yes; but there's no hurry now. The Delavans don't dine till half-past -eight." - -"Oh, are we dining there?" He reached for a cigarette. - -She couldn't help saying: "I'm sure you smoke too much, Dexter. The -irritation produced by the paper--" - -"Yes; I know. But what I wanted to say is: I should like you to ask Lita -and the boy to Cedarledge while Jim and Wyant are at the island." - -This was a surprise; but she met it with unmoved composure. "Of course, -if you like. But do you think Lita'll go, all alone? You'll be off -tarpon-fishing, Nona is going to Asheville for a fortnight's change, and -I had intended--" She pulled up suddenly. She had meant, of course, to -take her rest-cure at Dawnside. - -Manford sat frowning and studying the fire. "Why shouldn't we all go to -Cedarledge instead?" he began. "Somebody ought to look after Lita while -Jim's away; in fact, I don't believe he'll go with Wyant if we don't. -She's dead-beat, and doesn't know it, and with all the fools she has -about her the only way to ensure her getting a real rest is to carry her -off to the country with the boy." - -Pauline's face lit up with a blissful incredulity. "Oh, Dexter--would -you really come to Cedarledge for Easter? How splendid! Of course I'll -give up my rest-cure. As you say, there's no place like the country." - -She was already raising an inward hymn to Alvah Loft. An Easter holiday -in the country, all together--how long it was since that had happened! -She had always thought it her duty to urge Dexter to get away from the -family when he had the chance; to travel or shoot or fish, and not feel -himself chained to her side. And here at last was her reward--of his own -accord he was proposing that they should all be together for a quiet -fortnight. A softness came about her heart: the stiff armour of her -self-constraint seemed loosened, and she saw the fire through a luminous -blur. "It will be lovely," she murmured. - -Manford lit another cigarette, and sat puffing it in silence. It seemed -as though a weight had been lifted from him too; yet his face was still -heavy and preoccupied. Perhaps before their talk was over she might be -able to say a word about Alvah Loft; she was so sure that Dexter would -see everything differently if only he could be relieved of his -frustrations. - -At length he said: "I don't see why this should interfere with your -arrangements, though. Hadn't you meant to go somewhere for a rest-cure?" - -He had thought of that too! She felt a fresh tremor of gratitude. How -wicked she had been ever to doubt the designs of Providence, and the -resolving of all discords in the Higher Harmony! - -"Oh, my rest-cure doesn't matter; being with you all at Cedarledge will -be the best kind of rest." - -His obvious solicitude for her was more soothing than any medicine, more -magical even than Alvah Loft's silent communion. Perhaps the one thing -she had lacked, in all these years, was to feel that some one was -worrying about her as she worried about the universe. - -"It's awfully unselfish of you, Pauline. But running a big house is -never restful. Nona will give up Asheville and come to Cedarledge to -look after us; you mustn't change your plans." - -She smiled a little. "But I _must_, dear; because I'd meant to go to -Dawnside, and now, of course, in any case--" - -Manford stood up and went and leaned against the chimney-piece. "Well, -that will be all right," he said. - -"All right?" - -He was absently turning about in his hand a little bronze statuette. -"Yes. If you think the fellow does you good. I've been thinking over -what you said the other day; and I've decided to advise the Lindons not -to act ... too precipitately..." He coughed and put the statuette -back on the mantelshelf. "They've abandoned the idea..." - -"Oh, Dexter--" She started to her feet, her eyes brimming. He had -actually thought over what she had said to him--when, at the time, he -had seemed so obdurate and sneering! Her heart trembled with a happy -wonder in which love and satisfied vanity were subtly mingled. Perhaps, -after all, what her life had really needed was something much simpler -than all the complicated things she had put into it. - -"I'm so glad," she murmured, not knowing what else to say. She wanted to -hold out her arms, to win from him some answering gesture. But he was -already glancing at his watch. "That's all right. Jove, though--we'll be -late for dinner... Opera afterward, isn't there?" - -The door closed on him. For a moment or two she stood still, awed by the -sense of some strange presence in the room, something as fresh and -strong as a spring gale. It must be happiness, she thought. - - - - -XII - - -"YES; this morning I think you _can_ see her. She seems ever so much -better; not in such a fearful hurry, I mean." - -Pauline, from her dressing-room, overheard Maisie Bruss. She smiled at -the description of herself, sent a thought of gratitude to Alvah Loft, -and called out: "Is that Nona? I'll be there in a minute. Just finishing -my exercises..." - -She appeared, fresh and tingling, draped in a restful dove-coloured -wrapper, and offered Nona a smooth cheek. Miss Bruss had vanished, and -mother and daughter had to themselves the sunny room, full of flowers -and the scent of a wood-fire. - -"How wonderful you look, mother! All made over. Have you been trying -some new exercises?" - -Pauline smiled and pulled up the soft eiderdown coverlet at the foot of -her lounge. She sank comfortably back among her cushions. - -"No, dear: it's just--understanding a little better, I think." - -"Understanding?" - -"Yes; that things _always_ come out right if one just keeps on being brave -and trustful." - -"Oh--." She fancied she caught a note of disappointment in Nona's voice. -Poor Nona--her mother had long been aware that she had no enthusiasm, no -transports of faith. She took after her father. How tired and sallow she -looked in the morning light, perched on the arm of a chair, her long -legs dangling! - -"You really ought to try to believe that yourself, darling," said -Pauline brightly. - -Nona gave one of her father's shrugs. "Perhaps I will when I have more -time." - -"But one can always _make_ time, dear." ("Just as I do," the smile -suggested.) "You look thoroughly fagged out, Nona. I do wish you'd go to -the wonderful new man I've just--" - -"All right, mother. Only, this morning I haven't come to talk about -myself. It's Lita." - -"Lita?" - -"I've been wanting to speak to you about her for a long time. Haven't -you noticed anything?" - -Pauline still wore her alert and sympathizing smile. "Tell me what, -dear--let's talk it all over." - -Nona's brows were drawn in a troubled frown. "I'm afraid Jim's -not happy," she said. - -"Jim? But, darling, he's been so dreadfully over-worked--that's the -trouble. Your father spoke to me about it the other day. He's sending -Jim and Arthur down to the island next month for a good long rest." - -"Yes; it's awfully nice of father. But it's not that--it's Lita," Nona -doggedly repeated. - -A faint shadow brushed Pauline's cloudless horizon; but she resolutely -turned her eyes from it. "Tell me what you think is wrong." - -"Why, that she's bored stiff--says she's going to chuck the whole thing. -She says the life she's leading prevents her expressing her -personality." - -"Good gracious--she dares?" Pauline sat bolt upright, the torn garment -of her serenity fluttering away like a wisp of vapour. Was there never -to be any peace for her, she wondered? She had a movement of passionate -rebellion--then a terror lest it should imperil Alvah Loft's mental -surgery. After a physical operation the patient's repose was always -carefully guarded--but no one thought of sparing _her_, though she had -just been subjected to so radical an extirpation. She looked almost -irritably at Nona. - -"Don't you think you sometimes imagine things, my pet? Of course, the -more we yield to suggestions of pain and distress the more--" - -"Yes; I know. But this isn't a suggestion, it's a fact. Lita says she's -got to express her personality, or she'll do something dreadful. And if -she does it will break Jim's heart." - -Pauline leaned back, vaguely fortified by so definite a menace. It was -laughable to think of Lita Cliffe's threatening to do something dreadful -to a Wyant! - -"Don't you think she's just over-excited, perhaps? She leads such a -crazy sort of life--all you children do. And she hasn't been very strong -since the baby's birth. I believe she needs a good rest as much as Jim -does. And you know your father has been so wise about that; he's going -to persuade her to go to Cedarledge for two or three weeks while Jim's -in Georgia." - -Nona remained unimpressed. "Lita won't go to Cedarledge alone--you know -she won't." - -"She won't have to, dear. Your father has thought of that too; he finds -time to think of everything." - -"Who's going, then?" - -"We _all_ are. At least, your father hopes you will; and he's giving up -his tarpon-fishing on purpose to join us." - -"Father is?" Nona stood up, her gaze suddenly fixed on her mother. - -"Your father's wonderful," Pauline triumphed. - -"Yes, I know." The girl's voice flagged again. "But all this is weeks -away. And meanwhile I'm afraid--I'm afraid." - -"Little girls mustn't be afraid. If you are, send Lita to _me_. I'm sure -it's just a case of frustration--" - -"Frustration?" - -"Yes; the new psychological thing. I'll take her with me to see Alvah -Loft. He's the great Inspirational Healer. I've only had three -treatments, and it's miraculous. It doesn't take ten minutes, and all -one's burdens are lifted." Pauline threw back her head with a sigh which -seemed to luxuriate in the remembrance of her own release. "I wish I -could take you _all_ to him!" she said. - -"Well, perhaps you'd better begin with Lita." Nona was half-smiling too, -but it was what her mother secretly called her disintegrating smile. "I -wish the poor child were more constructive--but I suppose she's -inherited her father's legal mind," Pauline thought. - -Nona stood before her irresolutely. "You know, mother, if things do go -wrong Jim will never get over it." - -"There you are again--jumping at the conclusion that things will go -wrong! As for Lita, to me it's a clear case of frustration. She says she -wants to express her personality? Well, every one has the right to do -that--I should think it wrong of me to interfere. That wouldn't be the -way to make Jim happy. What Lita needs is to have her frustrations -removed. That will open her eyes to her happiness, and make her see what -a perfect home she has. I wonder where my engagement-list is? Maisie! ... -Oh, here..." She ran her eyes rapidly over the tablet. "I'll see -Lita tomorrow--I'll make a point of it. We'll have a friendly simple -talk--perfectly frank and affectionate. Let me see: at what time should -I be likely to find her? ... And, no, of course not, darling; I -wouldn't think of saying a word to Jim. But your father--surely I may -speak to your father?" - -Nona hesitated. "I think father knows about it--as much as he need," she -answered, her hand on the door. - -"Ah, your father always knows everything," Pauline placidly acquiesced. - -The prospect of the talk with her daughter-in-law barely ruffled her -new-found peace. It was a pity Lita was restless; but nowadays all the -young people were restless. Perhaps it would be as well to say a word to -Kitty Landish; flighty and inconsequent as she was, it might open her -eyes to find that she was likely to have her niece back on her hands. -Mrs. Percy Landish's hands were always full to overflowing with her own -difficulties. A succession of ingenious theories of life, and the -relentless pursuit of originality, had landed her in a state of chronic -embarrassment, pecuniary, social and sentimental. The announcement that -Lita was tired of Jim, and threatened to leave him, would fall like a -bombshell on that precarious roof which figured in the New York -Directory as somewhere in the East Hundreds, but was recorded in the -"Social Register" as No. 1 Viking Court. Mrs. Landish's last fad had -been to establish herself on the banks of the East River, which she and -a group of friends had adorned with a cluster of reinforced-cement -bungalows, first christened El Patio, but altered to Viking Court after -Mrs. Landish had read in an illustrated weekly that the Vikings, who had -discovered America ages before Columbus, had not, as previously -supposed, effected their first landing at Vineyard Haven, but at a spot -not far from the site of her dwelling. Cement, at an early stage, is -malleable, and the Alhambra _motifs_ had hastily given way to others from -the prows of Nordic ships, from silver torques and Runic inscriptions, -the latter easily contrived out of Arabic _sourats_ from the Koran. Before -these new ornaments were dry, Mrs. Landish and her friends were camping -on the historic spot; and after four years of occupancy they were -camping still, in Mrs. Manford's sense of the word. - -A hurried telephone call had assured Pauline that she could see Mrs. -Landish directly after lunch; and at two o'clock her motor drove up to -Viking Court, which opened on a dilapidated river-front and was -cynically overlooked by tall tenement houses with an underpinning of -delicatessen stores. - -Mrs. Landish was nowhere to be found. She had had to go out to lunch, a -melancholy maid-servant said, because the cook had just given notice; -but she would doubtless soon be back. With gingerly steps Pauline -entered the "living-room," so called (as visitors were unfailingly -reminded) because Mrs. Landish ate, painted, modelled in clay, -sculptured in wood, and received her friends there. The Vikings, she -added, had lived in that way. But today all traces of these varied -activities had disappeared, and the room was austerely empty. Mrs. -Landish's last hobby was for what she called "purism," and her chief -desire to make everything in her surroundings conform to the habits and -industries of a mythical past. Ever since she had created Viking Court -she had been trying to obtain rushes for the floor: but as the Eastern -States of America did not produce the particular variety of rush which -the Vikings were said to have used she had at last decided to have rugs -woven on handlooms in Abyssinia, some one having assured her that an -inscription referring to trade-relations between the Vikings and the -kingdom of Prester John had been discovered in the ruins of Petra. - -The difficulty of having these rugs made according to designs of the -period caused the cement floor of Mrs. Landish's living-room to remain -permanently bare, and most of the furniture having now been removed, the -room had all the appearance of a garage, the more so as Mrs. Landish's -latest protégé, a young cabaret-artist who performed on a motor-siren, -had been suffered to stable his cycle in one corner. - -In addition to this vehicle, the room contained only a few -relentless-looking oak chairs, a long table bearing an hour-glass (for -clocks would have been an anachronism), and a scrap of dusty velvet -nailed on the cement wall, as to which Mrs. Landish explained that it -was a bit of a sixth century Coptic vestment, and that the nuns of a -Basilian convent in Thessaly were reproducing it for eventual curtains -and chair-cushions. "It may take fifty years." Mrs. Landish always -added, "but I would rather go without it than live with anything less -perfect." - -The void into which Pauline advanced gave prominence to the figure of a -man who stood with his back to her, looking through the window at what -was to be a garden when Viking horticulture was revived. Meanwhile it -was fully occupied by neighbouring cats and by swirls of wind-borne -rubbish. - -The visitor, duskily blocked against a sullen March sky, was at first -not recognizable; but half way toward him Pauline exclaimed: "Dexter!" -He turned, and his surprise met hers. - -"I never dreamed of its being you!" she said. - -He faced her with a certain defiant jauntiness. "Why not?" - -"Because I never saw you here before. I've tried often enough to get you -to come--" - -"Oh, to lunch or dine!" He sent a grimace about the room. "I never -thought that was among my duties." - -She did not take this up, and a moment's silence hung between them. -Finally Manford said: "I came about Lita." - -Pauline felt a rush of relief. Her husband's voice had been harsh and -impatient: she saw that her arrival had mysteriously put him out. But if -anxiety about Lita were the cause of his visit it not only explained his -perturbation but showed his revived solicitude for herself. She sent -back another benediction to the Inspirational Healer, so sweet it was to -find that she and Dexter were once more moved by the same impulses. - -"It's awfully kind of you, dear. How funny that we should meet on the -same errand!" - -He stared: "Why, have you--?" - -"Come about Lita? Well, yes. She's been getting rather out of hand, -hasn't she? Of course a divorce would kill poor Jim--otherwise I -shouldn't so much mind--" - -"A divorce?" - -"Nona tells me it's Lita's idea. Foolish child! I'm to have a talk with -her this afternoon. I came here first to see if Kitty's influence--" - -"Oh: Kitty's influence!" - -"Yes; I know." She broke off, and glanced quickly at Manford. "But if -you don't believe in her influence, why did you come here yourself?" - -The question seemed to take her husband by surprise, and he met it by a -somewhat rigid smile. How old he looked in the hard slaty light! The -crisp hair was almost as thin on his temples as higher up. If only he -would try that wonderful new "Radio-scalp"! "And he used to be so -handsome!" his wife said to herself, with the rush of vitality she -always felt when she noted the marks of fatigue or age in her -contemporaries. Manford and Nona, she reflected, had the same way of -turning sallow and heavy-cheeked when they were under any physical or -moral strain. - -Manford said: "I came to ask Mrs. Landish to help us get Lita away for -Easter. I thought she might put in a word--" - -It was Pauline's turn to smile. "Perhaps she might. What I came for was -to say that if Lita doesn't quiet down and behave reasonably she may -find herself thrown on her aunt's hands again. I think that will produce -an effect on Kitty. I shall make it perfectly clear that they are not to -count on me financially if Lita leaves Jim." She glanced brightly at -Manford, instinctively awaiting his approval. - -But the expected response did not come. His face grew blurred and -uncertain, and for a moment he said nothing. Then he muttered: "It's all -very unfortunate ... a stupid muddle..." - -Pauline caught the change in his tone. It suggested that her last -remark, instead of pleasing him, had raised between them one of those -invisible barriers against which she had so often bruised her -perceptions. And just as she had thought that he and she were really in -touch again! - -"We mustn't be hard on her ... we mustn't judge her without hearing -both sides ..." he went on. - -"But of course not." It was just the sort of thing she wanted him to -say, but not in the voice in which he said it. The voice was full of -hesitation and embarrassment. Could it be her presence which embarrassed -him? With Manford one could never tell. She suggested, almost timidly: -"But why shouldn't I leave you to see Kitty alone? Perhaps we needn't -both..." - -His look of relief was unconcealable; but her bright resolution rose -above the shock. "You'll do it so much better," she encouraged him. - -"Oh, I don't know. But perhaps two of us ... looks rather like the -Third Degree, doesn't it?" - -She assented nervously: "All I want is to smooth things over..." - -He gave an acquiescent nod, and followed her as she moved toward the -door. "Perhaps, though--look here, Pauline--" - -She sparkled with responsiveness. - -"Hadn't you better wait before sending for Lita? It may not be -necessary, if--" - -Her first impulse was to agree; but she thought of the Inspirational -Healer. "You can trust me to behave with tact, dear; but I'm sure it -will help Lita to talk things out, and perhaps I shall know better than -Kitty how to get at her... Lita and I have always been good friends, -and there's a wonderful new man I want to persuade her to see ... some -one really psychic..." - -Manford's lips narrowed in a smile; again she had a confused sense of -new deserts widening between them. Why had he again become suddenly -sardonic and remote? She had no time to consider, for the new gospel of -frustrations was surging to her lips. - -"_Not_ a teacher; he repudiates all doctrines, and simply _acts_ on you. -He--" - -"Pauline darling! Dexter! Have you been waiting long? Oh, dear--my -hour-glass seems to be quite empty!" - -Mrs. Percy Landish was there, slipping toward them with a sort of aerial -shuffle, as if she had blown in on a March gust. Her tall swaying figure -produced, at a distance, an effect of stateliness which vanished as she -approached, as if she had suddenly got out of focus. Her face was like -an unfinished sketch, to which the artist had given heaps of fair hair, -a lovely nose, expressive eyes, and no mouth. She laid down some vague -parcels and shook the hour-glass irritably, as if it had been at fault. - -"How dear of you!" she said to her visitors. "I don't often get you -together in my eyrie." - -The expression puzzled Pauline, who knew that in poetry an eyrie was an -eagle's nest, and wondered how this term could be applied to a cement -bungalow in the East Hundreds... But there was no time to pursue such -speculations. - -Mrs. Landish was looking helplessly about her. "It's cold--you're both -freezing, I'm afraid?" Her eyes rested tragically on the empty hearth. -"The fact is, I can't have a fire because my andirons are _wrong_." - -"Not high enough? The chimney doesn't draw, you mean?" Pauline in such -emergencies was in her element; she would have risen from her deathbed -to show a new housemaid how to build a fire. But Mrs. Landish shook her -head with the look of a woman who never expects to be understood by -other women. - -"No, dear; I mean they were not of the period. I always suspected it, -and Dr. Ygrid Bjornsted, the great authority on Nordic art, who was here -the other day, told me that the only existing pair is in the Museum at -Christiania. So I have sent an order to have them copied. But you _are_ -cold, Pauline! Shall we go and sit in the kitchen? We shall be quite by -ourselves, because the cook has just given notice." - -Pauline drew her furs around her in silent protest at this new insanity. -"We shall be very well here, Kitty. I suppose you know it's about -Lita--" - -Mrs. Landish seemed to drift back to them from incalculable distances. -"Lita? Has Klawhammer really engaged her? It was for his 'Herodias,' -wasn't it?" She was all enthusiasm and participation. - -Pauline's heart sank. She had caught the irritated jut of Manford's -brows. No--it was useless to try to make Kitty understand; and foolish -to risk her husband's displeasure by staying in this icy room for such a -purpose. She wrapped herself in sweetness as in her sables. "It's -something much more serious than that cinema nonsense. But I'm going to -leave it to Dexter to explain. He will do it ever so much better than I -could... Yes, Kitty dear, I remember there's a step missing in the -vestibule. Please don't bother to see me out--you know Dexter's minutes -are precious." She thrust Mrs. Landish softly back into the room, and -made her way unattended across the hall. As she did so, the living-room -door, the lock of which had responded reluctantly to her handling, swung -open again, and she heard Manford ask, in his dry cross-examining voice: -"Will you please tell me exactly when and for how long Lita was at -Dawnside, Mrs. Landish?" - - - - -XIII - - -"I BELIEVE it's the first time in a month that I've heard Nona laugh," -Stanley Heuston said with a touch of irony--or was it simply envy? - -Nona was still in the whirlpool of her laugh. She struggled to its edge -only to be caught back, with retrospective sobs and gasps, into its -central coil. "It was too screamingly funny," she flung at them out of -the vortex. - -She was perched sideways, as her way was, on the arm of the big chintz -sofa in Arthur Wyant's sitting-room. Wyant was stretched out in his -usual armchair, behind a crumby messy tea-table, on the other side of -which sat his son and Stanley Heuston. - -"She didn't hesitate for more than half a second--just long enough to -catch my eye--then round she jerked, grabbed hold of her last word and -fitted it into a beautiful new appeal to the Mothers. Oh--oh--oh! If you -could have seen them!" - -"I can." Jim's face suddenly became broad, mild and earnestly peering. -He caught up a pair of his father's eye-glasses, adjusted them to his -blunt nose, and murmured in a soft feminine drawl: "Mrs. Manford is one -of our deepest-souled women. She has a vital message for all Mothers." - -Wyant leaned back and laughed. His laugh was a contagious chuckle, -easily provoked and spreading in circles like a full spring. Jim gave a -large shout at his own mimicry, and Heuston joined the chorus on a dry -note that neither spread nor echoed, but seemed suddenly to set bounds -to their mirth. Nona felt a momentary resentment of his tone. Was he -implying that they were ridiculing their mother? They weren't, they were -only admiring her in their own way, which had always been humorous and -half-parental. Stan ought to have understood by this time--and have -guessed why Nona, at this moment, caught at any pretext to make Jim -laugh, to make everything in their joint lives appear to him normal and -jolly. But Stanley always seemed to see beyond a joke, even when he was -in the very middle of it. He was like that about everything in life; -forever walking around things, weighing and measuring them, and making -his disenchanted calculations. Poor fellow--well, no wonder! - -Jim got up, the glasses still clinging to his blunt nose. He gathered an -imaginary cloak about him, picked up inexistent gloves and vanity-bag, -and tapped his head as if he were settling a feathered hat. The laughter -waxed again, and Wyant chuckled: "I wish you young fools would come -oftener. It would cure me a lot quicker than being shipped off to -Georgia." He turned half-apologetically to Nona. "Not that I'm not -awfully glad of the chance--" - -"I know, Exhibit dear. It'll be jolly enough when you get down there, -you and Jim." - -"Yes; I only wish you were coming too. Why don't you?" - -Jim's features returned to their normal cast, and he removed the -eye-glasses. "Because mother and Manford have planned to carry off Lita -and the kid to Cedarledge at the same time. Good scheme, isn't it? I -wish I could be in both places at once. We're all of us fed up with New -York." - -His father glanced at him. "Look here, my boy, there's no difficulty -about your being in the same place as your wife. I can take my old bones -down to Georgia without your help, since Manford's kind enough to invite -me." - -"Thanks a lot, dad; but part of Lita's holiday is getting away from -domestic cares, and I'm the principal one. She has to order dinner for -me. And I don't say I shan't like my holiday too ... sand and sun, any -amount of 'em. That's my size at present. No more superhuman efforts." -He stretched his arms over his head with a yawn. - -"But I thought Manford was off to the south too--to his tarpon? Isn't -this Cedarledge idea new?" - -"It's part of his general kindness. He wanted me to go with an easy -mind, so he's chucked his fishing and mobilized the whole group to go -and lead the simple life at Cedarledge with Lita." - -Wyant's sallow cheek-bones reddened slightly. "It's awfully kind, as you -say; but if my going south is to result in upsetting everybody else's -arrangements--" - -"Oh, rot, father." Jim spoke with sudden irritability. "Manford would -hate it if you chucked now; wouldn't he, Nona? And I do want Lita to get -away somewhere, and I'd rather it was to Cedarledge than anywhere." The -clock struck, and he pulled himself out of his chair. Nona noticed with -a pang how slack and half-hearted all his movements were. "Jove--I must -jump!" he said. "We're due at some cabaret show that begins early; and I -believe we dine at Ardwin's first, with a bunch of freaks. By-bye, Nona... -Stan... Goodbye, father. Only a fortnight now before we cut it -all!" - -The door shut after him on a silence. Wyant reached for his pipe and -filled it. Heuston stared at the tea-table. Suddenly Wyant questioned: -"Look here--why is Jim being shipped off to the island with me when his -wife's going to Cedarledge?" - -Nona dropped from her sofa-arm and settled into an armchair. "Simply for -the reasons he told you. They both want a holiday from each other." - -"I don't believe Jim really wants one from Lita." - -"Well, so much the worse for Jim. Lita's temporarily tired of dancing -and domesticity, and the doctor says she ought to go off for a while by -herself." - -Wyant was slowly drawing at his pipe. At length he said: "Your mother's -doctor told her that once; and she never came back." - -Nona's colour rose through her pale cheeks to her very forehead. The -motions of her blood were not impetuous, and she now felt herself -blushing for having blushed. It was unlike Wyant to say that--unlike his -tradition of reticence and decency, which had always joined with -Pauline's breezy optimism in relegating to silence and non-existence -whatever it was painful or even awkward to discuss. For years the dual -family had lived on the assumption that they were all the best friends -in the world, and the vocabulary of that convention had become their -natural idiom. - -Stanley Heuston seemed to catch the constraint in the air. He got up as -if to go. "I suppose we're dining somewhere too--." He pronounced the -"we" without conviction, for every one knew that he and his wife seldom -went out together. - -Wyant raised a detaining hand. "Don't go, Stan. Nona and I have no -secrets--if we had, you should share them. Why do you look so savage, -Nona? I suppose I've said something stupid... Fact is, I'm -old-fashioned; and this idea of people who've chosen to live together -having perpetually to get away from each other... When I remember my -father and mother, for sixty-odd years... New York in winter, Hudson -in summer... Staple topics: snow for six months, mosquitoes the other. -I suppose that's the reason your generation have got the fidgets!" - -Nona laughed. "It's a good enough reason; and anyhow there's nothing to -be done about it." - -Wyant frowned. "Nothing to be done about it--in Lita's case? I hope you -don't mean that. My son--God, if ever a man has slaved for a woman, made -himself a fool for her..." - -Heuston's dry voice cut the diatribe. "Well, sir, you wouldn't deprive -him of man's peculiar privilege: the right to make a fool of himself?" - -Wyant sank back grumbling among his cushions. "I don't understand you, -any of you," he said, as if secretly relieved by the admission. - -"Well, Exhibit dear, strictly speaking you don't have to. We're old -enough to run the show for ourselves, and all you've got to do is to -look on from the front row and admire us," said Nona, bending to him -with a caress. - -In the street she found herself walking silently at Heuston's side. -These weekly meetings with him at Wyant's were becoming a tacit -arrangement: the one thing in her life that gave it meaning. She thought -with a smile of her mother's affirmation that everything always came out -right if only one kept on being brave and trustful, and wondered where, -under that formula, her relation to Stanley Heuston could be fitted in. -It was anything but brave--letting herself drift into these continual -meetings, and refusing to accept their consequences. Yet every nerve in -her told her that these moments were the best thing in life, the one -thing she couldn't do without: just to be near him, to hear his cold -voice, to say something to provoke his disenchanted laugh; or, better -still, to walk by him as now without talking, with a furtive glance now -and then at his profile, ironic, dissatisfied, defiant--yes, and so weak -under the defiance... The fact that she judged and still loved showed -that her malady was mortal. - -"Oh, well--it won't last; nothing lasts for our lot," she murmured to -herself without conviction. "Or at the worst it will only last as long -as I do; and that's a date I can fix as I choose." - -What nonsense, though, to talk like that, when all those others needed -her: Jim and his silly Lita, her father, yes, even her proud -self-confident father, and poor old Exhibit A and her mother who was so -sure that nothing would ever go wrong again, now she had found a new -Healer! Yes; they all needed help, though they didn't know it, and Fate -seemed to have put her, Nona, at the very point where all their lives -intersected, as a First-Aid station is put at the dangerous turn of a -race-course, or a points-man at the shunting point of a big junction. - -"Look here, Nona: my dinner-engagement was a fable. Would the heavens -fall if you and I went and dined somewhere by ourselves, just as we -are?" - -"Oh, Stan--" Her heart gave a leap of joy. In these free days, when the -young came and went as they chose, who would have believed that these -two had never yet given themselves a stolen evening? Perhaps it was just -because it was so easy. Only difficult things tempted Nona, and the -difficult thing was always to say "No." - -Yet was it? She stole a glance at Heuston's profile, as a street-lamp -touched it, saw the set lips already preparing a taunt at her refusal, -and wondered if saying no to everything required as much courage as she -liked to think. What if moral cowardice were the core of her boasted -superiority? She didn't want to be "like the others"--but was there -anything to be proud of in that? Perhaps her disinterestedness was only -a subtler vanity, not unrelated, say, to Lita's refusal to let a friend -copy her new dresses, or Bee Lindon's perpetual craving to scandalize a -world sated with scandals. Exhibitionists, one and all of them, as the -psycho-analysts said--and, in her present mood, moral exhibitionism -seemed to her the meanest form of the display. - -"How mid-Victorian, Stan!" she laughed. "As if there were any heavens to -fall! Where shall we go? It will be the greatest fun. Isn't there rather -a good little Italian restaurant somewhere near here? And afterward -there's that nigger dancing at the Housetop." - -"Come along, then!" - -She felt as little and light as a wisp of straw carried out into the -rushing darkness of a sea splashed with millions of stars. Just the -thought of a friendly evening, an evening of simple comradeship, could -do that; could give her back her youth, yes, and the courage to -persevere. She put her hand through his arm, and knew by his silence -that he was thinking her thoughts. That was the final touch of magic. - - -"You really want to go to the Housetop?" he questioned, leaning back to -light his cigar with a leisurely air, as if there need never again be -any hurrying about anything. Their dinner at the little Italian restaurant -was nearly over. They had conscientiously explored the _paste_, the -_frutte di mare_, the _fritture_ and the cheese-and-tomato mixtures, and -were ending up with a foaming _sabaione_. The room was low-ceilinged, hot, -and crowded with jolly noisy people, mostly Italians, over whom, at -unnoticed intervals, an olive-tinted musician with blue-white eyeballs -showered trills and twangings. His music did not interrupt the -conversation, but merely obliged the diners to shout a little louder; a -pretext of which they joyfully availed themselves. Nona, at first, had -found the noise a delicious shelter for her talk with Heuston; but now -it was beginning to stifle her. "Let's get some fresh air first," she -said. - -"All right. We'll walk for a while." - -They pushed back their chairs, wormed a way through the packed tables, -got into their wraps, and stepped out of the swinging doors into long -streamers of watery lamplight. The douche of a cold rain received them. - -"Oh, dear--the Housetop, then!" Nona grumbled. How sweet the rain would -have been under the budding trees of Cedarledge! But here, in these -degraded streets... - -Heuston caught a passing taxi. "A turn, first--just round the Park?" - -"No; the Housetop." - -He leaned back and lit a cigarette. "You know I'm going to get myself -divorced: it's all settled," he announced. - -"Settled--with Aggie?" - -"No: not yet. But with the lady I'm going off with. My word of honour. I -am; next week." - -Nona gave an incredulous laugh. "So this is good-bye?" - -"Very nearly." - -"Poor Stan!" - -"Nona ... listen ... look here..." - -She took his hand. "Stan, hang next week!" - -"Nona--?" - -She shook her head, but let her hand lie in his. - -"No questions--no plans. Just being together," she pleaded. - -He held her in silence and their lips met. "Then why not--?" - -"No: the Housetop--the Housetop!" she cried, pulling herself out of his -arms. - -"Why, you're crying!" - -"I'm not! It's the rain. It's--" - -"Nona!" - -"Stan, you know it's no earthly use." - -"Life's so rotten--" - -"Not like this." - -"This? This--what?" - -She struggled out of another enfolding, put her head out of the window, -and cried: "The Housetop!" - - -They found a corner at the back of the crowded floor. Nona blinked a -little in the dazzle of light-garlands, the fumes of smoke, the clash of -noise and colours. But there he and she sat, close together, hidden in -their irresistible happiness, and though his lips had their moody twist -she knew the same softness was in his veins as in hers, isolating them -from the crowd as completely as if they had still been in the darkness -of the taxi. That was the way she must take her life, she supposed; -piece-meal, a tiny scrap of sweetness at a time, and never more than a -scrap--never once! Well--it would be worse still if there were no -moments like this, short and cruel as they seemed when they came. - -The Housetop was packed. The low balcony crammed with fashionable people -overhung them like a wreath of ripe fruits, peachy and white and golden, -made of painted faces, bare arms, jewels, brocades and fantastic furs. -It was the music-hall of the moment. - -The curtain shot up, and the little auditorium was plunged in shadow. -Nona could leave her hand in Heuston's. On the stage--a New Orleans -cotton-market--black dancers tossed and capered. They were like ripe -fruits too, black figs flung about in hot sunshine, falling to earth -with crimson bursts of laughter splitting open on white teeth, and -bounding up again into golden clouds of cotton-dust. It was all warm and -jolly and inconsequent. The audience forgot to smoke and chatter: little -murmurs of enjoyment rippled over it. - -The curtain descended, the light-garlands blossomed out, and once more -floor and balcony were all sound and movement. - -"Why, there's Lita up there in the balcony," Nona exclaimed, "just above -the stage. Don't you see--with Ardwin, and Jack Staley, and Bee Lindon, -and that awful Keiler woman?" - -She had drawn her hand away at the sight of the box full. "I don't see -Jim with them after all. Oh, how I hate that crowd!" All the ugly and -disquieting realities she had put from her swept back with a rush. If -only she could have had her one evening away from them! "I didn't think -we should find them here--I thought Lita had been last week." - -"Well, don't that crowd always keep on going to the same shows over and -over again? There's nothing they hate as much as novelty--they're so fed -up with it! And besides, what on earth do you care? They won't bother -us." - -She wavered a moment, and then said: "You see, Lita always bothers me." - -"Why? Anything new?" - -"She says she's tired of everything, Jim included, and is going to chuck -it, and go in for the cinema." - -"Oh, that--?" He manifested no surprise. "Well, isn't it where she -belongs?" - -"Perhaps--but Jim!" - -"Poor Jim. We've all got to swallow our dose one day or another." - -"Yes; but I can't bear it. Not for Jim. Look here, Stan--I'm going up -there to join them," she suddenly declared. - -"Oh, nonsense, Nona; they don't want you. And besides I hate that crowd -as much as you do... I don't want you mixed up with it. That cad -Staley, and the Keiler woman..." - -She gave a dry laugh. "Afraid they'll compromise me?" - -"Oh, rot! But what's the use of their even knowing you're here? They'll -hate your butting in, Lita worst of all." - -"Stan, I'm going up to them." - -"Oh, damn it. You always--" - -She had got up and was pushing away the little table in front of them. -But suddenly she stopped and sat down again. For a moment or two she did -not speak, nor look at Heuston. She had seen the massive outline of a -familiar figure rising from a seat near the front and planting itself -there for a slow gaze about the audience. - -"Hallo--your father? I didn't know he patronized this kind of show," -Heuston said. - -Nona groped for a careless voice, and found it. "Father? So it is! Oh, -he's really very frivolous--my influence, I'm afraid." The voice sounded -sharp and rattling in her own ears. "How funny, though! You don't happen -to see mother and Amalasuntha anywhere? That would make the family party -complete." - -She could not take her eyes from her father. How queer he looked--how -different! Strained and vigilant; she didn't know how else to put it. -And yet tired, inexpressibly tired, as if with some profound inner -fatigue which made him straighten himself a little too rigidly, and -throw back his head with a masterful young-mannish air as he scanned the -balcony just above him. He stood there for a few moments, letting the -lights and the eyes concentrate on him, as if lending himself to the -display with a certain distant tolerance; then he began to move toward -one of the exits. But half way he stopped, turned with his dogged jerk -of the shoulders, and made for a gangway leading up to the balcony. - -"Hullo," Heuston exclaimed. "Is he going up to Lita?" - -Nona gave a little laugh. "I might have known it! How like father--when -he undertakes anything!" - -"Undertakes what?" - -"Why, looking after Lita. He probably found out at the last minute that -Jim couldn't come, and made up his mind to replace him. Isn't it -splendid, how he's helping us? I know he loathes this sort of place--and -the people she's with. But he told me we oughtn't to lose our influence -on her, we ought to keep tight hold of her--" - -"I see." - -Nona had risen again and was beginning to move toward the passageway. -Heuston followed her, and she smiled back at him over her shoulder. She -felt as if she must cram every cranny in their talk with more words. The -silence which had enclosed them as in a crystal globe had been -splintered to atoms, and had left them stammering and exposed. - -"Well, I needn't go up to Lita after all; she really doesn't require two -dragons. Thank goodness, father has replaced me, and I don't have to be -with that crew ... just this evening," she whispered, slipping her arm -through Heuston's. "I should have hated to have it end in that way." By -this time they were out in the street. - -On the wet pavement he detained her. "Nona, how is it going to end?" - -"Why, by your driving me home, I hope. It's too wet to walk, worse -luck." - -He gave a resigned shrug, called a taxi, wavered a moment, and jumped in -after her. "I don't know why I come," he grumbled. - -She kept a bright hold on herself, lit a cigarette at his lighter, and -chattered resolutely of the show till the motor turned the corner of her -street. - -"Well, my child, it's really good-bye now. I'm off next week with the -other lady," Heuston said as they stopped before the Manford door. He -paid the taxi and helped her out, and she stood in the rain in front of -him. "I don't come back till Aggie divorces me, you understand," he -continued. - -"She won't!" - -"She'll have to." - -"It's hideous--doing it in that way." - -"Not as hideous as the kind of life I'm leading." - -She made no answer, and he followed her silently up the doorstep while -she fumbled for her latchkey. She was trembling now with weariness and -disappointment, and a feverish thirst for the one more kiss she was -resolved he should not take. - -"Other people get their freedom. I don't see why I shouldn't have mine," -he insisted. - -"Not in that way, Stan! You mustn't. It's too horrible." - -"That way? You know there's no other." - -She turned the latchkey, and the ponderous vestibule door swung inward. -"If you do, don't imagine I'll ever marry you!" she cried out as she -crossed the threshold; and he flung back furiously: "Wait till I ask -you!" and plunged away into the rain. - - - - -XIV - - -PAULINE MANFORD left Mrs. Landish's door with the uncomfortable sense of -having swallowed a new frustration. In this crowded life of hers they -were as difficult to avoid as germs--and there was not always time to -have them extirpated! - -Manford had evidently found out about Lita's Dawnside frequentations; -found it out, no doubt, as Pauline had, by seeing her photograph in that -loathsome dancing group in the "Looker-on." Well, perhaps it was best -that he should know; it would certainly confirm his resolve to stop any -action against the Mahatma. - -Only--if he had induced the Lindons to drop the investigation, why was -he still preoccupied by it? Why had he gone to Mrs. Landish to make that -particular inquiry about Lita? Pauline would have liked to shake off the -memory of his voice, and of the barely disguised impatience with which -he had waited for her to go before putting his question. Confronted by -this new riddle (when there were already so many others in her path) she -felt a reasonless exasperation against the broken doorknob which had let -her into the secret. If only Kitty Landish, instead of dreaming about -Mesopotamian embroideries, would send for a locksmith and keep her house -in repair! - -All day Pauline was oppressed by the nervous apprehension that Manford -might have changed his mind about dropping the investigation. If there -had been time she would have gone to Alvah Loft for relief; she had -managed so far to squeeze in a daily _séance_, and had come to depend on -it as "addicts" do on their morphia. The very brevity of the treatment, -and the blunt negative face and indifferent monosyllables of the Healer, -were subtly stimulating after the verbiage and flummery of his -predecessors. Such stern economy of means impressed Pauline in much the -same way as a new labour-saving device; she liked everything the better -for being a short-cut to something else, and even spiritual communion -for resembling an improved form of stenography. As Mrs. Swoffer said, -Alvah Loft was really the Busy Man's Christ. - -But that afternoon there was literally not time for a treatment. -Manford's decision to spend the Easter holidays at Cedarledge -necessitated one of those campaigns of intensive preparation in which -his wife and Maisie Bruss excelled. Leading the simple life at -Cedarledge involved despatching there a part of the New York domestic -staff at least ten days in advance, testing and lighting three -complicated heating systems, going over all the bells and electric -wiring, and making sure that the elaborate sanitary arrangements were in -irreproachable order. - -Nor was this all. Pauline, who prided herself on the perfect -organization of every detail of both her establishments, had lately been -studying the estimate for a new and singularly complete system of -burglar-alarm at Cedarledge, and also going over the bills for the -picturesque engine-house and up-to-date fire-engine with which she had -just endowed the village patriarchally clustered below the Cedarledge -hill. All these matters called for deep thought and swift decision; and -the fact gave her a sudden stimulus. No rest-cure in the world was as -refreshing to her as a hurried demand on her practical activity; she -thrilled to it like a war-horse to a trumpet, and compelled the fagged -Maisie to thrill in unison. - -In this case their energy was redoubled by the hope that, if Manford -found everything to his liking at Cedarledge, he might take a fancy to -spending more time there. Pauline's passionate interest in plumbing and -electric wiring was suffused with a romantic glow at the thought that -they might lure her husband back to domestic intimacy. "The heating of -the new swimming-pool must be finished too, and the workmen all out of -the way--you'll have to go there next week, Maisie, and impress on -everybody that there must not be a workman visible anywhere when we -arrive." - -Breathless, exultant, Pauline hurried home for a late cup of tea in her -boudoir, and settled down, pencil in hand, with plans and estimates, as -eagerly as her husband, in the early days of his legal career, used to -study the documents of a new case. - -Maisie, responding as she always did to the least touch of the spur, yet -lifted a perplexed brow to murmur: "All right. But I don't see how I can -very well leave before the Birth Control dinner. You know you haven't -yet rewritten the opening passage that you used by mistake at the--" - -Pauline's colour rose. Maisie's way of putting it was tactless; but the -fact remained that the opening of that unlucky speech had to be -rewritten, and that Pauline was never very sure of her syntax unless -Maisie's reinforced it. She had always meant to be cultivated--she still -thought she was when she looked at her bookshelves. But when she had to -compose a speech, though words never failed her, the mysterious -relations between them sometimes did. Wealth and extensive social -activities were obviously incompatible with a complete mastery of -grammar, and secretaries were made for such emergencies. Yes; Maisie, -fagged as she looked, could certainly not be spared till the speech was -remodelled. - -The telephone, ringing from downstairs, announced that the Marchesa was -on her way up to the boudoir. Pauline's pencil fell from her hand. On -her way up! It was really too inconsiderate... Amalasuntha must be -made to understand... But there was the undaunted lady. - -"The footman swore you were out, dear; but I knew from his manner that I -should find you. (With Powder, now, I never can tell.) And I simply _had_ -to rush in long enough to give you a good hug." The Marchesa glanced at -Maisie, and the secretary effaced herself after another glance, this -time from her employer, which plainly warned her: "Wait in the next -room; I won't let her stay." - -To her visitor Pauline murmured somewhat coldly: "I left word that I was -out because I'm desperately busy over the new plumbing and burglar-alarm -systems at Cedarledge. Dexter wants to go there for Easter, and of -course everything must be in order before we arrive..." - -The Marchesa's eyes widened. "Ah, this marvellous American plumbing! I -believe you all treat yourselves to a new set of bathrooms every year. -There's only one bath at San Fedele, and my dear parents-in-law had it -covered with a wooden lid so that it could be used to do the boots on. -It's really rather convenient--and out of family feeling Venturino has -always reserved it for that purpose. But that's not what I came to talk -about. What I want is to find words for my gratitude..." - -Pauline leaned back, gazing wearily at Amalasuntha's small sharp face, -which seemed to glitter with a new and mysterious varnish of prosperity. -"For what? You've thanked me already more than my little present -deserved." - -The Marchesa gave her a look of puzzled retrospection. "Oh--that lovely -cheque the other day? Of course my thanks include that too. But I'm -entirely overwhelmed by your new munificence." - -"My new munificence?" Pauline echoed between narrowed lips. Could this -be an adroit way of prefacing a fresh appeal? With the huge Cedarledge -estimates at her elbow she stiffened herself for refusal. Amalasuntha -must really be taught moderation. - -"Well, Dexter's munificence, then--his royal promise! I left him only an -hour ago," the Marchesa cried with rising exultation. - -"You mean he's found a job for Michelangelo? I'm very glad," said -Pauline, still without enthusiasm. - -"No, no; something ever so much better than that. At least," the -Marchesa hastily corrected herself, "something more immediately helpful. -His debts, dear, my silly boy's debts! Dexter has promised ... has -authorized me to cable that he need not sail, as everything will be -paid. It's more, far more, than I could have hoped!" The happy mother -possessed herself of Mrs. Manford's unresponsive hand. - -Pauline freed the hand abruptly. She felt the need of assimilating and -interpreting this news as rapidly as possible, without betraying undue -astonishment and yet without engaging her responsibility; but the effort -was beyond her, and she could only sit and stare. Dexter had promised to -pay Michelangelo's debts--but with whose money? And why? - -"I'm sure Dexter wants to do all he can to help you about -Michelangelo--we both do. But--" - -Pauline's brain was whirling; she found it impossible to go on. She knew -by heart the extent of Michelangelo's debts. Amalasuntha took care that -everyone did. She seemed to feel a sort of fatuous pride in their -enormity, and was always dinning it into her cousin's ears. Dexter, if -he had really made such a promise, must have made it in his wife's name; -and to do so without consulting her was so unlike him that the idea -deepened her bewilderment. - -"Are you sure? I'm sorry, Amalasuntha--but this comes as a surprise... -Dexter and I were to talk the matter over ... to see what could be -done..." - -"Darling, it's so like you to belittle your own generosity--you always -do! And so does Dexter. But in this case--well, the cable's gone; so why -deny it?" triumphed the Marchesa. - - -When Maisie Bruss returned, Pauline was still sitting with an idle -pencil before the pile of bills and estimates. She fixed an unseeing eye -on her secretary. "These things will have to wait. I'm dreadfully tired, -I don't know why. But I'll go over them all early tomorrow, before you -come; and--Maisie--I hate to ask it; but do you think you could get here -by eight o'clock instead of nine? There's so much to be done; and I want -to get you off to Cedarledge as soon as possible." - -Maisie, a little paler and more drawn than usual, declared that of -course she would turn up at eight. - -Even after she had gone Pauline did not move, or give another glance to -the papers. For the first time in her life she had an obscure sense of -moving among incomprehensible and overpowering forces. She could not, to -herself, have put it even as clearly as that--she just dimly felt that, -between her and her usual firm mastery of facts, something nebulous and -impenetrable was closing in... Nona--what if she were to consult Nona? -The girl sometimes struck her as having an uncanny gift of divination, -as getting at certain mysteries of mood and character more quickly and -clearly than her mother... "Though, when it comes to practical things, -poor child, she's not much more use than Jim..." - -Jim! His name called up the other associated with it. Lita was now -another source of worry. Whichever way Pauline looked, the same choking -obscurity enveloped her. Even about Jim and Lita it clung in a dense -fog, darkening and distorting what, only a short time ago, had seemed a -daylight case of domestic harmony. Money, health, good looks, a -beautiful baby ... and now all this fuss about having to express one's -own personality. Yes; Lita's attitude was just as confusing as Dexter's. -Was Dexter trying to express his own personality too? If only they would -all talk things out with her--help her to understand, instead of moving -about her in the obscurity, like so many burglars with dark lanterns! -This image jerked her attention back to the Cedarledge estimates, and -wearily she adjusted her eye-glasses and took up her pencil... - -Her maid rapped. "What dress, please, madam?" To be sure--they were -dining that evening with the Walter Rivingtons. It was the first time -they had invited Pauline since her divorce from Wyant; Mrs. Rivington's -was the only house left in which the waning traditions of old New York -still obstinately held out, and divorce was regarded as a social -disadvantage. But they had taken Manford's advice successfully in a -difficult case, and were too punctilious not to reward him in the one -way he would care about. The Rivingtons were the last step of the -Manford ladder. - -"The silver moiré, and my pearls." That would be distinguished and -exclusive-looking. Pauline was thankful Dexter had definitely promised -to go with her--he was getting so restive nowadays about what he had -taken to calling her dull dinners... - -The telephone again--this time Dexter's voice. Pauline listened -apprehensively, wondering if it would do to speak to him now about -Amalasuntha's extraordinary announcement, or whether it might be more -tactful to wait. He was so likely to be nervous and irritable at the end -of the day. Yes; it was in his eleventh-hour voice that he was speaking. - -"Pauline--look here; I shall be kept at the office rather late. Please -put off dinner, will you? I'd like a quiet evening alone with you--" - -"A quiet... But, Dexter, we're dining at the Rivingtons'. Shall I -telephone to say you may be late?" - -"The Rivingtons?" His voice became remote and utterly indifferent. "No; -telephone we won't come. Chuck them... I want a talk with you alone ... -can't we dine together quietly at home?" He repeated the phrases -slowly, as if he thought she had not understood him. - -Chuck the Rivingtons? It seemed like being asked to stand up in church -and deny her God. She sat speechless and let the fatal words go on -vibrating on the wire. - -"Don't you hear me, Pauline? Why don't you answer? Is there something -wrong with the line?" - -"No, Dexter. There's nothing wrong with the line." - -"Well, then... You can explain to them ... say anything you like." - -Through the dressing-room door she saw the maid laying out the silver -moiré, the chinchilla cloak, the pearls... - -Explain to the Rivingtons! - -"Very well, dear. What time shall I order dinner here?" she questioned -heroically. - -She heard him ring off, and sat again staring into the fog, which his -words had only made more impenetrable. - - - - -XV - - -MANFORD, the day after his daughter had caught sight of him at the -Housetop, started out early for one of his long tramps around the Park. -He was not due at his office till ten, and he wanted first to walk -himself tired. - -For some years after his marriage he had kept a horse in town, and taken -his morning constitutional in the saddle; but the daily canter over the -same bridle paths was too much like the circuit of his wife's -flower-garden. He took to his feet to make it last longer, and when -there was no time to walk had in a _masseur_ who prepared him, in the same -way as everybody else, for the long hours of sedentary hurry known as -"business." The New York routine had closed in on him, and he sometimes -felt that, for intrinsic interest, there was little to choose between -Pauline's hurry and his own. They seemed, all of them--lawyers, bankers, -brokers, railway-directors and the rest--to be cheating their inner -emptiness with activities as futile as those of the women they went home -to. - -It was all wrong--something about it was fundamentally wrong. They all -had these colossal plans for acquiring power, and then, when it was -acquired, what came of it but bigger houses, more food, more motors, -more pearls, and a more self-righteous philanthropy? - -The philanthropy was what he most hated: all these expensive plans for -moral forcible feeding, for compelling everybody to be cleaner, -stronger, healthier and happier than they would have been by the unaided -light of Nature. The longing to get away into a world where men and -women sinned and begot, lived and died, as they chose, without the -perpetual intervention of optimistic millionaires, had become so strong -that he sometimes felt the chain of habit would snap with his first -jerk. - -That was what had secretly drawn him to Jim's wife. She was the one -person in his group to whom its catchwords meant absolutely nothing. The -others, whatever their private omissions or indulgences, dressed up -their selfish cravings in the same wordy altruism. It used to be one's -duty to one's neighbour; now it had become one's duty to one's self. -Duty, duty--always duty! But when you spoke of duty to Lita she just -widened her eyes and said: "Is that out of the Marriage Service? 'Love, -honour and obey'--such a funny combination! Who do you suppose invented -it? I believe it must have been Pauline." One could never fix her -attention on any subject beyond her own immediate satisfaction, and that -animal sincerity seemed to Manford her greatest charm. Too great a -charm ... a terrible danger. He saw it now. He thought he had gone to her -for relaxation, change--and he had just managed to pull himself up on -the edge of a precipice. But for the sickening scene of the other -evening, when he had shown her the photograph, he might, old fool that -he was, have let himself slip into sentiment; and God knows where that -tumble would have landed him. Now a passionate pity had replaced his -fatuous emotion, the baleful siren was only a misguided child, and he -was to help and save her for Jim's sake and her own. - -It was queer that such a mood of calm lucidity had come out of the fury -of hate with which he rushed from her house. If it had not, he would -have gone mad--smashed something, done something irretrievable. And -instead here he was, calmly contemplating his own folly and hers! He -must go on seeing her, of course; there was more reason than ever for -seeing her; but there would be no danger in it now, only help for -her--and perhaps healing for him. To this new mood he clung as to an -inviolable refuge. The turmoil and torment of the last months could -never reach him again: he had found a way out, an escape. The relief of -being quiet, of avoiding a conflict, of settling everything without -effusion of blood, stole over him like the spell of the drug-taker's -syringe. Poor little Lita ... never again to be adored (thank heaven), -but, oh, so much the more to be helped and pitied... - -This deceptive serenity had come to him during his call on Mrs. -Landish--come from her very insensibility to any of the standards he -lived by. He had gone there--he saw it now--moved by the cruel masculine -desire to know the worst about a fallen idol. What he called the -determination to "face things"--what was it but the savage longing to -accumulate all the evidence against poor Lita? Give up the Mahatma -investigation? Never! All the more reason now for going on with it; for -exposing the whole blackguardly business, opening poor Jim's eyes to his -wife's past (better now than later), and helping him to get on his feet -again, start fresh, and recover his faith in life and happiness. For of -course poor Jim would be the chief sufferer... Damn the woman! She -wanted to get rid of Jim, did she? Well, here was her chance--only it -would be the other way round. The tables would be turned on her. She'd -see--! This in his first blind outbreak of rage; but by the time he -reached Mrs. Landish's door the old legal shrewdness had come to his -rescue, and he had understood that a public scandal was unnecessary, and -therefore to be avoided. Easy enough to get rid of Lita without that. -With such evidence as he would soon possess they could make any -conditions they chose. Jim would keep the boy, and the whole thing be -settled quietly--but on their terms, not hers! She would be only too -thankful to clear out bag and baggage--clean out of all their lives. -Faugh--to think he had delegated his own Nona; to look after her ... -the thought sickened him. - -And then, in the end, it had all come out so differently. He needed his -hard tramp around the Park to see just why. - -It was Mrs. Landish's own attitude--her silly rambling irresponsibility, -so like an elderly parody of Lita's youthful carelessness. Mrs. Landish -had met Manford's stern interrogations by the vague reply that he -mustn't ever come to _her_ for dates and figures and statistics: that -facts meant nothing to her, that the only thing she cared for was -Inspiration, Genius, the Divine Fire, or whatever he chose to call it. -Perhaps she'd done wrong, but she had sacrificed everything, all her -life, to her worship of genius. She was always hunting for it -everywhere, and it was because, from the first, she had felt a touch of -it in Lita that she had been so devoted to the child. Didn't Manford -feel it in Lita too? Of course she, Mrs. Landish, had dreamed of another -sort of marriage for her niece ... Oh, but Manford mustn't -misunderstand! Jim was perfect--_too_ perfect. That was the trouble. -Manford surely guessed the meaning of that "too"? Such absolute -reliability, such complete devotion, were sometimes more of a strain to -the artistic temperament than scenes and infidelities. And Lita was -first and foremost an artist, born to live in the world of art--in quite -other values--a fourth-dimensional world, as it were. It wasn't fair to -judge her in her present surroundings, ideal as they were in one way--a -way that unfortunately didn't happen to be hers! Mrs. Landish persisted -in assuming Manford's complete comprehension ... "If Jim could only be -made to understand as you do; to see that ordinary standards don't apply -to these rare natures... Why, has the child told you what Klawhammer -has offered her to turn _one film_ for him, before even having seen her -dance, just on the strength of what Jack Staley and Ardwin had told -him?" - -Ah--there it was! The truth was out. Mrs. Landish, always in debt, and -always full of crazy schemes for wasting more money, had seen a gold -mine in the exploitation of her niece's gifts. The divorce, instead of -frightening her, delighted her. Manford smiled as he thought how little -she would be moved by Pauline's threat to cut off the young couple. -Pauline sometimes forgot that, even in her own family, her authority was -not absolute. She could certainly not compete financially with -Hollywood, and Mrs. Landish's eyes were on Hollywood. - -"Dear Mr. Manford--but you look shocked! Absolutely shocked! Does the -screen really frighten you? How funny!" Mrs. Landish, drawing her -rambling eyebrows together, seemed trying to picture the inner darkness -of such a state. "But surely you know the smartest people are going in -for it? Why, the Marchesa di San Fedele was showing me the other day a -photograph of that beautiful son of hers--one of those really _Greek_ -beings in bathing tights--and telling me that Klawhammer, who had seen -it, had authorized her to cable him to come out to Hollywood on trial, -all expenses paid. It seems they can almost always recognize the -eurythmic people at a glance. Funny, wouldn't it be, if Michelangelo and -Lita turned out to be the future Valentino and--" - -He didn't remember the rest of the rigmarole. He could only recall -shouting out, with futile vehemence: "My wife and I will do everything -to prevent a divorce--" and leaving his astonished hostess on a threat -of which he knew the uselessness as well as she did. - -That was the air in which Lita had grown up, those were the gods of -Viking Court! Yet Manford had stormed instead of pitying, been furious -instead of tolerant, risked disaster for Lita and Jim instead of taking -calm control of the situation. The vision of Lita Wyant and Michelangelo -as future film stars, "featured" jointly on every hoarding from Maine to -California, had sent the blood to his head. Through a mist of rage he -had seen the monstrous pictures and conjectured the loathsome -letter-press. And no one would do more than look and laugh! At the -thought, he felt the destructive ire of the man who finds his private -desires pitted against the tendencies of his age. Well, they would see, -that was all: he would show them! - -The resolve to act brought relief to his straining imagination. Once -again he felt himself seated at his office desk, all his professional -authority between him and his helpless interlocutors, and impressive -words and skilful arguments ordering themselves automatically in his -mind. After all, he was the head of his family--in some degree even of -Wyant's family. - - - - -XVI - - -PAULINE'S nervousness had gradually subsided. About the Rivingtons--why, -after all, it wasn't such a bad idea to show them that, with a man of -Manford's importance, one must take one's chance of getting him, and -make the best of it if he failed one at the last. "Professional -engagement; oh, yes, entirely unexpected; extremely important; so -dreadfully sorry, but you know lawyers are not their own masters..." -It had been rather pleasant to say that to a flustered Mrs. Rivington, -stammering: "Oh, but _couldn't_ he ...? But we'll wait ... we'll dine -at half-past nine..." Pleasant also to add: "He must reserve his whole -evening, I'm afraid," and then hang up, and lean back at leisure, while -Mrs. Rivington (how Pauline pictured it!) dashed down in her -dressing-gown and crimping pins to re-arrange a table to which as much -thought had been given as if a feudal aristocracy were to sit at it. - -To Pauline the fact that Manford wanted to be alone with her made even -such renunciations easy. How many years had passed since he had -expressed such a wish? And did she owe his tardy return to the Mahatma -and reduced hips, or the Inspirational Healer and renewed optimism? If -only a woman could guess what inclined a man's heart to her, what -withdrew it! Pauline, if she had had the standardizing of life, would -have begun with human hearts, and had them turned out in series, all -alike, rather than let them come into being haphazard, cranky amateurish -things that you couldn't count on, or start up again if anything went -wrong... - -Just a touch of rouge? Well, perhaps her maid was right. She _did_ look -rather pale and drawn. Mrs. Herman Toy put it on with a trowel ... -apparently that was what men liked... Pauline shed a faint bloom on -her cheeks and ran her clever fingers through her prettily waved hair, -wondering again, as she did so, if it wouldn't be better to bob it. Then -the mauve tea-gown, the Chinese amethysts, and those silver sandals that -made her feet so slender. She looked at herself with a sigh of pleasure. -Dinner was to be served in the boudoir. - -Manford was very late; it was ten o'clock before coffee and liqueurs -were put on the low stand by the fire, and the little dinner-table was -noiselessly removed. The fire glowed invitingly, and he sank into the -armchair his wife pushed forward with a sound like a murmur of content. - -"Such a day--" he said, passing his hand across his forehead as if to -brush away a tangle of legal problems. - -"You do too much, Dexter; you really do. I know how wonderfully young -you are for your age, but still--." She broke off, dimly perceiving -that, in spite of the flattering exordium, this allusion to his age was -not quite welcome. - -"Nothing to do with age," he growled. "Everybody who does anything at -all does too much." (Did he mean to imply that she did nothing?) - -"The nervous strain--" she began, once more wondering if this were not -the moment to slip in a word of Alvah Loft. But though Manford had -wished to be with her he had apparently no desire to listen to her. It -was all her own fault, she felt. If only she had known how to reveal the -secret tremors that were rippling through her! There were women not -half as clever and tactful--not younger, either, nor even as -good-looking--who would have known at once what to say, or how to spell -the mute syllables of soul-telegraphy. If her husband had wanted -facts--a good confidential talk about the new burglar-alarm, or a clear -and careful analysis of the engine-house bills, or the heating system -for the swimming pool--she could have found just the confidential and -tender accent for such topics. Intimacy, to her, meant the tireless -discussion of facts, not necessarily of a domestic order, but definite -and palpable facts. For her part she was ready for anything, from Birth -Control to neo-impressionism: she flattered herself that few women had a -wider range. In confidential moments she preferred the homelier themes, -and would have enjoyed best of all being tender and gay about the coal -cellar, or reticent and brave about the leak in the boiler; but she was -ready to deal with anything as long as it was a fact, something with -substance and outline, as to which one could have an opinion and a line -of conduct. What paralyzed her was the sense that, apart from his -profession, her husband didn't care for facts, and that nothing was less -likely to rouse his interest than burglar-alarm wiring, or the last new -thing in electric ranges. Obviously, one must take men as they were, -wilful, moody and mysterious; but she would have given the world to be -told (since for all her application she had never discovered) what those -other women said who could talk to a man about nothing. - -Manford lit a cigar and stared into the fire. "It's about that fool -Amalasuntha," he began at length, addressing his words to the logs. - -The name jerked Pauline back to reality. Here was a fact--hard, knobby -and uncomfortable! And she had actually forgotten it in the confused -pleasure of their tête-à-tête! So he had only come home to talk to -her about Amalasuntha. She tried to keep the flatness out of her: "Yes, -dear?" - -He continued, still fixed on the fire: "You may not know that we've had -a narrow escape." - -"A narrow escape?" - -"That damned Michelangelo--his mother was importing him this very week. -The cable had gone. If I hadn't put a stop to it we'd have been saddled -with him for life." - -Pauline's breath failed her. She listened with straining ears. - -"You haven't seen her, then--she hasn't told you?" Manford continued. -"She was getting him out on her own responsibility to turn a film for -Klawhammer. Simply that! By the mercy of heaven I headed her off--but we -hadn't a minute to lose." - -In her bewilderment at this outburst, and at what it revealed, Pauline -continued to sit speechless. "Michelangelo--Klawhammer? I didn't know! -But wouldn't it have been the best solution, perhaps?" - -"Solution--of what? Don't you think one member of the family on the -screen's enough at a time? Or would it have looked prettier to see him -and Lita featured together on every hoarding in the country? My God--I -thought I'd done the right thing in acting for you ... there was no -time to consult you ... but if _you_ don't care, why should I? He's none -of _my_ family ... and she isn't either, for that matter." - -He had swung round from the hearth, and faced her for the first time, -his brows contracted, the veins swelling on his temples, his hands -grasping his knees as if to constrain himself not to start up in -righteous indignation. He was evidently deeply disturbed, yet his anger, -she felt, was only the unconscious mask of another emotion--an emotion -she could not divine. His vehemence, and the sense of moving in complete -obscurity, had an intimidating effect on her. - -"I don't quite understand, Dexter. Amalasuntha was here today. She said -nothing about films, or Klawhammer; but she did say that you'd made it -unnecessary for Michelangelo to come to America." - -"Didn't she say how?" - -"She said something about--paying his debts." - -Manford stood up and went to lean against the mantelpiece. He looked -down on his wife, who in her turn kept her eyes on the embers. - -"Well--you didn't suppose I made that offer till I saw we were up -against it, did you?" - -His voice rose again angrily, but a cautious glance at his face showed -her that its tormented lines were damp with perspiration. Her immediate -thought was that he must be ill, that she ought to take his -temperature--she always responded by first-aid impulses to any contact -with human distress. But no, after all, it was not that: he was unhappy, -that was it, he was desperately unhappy. But why? Was it because he -feared he had exceeded his rights in pledging her to such an extent, in -acting for her when there was no time to consult her? Apparently the -idea of the discord between Lita and Jim, and Lita's thirst for scenic -notoriety, had shocked him deeply--much more, in reality, than they had -Pauline. If so, his impulse had been a natural one, and eminently in -keeping with those Wyant traditions with which (at suitable moments) she -continued to identify herself. Yes: she began to understand his thinking -it would be odious to her to see the names of her son's wife and this -worthless Italian cousin emblazoned over every Picture Palace in the -land. She felt moved by his regard for her feelings. After all, as he -said, Lita and Michelangelo were no relations of his; he could easily -have washed his hands of the whole affair. - -"I'm sure what you've done must be right, Dexter; you know I always -trust your judgment. Only--I wish you'd explain..." - -"Explain what?" Her mild reply seemed to provoke a new wave of -exasperation. "The only way to stop his coming was to pay his debts. -They're very heavy. I had no right to commit you; I acknowledge it." - -She took a deep breath, the figure of Michelangelo's liabilities blazing -out before her as on a giant blackboard. Then: "You had every right, -Dexter," she said. "I'm glad you did it." - -He stood silent, his head bent, twisting between his fingers the cigar -he had forgotten to relight. It was as if he had been startled out of -speech by the promptness of her acquiescence, and would have found it -easier to go on arguing and justifying himself. - -"That's--very handsome of you, Pauline," he said at length. - -"Oh, no--why? You did it out of regard for me, I know. Only--perhaps you -won't mind our talking things over a little. About ways and means ..." -she added, seeing his forehead gloom again. - -"Ways and means--oh, certainly. But please understand that I don't -expect you to shoulder the whole sum. I've had two big fees lately; I've -already arranged--" - -She interrupted him quickly. "It's not your affair, Dexter. You're -awfully generous, always; but I couldn't think of letting you--" - -"It is my affair; it's all of our affair. I don't want this nasty -notoriety any more than you do ... and Jim's happiness wrecked into -the bargain..." - -"You're awfully generous," she repeated. - -"It's first of all a question of helping Jim and Lita. If that young ass -came over here with a contract from Klawhammer in his pocket there'd be -no holding her. And once that gang get hold of a woman..." He spoke -with a kind of breathless irritation, as though it were incredible that -Pauline should still not understand. - -"It's very fine of you, dear," she could only murmur. - -A pause followed, during which, for the first time, she could assemble -her thoughts and try to take in the situation. Dexter had bought off -Michelangelo to keep one more disturbing element out of the family -complication; perhaps also to relieve himself of the bother of having on -his hands, at close quarters, an idle and mischief-making young man. -That was comprehensible. But if his first object had been the securing -of Jim's peace of mind, might not the same end have been achieved, more -satisfactorily to every one but Michelangelo, by his uniting with -Pauline to increase Jim's allowance, and thus giving Lita the amusement -and distraction of having a lot more money to spend? Even at such a -moment, Pauline's practical sense of values made it hard for her to -accept the idea of putting so many good thousands into the pockets of -Michelangelo's creditors. She was naturally generous; but no matter how -she disposed of her fortune, she could never forget that it had been -money--and how much money it had been--before it became something else. -For her it was never transmuted, but only exchanged. - -"You're not satisfied--you don't think I did right?" Manford began -again. - -"I don't say that, Dexter. I'm only wondering--. Supposing we'd given -the money to Jim instead? Lita could have done her house over ... or -built a bungalow in Florida ... or bought jewels with it... She's so -easily amused." - -"Easily amused!" He broke into a hard laugh. "Why, that amount of money -wouldn't amuse her for a week!" His face took on a look of grim -introspection. "She wants the universe--or her idea of it. A woman with -an offer from Klawhammer dangling in front of her! Mrs. Landish told me -the figure--those people could buy us all out and not know it." - -Pauline's heart sank. Apparently he knew things about Lita of which she -was still ignorant. "I hadn't heard the offer had actually been made. -But if it has, and she wants to accept, how can we stop her?" - -Manford had thrown himself down into his armchair. He got up again, -relit his cigar, and walked across the room and back before answering. -"I don't know that we can. And I don't know how we can. But I want to -try... I want _time_ to try... Don't you see, Pauline? The child--we -mustn't be hard on her. Her beginnings were damnable... Perhaps you -know--yes? That cursèd Mahatma place?" Pauline winced, and looked away -from him. He had seen the photograph, then! And heaven knows what more -he had discovered in the course of his investigations for the Lindons... -A sudden light glared out at her. It was for Jim's sake and Lita's -that he had dropped the case--sacrificed his convictions, his sense of -the duty of exposing a social evil! She faltered: "I do know ... a -little..." - -"Well, a little's enough. Swine--! And that's the rotten atmosphere she -was brought up in. But she's not bad, Pauline ... there's something -still to be done with her ... give me time ... time..." He stopped -abruptly, as if the "me" had slipped out by mistake. "We must all stand -shoulder to shoulder to put up this fight for her," he corrected himself -with a touch of forensic emphasis. - -"Of course, dear, of course," Pauline murmured. - -"When we get her to ourselves at Cedarledge, you and Nona and I... -It's just as well Jim's going off, by the way. He's got her nerves on -edge; Jim's a trifle dense at times, you know... And, above all, this -whole business, Klawhammer and all, must be kept from him. We'll all -hold our tongues till the thing blows over, eh?" - -"Of course," she again assented. "But supposing Lita asks to speak to -me?" - -"Well, let her speak--listen to what she has to say..." He stopped, -and then added, in a rough unsteady voice: "Only don't be hard on her. -You won't, will you? No matter what rot she talks. The child's never had -half a chance." - -"How could you think I should, Dexter?" - -"No; no; I don't." He stood up, and sent a slow unseeing gaze about the -room. The gaze took in his wife, and rested on her long enough to make -her feel that she was no more to him--mauve tea-gown, Chinese amethysts, -touch of rouge and silver sandals--than a sheet of glass through which -he was staring: staring at what? She had never before felt so -inexistent. - -"Well--I'm dog-tired--down and out," he said with one of his sudden -jerks, shaking his shoulders and turning toward the door. He did not -remember to say goodnight to her: how should he have, when she was no -longer there for him? - - -After the door had closed, Pauline in her turn looked slowly about the -room. It was as if she were taking stock of the havoc wrought by an -earthquake; but nothing about her showed any sign of disorder except the -armchair her husband had pushed back, the rug his movement had -displaced. - -With instinctive precision she straightened the rug, and rolled the -armchair back into its proper corner. Then she went up to a mirror and -attentively scrutinized herself. The light was unbecoming, perhaps ... -the shade of the adjacent wall-candle had slipped out of place. She -readjusted it ... yes, that was better! But of course, at nearly -midnight--and after such a day!--a woman was bound to look a little -drawn. Automatically her lips shaped the familiar: "Pauline, don't -worry: there's nothing in the world to worry about." But the rouge had -vanished from the lips, their thin line looked blue and arid. She turned -from the unpleasing sight, putting out one light after another on the -way to her dressing-room. - -As she bent to extinguish the last lamp its light struck a tall framed -photograph: Lita's latest portrait. Lita had the gift of posing--the -lines she fell into always had an unconscious eloquence. And that little -round face, as sleek as the inside of a shell; the slanting eyes, the -budding mouth ... men, no doubt, would think it all enchanting. - -Pauline, with slow steps, went on into the big shining dressing-room, -and to the bathroom beyond, all ablaze with white tiling and silvered -taps and tubes. It was the hour of her evening uplift exercises, the -final relaxing of body and soul before she slept. Sternly she addressed -herself to relaxation. - - - - -XVII - - -WHAT was the sense of it all? - -Nona, sitting up in bed two days after her nocturnal visit to the -Housetop, swept the interval with a desolate eye. She had made her -great, her final, refusal. She had sacrificed herself, sacrificed -Heuston, to the stupid ideal of an obstinate woman who managed to -impress people by dressing up her egotism in formulas of philanthropy -and piety. Because Aggie was forever going to church, and bossing the -committees of Old Women's Homes and Rest-cures for Consumptives, she was -allowed a license of cruelty which would have damned the frivolous. - -Destroying two lives to preserve her own ideal of purity! It was like -the horrible ailing old men in history books, who used to bathe in human -blood to restore their vitality. Every one agreed that there was nothing -such a clever sensitive fellow as Stanley Heuston mightn't have made of -his life if he'd married a different kind of woman. As it was, he had -just drifted: tried the law, dabbled in literary reviewing, taken a turn -at municipal politics, another at scientific farming, and dropped one -experiment after another to sink, at thirty-five, into a disillusioned -idler who killed time with cards and drink and motor-speeding. She -didn't believe he ever opened a book nowadays: he was living on the -dwindling capital of his early enthusiasms. But, as for what people -called his "fastness," she knew it was merely the inevitable opposition -to Aggie's virtues. And it wasn't as if there had been children. Nona -always ached for the bewildered progeny suddenly bundled from one home -to another when their parents embarked on a new conjugal experiment; she -could never have bought her happiness by a massacre of innocents. But to -be sacrificed to a sterile union--as sterile spiritually as -physically--to miss youth and love because of Agnes Heuston's notion of -her duty to the elderly clergyman she called God! - -That woman he said he was going off with... Nona had pretended she -didn't know, had opened incredulous eyes at the announcement. But of -course she knew; everybody knew; it was Cleo Merrick. She had been -"after him" for the last two years, she hadn't a rag of reputation to -lose, and would jump at the idea of a few jolly weeks with a man like -Heuston, even if he got away from her afterward. But he wouldn't--of -course he never would! Poor Stan--Cleo Merrick's noise, her cheek, her -vulgarity: how warm and life-giving they would seem as a change from the -frigidarium he called home! She would hold him by her very cheapness: -her recklessness would seem like generosity, her glitter like heat. -Ah--how Nona could have shown him the difference! She shut her eyes and -felt his lips on her lids; and her lids became lips. Wherever he touched -her, a mouth blossomed... Did he know that? Had he never guessed? - -She jumped out of bed, ran into her dressing-room, began to bathe and -dress with feverish haste. She wouldn't telephone him--Aggie had long -ears. She wouldn't send a "special delivery"--Aggie had sharp eyes. She -would just summon him by a telegram: a safe anonymous telegram. She -would dash out of the house and get it off herself, without even waiting -for her cup of coffee to be brought. - -"Come and see me any time today. I was too stupid the other night." Yes; -he would understand that. She needn't even sign it... - -On the threshold of her room, the telegram crumpled in her hand, the -telephone bell arrested her. Stanley, surely; he must have felt the same -need that she had! She fumbled uncertainly with the receiver; the tears -were running down her cheeks. She had waited too long; she had exacted -the impossible of herself. "Yes--yes? It's you, darling?" She laughed it -out through her weeping. - -"What's that? It's Jim. That you, Nona?" a quiet voice came back. When -had Jim's voice ever been anything but quiet? - -"Oh, Jim, dear!" She gulped down tears and laughter. "Yes--what is it? -How awfully early you are!" - -"Hope I didn't wake you? Can I drop in on my way down town?" - -"Of course. When? How soon?" - -"Now. In two minutes. I've got to be at the office before nine." - -"All right. In two minutes. Come straight up." - -She hung up the receiver, and thrust the telegram aside. No time to rush -out with it now. She would see Jim first, and send off her message when -he left. Now that her decision was taken she felt tranquil and able to -wait. But anxiety about Jim rose and swelled in her again. She -reproached herself for having given him so little thought for the last -two days. Since her parting from Stan on the doorstep in the rainy night -everything but her fate and his had grown remote and almost indifferent -to her. Well; it was natural enough--only perhaps she had better not be -so glib about Aggie Heuston's selfishness! Of course everybody who was -in love was selfish; and Aggie, according to her lights, was in love. -Her love was bleak and cramped, like everything about her; a sort of -fleshless bony affair, like the repulsive plates in anatomical manuals. -But in reality those barren arms were stretched toward Stanley, though -she imagined they were lifted to God... What a hideous mystery life -was! And yet Pauline and her friends persisted in regarding it as a -Sunday school picnic, with lemonade and sponge cake as its supreme -rewards... - -Here was Jim at her sitting-room door. Nona held out her arms, and -slanted a glance at him as he bent his cheek to her kiss. Was the cheek -rather sallower than usual? Well, that didn't mean much: he and she were -always a yellow pair when they were worried! - -"What's up, old man? No--this armchair's more comfortable. Had your -coffee?" - -He let her change the armchair, but declined the coffee. He had -breakfasted before starting, he said--but she knew Lita's household, and -didn't believe him. - -"Anything wrong with Exhibit A?" - -"Wrong? No. That is..." She had put the question at random, in the -vague hope of gaining time before Lita's name was introduced; and now -she had the sense of having unwittingly touched on another problem. - -"That is--well, he's nervous and fidgety again: you've noticed?" - -"I've noticed." - -"Imagining things--. What a complicated world our ancestors lived in, -didn't they?" - -"Well, I don't know. Mother's world always seems to me alarmingly -simple." - -He considered. "Yes--that's pioneering and motor-building, I suppose. -It's the old New York blood that's so clogged with taboos. Poor father -always wants me to behave like a Knight of the Round Table." - -Nona lifted her eyebrows with an effort of memory. "How did they -behave?" - -"They were always hitting some other fellow over the head." - -She felt a little catch in her throat. "Who--particularly--does he want -you to hit over the head?" - -"Oh, we haven't got as far as that yet. It's just the general principle. -Anybody who looks too hard at Lita." - -"You _would_ have to be hitting about! Everybody looks hard at Lita. How -in the world can she help it?" - -"That's what I tell him. But he says I haven't got the feelings of a -gentleman. Guts, he means, I suppose." He leaned back, crossing his arms -wearily behind his back, his sallow face with heavy-lidded eyes tilted -to the ceiling. "Do you suppose Lita feels that too?" he suddenly flung -at his sister. - -"That you ought to break people's heads for her? She'd be the first to -laugh at you!" - -"So I told him. But he says women despise a man who isn't jealous." - -Nona sat silent, instinctively turning her eyes from his troubled face. -"Why should you be jealous?" she asked at length. - -He shifted his position, stretched his arms along his knees, and brought -his eyes down to a level with hers. There was something pathetic, she -thought, in such youthful blueness blurred with uncomprehended pain. - -"I suppose it's never got much to do with reasons," he said, very low. - -"No; that's why it's so silly--and ungenerous." - -"It doesn't matter what it is. She doesn't care a hang if I'm jealous or -if I'm not. She doesn't care anything about me. I've simply ceased to -exist for her." - -"Well, then you can't be in her way." - -"It seems I am, though. Because I do exist, for the world; and as the -boy's father. And the mere idea gets on her nerves." - -Nona laughed a little bitterly. "She wants a good deal of elbow-room, -doesn't she? And how does she propose to eliminate you?" - -"Oh, that's easy. Divorce." - -There was a silence between the two. This was how it sounded--that -simple reasonable request--on the lips of the other partner, the partner -who still had a stake in the affair! Lately she seemed to have forgotten -that side of the question; but how hideously it grimaced at her now, -behind the lines of this boyish face wrung with a man's misery! - -"Old Jim--it hurts such a lot?" - -He jerked away from her outstretched hand. "Hurt? A fellow can stand -being hurt. It can't hurt more than feeling her chained to me. But if -she goes--what does she go to?" - -Ah--that was it! Through the scorch and cloud of his own suffering he -had seen it, it was the centre of his pain. Nona glanced down absently -at her slim young hands--so helpless and inexperienced looking. All -these tangled cross-threads of life, inextricably and fatally -interwoven; how were a girl's hands to unravel them? - -"I suppose she's talked to you--told you her ideas?" he asked. - -Nona nodded. - -"Well, what's to be done: can you tell me?" - -"She mustn't go--we mustn't let her." - -"But if she stays--stays hating me?" - -"Oh, Jim, not _hating_--!" - -"You know well enough that she gets to hate anything that doesn't amuse -her." - -"But there's the baby. The baby still amuses her." - -He looked at her, surprised. "Ah, that's what father says: he calls the -baby, poor old chap, my hostage. What rot! As if I'd take her baby from -her--and just because she cares for it. If I don't know how to keep her, -I don't see that I've got any right to keep her child." - -That was the new idea of marriage, the view of Nona's contemporaries; it -had been her own a few hours since. Now, seeing it in operation, she -wondered if it still were. It was one thing to theorize on the -detachability of human beings, another to watch them torn apart by the -bleeding roots. This botanist who had recently discovered that plants -were susceptible to pain, and that transplanting was a major -operation--might he not, if he turned his attention to modern men and -women, find the same thing to be still true of a few of them? - -"Oh Jim, how I wish you didn't care so!" The words slipped out unawares: -they were the last she had meant to speak aloud. - -Her brother turned to her; the ghost of his old smile drew up his lip. -"Good old girl!" he mocked her--then his face dropped into his hands, -and he sat huddled against the armchair, his shaken shoulder-blades -warding off her touch. - -It didn't last more than a minute; but it was the real, the only answer. -He _did_ care so; nothing could alter it. She looked on stupidly, admitted -for the first time to this world-old anguish rooted under all the -restless moods of man. - -Jim got up, shook back his rumpled hair, and reached for a cigarette. -"That's _that_. And now, my child, what can I do? What I'd honestly like, -if she wants her freedom, is to give it to her, and yet be able to go on -looking after her. But I don't see how that can be worked out. Father -says it's madness. He says I'm a morbid coward and talk like the people -in the Russian novels. He wants to speak to her himself--" - -"Oh, no! He and she don't talk the same language..." - -Jim paused, pulling absently at his cigarette, and measuring the room -with uncertain steps. "That's what I feel. But there's _your_ father; he's -been so awfully good to us; and his ideas are less archaic..." - -Nona had turned away and was looking unseeingly out of the window. She -moved back hastily. "No!" - -He looked surprised. "You think he wouldn't understand either?" - -"I don't mean that... But, after all, it's not his job... Have you -spoken to mother?" - -"Mother? Oh, she always thinks everything's all right. She'd give me a -cheque, and tell me to buy Lita a new motor or to let her do over the -drawing-room." - -Nona pondered this answer, which was no more than the echo of her own -thoughts. "All the same, Jim: mother's mother. She's always been awfully -good to both of us, and you can't let this go on without her knowing, -without consulting her. She has a right to your confidence--she has a -right to hear what Lita has to say." - -He remained silent, as if indifferent. His mother's glittering optimism -was a hard surface for grief and failure to fling themselves on. "What's -the use?" he grumbled. - -"Let me consult her, then: at least let me see how she takes it." - -He threw away his cigarette and looked at his watch. "I've got to run; -it's nearly nine." He laid a hand on his sister's shoulder. "Whatever -you like, old girl. But don't imagine it's going to be any use." - -She put her arms about him, and he submitted to her kiss. "Give me -time," she said, not knowing what else to answer. - -After he had gone she sat motionless, weighed down with -half-comprehended misery. This business of living--how right she had -been to feel, in her ignorance, what a tortured tangle it was! Where, -for instance, did one's own self end and one's neighbour's begin? And -how tell the locked tendrils apart in the delicate process of -disentanglement? Her precocious half-knowledge of the human dilemma was -combined with a youthful belief that the duration of pain was -proportioned to its intensity. And at that moment she would have hated -any one who had tried to persuade her of the contrary. The only -honourable thing about suffering was that it should not abdicate before -indifference. - -She got up, and her glance fell on the telegram which she had pushed -aside when her brother entered. She still had her hat on, her feet were -turned toward the door. But the door seemed to open into a gray -unpeopled world suddenly shorn of its magic. She moved back into the -room and tore up the telegram. - - - - -XVIII - - -"LITA? But of course I'll talk to Lita--" Mrs. Manford, resting one -elbow on her littered desk, smiled up encouragingly at her daughter. On -the desk lay the final version of the Birth Control speech, mastered and -canalized by the skilful Maisie. The result was so pleasing that Pauline -would have liked to read it aloud to Nona, had the latter not worn her -look of concentrated care. It was a pity, Pauline thought, that Nona -should let herself go at her age to these moods of anxiety and -discouragement. - -Pauline herself, fortified by her morning exercises, and by a "double -treatment" ($50) from Alvah Loft, had soared once more above her own -perplexities. She had not had time for a word alone with her husband -since their strange talk of the previous evening; but already the doubts -and uncertainties produced by that talk had been dispelled. Of course -Dexter had been moody and irritable: wasn't her family always piling up -one worry on him after another? He had always loved Jim as much as he -did Nona; and now this menace to Jim's happiness, and the unpleasantness -about Lita, combined with Amalasuntha's barefaced demands, and the -threatened arrival of the troublesome Michelangelo--such a weight of -domestic problems was enough to unnerve a man already overburdened with -professional cares. - -"But of course I'll talk to Lita, dear; I always meant to. The silly -goose! I've waited only because your father--" - -Nona's heavy eyebrows ran together like Manford's. "Father?" - -"Oh, he's helping us so splendidly about it. And he asked me to wait; to -do nothing in a hurry..." - -Nona seemed to turn this over. "All the same--I think you ought to hear -what Lita has to say. She's trying to persuade Jim to let her divorce -him; and he thinks he ought to, if he can't make her happy." - -"But he _must_ make her happy! I'll talk to Jim too," cried Pauline with a -gay determination. - -"I'd try Lita first, mother. Ask her to postpone her decision. If we can -get her to come to Cedarledge for a few weeks' rest--" - -"Yes; that's what your father says." - -"But I don't think father ought to give up his fishing to join us. -Haven't you noticed how tired he looks? He ought to get away from all of -us for a few weeks. Why shouldn't you and I look after Lita?" - -Pauline's enthusiasm drooped. It was really no business of Nona's to -give her mother advice about the management of her father. These modern -girls--pity Nona didn't marry, and try managing a husband of her own! - -"Your father loves Cedarledge. It's quite his own idea to go there. He -thinks Easter in the country with us all will be more restful than -California. I haven't influenced him in the least to give up his -fishing." - -"Oh, I didn't suppose you had." Nona seemed to lose interest in the -discussion, and her mother took advantage of the fact to add, with a -gentle side-glance at her watch: "Is there anything else, dear? Because -I've got to go over my Birth Control speech, and at eleven there's a -delegation from--" - -Nona's eyes had followed her glance to the scattered pages on the desk. -"Are you really going to preside at that Birth Control dinner, mother?" - -"Preside? Why not? I happen to be chairman," Pauline answered with a -faint touch of acerbity. - -"I know. Only--the other day you were preaching unlimited families. -Don't the two speeches come rather close together? You might expose -yourself to some newspaper chaff if any one put you in parallel -columns." - -Pauline felt herself turning pale. Her lips tightened, and for a moment -she was conscious of a sort of blur in her brain. This girl ... it was -preposterous that she shouldn't understand! And always wanting reasons -and explanations at a moment's notice! To be subjected, under one's own -roof, to such a perpetual inquisition... There was nothing she -disliked so much as questions to which she had not had time to prepare -the answers. - -"I don't think you always grasp things, Nona." The words were feeble, -but they were the first that came. - -"I'm afraid I don't, mother." - -"Then, perhaps--I just suggest it--you oughtn't to be quite so ready to -criticize. You seem to imagine there is a contradiction in my belonging -to these two groups of ... of thought..." - -"They do seem to contradict each other." - -"Not in reality. The principles are different, of course; but, you see, -they are meant to apply to--to different categories of people. It's all -a little difficult to explain to any one as young as you are ... a -girl naturally can't be expected to know..." - -"Oh, what we girls don't know, mother!" - -"Well, dear, I've always approved of outspokenness on such matters. The -real nastiness is in covering things up. But all the same, age and -experience _do_ teach one... You children mustn't hope to get at all -your elders' reasons..." That sounded firm yet friendly, and as she -spoke she felt herself on safer ground. "I wish there were time to go -into it all with you now; but if I'm to keep up with today's -engagements, and crowd in a talk with Lita besides--Maisie! Will you -call up Mrs. Jim?" - -Maisie answered from the other room: "The delegation of the League For -Discovering Genius is waiting downstairs, Mrs. Manford--" - -"Oh, to be sure! This is rather an important movement, Nona; a new -thing. I do believe there's something helpful to be done for genius. -They're just organizing their first drive: I heard of it through that -wonderful Mrs. Swoffer. You wouldn't care to come down and see the -delegation with me? No ... I sometimes think you'd be happier if you -interested yourself a little more in other people ... in all the big -humanitarian movements that make one so proud to be an American. Don't -you think it's glorious to belong to the only country where everybody is -absolutely free, and yet we're all made to do exactly what is best for -us? I say that somewhere in my speech... Well, I promise to have my -talk with Lita before dinner; whatever happens, I'll squeeze her in. And -you and Jim needn't be afraid of my saying anything to set her against -us. Your father has impressed that on me already. After all, I've always -preached the respect of every one's personality; only Lita must begin by -respecting Jim's." - - -Fresh from a stimulating encounter with Mrs. Swoffer and the encouragers -of genius, Pauline was able to face with a smiling composure her meeting -with her daughter-in-law. Every contact with the humanitarian movements -distinguishing her native country from the selfish _laissez faire_ and -cynical indifference of Europe filled her with a new optimism, and shed -a reassuring light on all her private cares. America really seemed to -have an immediate answer for everything, from the treatment of the -mentally deficient to the elucidation of the profoundest religious -mysteries. In such an atmosphere of universal simplification, how could -one's personal problems not be solved? "The great thing is to believe -that they _will_ be," as Mrs. Swoffer said, à propos of the finding of -funds for the new League For Discovering Genius. The remark was so -stimulating to Pauline that she immediately drew a large cheque, and -accepted the chairmanship of the committee; and it was on the favouring -breeze of the League's applause that she sailed, at the tea-hour, into -Lita's boudoir. - -"It seems simpler just to ask her for a cup of tea--as if I were -dropping in to see the baby," Pauline had reflected; and as Lita was not -yet at home, there was time to turn her pretext into a reality. -Upstairs, in the blue and silver nursery, her sharp eye detected many -small negligences under the artistic surface: soiled towels lying about, -a half-empty glass of milk with a drowned fly in it, dead and decaying -flowers in the æsthetic flowerpots, and not a single ventilator open in -the upper window-panes. She made a mental note of these items, but -resolved not to touch on them in her talk with Lita. At Cedarledge, -where the nurse would be under her own eye, nursery hygiene could be -more tactfully imparted... - -The black boudoir was still empty when Pauline returned to it, but she -was armed with patience, and sat down to wait. The armchairs were much -too low to be comfortable and she hated the semi-obscurity of the veiled -lamps. How could one possibly occupy one's time in a pitch-dark room -with seats that one had to sprawl in as if they were deck-chairs? She -thought the room so ugly and dreary that she could hardly blame Lita for -wanting to do it over. "I'll give her a cheque for it at once," she -reflected indulgently. "All young people begin by making mistakes of -this kind." She remembered with a little shiver the set of imitation -tapestry armchairs that she had insisted on buying for her drawing-room -when she had married Wyant. Perhaps it would be a good move to greet -Lita with the offer of the cheque... - -Somehow Lita's appearance, when she at length arrived, made the idea -seem less happy. Lita had a way of looking as if she didn't much care -what one did to please her; for a young woman who spent so much money -she made very little effort to cajole it out of her benefactors. -"Hullo," she said; "I didn't know you were here. Am I late, I wonder?" - -Pauline greeted her with a light kiss. "How can you ever tell if you -are? I don't believe there's a clock in the house." - -"Yes, there is; in the nursery," said Lita. - -"Well, my dear, that one's stopped," rejoined her mother-in-law, -smiling. - -"You've been seeing the boy? Oh, then you haven't missed me," Lita -smiled back as she loosened her furs and tossed off her hat. She ran her -hands through her goldfish-coloured hair, and flung herself down on a -pile of cushions. "Tea's coming sooner or later, I suppose. Unless--a -cocktail? No? Wouldn't you be more comfortable on the floor?" she -suggested to her mother-in-law. - -Every whalebone in Pauline's perfectly fitting elastic girdle contracted -apprehensively. "Thank you; I'm very well here." She assumed as willowy -an attitude as the treacherous seat permitted, and added: "I'm so glad -to have the chance of a little talk. In this rushing life we all tend to -lose sight of each other, don't we? But I hear about you so constantly -from Nona that I feel we're very close even when we don't meet. Nona's -devoted to you--we all are." - -"That's awfully sweet of you," said Lita with her air of radiant -indifference. - -"Well, my dear, we hope you reciprocate," Pauline sparkled, stretching a -maternal hand to the young shoulder at her knee. - -Lita slanted her head backward with a slight laugh. Mrs. Manford had -never thought her pretty, but today the mere freshness of her parted -lips, their rosy lining, the unspoilt curves of her cheek and long white -throat, stung the older woman to reluctant admiration. - -"Am I expected to be devoted to you _all_?" Lita questioned. - -"No, dear; only to Jim." - -"Oh--" said Jim's wife, her smile contracting to a faint grimace. - -Pauline leaned forward earnestly. "I won't pretend not to know something -of what's been happening. I came here today to talk things over with -you, quietly and affectionately--like an older sister. Try not to think -of me as a mother-in-law!" - -Lita's slim eyebrows went up ironically. "Oh, I'm not afraid of -mothers-in-law; they're not as permanent as they used to be." - -Pauline took a quick breath; she caught the impertinence under the -banter, but she called her famous tact to the rescue. - -"I'm glad you're not afraid of me, because I want you to tell me -perfectly frankly what it is that's bothering you ... you and Jim..." - -"Nothing is bothering me particularly; but I suppose I'm bothering Jim," -said Lita lightly. - -"You're doing more than that, dear; you're making him desperately -unhappy. This talk of wanting to separate--" - -Lita rose on her elbow among the cushions, and levelled her eyes on Mrs. -Manford. They looked as clear and shallow as the most expensive topazes. - -"Separations are idiotic. What I want is a hundred per cent New York -divorce. And he could let me have it just as easily..." - -"Lita! You don't know how wretched it makes me to hear you say such -things." - -"Does it? Sorry! But it's Jim's own fault. Heaps of other girls would -jump at him if he was free. And if I'm bored, what's the use of trying -to keep me? What on earth can we do about it, either of us? You can't -take out an insurance against boredom." - -"But why should you be bored? With everything on earth..." Pauline -waved a hand at the circumjacent luxuries. - -"Well; that's it, I suppose. Always the same old everything!" - -The mother-in-law softened her voice to murmur temptingly: "Of course, -if it's this house you're tired of... Nona told me something about -your wanting to redecorate some of the rooms; and I can understand, for -instance, that this one..." - -"Oh, this is the only one I don't utterly loathe. But I'm not divorcing -Jim on account of the house," Lita answered, with a faint smile which -seemed perverse to Pauline. - -"Then what is the reason? I don't understand." - -"I'm not much good at reasons. I want a new deal, that's all." - -Pauline struggled against her rising indignation. To sit and hear this -chit of a Cliffe girl speak of husband and home as if it were a matter -of course to discard them like last year's fashions! But she was -determined not to allow her feelings to master her. "If you had only -yourself to think of, what should you do?" she asked. - -"Do? Be myself, I suppose! I can't be, here. I'm a sort of all-round -fake. I--" - -"We none of us want you to be that--Jim least of all. He wants you to -feel perfectly free to express your personality." - -"Here--in this house?" Her contemptuous gesture seemed to tumble it down -like a pack of cards. "And looking at him across the dinner-table every -night of my life?" - -Pauline paused; then she said gently: "And can you face giving up your -baby?" - -"Baby? Why should I? You don't suppose I'd ever give up my baby?" - -"Then you mean to ask Jim to give up his wife and child, and to assume -all the blame as well?" - -"Oh, dear, no. Where's the blame? I don't see any! All I want is a new -deal," repeated Lita doggedly. - -"My dear, I'm sure you don't know what you're saying. Your husband has -the misfortune to be passionately in love with you. The divorce you talk -of so lightly would nearly kill him. Even if he doesn't interest you any -longer, he did once. Oughtn't you to take that into account?" - -Lita seemed to ponder. Then she said: "But oughtn't he to take into -account that he doesn't interest me any longer?" - -Pauline made a final effort at self-control. "Yes, dear; if it's really -so. But if he goes away for a time... You know he's to have a long -holiday soon, and my husband has arranged to have him go down with Mr. -Wyant to the island. All I ask is that you shouldn't decide anything -till he comes back. See how you feel about him when he's been away for -two or three weeks. Perhaps you've been too much together--perhaps New -York has got too much on both your nerves. At any rate, do let him go -off on his holiday without the heartbreak of feeling it's good-bye... -My husband begs you to do this. You know he loves Jim as if he were his -son--" - -Lita was still leaning on her elbow. "Well--isn't he?" she said in her -cool silvery voice, with innocently widened eyes. - -For an instant the significance of the retort escaped Pauline. When it -reached her she felt as humiliated as if she had been caught concealing -a guilty secret. She opened her lips, but no sound came from them. She -sat wordless, torn between the desire to box her daughter-in-law's ears, -and to rush in tears from the house. - -"Lita ..." she gasped ... "this insult..." - -Lita sat up, her eyes full of a slightly humorous compunction. "Oh, no! -An insult! Why? I've always thought it would be so wonderful to have a -love-child. I supposed that was why you both worshipped Jim. And now he -isn't even that!" She shrugged her slim shoulders, and held her hands -out penitently. "I _am_ sorry to have said the wrong thing--honestly I am! -But it just shows we can never understand each other. For me the real -wickedness is to go on living with a man you don't love. And now I've -offended you by supposing you once felt in the same way yourself..." - -Pauline slowly rose to her feet: she felt stiff and shrunken. "You -haven't offended me--I'm not going to allow myself to be offended. I'd -rather think we don't understand each other, as you say. But surely it's -not too late to try. I don't want to discuss things with you; I don't -want to nag or argue; I only want you to wait, to come with the baby to -Cedarledge, and spend a few quiet weeks with us. Nona will be there, and -my husband ... there'll be no reproaches, no questions ... but we'll -do our best to make you happy..." - -Lita, with her funny twisted smile, moved toward her mother-in-law. -"Why, you're actually crying! I don't believe you do that often, do -you?" She bent forward and put a light kiss on Pauline's shrinking -cheek. "All right--I'll come to Cedarledge. I am dead-beat and fed-up, -and I daresay it'll do me a lot of good to lie up for a while..." - -Pauline, for a moment, made no answer: she merely laid her lips on the -girl's cheek, a little timidly, as if it had been made of something -excessively thin and brittle. - -"We shall all be very glad," she said. - - -On the doorstep, in the motor, she continued to move in the resonance of -the outrageous question: "_Well_--_isn't he_?" The violence of her recoil -left her wondering what use there was in trying to patch up a bond -founded on such a notion of marriage. Would not Jim, as his wife so -lightly suggested, run more chance of happiness if he could choose -again? Surely there must still be some decent right-minded girls brought -up in the old way ... like Aggie Heuston, say! But Pauline's -imagination shivered away from that too... Perhaps, after all, her own -principles were really obsolete to her children. Only, what was to take -their place? Human nature had not changed as fast as social usage, and -if Jim's wife left him nothing could prevent his suffering in the same -old way. - -It was all very baffling and disturbing, and Pauline did not feel as -sure as she usually did that the question could be disposed of by -ignoring it. Still, on the drive home her thoughts cleared as she -reflected that she had gained her main point--for the time, at any rate. -Manford had enjoined her not to estrange or frighten Lita, and the two -women had parted with a kiss. Manford had insisted that Lita should be -induced to take no final decision till after her stay at Cedarledge; and -to this also she had acquiesced. Pauline, on looking back, began to be -struck by the promptness of Lita's surrender, and correspondingly -impressed by her own skill in manœuvring. There _was_ something, after -all, in these exercises of the will, these smiling resolves to ignore or -dominate whatever was obstructive or unpleasant! She had gained with an -almost startling ease the point which Jim and Manford and Nona had -vainly struggled for. And perhaps Lita's horrid insinuation had not been -a voluntary impertinence, but merely the unconscious avowal of new -standards. The young people nowadays, for all their long words and -scientific realism, were really more like children than ever... - -In Pauline's boudoir, Nona, curled up on the hearth, her chin in her -hands, raised her head at her mother's approach. To Pauline the -knowledge that she was awaited, and that she brought with her the secret -of defeat or victory, gave back the healing sense of authority. - -"It's all right, darling," she announced; "just a little summer shower; -I always told you there was nothing to worry about." And she added with -a smile: "You see, Nona, some people _do_ still listen when your old -mother talks to them." - - - - -XIX - - -IF only Aggie Heuston had changed those sour-apple curtains in the front -drawing-room, Nona thought--if she had substituted deep upholstered -armchairs for the hostile gilt seats, and put books in the marqueterie -cabinets in place of blue china dogs and Dresden shepherdesses, -everything in three lives might have been different... - -But Aggie had probably never noticed the colour of the curtains or the -angularity of the furniture. She had certainly never missed the books. -She had accepted the house as it came to her from her parents, who in -turn had taken it over, in all its dreary frivolity, from their father -and mother. It embodied the New York luxury of the 'seventies in every -ponderous detail, from the huge cabbage roses of the Aubusson carpet to -the triple layer of curtains designed to protect the aristocracy of the -brown-stone age from the plebeian intrusion of light and air. - -"Funny," Nona thought again--"that all this ugliness should prick me -like nettles, and matter no more to Aggie than if it were in the next -street. She's a saint, I know. But what I want to find is a saint who -hates ugly furniture, and yet lives among it with a smile. What's the -merit, if you never see it?" She addressed herself to a closer -inspection of one of the cabinets, in which Aggie's filial piety had -preserved her mother's velvet and silver spectacle-case, and her -father's ivory opera-glasses, in combination with an alabaster Leaning -Tower and a miniature copy of Carlo Dolci's Magdalen. - -Queer dead rubbish--but queerer still that, at that moment and in that -house, Nona's uncanny detachment should permit her to smile at it! Where -indeed--she wondered again--did one's own personality end, and that of -others, of people, landscapes, chairs or spectacle-cases, begin? Ever -since she had received, the night before, Aggie's stiff and agonized -little note, which might have been composed by a child with a -tooth-ache, Nona had been apprehensively asking herself if her -personality didn't even include certain shreds and fibres of Aggie. It -was all such an inextricable tangle... - -Here she came. Nona heard the dry click of her steps on the stairs and -across the polished bareness of the hall. She had written: "If you could -make it perfectly convenient to call--" Aggie's nearest approach to a -friendly summons! And as she opened the door, and advanced over the -cabbage roses, Nona saw that her narrow face, with the eyes too close -together, and the large pale pink mouth with straight edges, was -sharpened by a new distress. - -"It's very kind of you to come, Nona--" she began in her clear -painstaking voice. - -"Oh, nonsense, Aggie! Do drop all that. Of course I know what it's -about." - -Aggie turned noticeably paler; but her training as a hostess prevailing -over her emotion, she pushed forward a gilt chair. "Do sit down." She -placed herself in an adjoining sofa corner. Overhead, Aggie's -grandmother, in a voluted gilt frame, held a Brussels lace handkerchief -in her hand, and leaned one ruffled elbow on a velvet table-cover -fringed with knobby tassels. - -"You say you know--" Aggie began. - -"Of course." - -"Stanley--he's told you?" - -Nona's nerves were beginning to jump and squirm like a bundle of young -vipers. Was she going to be able to stand much more of these paralyzing -preliminaries? - -"Oh, yes: he's told me." - -Aggie dropped her lids and stared down at her narrow white hands. Then a -premonitory twitch ran along her lips and drew her forehead into little -wrinkles of perplexity. - -"I don't want you to think I've any cause of complaint against -Stanley--none whatever. There has never been a single unkind word... -We've always lived together on the most perfect terms..." - -Feeling that some form of response was required of her, Nona emitted a -vague murmur. - -"Only now--he's--he's left me," Aggie concluded, the words wrung out of -her in laboured syllables. She raised one hand and smoothed back a flat -strand of hair which had strayed across her forehead. - -Nona was silent. She sat with her eyes fixed on that small twitching -mask--real face it could hardly be called, since it had probably never -before been suffered to express any emotion that was radically and -peculiarly Aggie's. - -"You knew that too?" Aggie continued, in a studiously objective tone. - -Nona made a sign of assent. - -"He has nothing to reproach me with--nothing whatever. He expressly told -me so." - -"Yes; I know. That's the worst of it." - -"The worst of it?" - -"Why, if he had, you might have had a good row that would have cleared -the air." - -Suddenly Nona felt Aggie's eyes fixed on her with a hungry penetrating -stare. "Did you and he use to have good rows, as you call it?" - -"Oh, by the hour--whenever we met!" Nona, for the life of her, could not -subdue the mocking triumph in her voice. - -Aggie's lips narrowed. "You've been very great friends, I know; he's -often told me so. But if you were always quarrelling how could you -continue to respect each other?" - -"I don't know that we did. At any rate, there was no time to think about -it; because there was always the making-up, you see." - -"The making-up?" - -"Aggie," Nona burst out abruptly, "have you never known what it was to -have a man give you a jolly good hug, and feel full enough of happiness -to scent a whole garden with it?" - -Aggie lifted her lids on a glance which was almost one of terror. The -image Nona had used seemed to convey nothing to her, but the question -evidently struck her with a deadly force. - -"A man--what man?" - -Nona laughed. "Well, for the sake of argument--Stanley!" - -"I can't imagine why you ask such queer questions, Nona. How could we -make up when we never quarrelled?" - -"Is it queer to ask you if you ever loved your husband?" - -"It's queer of you to ask it," said the wife simply. Nona's swift retort -died unspoken, and she felt one of her slow secret blushes creeping up -to the roots of her hair. - -"I'm sorry, Aggie. I'm horribly nervous--and I suppose you are. Hadn't -we better start fresh? What was it you wanted to see me about?" - -Aggie was silent for a moment, as if gathering up all her strength; then -she answered: "To tell you that if he wants to marry you I shan't oppose -a divorce any longer." - -"Aggie!" - -The two sat silent, opposite each other, as if they had reached a point -beyond which words could not carry their communion. Nona's mind, racing -forward, touched the extreme limit of human bliss, and then crawled back -from it bowed and broken-winged. - -"But _only_ on that condition," Aggie began again, with deliberate -emphasis. - -"On condition--that he marries me?" - -Aggie made a motion of assent. "I have a right to impose my conditions. -And what I want is"--she faltered suddenly--"what I want is that you -should save him from Cleo Merrick..." Her level voice broke and two -tears forced their way through her lashes and fell slowly down her -cheeks. - -"Save him from Cleo Merrick?" Nona fancied she heard herself laugh. Her -thoughts seemed to drag after her words as if she were labouring up hill -through a ploughed field. "Isn't it rather late in the day to make that -attempt? You say he's already gone off with her." - -"He's joined her somewhere--I don't know where. He wrote from his club -before leaving. But I know they don't sail till the day after tomorrow; -and you must get him back, Nona, you must save him. It's too awful. He -can't marry her; she has a husband somewhere who refuses to divorce -her." - -"Like you and Stanley!" - -Aggie drew back as if she had been struck. "Oh, no, no!" She looked -despairingly at Nona. "When I tell you I don't refuse now..." - -"Well, perhaps Cleo Merrick's husband may not, either." - -"It's different. He's a Catholic, and his church won't let him divorce. -And it can't be annulled. Stanley's just going to live with her ... -openly ... and she'll go everywhere with him ... exactly as if they -were husband and wife ... and everybody will know that they're not." - -Nona sat silent, considering with set lips and ironic mind the picture -thus pitilessly evoked. "Well, if she loves him..." - -"Loves him? A woman like that!" - -"She's been willing to make a sacrifice for him, at any rate. That's -where she has a pull over both of us." - -"But don't you see how awful it is for them to be living together in -that way?" - -"I see it's the best thing that could happen to Stanley to have found a -woman plucky enough to give him the thing he wanted--the thing you and I -both refused him." - -She saw Aggie's lifeless cheek redden. "I don't know what you mean by ... -refusing..." - -"I mean his happiness--that's all! You refused to divorce him, didn't -you? And I refused to do--what Cleo Merrick's doing. And here we both -are, sitting on the ruins; and that's the end of it, as far as you and I -are concerned." - -"But it's not the end--it's not too late. I tell you it's not too late! -He'll leave her even now if you ask him to ... I know he will!" - -Nona stood up with a dry laugh. "Thank you, Aggie. Perhaps he -would--only we shall never find out." - -"Never find out? When I keep telling you--" - -"Because even if I've been a coward that's no reason why I should be a -cad." Nona was buttoning her coat and clasping her fur about her neck -with quick precise movements, as if wrapping herself close against the -treacherous sweetness that was beginning to creep into her veins. -Suddenly she felt she could not remain a moment longer in that stifling -room, face to face with that stifling misery. - -"The better woman's got him--let her keep him," she said. - -She put out her hand, and for a moment Aggie's cold damp fingers lay in -hers. Then they were pulled away, and Aggie caught Nona by the sleeve. -"But Nona, listen! I don't understand you. Isn't it what you've always -wanted?" - -"Oh, more than anything in life!" the girl cried, turning breathlessly -away. - -The outer door swung shut on her, and on the steps she stood still and -looked back at the ruins on which she had pictured herself sitting with -Aggie Heuston. - -"I do believe," she murmured to herself, "I know most of the new ways of -being rotten; I only wish I was sure I knew the best new way of being -decent..." - - - - -_BOOK III_ - - - - -XX - - -AT the gates of Cedarledge Pauline lifted her head from a last hurried -study of the letters and papers Maisie Bruss had thrust into the motor. - -The departure from town had been tumultuous. Up to the last minute there -had been the usual rush and trepidation, Maisie hanging on the -footboard, Powder and the maid hurrying down with final messages and -recommendations. - -"Here's another batch of bills passed by the architect, Mrs. Manford. -And he asks if you'd mind--" - -"Yes, yes; draw another cheque for five thousand, Maisie, and send it to -me with the others to be signed." - -"And the estimates for the new orchid-house. The contractor says -building-materials are going up again next week, and he can't guarantee, -unless you telephone at once--" - -"Has madame the jewel-box? I put it under the rug myself, with madame's -motor-bag." - -"Thank you, Cécile. Yes, it's here." - -"And is the Maison Herminie to deliver the green and gold teagown here -or--" - -"Here are the proofs of the Birth Control speech, Mrs. Manford. If you -could just glance over them in the motor, and let me have them back -tonight--" - -"The Marchesa, madam, has called up to ask if you and Mr. Manford can -receive her at Cedarledge for the next week-end--" - -"No, Powder; say no. I'm dreadfully sorry..." - -"Very good, madam. I understand it was to bring a favourable answer from -the Cardinal--" - -"Oh; very well. I'll see. I'll telephone from Cedarledge." - -"Please, madam, Mr. Wyant's just telephoned--" - -"Mr. Wyant, Powder?" - -"Mr. Arthur Wyant, madam. To ask--" - -"But Mr. Wyant and Mr. James were to have started for Georgia last -night." - -"Yes, madam; but Mr. James was detained by business, and now Mr. Arthur -Wyant asks if you'll please ring up before they leave tonight." - -"Very well. (What can have happened, Nona? You don't know?) Say I've -started for Cedarledge, Powder; I'll ring up from there. Yes; that's -all." - -"Mrs. Manford, wait! Here are two more telegrams, and a special--" - -"Take care, Maisie; you'll slip and break your leg..." - -"Yes; but Mrs. Manford! The special is from Mrs. Swoffer. She says the -committee have just discovered a new genius, and they're calling an -emergency meeting for tomorrow afternoon at three, and couldn't you -possibly--" - -"No, no, Maisie--I can't! Say I've _left_--" - - -The waves of agitation were slow in subsiding. A glimpse, down a side -street, of the Marchesa's cheap boarding-house-hotel, revived them; and -so did the flash past the inscrutable "Dawnside," aloof on its height -above the Hudson. But as the motor slid over the wide suburban -Boulevards, and out into the budding country, with the roar and menace -of the city fading harmlessly away on the horizon, Pauline's serenity -gradually stole back. - -Nona, at her side, sat silent; and the mother was grateful for that -silence. She had noticed that the girl had looked pale and drawn for the -last fortnight; but that was just another proof of how much they all -needed the quiet of Cedarledge. - -"You don't know why Jim and his father have put off starting, Nona?" - -"No idea, mother. Probably business of Jim's, as Powder said." - -"Do you know why his father wants to telephone me?" - -"Not a bit. Probably it's not important. I'll call up this evening." - -"Oh, if you would, dear! I'm really tired." - -There was a pause, and then Nona questioned: "Have you noticed Maisie, -mother? She's pretty tired too." - -"Yes; poor Maisie! Preparing Cedarledge has been rather a rush for her, -I'm afraid--" - -"It's not only that. She's just been told that her mother has a cancer." - -"Oh, poor child! How dreadful! She never said a word to me--" - -"No, she wouldn't." - -"But, Nona, have you told her to see Disterman _at once_? Perhaps an -immediate operation ... you must call her up as soon as we arrive. -Tell her, of course, that I'll bear all the expenses--" - -After that they both relapsed into silence. - -These domestic tragedies happened now and then. One would have given the -world to avert them; but when one couldn't one was always ready to foot -the bill... Pauline wished that she had known ... had had time to -say a kindly word to poor Maisie... Perhaps she would have to give her -a week off; or at least a couple of days, while she settled her mother -in the hospital. At least, if Disterman advised an operation... - -It was dreadful, how rushed one always was. Pauline would have liked to -go and see poor Mrs. Bruss herself. But there were Dexter and Lita and -the baby all arriving the day after tomorrow, and only just time to put -the last touches to Cedarledge before they came. And Pauline herself was -desperately tired, though she had taken a "triple treatment" from Alvah -Loft ($100) that very morning. - -She always meant to be kind to every one dependent on her; it was only -time that lacked--always time! Dependents and all, they were swept away -with her in the same ceaseless rush. When now and then one of them -dropped by the way she was sorry, and sent back first aid, and did all -she could; but the rush never stopped; it couldn't stop; when one did a -kindness one could only fling it at its object and whirl by. - -The blessèd peace of the country! Pauline drew a deep breath of -content. Never before had she approached Cedarledge with so complete a -sense of possessorship. The place was really of her own making, for -though the house had been built and the grounds laid out years before -she had acquired the property, she had stamped her will and her wealth -on every feature. Pauline was persuaded that she was fond of the -country--but what she was really fond of was doing things to the -country, and owning, with this object, as many acres of it as possible. -And so it had come about that every year the Cedarledge estate had -pushed the encircling landscape farther back, and substituted for its -miles of golden-rod and birch and maple more acres of glossy lawn, and -more specimen limes and oaks and cut-leaved beeches, domed over more and -more windings of expensive shrubbery. - -From the farthest gate it was now a drive of two miles to the house, and -Pauline found even this too short for her minutely detailed appreciation -of what lay between her and her threshold. In the village, the glint of -the gilt weathercock on the new half-timbered engine-house; under a rich -slope of pasture-land the recently enlarged dairy-farm; then woods of -hemlock and dogwood; acres of rhododendron, azalea and mountain laurel -acclimatized about a hidden lake; a glimpse of Japanese water-gardens -fringed with cherry bloom and catkins; open lawns, spreading trees, the -long brick house-front and its terraces, and through a sculptured -archway the Dutch garden with dwarf topiary work and endless files of -bulbs about the commander's baton of a stately sundial. - -To Pauline each tree, shrub, water-course, herbaceous border, meant not -only itself, but the surveying of grades, transporting of soil, -tunnelling for drainage, conducting of water, the business -correspondence and paying of bills, which had preceded its existence; -and she would have cared for it far less--perhaps not at all--had it -sprung into being unassisted, like the random shadbushes and wild cherry -trees beyond the gates. - -The faint spring loveliness reached her somehow, in long washes of pale -green, and the blurred mauve of budding vegetation; but her eyes could -not linger on any particular beauty without its dissolving into soil, -manure, nurserymen's catalogues, and bills again--bills. It had all cost -a terrible lot of money; but she was proud of that too--to her it was -part of the beauty, part of the exquisite order and suitability which -reigned as much in the simulated wildness of the rhododendron glen as in -the geometrical lines of the Dutch garden. - -"Seventy-five thousand bulbs this year!" she thought, as the motor swept -by the sculptured gateway, just giving and withdrawing a flash of turf -sheeted with amber and lilac, in a setting of twisted and scalloped -evergreens. - -Twenty-five thousand more bulbs than last year ... that was how she -liked it to be. It was exhilarating to spend more money each year, to be -always enlarging and improving, in small ways as well as great, to face -unexpected demands with promptness and energy, beat down exorbitant -charges, struggle through difficult moments, and come out at the end of -the year tired but victorious, with improvements made, bills paid, and a -reassuring balance in the bank. To Pauline that was "life." - -And how her expenditure at Cedarledge was justifying itself! Her -husband, drawn by its fresh loveliness, had voluntarily given up his -annual trip to California, the excitement of tarpon-fishing, the -independence of bachelorhood--all to spend a quiet month in the country -with his wife and children. Pauline felt that even the twenty-five -thousand additional bulbs had had a part in shaping his decision. And -what would he say when he saw the new bathrooms, assisted at the village -fire-drill, and plunged into the artificially warmed waters of the new -swimming pool? A mist of happiness rose to her eyes as she looked out on -the spring-misted landscape. - - -Nona had not followed her mother into the house. Her dogs at her heels, -she plunged down hill to the woods and lake. She knew nothing of what -Cedarledge had cost, but little of the labour of its making. It was -simply the world of her childhood, and she could see it from no other -angle, nor imagine it as ever having been different. To her it had -always worn the same enchantment, stretched to the same remote -distances. At nineteen it was almost the last illusion she had left. - -In the path by the lake she felt herself drawn back under the old spell. -Those budding branches, the smell of black peaty soil quivering with -life, the woodlands faintly starred with dogwood, all were the setting -of childish adventures, old games with Jim, Indian camps on the -willow-fringed island, and innocent descents among the rhododendrons to -boat or bathe by moonlight. - -The old skiff had escaped Mrs. Manford's annual "doing-up" and still -leaked through the same rusty seams. Pushing out upon the lake, Nona -leaned on the oars and let the great mockery of the spring dilate her -heart... - - -Manford questioned: "All right, eh? Warm enough? Not going too fast? The -air's still sharp up here in the hills;" and Lita settled down beside -him into one of the deep silences that enfolded her as softly as her -furs. By turning his head a little he could just see the tip of her nose -and the curve of her upper lip between hat-brim and silver fox; and the -sense of her, so close and so still, sunk in that warm animal hush which -he always found so restful, dispelled his last uneasiness, and made her -presence at his side seem as safe and natural as his own daughter's. - -"Just as well you sent the boy by train, though--I foresaw I'd get off -too late to suit the young gentleman's hours." - -She curled down more deeply at his side, with a contented laugh. - -Manford, intent on the steering wheel, restrained the impulse to lay a -hand over hers, and kept his profile steadily turned to her. It was -wonderful, how successfully his plan was working out ... how -reasonable she'd been about it in the end. Poor child! No doubt she -would always be reasonable with people who knew how to treat her. And he -flattered himself that he did. It hadn't been easy, just at first--but -now he'd struck the right note and meant to hold it. Not paternal, -exactly: she would have been the first to laugh at anything as -old-fashioned as that. Heavy fathers had gone out with the rest of the -_tremolo_ effects. No; but elder brotherly. That was it. The same free and -friendly relation which existed, say, between Jim and Nona. Why, he had -actually tried chaffing Lita, and she hadn't minded--he had made fun of -that ridiculous Ardwin, and she had just laughed and shrugged. That -little shrug--when her white shoulder, as the dress slipped from it, -seemed to be pushing up into a wing! There was something birdlike and -floating in all her motions... Poor child, poor little girl... He -really felt like her elder brother; and his looking-glass told him that -he didn't look much too old for the part... - -The sense of having just grazed something dark and lurid, which had -threatened to submerge them, gave him an added feeling of security, a -holiday feeling, as if life stretched before him as safe and open as his -coming fortnight at Cedarledge. How glad he was that he had given up his -tarpon-fishing, managed to pack Jim and Wyant off to Georgia, and -secured this peaceful interval in which to look about him and take stock -of things before the grind began again! - -The day before yesterday--just after Pauline's departure--it had seemed -as if all their plans would be wrecked by one of Wyant's fits of -crankiness. Wyant always enjoyed changing his mind after every one -else's was made up; and at the last moment he had telephoned to say that -he wasn't well enough to go south. He had rung up Pauline first, and -being told that she had left had communicated with Jim; and Jim, -distracted, had appealed to Manford. It was one of his father's usual -attacks of "nervousness"; cousin Eleanor had seen it coming, and tried -to cut down the whiskies-and-sodas; finally Jim begged Manford to drop -in and reason with his predecessor. - -These visits always produced a profound impression on Wyant; Manford -himself, for all his professional acuteness, couldn't quite measure the -degree or guess the nature of the effect, but he felt his power, and -preserved it by seeing Wyant as seldom as possible. This time, however, -it seemed as if things might not go as smoothly as usual. Wyant, who -looked gaunt and excited, tried to carry off the encounter with the -jauntiness he always assumed in Manford's presence. "My dear fellow! Sit -down, do. Cigar? Always delighted to see my successor. Any little hints -I can give about the management of the concern--" - -It was his usual note, but exaggerated, overemphasized, lacking the -Wyant touch--and he had gone on: "Though why the man who has failed -should offer advice to the man who has succeeded, I don't know. Well, in -this case it's about Jim... Yes, you're as fond of Jim as I am, I -know... Still, he's _my_ son, eh? Well, I'm not satisfied that it's a -good thing to take him away from his wife at this particular moment. -Know I'm old-fashioned, of course ... all the musty old traditions -have been superseded. You and your set have seen to that--introduced the -breezy code of the prairies... But my son's my son; he wasn't brought -up in the new way, and, damn it all, Manford, you understand; well, -no--I suppose there are some things you never _will_ understand, no matter -how devilish clever you are, and how many millions you've made." - -The apple-cart had been near upsetting; but if Manford didn't understand -poor Wyant's social code he did know how to keep his temper when it was -worth while, and how to talk to a weak overexcited man who had been -drinking too hard, and who took no exercise. - -"Worried about Jim, eh? Yes--I don't wonder. I am too. Fact is, Jim's -worked himself to a standstill, and I feel partly responsible for it, -for I put him onto that job at the bank, and he's been doing it too -well--overdoing it. That's the whole trouble, and that's why I feel -responsible to you all for getting him away as soon as possible, and -letting him have a complete holiday... Jim's young--a fortnight off -will straighten him out. But you're the only person who can get him away -from his wife and baby, and wherever Lita is there'll be jazz and -nonsense, and bills and bothers; that's why his mother and I have -offered to take the lady on for a while, and give him his chance. As man -to man, Wyant, I think we two ought to stand together and see this thing -through. If we do, I guarantee everything will come out right. Do you -good too--being off like that with your boy, in a good climate, loafing -on the beach and watching Jim recuperate. Wish I could run down and join -you--and I don't say I won't make a dash for it, just for a week-end, if -I can break away from the family. A-1 fishing at the island--and I know -you used to be a great fisherman. As for Lita, she'll be safe enough -with Pauline and Nona." - -The trick was done. - -But why think of it as a trick, when at the time he had meant every word -he spoke? Jim _was_ dead-beat--_did_ need a change--and yet could only have -been got away on the pretext of having to take his father south. Queer, -how in some inner fold of one's conscience a collection of truths could -suddenly seem to look like a tissue of lies! ... Lord, but what morbid -rubbish! Manford was on his honour to make the whole thing turn out as -true as it sounded, and he was going to. And there was an end of it. And -here was Cedarledge. The drive hadn't lasted a minute... - -How lovely the place looked in the twilight, a haze of tender tints -melting into shadow, the long dark house-front already gemmed with -orange panes! - -"You'll like it, won't you, Lita?" A purr of content at his elbow. - -If only Pauline would have the sense to leave him alone, let him enjoy -it all in Lita's lazy inarticulate way, not cram him with statistics and -achievements, with expenditures and results. He was so tired of her -perpetual stock-taking, her perpetual rendering of accounts and -reckoning up of interest. He admired it all, of course--he admired -Pauline herself more than ever. But he longed to let himself sink into -the spring sweetness as a man might sink on a woman's breast, and just -feel her quiet hands in his hair. - -"There's the dogwood! Look! Never seen it in bloom here before, have -you? It's one of our sights." He had counted a good deal on the effect -of the dogwood. "Well, here we are--Jove, but it's good to be here! Why, -child, I believe you've been asleep..." He lifted her, still -half-drowsing, from the motor-- - -And now, the illuminated threshold, Powder, the footmen, the inevitable -stack of letters--and Pauline. - -But outside the spring dusk was secretly weaving its velvet spell. He -said to himself: "Shouldn't wonder if I slept ten hours at a stretch -tonight." - - - - -XXI - - -THE last day before her husband's arrival had been exhausting to -Pauline; but she could not deny that the results were worth the effort. -When had she ever before heard Dexter say on such a full note of -satisfaction: "Jove, but it's good to be back! What have you done to -make the place look so jolly?", or seen his smiling glance travel so -observantly about the big hall with its lamps and flowers and blazing -hearth? "Well, Lita, this is better than town, eh? You didn't know what -a good place Cedarledge could be! Don't rush off upstairs--they're -bringing the baby down. Come over to the fire and warm up; it's nipping -here in the hills. Hullo, Nona, you quiet mouse--didn't even see you, -curled up there in your corner..." - -Yes; the arrival had been perfect. Even Lita's kiss had seemed -spontaneous. And Dexter had praised everything, noticed all the -improvements; had voluntarily announced that he meant to inspect the new -heating system and the model chicken hatchery the next morning. -"Wonderful, what a way you have of making things a hundred per cent -better when they seemed all right before! I suppose even the eggs at -breakfast tomorrow will be twice their normal size." - -One such comment paid his wife for all she had done, and roused her -inventive faculty to fresh endeavour. Wasn't there something else she -could devise to provoke his praise? And the beauty of it was that it all -looked as if it had been done so easily. The casual observer would never -have suspected that the simple life at Cedarledge gave its smiling -organizer more trouble than a season of New York balls. - -That also was part of Pauline's satisfaction. She even succeeded in -persuading herself, as she passed through the hall with its piled-up -golf clubs and tennis rackets, its motor coats and capes and scarves -stacked on the long table, and the muddy terriers comfortably rolled up -on chintz-cushioned settles, that it was really all as primitive and -impromptu as it looked, and that she herself had always shared her -husband's passion for stamping about in the mud in tweed and homespun. - -"One of these days," she thought, "we'll give up New York altogether, -and live here all the year round, like an old-fashioned couple, and -Dexter can farm while I run the poultry-yard and dairy." Instantly her -practical imagination outlined the plan of an up-to-date chicken-farm on -a big scale, and calculated the revenues to be drawn from really -scientific methods of cheese and butter-making. Spring broilers, she -knew, were in ever-increasing demand, and there was a great call in -restaurants and hotels for the little foreign-looking cream-cheeses in -silver paper... - - -"The Marchesa has rung up again, madam," Powder reminded her, the second -morning at breakfast. Everybody came down to breakfast at Cedarledge; it -was part of the simple life. But it generally ended in Pauline's -throning alone behind the tea-urn, for her husband and daughter revelled -in unpunctuality when they were on a holiday, and Lita's inability to -appear before luncheon was tacitly taken for granted. - -"The Marchesa?" Pauline was roused from the placid enjoyment of her -new-laid egg and dewy butter. Why was it that one could never completely -protect one's self against bores and bothers? They had done everything -they could for Amalasuntha, and were now discovering that gratitude may -take more troublesome forms than neglect. - -"The Marchesa would like to consult you about the date of the Cardinal's -reception." - -Ah, then it was a fact--it was really settled! A glow of satisfaction -swept away Pauline's indifference, and her sense of fairness obliged her -to admit that, for such a service, Amalasuntha had a right to a Sunday -at Cedarledge. "It will bore her to death to spend two days here alone -with the family; but she will like to be invited, and in the course of -time she'll imagine it was a big house-party," Pauline reflected. - -"Very well, Powder. Please telephone that I shall expect the Marchesa -next Saturday." - -That gave them, at any rate, the inside of a week to themselves. After -six days alone with his women-kind perhaps even Dexter would not be -sorry for a little society; and if so, Pauline, with the Marchesa as a -bait, could easily drum up a country-neighbour dinner. The Toys, she -happened to remember, were to be at the Greystock Country Club over -Easter. She smiled at the thought that this might have made Dexter -decide to give up California for Cedarledge. She was not afraid of Mrs. -Toy any longer, and even recognized that her presence in the -neighbourhood might be useful. Pauline could never wholly believe--at -least not for many hours together--that people could be happy in the -country without all sorts of social alleviations; and six days of quiet -seemed to her measurable only in terms of prehistoric eras. When had her -mind ever had such a perspective to range over? Knowing it could be -shortened at will she sighed contentedly, and decided to devote the -morning to the study of a new refrigerating system she had recently seen -advertised. - -Dexter had not yet made his tour of inspection with her; but that was -hardly surprising. The first morning he had slept late, and lounged -about on the terrace in the balmy sunshine. In the afternoon they had -all motored to Greystock for a round of golf; and today, on coming down -to breakfast, Pauline had learned with surprise that her husband, Nona -and Lita were already off for an early canter, leaving word that they -would breakfast on the road. She did not know whether to marvel most at -Lita's having been coaxed out of bed before breakfast, or at Dexter's -taking to the saddle after so many years. Certainly the Cedarledge air -was wonderfully bracing and rejuvenating; she herself was feeling its -effects. And though she would have liked to show her husband all the -improvements she felt no impatience, but only a quiet satisfaction in -the success of her plans. If they could give Jim back a contented Lita -the object of their holiday would be attained; and in a glow of optimism -she sat down at her writing-table and dashed off a joyful letter to her -son. - -"Dexter is wonderful; he has already coaxed Lita out for a ride before -breakfast... Isn't that a triumph? When you get back you won't know -her... I shouldn't have a worry left if I didn't think Nona is looking -too pale and drawn. I shall persuade her to take a course of -Inspirational treatment as soon as we get back to town. By the way," her -pen ran on, "have you heard the news about Stan Heuston? People say he's -gone to Europe with that dreadful Merrick woman, and that now Aggie will -really have to divorce him... Nona, who has always been such a friend -of Stan's, has of course heard the report, but doesn't seem to know any -more than the rest of us..." - -Nothing amused Arthur Wyant more than to be supplied with such tit-bits -of scandal before they became common property. Pauline couldn't help -feeling that father and son must find the evenings long in their island -bungalow; and in the overflow of her own satisfaction she wanted to do -what she could to cheer them. - - -In spite of her manifold occupations the day seemed long. She had -visited the baby, seen the cook, consulted with Powder about the working -of the new burglar-alarm, gone over the gardens, catalogues in hand, -with the head-gardener, walked down to the dairy and the poultry yard to -say that Mr. Manford would certainly inspect them both the next day, and -called up Maisie Bruss to ask news of her mother, and tell her to -prepare a careful list for the reception to the Cardinal; yet an -astonishing amount of time still remained. It was delightful to be in -the country, to study the working-out of her improvements, and do her -daily exercises with windows open on the fresh hill breezes; but already -her real self was projected forward into complicated plans for the -Cardinal's entertainment. She wondered if it would not be wise to run up -to town the next morning and consult Amalasuntha; and reluctantly -decided that a talk on the telephone would do. - -The talk was long, and on the whole satisfactory; but if Maisie had been -within reach the arrangements for the party would have made more -progress. It was most unlucky that the doctors thought Maisie ought to -stay with her mother till the latter could get a private room at the -hospital. ("A room, of course, Maisie dear; I won't have her in a ward. -Not for the world! Just put it down on your account, please. So glad to -do it!") She really was glad to do all she could; but it was unfortunate -(and no one would feel it more than Maisie) that Mrs. Bruss should have -been taken ill just then. To fill the time, Pauline decided to go for a -walk with the dogs. - -When she returned she found Nona, still in her riding-habit, settled in -a sofa-corner in the library, and deep in a book. - -"Why, child, where did you drop from? I didn't know you were back." - -"The others are not. Lita suddenly took it into her head that it would -be fun to motor over to Greenwich and dine at the Country Club, and so -father got a motor at Greystock and telephoned for one of the grooms to -fetch the horses. It sounded rather jolly, but I was tired, so I came -home. It's nearly full moon, and they'll have a glorious run back." Nona -smiled up at her mother, as if to say that the moon made all the -difference. - -"Oh, but that means dancing, and getting home at all hours! And I -promised Jim to see that Lita kept quiet, and went to bed early. What's -the use of our having persuaded her to come here? Your father ought to -have refused to go." - -"If he had, there were plenty of people lunching at Greystock who would -have taken her on. You know--the cocktail crowd. That's why father -sacrificed himself." - -Pauline reflected. "I see. Your father always has to sacrifice himself. -I suppose there's no use trying to make Lita listen to reason." - -"Not unless one humours her a little. Father sees that. We mustn't let -her get bored here--she won't stay if we do." - -Pauline felt a sudden weariness in all her bones. It was as if the -laboriously built-up edifice of the simple life at Cedarledge had -already crumbled into dust at a kick of Lita's little foot. The -engine-house, the poultry yard, the new burglar-alarm and the heating of -the swimming pool--when would Dexter ever have time to inspect and -admire them, if he was to waste his precious holiday in scouring the -country after Lita? - -"Then I suppose you and I dine alone," Pauline said, turning a pinched -little smile on her daughter. - - - - -XXII - - -WHAT a time of year it was--the freed earth suddenly breaking into life -from every frozen seam! Manford wondered if he had ever before had time -to feel the impetuous loveliness of the American spring. - -In spite of his drive home in the small hours he had started out early -the next morning for a long tramp. Sleep--how could a man sleep with -that April moonlight in his veins? The moon that was everywhere--caught -in pearly puffs on the shadbush branches, scattered in ivory drifts of -wild plum bloom, tipping the grasses of the wayside with pale -pencillings, sheeting the recesses of the woodland with pools of icy -silver. A freezing burning magic, into which a man plunged, and came out -cold and aglow, to find everything about him as unreal and incredible as -himself... - -After the blatant club restaurant, noise, jazz, revolving couples, -Japanese lanterns, screaming laughter, tumultuous good-byes, this white -silence, the long road unwinding and twisting itself up again, blind -faces of shuttered farmhouses, black forests, misty lakes--a cut through -a world in sleep, all dumb and moon-bemused... - -The contrast was beautiful, intolerable... - -Sleep? He hadn't even gone to bed. Just plunged into a bath, and -stretched out on his lounge to see the dawn come. A mysterious sight -that, too; the cold fingers of the light remaking a new world, while men -slept, unheeding, and imagined they would wake to some familiar -yesterday. Fools! - -He breakfasted--ravenously--before his wife was down, and swung off with -a couple of dogs on a long tramp, he didn't care where. - -Even the daylight world seemed unimaginably strange: as if he had never -really looked at it before. He walked on slowly for three or four miles, -vaguely directing himself toward Greystock. His long tramps as a boy, in -his farming days, had given him the habit of deliberate steady walking, -and the unwonted movement refreshed rather than tired him--or at least, -while it tired his muscles, it seemed to invigorate his brain. Excited? -No--just pleasantly stimulated... - -He stretched himself out under a walnut tree on a sunny slope, lit his -pipe and gazed abroad over fields and woods. All the land was hazy with -incipient life. The dogs hunted and burrowed, and then came back to doze -at his feet with pleasant dreamings. The sun on his face felt warm and -human, and gradually life began to settle back into its old ruts--a -comfortable routine, diversified by pleasant episodes. Could it ever be -more, to a man past fifty? - -But after a while a chill sank on his spirit. He began to feel cold and -hungry, and set out to walk again. - -Presently he found it was half-past eleven--time to be heading for home. -Home; and the lunch-table; Pauline; and Nona; and Lita. Oh, God, no--not -yet... He trudged on, slowly and sullenly, deciding to pick up a -mouthful of lunch somewhere by the way. - -At a turn of the road he caught sight of a woman's figure strolling -across a green slope above him. Strong and erect in her trim golfing -skirt, she came down in his direction swinging a club in her hand. Why, -sure enough, he was actually on the edge of the Greystock course! The -woman was alone, without companions or caddies--going around for a trial -spin, or perhaps simply taking a stroll, as he was, drinking in the -intoxicating air... - -"Hul_lo_!" she called, and he found himself advancing toward Gladys Toy. - -Was this active erect woman in her nut-brown sweater and plaited skirt -the same as the bejewelled and redundant beauty of so many wearisome -dinners? Something of his old interest--the short-lived fancy of a week -or two--revived in him as she swung along, treading firmly but lightly -on her broad easy shoes. - -"Hul_lo_!" he responded. "Didn't know you were here." - -"I wasn't. I only came last night. Isn't it glorious?" Even her -slow-dripping voice moved faster and had a livelier ring. Decidedly, he -admired a well-made woman, a woman with curves and volume--all the more -after the stripped skeletons he had dined among the night before. Mrs. -Toy had height enough to carry off her pounds, and didn't look ashamed -of them, either. - -"Glorious? Yes, you _are_!" he said. - -"Oh, _me_?" - -"What else did you mean, then?" - -"Don't be silly! How did you get here?" - -"On my feet." - -"Gracious! From Cedarledge? You must be dead." - -"Don't you believe it. I walked over to lunch with you." - -"You've just said you didn't know I was here." - -"You mustn't believe everything I say." - -"All right. Then I won't believe you walked over to lunch with me." - -"Will you believe me when I tell you you're awfully beautiful?" - -"Yes!" she challenged him. - -"And that I want to kiss you?" - -She smiled with the eyes of a tired swimmer, and he saw that her slender -stock of repartee was exhausted. "Herman'll be here tonight," she said. - -"Then let's make the most of today." - -"But I've asked some people to lunch at the club." - -"Then you'll chuck them, and come off and lunch with me somewhere else." - -"Oh, will I--shall I?" She laughed, and he saw her breast rise on her -shortened breath. He caught her to him and planted a kiss in the middle -of her laughter. - -"Now will you?" - -She was a rich armful, and he remembered how splendid he had thought -plump rosy women in his youth, before money and fashion imposed their -artificial standards. - - -When he reëntered the doors of Cedarledge the cold spring sunset was -slanting in through the library windows on the tea-table at which his -wife and Nona sat. Of Lita there was no sign; Manford heard with -indolent amusement that she was reported to be just getting up. His -sentiment about Lita had settled into fatherly indulgence; he no longer -thought the epithet inappropriate. But underneath the superficial -kindliness he felt for her, as for all the world, he was aware of a -fundamental indifference to most things but his own comfort and -convenience. Such was the salutary result of fresh air and recovered -leisure. How absurd to work one's self into a state of fluster about -this or that--money or business or women! Especially women. As he looked -back on the last weeks he saw what a fever of fatigue he must have been -in to take such an exaggerated view of his own emotions. After three -days at Cedarledge serenity had descended on him like a benediction. -Gladys Toy's cheeks were as smooth as nectarines; and the keen morning -light had shown him that she wasn't in the least made up. He recalled -the fact with a certain pleasure, and then dismissed her from his -mind--or rather she dropped out of herself. He wasn't in the humour to -think long about anybody or anything ... he revelled in his own -laziness and indifference. - -"Tea? Yes; and a buttered muffin by all means. Several of them. I'm as -hungry as the devil. Went for a long tramp this morning before any of -you were up. Mrs. Toy ran across me, and brought me back in her new -two-seater. A regular beauty--the car, I mean--you'll have to have one -like it, Nona... Jove, how good the fire feels ... and what is it -that smells so sweet? Carnations--why, they're giants! We must go over -the green-houses tomorrow, Pauline; and all the rest of it. I want to -take stock of all your innovations." - -At that moment he felt able to face even the tour of inspection, and all -the facts and calculations it would evoke. Everything seemed easy now -that he had found he could shake off his moonlight obsession by spending -a few hours with a pretty woman who didn't mind being kissed. He was to -meet Mrs. Toy again the day after tomorrow; and in the interval she -would suffice to occupy his mind when he had nothing more interesting to -think of. - -As he was putting a match to his pipe Lita came into the room with her -long glide. Her boy was perched on her shoulder, and she looked like one -of Crivelli's enigmatic Madonnas carrying a little red-haired Jesus. - - -"Gracious! Is this breakfast or tea? I seem to have overslept myself -after our joy-ride," she said, addressing a lazy smile to Manford. - -She dropped to her knees before the fire and held up the boy to Pauline. -"Kiss his granny," she commanded in her faintly derisive voice. - -It was very pretty, very cleverly staged; but Manford said to himself -that she was too self-conscious, and that her lips were too much -painted. Besides, he had always hated women with prominent cheekbones -and hollows under them. He settled back comfortably into the afternoon's -reminiscences. - - - - -XXIII - - -DECIDEDLY, there was a different time-measure for life in town and in -the country. - -The dinner for Amalasuntha organized (and the Toys secured for it), -there were still two days left in that endless inside of a week which -was to have passed so rapidly. Yet everything had gone according to -Pauline's wishes. Dexter had really made the promised round of house and -grounds, and had extended his inspection to dairy, poultry yard and -engine-house. And he had approved of everything--approved almost too -promptly and uncritically. Was it because he had not been sufficiently -interested to note defects, or at any rate to point them out? The -suspicion, which stirred in his wife when she observed that he walked -through the cow-stables without making any comment on the defective -working of the new ventilating system, became a certainty when, on their -return to the house, she suggested their going over the accounts -together. "Oh, as long as the architect has o.k'd them! Besides, it's -too late now to do anything, isn't it? And your results are so splendid -that I don't see how they could be overpaid. Everything seems to be -perfect--" - -"Not the ventilating system in the Alderneys' stable, Dexter." - -"Oh, well; can't that be arranged? If it can't, put it down to profit -and loss. I never enjoyed anything more than my swim this morning in the -pool. You've managed to get the water warmed to exactly the right -temperature." - -He slipped out to join Nona on the putting green below the terrace. - -Yes; everything was all right; he was evidently determined that -everything should be. It had been the same about Michelangelo's debts. -At first he had resisted his wife's suggestion that they should help to -pay them off, in order to escape the young man's presence in New York; -then he had suddenly promised the Marchesa to settle the whole amount, -without so much as a word to Pauline. It was as if he were engrossed in -some deep and secret purpose, and resolved to clear away whatever -threatened to block his obstinate advance. She had seen him thus -absorbed when a "big case" possessed him. But there were no signs now of -professional preoccupation; no telephoning, wiring, hurried arrivals of -junior members or confidential clerks. He seemed to have shaken off "the -office" with all his other cares. There was something about his serene -good humour that obscurely frightened her. - -Once she might have ascribed it to an interest--an exaggerated -interest--in his step-son's wife. That idea had already crossed -Pauline's mind: she remembered its cold brush on the evening when her -husband had come home unexpectedly to see her, and had talked so -earnestly and sensibly about bringing Lita and her boy to Cedarledge. -The mere flit of a doubt--no more; and even then Pauline had felt its -preposterousness, and banished it in disgust and fear. - -Now she smiled at the fear. Her husband's manner to Lita was -perfect--easy, good humoured but slightly ironic. At the time of Jim's -marriage Dexter had had that same smile. He had thought the bride silly -and pretentious, he had even questioned her good looks. And now the -first week at Cedarledge showed that, if his attitude had grown -kindlier, it was for Jim's sake, not Lita's. Nona and Lita were together -all day long; when Manford joined them he treated both in the same way, -as a man treats two indulged and amusing daughters. - -What was he thinking of, then? Gladys Toy again, perhaps? Pauline had -imagined that was over. Even if it were not, it no longer worried her. -Dexter had had similar "flare-ups" before, and they hadn't lasted. -Besides, Pauline had gradually acquired a certain wifely philosophy, and -was prepared to be more lenient to her second husband than to the first. -As wives grew older they had to realize that husbands didn't always keep -pace with them... - -Not that she felt herself too old for Manford's love; all her early -illusions had rushed back to her the night he had made her give up the -Rivington dinner. But her dream had not survived that evening. She had -understood then that he meant they should be "only friends"; that was -all the future was to hold for her. Well; for a grandmother it ought to -be enough. She had no patience with the silly old women who expected -"that sort of nonsense" to last. Still, she meant, on her return to -town, to consult a new Russian who had invented a radium treatment which -absolutely wiped out wrinkles. He called himself a Scientific Initiate ... -the name fascinated her. - -From these perplexities she was luckily distracted by the urgent -business of the Cardinal's reception. Even without Maisie she could do a -good deal of preparatory writing and telephoning; but she was mortified -to find how much her handwriting had suffered from the long habit of -dictation. She never wrote a note in her own hand nowadays--except to -distinguished foreigners, since Amalasuntha had explained that they -thought typed communications ill-bred. And her unpractised script was so -stiff and yet slovenly that she decided she must have her hands -"treated" as she did her other unemployed muscles. But how find time for -this new and indispensable cure? Her spirits rose with the invigorating -sense of being once more in a hurry... - - -Nona sat on the south terrace in the sun. The Cedarledge experiment had -lasted eight days now, and she had to own that it had turned out better -than she would have thought possible. - -Lita was giving them wonderfully little trouble. After the first flight -to Greenwich she had shown no desire for cabarets and night-clubs, but -had plunged into the alternative excitement of violent outdoor sports; -relapsing, after hours of hard exercise, into a dreamy lassitude -unruffled by outward events. She never spoke of her husband, and Nona -did not know if Jim's frequent--too frequent--letters, were answered, or -even read. Lita smiled vaguely when he was mentioned, and merely -remarked, when her mother-in-law once risked an allusion to the future: -"I thought we were here to be cured of plans." And Pauline effaced her -blunder with a smile. - -Nona herself felt more and more like one of the trench-watchers pictured -in the war-time papers. There she sat in the darkness on her narrow -perch, her eyes glued to the observation-slit which looked out over -seeming emptiness. She had often wondered what those men thought about -during the endless hours of watching, the days and weeks when nothing -happened, when no faintest shadow of a skulking enemy crossed their span -of no-man's land. What kept them from falling asleep, or from losing -themselves in waking dreams, and failing to give warning when the attack -impended? She could imagine a man led out to be shot in the Flanders mud -because, at such a moment, he had believed himself to be dozing on a -daisy bank at home... - -Since her talk with Aggie Heuston a sort of _curare_ had entered into her -veins. She was sharply aware of everything that was going on about her, -but she felt unable to rouse herself. Even if anything that mattered -ever did happen again, she questioned if she would be able to shake off -the weight of her indifference. Was it really ten days now since that -talk with Aggie? And had everything of which she had then been warned -fulfilled itself without her lifting a finger? She dimly remembered -having acted in what seemed a mood of heroic self-denial; now she felt -only as if she had been numb. What was the use of fine motives if, once -the ardour fallen, even they left one in the lurch? - -She thought: "I feel like the oldest person in the world, and yet with -the longest life ahead of me ..." and a shiver of loneliness ran over -her. - -Should she go and hunt up the others? What difference would that make? -She might offer to write notes for her mother, who was upstairs plunged -in her visiting-list; or look in on Lita, who was probably asleep after -her hard gallop of the morning; or find her father, and suggest going -for a walk. She had not seen her father since lunch; but she seemed to -remember that he had ordered his new Buick brought round. Off again--he -was as restless as the others. All of them were restless nowadays. Had -he taken Lita with him, perhaps? Well--why not? Wasn't he here to look -after Lita? A sudden twitch of curiosity drew Nona to her feet, and sent -her slowly upstairs to her sister-in-law's room. Why did she have to -drag one foot after the other, as if some hidden influence held her -back, signalled a mute warning not to go? What nonsense! Better make a -clean breast of it to herself once for all, and admit-- - -"I beg pardon, Miss." It was the ubiquitous Powder at her heels. "If -you're going up to Mrs. Manford's sitting-room would you kindly tell her -that Mr. Manford has telephoned he won't be back from Greystock till -late, and she's please not to wait dinner?" Powder looked a little as if -he would rather not give that particular message himself. - -"Greystock? Oh, all right. I'll tell her." - -Golf again--golf and Gladys Toy. Nona gave her clinging preoccupations a -last shake. This was really a lesson to her! To be imagining horrible -morbid things about her father while he was engaged in a perfectly -normal elderly man's flirtation with a stupid woman he would forget as -soon as he got back to town! A real Easter holiday diversion. "After -all, he gave up his tarpon-fishing to come here, and Gladys isn't a bad -substitute--as far as weight goes. But a good deal less exciting as -sport." A dreary gleam of amusement crossed her mind. - -Softly she pushed open the door of one of the perfectly appointed -spare-rooms: a room so studiously equipped with every practical -convenience--from the smoothly-hung window-ventilators to the jointed -dressing-table lights, from the little portable telephone, and the -bed-table with folding legs, to the tall threefold mirror which lost no -curve of the beauty it reflected--that even Lita's careless ways seemed -subdued to the prevailing order. - -Lita was on the lounge, one long arm drooping, the other folded behind -her in the immemorial attitude of sleeping beauty. Sleep lay on her -lightly, as it does on those who summon it at will. It was her habitual -escape from the boredom between thrills, and in such intervals of -existence as she was now traversing she plunged back into it after every -bout of outdoor activity. - -Nona tiptoed forward and looked down on her. Who said that sleep -revealed people's true natures? It only made them the more enigmatic by -the added veil of its own mystery. Lita's head was nested in the angle -of a thin arm, her lids rounded heavily above the sharp cheek-bones just -swept by their golden fringe, the pale bow of the mouth relaxed, the -slight steel-strong body half shown in the parting of a flowered -dressing-gown. Thus exposed, with gaze extinct and loosened muscles, she -seemed a mere bundle of contradictory whims tied together by a frail -thread of beauty. The hand of the downward arm hung open, palm up. In -its little hollow lay the fate of three lives. What would she do with -them? How could one conceive of her knowing, or planning, or -imagining--conceive of her in any sort of durable human relations to any -one or anything? - -Her eyes opened and a languid curiosity floated up through them. - -"That you? I must have fallen asleep. I was trying to count up the -number of months we've been here, and numbers always make me go to -sleep." - -Nona laughed and sat down at the foot of the lounge. "Dear me--just as I -thought you were beginning to be happy!" - -"Well, isn't this what you call being happy--in the country?" - -"Lying on your back, and wondering how many months there are in a week?" - -"A week? Is it only a week? How on earth can you be sure, when one day's -so exactly like another?" - -"Tomorrow won't be. There's the blow-out for Amalasuntha, and dancing -afterward. Mother's idea of the simple life." - -"Well, all your mother's ideas _are_ simple." Lita yawned, her pale pink -mouth drooping like a faded flower. "Besides, it's ages till tomorrow. -Where's your father? He was going to take me for a spin in the new -Buick." - -"He's broken his promise, then. Deserted us all and sneaked off to -Greystock on his lone." - -A faint redness rose to Lita's cheek-bones. "Greystock and Gladys Toy? -Is that _his_ idea of the simple life? About on a par with your mother's... -Did you ever notice the Toy ankles?" - -Nona smiled. "They're not unnoticeable. But you forget that father's -getting to be an old gentleman... Fathers mustn't be choosers..." - -Lita made a slight grimace. "Oh, he could do better than that. There's -old Cosby, who looks heaps older--didn't he want to marry you? ... -Nona, you darling, let's take the Ford and run over to Greenwich for -dinner. Would your mother so very much mind? Does she want us here the -whole blessed time?" - -"I'll go and ask her. But on a Friday night the Country Club will be as -dead as the moon. Only a few old ladies playing bridge." - -"Well, then we'll have the floor to ourselves. I want a good practice, -and it's a ripping floor. We can dance with the waiters. It'll be fun to -shock the old ladies. I noticed one of the waiters the other day--must -be an Italian--built rather like Tommy Ardwin... I'm sure he dances..." - -That was all life meant to Lita--would ever mean. Good floors to -practise new dance-steps on, men--any men--to dance with and be -flattered by, women--any women--to stare and envy one, dull people to -startle, stupid people to shock--but never any one, Nona questioned, -whom one wanted neither to startle nor shock, neither to be envied nor -flattered by, but just to lose one's self in for good and all? Lita lose -herself--? Why, all she wanted was to keep on finding herself, -immeasurably magnified, in every pair of eyes she met! - -And here were Nona and her father and mother fighting to preserve this -brittle plaything for Jim, when somewhere in the world there might be a -real human woman for him... What was the sense of it all? - - - - -XXIV - - -THE Marchesa di San Fedele's ideas about the country were perfectly -simple; in fact she had only one. She regarded it as a place in which -there was more time to play bridge than in town. Thank God for -that!--and the rest one simply bore with... Of course there was the -obligatory going the rounds with host or hostess: gardens, glass, dairy, -chicken-hatchery, and heaven knew what besides (stables, thank goodness, -were out of fashion--even if people rode they no longer, unless they -kept hounds, dragged one between those dreary rows of box stalls, or -made one admire the lustrous steel and leather of the harness room, or -the monograms stencilled in blue and red on the coach-house floor). - -The Marchesa's life had always been made up of doing things as dull as -going over model dairies in order to get the chance, or the money, to do -others as thrilling to her as dancing was to Lita. It was part of the -game: one had to pay for what one got: the thing was to try and get a -great deal more than the strict equivalent. - -"Not that I don't marvel at your results, Pauline; we all do. But -they make me feel so useless and incapable. All this wonderful -creation--baths and swimming-pools and hatcheries and fire-engines, and -everything so perfect, indoors and out! Sometimes I'm glad you've never -been to our poor old San Fedele. But of course bathrooms will have to be -put in at San Fedele if Michelangelo finds an American bride when he -comes over..." - -Pauline laid down the pen she had taken up to record the exact terms in -which she was to address the Cardinal's secretary. ("A _personal_ note, -dear; yes, in your own writing; they don't yet understand your new -American ways at the Vatican...") - -"When Michelangelo comes over?" Pauline echoed. - -The Marchesa's face was sharper than a knife. "It's my little surprise. -I didn't mean you or Dexter to know till the contract was signed..." - -"What contract?" - -"My boy's to do Cæsar Borgia in the new film. Klawhammer cabled a -definite offer the day you left for the country. And of course I -insisted on Michelangelo's sailing instantly, though he'd planned to -spend the spring in Paris and was rather cross at having to give it up. -But as I told him, now is the moment to secure a lovely American bride. -We all know what your rich papas-in-law over here always ask: 'What -debts? What prospects? What other women?' The woman matter can generally -be arranged. The debts _are_, in this case--thanks to your generosity. But -the prospects--what were _they_, I ask you? Months of green mould at San -Fedele for a fortnight's splash in Rome ... oh, I don't disguise it! -And what American bride would accept _that_? The San Fedele pearls, -yes--but where is the San Fedele plumbing? But now, my dear, -Michelangelo presents himself as an equal ... superior, I might say, -if I weren't afraid of being partial. Cæsar Borgia in a Klawhammer -film--no one knows how many millions it may mean! And of course -Michelangelo is the very type..." - -"_To do me the favour to transmit to his Eminence_... Yes; this really -is a surprise, Amalasuntha." Inwardly Pauline was saying: "After all, -why not? If his own mother doesn't mind seeing him all over the place on -film posters. And perhaps now he may pay us back--in common decency -he'll have to!" - -She saw no serious reason for displeasure, once she had dropped her -carefully cultivated Wyant attitude. "If only it doesn't upset Lita -again, and make her restless!" But they really couldn't hope to keep all -Lita's friends and relations off the screen. - -"Arthur was amazed--and awfully pleased, after the first recoil. Dear -Arthur, you know, always recoils at first," the Marchesa continued, with -her shrewd deprecating smile, which insinuated that Pauline of course -wouldn't. (It was odd, Pauline reflected; the Marchesa always looked -like a peasant when she was talking business.) - -"Arthur? You've already written to him about it?" - -"No, dear. I ran across him yesterday in town. You didn't know Arthur'd -come back? I thought he said he'd telephoned to Nona, or somebody. A -touch of gout--got fidgety because he couldn't see his doctor. But he -looked remarkably well, I thought--so handsome still, in his _élancé_ -Wyant way; only a little too flushed, perhaps. Yes ... poor Eleanor... -Oh, no; he said Jim was still on the island. Perfectly contented -fishing. Jim's the only person I know who's always perfectly contented ... -such a lesson..." The Marchesa's sigh seemed to add: "Very -restful--but how I should despise him if he were my Michelangelo!" - -Pauline could hear--oh, how distinctly!--all that her former husband -would have to say about Michelangelo's projects. They would be food for -an afternoon's irony. But that did not greatly trouble her--nor did -Wyant's unexpected return. He was always miserable out of reach of his -doctor. And the fact that Jim hadn't come back proved that there was -nothing seriously wrong. Pauline thought: "I'll write to Jim again, and -tell him how perfect Dexter has been about Lita and the baby, and that -will convince him there's no need to hurry back." - -Complacency returned to her. How should it not, with the list for the -Cardinal's reception nearly complete, and the telephonic assurance of -the Bishop of New York and the Chief Rabbi that both these dignitaries -would be present? Socially also, though the season was over, the -occasion promised to be brilliant. Lots of people were coming back just -to see how a Cardinal was received. Even the Rivingtons were coming--she -had it from the Bishop. Yes, the Rivingtons had certainly been more -cordial since she and Manford had thrown them over at the last minute. -That was the way to treat people who thought themselves so awfully -superior. What wouldn't the Rivingtons have given to capture the -Cardinal? But he was sailing for Italy the day after Pauline's -reception--that was the beauty of it! No one else could possibly have -him. Amalasuntha had stage-managed the whole business very cleverly. She -had even overcome the Cardinal's scruples when he heard that Mrs. -Manford was chairman of the Birth Control committee... And tonight, at -the dinner, how pleasant everybody's congratulations would be! Pauline -gloried in her achievement for Manford's sake. Despite his assurance to -the contrary she could never imagine, for more than a moment at a time, -that such successes were really indifferent to him. - - -Lita appeared in the drawing-room after almost everybody had arrived. -She was always among the last; and in the country, as she said, there -was no way of knowing what time it was. Even at Cedarledge, where all -the clocks agreed to a second, one could never believe them, and always -suspected they must have stopped together, twelve hours before. - -"Besides, what's the use of knowing what time it is in the country? Time -for _what_?" - -She came in quietly, almost unnoticeably, with the feathered gait that -was half-way between drifting and floating; and at once, in spite of the -twenty people assembled, had the shining parquet and all the mirrors to -herself. That was her way: that knack of clearing the floor no matter -how quietly she entered. And tonight--! - -Well; perhaps, Manford thought, all the other women _were_ a little -overdressed. Women always had a tendency to overdress when they dined -with the Manfords; to wear too many jewels, and put on clothes that -glistened. Even at Cedarledge Pauline's parties had a New York -atmosphere. And Lita, in her straight white slip, slim and unadorned as -a Primitive angel, with that close coif of goldfish-coloured hair, and -not a spangle, a jewel, a pearl even, made the other women's clothes -look like upholstery. - -Manford, by the hearth, slightly bored in anticipation, yet bound to -admit that, like all his wife's shows, it was effectively done--Manford -received the shock of that quiet entrance, that shimmer widening into -light, and then turned to Mrs. Herman Toy. Full noon there; the usual -Rubensy redundance flushed by golfing in a high wind, by a last cocktail -before dressing, by the hurried wriggle into one of those elastic -sheaths the women--the redundant women--wore. Well; he liked ripeness in -a fruit to be eaten as soon as plucked. And Gladys' corn-yellow hair was -almost as springy and full of coloured shadows as the other's red. But -the voice, the dress, the jewels, the blatant jewels! A Cartier -show-case spilt over a strawberry mousse... And the quick possessive -look, so clumsily done--brazen, yet half-abashed! When a woman's first -business was to make up her mind which it was to be... Chances were -the man didn't care, as long as her ogling didn't make him ridiculous... -Why couldn't some women always be in golf clothes--if any? Gala get-up -wasn't in everybody's line... There was Lita speaking to Gladys -now--with auburn eyebrows lifted just a thread. The contrast--! And -Gladys purpler and more self-conscious--God, why did she have her -clothes so tight? And that drawing-room drawl! Why couldn't she just -sing out: "Hul_lo_!" as she did in the open? - -The Marchesa--how many times more was he to hear Pauline say: -"Amalasuntha on your right, dear." Oh, to get away to a world where -nobody gave dinners, and there were no Marchesas on one's right! He knew -by heart the very look of the little cheese soufflés, light as cherubs' -feathers, that were being handed around before the soup on silver-gilt -dishes with coats-of-arms. Everything at Cedarledge was silver-gilt. -Pauline, as usual, had managed to transplant the party to New York, when -all he wanted was to be quiet, smoke his pipe, and ride or tramp with -Nona and Lita. Why couldn't she see it? Her vigilant eye sought his--was -it for approval or admonition? What was she saying? "The Cardinal? Oh, -yes. It's all settled. So sweet of him! Of course you must all promise -to come. But I've got another little surprise for you after dinner. No; -not a word beforehand; not if you were to put me on the rack." What on -earth did she mean? - -"A surprise? Is this a surprise party?" It was Amalasuntha now. "Then I -must produce mine. But I daresay Pauline's told you. About Michelangelo -and Klawhammer... Cæsar Borgia ... such a sum that I don't dare to -mention it--you'd think I was mixing up the figures. But I've got them -down in black and white. Of course, as the producers say, Michelangelo's -so supremely the type--it's more than they ever could have hoped for." -What was the woman raving about? "He sails tomorrow," she said. Sailing -again--was that damned Michelangelo always sailing? Hadn't his debts -been paid on the express condition--? But no; there's been nothing, as -the Marchesa called it, "in black and white." The transaction had been -based on the implicit understanding that nothing but dire necessity -would induce Michelangelo to waste his charms on New York. Dire -necessity--or the chance to put himself permanently beyond it! A fortune -from a Klawhammer film. As Amalasuntha said, it was incalculable... - -"It's the type, you see: between ourselves, there's always been a rumour -of Borgia blood on the San Fedele side. A naughty ancestress! Perhaps -you've noticed the likeness? You remember that wonderful profile -portrait of Cæsar Borgia in black velvet? What gallery is it in? Oh, I -know--it came out in 'Vogue'!" Amalasuntha visibly bridled at her -proficiency. She was aware that envious people said the Italians knew -nothing of their own artistic inheritance. "I remember being so struck -by it at the time--I said to Venturino: 'But it's the image of our boy!' -Though Michelangelo will have to grow a beard, which makes him furious... -But then the millions!" - -Manford, looking up, caught a double gaze bent in his direction. Gladys -Toy's vast blue eyes had always been like searchlights; but tonight they -seemed actually to be writing her private history over his head, like an -advertising aeroplane. The fool! But was the other look also meant for -him? That half-shaded glint of Lita's--was it not rather attached to the -Marchesa, strung like a telephone wire to her lips? Klawhammer ... -Michelangelo ... a Borgia film... Those listening eyes missed not a -syllable... - -"The offers those fellows make--right and left--nobody takes much -account of them. Wait till I see your contract, as you call it... If -you really think it's a job for a gentleman," Manford growled. - -"But, my friend, gentlemen can't be choosers! Who are the real -working-class today? Our old aristocracies, alas! And besides, is it -ever degrading to create a work of art? I thought in America you made so -much of creativeness--constructiveness--what do you call it? Is it less -creative to turn a film than to manufacture bathtubs? Can there be a -nobler mission than to teach history to the millions by means of -beautiful pictures? ... Yes! I see Lita listening, and I know she -agrees with me... Lita! What a Lucrezia for his Cæsar! But why look -shocked, dear Dexter? Of course you know that Lucrezia Borgia has been -entirely rehabilitated? I saw that also in 'Vogue.' She was a perfectly -pure woman--and her hair was exactly the colour of Lita's." - - -They were finishing coffee in the drawing-room, the doors standing open -into the tall library where the men always smoked--the library which (as -Stanley Heuston had once remarked) Pauline's incorruptible honesty had -actually caused her to fill with books. - -"Oh, what is it? Not a fire? ... A chimney in the house? ... But -it's actually here... Not a ..." - -The women, a-flutter at the sudden siren-shriek, the hooting, rushing -and clattering up the drive, surged across the parquet, flowed with -startled little cries out into the hall, and saw the unsurprisable -Powder signalling to two perfectly matched footmen to throw open the -double doors. - -"A fire? The engine ... the ... oh, it's a _fire-drill_! ... A -_parade_! How realistic! How lovely of you! What a beauty the engine is!" - -Pauline stood smiling, watch in hand, as the hook-and-ladder motor -clattered up the drive and ranged itself behind the engine. The big -lantern over the front door illuminated fresh scarlet paint and -super-polished brasses, the firemen's agitated helmets and perspiring -faces, the flashing hoods of the lamps. - -"Just five minutes to the second! Wonderful!" She was shaking hands with -each member of the amateur brigade in turn. "I can't tell you how I -congratulate you--every one of you! Such an achievement ... you really -manœuvre like professionals. No one would have believed it was the -first time! Dexter, will you tell them a hot supper has been prepared -downstairs!" To the guests she was explaining in a triumphant undertone: -"I wanted to give them the chance to show off their new toy ... Yes, I -believe it's absolutely the most perfected thing in fire-engines. Dexter -and I thought it was time the village was properly equipped. It's really -more on account of the farmers--such a sense of safety for the -neighbourhood... Oh, Mr. Motts, I think you're simply wonderful, all -of you. Mr. Manford and my daughter are going to show you the way to -supper... Yes, yes, you _must_! Just a sandwich and something hot." - -She dominated them all, grave and glittering as a goddess of Velocity. -"She enjoys it as much as other women do love-making," Manford muttered -to himself. - - - - -XXV - - -MANFORD didn't know what first gave him the sense that Lita had slipped -out among the departing guests; slipped out, and not come back. When the -idea occurred to him it was already lodged in his mind, hard and -definite as a verified fact. She had vanished from among them into the -darkness. - -But only a moment ago; there was still time to dash round to the shed in -the service court, where motors were sometimes left for the night, and -where he had dropped his Buick just in time to rush in and dress for -dinner. He would have no trouble in overtaking her. - -The Buick was gone. - -Hatless and coatless in the soft night air, he rushed down the drive on -its track. No moon tonight, but a deceptive velvet mildness, such as -sometimes comes in spring before the wind hauls round to a frosty -quarter. He hurried on, out of the open gate, along the road toward the -village; and there, at the turn of the New York turnpike--just the road -he had expected her to take--stood his Buick, a figure stooping over it -in the lamp-glare. A furious stab of jealousy shot through him--"There's -a man with her; who?" But the man was only his own overcoat, which he -had left on the seat of the car when he dashed home for dinner, and -which was now drawn over Lita's shoulders. It was she who stood in the -night, bent over the mysteries of the car's insides. - -She looked up and called out: "Oh, look here--give me a hand, will you? -The thing's stuck." Manford moved around within lamp-range, and she -stared a moment, her little face springing out at him uncannily from the -darkness. Then she broke into a laugh. "You?" - -"Were you asking a total stranger to repair your motor? Rather risky, on -a country road in the middle of the night." - -She shrugged and smiled. "Not as risky as doing it myself. The chances -are that even a total stranger would know more about the inside of this -car than I do." - -"Lita, you're mad! Damn the car. What are you doing here anyhow?" - -She paused, one hand on the bonnet, while with the other she pushed back -a tossed lock from her round forehead. "Running away," she said simply. - -Manford took a quick breath. The thing was, he admonished himself, to -take this lightly, as nearly as possible in her own key--above all to -avoid protesting and exclaiming. But his heart was beating like a -trip-hammer. She was more of a fool than he had thought. - -"Running away from that dinner? I don't blame you. But it's over. Still, -if you want to wash out the memory of it, get into the motor and we'll -go for a good spin--like that one when we came back from Greenwich." - -Her lips parted in a faint smile. "Oh, but that ended up at Cedarledge." - -"Well--?" - -"Bless you; I'm not going back." - -"Where _are_ you going?" - -"To New York first--after that I don't know... Perhaps my aunt's... -Perhaps Hollywood..." - -The rage in him exploded. "Perhaps Dawnside--eh? Own up!" - -She laughed and shrugged again. "Own up? Why not? Anywhere where I can -dance and laugh and be hopelessly low-lived and irresponsible." - -"And get that blackguard crew about you again, all those--. Lita! Listen -to me. Listen. You've got to." - -"Got to?" She rounded on him in a quick flare of anger. "I wonder who -you think you're talking to? I'm not Gladys Toy." - -The unexpectedness of the challenge struck him dumb. For challenge it -was, unmistakably. He felt a rush of mingled strength and fear--fear at -this inconceivable thing, and the strength her self-betrayal gave him. -He returned with equal violence: "No--you're not. You're something so -utterly different..." - -"Oh," she burst in, "don't tell me I'm too sacred, and all that. I'm fed -up with the sanctities--that's the trouble with me. Just own up you like -'em artificially fattened. Why, that woman's ankles are half a yard -round. Can't you _see_ it? Or is that really the way you admire 'em? I -thought you wanted to be with me... I thought that was why you were -here... Do you suppose I'd have come all this way just to be taught to -love fresh air and family life? The hypocrisy--!" - -Her little face was flashing on him furiously, red lips parted on a -glitter of bright teeth. "She must have a sausage-machine, to cram her -into that tube she had on tonight. No human maid could do it... -'Utterly different'? I should hope so! I'd like to see _her_ get a job -with Klawhammer--unless he means to do a 'Barnum,' and wants a Fat -Woman... I ..." - -"_Lita_!" - -"You're _stupid_ ... you're stupider than anything on God's earth!" - -"Lita--" He put his hand over hers. Let the whole world crash, after -this... - - -Pauline sat in her upstairs sitting-room, full of that sense of repose -which comes of duties performed and rewards laid up. How could it be -otherwise, at the close of a day so rich in moral satisfactions? She -scanned it again, from the vantage of her midnight vigil in the sleeping -house, and saw that all was well in the little world she had created. - -Yes; all was well, from the fire-drill which had given a rather -languishing dinner its requisite wind-up of excitement to the -arrangements for the Cardinal's reception, Amalasuntha's skilful -turning of that Birth Control obstacle, and the fact that Jim -was philosophically remaining in the south in spite of his -father's unexpected return. The only shadow on the horizon was -Michelangelo's--Dexter would certainly be angry about that. But she was -not going to let Michelangelo darken her holiday, when everything else -in life was so smooth and sunshiny. - -She remembered her resolve to write to Jim, and took up her pen with a -smile. - - -"I can guess what heavenly weather you must be having from the delicious -taste of spring we're having here. The baby is out in the sunshine all -day: he's gained nearly a pound, and is getting almost as brown as if it -were summer. Lita looks ever so much better too, though she'd never -forgive my suggesting that she had put on even an ounce. But I don't -believe she has, for she and Nona and Dexter are riding or golfing or -racing over the country from morning to night like a pack of children. -You can't think how jolly and hungry and sleepy they all are when they -get home for tea. It was a wonderful invention of Dexter's to bring Lita -and the baby here while you were having your holiday, and you'll agree -that it has worked miracles when you see them. - -"Amalasuntha tells me your father is back. I expected to hear that he -had got restless away from his own quarters; but she says he's looking -very well. Nona will go in and see him next week, and report. Meanwhile -I'm so glad you're staying on and making the most of your holiday. Do -get all the rest and sunshine you can, and trust your treasures a little -longer to your loving old - - "MOTHER." - - -There--that would certainly reassure him. It had reassured her merely to -write it: given her the feeling, to which she always secretly inclined, -that a thing was so if one said it was, and doubly so if one wrote it -down. - -She sealed the letter, pushed back her chair, and glanced at the little -clock on her writing-table. A quarter to two! She had a right to feel -sleepy, and even to curtail her relaxing exercises. The country -stillness was so deep and soothing that she hardly needed them... - -She opened the window, and stood drinking in the hush. The spring night -was full of an underlying rustle and murmur that was a part of the -silence. But suddenly a sharp sound broke on her--the sound of a motor -coming up the drive. In the stillness she caught it a long way off, -probably just after the car turned in at the gate. The sound was so -unnatural, breaking in on the deep nocturnal dumbness of dim trees and -starlit sky, that she drew back startled. She was not a nervous woman, -but she thought irritably of a servants' escapade--something that the -chauffeur would have to be spoken to about the next day. Queer, -though--the motor did not turn off toward the garage. Standing in the -window she followed its continued approach; then heard it slow down and -stop--somewhere near the service court, she conjectured. - -Could it be that Lita and Nona had been off on one of their crazy trips -since the guests had left? She must really protest at such imprudence... -She felt angry, nervous, uncertain. It was uncanny, hearing that -invisible motor come so near the house and stop... She hesitated a -moment, and then crossed to her own room, opened the door of the little -anteroom beyond, and stood listening at her husband's bedroom door. It -was ajar, all dark within. She hesitated to speak, half fearing to wake -him; but at length she said in a low voice: "Dexter--." - -No answer. She pronounced his name again, a little louder, and then -cautiously crossed the threshold and switched on the light. The room was -empty, the bed undisturbed. It was evident that Manford had not been up -to his room since their guests had left. It was he, then, who had come -back in the motor... She extinguished the light and turned back into -her own room. On her dressing-table stood the little telephone which -communicated with the servants' quarters, with Maisie Bruss's office, -and with Nona's room. She stood wavering before the instrument. Why -shouldn't she call up Nona, and ask--? Ask what? If the girls had been -off on a lark they would be sure to tell her in the morning. And if it -was Dexter alone, then-- - -She turned from the telephone, and slowly began to undress. Presently -she heard steps in the hall, then in the anteroom; then her husband -moving softly about in his own room, and the unmistakable sounds of his -undressing... She drew a long breath, as if trying to free her lungs -of some vague oppression... It was Dexter--well, yes, only Dexter ... -and he hadn't cared to leave the motor at the garage at that hour... -Naturally... How glad she was that she hadn't rung up Nona! Suppose -her doing so had startled Lita or the baby... - -After all, perhaps she'd better do her relaxing exercises. She felt -suddenly staring wide awake. But she was glad she'd written that -reassuring letter to Jim--she was glad, because it was _true_... - - - - -XXVI - - -WHEN Nona told her mother that she wanted to go to town the next day to -see Mrs. Bruss and Maisie, Mrs. Manford said: "It's only what I expected -of you, darling," and added after a moment: "Do you think I ought--?" - -"No, of course not. It would simply worry Maisie." - -Nona knew it was the answer that her mother awaited. She knew that -nothing frightened and disorganized Pauline as much as direct contact -with physical or moral suffering--especially physical. Her whole life -(if one chose to look at it from a certain angle) had been a long -uninterrupted struggle against the encroachment of every form of pain. -The first step, always, was to conjure it, bribe it away, by every -possible expenditure--except of one's self. Cheques, surgeons, nurses, -private rooms in hospitals, X-rays, radium, whatever was most costly and -up-to-date in the dreadful art of healing--that was her first and -strongest line of protection; behind it came such lesser works as -rest-cures, change of air, a seaside holiday, a whole new set of teeth, -pink silk bed-spreads, lace cushions, stacks of picture papers, and -hot-house grapes and long-stemmed roses from Cedarledge. Behind these -again were the final, the verbal defenses, made of such phrases as: "If -I thought I could do the least good"--"If I didn't feel it might simply -upset her"--"_Some_ doctors still consider it contagious"--with the -inevitable summing-up: "The fewer people she sees the better..." - -Nona knew that this attitude was not caused by lack of physical courage. -Had Pauline been a pioneer's wife, and seen her family stricken down by -disease in the wilderness, she would have nursed them fearlessly; but -all her life she had been used to buying off suffering with money, or -denying its existence with words, and her moral muscles had become so -atrophied that only some great shock would restore their natural -strength... - -"Great shock! People like mother never have great shocks," Nona mused, -looking at the dauntless profile, the crisply waving hair, reflected in -the toilet-mirror. "Unless I were to give her one ..." she added with -an inward smile. - -Mrs. Manford restored her powder-puff to its crystal box. "Do you know, -darling, I believe I'll go to town with you tomorrow. It was very brave -of Maisie to make the effort of coming here the other day, but of -course, I didn't like to burden her with too many details at such a time -(when's the operation--tomorrow?), and there are things I could -perfectly well attend to myself, without bothering her; without her even -knowing. Yes; I'll motor up with you early." - -"She'll always delegate her anxieties," Nona mused, not unenviously, as -Cécile slipped Mrs. Manford's spangled teagown over her firm white -shoulders. Pauline turned a tender smile on her daughter. "It's so like -you, Nona, to want to be with Maisie for the operation--so _fine_, dear." - -Voice and smile were full of praise; yet behind the praise (Nona also -knew) lurked the unformulated apprehension: "All this running after sick -people and unhappy people--is it going to turn into a vocation?" Nothing -could have been more distasteful to Mrs. Manford than the idea that her -only daughter should be not only good, but merely good: like poor Aggie -Heuston, say... Nona could hear her mother murmuring: "I can't imagine -where on earth she got it from," as if alluding to some physical defect -unaccountable in the offspring of two superbly sound progenitors. - - -They started early, for forty-eight hours of accumulated leisure had -reinforced Pauline's natural activity. Amalasuntha, mysteriously smiling -and head-shaking over the incommunicable figures of Klawhammer's offer, -had bustled back to town early on Monday, leaving the family to -themselves--and a certain feeling of flatness had ensued. Dexter, his -wife thought, seemed secretly irritated, but determined to conceal his -irritation from her. It was about Michelangelo, no doubt. Lita was -silent and sleepy. No one seemed to have anything particular to do. Even -in town Mondays were always insipid. But in the afternoon Manford "took -Lita off their hands," as his wife put it, by carrying her away for the -long-deferred spin in the Buick; and Pauline plunged back restfully into -visiting-lists and other domestic preoccupations. She certainly had -nothing to worry about, and much to rejoice in, yet she felt languid and -vaguely apprehensive. She began to wonder if Alvah Loft's treatment were -of the lasting sort, or if it lost its efficacy, like an uncorked drug. -Perhaps the Scientific Initiate she had been told about would have a new -panacea for the mind as well as for the epiderm. She would telephone and -make an appointment; it always stimulated her to look forward to seeing -a new healer. As Mrs. Swoffer said, one ought never to neglect a -spiritual opportunity; and one never knew on whom the Spirit might have -alighted. Mrs. Swoffer's conversation was always soothing and yet -invigorating, and Pauline determined to see her too. And there was -Arthur--poor Exhibit A!--on Jim's account it would be kind to look him -up if there were time; unless Nona could manage that too, in the -intervals of solacing Maisie. It was so depressing--and so useless--to -sit in a hospital parlour, looking at old numbers of picture papers, -while those awful white-sleeved rites went on in the secret sanctuary of -tiles and nickel-plating. It would do Nona good to have an excuse for -slipping away. - -Pauline's list of things-to-be-done had risen like a spring tide as soon -as she decided to go to town for the day. There was hair-waving, -manicuring, dressmaking--her dress for the Cardinal's reception. How was -she ever to get through half the engagements on her list? And of course -she must call at the hospital with a big basket of grapes and flowers... - - -On the steps of the hospital Nona paused and looked about her. The -operation was over--everything had "gone beautifully," as beautifully as -it almost always does on these occasions. Maisie had been immensely -grateful for her coming, and as surprised as if an angel from the -seventh heaven had alighted to help her through. The two girls had sat -together, making jerky attempts at talk, till the nurse came and said: -"All right--she's back in bed again"; and then Maisie, after a burst of -relieving tears, had tiptoed off to sit in a corner of her mother's -darkened room and await the first sign of returning consciousness. There -was nothing more for Nona to do, and she went out into the April -freshness with the sense of relief that the healthy feel when they -escape back to life after a glimpse of death. - -On the hospital steps she ran into Arthur Wyant. - -"Exhibit, dear! What are you doing here?" - -"Coming to inquire for poor Mrs. Bruss. I heard from Amalasuntha..." - -"That's kind of you. Maisie'll be so pleased." - -She gave him the surgeon's report, saw that his card was entrusted to -the right hands, and turned back into the street with him. He looked -better than when he had left for the south; his leg was less stiff, and -he carried his tall carefully dressed figure with a rigid jauntiness. -But his face seemed sharper yet higher in colour. Fever or cocktails? -She wondered. It was lucky that their meeting would save her going to -the other end of the town to see him. - -"Just like you, Exhibit, to remember poor Maisie..." - -He raised ironic eyebrows. "Is inquiring about ill people obsolete? I -see you still keep up the tradition." - -"Oh, I've been seeing it through with Maisie. Some one had to." - -"Exactly. And your mother held aloof, but financed the whole business?" - -"Splendidly. She always does." - -He frowned, and stood hesitating, and tapping his long boot-tip with his -stick. "I rather want to have a talk with your mother." - -"With mother?" Nona was on the point of saying: "She's in town today--" -then, remembering Pauline's crowded list, she checked the impulse. - -"Won't I do as a proxy? I was going to suggest your carrying me off to -lunch." - -"No, my dear, you won't--as a proxy. But I'll carry you off to lunch." - -The choice of a restaurant would have been laborious--for Wyant, when -taken out of his rut, became a mass of manias, prejudices and -inhibitions--but Nona luckily remembered a new Bachelor Girls' Club -("The Singleton") which she had lately joined, and packed him into a -taxi still protesting. - -They found a quiet corner in a sociable low-studded dining-room, and she -leaned back, listening to his disconnected monologue and smoking one -cigarette after another in the nervous inability to eat. - -The ten days on the island? Oh, glorious, of course--hot sunshine--a -good baking for his old joints. Awfully kind of her father to invite -him ... he'd appreciated it immensely ... was going to write a line of -thanks... Jim, too, had appreciated his father's being included... -Only, no, really; he couldn't stay; in the circumstances he couldn't... - -"What circumstances, Exhibit? Getting the morning papers twenty-four -hours late?" - -Wyant frowned, looked at her sharply, and then laughed an uneasy -wrinkled laugh. "Impertinent chit!" - -"Own up, now; you were bored stiff. Communion with Nature was too much -for you. You couldn't stick it. Few can." - -"I don't say I'm as passive as Jim." - -"Jim's just loving it down there, isn't he? I'm so glad you persuaded -him to stay." - -Wyant frowned again, and stared past her at some invisible antagonist. -"It was about the only thing I _could_ persuade him to do." - -Nona's hand hung back from the lighting of another cigarette. "What else -did you try to?" - -"What else? Why to _act_, damn it ... take a line ... face things ... -face the music." He stopped in a splutter of metaphors, and dipped his -bristling moustache toward his coffee. - -"What things?" - -"Why: is he going to keep his wife, or isn't he?" - -"He thinks that's for Lita to decide." - -"For Lita to decide! A pretext for his damned sentimental inertness. A -man--my son! God, what's happened to the young men? Sit by and see ... -see... Nona, couldn't I manage to have a talk with your mother?" - -"You're having one with me. Isn't that enough for the moment?" - -He gave another vague laugh, and took a light from her extended -cigarette. She knew that, though he found her mother's visits -oppressive, he kept a careful record of their number, and dimly resented -any appearance of being "crowded out" by Pauline's other engagements. "I -suppose she comes up to town sometimes, doesn't she?" - -"Sometimes--but in such a rush! And we'll be back soon now. She's got to -get ready for the Cardinal's reception." - -"Great doings, I hear. Amalasuntha dropped in on me yesterday. She says -Lita's all agog again since that rotten Michelangelo's got a film -contract, and your father's in an awful state about it. Is he?" - -"The family are not used yet to figuring on the posters. Of course it's -only a question of time." - -"I don't mean in a state about Michelangelo, but about Lita." - -"Father's been a perfect brick about Lita." - -"Oh, he has, has he? Very magnanimous.--Thanks; no--no cigar... Of -course, if anybody's got to be a brick about Lita, I don't see why it's -not her husband's job; but then I suppose you'll tell me..." - -"Yes; I shall; please consider yourself told, won't you? Because I've -got to get back to the hospital." - -"The modern husband's job is a purely passive one, eh? That's your idea -too? If you go to him and say: 'How about that damned scoundrel and your -wife'--" - -"What damned scoundrel?" - -"Oh, I don't say ... anybody in particular ... and he answers: -'Well, what am I going to do about it?' and you say: 'Well, and your -honour, man; what about your honour?' and he says: 'What's my honour got -to do with it if my wife's sick of me?' and you say: 'God! But _the other -man_ ... aren't you going to break his bones for him?' and he sits and -looks at you and says: 'Get up a prize-fight for her?'... God! I give -it up. My own son! We don't speak the same language, that's all." - -He leaned back, his long legs stretched under the table, his tall -shambling body disjointed with the effort at a military tautness, a kind -of muscular demonstration of what his son's moral attitude ought to be. - -"Damn it--there was a good deal to be said for duelling." - -"And to whom do you want Jim to send his seconds? Michelangelo or -Klawhammer?" - -He stared, and echoed her laugh. "Ha! Ha! That's good. Klawhammer! Dirty -Jew ... the kind we used to horsewhip... Well, I don't understand -the new code." - -"Why do you want to, Exhibit? Come along. You've got me to look after in -the meantime. If you want to be chivalrous, tuck me under your arm and -see me back to the hospital." - -"A prize-fight--get up a prize-fight for her! God--I should understand -even that better than lying on the beach smoking a pipe and saying: -'What can a fellow do about it?' _Do_!" - - -Act--act--act! How funny it was, Nona reflected, as she remounted the -hospital steps: the people who talked most of acting seldom did more -than talk. Her father, for instance, so resolute and purposeful, never -discoursed about action, but quietly went about what had to be done. -Whereas poor Exhibit, perpetually inconsequent and hesitating, was never -tired of formulating the most truculent plans of action for others. -"Poor Exhibit indeed--incorrigible amateur!" she thought, understanding -how such wordy dilettantism must have bewildered and irritated the young -and energetic Pauline, fresh from the buzzing motor works at Exploit. - -Nona felt a sudden exasperation against Wyant for trying to poison Jim's -holiday by absurd insinuations and silly swagger. It was lucky that he -had got bored and come back, leaving the poor boy to bask on the sands -with his pipe and his philosophy. After all, it was to be supposed that -Jim knew what he wanted, and how to take care of it, now he had it. - -"At all events," Nona concluded, "I'm glad he didn't get hold of mother -and bother her with his foolish talk." She shot up in the lift to the -white carbolic-breathing passage where, with a heavy whiff of ether, -Mrs. Bruss's door opened to receive her. - - - - -XXVII - - -THE restorative effect of a day away from the country was visible in -Pauline's face and manner when she dawned on the breakfast-table the -next morning. The mere tone in which she murmured: "How lovely it is to -get back!" showed how lovely it had been to get away--and she lingered -over the new-laid eggs, the golden cream, all the country freshnesses -and succulences, with the sense of having richly earned them by a long -day spent in arduous and agreeable labours. - -"When there are tiresome things to be done the great thing is to do them -at once," she announced to Nona across the whole-wheat toast and -scrambled eggs. "I simply hated to leave all this loveliness yesterday; -but how much more I'm going to enjoy it today because I did!" - -Her day in town had in truth been exceptionally satisfactory. All had -gone well, from her encounter, at Amalasuntha's, with one of the -Cardinal's secretaries, to the belated glimpse of Maisie Bruss, haggard -but hopeful on the hospital steps, receiving the hamper of fruit and -flowers with grateful exclamations, and assurances that the surgeon was -"perfectly satisfied," and that there was "no reason why the dreadful -thing should ever reappear." In a wave of sympathetic emotion Pauline -had leaned from the motor to kiss her and say: "Your mother must have a -good rest at Atlantic City as soon as she can be moved--I'll arrange it. -Sea air is such a tonic ..." and Maisie had thanked and wept again... -It was pleasant to be able, in a few words, to make any one so happy... - -She had found Mrs. Swoffer too; found her in a super-terrestrial mood, -beaming through inspired eye-glasses, and pouring out new torrents of -stimulation. - -Yes: Alvah Loft was a great man, Mrs. Swoffer said. She, for her part, -had never denied it for a moment. How could Pauline have imagined that -her faith in Alvah Loft had failed her? No--but there were periods of -spiritual aridity which the brightest souls had to traverse, and she had -lately had reason to suspect, from her own experience and from -Pauline's, that perhaps Alvah Loft was at present engaged in such a -desert. Certainly to charge a hundred dollars for a "triple treatment" -(which was only three minutes longer than the plain one), and then -produce no more lasting results--well, Mrs. Swoffer preferred not to say -anything uncharitable... Then again, she sometimes suspected that -Alvah Loft's doctrine might be only for beginners. That was what Sacha -Gobine, the new Russian Initiate, plainly intimated. Of course there -were innumerable degrees in the spiritual life, and it might be that -sometimes Alvah Loft's patients got beyond his level--got above -it--without his being aware of the fact. Frankly, that was what Gobine -thought (from Mrs. Swoffer's report) must have happened in the case of -Pauline. "I believe your friend has reached a higher plane"--that was -the way the Initiate put it. "She's been at the gate" (he called the -Mahatma and Alvah Loft "gatekeepers"), "and now the gate has opened, and -she has entered in--entered into ..." But Mrs. Swoffer said she'd -rather not try to quote him because she couldn't put it as beautifully -as he did, and she wanted Pauline to hear it in his own mystical -language. "It's eternal rejuvenation just to sit and listen to him," she -breathed, laying an electric touch on her visitor's hand. - -Rejuvenation! The word dashed itself like cool spray against Pauline's -strained nerves and parched complexion. She could never hear it without -longing to plunge deep into its healing waters. Between manicure and -hair-waver she was determined to squeeze in a moment with Gobine. - -And the encounter, as she told Nona, had been like "a religious -experience"--apparently forgetful of the fact that every other meeting -with a new prophet had presented itself to her in identical terms. - -"You see, my dear, it's something so entirely new, so completely -different ... so emotional; yes, emotional; that's the word. The -Russians, of course, are emotional; it's their peculiar quality. Alvah -Loft--and you understand that I don't in the least suggest any loss of -faith in him; but Alvah Loft has a mind which speaks to the _mind_; there -is no appeal to the feelings. Whereas in Gobine's teaching there is a -mystic strain, a kind of Immediacy, as Mrs. Swoffer calls it... -Immediacy..." Pauline lingered on the term. It captivated her, as any -word did when she first heard it used in a new connection. "I don't know -how one could define the sensation better. 'Soul-unveiling' is Gobine's -expression... But he insists on time, on plenty of time... He says -we are all parching our souls by too much hurry. Of course I always felt -that with Alvah Loft. I felt like one of those cash-boxes they shoot -along over your head in the department stores. Number one, number two, -and so on--always somebody treading on your heels. Whereas Gobine -absolutely refuses to be hurried. Sometimes he sees only one patient a -day. When I left him he told me he thought he would not see any one else -till the next morning. 'I don't want to mingle your soul with any -other.' Rather beautiful, wasn't it? And he does give one a wonderful -dreamy sense of rest..." - -She closed her eyes and leaned back, evoking the gaunt bearded face and -heavy-lidded eyes of the new prophet, and the moist adhesive palm he had -laid in benediction on her forehead. How different from the thick-lipped -oily Mahatma, and from the thin dry Alvah Loft, who seemed more like an -implement in a laboratory than a human being! "Perhaps one needs them -all in turn," Pauline murmured half-aloud, with the self-indulgence of -the woman who has never had to do over an out-of-fashion garment. - -"One ought to be able to pass on last year's healers to one's poor -relations, oughtn't one, mother?" Nona softly mocked; but her mother -disarmed her with an unresentful smile. - -"Darling! I know you don't understand these things yet--only, child, I -do want you to be a little on your guard against becoming bitter, won't -you? There--you don't mind your old mother's just suggesting it?" - -Really Nona worried her at times--or would, if Gobine hadn't shed over -her this perfumed veil of Peace. Yes--Peace: that was what she had -always needed. Perfect confidence that everything would always come -right in the end. Of course the other healers had taught that too; some -people might say that Gobine's evangel was only the Mahatma's doctrine -of the Higher Harmony. But the resemblance was merely superficial, as -the Scientific Initiate had been careful to explain to her. Her previous -guides had not been Initiates, and had no scientific training; they -could only guess, whereas he _knew_. That was the meaning of Immediacy: -direct contact with the Soul of the Invisible. How clear and beautiful -he made it all! How all the little daily problems shrivelled up and -vanished like a puff of smoke to eyes cleared by that initiation! And he -had seen at once that Pauline was one of the few who _could_ be initiated; -who were worthy to be drawn out of the senseless modern rush and taken -in Beyond the Veil. She closed her eyes again, and felt herself there -with him... "Of course he treats hardly anybody," Mrs. Swoffer had -assured her; "not one in a hundred. He says he'd rather starve than -waste his time on the unmystical. (He saw at once that you were -mystical.) Because he takes time--he must have it... Days, weeks, if -necessary. Our crowded engagements mean nothing to him. He won't have a -clock in the house. And he doesn't care whether he's paid or not; he -says he's paid in soul-growth. Marvellous, isn't it?" - -Marvellous indeed! And how different from Alvah Loft's Taylorized -treatments, his rapidly rising scale of charges, and the unbroken stream -of patients succeeding each other under his bony touch! And how one came -back from communion with the Invisible longing to help others, to draw -all one's dear ones with one Beyond the Veil. Pauline had gone to town -with an unavowed burden on her mind. Jim, Lita, her husband, that -blundering Amalasuntha, that everlasting Michelangelo; and Nona, -too--Nona, who looked thinner and more drawn every day, and whose tongue -seemed to grow sharper and more derisive; who seemed--at barely -twenty--to be turning from a gay mocking girl into a pinched -fault-finding old maid... - -All these things had weighed on Pauline more than she cared to -acknowledge; but now she felt strong enough to lift them, or rather they -had become as light as air. "If only you Americans would persuade -yourselves of the utter unimportance of the Actual--of the total -non-existence of the Real." That was what Gobine had said, and the words -had thrilled her like a revelation. Her eyes continued to rest with an -absent smile on her daughter's ironic face, but what she was really -thinking of was: "How on earth can I possibly induce him to come to the -Cardinal's reception?" - -That was one of the things that Nona would never understand her caring -about. She would credit--didn't Pauline know!--her mother with the -fatuous ambition to use her united celebrities for a social "draw," as a -selfish child might gather all its toys into one heap; she would never -see how important it was to bring together the representatives of the -conflicting creeds, the bearers of the multiple messages, in the hope of -drawing from their contact the flash of revelation for which the whole -creation groaned. "If only the Cardinal could have a quiet talk with -Gobine," Pauline thought; and, immediately dramatizing the possibility, -saw herself steering his Eminence toward the innermost recess of her -long suite of drawing-rooms, where the Scientific Initiate, shaggy but -inspired, would suddenly stand before the Prince of the Church while she -guarded the threshold from intruders. What new life it might put into -the ossified Roman dogmas if the Cardinal could be made to understand -that beautiful new doctrine of Immediacy! But how could she ever -persuade Gobine to kiss the ring? - -"And Mrs. Bruss--any news? I thought Maisie seemed really hopeful." - -"Yes; the night wasn't bad. The doctors think she'll go on all -right--for the present." - -Pauline frowned; it was distasteful to have the suggestion of suffering -and decay obtruded upon her beatific mood. She was living in a world -where such things were not, and it seemed cruel--and unnecessary--to -suggest to her that perhaps all Mrs. Bruss had already endured might not -avail to spare her future misery. - -"I'm sure we ought to try to resist looking ahead, and creating -imaginary suffering for ourselves or others. Why should the doctors say -'for the present'? They can't possibly tell if the disease will ever -come back." - -"No; but they know it generally does." - -"Can't you see, Nona, that that's just what _makes_ it? Being prepared to -suffer is really the way to create suffering. And creating suffering is -creating sin, because sin and suffering are really one. We ought to -refuse ourselves to pain. All the great Healers have taught us that." - -Nona lifted her eyebrows in the slightly disturbing way she had. "Did -Christ?" - -Pauline felt her colour rise. This habit of irrelevant and rather -impertinent retort was growing on Nona. The idea of stirring up the -troublesome mysteries of Christian dogma at the breakfast-table! Pauline -had no intention of attacking any religion. But Nona was really getting -as querulous as a teething child. Perhaps that was what she was, -morally; perhaps some new experience was forcing its way through the -tender flesh of her soul. The suggestion was disturbing to all Pauline's -theories; yet confronted with her daughter's face and voice she could -only take refuge in the idea that Nona, unable to attain the Higher -Harmony, was struggling in a crepuscular wretchedness from which she -refused to be freed. - -"If you'd only come to Gobine with me, dear, these problems would never -trouble you any more." - -"They don't now--not an atom. What troubles me is the plain human -tangle, as it remains after we've done our best to straighten it out. -Look at Mrs. Bruss!" - -"But the doctors say there's every chance--" - -"Did you ever know them not to, after a first operation for cancer?" - -"Of course, Nona, if you take sorrow and suffering for granted--" - -"I don't, mother; but, apparently, Somebody does, judging from their -diffusion and persistency, as the natural history books say." - -Pauline felt her smooth brows gather in an unwelcome frown. The child -had succeeded in spoiling her breakfast and in unsettling the happy -equilibrium which she had imparted to her world. She didn't know what -ailed Nona, unless she was fretting over Stan Heuston's disgraceful -behaviour; but if so, it was better that she should learn in time what -he was, and face her disillusionment. She might actually have ended by -falling in love with him, Pauline reflected, and that would have been -very disagreeable on account of Aggie. "What she needs is to marry," -Pauline said to herself, struggling back to serenity. - -She glanced at her watch, wondered if it were worth while to wait any -longer for her husband, and decided to instruct Powder to keep his -breakfast hot, and produce fresh coffee and rice-cakes when he rang. - -Dexter, the day before, had taken Lita off on another long excursion. -They had turned up so late that dinner had to be postponed for them, and -had been so silent and remote all the evening that Pauline had ventured -a jest on the soporific effects of country air, and suggested that every -one should go to bed early. This morning, though it was past ten -o'clock, neither of the two had appeared; and Nona declared herself -ignorant of their plans for the day. - -"It's a mercy Lita is so satisfied here," Pauline sighed, resigning -herself to another dull day at the thought of the miracle Manford was -accomplishing. She had felt rather nervous when Amalasuntha had appeared -with her incredible film stories, and her braggings about the -irresistible Michelangelo; but Lita did not seem to have been unsettled -by them. - -"Jim will have a good deal to be grateful for when he gets home," -Pauline smiled to her daughter. "I do hope he'll appreciate what your -father has done. His staying on the island seems to show that he does. -By the way," she added, with another smile, "I didn't tell you, did I, -that I ran across Arthur yesterday?" - -Nona hesitated a moment. "So did I." - -"Oh, did you? He didn't mention it. He looks better, don't you think so? -But I found him excited and restless--almost as if another attack of -gout were coming on. He was annoyed because I wouldn't go and see him -then and there, though it was after six, and I should have had to dine -in town." - -"It's just as well you didn't, after such a tiring day." - -"He was so persistent--you know how he is at times. He insisted that he -must have a talk with me, though he wouldn't tell me about what." - -"I don't believe he knows. As you say, he's always nervous when he has -an attack coming on." - -"But he seemed so hurt at my refusing. He wanted me to promise to go -back today. And when I told him I couldn't he said that if I didn't he'd -come out here." - -Nona gave an impatient shrug. "How absurd! But of course he won't. I -don't exactly see dear old Exhibit walking up to the front door of -Cedarledge." - -Pauline's colour rose again; she too had pictured the same possibility, -only to reject it. Wyant had always refused to cross her threshold in -New York, though she lived in a house bought after her second marriage; -surely he would be still more reluctant to enter Cedarledge, where he -and she had spent their early life together, and their son had been -born. There were certain things, as he was always saying, that a man -didn't do: that was all. - -Nona was still pondering. "I wouldn't go to town to see him, mother; why -should you? He was excited, and rather cross, yesterday, but he really -hadn't anything to say. He just wanted to hear himself talk. As long as -we're here he'll never come, and when this mood passes off he won't even -remember what it was about. If you like I'll write and tell him that -you'll see him as soon as we get back." - -"Thank you, dear. I wish you would." - -How sensible the child could be when she chose! Her answer chimed -exactly with her mother's secret inclination, and the latter, rising -from the breakfast-table, decided to slip away to a final revision of -the Cardinal's list. It was pleasant, for once, to have time to give so -important a matter all the attention it deserved. - - - - -XXVIII - - -WHEN Nona came down the next morning it was raining--a cold blustery -rain, lashing the branches about and driving the startled spring back -into its secret recesses. - -It was the first rain since their arrival at Cedarledge, and it seemed -to thrust them back also--back into the wintry world of town, of -dripping streets, early lamplight and crowded places of amusement. - -Mrs. Manford had already breakfasted and left the dining-room, but her -husband's plate was still untouched. He came in as Nona was finishing, -and after an absent-minded nod and smile dropped silently into his -place. He sat opposite the tall rain-striped windows, and as he stared -out into the grayness it seemed as if some of it, penetrating into the -room in spite of the red sparkle of the fire, had tinged his face and -hair. Lately Nona had been struck by his ruddiness, and the vigour of -the dark waves crisping about his yellow-brown temples; but now he had -turned sallow and autumnal. "What people call looking one's age, I -suppose--as if we didn't have a dozen or a hundred ages, all of us!" - -Her father had withdrawn his stare from the outer world and turned it -toward the morning paper on the book-stand beside his plate. With lids -lowered and fixed lips he looked strangely different again--rather like -his own memorial bust in bronze. She shivered a little... - -"Father! Your coffee's getting cold." - -He pushed aside the paper, glanced at the letters piled by his plate, -and lifted his eyes to Nona's. The twinkle she always woke seemed to -struggle up to her from a long way off. - -"I missed my early tramp and don't feel particularly enthusiastic about -breakfast." - -"It's not enthusiastic weather." - -"No." He had grown absent-minded again. "Pity; when we've so few days -left." - -"It may clear, though." - -What stupid things they were saying! Much either he or she cared about -the weather, when they were in the country and had the prospect of a -good tramp or a hard gallop together. Not that they had had many such -lately; but then she had been busy with her mother, trying to make up -for Maisie's absence; and there had been the interruption caused by the -week-end party; and he had been helping to keep Lita amused--with -success, apparently. - -"Yes... I shouldn't wonder if it cleared." He frowned out toward the -sky again. "Round about midday." He paused, and added: "I thought of -running Lita over to Greystock." - -She nodded. They would no doubt stay and dine, and Lita would get her -dance. Probably Mrs. Manford wouldn't mind, though she was beginning to -show signs of wearying of tête-à-tête dinners with her daughter. But -they could go over the reception list again; and Pauline could talk -about her new Messiah. - -Nona glanced down at her own letters. She often forgot to look at them -till the day was nearly over, now that she knew the one writing her eyes -thirsted for would not be on any of the envelopes. Stanley Heuston had -made no sign since they had parted that night on the doorstep... - -The door opened, and Lita came in. It was the first time since their -arrival that she had appeared at breakfast. She faced Manford as she -entered, and Nona saw her father's expression change. It was like those -funny old portraits in the picture-restorers' windows, with a veil of -age and dust removed from one half to show the real surface underneath. -Lita's entrance did not make him look either younger or happier; it -simply removed from his face the soul-disguising veil which life -interposes between a man's daily world and himself. He looked -stripped--exposed ... exposed ... that was it. Nona glanced at Lita, -not to surprise her off her guard, but simply to look away from her -father. - -Lita's face was what it always was: something so complete and -accomplished that one could not imagine its being altered by any -interior disturbance. It was like a delicate porcelain vase, or a smooth -heavy flower, that a shifting of light might affect, but nothing from -within would alter. She smiled in her round-eyed unseeing way, as a -little gold-and-ivory goddess might smile down on her worshippers, and -said: "I got up early because there wasn't any need to." - -The reason was one completely satisfying to herself, but its effect on -her hearers was perhaps disappointing. Nona made no comment, and Manford -merely laughed--a vague laugh addressed, one could see, less to her -words, which he appeared not to have noticed, than to the mere luminous -fact of her presence; the kind of laugh evoked by the sight of a -dazzling fringed fish or flower suddenly offered to one's admiration. - -"I think the rain will hold off before lunch," he said, communicating -the fact impartially to the room. - -"Oh, what a pity--I wanted to get my hair thoroughly drenched. It's -beginning to uncurl with the long drought," Lita said, her hand wavering -uncertainly between the dishes Powder had placed in front of her. -"Grape-fruit, I think--though it's so awfully ocean-voyagy. Promise me, -Nona--!" She turned to her sister-in-law. - -"Promise you what?" - -"Not to send me a basket of grape-fruit when I sail." - -Manford looked up at her impenetrable porcelain face. His lips half -parted on an unspoken word; then he pushed back his chair and got up. - -"I'll order the car at eleven," he said, in a tone of aimless severity. - -Lita was scooping a spoonful of juice out of the golden bowl of the -grape-fruit. She seemed neither to heed nor to hear. Manford laid down -his napkin and walked out of the room. - -Lita threw back her head to let the liquid slip slowly down between her -lips. Her gold-fringed lids fluttered a little, as if the fruit-juice -were a kiss. - -"When are you sailing?" Nona asked, reaching for the cigarette-lighter. - -"Don't know. Next week, I shouldn't wonder." - -"For any particular part of the globe?" - -Lita's head descended, and she turned her chestnut-coloured eyes softly -on her sister-in-law. "Yes; but I can't remember what it's called." - -Nona was looking at her in silence. It was simply that she was so -beautiful. A vase? No--a lamp now: there was a glow from the interior. -As if her red corpuscles had turned into millions of fairy lamps... - -Her glance left Nona's and returned to her plate. "Letters. What a bore! -Why on earth don't people telephone?" - -She did not often receive letters, her congenital inability to answer -them having gradually cooled the zeal of her correspondents; of all, -that is, excepting her husband. Almost every day Nona saw one of Jim's -gray-blue envelopes on the hall table. That particular colour had come -to symbolize to her a state of patient expectancy. - -Lita was turning over some impersonal looking bills and advertisements. -From beneath them the faithful gray-blue envelope emerged. Nona thought: -"If only he wouldn't--!" and her eyes filled. - -Lita looked pensively at the post-mark and then laid the envelope down -unopened. - -"Aren't you going to read your letter?" - -She raised her brows. "Jim's? I did--yesterday. One just like it." - -"Lita! You're--you're perfectly beastly!" - -Lita's languid mouth rounded into a smile. "Not to you, darling. Do you -want me to read it?" She slipped a polished finger-tip under the flap. - -"Oh, no; no! Don't--not like that!" It made Nona wince. "I wish she -_hated_ Jim--I wish she wanted to kill him! I could bear it better than -this," the girl stormed inwardly. She got up and turned toward the door. - -"Nona--wait! What's the matter? Don't you really want to hear what he -says?" Lita stood up also, her eyes still on the open letter. "He--oh..." -She turned toward her sister-in-law a face from which the inner glow -had vanished. - -"What is it? Is he ill? What's wrong?" - -"He's coming home. He wants me to go back the day after tomorrow." She -stood staring in front of her, her eyes fixed on something invisible to -Nona, and beyond her. - -"Does he say why?" - -"He doesn't say anything but that." - -"When did you expect him?" - -"I don't know. Not for ages. I never can remember about dates. But I -thought he liked it down there. And your father said he'd arranged--" - -"Arranged what?" Nona interrupted. - -Lita seemed to become aware of her again, and turned on her a smooth -inaccessible face. "I don't know: arranged with the bank, I suppose." - -"To keep him there?" - -"To let him have a good long holiday. You all thought he needed it so -awfully, didn't you?" - -Nona stood motionless, staring out of the window. She saw her father -drive up in the Buick. The rain had diminished to a silver drizzle shot -with bursts of sun, and through the open window she heard him call: -"It's going to clear after all. We'd better start." - -Lita went out of the door, humming a tune. - -"Lita!" Nona called out, moved by some impulse to arrest, to warn--she -didn't know what. But the door had closed, and Lita was already out of -hearing. - - -All through the day it kept on raining at uncomfortable intervals. -Uncomfortable, that is, for Pauline and Nona. Whenever they tried to get -out for a walk a deluge descended; then, as soon as they had splashed -back to the house with the dripping dogs, the clouds broke and mocked -them with a blaze of sunshine. But by that time they were either -revising the list again, or had settled down to Mah-jongg in the -library. - -"Really, I can't go up and change into my walking shoes _again_!" Pauline -remonstrated to the weather; and a few minutes later the streaming -window-panes had justified her. - -"April showers," she remarked with a slightly rigid smile. She looked -deprecatingly at her daughter. "It was selfish of me to keep you here, -dear. You ought to have gone with your father and Lita." - -"But there were all those notes to do, mother. And really I'm rather -fed-up with Greystock." - -Pauline executed a repetition of her smile. "Well, I fancy we shall have -them back for tea. No golf this afternoon, I'm afraid," she said, -glancing with a certain furtive satisfaction at the increasing downpour. - -"No; but Lita may want to stay and dance." - -Pauline made no comment, but once more addressed her disciplined -attention to the game. - -The fire, punctually replenished, continued to crackle and drowse. The -warmth drew out the strong scent of the carnations and rose-geraniums, -and made the room as languid as a summer garden. Dusk fell from the -cloud-laden skies, and in due course the hand which tended the fire drew -the curtains on their noiseless rings and lit the lamps. Lastly Powder -appeared, heading the processional entrance of the tea-table. - -Pauline roused herself from a languishing Mah-jongg to take her expected -part in the performance. She and Nona grouped themselves about the -hearth, and Pauline lifted the lids of the little covered dishes with a -critical air. - -"I ordered those muffins your father likes so much," she said, in a tone -of unwonted wistfulness. "Perhaps we'd better send them out to be kept -hot." - -Nona agreed that it would be better; but as she had her hand on the bell -the sound of an approaching motor checked her. The dogs woke with a -happy growling and bustled out. "There they are after all!" Pauline -said. - -There was a minute or two of silence, unmarked by the usual yaps of -welcome; then a sound like the depositing of wraps and an umbrella; then -Powder on the threshold, for once embarrassed and at a loss. - -"Mr. Wyant, madam." - -"Mr. Wyant?" - -"Mr. Arthur Wyant. He seemed to think you were probably expecting him," -Powder continued, as if lengthening the communication in order to give -her time. - -Mrs. Manford, seizing it, rose to the occasion with one of her heroic -wing-beats. "Yes--I was. Please show him in," she said, without risking -a glance at her daughter. - -Arthur Wyant came in, tall and stooping in his shabby well-cut clothes, -a nervous flush on his cheekbones. He paused, and sent a half-bewildered -stare about the room--a look which seemed to say that when he had made -up his mind that he must see Pauline he had failed to allow for the -familiarity of the setting in which he was to find her. - -"You've hardly changed anything here," he said abruptly, in the far-off -tone of a man slowly coming back to consciousness. - -"How are you, Arthur? I'm sorry you've had such a rainy day for your -trip," Mrs. Manford responded, with an easy intonation intended to reach -the retreating Powder. - -Her former husband took no notice. His eyes continued to travel about -the room in the same uncertain searching way. - -"Hardly anything," he repeated, still seemingly unaware of any presence -in the room but his own. "That Raeburn, though--yes. That used to be in -the dining-room, didn't it?" He passed his hand over his forehead, as if -to brush away some haze of oblivion, and walked up to the picture. - -"Wait a bit. It's in the place where the Sargent of Jim as a youngster -used to hang--Jim on his pony. Just over my writing-table, so that I saw -it whenever I looked up..." He turned to Pauline. "Jolly picture. What -have you done with it? Why did you take it away?" - -Pauline coloured, but a smile of conciliation rode gallantly over her -blush. "I didn't. That is--Dexter wanted it. It's in his room; it's been -there for years." She paused, and then added: "You know how devoted -Dexter is to Jim." - -Wyant had turned abruptly from the contemplation of the Raeburn. The -colour in Pauline's cheek was faintly reflected in his own. "Stupid of -me ... of course... Fact is, I was rather rattled when I came in, -seeing everything so much the same... You must excuse my turning up in -this way; I had to see you about something important... Hullo, Nona--" - -"Of course I excuse you, Arthur. Do sit down--here by the fire. You must -be cold after your wet journey ... so unseasonable, after the weather -we've been having. Nona will ring for tea," Pauline said, with her -accent of indomitable hospitality. - - - - -XXIX - - -NONA, that night, in her mother's doorway, wavered a moment and then -turned back. - -"Well, then--goodnight, mother." - -"Goodnight, child." - -But Mrs. Manford seemed to waver too. She stood there in her rich dusky -draperies, and absently lifted a hand to detach one after the other of -her long earrings. It was one of Mrs. Manford's rules never to keep up -her maid to undress her. - -"Can I unfasten you, mother?" - -"Thanks, dear, no; this teagown slips off so easily. You must be tired..." - -"No; I'm not tired. But you..." - -"I'm not either." They stood irresolute on the threshold of the warm -shadowy room lit only by a waning sparkle from the hearth. Pauline -switched on the lamps. - -"Come in then, dear." Her strained smile relaxed, and she laid a hand on -her daughter's shoulder. "Well, it's over," she said, in the weary yet -satisfied tone in which Nona had sometimes heard her pronounce the -epitaph of a difficult but successful dinner. - -Nona followed her, and Pauline sank down in an armchair near the fire. -In the shaded lamplight, with the glint of the fire playing across her -face, and her small head erect on still comely shoulders, she had a -sweet dignity of aspect which moved her daughter incongruously. - -"I'm so thankful you've never bobbed your hair, mother." - -Mrs. Manford stared at this irrelevancy; her stare seemed to say that -she was resigned to her daughter's verbal leaps, but had long since -renounced the attempt to keep up with them. - -"You're so handsome just as you are," Nona continued. "I can understand -dear old Exhibit's being upset when he saw you here, in the same -surroundings, and looking, after all, so much as you must have in his -day... And when he himself is so changed..." - -Pauline lowered her lids over the vision. "Yes. Poor Arthur!" Had she -ever, for the last fifteen years, pronounced her former husband's name -without adding that depreciatory epithet? Somehow pity--an indulgent -pity--was always the final feeling he evoked. She leaned back against -the cushions, and added: "It was certainly unfortunate, his taking it -into his head to come out here. I didn't suppose he would have -remembered so clearly how everything looked... The Sargent of Jim on -the pony... Do you think he minded?" - -"Its having been moved to father's room? Yes; I think he did." - -"But, Nona, he's always been so grateful to your father for what he's -done for Jim--and for Lita. He _admires_ your father. He's often told me -so." - -"Yes." - -"At any rate, once he was here, I couldn't do less than ask him to stay -to dine." - -"No; you couldn't. Especially as there was no train back till after -dinner." - -"And, after all, I don't, to this minute, know what he came for!" - -Nona lifted her eyes from an absorbed contemplation of the fire. "You -don't?" - -"Oh, of course, in a vague way, to talk about Jim and Lita. The same old -things we've heard so many times. But I quieted him very soon about -that. I told him Lita had been perfectly happy here--that the experiment -had been a complete success. He seemed surprised that she had given up -all her notions about Hollywood and Klawhammer ... apparently -Amalasuntha has been talking a lot of nonsense to him ... but when I -said that Lita had never once spoken of Hollywood, and that she was -going home the day after tomorrow to join her husband, it seemed to -tranquillize him completely. Didn't he seem to you much quieter when he -drove off?" - -"Yes; he was certainly quieter. But he seemed to want particularly to -see Lita." - -Pauline drew a quick breath. "Yes. On the whole I was glad she wasn't -here. Lita has never known how to manage Arthur, and her manner is -sometimes so irritating. She might have said something that would have -upset him again. It was really a relief when your father telephoned that -they had decided to dine at Greystock--though I could see that Arthur -thought that funny too. His ideas have never progressed an inch; he's -always remained as old-fashioned as his mother." She paused a moment, -and then went on: "I saw you were a little startled when I asked him if -he wouldn't like to spend the night. But I didn't want to appear -inhospitable." - -"No; not in this house," Nona agreed with her quick smile. "And of -course one knew he wouldn't--" - -Pauline sighed. "Poor Arthur! He's always so punctilious." - -"It wasn't only that. He was suffering horribly." - -"About Lita? So foolish! As if he couldn't trust her to us--" - -"Not only about Lita. But just from the fact of being here--of having -all his old life thrust back on him. He seemed utterly unprepared for -it--as if he'd really succeeded in not thinking about it at all for -years. And suddenly there it was: like the drowning man's vision. A -drowning man--that's what he was like." - -Pauline straightened herself slightly, and Nona saw her brows gather in -a faint frown. "What dreadful ideas you have! I thought I'd never seen -him looking better; and certainly he didn't take too much wine at -dinner." - -"No; he was careful about that." - -"And I was careful too. I managed to give a hint to Powder." Her frown -relaxed, and she leaned back with another sigh, this time of -appeasement. After all, her look seemed to say, she was not going to let -herself be unsettled by Nona's mortuary images, now that the whole -business was over, and she had every reason to congratulate herself on -her own share in it. - -Nona (but it was her habit!) appeared less sure. She hung back a moment, -and then said: "I haven't told you yet. On the way down to dinner..." - -"What, dear?" - -"I met him on the upper landing. He asked to see the baby ... that was -natural..." - -Pauline drew her lips in nervously. She had thought she had all the -wires in her hands; and here was one--She agreed with an effort: -"Perfectly natural." - -"The baby was asleep, looking red and jolly. He stood over the crib a -long time. Luckily it wasn't the old nursery." - -"Really, Nona! He could hardly expect--" - -"No; of course not. Then, just as we were going downstairs, he said: -'Funny, how like Jim the child is growing. Reminds me of that old -portrait.' And he jerked out at me: 'Could I see it?'" - -"What--the Sargent?" - -Nona nodded. "Could I refuse him?" - -"I suppose that was natural too." - -"So I took him into father's study. He seemed to remember every step of -the way. He stood and looked and looked at the picture. He didn't say -anything ... didn't answer when I spoke... I saw that it went -through and through him." - -"Well, Nona, byegones are byegones. But people do bring things upon -themselves, sometimes--" - -"Oh, I know, mother." - -"Some people might think it peculiar, his rambling about the house like -that--his coming here at all, with his ideas of delicacy! But I don't -blame him; and I don't want you to," Pauline continued firmly. "After -all, it's just as well he came. He may have been a little upset at the -moment; but I managed to calm him down; and I certainly proved to him -that everything's all right, and that Dexter and I can be trusted to -know what's best for Lita." She paused, and then added: "Do you know, -I'm rather inclined not to mention his visit to your father--or to Lita. -Now it's over, why should they be bothered?" - -"No reason at all." Nona rose from her crouching attitude by the fire, -and stretched her arms above her head. "I'll see that Powder doesn't say -anything. And besides, he wouldn't. He always seems to know what needs -explaining and what doesn't. He ought to be kept to avert cataclysms, -like those fire-extinguishers in the passages... Goodnight, -mother--I'm beginning to be sleepy." - - -Yes; it was all over and done with; and Pauline felt that she had a -right to congratulate herself. She had not told Nona how "difficult" -Wyant had been for the first few minutes, when the girl had slipped out -of the library after tea and left them alone. What was the use of going -into all that? Pauline had been a little nervous at first--worried, for -instance, as to what might happen if Dexter and Lita should walk in -while Arthur was in that queer excited state, stamping up and down the -library floor, and muttering, half to himself and half to her: "Damn it, -am I in my own house or another man's? Can anybody answer me that?" - -But they had not walked in, and the phase of excitability had soon been -over. Pauline had only had to answer: "You're in my house, Arthur, -where, as Jim's father, you're always welcome..." That had put a stop -to his ravings, shamed him a little, and so brought him back to his -sense of what was due to the occasion, and to his own dignity. - -"My dear--you must excuse me. I'm only an intruder here, I know--" - -And when she had added: "Never in my house, Arthur. Sit down, please, -and tell me what you want to see me about--" why, at that question, -quietly and reasonably put, all his bluster had dropped, and he had sat -down as she bade him, and begun, in his ordinary tone, to rehearse the -old rigmarole about Jim and Lita, and Jim's supineness, and Lita's -philanderings, and what would the end of it be, and did she realize that -the woman was making a laughing-stock of their son--yes, that they were -talking about it at the clubs? - -After that she had had no trouble. It had been easy to throw a little -gentle ridicule over his apprehensions, and then to reassure him by her -report of her own talk with Lita (though she winced even now at its -conclusion), and the affirmation that the Cedarledge experiment had been -entirely successful. Then, luckily, just as his questions began to be -pressing again--as he began to hint at some particular man, she didn't -know who--Powder had come in to show him up to one of the spare-rooms to -prepare for dinner; and soon after dinner the motor was at the door, and -Powder (again acting for Providence) had ventured to suggest, sir, that -in view of the slippery state of the roads it would be well to get off -as promptly as possible. And Nona had taken over the seeing-off, and -with a long sigh of relief Pauline had turned back into the library, -where Wyant's empty whisky-and-soda glass and ash-tray stood, so -uncannily, on the table by her husband's armchair. Yes; she had been -thankful when it was over... - -And now she was thankful that it had happened. The encounter had -fortified her confidence in her own methods and given her a new proof of -her power to surmount obstacles by smiling them away. She had literally -smiled Arthur out of the house, when some women, in a similar emergency, -would have made a scene, or stood on their dignity. Dignity! Hers -consisted, more than ever, in believing the best of every one, in -persuading herself and others that to impute evil was to create it, and -to disbelieve it was to prevent its coming into being. Those were the -Scientific Initiate's very words: "We manufacture sorrow as we do all -the other toxins." How grateful she was to him for that formula! And how -light and happy it made her feel to know that she had borne it in mind, -and proved its truth, at so crucial a moment! She looked back with pity -at her own past moods of distrust, her wretched impulses of jealousy and -suspicion, the moments when even those nearest her had not been proof -against her morbid apprehensions... - -How absurd and far away it all seemed now! Jim was coming back the day -after tomorrow. Lita and the baby were going home to him. And the day -after that they would all be going back to town; and then the last -touches would be put to the ceremonial of the Cardinal's reception. Oh, -she and Powder would have their hands full! All of the big silver-gilt -service would have to be got out of the safety vaults and gone over... -Luckily the last reports of Mrs. Bruss's state were favourable, and no -doubt Maisie would be back as usual... Yes, life was really falling -into its usual busy and pleasurable routine. Rest in the country was all -very well; but rest, if overdone, became fatiguing... - -She found herself in bed, the lights turned off, and sleep descending on -her softly. - -Before it held her, she caught, through misty distances, the sound of -her husband's footfall, the opening and shutting of his door, and the -muffled noises of his undressing. Well ... so he was back ... and -Lita ... silly Lita ... no harm, really... Just as well they -hadn't met poor Arthur... Everything was all right ... the Cardinal... - - - - -XXX - - -PAULINE sat up suddenly in bed. It was as if an invisible hand had -touched a spring in her spinal column, and set her upright in the -darkness before she was aware of any reason for it. - -No doubt she had heard something through her sleep; but what? She -listened for a repetition of the sound. - -All was silence. She stretched out her hand to an onyx knob on the table -by her bed, and instantly the face of a miniature clock was illuminated, -and the hour chimed softly; two strokes followed by one. Half-past -two--the silentest hour of the night; and in the vernal hush of -Cedarledge! Yet certainly there had been a sound--a sharp explosive -sound... Again! There it was: a revolver shot ... somewhere in the -house... - -Burglars? - -Her feet were in her slippers, her hand on the electric light switch. -All the while she continued to listen intently. Dead silence everywhere... - -But how had burglars got in without starting the alarm? Ah--she -remembered! Powder had orders never to set it while any one was out of -the house; it was Dexter who should have seen that it was connected when -he got back from Greystock with Lita. And naturally he had forgotten to. - -Pauline was on her feet, her hair smoothed back under her fillet-shaped -cap of silver lace, her "rest-gown" of silvery silk slipped over her -night-dress. This emergency garb always lay at her bedside in case of -nocturnal alarms, and she was equipped in an instant, and had already -reconnected the burglar-alarm, and sounded the general summons for -Powder, the footmen, the gardeners and chauffeurs. Her hand played -irresolutely over the complicated knobs of the glittering switchboard -which filled a panel of her dressing-room; then she pressed the button -marked "Engine-house." Why not? There had been a series of bad suburban -burglaries lately, and one never knew... It was just as well to rouse -the neighbourhood... Dexter was so careless. Very likely he had left -the front door open. - -Silence still--profounder than ever. Not a sound since that second shot, -if shot it was. Very softly she opened her door and paused in the -anteroom between her room and her husband's. "Dexter!" she called. - -No answer; no responding flash of light. Men slept so heavily. She -opened, lighted--"Dexter!" - -The room was empty, her husband's bed unslept in. But then--what? Those -sounds of his return? Had she been dreaming when she thought she heard -them? Or was it the burglars she had heard, looting his room, a few feet -off from where she lay? In spite of her physical courage a shiver ran -over her... - -But if Dexter and Lita were not yet back, whence had the sound of the -shot come, and who had fired it? She trembled at the thought of -Nona--Nona and the baby! They were alone with the baby's nurse on the -farther side of the house. And the house seemed suddenly so immense, so -resonant, so empty... - -In the shadowy corridor outside her room she paused again for a second, -straining her ears for a guiding sound; then she sped on, pushing back -the swinging door which divided the farther wing from hers, turning on -the lights with a flying hand as she ran... On the deeply carpeted -floors her foot-fall made no sound, and she had the sense of skimming -over the ground inaudibly, like something ghostly, disembodied, which -had no power to break the hush and make itself heard... - -Half way down the passage she was startled to see the door of Lita's -bedroom open. Sounds at last--sounds low, confused and terrified--issued -from it. What kind of sounds? Pauline could not tell; they were rushing -together in a vortex in her brain. She heard herself scream "Help!" with -the strangled voice of a nightmare, and was comforted to feel the rush -of other feet behind her: Powder, the men-servants, the maids. Thank God -the system worked! Whatever she was coming to, at least they would be -there to help... - -She reached the door, pushed it--and it unexpectedly resisted. Some one -was clinging to it on the inner side, struggling to hold it shut, to -prevent her entering. She threw herself against it with all her -strength, and saw her husband's arm and hand in the gap. "Dexter!" - -"Oh, God." He fell back, and the door with him. Pauline went in. - -All the lights were on--the room was a glare. Another man stood -shivering and staring in a corner, but Pauline hardly noticed him, for -before her on the floor lay Lita's long body, in a loose spangled robe, -flung sobbing over another body. - -"Nona--Nona!" the mother screamed, rushing forward to where they lay. - -She swept past her husband, dragged Lita back, was on her knees on the -floor, her child pressed to her, Nona's fallen head against her breast, -Nona's blood spattering the silvery folds of the rest-gown, destroying -it forever as a symbol of safety and repose. - -"Nona--child! What's happened? Are you hurt? Dexter--for pity's sake! -Nona, look at me! It's mother, darling, mother--" - -Nona's eyes opened with a flutter. Her face was ashen-white, and empty -as a baby's. Slowly she met her mother's agonized stare. "All right ... -only winged me." Her gaze wavered about the disordered room, lifting -and dropping in a butterfly's bewildered flight. Lita lay huddled on the -couch in her spangles, twisted and emptied, like a festal garment flung -off by its wearer. Manford stood between, his face a ruin. In the corner -stood that other man, shrinking, motionless. Pauline's eyes, following -her child's, travelled on to him. - -"Arthur!" she gasped out, and felt Nona's feeble pressure on her arm. - -"Don't ... don't... It was an accident. Father--an accident! -_Father_!" - -The door of the room was wide now, and Powder stood there, unnaturally -thin and gaunt in his improvised collarless garb, marshalling the gaping -footmen, with gardeners, chauffeurs and maids crowding the corridor -behind them. It was really marvellous, how Pauline's system had worked. - -Manford turned to Arthur Wyant, his stony face white with revenge. Wyant -still stood motionless, his arms hanging down, his body emptied of all -its strength, a broken word that sounded like "honour" stumbling from -his bedraggled lips. - -"_Father_!" At Nona's faint cry Manford's arm fell to his side also, and -he stood there as powerless and motionless as the other. - -"All an accident ..." breathed from the white lips against Pauline. - -Powder had stepped forward. His staccato orders rang back over his -shoulder. "Ring up the doctor. Have a car ready. Scour the gardens... -One of the women here! Madam's maid!" - -Manford suddenly roused himself and swung about with dazed eyes on the -disheveled group in the doorway. "Damn you, what are you doing here, all -of you? Get out--get out, the lot of you! Get out, I say! Can't you hear -me?" - -Powder bent a respectful but controlling eye on his employer. "Yes, sir; -certainly, sir. I only wish to state that the burglar's mode of entrance -has already been discovered." Manford met this with an unseeing stare, -but the butler continued imperturbably: "Thanks to the rain, sir. He got -in through the pantry window; the latch was forced, and there's muddy -footprints on my linoleum, sir. A tramp was noticed hanging about this -afternoon. I can give evidence--" - -He darted swiftly between the two men, bent to the floor, and picked up -something which he slipped quickly and secretly into his pocket. A -moment later he had cleared his underlings from the threshold, and the -door was shut on them and him. - -"Dexter," Pauline cried, "help me to lift her to the bed." - -Outside, through the watchful hush of the night, a rattle and roar came -up the drive. It filled the silence with an unnatural clamour, immense, -mysterious and menacing. It was the Cedarledge fire-brigade, arriving -double quick in answer to their benefactress's summons. - -Pauline, bending over her daughter's face, fancied she caught a wan -smile on it... - - - - -XXXI - - -NONA MANFORD'S room was full of spring flowers. They had poured in, sent -by sympathizing friends, ever since she had been brought back to town -from Cedarledge. - -That was two weeks ago. It was full spring now, and her windows stood -wide to the May sunset slanting across the room, and giving back to the -tall branches of blossoming plum and cherry something of their native -scent and freshness. - -The reminder of Cedarledge would once have doubled their beauty; now it -made her shut her eyes sharply, in the inner recoil from all the name -brought back. - -She was still confined to her room, for the shot which had fractured her -arm near the shoulder had also grazed her lung, and her temperature -remained obstinately high. Shock, the doctors said, chiefly ... the -appalling sight of a masked burglar in her sister-in-law's bedroom; and -being twice fired at--twice! - -Lita corroborated the story. She had been asleep when her door was -softly opened, and she had started up to see a man in a mask, with a -dark lantern... Yes; she was almost sure he had a mask; at any rate -she couldn't see his face; the police had found the track of muddy feet -on the pantry linoleum, and up the back stairs. - -Lita had screamed, and Nona had dashed to the rescue; yes, and Mr. -Manford--Lita thought Mr. Manford had perhaps got there before Nona. But -then again, she wasn't sure... The fact was that Lita had been -shattered by the night's experience, and her evidence, if not -self-contradictory, was at least incoherent. - -The only really lucid witnesses were Powder, the butler, and Nona -Manford herself. Their statements agreed exactly, or at least dovetailed -into each other with perfect precision, the one completing the other. -Nona had been first on the scene: she had seen the man in the room--she -too thought that he was masked--and he had turned on her and fired. At -that moment her father, hearing the shots, had rushed in, half-dressed; -and as he did so the burglar fled. Some one professed to have seen him -running away through the rain and darkness; but no one had seen his -face, and there was no way of identifying him. The only positive proof -of his presence--except for the shot--was the discovery by Powder, of -those carefully guarded footprints on the pantry floor; and these, of -course, might eventually help to trace the criminal. As for the -revolver, that also had disappeared; and the bullets, one of which had -been found lodged in the door, the other in the panelling of the room, -were of ordinary army calibre, and offered no clue. Altogether it was an -interesting problem for the police, who were reported to be actively at -work on it, though so far without visible results. - -Then, after three days of flaming headlines and journalistic -conjectures, another sensation crowded out the Cedarledge burglary. The -newspaper public, bored with the inability of the police to provide -fresh fuel for their curiosity, ceased to speculate on the affair, and -interest in it faded out as quickly as it had flared up. - -During the last few days Nona's temperature had gradually dropped, and -she had been allowed to see visitors; first one in the day, then two or -three, then four or five--so that by this time her jaws were beginning -to feel a little stiff with the continual rehearsal of her story, -embellished (at the visitors' request) with an analysis of her own -emotions. She always repeated her narrative in exactly the same terms, -and presented the incidents in exactly the same order; by now she had -even learned to pause at the precise point where she knew her -sympathizing auditors would say: "But, my dear, how perfectly -awful--what did it feel like?" - -"Like being shot in the arm." - -"Oh, Nona, you're so cynical! But before that--when you _saw the -man_--weren't you absolutely sick with terror?" - -"He didn't give me time to be sick with anything but the pain in my -shoulder." - -"You'll never get her to confess that she was frightened!" - -And so the dialogue went on. Did her listeners notice that she recited -her tale with the unvarying precision of a lesson learned by heart? -Probably not; if they did, they made no sign. The papers had all been -full of the burglary at Cedarledge: a masked burglar--and of the -shooting of Miss Manford, and the would-be murderer's escape. The -account, blood-curdling and definite, had imposed itself on the public -credulity with all the authority of heavy headlines and continual -repetition. Within twenty-four hours the Cedarledge burglary was an -established fact, and suburban millionaires were doubling the number of -their night watchmen, and looking into the newest thing in -burglar-alarms. Nona, leaning back wearily on her couch, wondered how -soon she would be allowed to travel and get away from it all. - -The others were all going to travel. Her mother and father were off that -very evening to the Rocky Mountains and Vancouver. From there they were -going to Japan and, in the early autumn, to Ceylon and India. Pauline -already had letters to all the foremost Native Princes, and was -regretting that there was not likely to be a Durbar during their visit. -The Manfords did not expect to be back till January or February; -Manford's professional labours had become so exhausting that the -doctors, fearing his accumulated fatigue might lead to a nervous -break-down, had ordered a complete change and prolonged absence from -affairs. Pauline hoped that Nona would meet them in Egypt on their way -home. A sunny Christmas together in Cairo would be so lovely... - -Arthur Wyant had gone also--to Canada, it was said, with cousin Eleanor -in attendance. Some insinuated that a private inebriate asylum in Maine -was the goal of his journey; but no one really knew, and few cared. His -remaining cronies, when they heard that he had been ill, and was to -travel for a change, shrugged or smiled, and said: "Poor old -Arthur--been going it too strong again," and then forgot about him. He -had long since lost his place in the scheme of things. - -Even Lita and Jim Wyant were on a journey. They had sailed the previous -week for Paris, where they would arrive in time for the late spring -season, and Lita would see the Grand Prix, the new fashions and the new -plays. Jim's holiday had been extended to the end of August: Manford, -ever solicitous for his stepson, had arranged the matter with the bank. -It was natural, every one agreed, that Jim should have been dreadfully -upset by the ghastly episode at Cedarledge, in which his wife might have -been a victim as well as Nona; and his intimates knew how much he had -worried about his father's growing intemperance. Altogether, both Wyants -and Manfords had been subjected to an unusual strain; and when rich -people's nerves are out of gear the pleasant remedy of travel is the -first prescribed. - - -Nona turned her head uneasily on the cushions. She felt incurably weary, -and unable to rebound to the spring radiance which usually set her blood -in motion. Her immobility had begun to wear on her. At first it had been -a relief to be quiescent, to be out of things, to be offered up as the -passive victim and the accepted evidence of the Cedarledge burglary. But -now she was sick to nausea of the part, and envious of the others who -could escape by flight--by perpetual evasion. - -Not that she really wanted to be one of them; she was not sure that she -wanted to go away at all--at least in the body. Spiritual escape was -what she craved; but by what means, and whither? Perhaps it could best -be attained by staying just where she was, by sticking fast to her few -square feet of obligations and responsibilities. But even this idea made -no special appeal. Her obligations, her responsibilities--what were -they? Negative, at best, like everything else in her life. She had -thought that renunciation would mean freedom--would mean at least -escape. But today it seemed to mean only a closer self-imprisonment. She -was tired, no doubt... - -There was a tap on the door, and her mother entered. Nona raised her -listless eyes curiously. She always looked at her mother with curiosity -now: curiosity not so much as to what had changed in her, but as to what -had remained the same. And it was extraordinary how Pauline, the old -Pauline, was coming to the surface again through the new one, the -haggard and stricken apparition of the Cedarledge midnight... - -"My broken arm saved her," Nona thought, remembering, with a sort of -ironical admiration, how that dishevelled spectre had become Pauline -Manford again, in command of herself and the situation, as soon as she -could seize on its immediate, its practical, sides; could grasp those -handles of reality to which she always clung. - -Now even that stern and disciplined figure had vanished, giving way, as -the days passed and reassurance grew, to the usual, the everyday -Pauline, smilingly confident in herself and in the general security of -things. Had that dreadful night at Cedarledge ever been a reality to -her? If it had, Nona was sure, it had already faded into the realms of -fable, since its one visible result had been her daughter's injury, and -that was on the way to healing. Everything else connected with it had -happened out of sight and under ground, and for that reason was now as -if it had never existed for Pauline, who was more than ever resolutely -two-dimensional. - -Physically, at least, the only difference Nona could detect was that a -skilful make-up had filled in the lines which, in spite of all the arts -of the face-restorers, were weaving their permanent web about her -mother's lips and eyes. Under this delicate mask Pauline's face looked -younger and fresher than ever, and as smooth and empty as if she had -just been born again--"And she _has_, after all," Nona concluded. - -She sat down by the couch, and laid a light hand caressingly on her -daughter's. - -"Darling! Had your tea? You feel really better, don't you? The doctor -says the massage is to begin tomorrow. By the way--" she tossed a -handful of newspaper cuttings onto the coverlet--"perhaps some of these -things about the reception may amuse you. Maisie's been saving them to -show you. Of course most of the foreign names are wrong; but the -description of the room is rather good. I believe Tommy Ardwin wrote the -article for the 'Looker-on.' Amalasuntha says the Cardinal will like it. -It seems he was delighted with the idea of the flash-light photographs. -Altogether he was very much pleased." - -"Then you ought to be, mother." Nona forced her pale lips into a smile. - -"I _am_, dear. If I do a thing at all I like to do it well. That's always -been my theory, you know: the best or nothing. And I do believe it was a -success. But perhaps I'm tiring you--." Pauline stood up irresolutely. -She had never been good at bedsides unless she could play some active -and masterful part there. Nona was aware that her mother's moments alone -with her had become increasingly difficult as her strength had returned, -and there was nothing more to be done for her. It was as well that the -Manfords were starting on their journey that evening. - -"Don't stay, mother; I'm all right, really. It's only that things still -tire me a little--" - -Pauline lingered, looking down on the girl with an expression of anxiety -struggling through her smooth rejuvenation. - -"I wish I felt happier about leaving you, darling. I know you're all -right, of course; but the idea of your staying in this house all by -yourself--" - -"It's just what I shall like. And on father's account you ought to get -away." - -"It's what I feel," Pauline assented, brightening. - -"You must be awfully busy with all the last things to be done. I'm as -comfortable as possible; I wish you'd just go off and forget about me." - -"Well, Maisie is clamouring for me," Pauline confessed from the -threshold. - -The door shut, and Nona closed her eyes with a sigh. Tomorrow--tomorrow -she would be alone! And in a week, perhaps, she would get back to -Cedarledge, and lie on the terrace with the dogs about her, and no one -to ask questions, to hint and sympathize, or be discreet and evasive... -Yes, in spite of everything, the idea of returning to Cedarledge now -seemed more bearable than any other... - -In a restless attempt to ease her position she stretched her hand out, -and it came in contact with the bundle of newspaper cuttings. She shrank -back with a little grimace; then she smiled. After the night at -Cedarledge every one had supposed--even Maisie and Powder had--that the -Cardinal's reception would have to be given up, since, owing to his -Eminence's impending departure, it could not be deferred. But it had -come off on the appointed day--only the fourth after the burglary--and -Pauline had made it a success. The girl really admired her mother for -that. Something in her own composition responded to the energy with -which the older woman could meet an emergency when there was no way of -turning it. The party had been not only brilliant but entertaining. -Every one had been there, all the official and ecclesiastical -dignitaries, including the Bishop of New York and the Chief Rabbi--yes, -even the Scientific Initiate, looking colossal and Siberian in some -half-priestly dress that added its note to the general picturesqueness; -and yet there had been no crush, no confusion, nothing to detract from -the dignity and amenity of the evening. Nona suspected her mother of -longing to invite the Mahatma, whose Oriental garb would have been so -effective, and who would have been so flattered, poor man! But she had -not risked it, and her chief lion, after the great ecclesiastics, had -turned out to be Michelangelo, the newly arrived, with the film-glamour -enhancing his noble Roman beauty, and his mother at his side, explaining -and parading him. - -"The pity is that dear Jim and Lita have sailed," the Marchesa declared -to all who would give ear. "That's really a great disappointment. I did -hope Lita would have been here tonight. She and my Michelangelo would -have made such a glorious couple: the Old World and the New. Or as -Antony and Cleopatra--only fancy! My boy tells me that Klawhammer is -looking for a Cleopatra. But dear Lita will be back before long--." And -she mingled her hopes and regrets with Mrs. Percy Landish's. - - - - -XXXII - - -NONA shut her eyes again. Ever since that intolerable night she had -ached with the incessant weariness of not being able to sleep, and of -trying to hide from those about her how brief her intervals of oblivion -had been. During the hours of darkness she seemed to be forever toiling -down perspectives of noise and glare, like a wanderer in the labyrinth -of an unknown city. Even her snatches of sleep were so crowded with -light and noise, so dazzled with the sense of exposure, that she was not -conscious of the respite till it was over. It was only by day, alone in -her room, that her lids, in closing, sometimes shut things out... - -Such a respite came to her now; and she started up out of nothingness to -find her father at her side. She had not expected to see him alone -before they parted. She had fancied that her parents would contrive to -postpone their joint farewells till after dinner, just before driving -off to their train. For a moment she lay and looked up at Manford -without being clearly conscious that he was there, and without knowing -what to say if he were. - -It appeared that he did not know either. Perhaps he had been led to her -side, almost in spite of himself, by a vague craving to be alone with -her just once before they parted; or perhaps he had come because he -suspected she might think he was afraid to. He sat down without speaking -in the chair which Pauline had left. - -Dusk had fallen, and Nona was aware of the presence at her side only as -a shadowy bulk. After a while her father put out his hand and laid it on -hers. - -"Why, it's nearly dark," she said. "You'll be off in an hour or so now." - -"Yes. Your mother and I are dining early." - -She wound her fingers into his, and they sat silent again. She liked to -have him near her in this way, but she was glad, for his sake and her -own, that the twilight made his face indistinct. She hoped their silence -might be unbroken. As long as she neither saw nor heard him there was an -unaccountable comfort in feeling him near--as if the living warmth he -imparted were something they shared indissolubly. - -"In a couple of hours now--" he began, with an attempt at briskness. She -was silent, and he went on: "I wanted to be with you alone for a minute -like this. I wanted to say--" - -"Father--." - -He turned suddenly in his chair, and bending down over her pressed his -forehead against the coverlet. She freed her hand and passed it through -the thin hair on his temples. - -"Don't. There's nothing to say." - -She felt a tremor of his shoulders as they pressed against her, and the -tremor ran through her own body and seemed to loosen the fibres of her -heart. - -"Old dad." - -"Nona." - -After that they remained again without speaking till a clock chimed out -from somewhere in the shadows. Manford got up. He gave himself one of -his impatient shakes, and stooped to kiss his daughter on the forehead. - -"I don't believe I'll come up again before we go." - -"No." - -"It's no use--" - -"No." - -"I'll look after your mother--do all I can... Goodbye, dear." - -"Goodbye, father." - -He groped for her forehead again, and went out of the room; and she -closed her eyes and lay in the darkness, her heart folded like two hands -around the thought of him. - - -"Nona, darling!" There were still the goodbyes to her mother to be gone -through. Well, that would be comparatively easy; and in a lighted room -too, with Pauline on the threshold, slim, erect and consciously equipped -for travel--complete and wonderful! Yes; it would be almost easy. - -"Child, it's time; we're off in a few minutes. But I think I've left -everything in order. Maisie's downstairs; she has all my directions, and -the list of stations to which she's to wire how you are while we're -crossing the continent." - -"But, mother, I'm all right; it's not a bit necessary--" - -"Dear! You can't help my wanting to hear about you." - -"No; I know. I only meant you're not to worry." - -"Of course I won't worry; I wouldn't _let_ myself worry. You know how I -feel about all that. And besides," added Mrs. Manford victoriously, -"what in the world is there to worry about?" - -"Nothing," Nona acquiesced with a smile. - -Pauline bent down and placed a lingering kiss where Manford's lips had -just brushed his daughter's forehead. Pauline played her part -better--and made it correspondingly easier for her fellow-actors to play -theirs. - -"Goodbye, mother dear. Have all sorts of a good time, won't you?" - -"It will be a very interesting trip--with a man as clever and cultivated -as your father... If only you could have come with us! But you'll -promise to join us in Egypt?" - -"Don't ask me to promise anything yet, mother." - -Pauline raised herself to her full height and stood looking down -intently at her daughter. Under her smooth new face Nona again seemed to -see the flicker of anxiety pass back and forward, like a light moving -from window to window in a long-uninhabited house. The glimpse startled -the girl and caught her by the heart. Suddenly something within her -broke up. Her lips tightened like a child's, and she felt the tears -running down her cheeks. - -"Nona! You're not crying?" Pauline was kneeling at her side. - -"It's nothing, mother--nothing. Go! Please go!" - -"Darling--if I could only see you happy one of these days." - -"Happy?" - -"Well, I mean like other people. Married--" the mother hastily ventured. - -Nona had brushed away her tears. She raised her head and looked straight -at Pauline. - -"Married? Do you suppose being married would make me happy? I wonder why -you should! I don't want to marry--there's nobody in the world I would -marry." She continued to stare up at her mother with hard unwavering -eyes. "Marry! I'd a thousand times rather go into a convent and have -done with it," she exclaimed. - -"A convent--Nona! Not a _convent_?" - -Pauline had got to her feet and stood before her daughter with distress -and amazement breaking through every fissure of her paint. "I never -heard anything so horrible," she said. - -Deeper than all her eclectic religiosity, deeper than her pride in -receiving the Cardinal, deeper than the superficial contradictions and -accommodations of a conscience grown elastic from too much use, Nona -watched, with a faint smile, the old Puritan terror of gliding priests -and incense and idolatry rise to the surface of her mother's face. -Perhaps that terror was the only solid fibre left in her. - -"I sometimes think you want to break my heart, Nona. To tell me this -now! ... Go into a convent ..." the mother groaned. - -The girl let her head drop back among the cushions. - -"Oh, but I mean a convent where nobody believes in anything," she said. - -THE END - -*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK TWILIGHT SLEEP *** - -Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions will -be renamed. - -Creating the works from print editions not protected by U.S. copyright -law means that no one owns a United States copyright in these works, -so the Foundation (and you!) can copy and distribute it in the -United States without permission and without paying copyright -royalties. Special rules, set forth in the General Terms of Use part -of this license, apply to copying and distributing Project -Gutenberg™ electronic works to protect the PROJECT GUTENBERG™ -concept and trademark. 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If you -are not located in the United States, you will have to check the laws of the -country where you are located before using this eBook. -</div> - -<p style='display:block; margin-top:1em; margin-bottom:1em; margin-left:2em; text-indent:-2em'>Title: Twilight sleep</p> -<p style='display:block; margin-top:1em; margin-bottom:0; margin-left:2em; text-indent:-2em'>Author: Edith Wharton</p> -<p style='display:block; text-indent:0; margin:1em 0'>Release Date: May 23, 2023 [eBook #70844]</p> -<p style='display:block; text-indent:0; margin:1em 0'>Language: English</p> - <p style='display:block; margin-top:1em; margin-bottom:0; margin-left:2em; text-indent:-2em; text-align:left'>Produced by: Laura Natal Rodrigues (Images generously made available by Hathi Trust Digital Library.)</p> -<div style='margin-top:2em; margin-bottom:4em'>*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK TWILIGHT SLEEP ***</div> - -<div class="figcenter"> -<img src="images/cover.jpg" width="500" alt="500"> -</div> - -<div class="chapter"> -<h1>TWILIGHT SLEEP</h1> - -<p><br><br></p> - -<div style='text-align:center; font-size:1.2em;'>EDITH WHARTON</div> - -<p><br><br></p> - -<div class="poetry-container"> -<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">FAUST. <i>Und du, wer bist du</i>?</span><br> -<span class="i0">SORGE. <i>Bin einmal da</i>.</span><br> -<span class="i0">FAUST. <i>Entferne dich</i>!</span><br> -<span class="i0">SORGE. <i>Ich bin am rechten Ort</i>.</span><br> -</div><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i16">Faust. Teil II. Akt V.</span> -</div></div></div> - -<p><br><br></p> - -<p class="center"><b>New York & London</b><br> -<b>D. APPLETON AND COMPANY</b><br> -<b>MCMXXVII</b></p> - -</div> - -<p><br><br><br></p> - -<div class="chapter"> -<p class="center">COPYRIGHT—1927—BY -D. APPLETON AND COMPANY<br> -PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA</p> - -<p><br><br><br></p> - -<p class="center">By EDITH WHARTON</p> -<br> -<p class="nind"> -TWILIGHT SLEEP<br> -HERE AND BEYOND<br> -THE MOTHER'S RECOMPENSE<br> -OLD NEW YORK<br> -<span style="margin-left: 2em;">False Dawn</span><br> -<span style="margin-left: 2em;">The Old Maid</span><br> -<span style="margin-left: 2em;">The Spark</span><br> -<span style="margin-left: 2em;">New Year's Day</span><br> -THE GLIMPSES OF THE MOON<br> -THE AGE OF INNOCENCE<br> -SUMMER<br> -THE REEF<br> -THE MARNE<br> -FRENCH WAYS AND THEIR MEANING</p> - -<p><br><br><br></p> -</div> -<div class="chapter"> -<h2>CONTENTS</h2> -<p class="nind"> -<a href="#BOOK_I">BOOK I</a><br> -CHAPTER <a href="#chap01">I</a><br> -CHAPTER <a href="#chap02">II</a><br> -CHAPTER <a href="#chap03">III</a><br> -CHAPTER <a href="#chap04">IV</a><br> -CHAPTER <a href="#chap05">V</a><br> -CHAPTER <a href="#chap06">VI</a><br> -CHAPTER <a href="#chap07">VII</a><br> -CHAPTER <a href="#chap08">VIII</a><br> -CHAPTER <a href="#chap09">IX</a><br> -CHAPTER <a href="#chap10">X</a><br> -<a href="#BOOK_II">BOOK II</a><br> -CHAPTER <a href="#chap11">XI</a><br> -CHAPTER <a href="#chap12">XII</a><br> -CHAPTER <a href="#chap13">XIII</a><br> -CHAPTER <a href="#chap14">XIV</a><br> -CHAPTER <a href="#chap15">XV</a><br> -CHAPTER <a href="#chap16">XVI</a><br> -CHAPTER <a href="#chap17">XVII</a><br> -CHAPTER <a href="#chap18">XVIII</a><br> -CHAPTER <a href="#chap19">XIX</a><br> -<a href="#BOOK_III">BOOK III</a><br> -CHAPTER <a href="#chap20">XX</a><br> -CHAPTER <a href="#chap21">XXI</a><br> -CHAPTER <a href="#chap22">XXII</a><br> -CHAPTER <a href="#chap23">XXIII</a><br> -CHAPTER <a href="#chap24">XXIV</a><br> -CHAPTER <a href="#chap25">XXV</a><br> -CHAPTER <a href="#chap26">XXVI</a><br> -CHAPTER <a href="#chap27">XXVII</a><br> -CHAPTER <a href="#chap28">XXVIII</a><br> -CHAPTER <a href="#chap29">XXIX</a><br> -CHAPTER <a href="#chap30">XXX</a><br> -CHAPTER <a href="#chap31">XXXI</a><br> -CHAPTER <a href="#chap32">XXXII</a></p> - - -<p><br><br><br></p> -</div> -<div class="chapter"> -<h2><a id="BOOK_I"><i>BOOK I</i></a></h2> - -<p><br><br><br></p> - -<h2><a id="chap01"></a>I</h2> - -<div> - <img class="drop-cap" src="images/dropcap-m.jpg" width="70" alt="drop_m"> -</div> -<p class="drop-cap"> -MISS BRUSS, the perfect secretary, received Nona Manford at the door of -her mother's boudoir ("the office," Mrs. Manford's children called it) -with a gesture of the kindliest denial. -</p> -<p> -"She wants to, you know, dear—your mother always wants to see you," -pleaded Maisie Bruss, in a voice which seemed to be thinned and -sharpened by continuous telephoning. Miss Bruss, attached to Mrs. -Manford's service since shortly after the latter's second marriage, had -known Nona from her childhood, and was privileged, even now that she was -"out," to treat her with a certain benevolent familiarity—benevolence -being the note of the Manford household. -</p> -<p> -"But look at her list—just for this morning!" the secretary -continued, handing over a tall morocco-framed tablet, on which was -inscribed, in the colourless secretarial hand: "7.30 Mental uplift. 7.45 -Breakfast. 8. Psycho-analysis. 8.15 See cook. 8.30 Silent Meditation. -8.45 Facial massage. 9. Man with Persian miniatures. 9.15 -Correspondence. 9.30 Manicure. 9.45 Eurythmic exercises. 10. Hair waved. -10.15 Sit for bust. 10.30 Receive Mothers' Day deputation. 11. Dancing -lesson. 11.30 Birth Control committee at Mrs.——" -</p> -<p> -"The manicure is there now, late as usual. That's what martyrizes your -mother; everybody's being so unpunctual. This New York life is killing -her." -</p> -<p> -"I'm not unpunctual," said Nona Manford, leaning in the doorway. -</p> -<p> -"No; and a miracle, too! The way you girls keep up your dancing all -night. You and Lita—what times you two do have!" Miss Bruss was -becoming almost maternal. "But just run your eye down that list—. You -see your mother didn't <i>expect</i> to see you before lunch; now did she?" -</p> -<p> -Nona shook her head. "No; but you might perhaps squeeze me in." -</p> -<p> -It was said in a friendly, a reasonable tone; on both sides the matter -was being examined with an evident desire for impartiality and -good-will. Nona was used to her mother's engagements; used to being -squeezed in between faith-healers, art-dealers, social service workers -and manicures. When Mrs. Manford did see her children she was perfect to -them; but in this killing New York life, with its ever-multiplying -duties and responsibilities, if her family had been allowed to tumble in -at all hours and devour her time, her nervous system simply couldn't -have stood it—and how many duties would have been left undone! -</p> -<p> -Mrs. Manford's motto had always been: "There's a time for everything." -But there were moments when this optimistic view failed her, and she -began to think there wasn't. This morning, for instance, as Miss Bruss -pointed out, she had had to tell the new French sculptor who had been -all the rage in New York for the last month that she wouldn't be able to -sit to him for more than fifteen minutes, on account of the Birth -Control committee meeting at 11.30 at Mrs.—— -</p> -<p> -Nona seldom assisted at these meetings, her own time being—through -force of habit rather than real inclination—so fully taken up with -exercise, athletics and the ceaseless rush from thrill to thrill which -was supposed to be the happy privilege of youth. But she had had -glimpses enough of the scene: of the audience of bright elderly women, -with snowy hair, eurythmic movements, and finely-wrinkled over-massaged -faces on which a smile of glassy benevolence sat like their rimless -pince-nez. They were all inexorably earnest, aimlessly kind and -fathomlessly pure; and all rather too well-dressed, except the -"prominent woman" of the occasion, who usually wore dowdy clothes, and -had steel-rimmed spectacles and straggling wisps of hair. Whatever the -question dealt with, these ladies always seemed to be the same, and -always advocated with equal zeal Birth Control and unlimited maternity, -free love or the return to the traditions of the American home; and -neither they nor Mrs. Manford seemed aware that there was anything -contradictory in these doctrines. All they knew was that they were -determined to force certain persons to do things that those persons -preferred not to do. Nona, glancing down the serried list, recalled a -saying of her mother's former husband, Arthur Wyant: "Your mother and -her friends would like to teach the whole world how to say its prayers -and brush its teeth." -</p> -<p> -The girl had laughed, as she could never help laughing at Wyant's -sallies; but in reality she admired her mother's zeal, though she -sometimes wondered if it were not a little too promiscuous. Nona was the -daughter of Mrs. Manford's second marriage, and her own father, Dexter -Manford, who had had to make his way in the world, had taught her to -revere activity as a virtue in itself; his tone in speaking of Pauline's -zeal was very different from Wyant's. He had been brought up to think -there was a virtue in work <i>per se</i>, even if it served no more useful -purpose than the revolving of a squirrel in a wheel. "Perhaps your -mother tries to cover too much ground; but it's very fine of her, you -know—she never spares herself." -</p> -<p> -"Nor us!" Nona sometimes felt tempted to add; but Manford's admiration -was contagious. Yes; Nona did admire her mother's altruistic energy; but -she knew well enough that neither she nor her brother's wife Lita would -ever follow such an example—she no more than Lita. They belonged to -another generation: to the bewildered disenchanted young people who had -grown up since the Great War, whose energies were more spasmodic and -less definitely directed, and who, above all, wanted a more personal -outlet for them. "Bother earthquakes in Bolivia!" Lita had once -whispered to Nona, when Mrs. Manford had convoked the bright elderly -women to deal with a seismic disaster at the other end of the world, the -repetition of which these ladies somehow felt could be avoided if they -sent out a commission immediately to teach the Bolivians to do something -they didn't want to do—not to <i>believe</i> in earthquakes, for -instance. -</p> -<p> -The young people certainly felt no corresponding desire to set the -houses of others in order. Why shouldn't the Bolivians have earthquakes -if they chose to live in Bolivia? And why must Pauline Manford lie awake -over it in New York, and have to learn a new set of Mahatma exercises to -dispel the resulting wrinkles? "I suppose if we feel like that it's -really because we're too lazy to care," Nona reflected, with her -incorrigible honesty. -</p> -<p> -She turned from Miss Bruss with a slight shrug. "Oh, well," she -murmured. -</p> -<p> -"You know, pet," Miss Bruss volunteered, "things always get worse as the -season goes on; and the last fortnight in February is the worst of all, -especially with Easter coming as early as it does this year. I never -<i>could</i> see why they picked out such an awkward date for Easter: -perhaps those Florida hotel people did it. Why, your poor mother wasn't -even able to see your father this morning before he went down town, -though she thinks it's <i>all wrong</i> to let him go off to his office -like that, without finding time for a quiet little chat first... Just a -cheery word to put him in the right mood for the day... Oh, by the way, -my dear, I wonder if you happen to have heard him say if he's dining at -home tonight? Because you know he never <i>does</i> remember to leave -word about his plans, and if he hasn't, I'd better telephone to the -office to remind him that it's the night of the big dinner for the -Marchesa—" -</p> -<p> -"Well, I don't think father's dining at home," said the girl -indifferently. -</p> -<p> -"Not—not—not? Oh, my gracious!" clucked Miss Bruss, dashing -across the room to the telephone on her own private desk. -</p> -<p> -The engagement-list had slipped from her hands, and Nona Manford, -picking it up, ran her glance over it. She read: "4 P.M. See A.—4.30 -P.M. Musical: Torfried Lobb." -</p> -<p> -"4 P.M. See A." Nona had been almost sure it was Mrs. Manford's day for -going to see her divorced husband, Arthur Wyant, the effaced mysterious -person always designated on Mrs. Manford's lists as "A," and hence known -to her children as "Exhibit A." It was rather a bore, for Nona had meant -to go and see him herself at about that hour, and she always timed her -visits so that they should not clash with Mrs. Manford's, not because -the latter disapproved of Nona's friendship with Arthur Wyant (she -thought it "beautiful" of the girl to show him so much kindness), but -because Wyant and Nona were agreed that on these occasions the presence -of the former Mrs. Wyant spoilt their fun. But there was nothing to do -about it. Mrs. Manford's plans were unchangeable. Even illness and death -barely caused a ripple in them. One might as well have tried to bring -down one of the Pyramids by poking it with a parasol as attempt to -disarrange the close mosaic of Mrs. Manford's engagement-list. Mrs. -Manford herself couldn't have done it; not with the best will in the -world; and Mrs. Manford's will, as her children and all her household -knew, was the best in the world. -</p> -<p> -Nona Manford moved away with a final shrug. She had wanted to speak to -her mother about something rather important; something she had caught a -startled glimpse of, the evening before, in the queer little half-formed -mind of her sister-in-law Lita, the wife of her half-brother Jim -Wyant—the Lita with whom, as Miss Bruss remarked, she, Nona, -danced away the nights. There was nobody on earth as dear to Nona as -that same Jim, her elder by six or seven years, and who had been -brother, comrade, guardian, almost father to her—her own father, -Dexter Manford, who was so clever, capable and kind, being almost always -too busy at the office, or too firmly requisitioned by Mrs. Manford, -when he was at home, to be able to spare much time for his daughter. -</p> -<p> -Jim, bless him, always had time; no doubt that was what his mother meant -when she called him lazy—as lazy as his father, she had once -added, with one of her rare flashes of impatience. Nothing so conduced -to impatience in Mrs. Manford as the thought of anybody's having the -least fraction of unapportioned time and not immediately planning to do -something with it. If only they could have given it to <i>her</i>! And -Jim, who loved and admired her (as all her family did) was always -conscientiously trying to fill his days, or to conceal from her their -occasional vacuity. But he had a way of not being in a hurry, and this -had been all to the good for little Nona, who could always count on him -to ride or walk with her, to slip off with her to a concert or a -"movie," or, more pleasantly still, just to <i>be there</i>—idling -in the big untenanted library of Cedarledge, the place in the country, -or in his untidy study on the third floor of the town house, and ready -to answer questions, help her to look up hard words in dictionaries, -mend her golf-sticks, or get a thorn out of her Sealyham's paw. Jim was -wonderful with his hands: he could repair clocks, start up mechanical -toys, make fascinating models of houses or gardens, apply a tourniquet, -scramble eggs, mimic his mother's visitors—preferably the -"earnest" ones who held forth about "causes" or "messages" in her gilded -drawing-rooms—and make delicious coloured maps of imaginary -continents, concerning which Nona wrote interminable stories. And of all -these gifts he had, alas, made no particular use as yet—except to -enchant his little half-sister. -</p> -<p> -It had been just the same, Nona knew, with his father: poor useless -"Exhibit A"! Mrs. Manford said it was their "old New York blood"—she -spoke of them with mingled contempt and pride, as if they were the last -of the Capetians, exhausted by a thousand years of sovereignty. Her own -red corpuscles were tinged with a more plebeian dye. Her progenitors had -mined in Pennsylvania and made bicycles at Exploit, and now gave their -name to one of the most popular automobiles in the United States. Not -that other ingredients were lacking in her hereditary make-up: her -mother was said to have contributed southern gentility by being a Pascal -of Tallahassee. Mrs. Manford, in certain moods, spoke of "The Pascals of -Tallahassee" as if they accounted for all that was noblest in her; but -when she was exhorting Jim to action it was her father's blood that she -invoked. "After all, in spite of the Pascal tradition, there is no shame -in being in trade. My father's father came over from Scotland with two -sixpences in his pocket ..." and Mrs. Manford would glance with -pardonable pride at the glorious Gainsborough over the dining-room -mantelpiece (which she sometimes almost mistook for an ancestral -portrait), and at her healthy handsome family sitting about the -dinner-table laden with Georgian silver and orchids from her own -hot-houses. -</p> -<p> -From the threshold, Nona called back to Miss Bruss: "Please tell mother -I shall probably be lunching with Jim and Lita—" but Miss Bruss was -passionately saying to an unseen interlocutor: "Oh, but Mr. Rigley, but -you <i>must</i> make Mr. Manford understand that Mrs. Manford counts on him -for dinner this evening... The dinner-dance for the Marchesa, you know..." -</p> - -<p><br></p> - -<p> -The marriage of her half-brother had been Nona Manford's first real -sorrow. Not that she had disapproved of his choice: how could any one -take that funny irresponsible little Lita Cliffe seriously enough to -disapprove of her? The sisters-in-law were soon the best of friends; if -Nona had a fault to find with Lita, it was that she didn't worship the -incomparable Jim as blindly as his sister did. But then Lita was made to -be worshipped, not to worship; that was manifest in the calm gaze of her -long narrow nut-coloured eyes, in the hieratic fixity of her lovely -smile, in the very shape of her hands, so slim yet dimpled, hands which -had never grown up, and which drooped from her wrists as if listlessly -waiting to be kissed, or lay like rare shells or upcurved -magnolia-petals on the cushions luxuriously piled about her indolent -body. -</p> -<p> -The Jim Wyants had been married for nearly two years now; the baby was -six months old; the pair were beginning to be regarded as one of the -"old couples" of their set, one of the settled landmarks in the -matrimonial quicksands of New York. Nona's love for her brother was too -disinterested for her not to rejoice in this: above all things she -wanted her old Jim to be happy, and happy she was sure he was—or had -been until lately. The mere getting away from Mrs. Manford's iron rule -had been a greater relief than he himself perhaps guessed. And then he -was still the foremost of Lita's worshippers; still enchanted by the -childish whims, the unpunctuality, the irresponsibility, which made life -with her such a thrillingly unsettled business after the clock-work -routine of his mother's perfect establishment. -</p> -<p> -All this Nona rejoiced in; but she ached at times with the loneliness of -the perfect establishment, now that Jim, its one disturbing element, had -left. Jim guessed her loneliness, she was sure: it was he who encouraged -the growing intimacy between his wife and his half-sister, and tried to -make the latter feel that his house was another home to her. -</p> -<p> -Lita had always been amiably disposed toward Nona. The two, though so -fundamentally different, were nearly of an age, and united by the -prevailing passion for every form of sport. Lita, in spite of her soft -curled-up attitudes, was not only a tireless dancer but a brilliant if -uncertain tennis-player, and an adventurous rider to hounds. Between her -hours of lolling, and smoking amber-scented cigarettes, every moment of -her life was crammed with dancing, riding or games. During the two or -three months before the baby's birth, when Lita had been reduced to -partial inactivity, Nona had rather feared that her perpetual -craving for new "thrills" might lead to some insidious form of -time-killing—some of the drinking or drugging that went on among the -young women of their set; but Lita had sunk into a state of smiling -animal patience, as if the mysterious work going on in her tender young -body had a sacred significance for her, and it was enough to lie still -and let it happen. All she asked was that nothing should "hurt" her: she -had the blind dread of physical pain common also to most of the young -women of her set. But all that was so easily managed nowadays: Mrs. -Manford (who took charge of the business, Lita being an orphan) of -course knew the most perfect "Twilight Sleep" establishment in the -country, installed Lita in its most luxurious suite, and filled her -rooms with spring flowers, hot-house fruits, new novels and all the -latest picture-papers—and Lita drifted into motherhood as lightly and -unperceivingly as if the wax doll which suddenly appeared in the cradle -at her bedside had been brought there in one of the big bunches of -hot-house roses that she found every morning on her pillow. -</p> -<p> -"Of course there ought to be no Pain ... nothing but Beauty... It -ought to be one of the loveliest, most poetic things in the world to -have a baby," Mrs. Manford declared, in that bright efficient voice -which made loveliness and poetry sound like the attributes of an -advanced industrialism, and babies something to be turned out in series -like Fords. And Jim's joy in his son had been unbounded; and Lita really -hadn't minded in the least. -</p> - -<p><br><br><br></p> -</div> -<div class="chapter"> -<h2><a id="chap02"></a>II</h2> - -<div> - <img class="drop-cap" src="images/dropcap-t.jpg" width="70" alt="drop_t"> -</div> -<p class="drop-cap"> -THE Marchesa was something which happened at irregular but inevitable -moments in Mrs. Manford's life. -</p> -<p> -Most people would have regarded the Marchesa as a disturbance; some as a -distinct inconvenience; the pessimistic as a misfortune. It was a matter -of conscious pride to Mrs. Manford that, while recognizing these -elements in the case, she had always contrived to make out of it -something not only showy but even enviable. -</p> -<p> -For, after all, if your husband (even an ex-husband) has a first cousin -called Amalasuntha degli Duchi di Lucera, who has married the Marchese -Venturino di San Fedele, of one of the great Neapolitan families, it -seems stupid and wasteful not to make some use of such a conjunction of -names and situations, and to remember only (as the Wyants did) that when -Amalasuntha came to New York it was always to get money, or to get her -dreadful son out of a new scrape, or to consult the family lawyers as to -some new way of guarding the remains of her fortune against Venturino's -systematic depredations. -</p> -<p> -Mrs. Manford knew in advance the hopelessness of these quests—all of -them, that is, except that which consisted in borrowing money from -herself. She always lent Amalasuntha two or three thousand dollars (and -put it down to the profit-and-loss column of her carefully-kept private -accounts); she even gave the Marchesa her own last year's clothes, -cleverly retouched; and in return she expected Amalasuntha to shed on -the Manford entertainments that exotic lustre which the near relative of -a Duke who is also a grandee of Spain and a great dignitary of the Papal -Court trails with her through the dustiest by-ways, even if her mother -has been a mere Mary Wyant of Albany. -</p> -<p> -Mrs. Manford had been successful. The Marchesa, without taking thought, -fell naturally into the part assigned to her. In her stormy and -uncertain life, New York, where her rich relations lived, and from which -she always came back with a few thousand dollars, and clothes that could -be made to last a year, and good advice about putting the screws on -Venturino, was like a foretaste of heaven. "Live there? Carina, -<i>no</i>! It is too—too uneventful. As heaven must be. But -everybody is celestially kind ... and Venturino has learnt that there -are certain things my American relations will not tolerate..." Such was -Amalasuntha's version of her visits to New York, when she recounted them -in the drawing-rooms of Rome, Naples or St. Moritz; whereas in New York, -quite carelessly and unthinkingly—for no one was simpler at heart -than Amalasuntha—she pronounced names, and raised suggestions, -which cast a romantic glow of unreality over a world bounded by Wall -Street on the south and Long Island in most other directions; and in -this glow Pauline Manford was always eager to sun her other guests. -</p> -<p> -"My husband's cousin" (become, since the divorce from Wyant "my son's -cousin") was still, after twenty-seven years, a useful social card. The -Marchesa di San Fedele, now a woman of fifty, was still, in Pauline's -set, a pretext for dinners, a means of paying off social scores, a small -but steady luminary in the uncertain New York heavens. Pauline could -never see her rather forlorn wisp of a figure, always clothed in -careless unnoticeable black (even when she wore Mrs. Manford's old -dresses), without a vision of echoing Roman staircases, of the torchlit -arrival of Cardinals at the Lucera receptions, of a great fresco-like -background of Popes, princes, dilapidated palaces, cypress-guarded -villas, scandals, tragedies, and interminable feuds about inheritances. -</p> -<p> -"It's all so dreadful—the wicked lives those great Roman families -lead. After all, poor Amalasuntha has good American blood in -her—her mother was a Wyant; yes—Mary Wyant married Prince -Ottaviano di Lago Negro, the Duke of Lucera's son, who used to be at the -Italian Legation in Washington; but what is Amalasuntha to do, in a -country where there's no divorce, and a woman just has to put up with -<i>everything</i>? The Pope has been most kind; he sides entirely with -Amalasuntha. But Venturino's people are very powerful too—a great -Neapolitan family—yes, Cardinal Ravello is Venturino's uncle ... -so that altogether it's been dreadful for Amalasuntha ... and such an -oasis to her, coming back to her own people..." -</p> -<p> -Pauline Manford was quite sincere in believing that it was dreadful for -Amalasuntha. Pauline herself could conceive of nothing more shocking -than a social organization which did not recognize divorce, and let all -kinds of domestic evils fester undisturbed, instead of having people's -lives disinfected and whitewashed at regular intervals, like the cellar. -But while Mrs. Manford thought all this—in fact, in the very act -of thinking it—she remembered that Cardinal Ravello, Venturino's -uncle, had been mentioned as one of the probable delegates to the Roman -Catholic Congress which was to meet at Baltimore that winter, and -wondered whether an evening party for his Eminence could not be -organized with Amalasuntha's help; even got as far as considering the -effect of torch-bearing footmen (in silk stockings) lining the Manford -staircase—which was of marble, thank goodness!—and of Dexter -Manford and Jim receiving the Prince of the Church on the doorstep, and -walking upstairs backward carrying silver candelabra; though Pauline -wasn't sure she could persuade them to go as far as that. -</p> -<p> -Pauline felt no more inconsistency in this double train of thought than -she did in shuddering at the crimes of the Roman Church and longing to -receive one of its dignitaries with all the proper ceremonial. She was -used to such rapid adjustments, and proud of the fact that whole -categories of contradictory opinions lay down together in her mind as -peacefully as the Happy Families exhibited by strolling circuses. And of -course, if the Cardinal <i>did</i> come to her house, she would show her -American independence by inviting also the Bishop of New York—her own -Episcopal Bishop—and possibly the Chief Rabbi (also a friend of -hers), and certainly that wonderful much-slandered "Mahatma" in whom she -still so thoroughly believed... -</p> -<p> -But the word pulled her up short. Yes; certainly she believed in the -"Mahatma." She had every reason to. Standing before the tall threefold -mirror in her dressing-room, she glanced into the huge bathroom -beyond—which looked like a biological laboratory, with its white -tiles, polished pipes, weighing machines, mysterious appliances for -douches, gymnastics and "physical culture"—and recalled with -gratitude that it was certainly those eurythmic exercises of the -Mahatma's ("holy ecstasy," he called them) which had reduced her hips -after everything else had failed. And this gratitude for the reduction -of her hips was exactly on the same plane, in her neat card-catalogued -mind, with her enthusiastic faith in his wonderful mystical teachings -about Self-Annihilation, Anterior Existence and Astral Affinities ... -all so incomprehensible and so pure... Yes; she would certainly ask the -Mahatma. It would do the Cardinal good to have a talk with him. She -could almost hear his Eminence saying, in a voice shaken by emotion: -"Mrs. Manford, I want to thank you for making me know that Wonderful -Man. If it hadn't been for you—" -</p> -<p> -Ah, she did like people who said to her: "If it hadn't been for -you—!" -</p> -<p> -The telephone on her dressing-table rang. Miss Bruss had switched on -from the boudoir. Mrs. Manford, as she unhooked the receiver, cast a -nervous glance at the clock. She was already seven minutes late for her -Marcel-waving, and— -</p> -<p> -Ah: it was Dexter's voice! Automatically she composed her face to a -wifely smile, and her voice to a corresponding intonation. "Yes? -Pauline, dear. Oh—about dinner tonight? Why, you know, -Amalasuntha... You say you're going to the theatre with Jim and Lita? -But, Dexter, you can't! They're dining here—Jim and Lita are. But -<i>of course</i>... Yes, it must have been a mistake; Lita's so -flighty... I know..." (The smile grew a little pinched; the voice echoed -it. Then, patiently): "Yes; what else? ... <i>Oh</i>... oh, Dexter... -what do you mean? ... The Mahatma? <i>What</i>? I don't understand!" -</p> -<p> -But she did. She was conscious of turning white under her discreet -cosmetics. Somewhere in the depths of her there had lurked for the last -weeks an unexpressed fear of this very thing: a fear that the people who -were opposed to the teaching of the Hindu sage—New York's great -"spiritual uplift" of the last two years—were gaining power and -beginning to be a menace. And here was Dexter Manford actually saying -something about having been asked to conduct an investigation into the -state of things at the Mahatma's "School of Oriental Thought," in which -all sorts of unpleasantness might be involved. Of course Dexter never -said much about professional matters on the telephone; he did not, to -his wife's thinking, say enough about them when he got home. But what -little she now gathered made her feel positively ill. -</p> -<p> -"Oh, Dexter, but I must see you about this! At once! You couldn't come -back to lunch, I suppose? Not possibly? No—this evening there'll be -no chance. Why, the dinner for Amalasuntha—oh, please don't forget it -<i>again</i>!" -</p> -<p> -With one hand on the receiver, she reached with the other for her -engagement-list (the duplicate of Miss Bruss's), and ran a nervous -unseeing eye over it. A scandal—another scandal! It mustn't be. She -loathed scandals. And besides, she did believe in the Mahatma. He had -"vision." From the moment when she had picked up that word in a magazine -article she had felt she had a complete answer about him... -</p> -<p> -"But I must see you before this evening, Dexter. Wait! I'm looking over -my engagements." She came to "4 P.M. See A. 4.30 Musical—Torfried -Lobb." No; she couldn't give up Torfried Lobb: she was one of the fifty -or sixty ladies who had "discovered" him the previous winter, and she -knew he counted on her presence at his recital. Well, then—for once -"A" must be sacrificed. -</p> -<p> -"Listen, Dexter; if I were to come to the office at 4? Yes; sharp. Is -that right? And don't do anything till I see you—promise!" -</p> -<p> -She hung up with a sigh of relief. She would try to readjust things so -as to see "A" the next day; though readjusting her list in the height of -the season was as exhausting as a major operation. -</p> -<p> -In her momentary irritation she was almost inclined to feel as if it -were Arthur's fault for figuring on that day's list, and thus unsettling -all her arrangements. Poor Arthur—from the first he had been one -of her failures. She had a little cemetery of them—a very small -one—planted over with quick-growing things, so that you might have -walked all through her life and not noticed there were any graves in it. -To the inexperienced Pauline of thirty years ago, fresh from the -factory-smoke of Exploit, Arthur Wyant had symbolized the tempting -contrast between a city absorbed in making money and a society bent on -enjoying it. Such a brilliant figure—and nothing to show for it! -She didn't know exactly what she had expected, her own ideal of manly -achievement being at that time solely based on the power of getting rich -faster than your neighbours—which Arthur would certainly never do. -His father-in-law at Exploit had seen at a glance that it was no use -taking him into the motor-business, and had remarked philosophically to -Pauline: "Better just regard him as a piece of jewellery: I guess we can -afford it." -</p> -<p> -But jewellery must at least be brilliant; and Arthur had -somehow—faded. At one time she had hoped he might play a part in -state politics—with Washington and its enticing diplomatic society -at the end of the vista—but he shrugged that away as -contemptuously as what he called "trade." At Cedarledge he farmed a -little, fussed over the accounts, and muddled away her money till she -replaced him by a trained superintendent; and in town he spent hours -playing bridge at his club, took an intermittent interest in racing, and -went and sat every afternoon with his mother, old Mrs. Wyant, in the -dreary house near Stuyvesant Square which had never been "done over," -and was still lit by Carcel lamps. -</p> -<p> -An obstacle and a disappointment; that was what he had always been. -Still, she would have borne with his inadequacy, his resultless -planning, dreaming and dawdling, even his growing tendency to drink, as -the wives of her generation were taught to bear with such failings, had -it not been for the discovery that he was also "immoral." Immorality no -high-minded woman could condone; and when, on her return from a -rest-cure in California, she found that he had drifted into a furtive -love affair with the dependent cousin who lived with his mother, every -law of self-respect known to Pauline decreed his repudiation. Old Mrs. -Wyant, horror-struck, banished the cousin and pleaded for her son: -Pauline was adamant. She addressed herself to the rising divorce-lawyer, -Dexter Manford, and in his capable hands the affair was settled rapidly, -discreetly, without scandal, wrangling or recrimination. Wyant withdrew -to his mother's house, and Pauline went to Europe, a free woman. -</p> -<p> -In the early days of the new century divorce had not become a social -institution in New York, and the blow to Wyant's pride was deeper than -Pauline had foreseen. He lived in complete retirement at his mother's, -saw his boy at the dates prescribed by the court, and sank into a sort -of premature old age which contrasted painfully—even to Pauline -herself—with her own recovered youth and elasticity. The contrast -caused her a retrospective pang, and gradually, after her second -marriage, and old Mrs. Wyant's death, she came to regard poor Arthur not -as a grievance but as a responsibility. She prided herself on never -neglecting her responsibilities, and therefore felt a not unnatural -vexation with Arthur for having figured among her engagements that day, -and thus obliged her to postpone him. -</p> -<p> -Moving back to the dressing-table she caught her reflection in the tall -triple glass. Again those fine wrinkles about lids and lips, those -vertical lines between the eyes! She would not permit it; no, not for a -moment. She commanded herself: "Now, Pauline, <i>stop worrying</i>. You -know perfectly well there's no such thing as worry; it's only dyspepsia -or want of exercise, and everything's really all right—" in the -insincere tone of a mother soothing a bruised baby. -</p> -<p> -She looked again, and fancied the wrinkles were really fainter, the -vertical lines less deep. Once more she saw before her an erect athletic -woman, with all her hair and all her teeth, and just a hint of rouge -(because "people did it") brightening a still fresh complexion; saw her -small symmetrical features, the black brows drawn with a light stroke -over handsome directly-gazing gray eyes, the abundant whitening hair -which still responded so crisply to the waver's wand, the firmly planted -feet with arched insteps rising to slim ankles. -</p> -<p> -How absurd, how unlike herself, to be upset by that foolish news! She -would look in on Dexter and settle the Mahatma business in five minutes. -If there was to be a scandal she wasn't going to have Dexter mixed up in -it—above all not against the Mahatma. She could never forget that it -was the Mahatma who had first told her she was psychic. -</p> -<p> -The maid opened an inner door an inch or two to say rebukingly: "Madam, -the hair-dresser; and Miss Bruss asked me to remind you—" -</p> -<p> -"Yes, yes, yes," Mrs. Manford responded hastily; repeating below her -breath, as she flung herself into her kimono and settled down before her -toilet-table: "Now, I forbid you to let yourself feel hurried! You -<i>know</i> there's no such thing as hurry." -</p> -<p> -But her eye again turned anxiously to the little clock among her -scent-bottles, and she wondered if she might not save time by dictating -to Maisie Bruss while she was being waved and manicured. She envied -women who had no sense of responsibility—like Jim's little Lita. As -for herself, the only world she knew rested on her shoulders. -</p> - -<p><br><br><br></p> -</div> -<div class="chapter"> -<h2><a id="chap03"></a>III</h2> - -<div> - <img class="drop-cap" src="images/dropcap-a.jpg" width="70" alt="drop_a"> -</div> -<p class="drop-cap"> -AT a quarter past one, when Nona arrived at her half-brother's house, -she was told that Mrs. Wyant was not yet down. -</p> -<p> -"And Mr. Wyant not yet up, I suppose? From his office, I mean," she -added, as the young butler looked his surprise. -</p> -<p> -Pauline Manford had been very generous at the time of her son's -marriage. She was relieved at his settling down, and at his seeming to -understand that marriage connoted the choice of a profession, and the -adoption of what people called regular habits. Not that Jim's -irregularities had ever been such as the phrase habitually suggests. -They had chiefly consisted in his not being able to make up his mind -what to do with his life (so like his poor father, that!), in his always -forgetting what time it was, or what engagements his mother had made for -him, in his wanting a chemical laboratory fitted up for him at -Cedarledge, and then, when it was all done, using it first as a kennel -for breeding fox-terriers and then as a quiet place to practise the -violin. -</p> -<p> -Nona knew how sorely these vacillations had tried her mother, and how -reassured Mrs. Manford had been when the young man, in the heat of his -infatuation for Lita, had vowed that if she would have him he would turn -to and grind in an office like all the other husbands. -</p> -<p> -<i>Lita have him</i>! Lita Cliffe, a portionless orphan, with no one to -guide her in the world but a harum-scarum and somewhat blown-upon aunt, -the "impossible" Mrs. Percy Landish! Mrs. Manford smiled at her son's -modesty while she applauded his good resolutions. "This experience has -made a man of dear Jim," she said, mildly triumphing in the latest -confirmation of her optimism. "If only it lasts—!" she added, -relapsing into human uncertainty. -</p> -<p> -"Oh, it will, mother; you'll see; as long as Lita doesn't get tired of -him," Nona had assured her. -</p> -<p> -"As long—? But, my dear child, why should Lita ever get tired of him? -You seem to forget what a miracle it was that a girl like Lita, with no -one but poor Kitty Landish to look after her, should ever have got such -a husband!" -</p> -<p> -Nona held her ground. "Well—just look about you, mother! Don't they -almost all get tired of each other? And when they do, will anything ever -stop their having another try? Think of your big dinners! Doesn't Maisie -always have to make out a list of previous marriages as long as a -cross-word puzzle, to prevent your calling people by the wrong names?" -</p> -<p> -Mrs. Manford waved away the challenge. "Jim and Lita are not like that; -and I don't like your way of speaking of divorce, Nona," she had added, -rather weakly for her—since, as Nona might have reminded her, her own -way of speaking of divorce varied disconcertingly with the time, the -place and the divorce. -</p> -<p> -The young girl had leisure to recall this discussion while she sat and -waited for her brother and his wife. In the freshly decorated and -studiously empty house there seemed to be no one to welcome her. The -baby (whom she had first enquired for) was asleep, his mother hardly -awake, and the head of the house still "at the office." Nona looked -about the drawing-room and wondered—the habit was growing on her. -</p> -<p> -The drawing-room (it suddenly occurred to her) was very expressive of -the modern marriage state. It looked, for all its studied effects, its -rather nervous attention to "values," complementary colours, and the -things the modern decorator lies awake over, more like the waiting-room -of a glorified railway station than the setting of an established way of -life. Nothing in it seemed at home or at ease—from the early kakemono -of a bearded sage, on walls of pale buff silk, to the three mourning -irises isolated in a white Sung vase in the desert of an otherwise empty -table. The only life in the room was contributed by the agitations of -the exotic goldfish in a huge spherical aquarium; and they too were but -transients, since Lita insisted on having the aquarium illuminated night -and day with electric bulbs, and the sleepless fish were always dying -off and having to be replaced. -</p> -<p> -Mrs. Manford had paid for the house and its decoration. It was not what -she would have wished for herself—she had not yet quite caught up -with the new bareness and selectiveness. But neither would she have -wished the young couple to live in the opulent setting of tapestries and -"period" furniture which she herself preferred. Above all she wanted -them to keep up; to do what the other young couples were doing; she had -even digested—in one huge terrified gulp—Lita's black -boudoir, with its welter of ebony velvet cushions overlooked by a statue -as to which Mrs. Manford could only minimize the indecency by saying -that she understood it was Cubist. But she did think it -unkind—after all she had done—to have Nona suggest that Lita -might get tired of Jim! -</p> -<p> -The idea had never really troubled Nona—at least not till lately. -Even now she had nothing definite in her mind. Nothing beyond the vague -question: what would a woman like Lita be likely to do if she suddenly -grew tired of the life she was leading? But that question kept coming -back so often that she had really wanted, that morning, to consult her -mother about it; for who else was there to consult? Arthur Wyant? Why, -poor Arthur had never been able to manage his own poor little concerns -with any sort of common sense or consistency; and at the suggestion that -any one might tire of Jim he would be as indignant as Mrs. Manford, and -without her power of controlling her emotions. -</p> -<p> -Dexter Manford? Well—Dexter Manford's daughter had to admit that -it really wasn't his business if his step-son's marriage threatened to -be a failure; and besides, Nona knew how overwhelmed with work her -father always was, and hesitated to lay this extra burden on him. For it -would be a burden. Manford was very fond of Jim (as indeed they all -were), and had been extremely kind to him. It was entirely owing to -Manford's influence that Jim, who was regarded as vague and unreliable, -had got such a good berth in the Amalgamated Trust Co.; and Manford had -been much pleased at the way in which the boy had stuck to his job. Just -like Jim, Nona thought tenderly—if ever you could induce him to do -anything at all, he always did it with such marvellous neatness and -persistency. And the incentive of working for Lita and the boy was -enough to anchor him to his task for life. -</p> -<p> -A new scent—unrecognizable but exquisite. In its wake came Lita -Wyant, half-dancing, half-drifting, fastening a necklace, humming a -tune, her little round head, with the goldfish-coloured hair, the -mother-of-pearl complexion and screwed-up auburn eyes, turning sideways -like a bird's on her long throat. She was astonished but delighted to -see Nona, indifferent to her husband's non-arrival, and utterly unaware -that lunch had been waiting for half an hour. -</p> -<p> -"I had a sandwich and a cocktail after my exercises. I don't suppose -it's time for me to be hungry again," she conjectured. "But perhaps you -are, you poor child. Have you been waiting long?" -</p> -<p> -"Not much! I know you too well to be punctual," Nona laughed. -</p> -<p> -Lita widened her eyes. "Are you suggesting that I'm not? Well, then, how -about your ideal brother?" -</p> -<p> -"He's down town working to keep a roof over your head and your son's." -</p> -<p> -Lita shrugged. "Oh, a roof—I don't care much for roofs, do -you—or is it <i>rooves</i>? Not this one, at any rate." She caught -Nona by the shoulders, held her at arm's-length, and with tilted head -and persuasively narrowed eyes, demanded: "This room is <i>awful</i>, -isn't it? Now acknowledge that it is! And Jim won't give me the money to -do it over." -</p> -<p> -"Do it over? But, Lita, you did it exactly as you pleased two years -ago!" -</p> -<p> -"Two years ago? Do you mean to say you like anything that you liked two -years ago?" -</p> -<p> -"Yes—you!" Nona retorted: adding rather helplessly: "And, besides, -everybody admires the room so much—." She stopped, feeling that she -was talking exactly like her mother. -</p> -<p> -Lita's little hands dropped in a gesture of despair. "That's just it! -<i>Everybody</i> admires it. Even Mrs. Manford does. And when you think -what sort of things <i>Everybody</i> admires! What's the use of -pretending, Nona? It's the typical <i>cliché</i> drawing-room. Every -one of the couples who were married the year we were has one like it. -The first time Tommy Ardwin saw it—you know he's the new -decorator—he said: 'Gracious, how familiar all this seems!' and -began to whistle 'Home, <i>Sweet Home</i>'!" -</p> -<p> -"But of course he would, you simpleton! When what he wants is to be -asked to do it over!" -</p> -<p> -Lita heaved a sigh. "If he only could! Perhaps he might reconcile me to -this house. But I don't believe anybody could do that." She glanced -about her with an air of ineffable disgust. "I'd like to throw -everything in it into the street. I've been so bored here." -</p> -<p> -Nona laughed. "You'd be bored anywhere. I wish another Tommy Ardwin -would come along and tell you what an old <i>cliché</i> being bored is." -</p> -<p> -"An old <i>cliché</i>? Why shouldn't it be? When life itself is such a -bore? You can't redecorate life!" -</p> -<p> -"If you could, what would you begin by throwing into the street? The -baby?" -</p> -<p> -Lita's eyes woke to fire. "Don't be an idiot! You know I adore my baby." -</p> -<p> -"Well—then Jim?" -</p> -<p> -"You know I adore my Jim!" echoed the young wife, mimicking her own -emotion. -</p> -<p> -"Hullo—that sounds ominous!" Jim Wyant came in, clearing the air with -his fresh good-humoured presence. "I fear my bride when she says she -adores me," he said, taking Nona into a brotherly embrace. -</p> -<p> -As he stood there, sturdy and tawny, a trifle undersized, with his -bright blue eyes and short blunt-nosed face, in which everything was so -handsomely modelled and yet so safe and sober, Nona fell again to her -dangerous wondering. Something had gone out of his face—all the -wild uncertain things, the violin, model-making, inventing, dreaming, -vacillating—everything she had best loved except the twinkle in -his sobered eyes. Whatever else was left now was all plain utility. -Well, better so, no doubt—when one looked at Lita! Her glance -caught her sister-in-law's face in a mirror between two panels, and the -reflection of her own beside it; she winced a little at the contrast. At -her best she had none of that milky translucence, or of the long lines -which made Lita seem in perpetual motion, as a tremor of air lives in -certain trees. Though Nona was as tall and nearly as slim, she seemed to -herself to be built, while Lita was spun of spray and sunlight. Perhaps -it was Nona's general brownness—she had Dexter Manford's brown -crinkled hair, his strong black lashes setting her rather usual-looking -gray eyes; and the texture of her dusky healthy skin, compared to -Lita's, seemed rough and opaque. The comparison added to her general -vague sense of discouragement. "It's not one of my beauty days," she -thought. -</p> -<p> -Jim was drawing her arm through his. "Come along, my girl. Is there -going to be any lunch?" he queried, turning toward the dining-room. -</p> -<p> -"Oh, probably. In this house the same things always happen every day," -Lita averred with a slight grimace. -</p> -<p> -"Well, I'm glad lunch does—on the days when I can make a dash up-town -for it." -</p> -<p> -"On others Lita eats goldfish food," Nona laughed. -</p> -<p> -"Luncheon is served, madam," the butler announced. -</p> -<p> -The meal, as usual under Lita's roof, was one in which delicacies -alternated with delays. Mrs. Manford would have been driven out of her -mind by the uncertainties of the service and the incoherence of the -<i>menu</i>; but she would have admitted that no one did a pilaff better -than Lita's cook. Gastronomic refinements were wasted on Jim, whose -indifference to the possession of the Wyant madeira was one of his -father's severest trials. ("I shouldn't have been surprised if <i>you</i> -hadn't cared, Nona; after all, you're a Manford; but that a Wyant -shouldn't have a respect for old wine!" Arthur Wyant often lamented to -her.) As for Lita, she either nibbled languidly at new health foods, or -made ravenous inroads into the most indigestible dish presented to her. -To-day she leaned back, dumb and indifferent, while Jim devoured what -was put before him as if unaware that it was anything but canned beef; -and Nona watched the two under guarded lids. -</p> -<p> -The telephone tinkled, and the butler announced: "Mr. Manford, madam." -</p> -<p> -Nona Manford looked up. "For me?" -</p> -<p> -"No, miss; Mrs. Wyant." -</p> -<p> -Lita was on her feet, suddenly animated. "Oh, all right... Don't wait -for me," she flung over her shoulder as she made for the door. -</p> -<p> -"Have the receiver brought in here," Jim suggested; but she brushed by -without heeding. -</p> -<p> -"That's something new—Lita sprinting for the telephone!" Jim laughed. -</p> -<p> -"And to talk to father!" For the life of her, Nona could not have told -why she stopped short with a vague sense of embarrassment. Dexter -Manford had always been very kind to his stepson's wife; but then -everybody was kind to Lita. -</p> -<p> -Jim's head was bent over the pilaff; he took it down in quick -undiscerning mouthfuls. -</p> -<p> -"Well, I hope he's saying something that will amuse her: nothing seems -to, nowadays." -</p> -<p> -It was on the tip of Nona's tongue to rejoin: "Oh, yes; it amuses her to -say that nothing amuses her." But she looked at her brother's face, -faintly troubled under its surface serenity, and refrained. -</p> -<p> -Instead, she remarked on the beauty of the two yellow arums in a bronze -jar reflected in the mahogany of the dining-table. "Lita has a genius -for flowers." -</p> -<p> -"And for everything else—when she chooses!" -</p> -<p> -The door opened and Lita sauntered back and dropped into her seat. She -shook her head disdainfully at the proffered pilaff. There was a pause. -</p> -<p> -"Well—what's the news?" Jim asked. -</p> -<p> -His wife arched her exquisite brows. "News? I expect you to provide -that. I'm only just awake." -</p> -<p> -"I mean—" But he broke off, and signed to the butler to remove his -plate. There was another pause; then Lita's little head turned on its -long interrogative neck toward Nona. "It seems we're banqueting tonight -at the Palazzo Manford. Did you know?" -</p> -<p> -"Did I know? Why, Lita! I've heard of nothing else for weeks. It's the -annual feast for the Marchesa." -</p> -<p> -"I was never told," said Lita calmly. "I'm afraid I'm engaged." -</p> -<p> -Jim lifted his head with a jerk. "You were told a fortnight ago." -</p> -<p> -"Oh, a fortnight! That's too long to remember anything. It's like Nona's -telling me that I ought to admire my drawing-room because I admired it -two years ago." -</p> -<p> -Her husband reddened to the roots of his tawny hair. "Don't you admire -it?" he asked, with a sort of juvenile dismay. -</p> -<p> -"There; Lita'll be happy now—she's produced her effect!" Nona laughed -a little nervously. -</p> -<p> -Lita joined in the laugh. "Isn't he like his mother?" she shrugged. -</p> -<p> -Jim was silent, and his sister guessed that he was afraid to insist on -the dinner engagement lest he should increase his wife's determination -to ignore it. The same motive kept Nona from saying anything more; and -the lunch ended in a clatter of talk about other things. But what -puzzled Nona was that her father's communication to Lita should have -concerned the fact that she was dining at his house that night. It was -unlike Dexter Manford to remember the fact himself (as Miss Bruss's -frantic telephoning had testified), and still more unlike him to remind his -wife's guests, even if he knew who they were to be—which he seldom -did. Nona pondered. "They must have been going somewhere together—he -told me he was engaged tonight—and Lita's in a temper because they -can't. But then she's in a temper about everything today." Nona tried to -make that cover all her perplexities. She wondered if it did as much for -Jim. -</p> - -<p><br><br><br></p> -</div> -<div class="chapter"> -<h2><a id="chap04"></a>IV</h2> - -<div> - <img class="drop-cap" src="images/dropcap-i.jpg" width="70" alt="drop_i"> -</div> -<p class="drop-cap"> -IT would have been hard, Nona Manford thought, to find a greater -contrast than between Lita Wyant's house and that at which, two hours -later, she descended from Lita Wyant's smart Brewster. -</p> -<p> -"You won't come, Lita?" The girl paused, her hand on the motor door. -"He'd like it awfully." -</p> -<p> -Lita shook off the suggestion. "I'm not in the humour." -</p> -<p> -"But he's such fun—he can be better company than anybody." -</p> -<p> -"Oh, for you he's a fad—for me he's a duty; and I don't happen to -feel like duties." Lita waved one of her flower-hands and was off. -</p> -<p> -Nona mounted the pock-marked brown steps. The house was old Mrs. -Wyant's, a faded derelict habitation in a street past which fashion and -business had long since flowed. After his mother's death Wyant, from -motives of economy, had divided it into small flats. He kept one for -himself, and in the one overhead lived his mother's former companion, -the dependent cousin who had been the cause of his divorce. Wyant had -never married her; he had never deserted her; that, to Nona's mind, gave -one a fair notion of his character. When he was ill—and he had -developed, rather early, a queer sort of nervous hypochondria—the -cousin came downstairs and nursed him; when he was well his visitors -never saw her. But she was reported to attend to his mending, keep some -sort of order in his accounts, and prevent his falling a prey to the -unscrupulous. Pauline Manford said it was probably for the best. She -herself would have thought it natural, and in fact proper, that her -former husband should have married his cousin; as he had not, she -preferred to decide that since the divorce they had been "only friends." -The Wyant code was always a puzzle to her. She never met the cousin when -she called on her former husband; but Jim, two or three times a year, -made it a point to ring the bell of the upper flat, and at Christmas -sent its invisible tenant an azalea. -</p> -<p> -Nona ran up the stairs to Wyant's door. On the threshold a thin -gray-haired lady with a shadowy face awaited her. -</p> -<p> -"Come in, do. He's got the gout, and can't get up to open the door, and -I had to send the cook out to get something tempting for his dinner." -</p> -<p> -"Oh, thank you, cousin Eleanor." The girl looked sympathetically into -the other's dimly tragic eyes. "Poor Exhibit A! I'm sorry he's ill -again." -</p> -<p> -"He's been—imprudent. But the worst of it's over. It will brighten -him up to see you. Your cousin Stanley's there." -</p> -<p> -"Is he?" Nona half drew back, feeling herself faintly redden. -</p> -<p> -"He'll be going soon. Mr. Wyant will be disappointed if you don't go -in." -</p> -<p> -"But of course I'm going in." -</p> -<p> -The older woman smiled a worn smile, and vanished upstairs while Nona -slipped off her furs. The girl knew it would be useless to urge cousin -Eleanor to stay. If one wished to see her one had to ring at her own -door. -</p> -<p> -Arthur Wyant's shabby sitting-room was full of February sunshine, -illustrated magazines, newspapers and cigar ashes. There were some books -on shelves, shabby also: Wyant had apparently once cared for them, and -his talk was still coloured by traces of early cultivation, especially -when visitors like Nona or Stan Heuston were with him. But the range of -his allusions suggested that he must have stopped reading years ago. -Even novels were too great a strain on his attention. As far back as -Nona could remember he had fared only on the popular magazines, -picture-papers and the weekly purveyors of social scandal. He took an -intense interest in the private affairs of the world he had ceased to -frequent, though he always ridiculed this interest in talking to Nona or -Heuston. -</p> -<p> -While he sat there, deep in his armchair, with bent shoulders, sunk head -and clumsy bandaged foot, Nona saw him, as she always did, as taller, -slimmer, more handsomely upstanding than any man she had ever known. He -stooped now, even when he was on his feet; he was prematurely aged; and -the fact perhaps helped to connect him with vanished institutions to -which only his first youth could have belonged. -</p> -<p> -To Nona, at any rate, he would always be the Arthur Wyant of the -race-meeting group in the yellowing photograph on his mantelpiece: clad -in the gray frock-coat and topper of the early 'eighties, and tallest in -a tall line of the similarly garbed, behind ladies with puffed sleeves -and little hats tilting forward on elaborate hair. How peaceful, smiling -and unhurried they all seemed! Nona never looked at them without a pang -of regret that she had not been born in those spacious days of dogcarts, -victorias, leisurely tennis and afternoon calls... -</p> -<p> -Wyant's face, even more than his figure, related him to that past: the -small shapely head, the crisp hair grown thin on a narrow slanting -forehead, the eyes in which a twinkle still lingered, eyes probably blue -when the hair was brown, but now faded with the rest, and the slight -fair moustache above an uncertain ironic mouth. -</p> -<p> -A romantic figure; or rather the faded photograph of one. Yes; perhaps -Arthur Wyant had always been faded—like a charming reflection in a -sallow mirror. And all that length of limb and beauty of port had been -meant for some other man, a man to whom the things had really happened -which Wyant had only dreamed. -</p> -<p> -His visitor, though of the same stock, could never have inspired such -conjectures. Stanley Heuston was much younger—in the middle -thirties—and most things about him were middling: height, complexion, -features. But he had a strong forehead, his mouth was curved for power -and mockery, and only his small quick eyes betrayed the uncertainty and -lassitude inherited from a Wyant mother. -</p> -<p> -Wyant, at Nona's approach, held out a dry feverish hand. "Well, this is -luck! Stan was just getting ready to fly at your mother's approach, and -you turn up instead!" -</p> -<p> -Heuston got to his feet, and greeted Nona somewhat ceremoniously. -"Perhaps I'd better fly all the same," he said in a singularly agreeable -voice. His eyes were intent on the girl's. -</p> -<p> -She made a slight gesture, not so much to detain or dismiss as to -signify her complete indifference. "Isn't mother coming presently?" she -said, addressing the question to Wyant. -</p> -<p> -"No; I'm moved on till tomorrow. There must have been some big upheaval -to make her change her plans at the last minute. Sit down and tell us -all about it." -</p> -<p> -"I don't know of any upheaval. There's only the dinner-dance for -Amalasuntha this evening." -</p> -<p> -"Oh, but that sort of thing is in your mother's stride. You underrate -her capacity. Stan has been giving me a hint of something a good deal -more volcanic." -</p> -<p> -Nona felt an inward tremor; was she going to hear Lita's name? She -turned her glance on Heuston with a certain hostility. -</p> -<p> -"Oh, Stan's hints—." -</p> -<p> -"You see what Nona thinks of my views on cities and men," Heuston -shrugged. He had remained on his feet, as though about to take leave; -but once again the girl felt his eager eyes beseeching her. -</p> -<p> -"Are you waiting to walk home with me? You needn't. I'm going to stay -for hours," she said, smiling across him at Wyant as she settled down -into one of the chintz armchairs. -</p> -<p> -"Aren't you a little hard on him?" Wyant suggested, when the door had -closed on their visitor. "It's not exactly a crime to want to walk home -with you." -</p> -<p> -Nona made an impatient gesture. "Stan bores me." -</p> -<p> -"Ah, well, I suppose he's not enough of a novelty. Or not up-to-date -enough; <i>your</i> dates. Some of his ideas seem to me pretty subversive; -but I suppose in your set and Lita's a young man who doesn't jazz all day -and drink all night—or vice versa—is a back number." -</p> -<p> -The girl did not take this up, and after a moment Wyant continued, in -his half-mocking half-querulous voice: "Or is it that he isn't 'psychic' -enough? That's the latest, isn't it? When you're not high-kicking you're -all high-thinking; and that reminds me of Stan's news—" -</p> -<p> -"Yes?" Nona brought it out between parched lips. Her gaze turned from -Wyant to the coals smouldering in the grate. She did not want to face -any one just then. -</p> -<p> -"Well, it seems there's going to be a gigantic muck-raking—one of the -worst we've had yet. Into this Mahatma business; you know, the nigger -chap your mother's always talking about. There's a hint of it in the -last number of the 'Looker-on'; here ... where is it? Never mind, -though. What it says isn't a patch on the real facts, Stan tells me. It -seems the goings-on in that School of Oriental Thought—what does he -call the place: Dawnside?—have reached such a point that the Grant -Lindons, whose girl has been making a 'retreat' there, or whatever they -call it, are out to have a thorough probing. They say the police don't -want to move because so many people we know are mixed up in it; but -Lindon's back is up, and he swears he won't rest till he gets the case -before the Grand Jury..." -</p> -<p> -As Wyant talked, the weight lifted from Nona's breast. Much she cared -for the Mahatma, or for the Grant Lindons! Stuffy old-fashioned -people—she didn't wonder Bee Lindon had broken away from such -parents—though she was a silly fool, no doubt. Besides, the Mahatma -certainly had reduced Mrs. Manford's hips—and made her less nervous -too: for Mrs. Manford sometimes was nervous, in spite of her breathless -pursuit of repose. Not, of course, in the same querulous uncontrolled -way as poor Arthur Wyant, who had never been taught poise, or mental -uplift, or being in tune with the Infinite; but rather as one agitated -by the incessant effort to be calm. And in that respect the Mahatma's -rhythmic exercises had without doubt been helpful. No; Nona didn't care -a fig for scandals about the School of Oriental Thought. And the relief -of finding that the subject she had dreaded to hear broached had -probably never even come to Wyant's ears, gave her a reaction of -light-heartedness. -</p> -<p> -There were moments when Nona felt oppressed by responsibilities and -anxieties not of her age, apprehensions that she could not shake off and -yet had not enough experience of life to know how to meet. One or two of -her girl friends—in the brief intervals between whirls and -thrills—had confessed to the same vague disquietude. It was as if, -in the beaming determination of the middle-aged, one and all of them, to -ignore sorrow and evil, "think them away" as superannuated bogies, -survivals of some obsolete European superstition unworthy of enlightened -Americans, to whom plumbing and dentistry had given higher standards, -and bi-focal glasses a clearer view of the universe—as if the -demons the elder generation ignored, baulked of their natural prey, had -cast their hungry shadow over the young. After all, somebody in every -family had to remember now and then that such things as wickedness, -suffering and death had not yet been banished from the earth; and with -all those bright-complexioned white-haired mothers mailed in massage and -optimism, and behaving as if they had never heard of anything but the -Good and the Beautiful, perhaps their children had to serve as vicarious -sacrifices. There were hours when Nona Manford, bewildered little -Iphigenia, uneasily argued in this way: others when youth and -inexperience reasserted themselves, and the load slipped from her, and -she wondered why she didn't always believe, like her elders, that one -had only to be brisk, benevolent and fond to prevail against the powers -of darkness. -</p> -<p> -She felt this relief now; but a vague restlessness remained with her, -and to ease it, and prove to herself that she was not nervous, she -mentioned to Wyant that she had just been lunching with Jim and Lita. -</p> -<p> -Wyant brightened, as he always did at his son's name. "Poor old Jim! He -dropped in yesterday, and I thought he looked overworked! I sometimes -wonder if that father of yours hasn't put more hustle into him than a -Wyant can assimilate." Wyant spoke good-humouredly; his first bitterness -against the man who had supplanted him (a sentiment regarded by Pauline -as barbarous and mediæval) had gradually been swallowed up in gratitude -for Dexter Manford's kindness to Jim. The oddly-assorted trio, Wyant, -Pauline and her new husband, had been drawn into a kind of inarticulate -understanding by their mutual tenderness for the progeny of the two -marriages, and Manford loved Jim almost as much as Wyant loved Nona. -</p> -<p> -"Oh, well," the girl said, "Jim always does everything with all his -might. And now that he's doing it for Lita and the baby, he's got to -keep on, whether he wants to or not." -</p> -<p> -"I suppose so. But why do you say 'whether'?" Wyant questioned with -one of his disconcerting flashes. "Doesn't he want to?" -</p> -<p> -Nona was vexed at her slip. "Of course. I only meant that he used to be -rather changeable in his tastes, and that getting married has given him -an object." -</p> -<p> -"How very old-fashioned! You <i>are</i> old-fashioned, you know, my -child; in spite of the jazz. I suppose that's what I've done for -<i>you</i>, in exchange for Manford's modernizing Jim. Not much of an -exchange, I'm afraid. But how long do you suppose Lita will care about -being an object to Jim?" -</p> -<p> -"Why shouldn't she care? She'd go on caring about the baby, even if ... not -that I mean..." -</p> -<p> -"Oh, I know. That's a great baby. Queer, you know—I can see he's -going to have the Wyant nose and forehead. It's about all we've left to -give. But look here—haven't you really heard anything more about -the Mahatma? I thought that Lindon girl was a pal of yours. Now -listen—" -</p> -<p> -When Nona Manford emerged into the street she was not surprised to meet -Stanley Heuston strolling toward her across Stuyvesant Square. Neither -surprised, nor altogether sorry; do what she would, she could never -quite repress the sense of ease and well-being that his nearness gave. -And yet half the time they were together she always spent in being angry -with him and wishing him away. If only the relation between them had -been as simple as that between herself and Jim! And it might have -been—ought to have been—seeing that Heuston was Jim's cousin, -and nearly twice her age; yes, and had been married before she left the -schoolroom. Really, her exasperation was justified. Yet no one -understood her as well as Stanley; not even Jim, who was so much dearer -and more lovable. Life was a confusing business to Nona Manford. -</p> -<p> -"How absurd! I asked you not to wait. I suppose you think I'm not old -enough to be out alone after dark." -</p> -<p> -"That hadn't occurred to me; and I'm not waiting to walk home with you," -Heuston rejoined with some asperity. "But I do want to say two words," -he added, his voice breaking into persuasion. -</p> -<p> -Nona stopped, her heels firmly set on the pavement. "The same old two?" -</p> -<p> -"No. Besides, there are three of those. You never <i>could</i> count." He -hesitated: "This time it's only about Arthur—" -</p> -<p> -"Why; what's the matter?" The sense of apprehension woke in her again. -What if Wyant really had begun to suspect that there was something, an -imponderable something, wrong between Jim and Lita, and had been too -shrewd to let Nona detect his suspicion? -</p> -<p> -"Haven't you noticed? He looks like the devil. He's been drinking again. -Eleanor spoke to me—" -</p> -<p> -"Oh, dear." There it was—all the responsibilities and worries always -closed in on Nona! But this one, after all, was relatively bearable. -</p> -<p> -"What can I do, Stan? I can't imagine why you come to <i>me</i>!" -</p> -<p> -He smiled a little, in his queer derisive way. "Doesn't everybody? The -fact is—I didn't want to bother Jim." -</p> -<p> -She was silent. She understood; but she resented his knowing that she -understood. -</p> -<p> -"Jim has got to be bothered. He's got to look after his father." -</p> -<p> -"Yes; but I— Oh, look here, Nona; won't you see?" -</p> -<p> -"See what?" -</p> -<p> -"Why—that if Jim is worried about his father now—Jim's a queer -chap; he's tried his hand at fifty things, and never stuck to one; and if -he gets a shock now, on top of everything else—" -</p> -<p> -Nona felt her lips grow hard: all her pride and tenderness for her -brother stiffened into ice about her heart. -</p> -<p> -"I don't know what you mean. Jim's grown up—he's got to face things." -</p> -<p> -"Yes; I know. I've been told the same thing about myself. But there are -things one doesn't ever have a chance to face in this slippery sliding -modern world, because they don't come out into the open. They just lurk -and peep and mouth. My case exactly. What on earth is there about Aggie -that a fellow can <i>face</i>?" -</p> -<p> -Nona stopped short with a jerk. "We don't happen to be talking about you -and Aggie," she said. -</p> -<p> -"Oh, well; I was merely using myself as an example. But there are plenty -of others to choose from." -</p> -<p> -Her voice broke into anger. "I don't imagine you're comparing your -married life to Jim's?" -</p> -<p> -"Lord, no. God forbid!" He burst into a dry laugh. "When I think of -Aggie's life and Lita's—!" -</p> -<p> -"Never mind about Lita's life. What do you know about it, anyhow? Oh, -Stan, why are we quarrelling again?" She felt the tears in her throat. -"What you wanted was only to tell me about poor Arthur. And I'd guessed -that myself—I know something ought to be done. But <i>what</i>? -How on earth can I tell? I'm always being asked by everybody what ought -to be done ... and sometimes I feel too young to be always the one to -judge, to decide..." -</p> -<p> -Heuston stood watching her in silence. Suddenly he took her hand and -drew it through his arm. She did not resist, and thus linked they walked -on slowly and without further speech through the cold deserted streets. -As they approached more populous regions she freed her arm from his, and -signalled to a taxi. -</p> -<p> -"May I come?" -</p> -<p> -"No. I'm going to meet Lita at the Cubist Cabaret. I promised to be -there by four." -</p> -<p> -"Oh, all right." He looked at her irresolutely as the taxi drew up. "I -wish to God I could always be on hand to help you when you're bothered!" -</p> -<p> -She shook her head. -</p> -<p> -"Never?" -</p> -<p> -"Not while Aggie—" -</p> -<p> -"That means never." -</p> -<p> -"Then never." She held out her hand, but he had turned and was already -striding off in the opposite direction. She threw the address to the -chauffeur and got in. -</p> -<p> -"Yes; I suppose it <i>is</i> never," she said to herself. After all, -instead of helping her with the Wyant problem, Stan had only brought her -another: his own—and hers. As long as Aggie Heuston, a sort of lay -nun, absorbed in High Church practices and the exercise of a bleak but -efficient philanthropy, continued to set her face against divorce, Nona -would not admit that Heuston had any right to force it upon her. "It's -her way of loving him," the girl said to herself for the hundredth time. -"She wants to keep him for herself too—though she doesn't know it; -but she does above all want to save him. And she thinks that's the way -to do it. I rather admire her for thinking that there is a way to save -people..." She pushed that problem once more into the back of her mind, -and turned her thoughts toward the other and far more pressing one: that -of poor Arthur Wyant's growing infirmity. Stanley was probably right in -not wanting to speak to Jim about it at that particular -moment—though how did Stanley know about Jim's troubles, and what -did he know?—and she herself, after all, was perhaps the only -person to deal with Arthur Wyant. Another interval of anxious -consideration made her decide that the best way would be to seek her -father's advice. After an hour's dancing she would feel better, more -alive and competent, and there would still be time to dash down to -Manford's office, the only place—as she knew by -experience—where Manford was ever likely to have time for her. -</p> - -<p><br><br><br></p> -</div> -<div class="chapter"> -<h2><a id="chap05"></a>V</h2> - -<div> - <img class="drop-cap" src="images/dropcap-t.jpg" width="70" alt="drop_t"> -</div> -<p class="drop-cap"> -THE door of his private office clicked on a withdrawing client, and -Dexter Manford, giving his vigorous shoulders a shake, rose from his -desk and stood irresolute. -</p> -<p> -"I must get out to Cedarledge for some golf on Saturday," he thought. He -lived among people who regarded golf as a universal panacea, and in a -world which believed in panaceas. -</p> -<p> -As he stood there, his glance lit on the looking-glass above the mantel -and he mustered his image impatiently. Queer thing, for a man of his age -to gape at himself in a looking-glass like a dago dancing-master! He saw -a swarthy straight-nosed face, dark crinkling hair with a dash of gray -on the temples, dark eyes under brows that were beginning to beetle -across a deep vertical cleft. Complexion turning from ruddy to sallow; -eyes heavy—would he put his tongue out next? The matter with him -was... -</p> -<p> -He dropped back into his desk-chair and unhooked the telephone receiver. -</p> -<p> -"Mrs. James Wyant? Yes... Oh—<i>out</i>? You're sure? And you don't -know when she'll be back? Who? Yes; Mr. Manford. I had a message for Mrs. -Wyant. No matter." -</p> -<p> -He hung up and leaned back, stretching his legs under the table and -staring moodily at the heap of letters and legal papers in the -morocco-lined baskets set out before him. -</p> -<p> -"I look ten years older than my age," he thought. Yet that last new -type-writer, Miss Vollard, or whatever her name was, really behaved as -if ... was always looking at him when she thought he wasn't looking... -"Oh, what rot!" he exclaimed. -</p> -<p> -His day had been as all his days were now: a starting in with a great -sense of pressure, importance and authority—and a drop at the close -into staleness and futility. -</p> -<p> -The evening before, he had stopped to see his doctor and been told that -he was over-working, and needed a nerve-tonic and a change of scene. -"Cruise to the West Indies, or something of the sort. Couldn't you get -away for three or four weeks? No? Well, more golf then, anyhow." -</p> -<p> -Getting away from things; the perpetual evasion, moral, mental, -physical, which he heard preached, and saw practised, everywhere about -him, except where money-making was concerned! He, Dexter Manford, who -had been brought up on a Minnesota farm, paid his own way through the -State College at Delos, and his subsequent course in the Harvard Law -School; and who, ever since, had been working at the top of his pitch -with no more sense of strain, no more desire for evasion (shirking, he -called it) than a healthy able-bodied man of fifty had a right to feel! -If his task had been mere money-getting he might have known—and -acknowledged—weariness. But he gloried in his profession, in its -labours and difficulties as well as its rewards, it satisfied him -intellectually and gave him that calm sense of mastery—mastery over -himself and others—known only to those who are doing what they were -born to do. -</p> -<p> -Of course, at every stage of his career—and never more than now, -on its slippery pinnacle—he had suffered the thousand irritations -inseparable from a hard-working life: the trifles which waste one's -time, the fools who consume one's patience, the tricky failure of the -best-laid plans, the endless labour of rolling human stupidity up the -steep hill of understanding. But until lately these things had been a -stimulus: it had amused him to shake off trifles, baffle bores, -circumvent failure, and exercise his mental muscles in persuading stupid -people to do intelligent things. There was pioneer blood in him: he was -used to starting out every morning to hack his way through a fresh -growth of prejudices and obstacles; and though he liked his big -retaining fees he liked arguing a case even better. -</p> -<p> -Professionally, he was used to intellectual loneliness, and no longer -minded it. Outside of his profession he had a brain above the average, -but a general education hardly up to it; and the discrepancy between -what he would have been capable of enjoying had his mind been prepared -for it, and what it could actually take in, made him modest and almost -shy in what he considered cultivated society. He had long believed his -wife to be cultivated because she had fits of book-buying and there was -an expensively bound library in the New York house. In his raw youth, in -the old Delos days, he had got together a little library of his own in -which Robert Ingersoll's lectures represented science, the sermons of -the Reverend Frank Gunsaulus of Chicago, theology, John Burroughs, -natural history, and Jared Sparks and Bancroft almost the whole of -history. He had gradually discovered the inadequacy of these guides, but -without ever having done much to replace them. Now and then, when he was -not too tired, and had the rare chance of a quiet evening, he picked up -a book from Pauline's table; but the works she acquired were so -heterogeneous, and of such unequal value, that he rarely found one worth -reading. Mrs. Tallentyre's "Voltaire" had been a revelation: he -discovered, to his surprise, that he had never really known who Voltaire -was, or what sort of a world he had lived in, and why his name had -survived it. After that, Manford decided to start in on a course of -European history, and got as far as taking the first volume of Macaulay -up to bed. But he was tired at night, and found Macaulay's periods too -long (though their eloquence appealed to his forensic instinct): and -there had never been time for that course of history. -</p> -<p> -In his early wedded days, before he knew much of his wife's world, he -had dreamed of quiet evenings at home, when Pauline would read -instructive books aloud while he sat by the fire and turned over his -briefs in some quiet inner chamber of his mind. But Pauline had never -known any one who wanted to be read aloud to except children getting -over infantile complaints. She regarded the desire almost as a symptom -of illness, and decided that Dexter needed "rousing," and that she must -do more to amuse him. As soon as she was able after Nona's birth she -girt herself up for this new duty; and from that day Manford's life, out -of office hours, had been one of almost incessant social activity. At -first the endless going out had bewildered, then for a while amused and -flattered him, then gradually grown to be a soothing routine, a sort of -mild drug-taking after the high pressure of professional hours; but of -late it had become simply a bore, a duty to be persisted in -because—as he had at last discovered—Pauline could not live -without it. After twenty years of marriage he was only just beginning to -exercise his intellectual acumen on his wife. -</p> -<p> -The thought of Pauline made him glance at his clock: she would be coming -in a moment. He unhooked the receiver again, and named, impatiently, the -same number as before. "Out, you say? Still?" (The same stupid voice -making the same stupid answer!) "Oh, no; no matter. I say <i>it's no -matter</i>," he almost shouted, replacing the receiver. Of all idiotic -servants—! -</p> -<p> -Miss Vollard, the susceptible type-writer, shot a shingled head around -the door, said "<i>All</i> right" with an envious sigh to some one outside, -and effaced herself before the brisk entrance of her employer's wife. -Manford got to his feet. -</p> -<p> -"Well, my dear—" He pushed an armchair near the fire, solicitous, -still a little awed by her presence—the beautiful Mrs. Wyant who -had deigned to marry him. Pauline, throwing back her furs, cast a quick -house-keeping glance about her. The scent she used always reminded him -of a superior disinfectant; and in another moment, he knew, she would -find some pretext for assuring herself, by the application of a gloved -finger-tip, that there was no dust on desk or mantelpiece. She had very -nearly obliged him, when he moved into his new office, to have concave -surbases, as in a hospital ward or a hygienic nursery. She had adopted -with enthusiasm the idea of the concave tiling fitted to every cove and -angle, so that there were no corners anywhere to catch the dust. -People's lives ought to be like that: with no corners in them. She -wanted to de-microbe life. -</p> -<p> -But, in the case of his own office, Manford had resisted; and now, he -understood, the fad had gone to the scrap-heap—with how many others! -</p> -<p> -"Not too near the fire." Pauline pushed her armchair back and glanced up -to see if the ceiling ventilators were working. "You <i>do</i> renew the -air at regular intervals? I'm sure everything depends on that; that and -thought-direction. What the Mahatma calls mental deep-breathing." She -smiled persuasively. "You look tired, Dexter ... tired and drawn." -</p> -<p> -"Oh, rot!—A cigarette?" -</p> -<p> -She shook her small resolute head. "You forget that he's cured me of -that too—the Mahatma. Dexter," she exclaimed suddenly, "I'm sure it's -this silly business of the Grant Lindons' that's worrying you. I want to -talk to you about it—to clear it up with you. It's out of the -question that you should be mixed up in it." -</p> -<p> -Manford had gone back to his desk-chair. Habit made him feel more at -home there, in fuller possession of himself; Pauline, in the seat facing -him, the light full on her, seemed no more than a client to be advised, -or an opponent to be talked over. He knew she felt the difference too. -So far he had managed to preserve his professional privacy and his -professional authority. What he did "at the office" was clouded over, -for his family, by the vague word "business," which meant that a man -didn't want to be bothered. Pauline had never really distinguished -between practising the law and manufacturing motors; nor had Manford -encouraged her to. But today he suspected that she meant her -interference to go to the extreme limit which her well-known "tact" -would permit. -</p> -<p> -"You must not be mixed up in this investigation. Why not hand it over to -somebody else? Alfred Cosby, or that new Jew who's so clever? The -Lindons would accept any one you recommended; unless, of course," she -continued, "you could persuade them to drop it, which would be so much -better. I'm sure you could, Dexter; you always know what to say—and -your opinion carries such weight. Besides, what is it they complain of? -Some nonsense of Bee's, I've no doubt—she took a rest-cure at the -School. If they'd brought the girl up properly there'd have been no -trouble. Look at Nona!" -</p> -<p> -"Oh—Nona!" Manford gave a laugh of pride. Nona was the one warm rich -spot in his life: the corner on which the sun always shone. Fancy -comparing that degenerate fool of a Bee Lindon to his Nona, and -imagining that "bringing-up" made the difference! Still, he had to admit -that Pauline—always admirable—had been especially so as a -mother. Yet she too was bitten with this theosophical virus! -</p> -<p> -He lounged back, hands in pockets, one leg swinging, instinctively -seeking an easier attitude as his moral ease diminished. -</p> -<p> -"My dear, it's always been understood, hasn't it, that what goes on in -this office is between me and my clients, and not—" -</p> -<p> -"Oh, nonsense, Dexter!" She seldom took that tone: he saw that she was -losing her self-control. "Look here: I make it a rule never to -interfere; you've just said so. Well—if I interfere now, it's because -I've a right to—because it's a duty! The Lindons are my son's -cousins: Fanny Lindon was a Wyant. Isn't that reason enough?" -</p> -<p> -"It was one of the Lindons' reasons. They appealed to me on that very -ground." -</p> -<p> -Pauline gave an irritated laugh. "How like Fanny! Always pushing in and -claiming things. I wonder such an argument took you in. Do consider, -Dexter! I won't for a minute admit that there can be anything wrong -about the Mahatma; but supposing there were..." She drew herself up, -her lips tightening. "I hope I know how to respect professional secrecy, -and I don't ask you to repeat their nasty insinuations; in fact, as you -know, I always take particular pains to avoid hearing anything painful -or offensive. But, supposing there were any ground for what they say; do -they realize how the publicity is going to affect Bee's reputation? And -how shall you feel if you set the police at work and find them -publishing the name of a girl who is Jim's cousin, and a friend of your -own daughter's?" -</p> -<p> -Manford moved restlessly in his chair, and in so doing caught his -reflexion in the mirror, and saw that his jaw had lost its stern -professional cast. He made an attempt to recover it, but unsuccessfully. -</p> -<p> -"But all this is too absurd," Pauline continued on a smoother note. "The -Mahatma and his friends have nothing to fear. Whose judgment would you -sooner trust: mine, or poor Fanny's? What really bothers me is your -allowing the Lindons to drag you into an affair which is going to -discredit them, and not the Mahatma." She smiled her bright frosty -smile. "You know how proud I am of your professional prestige: I should -hate to have you associated with a failure." She paused, and he saw that -she meant to rest on that. -</p> -<p> -"This is a pretty bad business. The Lindons have got their proofs all -right," he said. -</p> -<p> -Pauline reddened, and her face lost its look of undaunted serenity. "How -can you believe such rubbish, Dexter? If you're going to take Fanny -Lindon's word against mine—" -</p> -<p> -"It's not a question of your word or hers. Lindon is fully documented: -he didn't come to me till he was. I'm sorry, Pauline; but you've been -deceived. This man has got to be shown up, and the Lindons have had the -pluck to do what everybody else has shirked." -</p> -<p> -Pauline's angry colour had faded. She got up and stood before her -husband, distressed and uncertain; then, with a visible effort at -self-command, she seated herself again, and locked her hands about her -gold-mounted bag. -</p> -<p> -"Then you'd rather the scandal, if there is one, should be paraded -before the world? Who will gain by that except the newspaper reporters, -and the people who want to drag down society? And how shall you feel if -Nona is called as a witness—or Lita?" -</p> -<p> -"Oh, nonsense—" He stopped abruptly, and got up too. The -discussion was lasting longer than he had intended, and he could not -find the word to end it. His mind felt suddenly empty—empty of -arguments and formulas. "I don't know why you persist in bringing in -Nona—or Lita—" -</p> -<p> -"I don't; it's you. You will, that is, if you take this case. Bee and -Nona have been intimate since they were babies, and Bee is always at -Lita's. Don't you suppose the Mahatma's lawyers will make use of that if -you <i>oblige</i> him to fight? You may say you're prepared for it; and I -admire your courage—but I can't share it. The idea that our children -may be involved simply sickens me." -</p> -<p> -"Neither Nona nor Lita has ever had anything to do with this charlatan -and his humbug, as far as I know," said Manford irritably. -</p> -<p> -"Nona has attended his eurythmic classes at our house, and gone to his -lectures with me: at one time they interested her intensely." Pauline -paused. "About Lita I don't know: I know so little about Lita's life -before her marriage." -</p> -<p> -"It was presumably that of any of Nona's other girl friends." -</p> -<p> -"Presumably. Kitty Landish might enlighten us. But of course, if it -<i>was</i>—" he noted her faintly sceptical emphasis—"I -don't admit that that would preclude Lita's having known the Mahatma, or -believed in him. And you must remember, Dexter, that I should be the -most deeply involved of all! I mean to take a rest-cure at Dawnside in -March." She gave the little playful laugh with which she had been used, -in old times, to ridicule the naughtiness of her children. -</p> -<p> -Manford drummed on his blotting-pad. "Look here, suppose we drop this -for the present—" -</p> -<p> -She glanced at her wrist-watch. "If you can spare the time—" -</p> -<p> -"Spare the time?" -</p> -<p> -She answered softly: "I'm not going away till you've promised." -</p> -<p> -Manford could remember the day when that tone—so feminine under -its firmness—would have had the power to shake him. Pauline, in -her wifely dealings, so seldom invoked the prerogative of her grace, her -competence, her persuasiveness, that when she did he had once found it -hard to resist. But that day was past. Under his admiration for her -brains, and his esteem for her character, he had felt, of late, a -stealing boredom. She was too clever, too efficient, too uniformly -sagacious and serene. Perhaps his own growing sense of -power—professional and social—had secretly undermined his -awe of hers, made him feel himself first her equal, then ever so little -her superior. He began to detect something obtuse in that unfaltering -competence. And as his professional authority grew he had become more -jealous of interference with it. His wife ought at least to have -understood that! If her famous tact were going to fail her, what would -be left, he asked himself? -</p> -<p> -"Look here, Pauline, you know all this is useless. In professional -matters no one else can judge for me. I'm busy this afternoon; I'm sure -you are too—" -</p> -<p> -She settled more deeply into her armchair. "Never too busy for you, -Dexter." -</p> -<p> -"Thank you, dear. But the time I ask you to give me is outside of -business hours," he rejoined with a slight smile. -</p> -<p> -"Then I'm dismissed?" She smiled back. "I understand; you needn't ring!" -She rose with recovered serenity and laid a light hand on his shoulder. -"Sorry to have bothered you; I don't often, do I? All I ask is that you -should think over—" -</p> -<p> -He lifted the hand to his lips. "Of course, of course." Now that she was -going he could say it. -</p> -<p> -"I'm forgiven?" -</p> -<p> -He smiled: "You're forgiven;" and from the threshold she called, almost -gaily: "Don't forget tonight—Amalasuntha!" -</p> -<p> -His brow clouded as he returned to his chair; and oddly enough—he was -aware of the oddness—it was clouded not by the tiresome scene he had -been through, but by his wife's reminder. "Damn that dinner," he swore -to himself. -</p> -<p> -He turned to the telephone, unhooked it for the third time, and called -for the same number. -</p> - -<p><br></p> - -<p> -That evening, as he slipped the key into his front-door, Dexter Manford -felt the oppression of all that lay behind it. He never entered his house -without a slight consciousness of the importance of the act—never -completely took for granted the resounding vestibule, the big hall with -its marble staircase ascending to all the light and warmth and luxury -which skill could devise, money buy, and Pauline's ingenuity combine in -a harmonious whole. He had not yet forgotten the day when, after one of -his first legal successes, he had installed a bathroom in his mother's -house at Delos, and all the neighbours had driven in from miles around -to see it. -</p> -<p> -But luxury, and above all comfort, had never weighed on him; he was too -busy to think much about them, and sure enough of himself and his powers -to accept them as his right. It was not the splendour of his house that -oppressed him but the sense of the corporative bonds it imposed. It -seemed part of an elaborate social and domestic structure, put together -with the baffling ingenuity of certain bird's-nests of which he had seen -the pictures. His own career, Pauline's multiple activities, the problem -of poor Arthur Wyant, Nona, Jim, Lita Wyant, the Mahatma, the tiresome -Grant Lindons, the perennial and inevitable Amalasuntha, for whom the -house was being illuminated tonight—all were strands woven into the -very pile of the carpet he trod on his way up the stairs. As he passed -the dining-room he saw, through half-open doors, the glitter of glass -and silver, a shirt-sleeved man placing bowls of roses down the long -table, and Maisie Bruss, wan but undaunted, dealing out dinner cards to -Powder, the English butler. -</p> - -<p><br><br><br></p> -</div> -<div class="chapter"> -<h2><a id="chap06"></a>VI</h2> - -<div> - <img class="drop-cap" src="images/dropcap-p.jpg" width="70" alt="drop_p"> -</div> -<p class="drop-cap"> -PAULINE MANFORD sent a satisfied glance down the table. -</p> -<p> -It was on such occasions that she visibly reaped her reward. No one else -in New York had so accomplished a cook, such smoothly running service, a -dinner-table so softly yet brightly lit, or such skill in grouping about -it persons not only eminent in wealth or fashion, but likely to find -pleasure in each other's society. -</p> -<p> -The intimate reunion, of the not-more-than-the-Muses kind, was not -Pauline's affair. She was aware of this, and seldom made the -attempt—though, when she did, she was never able to discover why it -was not a success. But in the organizing and administering of a big dinner -she was conscious of mastery. Not the stupid big dinner of old days, -when the "crowned heads" used to be treated like a caste apart, and -everlastingly invited to meet each other through a whole monotonous -season: Pauline was too modern for that. She excelled in a judicious -blending of Wall Street and Bohemia, and her particular art lay in her -selection of the latter element. Of course there were Bohemians and -Bohemians; as she had once remarked to Nona, people weren't always -amusing just because they were clever, or dull just because they were -rich—though at the last clause Nona had screwed up her nose -incredulously... Well, even Nona would be satisfied tonight, Pauline -thought. It wasn't everybody who would have been bold enough to ask a -social reformer like Parker Greg with the very people least disposed to -encourage social reform, nor a young composer like Torfried Lobb (a -disciple of "The Six") with all those stolid opera-goers, nor that -disturbing Tommy Ardwin, the Cubist decorator, with the owners of the -most expensive "period houses" in Fifth Avenue. -</p> -<p> -Pauline was not a bit afraid of such combinations. She knew in advance -that at one of her dinners everything would "go"—it always did. And -her success amused and exhilarated her so much that, even tonight, though -she had come down oppressed with problems, they slipped from her before -she even had time to remind herself that they were nonexistent. She had -only to look at the faces gathered about that subdued radiance of old -silver and scattered flowers to be sure of it. There, at the other end -of the table, was her husband's dark head, comely and resolute in its -vigorous middle-age; on his right the Marchesa di San Fedele, the famous -San Fedele pearls illuminating her inconspicuous black; on his left the -handsome Mrs. Herman Toy, magnanimously placed there by Pauline because -she knew that Manford was said to be "taken" by her, and she wanted him -to be in good-humour that evening. To measure her own competence she had -only to take in this group, already settling down to an evening's -enjoyment, and then let her glance travel on to the others, the young -and handsome women, the well-dressed confident-looking men. Nona, grave -yet eager, was talking to Manford's legal rival, the brilliant Alfred -Cosby, who was known to have said she was the cleverest girl in New -York. Lita, cool and aloof, drooped her head slightly to listen to -Torfried Lobb, the composer; Jim gazed across the table at Lita as if -his adoration made every intervening obstacle transparent; Aggie -Heuston, whose coldness certainly made her look distinguished, though -people complained that she was dull, dispensed occasional monosyllables -to the ponderous Herman Toy; and Stanley Heuston, leaning back with that -faint dry smile which Pauline found irritating because it was so -inscrutable, kept his eyes discreetly but steadily on Nona. Dear good -Stan, always like a brother to Nona! People who knew him well said he -wasn't as sardonic as he looked. -</p> -<p> -It was a world after Pauline's heart—a world such as she believed its -Maker meant it to be. She turned to the Bishop on her right, wondering -if he shared her satisfaction, and encountered a glance of -understanding. -</p> -<p> -"So refreshing to be among old friends... This is one of the few houses -left... Always such a pleasure to meet the dear Marchesa; I hope she has -better reports of her son? Wretched business, I'm afraid. My dear Mrs. -Manford, I wonder if you know how blessed you are in your children? That -wise little Nona, who is going to make some man so happy one of these -days—not Cosby, no? Too much difference in age? And your steady -Jim and his idol ... yes, I know it doesn't become my cloth to speak -indulgently of idolatry. But happy marriages are so rare nowadays: where -else could one find such examples as there are about this table? Your -Jim and his Lita, and my good friend Heuston with that saint of a -wife—" The Bishop paused, as if, even on so privileged an -occasion, he was put to it to prolong the list. "Well, you've given them -the example..." He stopped again, probably remembering that his -hostess's matrimonial bliss was built on the ruins of her first -husband's. But in divorcing she had invoked a cause which even the -Church recognizes; and the Bishop proceeded serenely: "<i>Her children -shall rise up and call her blessed</i>—yes, dear friend, you must -let me say it." -</p> -<p> -The words were balm to Pauline. Every syllable carried conviction: all -was right with her world and the Bishop's! Why did she ever need any -other spiritual guidance than that of her own creed? She felt a twinge -of regret at having so involved herself with the Mahatma. Yet what did -Episcopal Bishops know of "holy ecstasy"? And could any number of Church -services have reduced her hips? After all, there was room for all the -creeds in her easy rosy world. And the thought led her straight to her -other preoccupation: the reception for the Cardinal. She resolved to -secure the Bishop's approval at once. After that, of course the Chief -Rabbi would have to come. And what a lesson in tolerance and good-will -to the discordant world she was trying to reform! -</p> - -<p><br></p> - -<p> -Nona, half-way down the table, viewed its guests from another angle. She -had come back depressed rather than fortified from her flying visit to -her father. There were days when Manford liked to be "surprised" at the -office; when he and his daughter had their little jokes together over -these clandestine visits. But this one had not come off in that spirit. -She had found Manford tired and slightly irritable; Nona, before he had -time to tell her of her mother's visit, caught a lingering whiff of -Pauline's cool hygienic scent, and wondered nervously what could have -happened to make Mrs. Manford break through her tightly packed -engagements, and dash down to her husband's office. It was of course to -that emergency that she had sacrificed poor Exhibit A—little guessing -his relief at the postponement. But what could have obliged her to see -Manford so suddenly, when they were to meet at dinner that evening? -</p> -<p> -The girl had asked no questions: she knew that Manford, true to his -profession, preferred putting them. And her chief object, of course, had -been to get him to help her about Arthur Wyant. That, she perceived, at -first added to his irritation: was he Wyant's keeper, he wanted to know? -But he broke off before the next question: "Why the devil can't his own -son look after him?" She had seen that question on his very lips; but -they shut down on it, and he rose from his chair with a shrug. "Poor -devil—if you think I can be of any use? All right, then—I'll -drop in on him tomorrow." He and Wyant, ever since the divorce, had met -whenever Jim's fate was to be discussed; Wyant felt a sort of humiliated -gratitude for Manford's generosity to his son. "Not the money, you know, -Nona—damn the money! But taking such an interest in him; helping -him to find himself: appreciating him, hang it! He understands Jim a -hundred times better than your mother ever did..." On this basis the two -men came together now and then in a spirit of tolerant understanding... -</p> -<p> -Nona recalled her father's face as it had been when she left him: -worried, fagged, yet with that twinkle of gaiety his eyes always had -when he looked at her. Now, smoothed out, smiling, slightly replete, it -was hard as stone. "Like his own death-mask," the girl thought; "as if -he'd done with everything, once for all.—And the way those two women -bore him! Mummy put Gladys Toy next to him as a reward—for what?" She -smiled at her mother's simplicity in imagining that he was having what -Pauline called a "harmless flirtation" with Mrs. Herman Toy. That lady's -obvious charms were no more to him, Nona suspected, than those of the -florid Bathsheba in the tapestry behind his chair. But Pauline had -evidently had some special reason—over and above her usual diffused -benevolence—for wanting to put Manford in a good humour. "The -Mahatma, probably." Nona knew how her mother hated a fuss: how vulgar and -unchristian she always thought it. And it would certainly be -inconvenient to give up the rest-cure at Dawnside she had planned for -March, when Manford was to go off tarpon-fishing. -</p> -<p> -Nona's glance, in the intervals of talk with her neighbours, travelled -farther, lit on Jim's good-humoured wistful face—Jim was always -wistful at his mother's banquets—and flitted on to Aggie Heuston's -precise little mask, where everything was narrow and perpendicular, like -the head of a saint squeezed into a cathedral niche. But the girl's eyes -did not linger, for as they rested on Aggie they abruptly met the -latter's gaze. Aggie had been furtively scrutinizing her, and the -discovery gave Nona a faint shock. In another instant Mrs. Heuston -turned to Parker Greg, the interesting young social reformer whom -Pauline had thoughtfully placed next to her, with the optimistic idea -that all persons interested in improving the world must therefore be in -the fullest sympathy. Nona, knowing Parker Greg's views, smiled at that -too. Aggie, she was sure, would feel much safer with her other -neighbour, Mr. Herman Toy, who thought, on all subjects, just what all -his fellow capitalists did. -</p> -<p> -Nona caught Stan Heuston's smile, and knew he had read her thought; but -from him too she turned. The last thing she wanted was that he should -guess her real opinion of his wife. Something deep down and dogged in -Nona always, when it came to the touch, made her avert her feet from the -line of least resistance. -</p> - -<p><br></p> - -<p> -Manford lent an absent ear first to one neighbour, then the other. Mrs. -Toy was saying, in her flat uncadenced voice, like tepid water running -into a bath: "I don't see how people can live without lifts in their -houses, do you? But perhaps it's because I've never had to. Father's -house had the first electric lift at Climax. Once, in England, we went -to stay with the Duke of Humber, at Humber Castle—one of those -huge parties, royalties and everything—golf and polo all day, and -a ball every night; and, will you believe it, <i>we had to walk up and -down stairs</i>! I don't know what English people are made of. I suppose -they've never been used to what we call comfort. The second day I told -Herman I couldn't stand those awful slippery stairs after two rounds of -golf, and dancing till four in the morning. It was simply destroying my -heart—the doctor has warned me so often! I wanted to leave right -away—but Herman said it would offend the Duke. The Duke's such a -sweet old man. But, any way, I made Herman promise me a sapphire and -emerald <i>plaque</i> from Carrier's before I'd agree to stick it -out..." -</p> -<p> -The Marchesa's little ferret face with sharp impassioned eyes darted -conversationally forward. "The Duke of Humber? I know him so well. Dear -old man! Ah, you also stayed at Humber? So often he invites me. We are -related ... yes, through his first wife, whose mother was a Venturini -of the Calabrian branch: Donna Ottaviana. Yes. Another sister, Donna -Rosmunda, the beauty of the family, married the Duke of Lepanto ... a -mediatized prince..." -</p> -<p> -She stopped, and Manford read in her eyes the hasty inward -interrogation: "Will they think that expression queer? I'm not sure -myself just what 'mediatized' means. And these Americans! They stick at -nothing, but they're shocked at everything." Aloud she continued: "A -mediatized prince—but a man of the <i>very highest</i> character." -</p> -<p> -"Oh—" murmured Mrs. Toy, puzzled but obviously relieved. -</p> -<p> -Manford's attention, tugging at its moorings, had broken loose again and -was off and away. -</p> -<p> -The how-many-eth dinner did that make this winter? And no end in sight! -How could Pauline stand it? Why did she want to stand it? All those -rest-cures, massages, rhythmic exercises, devised to restore the health -of people who would have been as sound as bells if only they had led -normal lives! Like that fool of a woman spreading her blond splendours -so uselessly at his side, who couldn't walk upstairs because she had danced -all night! Pauline was just like that—never walked upstairs, and -then had to do gymnastics, and have osteopathy, and call in Hindu sages, -to prevent her muscles from getting atrophied... He had a vision of his -mother, out on the Minnesota farm, before they moved into Delos—saw -her sowing, digging potatoes, feeding chickens; saw her kneading, -baking, cooking, washing, mending, catching and harnessing the -half-broken colt to drive twelve miles in the snow for the doctor, one -day when all the men were away, and his little sister had been so badly -scalded... And there the old lady sat at Delos, in her nice little -brick house, in her hale and hearty old age, built to outlive them -all.—Wasn't that perhaps the kind of life Manford himself had been -meant for? Farming on a big scale, with all the modern appliances his -forbears had lacked, outdoing everybody in the county, marketing his -goods at the big centres, and cutting a swathe in state politics like -his elder brother? Using his brains, muscles, the whole of him, body and -soul, to do real things, bring about real results in the world, instead -of all this artificial activity, this spinning around faster and faster -in the void, and having to be continually rested and doctored to make up -for exertions that led to nothing, nothing, nothing... -</p> -<p> -"Of course we all know <i>you</i> could tell us if you would. Everybody -knows the Lindons have gone to you for advice." Mrs. Toy's large shallow -eyes floated the question toward him on a sea-blue wave of curiosity. -"Not a word of truth? Oh, of course you have to say that! But everybody -has been expecting there'd be trouble soon..." -</p> -<p> -And, in a whisper, from the Marchesa's side: "Teasing you about that -mysterious Mahatma? Foolish woman! As long as dear Pauline believes in -him, I'm satisfied. That was what I was saying to Pauline before dinner: -'Whatever you and Dexter approve of, I approve of.' That's the reason -why I'm so anxious to have my poor boy come to New York ... my -Michelangelo! If only you could see him I know you'd grow as fond of him -as you are of our dear Jim: perhaps even take him into your office... -Ah, that, dear Dexter, has always been my dream!" -</p> -<p> -... What sort of a life, after all, if not this one? For of course -that dream of a Western farm was all rubbish. What he really wanted was -a life in which professional interests as far-reaching and absorbing as -his own were somehow impossibly combined with great stretches of country -quiet, books, horses and children—ah, children! Boys of his -own—teaching them all sorts of country things; taking them for long -trudges, telling them about trees and plants and birds—watching the -squirrels, feeding the robins and thrushes in winter; and coming home in -the dusk to firelight, lamplight, a tea-table groaning with jolly -things, all the boys and girls (girls too, more little Nonas) grouped -around, hungry and tingling from their long tramp—and a woman lifting -a calm face from her book: a woman who looked so absurdly young to be -their mother; so— -</p> -<p> -"You're looking at Jim's wife?" The Marchesa broke in. "No wonder! -<i>Très en beauté</i>, our Lita!—that dress, the very same -colour as her hair, and those Indian emeralds ... how clever of her! But -a little difficult to talk to? Little too silent? No? Ah, not to -<i>you</i>, perhaps—her dear father! Father-in-law, I mean—" -</p> -<p> -Silent! The word sent him off again. For in that other world, so ringing -with children's laughter, children's wrangles, and all the healthy -blustering noises of country life in a big family, there would somehow, -underneath it all, be a great pool of silence, a reservoir on which one -could always draw and flood one's soul with peace. The vision was vague -and contradictory, but it all seemed to meet and mingle in the woman's -eyes... -</p> -<p> -Pauline was signalling from her table-end. He rose and offered his arm -to the Marchesa. -</p> -<p> -In the hall the strains of the famous Somaliland orchestra bumped and -tossed downstairs from the ball-room to meet them. The ladies, headed by -Mrs. Toy, flocked to the mirror-lined lift dissembled behind forced -lilacs and Japanese plums; but Amalasuntha, on Manford's arm, set her -blunt black slipper on the marble tread. -</p> -<p> -"I'm used to Roman palaces!" -</p> - -<p><br><br><br></p> -</div> -<div class="chapter"> -<h2><a id="chap07"></a>VII</h2> - -<div> - <img class="drop-cap" src="images/dropcap-a.jpg" width="70" alt="drop_a"> -</div> -<p class="drop-cap"> -"AT least you'll take a turn?" Heuston said; and Nona, yielding, joined -the dancers balancing with slow steps about the shining floor. -</p> -<p> -Dancing meant nothing; it was like breathing; what would one be doing if -one weren't dancing? She could not refuse without seeming singular; it -was simpler to acquiesce, and lose one's self among the couples absorbed -in the same complicated ritual. -</p> -<p> -The floor was full, but not crowded: Pauline always saw to that. It was -easy to calculate in advance, for every one she asked always accepted, -and she and Maisie Bruss, in making out the list, allotted the requisite -space per couple as carefully as if they had been counting cubic feet in -a hospital. The ventilation was perfect too; neither draughts nor -stuffiness. One had almost the sense of dancing out of doors, under some -equable southern sky. Nona, aware of what it cost to produce this -illusion, marvelled once more at her tireless mother. -</p> -<p> -"Isn't she wonderful?" -</p> -<p> -Mrs. Manford, fresh, erect, a faint line of diamonds in her hair, stood -in the doorway, her slim foot advanced toward the dancers. -</p> -<p> -"Perennially! Ah—she's going to dance. With Cosby." -</p> -<p> -"Yes. I wish she wouldn't." -</p> -<p> -"Wouldn't with Cosby?" -</p> -<p> -"Dear, no. In general." -</p> -<p> -Nona and Heuston had seated themselves, and were watching from their -corner the weaving of hallucinatory patterns by interjoined revolving -feet. -</p> -<p> -"I see. You think she dances with a Purpose?" -</p> -<p> -The girl smiled. "Awfully well—like everything else she does. But as -if it were something between going to church and drilling a scout brigade. -Mother's too—too tidy to dance." -</p> -<p> -"Well—this is different," murmured Heuston. -</p> -<p> -The floor had cleared as if by magic before the advance of a long slim -pair: Lita Wyant and Tommy Ardwin. The decorator, tall and supple, had -the conventional dancer's silhouette; but he was no more than a -silhouette, a shadow on the wall. All the light and music in the room -had passed into the translucent creature in his arms. He seemed to Nona -like some one who has gone into a spring wood and come back carrying a -long branch of silver blossom. -</p> -<p> -"Good heavens! <i>Quelle plastique</i>!" piped the Marchesa over Nona's -shoulder. -</p> -<p> -The two had the floor to themselves: every one else had stopped dancing. -But Lita and her partner seemed unaware of it. Her sole affair was to -shower radiance, his to attune his lines to hers. Her face was a small -still flower on a swaying stalk; all her expression was in her body, in -that long <i>legato</i> movement like a weaving of grasses under a breeze, -a looping of little waves on the shore. -</p> -<p> -"Look at Jim!" Heuston laughed. Jim Wyant, from a doorway, drank the -vision thirstily. "Surely," his eyes seemed to triumph, "this justifies -the Cubist Cabaret, and all the rest of her crazes." -</p> -<p> -Lita, swaying near him, dropped a smile, and floated off on the bright -ripples of her beauty. -</p> -<p> -Abruptly the music stopped. Nona glanced across the room and saw Mrs. -Manford move away from the musicians' balcony, over which the conductor -had just leaned down to speak to her. -</p> -<p> -There was a short interval; then the orchestra broke into a fox-trot and -the floor filled again. Mrs. Manford swept by with a set smile—"the -kind she snaps on with her tiara," Nona thought. Well, perhaps it was -rather bad form of Lita to monopolize the floor at her mother-in-law's -ball; but was it the poor girl's fault if she danced so well that all -the others stopped to gaze? -</p> -<p> -Ardwin came up to Nona. "Oh, no," Heuston protested under his breath. "I -wanted—" -</p> -<p> -"There's Aggie signalling." -</p> -<p> -The girl's arm was already on Ardwin's shoulder. As they circled toward -the middle of the room, Nona said: "You show off Lita's dancing -marvellously." -</p> -<p> -He replied, in his high-pitched confident voice: "Oh, it's only a -question of giving her her head and not butting in. She and I each have -our own line of self-expression: it would be stupid to mix them. If only -I could get her to dance just once for Serge Klawhammer; he's scouring -the globe to find somebody to do the new 'Herodias' they're going to -turn at Hollywood. People are fed up with the odalisque style, and with -my help Lita could evolve something different. She's half promised to -come round to my place tonight after supper and see Klawhammer. Just six -or seven of the enlightened—wonder if you'd join us? He's tearing -back to Hollywood tomorrow." -</p> -<p> -"Is Lita really coming?" -</p> -<p> -"Well, she said yes and no, and ended on yes." -</p> -<p> -"All right—I will." Nona hated Ardwin, his sleekness, suppleness, -assurance, the group he ruled, the fashions he set, the doctrines he -professed—hated them so passionately and undiscerningly that it -seemed to her that at last she had her hand on her clue. That was it, of -course! Ardwin and his crew were trying to persuade Lita to go into the -movies; that accounted for her restlessness and irritability, her -growing distaste for her humdrum life. Nona drew a breath of relief. -After all, if it were only that—! -</p> -<p> -The dance over, she freed herself and slipped through the throng in -quest of Jim. Should she ask him to take her to Ardwin's? No: simply -tell him that she and Lita were off for a final spin at the decorator's -studio, where there would be more room and less fuss than at Pauline's. -Jim would laugh and approve, provided she and Lita went together; no use -saying anything about Klawhammer and his absurd "Herodias." -</p> -<p> -"Jim? But, my dear, Jim went home long ago. I don't blame the poor boy," -Mrs. Manford sighed, waylaid by her daughter, "because I know he has to -be at the office so early; and it must be awfully boring, standing about -all night and not dancing. But, darling, you must really help me to find -your father. Supper's ready, and I can't imagine..." -</p> -<p> -The Marchesa's ferret face slipped between them as she trotted by on Mr. -Toy's commodious arm. -</p> -<p> -"Dear Dexter? I saw him not five minutes ago, seeing off that wonderful -Lita—" -</p> -<p> -"Lita? Lita gone too?" Nona watched the struggle between her mother's -disciplined features and twitching nerves. "What impossible children I -have!" A smile triumphed over her discomfiture. "I do hope there's -nothing wrong with the baby? Nona, slip down and tell your father he -must come up. Oh, Stanley, dear, all my men seem to have deserted me. Do -find Mrs. Toy and take her in to supper..." -</p> -<p> -In the hall below there was no Dexter. Nona cast about a glance for -Powder, the pale resigned butler, who had followed Mrs. Manford through -all her vicissitudes and triumphs, seemingly concerned about nothing but -the condition of his plate and the discipline of his footmen. Powder -knew everything, and had an answer to everything; but he was engaged at -the moment in the vast operation of making terrapin and champagne appear -simultaneously on eighty-five small tables, and was not to be found in -the hall. Nona ran her eye along the line of footmen behind the piled-up -furs, found one who belonged to the house, and heard that Mr. Manford -had left a few minutes earlier. His motor had been waiting for him, and -was now gone. Mrs. James Wyant was with him, the man thought. "He's -taken her to Ardwin's, of course. Poor father! After an evening of Mrs. -Toy and Amalasuntha—who can wonder? If only mother would see how her -big parties bore him!" But Nona's mother would never see that. -</p> - -<p><br></p> - -<p> -"It's just my indestructible faith in my own genius—nothing else," -Ardwin was proclaiming in his jumpy falsetto as Nona entered the -high-perched studio where he gathered his group of the enlightened. -These privileged persons, in the absence of chairs, had disposed -themselves on the cushions and mattresses scattered about a floor -painted to imitate a cunning perspective of black and white marble. Tall -lamps under black domes shed their light on bare shoulders, heads sleek -or tousled, and a lavish show of flesh-coloured legs and sandalled feet. -Ardwin, unbosoming himself to a devotee, held up a guttering -church-candle to a canvas which simulated a window open on a geometrical -representation of brick walls, fire escapes and back-yards. "Sham? Oh, -of course. I had the real window blocked up. It looked out on that -stupid old 'night-piece' of Brooklyn Bridge and the East River. -Everybody who came here said: 'A Whistler nocturne!' and I got so bored. -Besides, it was <i>really there</i>: and I hate things that are really -where you think they are. They're as tiresome as truthful people. -Everything in art should be false. Everything in life should be art. -<i>Ergo</i>, everything in life should be false: complexions, teeth, -hair, wives ... specially wives. Oh, Miss Manford, that you? Do come in. -Mislaid Lita?" -</p> -<p> -"Isn't she here?" -</p> -<p> -"<i>Is</i> she?" He pivoted about on the company. When he was not -dancing he looked, with his small snaky head and too square shoulders, -like a cross between a Japanese waiter and a full-page advertisement for -silk underwear. "<i>Is</i> Lita here? Any of you fellows got her -dissembled about your persons? Now, then, out with her! Jossie Keiler, -<i>you</i>'re not Mrs. James Wyant disguised as a dryad, are you?" There -was a general guffaw as Miss Jossie Keiler, the octoroon pianist, -scrambled to her pudgy feet and assembled a series of sausage arms and -bolster legs in a provocative pose. "Knew I'd get found out," she -lisped. -</p> -<p> -A short man with a deceptively blond head, thick lips under a stubby -blond moustache, and eyes like needles behind tortoiseshell-rimmed -glasses, stood before the fire, bulging a glossy shirtfront and -solitaire pearl toward the company. "Don't this lady dance?" he -enquired, in a voice like melted butter, a few drops of which seemed to -trickle down his lips and be licked back at intervals behind a thickly -ringed hand. -</p> -<p> -"Miss Manford? Bet she does! Come along, Nona; shed your togs and let's -show Mr. Klawhammer here present that Lita's not the only peb—" -</p> -<p> -"Gracious! Wait till I get into the saddle!" screamed Miss Keiler, tiny -hands like blueish mice darting out at the keyboard from the end of her -bludgeon arms. -</p> -<p> -Nona perched herself on the edge of a refectory table. "Thanks. I'm not -a candidate for 'Herodias.' My sister-in-law is sure to turn up in a -minute." -</p> - -<p><br></p> - -<p> -Even Mrs. Dexter Manford's perfectly run house was not a particularly -appetizing place to return to at four o'clock on the morning after a -dance. The last motor was gone, the last overcoat and opera cloak had -vanished from hall and dressing-rooms, and only one hanging lamp lit the -dusky tapestries and the monumental balustrade of the staircase. But -empty cocktail glasses and ravaged cigar-boxes littered the hall tables, -wisps of torn tulle and trampled orchids strewed the stair-carpet, and -the thicket of forced lilacs and Japanese plums in front of the lift -drooped mournfully in the hot air. Nona, letting herself in with her -latch-key, scanned the scene with a feeling of disgust. What was it all -for, and what was left when it was over? Only a huge clearing-up for -Maisie and the servants, and a new list to make out for the next time... -She remembered mild spring nights at Cedarledge, when she was a little -girl, and she and Jim used to slip downstairs in stocking feet, go to -the lake, loose the canoe, and drift on a silver path among islets -fringed with budding dogwood. She hurried on past the desecrated shrubs. -</p> -<p> -Above, the house was dark but for a line of light under the library -door. Funny—at that hour; her father must still be up. Very likely he -too had just come in. She was passing on when the door opened and -Manford called her. -</p> -<p> -"'Pon my soul, Nona! That you? I supposed you were in bed long ago." -</p> -<p> -One of the green-shaded lamps lit the big writing-table. Manford's -armchair was drawn up to it, an empty glass and half-consumed cigarette -near by, the evening paper sprawled on the floor. -</p> -<p> -"Was that you I heard coming in? Do you know what time it is?" -</p> -<p> -"Yes; worse luck! I've been scouring the town after Lita." -</p> -<p> -"<i>Lita</i>?" -</p> -<p> -"Waiting for her for hours at Tommy Ardwin's. Such a crew! He told me -she was going there to dance for Klawhammer, the Hollywood man, and I -didn't want her to go alone—" -</p> -<p> -Manford's face darkened. He lit another cigarette and turned to his -daughter impatiently. -</p> -<p> -"What the devil made you believe such a yarn? Klawhammer—!" -</p> -<p> -Nona stood facing him; their eyes met, and he turned away with a shrug -to reach for a match. -</p> -<p> -"I believed it because, just afterward, the servants told me that Lita -had left, and as they said you'd gone with her I supposed you'd taken -her to Ardwin's, not knowing that I meant to join her there." -</p> -<p> -"Ah; I see." He lit the cigarette and puffed at it for a moment or two, -deliberately. "You're quite right to think she needs looking after," he -began again, in a changed tone. "Somebody's got to take on the job, -since her husband seems to have washed his hands of it." -</p> -<p> -"Father! You know perfectly well that if Jim took on that job—running -after Lita all night from one cabaret to another—he'd lose the other, -the one that keeps them going. Nobody could carry on both." -</p> -<p> -"Hullo, spitfire! Hands off our brother!" -</p> -<p> -"Rather." She leaned against the table, her eyes still on him. "And when -Ardwin told me about this Klawhammer film—didn't Lita mention it to -you?" -</p> -<p> -He appeared to consider. "She did say Ardwin was bothering her about -something of the kind; so when I found Jim had gone I took her home -myself." -</p> -<p> -"Ah—you took her home?" -</p> -<p> -Manford, settling himself back in his armchair, met the surprise in her -voice unconcernedly. "Why, of course. Did you really see me letting her -make a show of herself? Sorry you think that's my way of looking after -her." -</p> -<p> -Nona, perched on the arm of his chair, enclosed him in a happy hug. "You -goose, you!" she sighed; but the epithet was not for her father. -</p> -<p> -She poured herself a glass of cherry brandy, dropped a kiss on his -thinning hair, and ran up to her room humming Miss Jossie Keiler's -jazz-tune. Perhaps after all it wasn't such a rotten world. -</p> - -<p><br><br><br></p> -</div> -<div class="chapter"> -<h2><a id="chap08"></a>VIII</h2> - -<div> - <img class="drop-cap" src="images/dropcap-t.jpg" width="70" alt="drop_t"> -</div> -<p class="drop-cap"> -THE morning after a party in her own house Pauline Manford always -accorded herself an extra half-hour's rest; but on this occasion she -employed it in lying awake and wearily reckoning up the next day's -tasks. Disenchantment had succeeded to the night's glamour. The glamour -of balls never did last: they so quickly became a matter for those -domestic undertakers, the charwomen, housemaids and electricians. And in -this case the taste of pleasure had soured early. When the doors were -thrown open on the beflowered supper tables not one of the hostess's -family was left to marshal the guests to their places! Her husband, her -daughter and son, her son's wife—all had deserted her. It needed, in -that chill morning vigil, all Pauline's self-control to banish the -memory. Not that she wanted any of them to feel under any -obligation—she was all for personal freedom, self-expression, or -whatever they called it nowadays—but still, a ball was a ball, a host -was a host. It was too bad of Dexter, really; and of Jim too. On Lita of -course no one could count: that was part of the pose people found so -fascinating. But Jim—Jim and Nona to forsake her! What a ridiculous -position it had put her in—but no, she mustn't think of that now, or -those nasty little wrinkles would creep back about her eyes. The -masseuse had warned her... Gracious! At what time was the masseuse -due? She stretched out her hand, turned on the light by the bed (for the -windows were still closely darkened), and reached for what Maisie Bruss -called the night-list: an upright porcelain tablet on which the -secretary recorded, for nocturnal study, the principal "fixtures" of the -coming day. -</p> -<p> -Today they were so numerous that Miss Bruss's tight script had hardly -contrived to squeeze them in. Foremost, of course, poor Exhibit A, moved -on from yesterday; then a mysterious appointment with Amalasuntha, just -before lunch: something urgent, she had hinted. Today of all days! -Amalasuntha was so tactless at times. And then that Mahatma business: -since Dexter was inflexible, his wife had made up her mind to appeal to -the Lindons. It would be awkward, undoubtedly—and she did so hate -things that were awkward. Any form of untidiness, moral or material, was -unpleasant to her; but something must be done, and at once. She herself -hardly knew why she felt so apprehensive, so determined that the matter -should have no sequel; except that, if anything <i>did</i> go wrong, it -would upset all her plans for a rest-cure, for new exercises, for all -sorts of promised ways of prolonging youth, activity and slenderness, -and would oblige her to find a new Messiah who would tell her she was -psychic. -</p> -<p> -But the most pressing item on her list was her address that very -afternoon to the National Mothers' Day Association—or, no; wasn't it -the Birth Control League? Nonsense! That was her speech at the banquet -next week: a big affair at the St. Regis for a group of International -Birth-controllers. Wakeful as she felt, she must be half asleep to have -muddled up her engagements like that! She extinguished the lamp and sank -hopefully to her pillow—perhaps now sleep would really come. But her -bed-lamp seemed to have a double switch, and putting it out in the room -only turned it on in her head. -</p> -<p> -Well, she would try reciting scraps of her Mothers' Day address: she -seldom spoke in public, but when she did she took the affair seriously, -and tried to be at once winning and impressive. She and Maisie had gone -carefully over the typed copy; and she was sure it was all right; but -she liked getting the more effective passages by heart—it brought her -nearer to her audience to lean forward and speak intimately, without -having to revert every few minutes to the text. -</p> -<p> -"Was there ever a hearth or a heart—a mother's heart—that -wasn't big enough for all the babies God wants it to hold? Of course -there are days when the mother is so fagged out that she thinks she'd -give the world if there were nothing at all to do in the nursery, and -she could just sit still with folded hands. But the only time when -there's nothing at all for a mother to do in the nursery is when there's -a little coffin there. It's all quiet enough <i>then</i> ... as some of -us here know..." (Pause, and a few tears in the audience.) "Not that we -want the modern mother to wear herself out: no indeed! The babies -themselves haven't any use for worn-out mothers! And the first thing to -be considered is what the babies want, isn't it?" (Pause—smiles in -the audience)... -</p> -<p> -What on earth was Amalasuntha coming to bother her about? More money, of -course—but she really couldn't pay all that wretched Michelangelo's -debts. There would soon be debts nearer home if Lita went on dressing so -extravagantly, and perpetually having her jewellery reset. It cost -almost as much nowadays to reset jewels as to buy new ones, and those -emeralds... -</p> -<p> -At that hour of the morning things did tend to look ash-coloured; and -she felt that her optimism had never been so sorely strained since the -year when she had had to read Proust, learn a new dance-step, master -Oriental philosophy, and decide whether she should really bob her hair, -or only do it to look so. She had come victoriously through those -ordeals; but what if worse lay ahead? -</p> - -<p><br></p> - -<p> -Amalasuntha, in one of Mrs. Manford's least successfully made-over -dresses, came in looking shabby and humble—always a bad sign. And of -course it was Michelangelo's debts. Racing, baccara, and a woman ... a -Russian princess; oh, my dear, <i>authentic</i>, quite! Wouldn't Pauline -like to see her picture from the "Prattler"? She and Michelangelo had been -snapped together in bathing tights at the Lido. -</p> -<p> -No—Pauline wouldn't. She turned from the proffered effigy with a -disgust evidently surprising to the Marchesa, whose own prejudices were -different, and who could grasp other people's only piece-meal, one at a -time, like a lesson in mnemonics. -</p> -<p> -"Oh, my boy doesn't do things by halves," the Marchesa averred, still -feeling that the occasion was one for boasting. -</p> -<p> -Pauline leaned back wearily. "I'm as sorry for you as I can be, -Amalasuntha; but Michelangelo is not a baby, and if he can't be made to -understand that a poor man who wants to spend money must first earn -it—" -</p> -<p> -"Oh, but he does, darling! Venturino and I have always dinned it into -him. And last year he tried his best to marry that one-eyed Miss Oxbaum -from Oregon, he really did." -</p> -<p> -"I said <i>earn</i>," Pauline interposed. "We don't consider that marrying -for money is earning it—" -</p> -<p> -"Oh, mercy—don't you? Not sometimes?" breathed the Marchesa. -</p> -<p> -"What I mean by earning is going into an office—is—" -</p> -<p> -"Ah, just so! It was what I said to Dexter last night. It is what -Venturino and I most long for: that Dexter should take Michelangelo into -his office. That would solve every difficulty. And once Michelangelo is -here I'm sure he will succeed. No one is more clever, you know: only, in -Rome, young men are in greater danger—there are more -temptations—" -</p> -<p> -Pauline pursed her lips. "I suppose there are." But, since temptations -are the privilege of metropolises, she thought it rather impertinent of -Amalasuntha to suggest that there were more in a one-horse little place -like Rome than in New York; though in a different mood she would have -been the first to pronounce the Italian capital a sink of iniquity, and -New York the model and prototype of the pure American city. All these -contradictions, which usually sat lightly on her, made her head ache -today, and she continued, nervously: "Take Michelangelo into his office! -But what preparations has he had, what training? Has he ever studied for -the law?" -</p> -<p> -"No; I don't think he has, darling; but he <i>would</i>; I can promise you -he would," the Marchesa declared, in the tone of one saying: "In such -straits, he would become a street-cleaner." -</p> -<p> -Pauline smiled faintly. "I don't think you understand. The law is a -<i>profession</i>." (Dexter had told her that.) "It requires years of -training, of preparation. Michelangelo would have to take a degree at -Harvard or Columbia first. But perhaps"—a glance at her -wrist-watch told her that her next engagement impended—"perhaps -Dexter could suggest some other kind of employment. I don't know, of -course... I can't promise... But meanwhile ..." She turned to her -writing-table, and a cheque passed between them, too small to make a -perceptible impression on Michelangelo's deficit, but large enough for -Amalasuntha to murmur: "How you do spoil me, darling! Well—for the -boy's sake I accept in all simplicity. And about the reception for the -Cardinal—I'm sure a cable to Venturino will arrange it. Would that -kind Maisie send it off, and sign my name?" -</p> - -<p><br></p> - -<p> -It was well after three o'clock when Pauline came down the Lindons' -door-step and said to her chauffeur: "To Mr. Wyant's." And she had still -to crowd in her eurythmic exercises (put off from the morning), and be -ready at half-past four, bathed, waved and apparelled, for the Mothers' -Day Meeting, which was to take place in her own ball-room, with a giant -tea to follow. -</p> -<p> -Certainly, no amount of "mental deep-breathing," and all the other -exercises in serenity, could combat the nervous apprehension produced by -this breathless New York life. Today she really felt it to be too much -for her: she leaned back and closed her lids with a sigh. But she was -jerked back to consciousness by the traffic-control signal, which had -immobilized the motor just when every moment was so precious. The result -of every one's being in such a hurry to get everywhere was that nobody -could get anywhere. She looked across the triple row of motors in line -with hers, and saw in each (as if in a vista of mirrors) an expensively -dressed woman like herself, leaning forward in the same attitude of -repressed impatience, the same nervous frown of hurry on her brow. -</p> -<p> -Oh, if only she could remember to relax! -</p> -<p> -But how could one, with everything going wrong as it was today? The -visit to Fanny Lindon had been an utter failure. Pauline had apparently -overestimated her influence on the Lindons, and that discovery in itself -was rather mortifying. To be told that the Mahatma business was "a -family affair"—and thus be given to understand that she was no longer -of the family! Pauline, in her own mind, had never completely ceased to -be a Wyant. She thought herself still entitled to such shadowy -prerogatives as the name afforded, and was surprised that the Wyants -should not think so too. After all, she kept Amalasuntha for them—no -slight charge! -</p> -<p> -But Mrs. Lindon had merely said it was "all too painful"—and had -ended, surprisingly: "Dexter himself has specially asked us not to say -anything." -</p> -<p> -The implication was: "If you want to find out, go to him!"—when of -course Fanny knew well enough that lawyers' and doctors' wives are the -last people to get at their clients' secrets. -</p> -<p> -Pauline rose to her feet, offended, and not averse from showing it. -"Well, my dear, I can only say that if it's so awful that you can't tell -<i>me</i>, I rather wonder at your wanting to tell Tom, Dick and Harry. -Have you thought of that?" -</p> -<p> -Oh, yes, she had, Mrs. Lindon wailed. "But Grant says it's a duty ... -and so does Dexter..." -</p> -<p> -Pauline permitted herself a faint smile. "Dexter naturally takes the -lawyer's view: that's <i>his</i> duty." -</p> -<p> -Mrs. Lindon's mind was not alert for innuendos. "Yes; he says we -<i>ought</i> to," she merely repeated. -</p> -<p> -A sudden lassitude overcame Pauline. "At least send Grant to me -first—let me talk to him." -</p> -<p> -But to herself she said: "My only hope now is to get at them through -Arthur." And she looked anxiously out of the motor, watching for the -signal to shift. -</p> -<p> -Everything at Arthur Wyant's was swept and garnished for her approach. -One felt that cousin Eleanor, whisking the stray cigarette-ends into the -fire, and giving the sofa cushions a last shake, had slipped out of the -back door as Mrs. Manford entered by the front. -</p> -<p> -Wyant greeted her with his usual rather overdone cordiality. He had -never quite acquired the note on which discarded husbands should welcome -condescending wives. In this respect Pauline was his superior. She had -found the exact blend of gravity with sisterly friendliness; and the -need of having to ask about his health always helped her over the first -moments. -</p> -<p> -"Oh, you see—still mummified." He pointed to the leg stretched out in -front of him. "Couldn't even see Amalasuntha to the door—" -</p> -<p> -"Amalasuntha? Has she been here?" -</p> -<p> -"Yes. Asked herself to lunch. Rather a to-do for me; I'm not used to -entertaining distinguished foreigners, especially when they have to -picnic on a tray at my elbow. But she took it all very good-naturedly." -</p> -<p> -"I should think so," Pauline murmured; adding inwardly: "Trust -Amalasuntha not to pay for her own lunch." -</p> -<p> -"Yes; she's in great feather. Said you'd been so kind to her—as -usual." -</p> -<p> -Pauline sounded the proper deprecation. -</p> -<p> -"She's awfully pleased at your having promised that Manford would give -Michelangelo a leg up if he comes out to try his luck in New York." -</p> -<p> -"Promised? Well—not quite. But I did say Dexter would do what he -could. It seems the only way left of disposing of Michelangelo." -</p> -<p> -Wyant leaned back, a smile twitching under his moustache. "Yes—that -young man's a scourge. And I begin to see why. Did you see his picture -in bathing tights with the latest lady?" -</p> -<p> -Pauline waved away the suggestion. How like Arthur not to realize, even -yet, that such things disgusted her! -</p> -<p> -"Well, he's the best looking piece of human sculpture I've seen since I -last went through the Vatican galleries. Regular Apollo. Funny, the -Albany Wyants having a hand in turning out a heathen divinity. I was -showing the picture to Manford just now, and telling him the fond -mother's comment." -</p> -<p> -Pauline looked up quickly. "Has Dexter been here too?" -</p> -<p> -"Yes; trying to give <i>me</i> a leg up." He glanced at his bandages. -"Rather more difficult, that. I must get it down first—to the -floor. But Manford's awfully kind too—it's catching. He wants me -to go off with Jim, down to that island of his, and get a fortnight's -real sunshine. Says he can get Jim off by a little wirepulling, some -time just before Easter, he thinks. It's tempting—" -</p> -<p> -Pauline smiled: she was always pleased when the two men spoke of each -other in that tone; and certainly it <i>was</i> kind of Dexter to offer the -hospitality of his southern island to poor Arthur... She thought how -easy life would be if only every one were kind and simple. -</p> -<p> -"But about Michelangelo: I was going to tell you what is worrying -Amalasuntha. Of course what she means by Michelangelo's going into -business in America is marrying an heiress—" -</p> -<p> -"Oh, of course. And I daresay he will." -</p> -<p> -"Exactly. She's got her eye on one already. You haven't guessed? Nona!" -</p> -<p> -Pauline's sense of humour was not unfailing, but this relaxed her taut -nerves, and she laughed. "Poor Michelangelo!" -</p> -<p> -"I thought it wouldn't worry you. But what is worrying Amalasuntha is -that he won't be let—" -</p> -<p> -"Be let?" -</p> -<p> -"By Lita. Her theory is that Lita will fall madly in love with -Michelangelo as soon as she lays eyes on him—and that when they've -had one dance together she'll be lost. And Amalasuntha, for that -reason—though she daren't tell you so—thinks it might really be -cheaper in the end to pay Michelangelo's debts than to import him. As -she says, it's for the family to decide, now she's warned them." -</p> -<p> -Their laughter mingled. It was the first time, perhaps, since they had -been young together; as a rule, their encounters were untinged with -levity. -</p> -<p> -But Pauline dismissed the laugh hurriedly for the Grant Lindons. At the -name Wyant's eyes lit up: it was as if she had placed an appetizing -morsel before a listless convalescent. -</p> -<p> -"But you're the very person to tell me all about it—or, no, you -can't, of course, if Manford's going to take it up. But no -matter—after all, it's public property by this time. Seen this -morning's 'Looker-on'—with pictures? Here, where—" In the -stack of illustrated papers always at his elbow he could never find the -one he wanted, and now began to toss over "Prattlers," "Listeners" and -others with helpless hand. How that little symptom of inefficiency took -her back to the old days, when his perpetual disorder, and his -persistent belief that he could always put his hand on everything, used -to be such a strain on her nerves! -</p> -<p> -"Pictures?" she gasped. -</p> -<p> -"Rather. The nigger himself, in turban and ritual togs; and a lot of -mixed nudes doing leg-work round a <i>patio</i>. The place looks like a -Palm Beach Hotel. Fanny Lindon's in a stew because she's recognized Bee in -the picture. She says she's going to have the man in jail if they spend -their last penny on it. Hullo—here it is, after all." -</p> -<p> -Pauline shrank back. Would people never stop trying to show her -disgusting photographs? She articulated: "You haven't seen Fanny Lindon -too?" -</p> -<p> -"Haven't I? She spent the morning here. She told Amalasuntha -everything." -</p> -<p> -Pauline, with a great effort, controlled her rising anger. "How idiotic! -Now it <i>will</i> be spread to all the winds!" She saw Fanny and -Amalasuntha gloatingly exchanging the images of their progenies' -dishonour. It was too indecent ... and the old New Yorker was as -shameless as the demoralized foreigner. -</p> -<p> -"I didn't know Fanny had been here before me. I've just left her. I've -been trying to persuade her to stop; to hush up the whole business -before it's too late. I suppose you gave her the same advice?" -</p> -<p> -Wyant's face clouded: he looked perplexedly at his former wife, and she -saw he had lost all sense of the impropriety and folly of the affair in -his famished enjoyment of its spicy details. -</p> -<p> -"I don't know—I understood it <i>was</i> too late; and that Manford -was urging them to do it." -</p> -<p> -Pauline made a slight movement of impatience. "Dexter—of course! -When he sees a 'case'! I suppose lawyers are all alike. At any rate, I -can't make him understand..." She broke off, suddenly aware that the -rôles were reversed, and that for the first time she was disparaging -her second husband to her first. "Besides," she hurried on, "it's no -affair of Dexter's if the Lindons choose to dishonour their child -publicly. They're not <i>his</i> relations; Bee is not <i>his</i> -cousin's daughter. But you and I—how can we help feeling -differently? Bee and Nona and Jim were all brought up together. You must -help me to stop this scandal! You must send for Grant Lindon at once. -He's sure to listen to you ... you've always had a great influence on -Grant..." -</p> -<p> -She found herself, in her extremity, using the very arguments she had -addressed to Manford, and she saw at once that in this case they were -more effective. Wyant drew himself up stiffly with a faint smile of -satisfaction. Involuntarily he ran a thin gouty hand through his hair, -and tried for a glimpse of himself in the mirror. -</p> -<p> -"Think so—really? Of course when Grant was a boy he used to consider -me a great fellow. But now ... who remembers me in my dingy corner?" -</p> -<p> -Pauline rose with her clear wintry smile. "A good many of us, it seems. -You tell me I'm the third lady to call on you today! You know well enough, -Arthur—" she brushed the name in lightly, on the extreme tip of -her smile—"that the opinion of people like you still counts in New -York, even in these times. Imagine what your mother would have felt at -the idea of Fanny and Bee figuring in all the daily headlines, with -reporters and photographers in a queue on the doorstep! I'm glad she -hasn't lived to see it." -</p> -<p> -She knew that Wyant's facile irony always melted before an emotional -appeal, especially if made in his mother's name. He blinked unsteadily, -and flung away the "Looker-on." -</p> -<p> -"You're dead right: they're a pack of fools. There are no standards -left. I'll do what I can; I'll telephone to Grant to look in on his way -home this evening... I say, Pauline: what's the truth of it all, -anyhow? If I'm to give him a talking to I ought to know." His eyes again -lit up with curiosity. -</p> -<p> -"Truth of it? There isn't any—it's the silliest mare's-nest! Why, I'm -going to Dawnside for a rest-cure next month, while Dexter's -tarpon-fishing. The Mahatma is worlds above all this tattle—it's for -the Lindons I'm anxious, not him." -</p> -<p> -The paper thrown aside by Wyant had dropped to the floor, face upward at -a full-page picture—<i>the</i> picture. Pauline, on her way out, -mechanically yielded to her instinct for universal tidying, and bent to -pick it up; bent and looked. Her eyes were still keen; passing over the -noxious caption "Dawnside Co-Eds," they immediately singled out Bee -Lindon from the capering round; then travelled on, amazed, to another -denuded nymph ... whose face, whose movements... Incredible! ... For a -second Pauline refused to accept what her eyes reported. Sick and -unnerved, she folded the picture away and laid the magazine on a table. -</p> -<p> -"Oh, don't bother about picking up that paper. Sorry there's no one to -show you out!" she heard Wyant calling. She went downstairs, blind, -unbelieving, hardly knowing how she got into her motor. -</p> -<p> -Barely time to get home, change, and be in the Chair, her address before -her, when the Mothers arrived in their multitude... -</p> - -<p><br><br><br></p> -</div> -<div class="chapter"> -<h2><a id="chap09"></a>IX</h2> - -<div> - <img class="drop-cap" src="images/dropcap-w.jpg" width="70" alt="drop_w"> -</div> -<p class="drop-cap"> -WELL, perhaps Dexter would understand <i>now</i> the need of hushing up the -Grant Lindons... The picture might be a libel, of course—such things, -Pauline knew, could be patched up out of quite unrelated photographs. -The dancing circle might have been skilfully fitted into the Dawnside -<i>patio</i>, and goodness knew what shameless creatures have supplied the -bodies of the dancers. Dexter had often told her that it was a common -blackmailing trick. -</p> -<p> -Even if the photograph were genuine, Pauline could understand and make -allowances. She had never seen anything of the kind herself at -Dawnside—heaven forbid!—but whenever she had gone there for a -lecture, or a new course of exercises, she had suspected that the bare -whitewashed room, with its throned Buddha, which received her and other -like-minded ladies of her age, all active, earnest and eager for -self-improvement, had not let them very far into the mystery. Beyond, -perhaps, were other rites, other settings: why not? Wasn't everybody -talking about "the return to Nature," and ridiculing the American -prudery in which the minds and bodies of her generation had been -swaddled? The Mahatma was one of the leaders of the new movement: the -Return to Purity, he called it. He was always celebrating the nobility -of the human body, and praising the ease of the loose Oriental dress -compared with the constricting western garb: but Pauline had supposed -the draperies he advocated to be longer and less transparent; above all, -she had not expected familiar faces above those insufficient scarves... -</p> -<p> -But here she was at her own door. There was just time to be ready for -the Mothers; none in which to telephone to Dexter, or buy up the whole -edition of the "Looker-on" (fantastic vision!), or try and get hold of -its editor, who had once dined with her, and was rather a friend of -Lita's. All these possibilities and impossibilities raced through her -brain to the maddening tune of "too late" while she slipped off her -street-dress and sat twitching with impatience under the maid's -readjustment of her ruffled head. The gown prepared for the meeting, -rich, matronly and just the least bit old-fashioned—very different -from the one designed for the Birth Control committee—lay spread -out beside the copy of her speech, and Maisie Bruss, who had been -hovering within call, dashed back breathless from a peep over the -stairs. -</p> -<p> -"They're arriving—" -</p> -<p> -"Oh, Maisie, rush down! Say I'm telephoning—" -</p> -<p> -Her incurable sincerity made her unhook the receiver and call out -Manford's office number. Almost instantly she heard him. "Dexter, this -Mahatma investigation must be stopped! Don't ask me why—there isn't -time. Only promise—" -</p> -<p> -She heard his impatient laugh. -</p> -<p> -"No?" -</p> -<p> -"Impossible," came back. -</p> -<p> -She supposed she had hung up the receiver, fastened on her jewelled -"Motherhood" badge, slipped on rings and bracelets as usual. But she -remembered nothing clearly until she found herself on the platform at -the end of the packed ball-room, looking across rows and rows of earnest -confiding faces, with lips and eyes prepared for the admiring reception -of her "message." She was considered a very good speaker: she knew how -to reach the type of woman represented by this imposing -assemblage—delegates from small towns all over the country, united by -a common faith in the infinite extent of human benevolence and the -incalculable resources of American hygiene. Something of the moral -simplicity of her own bringing-up brought her close to these women, who -had flocked to the great perfidious city serenely unaware of its being -anything more, or other, than the gigantic setting of a Mothers' -Meeting. Pauline, at such times, saw the world through their eyes, and -was animated by a genuine ardour for the cause of motherhood and -domesticity. -</p> -<p> -As she turned toward her audience a factitious serenity descended on -her. She felt in control of herself and of the situation. She spoke. -</p> -<p> -"Personality—first and last, and at all costs. I've begun my talk to -you with that one word because it seems to me to sum up our whole case. -Personality—room to develop in: not only elbow-room but body-room and -soul-room, and plenty of both. That's what every human being has a right -to. No more effaced wives, no more drudging mothers, no more -human slaves crushed by the eternal round of housekeeping and -child-bearing—" -</p> -<p> -She stopped, drew a quick breath, met Nona's astonished gaze over rows -of bewildered eye-glasses, and felt herself plunging into an abyss. But -she caught at the edge, and saved herself from the plunge— -</p> -<p> -"That's what our antagonists say—the women who are afraid to be -mothers, ashamed to be mothers, the women who put their enjoyment and -their convenience and what they call their happiness before the -mysterious heaven-sent joy, the glorious privilege, of bringing children -into the world—" -</p> -<p> -A round of applause from the reassured mothers. She had done it! She had -pulled off her effect from the very jaws of disaster. Only the swift -instinct of recovery had enabled her, before it was too late, to pass -off the first sentences of her other address, her Birth Control speech, -as the bold exordium of her hymn to motherhood! She paused a moment, -still inwardly breathless, yet already sure enough of herself to smile -back at Nona across her unsuspecting audience—sure enough to note -that her paradoxical opening had had a much greater effect than she could -have hoped to produce by the phrases with which she had meant to begin. -</p> -<p> -A hint for future oratory— -</p> -<p> -Only—the inward nervousness subsisted. The discovery that she could -lose not only her self-control but her memory, the very sense of what -she was saying, was like a hand of ice pointing to an undecipherable -warning. -</p> -<p> -Nervousness, fatigue, brain-exhaustion ... had her fight against them -been vain? What was the use of all the months and years of patient -Taylorized effort against the natural human fate: against anxiety, -sorrow, old age—if their menace was to reappear whenever events -slipped from her control? -</p> -<p> -The address ended in applause and admiring exclamations. She had won her -way straight to those trustful hearts, still full of personal memories -of a rude laborious life, or in which its stout tradition lingered on in -spite of motors, money and the final word in plumbing. -</p> - -<p><br></p> - -<p> -Pauline, after the dispersal of the Mothers, had gone up to her room -still dazed by the narrowness of her escape. Thank heaven she had a free -hour! She threw herself on her lounge and turned her gaze inward upon -herself: an exercise for which she seldom had the leisure. -</p> -<p> -Now that she knew she was safe, and had done nothing to discredit -herself or the cause, she could penetrate an inch or two farther into -the motive power of her activities; and what she saw there frightened -her. To be Chairman of the Mothers' Day Association, and a speaker at -the Birth Control banquet! It did not need her daughter's derisive -chuckle to give her the measure of her inconsequence. Yet to reconcile -these contradictions had seemed as simple as to invite the Chief Rabbi -and the Bishop of New York to meet Amalasuntha's Cardinal. Did not the -Mahatma teach that, to the initiated, all discords were resolved into a -higher harmony? When her hurried attention had been turned for a moment -on the seeming inconsistency of encouraging natality and teaching how to -restrict it, she had felt it was sufficient answer to say that the two -categories of people appealed to were entirely different, and could not -be "reached" in the same way. In ethics, as in advertising, the main -thing was to get at your public. Hitherto this argument had satisfied -her. Feeling there was much to be said on both sides, she had thrown -herself with equal zeal into the propagation of both doctrines; but now, -surveying her attempt with a chastened eye, she doubted its expediency. -</p> -<p> -Maisie Bruss, appearing with notes and telephone messages, seemed to -reflect this doubt in her small buttoned-up face. -</p> -<p> -"Oh, Maisie! Is there anything important? I'm dead tired." It was an -admission she did not often make. -</p> -<p> -"Nothing much. Three or four papers have 'phoned for copies of your -address. It was a great success." -</p> -<p> -A faint glow of satisfaction wavered through Pauline's perplexities. She -did not pretend to eloquence; she knew her children smiled at her -syntax. Yet she had reached the hearts of her audience, and who could -deny that that was success? -</p> -<p> -"Oh, Maisie—I don't think it's good enough to appear in print ..." -</p> -<p> -The secretary smiled, made a short-hand memorandum, and went on: "The -Marchesa telephoned that her son is sailing on Wednesday—and I've -sent off her cable about the Cardinal, answer paid." -</p> -<p> -"Sailing on Wednesday? But it can't be—the day after tomorrow!" -Pauline raised herself on an anxious elbow. She had warned her husband, -and he wouldn't listen. "Telephone downstairs, please, Maisie—find -out if Mr. Manford has come in." But she knew well enough what the -answer would be. Nowadays, whenever there was anything serious to be -talked over, Dexter found some excuse for avoiding her. She lay back, -her lids dropped over her tired eyes, and waited for the answer: "Mr. -Manford isn't in yet." -</p> -<p> -Something had come over Dexter lately: no closing of her eyes would shut -that out! She supposed it was over-work—the usual reason. Rich men's -doctors always said they were over-worked when they became cross and -trying at home. -</p> -<p> -"Dinner at the Toys' at 8.30." Miss Bruss continued her recital; and -Pauline drew in her lips on a faintly bitter smile. At the Toys'—he -wouldn't forget that! Whenever there was a woman who attracted him ... -why, Lita even ... she'd seen him in a flutter once when he was going -to the cinema with Lita, and thought she had forgotten to call for him! -He had stamped up and down, watch in hand... Well, she supposed it was -one of the symptoms of middle age: a passing phase. She could afford to -be generous, after twenty years of his devotion; and she meant to be. -Men didn't grow old as gracefully as women—she knew enough not to nag -him about his little flirtations, and was really rather grateful to that -silly Gladys Toy for making a fuss over him. -</p> -<p> -But when it came to serious matters, like this of the Mahatma, it was -different, Dexter owed it to her to treat her opinions with more -consideration—a woman whose oratory was sought for by a dozen -newspapers! And that tiresome business of Michelangelo; another problem -he had obstinately shirked. Discouragement closed in on Pauline. Of what -use were eurythmics, cold douches, mental deep-breathings and all the -other panaceas? -</p> -<p> -If things went on like this she would have to have her face lifted. -</p> - -<p><br><br><br></p> -</div> -<div class="chapter"> -<h2><a id="chap10"></a>X</h2> - -<div> - <img class="drop-cap" src="images/dropcap-i.jpg" width="70" alt="drop_i"> -</div> -<p class="drop-cap"> -IT was exasperating, the way the Vollard girl lurked and ogled... -Undoubtedly she was their best typist: mechanically perfect, with a -smattering of French and Italian useful in linguistic emergencies. There -could be no question of replacing her. But, apart from her job, what a -poor Poll! And always—there was no denying it, the office smiled over -it—always finding excuses to intrude on Manford's privacy: a hurry -trunk-call, a signature forgotten, a final question to ask, a message -from one of the other members of the firm ... she seized her pretexts -cleverly... And when she left him nowadays, he always got up, squared -his shoulders, studied himself critically in the mirror over the -mantelpiece, and hated her the more for having caused him to do anything -so silly. -</p> -<p> -This afternoon her excuse had been flimsier than usual: a new point to -be noted against her. "One of the gentlemen left it on his desk. There's -a picture in it that'll amuse you. Oh, you don't mind my bringing it -in?" she gasped. -</p> -<p> -Manford was just leaving; overcoat on, hat and stick in hand. He -muttered: "Oh, thanks," and took the "Looker-on" in order to cut short -her effusions. A picture that might amuse him! The simpleton... -Probably some of those elaborate "artistic" studies of the Cedarledge -gardens. He remembered that his wife had allowed the "Looker-on" -photographers to take them last summer. She thought it a duty: it might -help to spread the love of gardening (another of her hobbies); and -besides it was undemocratic to refuse to share one's private privileges -with the multitude. He knew all her catch-words and had reached the -point of wondering how much she would have valued her privileges had the -multitude not been there to share them. -</p> -<p> -He thrust the magazine under his arm, and threw it down, half an hour -later, in Lita Wyant's boudoir. It was so quiet and shadowy there that -he was almost glad Lita was not in, though sometimes her unpunctuality -annoyed him. This evening, after the rush and confusion of the day, he -found it soothing to await her in this half-lit room, with its heaped-up -cushions still showing where she had leaned, and the veiled light on two -arums in a dark bowl. Wherever Lita was, there were some of those smooth -sculptural arums. -</p> -<p> -When she came, the stillness would hardly be disturbed. She had a way of -deepening it by her presence: noise and hurry died on her threshold. And -this evening all the house was quiet. Manford, as usual, had tiptoed up -to take a look at the baby, in the night nursery where there were such -cool silver-coloured walls, and white hyacinths in pots of silvery -lustre. The baby slept, a round pink Hercules with defiant rosy curls, -his pink hands clenched on the coverlet. Even the nurse by the lamp sat -quiet and silver-coloured as a brooding pigeon. -</p> -<p> -A house without fixed hours, engagements, obligations ... where none -of the clocks went, and nobody was late, because there was no particular -time for anything to happen. Absurd, of course, maddeningly -unpractical—but how restful after a crowded day! And what a miracle -to have achieved, in the tight pattern of New York's tasks and -pleasures—in the very place which seemed doomed to collapse and -vanish if ever its clocks should stop! -</p> -<p> -These late visits had begun by Manford's dropping in on the way home for -a look at the baby. He liked babies in their cribs, and especially this -fat rascal of Jim's. Next to Nona, there was no one he cared for as much -as Jim; and seeing Jim happily married, doing well at his bank, and with -that funny little chap upstairs, stirred in the older man all his old -regrets that he had no son. -</p> -<p> -Jim seldom got back early enough to assist at these visits; and Lita -too, at first, was generally out. But in the last few months Manford had -more often found her—or at least, having fallen into the habit of -lingering over a cigarette in her boudoir, had managed to get a glimpse -of her before going on to that other house where all the clocks struck -simultaneously, and the week's engagements, in Maisie Bruss's hand, -jumped out at him as he entered his study. -</p> -<p> -This evening he felt more than usually tired—of his day, his work, -his life, himself—oh, especially himself; so tired that, the deep -armchair aiding, he slipped into a half-doze in which the quietness -crept up round him like a tide. -</p> -<p> -He woke with a start, imagining that Lita had entered, and feeling the -elderly man's discomfiture when beauty finds him napping... But the room -was empty: a movement of his own had merely knocked Miss Vollard's -magazine to the floor. He remembered having brought it in to show Lita -the photographs of Cedarledge which he supposed it to contain. Would -there be time? He consulted his watch—an anachronism in that -house—lit another cigarette, and leaned back contentedly. He knew -that as soon as he got home Pauline, who had telephoned again that -afternoon about the Mahatma, would contrive to corner him and reopen the -tiresome question, together with another, which threatened to be almost -equally tiresome, about paying that rotten Michelangelo's debts. "If we -don't, we shall have him here on our hands: Amalasuntha is convinced -you'll take him into the firm. You'd better come home in time to talk -things over—." Always talking over, interfering, adjusting! He had -enough of that in his profession. Pity Pauline wasn't a lawyer: she -might have worked off her steam in office hours. He would sit quietly -where he was, taking care to reach his house only just in time to dress -and join her in the motor. They were dining out, he couldn't remember -where. -</p> -<p> -For a moment his wife's figure stood out before him in brilliant stony -relief, like a photograph seen through a stereopticon; then it vanished -in the mist of his well-being, the indolence engendered by waiting there -alone and undisturbed for Lita. Queer creature, Lita! His lips twitched -into a reminiscent smile. One day she had come up noiselessly behind him -and surprised him by a light kiss on his hair. He had thought it was -Nona... Since then he had sometimes feigned to doze while he waited; -but she had never kissed him again... -</p> -<p> -What sort of a life did she really lead, he wondered? And what did she -make of Jim, now the novelty was over? He could think of no two people -who seemed less made for each other. But you never could tell with a -woman. Jim was young and adoring; and there was that red-headed boy... -</p> -<p> -Luckily Lita liked Nona, and the two were a good deal together. Nona was -as safe as a bank—and as jolly as a cricket. Everything was sure to -be right when she was there. But there were all the other hours, intervals -that Manford had no way of accounting for; and Pauline always said the -girl had had a queer bringing-up, as indeed any girl must have had at -the hands of Mrs. Percy Landish. Pauline had objected to the marriage on -that ground, though the modern mother's respect for the independence of -her children had reduced her objection to mere shadowy hints of which -Jim, in his transports, took no heed. -</p> -<p> -Manford also disliked the girl at first, and deplored Jim's choice. He -thought Lita positively ugly, with her high cheekbones, her too small -head, her glaring clothes and conceited lackadaisical airs. Then, as -time passed, and the marriage appeared after all to be turning out well, -he tried to interest himself in her for Jim's sake, to see in her what -Jim apparently did. But the change had not come till the boy's birth. -Then, as she lay in her pillows, a new shadowiness under her golden -lashes, one petal of a hand hollowed under the little red head at her -side, the vision struck to his heart. The enchantment did not last; he -never recaptured it; there were days when what he called her "beauty -airs" exasperated him, others when he was chilled by her triviality. But -she never bored him, never ceased to excite in him a sort of irritated -interest. He told himself that it was because one could never be sure -what she was up to; speculating on what went on behind that smooth round -forehead and those elusive eyes became his most absorbing occupation. -</p> -<p> -At first he used to be glad when Nona turned up, and when Jim came in -from his bank, fagged but happy, and the three young people sat talking -nonsense, and letting Manford smoke and listen. But gradually he had -fallen into the way of avoiding Nona's days, and of coming earlier -(extricating himself with difficulty from his professional engagements), -so that he might find Lita alone before Jim arrived. -</p> -<p> -Lately she had seemed restless, vaguely impatient with things; and -Manford was determined to win her confidence and get at the riddle -behind that smooth round brow. He could not bear the idea that Jim's -marriage might turn out to be a mere unsuccessful adventure, like so -many others. Lita must be made to understand what a treasure she -possessed, and how easily she might lose it. Lita Cliffe—Mrs. Percy -Landish's niece—to have had the luck to marry Jim Wyant, and to risk -estranging him! What fools women were! If she could be got away from the -pack of frauds and flatterers who surrounded her, Manford felt sure he -could bring her to her senses. Sometimes, in her quiet moods, she seemed -to depend on his judgment, to defer rather touchingly to what he said... -</p> -<p> -The thing would be to coax her from jazz and night-clubs, and the -pseudo-artistic rabble of house-decorators, cinema stars and theatrical -riff-raff who had invaded her life, to get her back to country joys, -golf and tennis and boating, all the healthy outdoor activities. She -liked them well enough when there were no others available. She had -owned to Manford that she was sick of the rush and needed a rest; had -half promised to come to Cedarledge with the boy for Easter. Jim would -be taking his father down to the island off the Georgia coast; and Jim's -being away might be a good thing. These modern young women soon tired of -what they were used to; Lita would appreciate her husband all the more -after a separation. -</p> -<p> -Well, only a few weeks more, and perhaps it would come true. She had -never seen the Cedarledge dogwood in bud, the woods trembling into -green. Manford, smiling at the vision, stooped to pick up the -"Looker-on" and refresh his memory. -</p> -<p> -But it wasn't the right number: there were no gardens in it. Why had -Miss Vollard given it to him? As he fluttered the pages they dropped -open at: "Oriental Sage in Native Garb"—. Oh, damn the Mahatma! -"Dawnside Co-Eds"—oh, damn... -</p> -<p> -He stood up to thrust the paper under one of the heavily-shaded lamps. -At home, where Pauline and reason ruled, the lighting was disposed in -such a way that one could always read without moving from one's chair; -but in this ridiculous house, where no one ever opened a book, the lamps -were so perversely placed, and so deeply shrouded, that one had to hold -one's paper under the shade to make out anything. -</p> -<p> -He scrutinized the picture, shrugged away his disgusted recognition of -Bee Lindon, looked again and straightened his eye-glasses on his nose to -be doubly sure—the lawyer's instinct of accuracy prevailing over a -furious inward tremor. -</p> -<p> -He walked to the door, and then turned back and stood irresolute. To -study the picture he had lifted the border of the lampshade, and the -light struck crudely on the statue above Lita's divan; the statue of -which Pauline (to her children's amusement) always said a little -apprehensively that she supposed it must be Cubist. Manford had hardly -noticed the figure before, except to wonder why the young people admired -ugliness: half lost in the shadows of the niche, it seemed a mere bundle -of lumpy limbs. Now, in the glare—"Ah, you carrion, you!" He -clenched his fist at it. "<i>That's</i> what they want—that's -their brutish idol!" The words came stammering from him in a blur of -rage. It was on Jim's account ... the shock, the degradation... The -paper slipped to the floor, and he dropped into his seat again. -</p> -<p> -Slowly his mind worked its way back through the disgust and confusion. -Pauline had been right: what could one expect from a girl brought up in -that Landish house? Very likely no one had ever thought of asking where -she was, where she had been—Mrs. Landish, absorbed in her own silly -affairs, would be the last person to know. -</p> -<p> -Well, what of that? The modern girl was always free, was expected to -know how to use her freedom. Nona's independence had been as -scrupulously respected as Jim's; she had had her full share of the -perpetual modern agitations. Yet Nona was firm as a rock: a man's heart -could build on her. If a woman was naturally straight, jazz and -night-clubs couldn't make her crooked... -</p> -<p> -True, in Nona's case there had been Pauline's influence: Pauline who, -whatever her faults, was always good-humoured and usually wise with her -children. The proof was that, while they laughed at her, they adored -her: he had to do her that justice. At the thought of Pauline a breath -of freshness and honesty swept through him. He had been unfair to her -lately, critical, irritable. He had been absorbing a slow poison, the -poison emanating from this dusky self-conscious room, with all its -pernicious implications. His first impression of Lita, when he had -thought her ugly and pretentious, rushed back on him, dissipating the -enchantment. -</p> -<p> -"Oh, I'm glad you waited—" She was there before him, her little -heart-shaped face deep in its furs, like a bird on the nest. "I wanted -to see you today; I <i>willed</i> you to wait." She stood there, her head -slightly on one side, distilling her gaze through half-parted lids like -some rare golden liquid. -</p> -<p> -Manford stared back. Her entrance had tangled up the words in his -throat: he stood before her choked with denunciation and invective. And -then it occurred to him how much easier it was just to say -nothing—and to go. Of course he meant to go. It was no business of -his: Jim Wyant was not his son. Thank God he could wash his hands of the -whole affair. -</p> -<p> -He mumbled: "Dining out. Can't wait." -</p> -<p> -"Oh, but you must!" Her hand was on his arm, as light as a petal. "I -want you." He could just see the twinkle of small round teeth as her -upper lip lifted... "Can't ... can't." He tried to disengage his -voice, as if that too were tangled up in her. -</p> -<p> -He moved away toward the door. The "Looker-on" lay on the floor between -them. So much the better; she would find it when he was gone! She would -understand then why he hadn't waited. And no fear of Jim's getting hold -of the paper; trust her to make it disappear! -</p> -<p> -"Why, what's that?" She bent her supple height to pick it up and moved -to the lamp, her face alight. -</p> -<p> -"You darling, you—did you bring me this? What luck! I've been all -over the place hunting for a copy—the whole edition's sold out. I -had the original photograph somewhere, but couldn't put my hand on it." -</p> -<p> -She had reached the fatal page; she was spreading it open. Her smile -caressed it; her mouth looked like a pink pod bursting on a row of -pearly seeds. She turned to Manford almost tenderly. "After you -prevented my going to Ardwin's I had to swear to send this to -Klawhammer, to show that I really <i>can</i> dance. Tommy telephoned at -daylight that Klawhammer was off to Hollywood, and that when I chucked -last night they all said it was because I knew I couldn't come up to the -scratch." She held out the picture with an air of pride. "Doesn't look -much like it, does it? ... Why, what are you staring at? Didn't you -know I was going in for the movies? Immobility was never my strong -point..." She threw the paper down, and began to undo her furs with a -lazy smile, sketching a dance step as she did so. "Why do you look so -shocked? If I don't do that I shall run away with Michelangelo. I -suppose you know that Amalasuntha's importing him? I can't stick this -sort of thing much longer... Besides, we've all got a right to -self-expression, haven't we?" -</p> -<p> -Manford continued to look at her. He hardly heard what she was saying, -in the sickness of realizing what she was. Those were the thoughts, the -dreams, behind those temples on which the light laid such pearly -circles! -</p> -<p> -He said slowly: "This picture—it's true, then? You've been there?" -</p> -<p> -"Dawnside? Bless you—where'd you suppose I learnt to dance? Aunt -Kitty used to plant me out there whenever she wanted to go off on her -own—which was pretty frequently." She had tossed of her hat, slipped -out of her furs, and lowered the flounce of the lamp-shade; and there -she stood before him in her scant slim dress, her arms, bare to the -shoulder, lifted in an amphora-gesture to her little head. -</p> -<p> -"Oh, children—but I'm bored!" she yawned. -</p> - -<p><br><br><br></p> - -<h2><a id="BOOK_II"><i>BOOK II</i></a></h2> - -<p><br><br><br></p> -</div> -<div class="chapter"> -<h2><a id="chap11"></a>XI</h2> - -<div> - <img class="drop-cap" src="images/dropcap-p.jpg" width="70" alt="drop_p"> -</div> -<p class="drop-cap"> -PAULINE MANFORD was losing faith in herself; she felt the need of a new -moral tonic. Could she still obtain it from the old sources? -</p> -<p> -The morning after the Toys' dinner, considering the advisability of -repairing to that small bare room at Dawnside where the Mahatma gave his -private audiences, she felt a chill of doubt. She would have preferred, -just then, not to be confronted with the sage; in going to him she -risked her husband's anger, and prudence warned her to keep out of the -coming struggle. If the Mahatma should ask her to intervene she could -only answer that she had already done so unsuccessfully; and such -admissions, while generally useless, are always painful. Yet guidance -she must have: no Papist in quest of "direction" (wasn't that what -Amalasuntha called it?) could have felt the need more acutely. Certainly -the sacrament of confession, from which Pauline's ingrained -Protestantism recoiled in horror, must have its uses at such moments. -But to whom, if not to the Mahatma, could she confess? -</p> -<p> -Dexter had gone down town without asking to see her; she had been sure -he would, after their drive to and from the Toys' the evening before. When -he was in one of his moods of clenched silence—they were becoming -more frequent, she had remarked—she knew the uselessness of -interfering. Echoes of the Freudian doctrine, perhaps rather confusedly -apprehended, had strengthened her faith in the salutariness of "talking -things over," and she longed to urge this remedy again on Dexter; but -the last time she had done so he had wounded her by replying that he -preferred an aperient. And in his present mood of stony inaccessibility -he might say something even coarser. -</p> -<p> -She sat in her boudoir, painfully oppressed by an hour of unexpected -leisure. The facial-massage artist had the grippe, and had notified her -only at the last moment. To be sure, she had skipped her "Silent -Meditation" that morning; but she did not feel in the mood for it now. -And besides, an hour is too long for meditation—an hour is too long -for anything. Now that she had one to herself, for the first time in years, -she didn't in the least know what to do with it. That was something -which no one had ever thought of teaching her; and the sense of being -surrounded by a sudden void, into which she could reach out on all sides -without touching an engagement or an obligation, produced in her a sort -of mental dizziness. She had taken plenty of rest-cures, of course; all -one's friends did. But during a rest-cure one was always busy resting; -every minute was crammed with passive activities; one never had this -queer sense of inoccupation, never had to face an absolutely featureless -expanse of time. It made her feel as if the world had rushed by and -forgotten her. An hour—why, there was no way of measuring the length -of an empty hour! It stretched away into infinity like the endless road in -a nightmare; it gaped before her like the slippery sides of an abyss. -Nervously she began to wonder what she could do to fill it—if there -were not some new picture show or dressmakers' opening or hygienic -exhibition that she might cram into it before the minute hand switched -round to her next engagement. She took up her list to see what that -engagement was. -</p> -<p> -"11.45. Mrs. Swoffer." -</p> -<p> -Oh, to be sure ... Mrs. Swoffer. Maisie had reminded her that morning. -The relief was instantaneous. Only, who <i>was</i> Mrs. Swoffer? Was she -the President of the Militant Pacifists' League, or the Heroes' Day -delegate, or the exponent of the New Religion of Hope, or the woman who -had discovered a wonderful trick for taking the wrinkles out of the -corners of your eyes? Maisie was out on an urgent commission, and could -not be consulted; but whatever Mrs. Swoffer's errand was, her arrival -would be welcome—especially if she came before her hour. And she did. -</p> -<p> -She was a small plump woman of indefinite age, with faded blond hair and -rambling features held together by a pair of urgent eye-glasses. She -asked if she might hold Pauline's hand just a moment while she looked at -her and reverenced her—and Pauline, on learning that this was the -result of reading her Mothers' Day speech in the morning papers, acceded -not unwillingly. -</p> -<p> -Not that that was what Mrs. Swoffer had come for; she said it was just a -flower she wanted to gather on the way. A rose with the dew on it—she -took off her glasses and wiped them, as if to show where the dew had -come from. "You speak for so <i>many</i> of us," she breathed, and -recovered Pauline's hand for another pressure. -</p> -<p> -But she <i>had</i> come for the children, all the same; and that was really -coming for the mothers, wasn't it? Only she wanted to reach the mothers -through the children—reversing the usual process. Mrs. Swoffer said -she believed in reversing almost everything. Standing on your head was one -of the most restorative physical exercises, and she believed it was the -same mentally and morally. It was a good thing to stand one's <i>soul</i> -upside down. And so she'd come about the children... -</p> -<p> -The point was to form a League—a huge International League of -Mothers—against the dreadful old practice of telling children they -were naughty. Had Mrs. Manford ever stopped to think what an abominable -thing it was to suggest to a pure innocent child that there was such a -thing in the world as Being Naughty? What did it open the door to? Why, -to the idea of Wickedness, the most awful idea in the whole world. -</p> -<p> -Of course Mrs. Manford would see at once what getting rid of the idea of -Wickedness would lead to. How could there be bad men if there were no -bad children? And how could there be bad children if children were never -allowed to know that such a thing as badness existed? There was a splendid -woman—Orba Clapp; no doubt Mrs. Manford had heard of her?—who -was getting up a gigantic world-wide movement to boycott the -manufacturers and sellers of all military toys, tin soldiers, cannon, -toy rifles, water-pistols and so on. It was a grand beginning, and -several governments had joined the movement already: the Philippines, -Mrs. Swoffer thought, and possibly Montenegro. But that seemed to her -only a beginning: much as she loved and revered Orba Clapp, she couldn't -honestly say that she thought the scheme went deep enough. She, Mrs. -Swoffer, wanted to go right down to the soul: the collective soul of all -the little children. The great Teacher, Alvah Loft—she supposed Mrs. -Manford knew about <i>him</i>? No? She was surprised that a woman like Mrs. -Manford—"one of our beacon-lights"—hadn't heard of Alvah Loft. -She herself owed everything to him. No one had helped her as he had: he had -pulled her out of the very depths of scepticism. But didn't Mrs. Manford -know his books, even: "Spiritual Vacuum-Cleaning" and "Beyond God"? -</p> -<p> -Pauline had grown a little listless while the children were to the fore. -She would help, of course; lend her name; subscribe. But that string had -been so often twanged that it gave out rather a deadened note: whereas -the name of a new Messiah immediately roused her. "Beyond God" was a -tremendous title; she would get Maisie to telephone for the books at -once. But what exactly did Alvah Loft teach? -</p> -<p> -Mrs. Swoffer's eye-glasses flashed with inspiration. "He doesn't teach: he -absolutely refuses to be regarded as a <i>teacher</i>. He says there are -too many already. He's an Inspirational Healer. What he does is to act on -you—on your spirit. He simply relieves you of your frustrations." -</p> -<p> -Frustrations! Pauline was fascinated by the word. Not that it was new to -her. Her vocabulary was fairly large, far more so, indeed, than that of -her daughter's friends, whose range was strictly limited to sport and -dancing; but whenever she heard a familiar word used as if it had some -unsuspected and occult significance it fascinated her like a phial -containing a new remedy. -</p> -<p> -Mrs. Swoffer's glasses were following Pauline's thoughts as they formed. -"Will you let me speak to you as I would to an old friend? The moment I -took your hand I <i>knew</i> you were suffering from frustrations. To any -disciple of Alvah Loft's the symptoms are unmistakeable. Sometimes I -almost wish I didn't see it all so clearly ... it gives one such a -longing to help..." -</p> -<p> -Pauline murmured: "I <i>do</i> want help." -</p> -<p> -"Of course you do," Mrs. Swoffer purred, "and you want <i>his</i> help. -Don't you know those wonderful shoe-shops where they stock every size and -shape the human foot can require? I tell Alvah Loft he's like that; he's -got a cure for everybody's frustrations. Of course," she added, "there -isn't time for everybody; he has to choose. But he would take you at -once." She drew back, and her glasses seemed to suck Pauline down as if -they had been quicksands. "You're psychic," she softly pronounced. -</p> -<p> -"I believe I am," Pauline acknowledged. "But—" -</p> -<p> -"Yes; I know; those frustrations! All the things you think you ought to -do, <i>and can't</i>; that's it, isn't it?" Mrs. Swoffer stood up. "Dear -friend, come with me. Don't look at your watch. Just come!" -</p> -<p> -An hour later Pauline, refreshed and invigorated, descended the -Inspirational Healer's brown-stone doorstep with a springing step. It -had been worth while breaking three or four engagements to regain that -feeling of moral freedom. Why had she never heard of Alvah Loft before? -His method was so much simpler than the Mahatma's: no eurythmics, -gymnastics, community life, no mental deep-breathing, or long words to -remember. Alvah Loft simply took out your frustrations as if they'd been -adenoids; it didn't last ten minutes, and was perfectly painless. -Pauline had always felt that the Messiah who should reduce his message -to tabloid form would outdistance all the others; and Alvah Loft had -done it. He just received you in a boarding-house back-parlour, with -bunches of pampas-grass on the mantelpiece, while rows of patients sat -in the front room waiting their turn. You told him what was bothering -you, and he said it was just a frustration, and he could relieve you of -it, and make it so that it didn't exist, by five minutes of silent -communion. And he sat and held you by the wrist, very lightly, as if he -were taking your temperature, and told you to keep your eyes on the Ella -Wheeler Wilcox line-a-day on the wall over his head. After it was over -he said: "You're a good subject. The frustrations are all out. Go home, -and you'll hear something good before dinner. Twenty-five dollars." And -a pasty-faced young man with pale hair, who was waiting in the passage, -added: "Pass on, please," and steered Pauline out by the elbow. -</p> -<p> -Of course she wasn't naturally credulous; she prided herself on always -testing everything by reason. But it <i>was</i> marvellous, how light she -felt as she went down the steps! The buoyancy persisted all day, perhaps -strengthened by an attentive study of the reports of the Mothers' Day -Meeting, laid out by the vigilant Maisie for perusal. Alvah Loft had -told her that she would hear of something good before dinner, and when, -late in the afternoon, she went up to her boudoir, she glanced -expectantly at the writing-table, as if revelation might be there. It -was, in the shape of a telephone message. -</p> -<p> -"Mr. Manford will be at home by seven. He would like to see you for a -few minutes before dinner." -</p> -<p> -It was nearly seven, and Pauline settled herself by the fire and -unfolded the evening paper. She seldom had time for its perusal, but -today there might be some reference to the Mothers' Day Meeting; and her -newly-regained serenity made it actually pleasant to be sitting there -undisturbed, waiting for her husband. -</p> -<p> -"Dexter—how tired you look!" she exclaimed when he came in. It -occurred to her at once that she might possibly insinuate an allusion to -the new healer; but wisdom counselled a waiting policy, and she laid -down her paper and smiled expectantly. -</p> -<p> -Manford gave his shoulders their usual impatient shake. "Everybody looks -tired at the end of a New York day; I suppose it's what New York is -for." He sat down in the armchair facing hers, and stared at the fire. -</p> -<p> -"I wanted to see you to talk about plans—a rearrangement," he began. -"It's so hard to find a quiet minute." -</p> -<p> -"Yes; but there's no hurry now. The Delavans don't dine till half-past -eight." -</p> -<p> -"Oh, are we dining there?" He reached for a cigarette. -</p> -<p> -She couldn't help saying: "I'm sure you smoke too much, Dexter. The -irritation produced by the paper—" -</p> -<p> -"Yes; I know. But what I wanted to say is: I should like you to ask Lita -and the boy to Cedarledge while Jim and Wyant are at the island." -</p> -<p> -This was a surprise; but she met it with unmoved composure. "Of course, -if you like. But do you think Lita'll go, all alone? You'll be off -tarpon-fishing, Nona is going to Asheville for a fortnight's change, and -I had intended—" She pulled up suddenly. She had meant, of course, to -take her rest-cure at Dawnside. -</p> -<p> -Manford sat frowning and studying the fire. "Why shouldn't we all go to -Cedarledge instead?" he began. "Somebody ought to look after Lita while -Jim's away; in fact, I don't believe he'll go with Wyant if we don't. -She's dead-beat, and doesn't know it, and with all the fools she has -about her the only way to ensure her getting a real rest is to carry her -off to the country with the boy." -</p> -<p> -Pauline's face lit up with a blissful incredulity. "Oh, Dexter—would -you really come to Cedarledge for Easter? How splendid! Of course I'll -give up my rest-cure. As you say, there's no place like the country." -</p> -<p> -She was already raising an inward hymn to Alvah Loft. An Easter holiday -in the country, all together—how long it was since that had happened! -She had always thought it her duty to urge Dexter to get away from the -family when he had the chance; to travel or shoot or fish, and not feel -himself chained to her side. And here at last was her reward—of his -own accord he was proposing that they should all be together for a quiet -fortnight. A softness came about her heart: the stiff armour of her -self-constraint seemed loosened, and she saw the fire through a luminous -blur. "It will be lovely," she murmured. -</p> -<p> -Manford lit another cigarette, and sat puffing it in silence. It seemed -as though a weight had been lifted from him too; yet his face was still -heavy and preoccupied. Perhaps before their talk was over she might be -able to say a word about Alvah Loft; she was so sure that Dexter would -see everything differently if only he could be relieved of his -frustrations. -</p> -<p> -At length he said: "I don't see why this should interfere with your -arrangements, though. Hadn't you meant to go somewhere for a rest-cure?" -</p> -<p> -He had thought of that too! She felt a fresh tremor of gratitude. How -wicked she had been ever to doubt the designs of Providence, and the -resolving of all discords in the Higher Harmony! -</p> -<p> -"Oh, my rest-cure doesn't matter; being with you all at Cedarledge will -be the best kind of rest." -</p> -<p> -His obvious solicitude for her was more soothing than any medicine, more -magical even than Alvah Loft's silent communion. Perhaps the one thing -she had lacked, in all these years, was to feel that some one was -worrying about her as she worried about the universe. -</p> -<p> -"It's awfully unselfish of you, Pauline. But running a big house is -never restful. Nona will give up Asheville and come to Cedarledge to -look after us; you mustn't change your plans." -</p> -<p> -She smiled a little. "But I <i>must</i>, dear; because I'd meant to go to -Dawnside, and now, of course, in any case—" -</p> -<p> -Manford stood up and went and leaned against the chimney-piece. "Well, -that will be all right," he said. -</p> -<p> -"All right?" -</p> -<p> -He was absently turning about in his hand a little bronze statuette. -"Yes. If you think the fellow does you good. I've been thinking over -what you said the other day; and I've decided to advise the Lindons not -to act ... too precipitately..." He coughed and put the statuette -back on the mantelshelf. "They've abandoned the idea..." -</p> -<p> -"Oh, Dexter—" She started to her feet, her eyes brimming. He had -actually thought over what she had said to him—when, at the time, he -had seemed so obdurate and sneering! Her heart trembled with a happy -wonder in which love and satisfied vanity were subtly mingled. Perhaps, -after all, what her life had really needed was something much simpler -than all the complicated things she had put into it. -</p> -<p> -"I'm so glad," she murmured, not knowing what else to say. She wanted to -hold out her arms, to win from him some answering gesture. But he was -already glancing at his watch. "That's all right. Jove, though—we'll -be late for dinner... Opera afterward, isn't there?" -</p> -<p> -The door closed on him. For a moment or two she stood still, awed by the -sense of some strange presence in the room, something as fresh and -strong as a spring gale. It must be happiness, she thought. -</p> - -<p><br><br><br></p> -</div> -<div class="chapter"> -<h2><a id="chap12"></a>XII</h2> - -<div> - <img class="drop-cap" src="images/dropcap-y.jpg" width="70" alt="drop_y"> -</div> -<p class="drop-cap"> -"YES; this morning I think you <i>can</i> see her. She seems ever so much -better; not in such a fearful hurry, I mean." -</p> -<p> -Pauline, from her dressing-room, overheard Maisie Bruss. She smiled at -the description of herself, sent a thought of gratitude to Alvah Loft, -and called out: "Is that Nona? I'll be there in a minute. Just finishing -my exercises..." -</p> -<p> -She appeared, fresh and tingling, draped in a restful dove-coloured -wrapper, and offered Nona a smooth cheek. Miss Bruss had vanished, and -mother and daughter had to themselves the sunny room, full of flowers -and the scent of a wood-fire. -</p> -<p> -"How wonderful you look, mother! All made over. Have you been trying -some new exercises?" -</p> -<p> -Pauline smiled and pulled up the soft eiderdown coverlet at the foot of -her lounge. She sank comfortably back among her cushions. -</p> -<p> -"No, dear: it's just—understanding a little better, I think." -</p> -<p> -"Understanding?" -</p> -<p> -"Yes; that things <i>always</i> come out right if one just keeps on being -brave and trustful." -</p> -<p> -"Oh—." She fancied she caught a note of disappointment in Nona's -voice. Poor Nona—her mother had long been aware that she had no -enthusiasm, no transports of faith. She took after her father. How tired -and sallow she looked in the morning light, perched on the arm of a -chair, her long legs dangling! -</p> -<p> -"You really ought to try to believe that yourself, darling," said -Pauline brightly. -</p> -<p> -Nona gave one of her father's shrugs. "Perhaps I will when I have more -time." -</p> -<p> -"But one can always <i>make</i> time, dear." ("Just as I do," the smile -suggested.) "You look thoroughly fagged out, Nona. I do wish you'd go to -the wonderful new man I've just—" -</p> -<p> -"All right, mother. Only, this morning I haven't come to talk about -myself. It's Lita." -</p> -<p> -"Lita?" -</p> -<p> -"I've been wanting to speak to you about her for a long time. Haven't -you noticed anything?" -</p> -<p> -Pauline still wore her alert and sympathizing smile. "Tell me what, -dear—let's talk it all over." -</p> -<p> -Nona's brows were drawn in a troubled frown. "I'm afraid Jim's -not happy," she said. -</p> -<p> -"Jim? But, darling, he's been so dreadfully over-worked—that's the -trouble. Your father spoke to me about it the other day. He's sending -Jim and Arthur down to the island next month for a good long rest." -</p> -<p> -"Yes; it's awfully nice of father. But it's not that—it's Lita," Nona -doggedly repeated. -</p> -<p> -A faint shadow brushed Pauline's cloudless horizon; but she resolutely -turned her eyes from it. "Tell me what you think is wrong." -</p> -<p> -"Why, that she's bored stiff—says she's going to chuck the whole -thing. She says the life she's leading prevents her expressing her -personality." -</p> -<p> -"Good gracious—she dares?" Pauline sat bolt upright, the torn garment -of her serenity fluttering away like a wisp of vapour. Was there never -to be any peace for her, she wondered? She had a movement of passionate -rebellion—then a terror lest it should imperil Alvah Loft's mental -surgery. After a physical operation the patient's repose was always -carefully guarded—but no one thought of sparing <i>her</i>, though -she had just been subjected to so radical an extirpation. She looked almost -irritably at Nona. -</p> -<p> -"Don't you think you sometimes imagine things, my pet? Of course, the -more we yield to suggestions of pain and distress the more—" -</p> -<p> -"Yes; I know. But this isn't a suggestion, it's a fact. Lita says she's -got to express her personality, or she'll do something dreadful. And if -she does it will break Jim's heart." -</p> -<p> -Pauline leaned back, vaguely fortified by so definite a menace. It was -laughable to think of Lita Cliffe's threatening to do something dreadful -to a Wyant! -</p> -<p> -"Don't you think she's just over-excited, perhaps? She leads such a crazy -sort of life—all you children do. And she hasn't been very strong -since the baby's birth. I believe she needs a good rest as much as Jim -does. And you know your father has been so wise about that; he's going -to persuade her to go to Cedarledge for two or three weeks while Jim's -in Georgia." -</p> -<p> -Nona remained unimpressed. "Lita won't go to Cedarledge alone—you -know she won't." -</p> -<p> -"She won't have to, dear. Your father has thought of that too; he finds -time to think of everything." -</p> -<p> -"Who's going, then?" -</p> -<p> -"We <i>all</i> are. At least, your father hopes you will; and he's giving -up his tarpon-fishing on purpose to join us." -</p> -<p> -"Father is?" Nona stood up, her gaze suddenly fixed on her mother. -</p> -<p> -"Your father's wonderful," Pauline triumphed. -</p> -<p> -"Yes, I know." The girl's voice flagged again. "But all this is weeks -away. And meanwhile I'm afraid—I'm afraid." -</p> -<p> -"Little girls mustn't be afraid. If you are, send Lita to <i>me</i>. I'm -sure it's just a case of frustration—" -</p> -<p> -"Frustration?" -</p> -<p> -"Yes; the new psychological thing. I'll take her with me to see Alvah -Loft. He's the great Inspirational Healer. I've only had three -treatments, and it's miraculous. It doesn't take ten minutes, and all -one's burdens are lifted." Pauline threw back her head with a sigh which -seemed to luxuriate in the remembrance of her own release. "I wish I -could take you <i>all</i> to him!" she said. -</p> -<p> -"Well, perhaps you'd better begin with Lita." Nona was half-smiling too, -but it was what her mother secretly called her disintegrating smile. "I -wish the poor child were more constructive—but I suppose she's -inherited her father's legal mind," Pauline thought. -</p> -<p> -Nona stood before her irresolutely. "You know, mother, if things do go -wrong Jim will never get over it." -</p> -<p> -"There you are again—jumping at the conclusion that things will go -wrong! As for Lita, to me it's a clear case of frustration. She says she -wants to express her personality? Well, every one has the right to do -that—I should think it wrong of me to interfere. That wouldn't be the -way to make Jim happy. What Lita needs is to have her frustrations -removed. That will open her eyes to her happiness, and make her see what -a perfect home she has. I wonder where my engagement-list is? Maisie! ... -Oh, here..." She ran her eyes rapidly over the tablet. "I'll see -Lita tomorrow—I'll make a point of it. We'll have a friendly simple -talk—perfectly frank and affectionate. Let me see: at what time -should I be likely to find her? ... And, no, of course not, darling; I -wouldn't think of saying a word to Jim. But your father—surely I may -speak to your father?" -</p> -<p> -Nona hesitated. "I think father knows about it—as much as he need," -she answered, her hand on the door. -</p> -<p> -"Ah, your father always knows everything," Pauline placidly acquiesced. -</p> -<p> -The prospect of the talk with her daughter-in-law barely ruffled her -new-found peace. It was a pity Lita was restless; but nowadays all the -young people were restless. Perhaps it would be as well to say a word to -Kitty Landish; flighty and inconsequent as she was, it might open her -eyes to find that she was likely to have her niece back on her hands. -Mrs. Percy Landish's hands were always full to overflowing with her own -difficulties. A succession of ingenious theories of life, and the -relentless pursuit of originality, had landed her in a state of chronic -embarrassment, pecuniary, social and sentimental. The announcement that -Lita was tired of Jim, and threatened to leave him, would fall like a -bombshell on that precarious roof which figured in the New York -Directory as somewhere in the East Hundreds, but was recorded in the -"Social Register" as No. 1 Viking Court. Mrs. Landish's last fad had -been to establish herself on the banks of the East River, which she and -a group of friends had adorned with a cluster of reinforced-cement -bungalows, first christened El Patio, but altered to Viking Court after -Mrs. Landish had read in an illustrated weekly that the Vikings, who had -discovered America ages before Columbus, had not, as previously -supposed, effected their first landing at Vineyard Haven, but at a spot -not far from the site of her dwelling. Cement, at an early stage, is -malleable, and the Alhambra <i>motifs</i> had hastily given way to others -from the prows of Nordic ships, from silver torques and Runic inscriptions, -the latter easily contrived out of Arabic <i>sourats</i> from the Koran. -Before these new ornaments were dry, Mrs. Landish and her friends were -camping on the historic spot; and after four years of occupancy they were -camping still, in Mrs. Manford's sense of the word. -</p> -<p> -A hurried telephone call had assured Pauline that she could see Mrs. -Landish directly after lunch; and at two o'clock her motor drove up to -Viking Court, which opened on a dilapidated river-front and was -cynically overlooked by tall tenement houses with an underpinning of -delicatessen stores. -</p> -<p> -Mrs. Landish was nowhere to be found. She had had to go out to lunch, a -melancholy maid-servant said, because the cook had just given notice; -but she would doubtless soon be back. With gingerly steps Pauline -entered the "living-room," so called (as visitors were unfailingly -reminded) because Mrs. Landish ate, painted, modelled in clay, -sculptured in wood, and received her friends there. The Vikings, she -added, had lived in that way. But today all traces of these varied -activities had disappeared, and the room was austerely empty. Mrs. -Landish's last hobby was for what she called "purism," and her chief -desire to make everything in her surroundings conform to the habits and -industries of a mythical past. Ever since she had created Viking Court -she had been trying to obtain rushes for the floor: but as the Eastern -States of America did not produce the particular variety of rush which -the Vikings were said to have used she had at last decided to have rugs -woven on handlooms in Abyssinia, some one having assured her that an -inscription referring to trade-relations between the Vikings and the -kingdom of Prester John had been discovered in the ruins of Petra. -</p> -<p> -The difficulty of having these rugs made according to designs of the -period caused the cement floor of Mrs. Landish's living-room to remain -permanently bare, and most of the furniture having now been removed, the -room had all the appearance of a garage, the more so as Mrs. Landish's -latest protégé, a young cabaret-artist who performed on a motor-siren, -had been suffered to stable his cycle in one corner. -</p> -<p> -In addition to this vehicle, the room contained only a few -relentless-looking oak chairs, a long table bearing an hour-glass (for -clocks would have been an anachronism), and a scrap of dusty velvet -nailed on the cement wall, as to which Mrs. Landish explained that it -was a bit of a sixth century Coptic vestment, and that the nuns of a -Basilian convent in Thessaly were reproducing it for eventual curtains -and chair-cushions. "It may take fifty years." Mrs. Landish always -added, "but I would rather go without it than live with anything less -perfect." -</p> -<p> -The void into which Pauline advanced gave prominence to the figure of a -man who stood with his back to her, looking through the window at what -was to be a garden when Viking horticulture was revived. Meanwhile it -was fully occupied by neighbouring cats and by swirls of wind-borne -rubbish. -</p> -<p> -The visitor, duskily blocked against a sullen March sky, was at first -not recognizable; but half way toward him Pauline exclaimed: "Dexter!" -He turned, and his surprise met hers. -</p> -<p> -"I never dreamed of its being you!" she said. -</p> -<p> -He faced her with a certain defiant jauntiness. "Why not?" -</p> -<p> -"Because I never saw you here before. I've tried often enough to get you -to come—" -</p> -<p> -"Oh, to lunch or dine!" He sent a grimace about the room. "I never -thought that was among my duties." -</p> -<p> -She did not take this up, and a moment's silence hung between them. -Finally Manford said: "I came about Lita." -</p> -<p> -Pauline felt a rush of relief. Her husband's voice had been harsh and -impatient: she saw that her arrival had mysteriously put him out. But if -anxiety about Lita were the cause of his visit it not only explained his -perturbation but showed his revived solicitude for herself. She sent -back another benediction to the Inspirational Healer, so sweet it was to -find that she and Dexter were once more moved by the same impulses. -</p> -<p> -"It's awfully kind of you, dear. How funny that we should meet on the -same errand!" -</p> -<p> -He stared: "Why, have you—?" -</p> -<p> -"Come about Lita? Well, yes. She's been getting rather out of hand, -hasn't she? Of course a divorce would kill poor Jim—otherwise I -shouldn't so much mind—" -</p> -<p> -"A divorce?" -</p> -<p> -"Nona tells me it's Lita's idea. Foolish child! I'm to have a talk with -her this afternoon. I came here first to see if Kitty's influence—" -</p> -<p> -"Oh: Kitty's influence!" -</p> -<p> -"Yes; I know." She broke off, and glanced quickly at Manford. "But if -you don't believe in her influence, why did you come here yourself?" -</p> -<p> -The question seemed to take her husband by surprise, and he met it by a -somewhat rigid smile. How old he looked in the hard slaty light! The -crisp hair was almost as thin on his temples as higher up. If only he -would try that wonderful new "Radio-scalp"! "And he used to be so -handsome!" his wife said to herself, with the rush of vitality she -always felt when she noted the marks of fatigue or age in her -contemporaries. Manford and Nona, she reflected, had the same way of -turning sallow and heavy-cheeked when they were under any physical or -moral strain. -</p> -<p> -Manford said: "I came to ask Mrs. Landish to help us get Lita away for -Easter. I thought she might put in a word—" -</p> -<p> -It was Pauline's turn to smile. "Perhaps she might. What I came for was -to say that if Lita doesn't quiet down and behave reasonably she may -find herself thrown on her aunt's hands again. I think that will produce -an effect on Kitty. I shall make it perfectly clear that they are not to -count on me financially if Lita leaves Jim." She glanced brightly at -Manford, instinctively awaiting his approval. -</p> -<p> -But the expected response did not come. His face grew blurred and -uncertain, and for a moment he said nothing. Then he muttered: "It's all -very unfortunate ... a stupid muddle..." -</p> -<p> -Pauline caught the change in his tone. It suggested that her last -remark, instead of pleasing him, had raised between them one of those -invisible barriers against which she had so often bruised her -perceptions. And just as she had thought that he and she were really in -touch again! -</p> -<p> -"We mustn't be hard on her ... we mustn't judge her without hearing -both sides ..." he went on. -</p> -<p> -"But of course not." It was just the sort of thing she wanted him to -say, but not in the voice in which he said it. The voice was full of -hesitation and embarrassment. Could it be her presence which embarrassed -him? With Manford one could never tell. She suggested, almost timidly: -"But why shouldn't I leave you to see Kitty alone? Perhaps we needn't -both..." -</p> -<p> -His look of relief was unconcealable; but her bright resolution rose -above the shock. "You'll do it so much better," she encouraged him. -</p> -<p> -"Oh, I don't know. But perhaps two of us ... looks rather like the -Third Degree, doesn't it?" -</p> -<p> -She assented nervously: "All I want is to smooth things over..." -</p> -<p> -He gave an acquiescent nod, and followed her as she moved toward the -door. "Perhaps, though—look here, Pauline—" -</p> -<p> -She sparkled with responsiveness. -</p> -<p> -"Hadn't you better wait before sending for Lita? It may not be -necessary, if—" -</p> -<p> -Her first impulse was to agree; but she thought of the Inspirational -Healer. "You can trust me to behave with tact, dear; but I'm sure it -will help Lita to talk things out, and perhaps I shall know better than -Kitty how to get at her... Lita and I have always been good friends, -and there's a wonderful new man I want to persuade her to see ... some -one really psychic..." -</p> -<p> -Manford's lips narrowed in a smile; again she had a confused sense of -new deserts widening between them. Why had he again become suddenly -sardonic and remote? She had no time to consider, for the new gospel of -frustrations was surging to her lips. -</p> -<p> -"<i>Not</i> a teacher; he repudiates all doctrines, and simply <i>acts</i> -on you. He—" -</p> -<p> -"Pauline darling! Dexter! Have you been waiting long? Oh, dear—my -hour-glass seems to be quite empty!" -</p> -<p> -Mrs. Percy Landish was there, slipping toward them with a sort of aerial -shuffle, as if she had blown in on a March gust. Her tall swaying figure -produced, at a distance, an effect of stateliness which vanished as she -approached, as if she had suddenly got out of focus. Her face was like -an unfinished sketch, to which the artist had given heaps of fair hair, -a lovely nose, expressive eyes, and no mouth. She laid down some vague -parcels and shook the hour-glass irritably, as if it had been at fault. -</p> -<p> -"How dear of you!" she said to her visitors. "I don't often get you -together in my eyrie." -</p> -<p> -The expression puzzled Pauline, who knew that in poetry an eyrie was an -eagle's nest, and wondered how this term could be applied to a cement -bungalow in the East Hundreds... But there was no time to pursue such -speculations. -</p> -<p> -Mrs. Landish was looking helplessly about her. "It's cold—you're both -freezing, I'm afraid?" Her eyes rested tragically on the empty hearth. -"The fact is, I can't have a fire because my andirons are <i>wrong</i>." -</p> -<p> -"Not high enough? The chimney doesn't draw, you mean?" Pauline in such -emergencies was in her element; she would have risen from her deathbed -to show a new housemaid how to build a fire. But Mrs. Landish shook her -head with the look of a woman who never expects to be understood by -other women. -</p> -<p> -"No, dear; I mean they were not of the period. I always suspected it, -and Dr. Ygrid Bjornsted, the great authority on Nordic art, who was here -the other day, told me that the only existing pair is in the Museum at -Christiania. So I have sent an order to have them copied. But you -<i>are</i> cold, Pauline! Shall we go and sit in the kitchen? We shall -be quite by ourselves, because the cook has just given notice." -</p> -<p> -Pauline drew her furs around her in silent protest at this new insanity. -"We shall be very well here, Kitty. I suppose you know it's about -Lita—" -</p> -<p> -Mrs. Landish seemed to drift back to them from incalculable distances. -"Lita? Has Klawhammer really engaged her? It was for his 'Herodias,' -wasn't it?" She was all enthusiasm and participation. -</p> -<p> -Pauline's heart sank. She had caught the irritated jut of Manford's -brows. No—it was useless to try to make Kitty understand; and -foolish to risk her husband's displeasure by staying in this icy room -for such a purpose. She wrapped herself in sweetness as in her sables. -"It's something much more serious than that cinema nonsense. But I'm -going to leave it to Dexter to explain. He will do it ever so much -better than I could... Yes, Kitty dear, I remember there's a step -missing in the vestibule. Please don't bother to see me out—you -know Dexter's minutes are precious." She thrust Mrs. Landish softly back -into the room, and made her way unattended across the hall. As she did -so, the living-room door, the lock of which had responded reluctantly to -her handling, swung open again, and she heard Manford ask, in his dry -cross-examining voice: "Will you please tell me exactly when and for how -long Lita was at Dawnside, Mrs. Landish?" -</p> - -<p><br><br><br></p> -</div> -<div class="chapter"> -<h2><a id="chap13"></a>XIII</h2> - -<div> - <img class="drop-cap" src="images/dropcap-i.jpg" width="70" alt="drop_i"> -</div> -<p class="drop-cap"> -"I BELIEVE it's the first time in a month that I've heard Nona laugh," -Stanley Heuston said with a touch of irony—or was it simply envy? -</p> -<p> -Nona was still in the whirlpool of her laugh. She struggled to its edge -only to be caught back, with retrospective sobs and gasps, into its -central coil. "It was too screamingly funny," she flung at them out of -the vortex. -</p> -<p> -She was perched sideways, as her way was, on the arm of the big chintz -sofa in Arthur Wyant's sitting-room. Wyant was stretched out in his -usual armchair, behind a crumby messy tea-table, on the other side of -which sat his son and Stanley Heuston. -</p> -<p> -"She didn't hesitate for more than half a second—just long enough to -catch my eye—then round she jerked, grabbed hold of her last word and -fitted it into a beautiful new appeal to the Mothers. Oh—oh—oh! -If you could have seen them!" -</p> -<p> -"I can." Jim's face suddenly became broad, mild and earnestly peering. -He caught up a pair of his father's eye-glasses, adjusted them to his -blunt nose, and murmured in a soft feminine drawl: "Mrs. Manford is one -of our deepest-souled women. She has a vital message for all Mothers." -</p> -<p> -Wyant leaned back and laughed. His laugh was a contagious chuckle, -easily provoked and spreading in circles like a full spring. Jim gave a -large shout at his own mimicry, and Heuston joined the chorus on a dry -note that neither spread nor echoed, but seemed suddenly to set bounds -to their mirth. Nona felt a momentary resentment of his tone. Was he -implying that they were ridiculing their mother? They weren't, they were -only admiring her in their own way, which had always been humorous and -half-parental. Stan ought to have understood by this time—and have -guessed why Nona, at this moment, caught at any pretext to make Jim -laugh, to make everything in their joint lives appear to him normal and -jolly. But Stanley always seemed to see beyond a joke, even when he was -in the very middle of it. He was like that about everything in life; -forever walking around things, weighing and measuring them, and making -his disenchanted calculations. Poor fellow—well, no wonder! -</p> -<p> -Jim got up, the glasses still clinging to his blunt nose. He gathered an -imaginary cloak about him, picked up inexistent gloves and vanity-bag, -and tapped his head as if he were settling a feathered hat. The laughter -waxed again, and Wyant chuckled: "I wish you young fools would come -oftener. It would cure me a lot quicker than being shipped off to -Georgia." He turned half-apologetically to Nona. "Not that I'm not -awfully glad of the chance—" -</p> -<p> -"I know, Exhibit dear. It'll be jolly enough when you get down there, -you and Jim." -</p> -<p> -"Yes; I only wish you were coming too. Why don't you?" -</p> -<p> -Jim's features returned to their normal cast, and he removed the -eye-glasses. "Because mother and Manford have planned to carry off Lita -and the kid to Cedarledge at the same time. Good scheme, isn't it? I -wish I could be in both places at once. We're all of us fed up with New -York." -</p> -<p> -His father glanced at him. "Look here, my boy, there's no difficulty -about your being in the same place as your wife. I can take my old bones -down to Georgia without your help, since Manford's kind enough to invite -me." -</p> -<p> -"Thanks a lot, dad; but part of Lita's holiday is getting away from -domestic cares, and I'm the principal one. She has to order dinner for -me. And I don't say I shan't like my holiday too ... sand and sun, any -amount of 'em. That's my size at present. No more superhuman efforts." -He stretched his arms over his head with a yawn. -</p> -<p> -"But I thought Manford was off to the south too—to his tarpon? Isn't -this Cedarledge idea new?" -</p> -<p> -"It's part of his general kindness. He wanted me to go with an easy -mind, so he's chucked his fishing and mobilized the whole group to go -and lead the simple life at Cedarledge with Lita." -</p> -<p> -Wyant's sallow cheek-bones reddened slightly. "It's awfully kind, as you -say; but if my going south is to result in upsetting everybody else's -arrangements—" -</p> -<p> -"Oh, rot, father." Jim spoke with sudden irritability. "Manford would -hate it if you chucked now; wouldn't he, Nona? And I do want Lita to get -away somewhere, and I'd rather it was to Cedarledge than anywhere." The -clock struck, and he pulled himself out of his chair. Nona noticed with a -pang how slack and half-hearted all his movements were. "Jove—I must -jump!" he said. "We're due at some cabaret show that begins early; and I -believe we dine at Ardwin's first, with a bunch of freaks. By-bye, Nona... -Stan... Goodbye, father. Only a fortnight now before we cut it -all!" -</p> -<p> -The door shut after him on a silence. Wyant reached for his pipe and -filled it. Heuston stared at the tea-table. Suddenly Wyant questioned: -"Look here—why is Jim being shipped off to the island with me when -his wife's going to Cedarledge?" -</p> -<p> -Nona dropped from her sofa-arm and settled into an armchair. "Simply for -the reasons he told you. They both want a holiday from each other." -</p> -<p> -"I don't believe Jim really wants one from Lita." -</p> -<p> -"Well, so much the worse for Jim. Lita's temporarily tired of dancing -and domesticity, and the doctor says she ought to go off for a while by -herself." -</p> -<p> -Wyant was slowly drawing at his pipe. At length he said: "Your mother's -doctor told her that once; and she never came back." -</p> -<p> -Nona's colour rose through her pale cheeks to her very forehead. The -motions of her blood were not impetuous, and she now felt herself -blushing for having blushed. It was unlike Wyant to say that—unlike -his tradition of reticence and decency, which had always joined with -Pauline's breezy optimism in relegating to silence and non-existence -whatever it was painful or even awkward to discuss. For years the dual -family had lived on the assumption that they were all the best friends -in the world, and the vocabulary of that convention had become their -natural idiom. -</p> -<p> -Stanley Heuston seemed to catch the constraint in the air. He got up as -if to go. "I suppose we're dining somewhere too—." He pronounced the -"we" without conviction, for every one knew that he and his wife seldom -went out together. -</p> -<p> -Wyant raised a detaining hand. "Don't go, Stan. Nona and I have no -secrets—if we had, you should share them. Why do you look so savage, -Nona? I suppose I've said something stupid... Fact is, I'm -old-fashioned; and this idea of people who've chosen to live together -having perpetually to get away from each other... When I remember my -father and mother, for sixty-odd years... New York in winter, Hudson -in summer... Staple topics: snow for six months, mosquitoes the other. -I suppose that's the reason your generation have got the fidgets!" -</p> -<p> -Nona laughed. "It's a good enough reason; and anyhow there's nothing to -be done about it." -</p> -<p> -Wyant frowned. "Nothing to be done about it—in Lita's case? I hope -you don't mean that. My son—God, if ever a man has slaved for a -woman, made himself a fool for her..." -</p> -<p> -Heuston's dry voice cut the diatribe. "Well, sir, you wouldn't deprive -him of man's peculiar privilege: the right to make a fool of himself?" -</p> -<p> -Wyant sank back grumbling among his cushions. "I don't understand you, -any of you," he said, as if secretly relieved by the admission. -</p> -<p> -"Well, Exhibit dear, strictly speaking you don't have to. We're old -enough to run the show for ourselves, and all you've got to do is to -look on from the front row and admire us," said Nona, bending to him -with a caress. -</p> -<p> -In the street she found herself walking silently at Heuston's side. -These weekly meetings with him at Wyant's were becoming a tacit -arrangement: the one thing in her life that gave it meaning. She thought -with a smile of her mother's affirmation that everything always came out -right if only one kept on being brave and trustful, and wondered where, -under that formula, her relation to Stanley Heuston could be fitted in. -It was anything but brave—letting herself drift into these continual -meetings, and refusing to accept their consequences. Yet every nerve in -her told her that these moments were the best thing in life, the one -thing she couldn't do without: just to be near him, to hear his cold -voice, to say something to provoke his disenchanted laugh; or, better -still, to walk by him as now without talking, with a furtive glance now -and then at his profile, ironic, dissatisfied, defiant—yes, and so -weak under the defiance... The fact that she judged and still loved showed -that her malady was mortal. -</p> -<p> -"Oh, well—it won't last; nothing lasts for our lot," she murmured to -herself without conviction. "Or at the worst it will only last as long -as I do; and that's a date I can fix as I choose." -</p> -<p> -What nonsense, though, to talk like that, when all those others needed -her: Jim and his silly Lita, her father, yes, even her proud -self-confident father, and poor old Exhibit A and her mother who was so -sure that nothing would ever go wrong again, now she had found a new -Healer! Yes; they all needed help, though they didn't know it, and Fate -seemed to have put her, Nona, at the very point where all their lives -intersected, as a First-Aid station is put at the dangerous turn of a -race-course, or a points-man at the shunting point of a big junction. -</p> -<p> -"Look here, Nona: my dinner-engagement was a fable. Would the heavens -fall if you and I went and dined somewhere by ourselves, just as we -are?" -</p> -<p> -"Oh, Stan—" Her heart gave a leap of joy. In these free days, when -the young came and went as they chose, who would have believed that these -two had never yet given themselves a stolen evening? Perhaps it was just -because it was so easy. Only difficult things tempted Nona, and the -difficult thing was always to say "No." -</p> -<p> -Yet was it? She stole a glance at Heuston's profile, as a street-lamp -touched it, saw the set lips already preparing a taunt at her refusal, -and wondered if saying no to everything required as much courage as she -liked to think. What if moral cowardice were the core of her boasted -superiority? She didn't want to be "like the others"—but was there -anything to be proud of in that? Perhaps her disinterestedness was only -a subtler vanity, not unrelated, say, to Lita's refusal to let a friend -copy her new dresses, or Bee Lindon's perpetual craving to scandalize a -world sated with scandals. Exhibitionists, one and all of them, as the -psycho-analysts said—and, in her present mood, moral exhibitionism -seemed to her the meanest form of the display. -</p> -<p> -"How mid-Victorian, Stan!" she laughed. "As if there were any heavens to -fall! Where shall we go? It will be the greatest fun. Isn't there rather -a good little Italian restaurant somewhere near here? And afterward -there's that nigger dancing at the Housetop." -</p> -<p> -"Come along, then!" -</p> -<p> -She felt as little and light as a wisp of straw carried out into the -rushing darkness of a sea splashed with millions of stars. Just the -thought of a friendly evening, an evening of simple comradeship, could -do that; could give her back her youth, yes, and the courage to -persevere. She put her hand through his arm, and knew by his silence -that he was thinking her thoughts. That was the final touch of magic. -</p> - -<p><br></p> - -<p> -"You really want to go to the Housetop?" he questioned, leaning back to -light his cigar with a leisurely air, as if there need never again be -any hurrying about anything. Their dinner at the little Italian -restaurant was nearly over. They had conscientiously explored the -<i>paste</i>, the <i>frutte di mare</i>, the <i>fritture</i> and the -cheese-and-tomato mixtures, and were ending up with a foaming -<i>sabaione</i>. The room was low-ceilinged, hot, and crowded with jolly -noisy people, mostly Italians, over whom, at unnoticed intervals, an -olive-tinted musician with blue-white eyeballs showered trills and -twangings. His music did not interrupt the conversation, but merely -obliged the diners to shout a little louder; a pretext of which they -joyfully availed themselves. Nona, at first, had found the noise a -delicious shelter for her talk with Heuston; but now it was beginning to -stifle her. "Let's get some fresh air first," she said. -</p> -<p> -"All right. We'll walk for a while." -</p> -<p> -They pushed back their chairs, wormed a way through the packed tables, -got into their wraps, and stepped out of the swinging doors into long -streamers of watery lamplight. The douche of a cold rain received them. -</p> -<p> -"Oh, dear—the Housetop, then!" Nona grumbled. How sweet the rain -would have been under the budding trees of Cedarledge! But here, in these -degraded streets... -</p> -<p> -Heuston caught a passing taxi. "A turn, first—just round the Park?" -</p> -<p> -"No; the Housetop." -</p> -<p> -He leaned back and lit a cigarette. "You know I'm going to get myself -divorced: it's all settled," he announced. -</p> -<p> -"Settled—with Aggie?" -</p> -<p> -"No: not yet. But with the lady I'm going off with. My word of honour. I -am; next week." -</p> -<p> -Nona gave an incredulous laugh. "So this is good-bye?" -</p> -<p> -"Very nearly." -</p> -<p> -"Poor Stan!" -</p> -<p> -"Nona ... listen ... look here..." -</p> -<p> -She took his hand. "Stan, hang next week!" -</p> -<p> -"Nona—?" -</p> -<p> -She shook her head, but let her hand lie in his. -</p> -<p> -"No questions—no plans. Just being together," she pleaded. -</p> -<p> -He held her in silence and their lips met. "Then why not—?" -</p> -<p> -"No: the Housetop—the Housetop!" she cried, pulling herself out of -his arms. -</p> -<p> -"Why, you're crying!" -</p> -<p> -"I'm not! It's the rain. It's—" -</p> -<p> -"Nona!" -</p> -<p> -"Stan, you know it's no earthly use." -</p> -<p> -"Life's so rotten—" -</p> -<p> -"Not like this." -</p> -<p> -"This? This—what?" -</p> -<p> -She struggled out of another enfolding, put her head out of the window, -and cried: "The Housetop!" -</p> - -<p><br></p> - -<p> -They found a corner at the back of the crowded floor. Nona blinked a -little in the dazzle of light-garlands, the fumes of smoke, the clash of -noise and colours. But there he and she sat, close together, hidden in -their irresistible happiness, and though his lips had their moody twist -she knew the same softness was in his veins as in hers, isolating them -from the crowd as completely as if they had still been in the darkness -of the taxi. That was the way she must take her life, she supposed; -piece-meal, a tiny scrap of sweetness at a time, and never more than a -scrap—never once! Well—it would be worse still if there were no -moments like this, short and cruel as they seemed when they came. -</p> -<p> -The Housetop was packed. The low balcony crammed with fashionable people -overhung them like a wreath of ripe fruits, peachy and white and golden, -made of painted faces, bare arms, jewels, brocades and fantastic furs. -It was the music-hall of the moment. -</p> -<p> -The curtain shot up, and the little auditorium was plunged in shadow. -Nona could leave her hand in Heuston's. On the stage—a New Orleans -cotton-market—black dancers tossed and capered. They were like ripe -fruits too, black figs flung about in hot sunshine, falling to earth -with crimson bursts of laughter splitting open on white teeth, and -bounding up again into golden clouds of cotton-dust. It was all warm and -jolly and inconsequent. The audience forgot to smoke and chatter: little -murmurs of enjoyment rippled over it. -</p> -<p> -The curtain descended, the light-garlands blossomed out, and once more -floor and balcony were all sound and movement. -</p> -<p> -"Why, there's Lita up there in the balcony," Nona exclaimed, "just above -the stage. Don't you see—with Ardwin, and Jack Staley, and Bee -Lindon, and that awful Keiler woman?" -</p> -<p> -She had drawn her hand away at the sight of the box full. "I don't see -Jim with them after all. Oh, how I hate that crowd!" All the ugly and -disquieting realities she had put from her swept back with a rush. If -only she could have had her one evening away from them! "I didn't think -we should find them here—I thought Lita had been last week." -</p> -<p> -"Well, don't that crowd always keep on going to the same shows over and -over again? There's nothing they hate as much as novelty—they're so -fed up with it! And besides, what on earth do you care? They won't bother -us." -</p> -<p> -She wavered a moment, and then said: "You see, Lita always bothers me." -</p> -<p> -"Why? Anything new?" -</p> -<p> -"She says she's tired of everything, Jim included, and is going to chuck -it, and go in for the cinema." -</p> -<p> -"Oh, that—?" He manifested no surprise. "Well, isn't it where she -belongs?" -</p> -<p> -"Perhaps—but Jim!" -</p> -<p> -"Poor Jim. We've all got to swallow our dose one day or another." -</p> -<p> -"Yes; but I can't bear it. Not for Jim. Look here, Stan—I'm going up -there to join them," she suddenly declared. -</p> -<p> -"Oh, nonsense, Nona; they don't want you. And besides I hate that crowd -as much as you do... I don't want you mixed up with it. That cad -Staley, and the Keiler woman..." -</p> -<p> -She gave a dry laugh. "Afraid they'll compromise me?" -</p> -<p> -"Oh, rot! But what's the use of their even knowing you're here? They'll -hate your butting in, Lita worst of all." -</p> -<p> -"Stan, I'm going up to them." -</p> -<p> -"Oh, damn it. You always—" -</p> -<p> -She had got up and was pushing away the little table in front of them. -But suddenly she stopped and sat down again. For a moment or two she did -not speak, nor look at Heuston. She had seen the massive outline of a -familiar figure rising from a seat near the front and planting itself -there for a slow gaze about the audience. -</p> -<p> -"Hallo—your father? I didn't know he patronized this kind of show," -Heuston said. -</p> -<p> -Nona groped for a careless voice, and found it. "Father? So it is! Oh, he's -really very frivolous—my influence, I'm afraid." The voice sounded -sharp and rattling in her own ears. "How funny, though! You don't happen -to see mother and Amalasuntha anywhere? That would make the family party -complete." -</p> -<p> -She could not take her eyes from her father. How queer he looked—how -different! Strained and vigilant; she didn't know how else to put it. -And yet tired, inexpressibly tired, as if with some profound inner -fatigue which made him straighten himself a little too rigidly, and -throw back his head with a masterful young-mannish air as he scanned the -balcony just above him. He stood there for a few moments, letting the -lights and the eyes concentrate on him, as if lending himself to the -display with a certain distant tolerance; then he began to move toward -one of the exits. But half way he stopped, turned with his dogged jerk -of the shoulders, and made for a gangway leading up to the balcony. -</p> -<p> -"Hullo," Heuston exclaimed. "Is he going up to Lita?" -</p> -<p> -Nona gave a little laugh. "I might have known it! How like -father—when he undertakes anything!" -</p> -<p> -"Undertakes what?" -</p> -<p> -"Why, looking after Lita. He probably found out at the last minute that -Jim couldn't come, and made up his mind to replace him. Isn't it -splendid, how he's helping us? I know he loathes this sort of -place—and the people she's with. But he told me we oughtn't to -lose our influence on her, we ought to keep tight hold of her—" -</p> -<p> -"I see." -</p> -<p> -Nona had risen again and was beginning to move toward the passageway. -Heuston followed her, and she smiled back at him over her shoulder. She -felt as if she must cram every cranny in their talk with more words. The -silence which had enclosed them as in a crystal globe had been -splintered to atoms, and had left them stammering and exposed. -</p> -<p> -"Well, I needn't go up to Lita after all; she really doesn't require two -dragons. Thank goodness, father has replaced me, and I don't have to be -with that crew ... just this evening," she whispered, slipping her arm -through Heuston's. "I should have hated to have it end in that way." By -this time they were out in the street. -</p> -<p> -On the wet pavement he detained her. "Nona, how is it going to end?" -</p> -<p> -"Why, by your driving me home, I hope. It's too wet to walk, worse -luck." -</p> -<p> -He gave a resigned shrug, called a taxi, wavered a moment, and jumped in -after her. "I don't know why I come," he grumbled. -</p> -<p> -She kept a bright hold on herself, lit a cigarette at his lighter, and -chattered resolutely of the show till the motor turned the corner of her -street. -</p> -<p> -"Well, my child, it's really good-bye now. I'm off next week with the -other lady," Heuston said as they stopped before the Manford door. He -paid the taxi and helped her out, and she stood in the rain in front of -him. "I don't come back till Aggie divorces me, you understand," he -continued. -</p> -<p> -"She won't!" -</p> -<p> -"She'll have to." -</p> -<p> -"It's hideous—doing it in that way." -</p> -<p> -"Not as hideous as the kind of life I'm leading." -</p> -<p> -She made no answer, and he followed her silently up the doorstep while -she fumbled for her latchkey. She was trembling now with weariness and -disappointment, and a feverish thirst for the one more kiss she was -resolved he should not take. -</p> -<p> -"Other people get their freedom. I don't see why I shouldn't have mine," -he insisted. -</p> -<p> -"Not in that way, Stan! You mustn't. It's too horrible." -</p> -<p> -"That way? You know there's no other." -</p> -<p> -She turned the latchkey, and the ponderous vestibule door swung inward. -"If you do, don't imagine I'll ever marry you!" she cried out as she -crossed the threshold; and he flung back furiously: "Wait till I ask -you!" and plunged away into the rain. -</p> - -<p><br><br><br></p> -</div> -<div class="chapter"> -<h2><a id="chap14"></a>XIV</h2> - -<div> - <img class="drop-cap" src="images/dropcap-p.jpg" width="70" alt="drop_p"> -</div> -<p class="drop-cap"> -PAULINE MANFORD left Mrs. Landish's door with the uncomfortable sense of -having swallowed a new frustration. In this crowded life of hers they -were as difficult to avoid as germs—and there was not always time to -have them extirpated! -</p> -<p> -Manford had evidently found out about Lita's Dawnside frequentations; -found it out, no doubt, as Pauline had, by seeing her photograph in that -loathsome dancing group in the "Looker-on." Well, perhaps it was best -that he should know; it would certainly confirm his resolve to stop any -action against the Mahatma. -</p> -<p> -Only—if he had induced the Lindons to drop the investigation, why was -he still preoccupied by it? Why had he gone to Mrs. Landish to make that -particular inquiry about Lita? Pauline would have liked to shake off the -memory of his voice, and of the barely disguised impatience with which -he had waited for her to go before putting his question. Confronted by -this new riddle (when there were already so many others in her path) she -felt a reasonless exasperation against the broken doorknob which had let -her into the secret. If only Kitty Landish, instead of dreaming about -Mesopotamian embroideries, would send for a locksmith and keep her house -in repair! -</p> -<p> -All day Pauline was oppressed by the nervous apprehension that Manford -might have changed his mind about dropping the investigation. If there -had been time she would have gone to Alvah Loft for relief; she had -managed so far to squeeze in a daily <i>séance</i>, and had come to depend -on it as "addicts" do on their morphia. The very brevity of the treatment, -and the blunt negative face and indifferent monosyllables of the Healer, -were subtly stimulating after the verbiage and flummery of his -predecessors. Such stern economy of means impressed Pauline in much the -same way as a new labour-saving device; she liked everything the better -for being a short-cut to something else, and even spiritual communion -for resembling an improved form of stenography. As Mrs. Swoffer said, -Alvah Loft was really the Busy Man's Christ. -</p> -<p> -But that afternoon there was literally not time for a treatment. -Manford's decision to spend the Easter holidays at Cedarledge -necessitated one of those campaigns of intensive preparation in which -his wife and Maisie Bruss excelled. Leading the simple life at -Cedarledge involved despatching there a part of the New York domestic -staff at least ten days in advance, testing and lighting three -complicated heating systems, going over all the bells and electric -wiring, and making sure that the elaborate sanitary arrangements were in -irreproachable order. -</p> -<p> -Nor was this all. Pauline, who prided herself on the perfect -organization of every detail of both her establishments, had lately been -studying the estimate for a new and singularly complete system of -burglar-alarm at Cedarledge, and also going over the bills for the -picturesque engine-house and up-to-date fire-engine with which she had -just endowed the village patriarchally clustered below the Cedarledge -hill. All these matters called for deep thought and swift decision; and -the fact gave her a sudden stimulus. No rest-cure in the world was as -refreshing to her as a hurried demand on her practical activity; she -thrilled to it like a war-horse to a trumpet, and compelled the fagged -Maisie to thrill in unison. -</p> -<p> -In this case their energy was redoubled by the hope that, if Manford -found everything to his liking at Cedarledge, he might take a fancy to -spending more time there. Pauline's passionate interest in plumbing and -electric wiring was suffused with a romantic glow at the thought that -they might lure her husband back to domestic intimacy. "The heating of -the new swimming-pool must be finished too, and the workmen all out of -the way—you'll have to go there next week, Maisie, and impress on -everybody that there must not be a workman visible anywhere when we -arrive." -</p> -<p> -Breathless, exultant, Pauline hurried home for a late cup of tea in her -boudoir, and settled down, pencil in hand, with plans and estimates, as -eagerly as her husband, in the early days of his legal career, used to -study the documents of a new case. -</p> -<p> -Maisie, responding as she always did to the least touch of the spur, yet -lifted a perplexed brow to murmur: "All right. But I don't see how I can -very well leave before the Birth Control dinner. You know you haven't -yet rewritten the opening passage that you used by mistake at the—" -</p> -<p> -Pauline's colour rose. Maisie's way of putting it was tactless; but the -fact remained that the opening of that unlucky speech had to be -rewritten, and that Pauline was never very sure of her syntax unless -Maisie's reinforced it. She had always meant to be cultivated—she -still thought she was when she looked at her bookshelves. But when she -had to compose a speech, though words never failed her, the mysterious -relations between them sometimes did. Wealth and extensive social -activities were obviously incompatible with a complete mastery of -grammar, and secretaries were made for such emergencies. Yes; Maisie, -fagged as she looked, could certainly not be spared till the speech was -remodelled. -</p> -<p> -The telephone, ringing from downstairs, announced that the Marchesa was -on her way up to the boudoir. Pauline's pencil fell from her hand. On -her way up! It was really too inconsiderate... Amalasuntha must be -made to understand... But there was the undaunted lady. -</p> -<p> -"The footman swore you were out, dear; but I knew from his manner that I -should find you. (With Powder, now, I never can tell.) And I simply -<i>had</i> to rush in long enough to give you a good hug." The Marchesa -glanced at Maisie, and the secretary effaced herself after another -glance, this time from her employer, which plainly warned her: "Wait in -the next room; I won't let her stay." -</p> -<p> -To her visitor Pauline murmured somewhat coldly: "I left word that I was -out because I'm desperately busy over the new plumbing and burglar-alarm -systems at Cedarledge. Dexter wants to go there for Easter, and of -course everything must be in order before we arrive..." -</p> -<p> -The Marchesa's eyes widened. "Ah, this marvellous American plumbing! I -believe you all treat yourselves to a new set of bathrooms every year. -There's only one bath at San Fedele, and my dear parents-in-law had it -covered with a wooden lid so that it could be used to do the boots on. -It's really rather convenient—and out of family feeling Venturino has -always reserved it for that purpose. But that's not what I came to talk -about. What I want is to find words for my gratitude..." -</p> -<p> -Pauline leaned back, gazing wearily at Amalasuntha's small sharp face, -which seemed to glitter with a new and mysterious varnish of prosperity. -"For what? You've thanked me already more than my little present -deserved." -</p> -<p> -The Marchesa gave her a look of puzzled retrospection. "Oh—that -lovely cheque the other day? Of course my thanks include that too. But -I'm entirely overwhelmed by your new munificence." -</p> -<p> -"My new munificence?" Pauline echoed between narrowed lips. Could this -be an adroit way of prefacing a fresh appeal? With the huge Cedarledge -estimates at her elbow she stiffened herself for refusal. Amalasuntha -must really be taught moderation. -</p> -<p> -"Well, Dexter's munificence, then—his royal promise! I left him only -an hour ago," the Marchesa cried with rising exultation. -</p> -<p> -"You mean he's found a job for Michelangelo? I'm very glad," said -Pauline, still without enthusiasm. -</p> -<p> -"No, no; something ever so much better than that. At least," the -Marchesa hastily corrected herself, "something more immediately helpful. -His debts, dear, my silly boy's debts! Dexter has promised ... has -authorized me to cable that he need not sail, as everything will be -paid. It's more, far more, than I could have hoped!" The happy mother -possessed herself of Mrs. Manford's unresponsive hand. -</p> -<p> -Pauline freed the hand abruptly. She felt the need of assimilating and -interpreting this news as rapidly as possible, without betraying undue -astonishment and yet without engaging her responsibility; but the effort -was beyond her, and she could only sit and stare. Dexter had promised to -pay Michelangelo's debts—but with whose money? And why? -</p> -<p> -"I'm sure Dexter wants to do all he can to help you about -Michelangelo—we both do. But—" -</p> -<p> -Pauline's brain was whirling; she found it impossible to go on. She knew -by heart the extent of Michelangelo's debts. Amalasuntha took care that -everyone did. She seemed to feel a sort of fatuous pride in their -enormity, and was always dinning it into her cousin's ears. Dexter, if -he had really made such a promise, must have made it in his wife's name; -and to do so without consulting her was so unlike him that the idea -deepened her bewilderment. -</p> -<p> -"Are you sure? I'm sorry, Amalasuntha—but this comes as a surprise... -Dexter and I were to talk the matter over ... to see what could be -done..." -</p> -<p> -"Darling, it's so like you to belittle your own generosity—you always -do! And so does Dexter. But in this case—well, the cable's gone; so -why deny it?" triumphed the Marchesa. -</p> - -<p><br></p> - -<p> -When Maisie Bruss returned, Pauline was still sitting with an idle -pencil before the pile of bills and estimates. She fixed an unseeing eye -on her secretary. "These things will have to wait. I'm dreadfully tired, -I don't know why. But I'll go over them all early tomorrow, before you -come; and—Maisie—I hate to ask it; but do you think you -could get here by eight o'clock instead of nine? There's so much to be -done; and I want to get you off to Cedarledge as soon as possible." -</p> -<p> -Maisie, a little paler and more drawn than usual, declared that of -course she would turn up at eight. -</p> -<p> -Even after she had gone Pauline did not move, or give another glance to -the papers. For the first time in her life she had an obscure sense of -moving among incomprehensible and overpowering forces. She could not, to -herself, have put it even as clearly as that—she just dimly felt -that, between her and her usual firm mastery of facts, something -nebulous and impenetrable was closing in... Nona—what if she were -to consult Nona? The girl sometimes struck her as having an uncanny gift -of divination, as getting at certain mysteries of mood and character -more quickly and clearly than her mother... "Though, when it comes to -practical things, poor child, she's not much more use than Jim..." -</p> -<p> -Jim! His name called up the other associated with it. Lita was now -another source of worry. Whichever way Pauline looked, the same choking -obscurity enveloped her. Even about Jim and Lita it clung in a dense -fog, darkening and distorting what, only a short time ago, had seemed a -daylight case of domestic harmony. Money, health, good looks, a -beautiful baby ... and now all this fuss about having to express one's -own personality. Yes; Lita's attitude was just as confusing as Dexter's. -Was Dexter trying to express his own personality too? If only they would -all talk things out with her—help her to understand, instead of -moving about her in the obscurity, like so many burglars with dark -lanterns! This image jerked her attention back to the Cedarledge -estimates, and wearily she adjusted her eye-glasses and took up her -pencil... -</p> -<p> -Her maid rapped. "What dress, please, madam?" To be sure—they were -dining that evening with the Walter Rivingtons. It was the first time -they had invited Pauline since her divorce from Wyant; Mrs. Rivington's -was the only house left in which the waning traditions of old New York -still obstinately held out, and divorce was regarded as a social -disadvantage. But they had taken Manford's advice successfully in a -difficult case, and were too punctilious not to reward him in the one -way he would care about. The Rivingtons were the last step of the -Manford ladder. -</p> -<p> -"The silver moiré, and my pearls." That would be distinguished and -exclusive-looking. Pauline was thankful Dexter had definitely promised -to go with her—he was getting so restive nowadays about what he had -taken to calling her dull dinners... -</p> -<p> -The telephone again—this time Dexter's voice. Pauline listened -apprehensively, wondering if it would do to speak to him now about -Amalasuntha's extraordinary announcement, or whether it might be more -tactful to wait. He was so likely to be nervous and irritable at the end -of the day. Yes; it was in his eleventh-hour voice that he was speaking. -</p> -<p> -"Pauline—look here; I shall be kept at the office rather late. Please -put off dinner, will you? I'd like a quiet evening alone with you—" -</p> -<p> -"A quiet... But, Dexter, we're dining at the Rivingtons'. Shall I -telephone to say you may be late?" -</p> -<p> -"The Rivingtons?" His voice became remote and utterly indifferent. "No; -telephone we won't come. Chuck them... I want a talk with you alone ... -can't we dine together quietly at home?" He repeated the phrases -slowly, as if he thought she had not understood him. -</p> -<p> -Chuck the Rivingtons? It seemed like being asked to stand up in church -and deny her God. She sat speechless and let the fatal words go on -vibrating on the wire. -</p> -<p> -"Don't you hear me, Pauline? Why don't you answer? Is there something -wrong with the line?" -</p> -<p> -"No, Dexter. There's nothing wrong with the line." -</p> -<p> -"Well, then... You can explain to them ... say anything you like." -</p> -<p> -Through the dressing-room door she saw the maid laying out the silver -moiré, the chinchilla cloak, the pearls... -</p> -<p> -Explain to the Rivingtons! -</p> -<p> -"Very well, dear. What time shall I order dinner here?" she questioned -heroically. -</p> -<p> -She heard him ring off, and sat again staring into the fog, which his -words had only made more impenetrable. -</p> - -<p><br><br><br></p> -</div> -<div class="chapter"> -<h2><a id="chap15"></a>XV</h2> - -<div> - <img class="drop-cap" src="images/dropcap-m.jpg" width="70" alt="drop_m"> -</div> -<p class="drop-cap"> -MANFORD, the day after his daughter had caught sight of him at the -Housetop, started out early for one of his long tramps around the Park. -He was not due at his office till ten, and he wanted first to walk -himself tired. -</p> -<p> -For some years after his marriage he had kept a horse in town, and taken -his morning constitutional in the saddle; but the daily canter over the -same bridle paths was too much like the circuit of his wife's -flower-garden. He took to his feet to make it last longer, and when -there was no time to walk had in a <i>masseur</i> who prepared him, in -the same way as everybody else, for the long hours of sedentary hurry -known as "business." The New York routine had closed in on him, and he -sometimes felt that, for intrinsic interest, there was little to choose -between Pauline's hurry and his own. They seemed, all of -them—lawyers, bankers, brokers, railway-directors and the -rest—to be cheating their inner emptiness with activities as -futile as those of the women they went home to. -</p> -<p> -It was all wrong—something about it was fundamentally wrong. They all -had these colossal plans for acquiring power, and then, when it was -acquired, what came of it but bigger houses, more food, more motors, -more pearls, and a more self-righteous philanthropy? -</p> -<p> -The philanthropy was what he most hated: all these expensive plans for -moral forcible feeding, for compelling everybody to be cleaner, -stronger, healthier and happier than they would have been by the unaided -light of Nature. The longing to get away into a world where men and -women sinned and begot, lived and died, as they chose, without the -perpetual intervention of optimistic millionaires, had become so strong -that he sometimes felt the chain of habit would snap with his first -jerk. -</p> -<p> -That was what had secretly drawn him to Jim's wife. She was the one -person in his group to whom its catchwords meant absolutely nothing. The -others, whatever their private omissions or indulgences, dressed up -their selfish cravings in the same wordy altruism. It used to be one's -duty to one's neighbour; now it had become one's duty to one's self. -Duty, duty—always duty! But when you spoke of duty to Lita she -just widened her eyes and said: "Is that out of the Marriage Service? -'Love, honour and obey'—such a funny combination! Who do you -suppose invented it? I believe it must have been Pauline." One could -never fix her attention on any subject beyond her own immediate -satisfaction, and that animal sincerity seemed to Manford her greatest -charm. Too great a charm ... a terrible danger. He saw it now. He -thought he had gone to her for relaxation, change—and he had just -managed to pull himself up on the edge of a precipice. But for the -sickening scene of the other evening, when he had shown her the -photograph, he might, old fool that he was, have let himself slip into -sentiment; and God knows where that tumble would have landed him. Now a -passionate pity had replaced his fatuous emotion, the baleful siren was -only a misguided child, and he was to help and save her for Jim's sake -and her own. -</p> -<p> -It was queer that such a mood of calm lucidity had come out of the fury -of hate with which he rushed from her house. If it had not, he would -have gone mad—smashed something, done something irretrievable. And -instead here he was, calmly contemplating his own folly and hers! He -must go on seeing her, of course; there was more reason than ever for -seeing her; but there would be no danger in it now, only help for -her—and perhaps healing for him. To this new mood he clung as to an -inviolable refuge. The turmoil and torment of the last months could -never reach him again: he had found a way out, an escape. The relief of -being quiet, of avoiding a conflict, of settling everything without -effusion of blood, stole over him like the spell of the drug-taker's -syringe. Poor little Lita ... never again to be adored (thank heaven), -but, oh, so much the more to be helped and pitied... -</p> -<p> -This deceptive serenity had come to him during his call on Mrs. -Landish—come from her very insensibility to any of the standards -he lived by. He had gone there—he saw it now—moved by the -cruel masculine desire to know the worst about a fallen idol. What he -called the determination to "face things"—what was it but the -savage longing to accumulate all the evidence against poor Lita? Give up -the Mahatma investigation? Never! All the more reason now for going on -with it; for exposing the whole blackguardly business, opening poor -Jim's eyes to his wife's past (better now than later), and helping him -to get on his feet again, start fresh, and recover his faith in life and -happiness. For of course poor Jim would be the chief sufferer... Damn -the woman! She wanted to get rid of Jim, did she? Well, here was her -chance—only it would be the other way round. The tables would be -turned on her. She'd see—! This in his first blind outbreak of -rage; but by the time he reached Mrs. Landish's door the old legal -shrewdness had come to his rescue, and he had understood that a public -scandal was unnecessary, and therefore to be avoided. Easy enough to get -rid of Lita without that. With such evidence as he would soon possess -they could make any conditions they chose. Jim would keep the boy, and -the whole thing be settled quietly—but on their terms, not hers! -She would be only too thankful to clear out bag and baggage—clean -out of all their lives. Faugh—to think he had delegated his own -Nona; to look after her ... the thought sickened him. -</p> -<p> -And then, in the end, it had all come out so differently. He needed his -hard tramp around the Park to see just why. -</p> -<p> -It was Mrs. Landish's own attitude—her silly rambling -irresponsibility, so like an elderly parody of Lita's youthful -carelessness. Mrs. Landish had met Manford's stern interrogations by the -vague reply that he mustn't ever come to <i>her</i> for dates and -figures and statistics: that facts meant nothing to her, that the only -thing she cared for was Inspiration, Genius, the Divine Fire, or -whatever he chose to call it. Perhaps she'd done wrong, but she had -sacrificed everything, all her life, to her worship of genius. She was -always hunting for it everywhere, and it was because, from the first, -she had felt a touch of it in Lita that she had been so devoted to the -child. Didn't Manford feel it in Lita too? Of course she, Mrs. Landish, -had dreamed of another sort of marriage for her niece ... Oh, but -Manford mustn't misunderstand! Jim was perfect—<i>too</i> perfect. -That was the trouble. Manford surely guessed the meaning of that "too"? -Such absolute reliability, such complete devotion, were sometimes more -of a strain to the artistic temperament than scenes and infidelities. -And Lita was first and foremost an artist, born to live in the world of -art—in quite other values—a fourth-dimensional world, as it -were. It wasn't fair to judge her in her present surroundings, ideal as -they were in one way—a way that unfortunately didn't happen to be -hers! Mrs. Landish persisted in assuming Manford's complete -comprehension ... "If Jim could only be made to understand as you do; to -see that ordinary standards don't apply to these rare natures... Why, -has the child told you what Klawhammer has offered her to turn <i>one -film</i> for him, before even having seen her dance, just on the -strength of what Jack Staley and Ardwin had told him?" -</p> -<p> -Ah—there it was! The truth was out. Mrs. Landish, always in debt, and -always full of crazy schemes for wasting more money, had seen a gold -mine in the exploitation of her niece's gifts. The divorce, instead of -frightening her, delighted her. Manford smiled as he thought how little -she would be moved by Pauline's threat to cut off the young couple. -Pauline sometimes forgot that, even in her own family, her authority was -not absolute. She could certainly not compete financially with -Hollywood, and Mrs. Landish's eyes were on Hollywood. -</p> -<p> -"Dear Mr. Manford—but you look shocked! Absolutely shocked! Does -the screen really frighten you? How funny!" Mrs. Landish, drawing her -rambling eyebrows together, seemed trying to picture the inner darkness -of such a state. "But surely you know the smartest people are going in -for it? Why, the Marchesa di San Fedele was showing me the other day a -photograph of that beautiful son of hers—one of those really -<i>Greek</i> beings in bathing tights—and telling me that -Klawhammer, who had seen it, had authorized her to cable him to come out -to Hollywood on trial, all expenses paid. It seems they can almost -always recognize the eurythmic people at a glance. Funny, wouldn't it -be, if Michelangelo and Lita turned out to be the future Valentino -and—" -</p> -<p> -He didn't remember the rest of the rigmarole. He could only recall -shouting out, with futile vehemence: "My wife and I will do everything -to prevent a divorce—" and leaving his astonished hostess on a threat -of which he knew the uselessness as well as she did. -</p> -<p> -That was the air in which Lita had grown up, those were the gods of -Viking Court! Yet Manford had stormed instead of pitying, been furious -instead of tolerant, risked disaster for Lita and Jim instead of taking -calm control of the situation. The vision of Lita Wyant and Michelangelo -as future film stars, "featured" jointly on every hoarding from Maine to -California, had sent the blood to his head. Through a mist of rage he -had seen the monstrous pictures and conjectured the loathsome -letter-press. And no one would do more than look and laugh! At the -thought, he felt the destructive ire of the man who finds his private -desires pitted against the tendencies of his age. Well, they would see, -that was all: he would show them! -</p> -<p> -The resolve to act brought relief to his straining imagination. Once -again he felt himself seated at his office desk, all his professional -authority between him and his helpless interlocutors, and impressive -words and skilful arguments ordering themselves automatically in his -mind. After all, he was the head of his family—in some degree even of -Wyant's family. -</p> - -<p><br><br><br></p> -</div> -<div class="chapter"> -<h2><a id="chap16"></a>XVI</h2> - -<div> - <img class="drop-cap" src="images/dropcap-p.jpg" width="70" alt="drop_p"> -</div> -<p class="drop-cap"> -PAULINE'S nervousness had gradually subsided. About the -Rivingtons—why, after all, it wasn't such a bad idea to show them -that, with a man of Manford's importance, one must take one's chance of -getting him, and make the best of it if he failed one at the last. -"Professional engagement; oh, yes, entirely unexpected; extremely -important; so dreadfully sorry, but you know lawyers are not their own -masters..." It had been rather pleasant to say that to a flustered Mrs. -Rivington, stammering: "Oh, but <i>couldn't</i> he ...? But we'll wait ... -we'll dine at half-past nine..." Pleasant also to add: "He must -reserve his whole evening, I'm afraid," and then hang up, and lean back -at leisure, while Mrs. Rivington (how Pauline pictured it!) dashed down -in her dressing-gown and crimping pins to re-arrange a table to which as -much thought had been given as if a feudal aristocracy were to sit at -it. -</p> -<p> -To Pauline the fact that Manford wanted to be alone with her made even -such renunciations easy. How many years had passed since he had -expressed such a wish? And did she owe his tardy return to the Mahatma -and reduced hips, or the Inspirational Healer and renewed optimism? If -only a woman could guess what inclined a man's heart to her, what -withdrew it! Pauline, if she had had the standardizing of life, would -have begun with human hearts, and had them turned out in series, all -alike, rather than let them come into being haphazard, cranky amateurish -things that you couldn't count on, or start up again if anything went -wrong... -</p> -<p> -Just a touch of rouge? Well, perhaps her maid was right. She <i>did</i> -look rather pale and drawn. Mrs. Herman Toy put it on with a trowel ... -apparently that was what men liked... Pauline shed a faint bloom on -her cheeks and ran her clever fingers through her prettily waved hair, -wondering again, as she did so, if it wouldn't be better to bob it. Then -the mauve tea-gown, the Chinese amethysts, and those silver sandals that -made her feet so slender. She looked at herself with a sigh of pleasure. -Dinner was to be served in the boudoir. -</p> -<p> -Manford was very late; it was ten o'clock before coffee and liqueurs -were put on the low stand by the fire, and the little dinner-table was -noiselessly removed. The fire glowed invitingly, and he sank into the -armchair his wife pushed forward with a sound like a murmur of content. -</p> -<p> -"Such a day—" he said, passing his hand across his forehead as if to -brush away a tangle of legal problems. -</p> -<p> -"You do too much, Dexter; you really do. I know how wonderfully young -you are for your age, but still—." She broke off, dimly perceiving -that, in spite of the flattering exordium, this allusion to his age was -not quite welcome. -</p> -<p> -"Nothing to do with age," he growled. "Everybody who does anything at -all does too much." (Did he mean to imply that she did nothing?) -</p> -<p> -"The nervous strain—" she began, once more wondering if this were not -the moment to slip in a word of Alvah Loft. But though Manford had -wished to be with her he had apparently no desire to listen to her. It -was all her own fault, she felt. If only she had known how to reveal the -secret tremors that were rippling through her! There were women not -half as clever and tactful—not younger, either, nor even as -good-looking—who would have known at once what to say, or how to -spell the mute syllables of soul-telegraphy. If her husband had wanted -facts—a good confidential talk about the new burglar-alarm, or a -clear and careful analysis of the engine-house bills, or the heating system -for the swimming pool—she could have found just the confidential and -tender accent for such topics. Intimacy, to her, meant the tireless -discussion of facts, not necessarily of a domestic order, but definite -and palpable facts. For her part she was ready for anything, from Birth -Control to neo-impressionism: she flattered herself that few women had a -wider range. In confidential moments she preferred the homelier themes, -and would have enjoyed best of all being tender and gay about the coal -cellar, or reticent and brave about the leak in the boiler; but she was -ready to deal with anything as long as it was a fact, something with -substance and outline, as to which one could have an opinion and a line -of conduct. What paralyzed her was the sense that, apart from his -profession, her husband didn't care for facts, and that nothing was less -likely to rouse his interest than burglar-alarm wiring, or the last new -thing in electric ranges. Obviously, one must take men as they were, -wilful, moody and mysterious; but she would have given the world to be -told (since for all her application she had never discovered) what those -other women said who could talk to a man about nothing. -</p> -<p> -Manford lit a cigar and stared into the fire. "It's about that fool -Amalasuntha," he began at length, addressing his words to the logs. -</p> -<p> -The name jerked Pauline back to reality. Here was a fact—hard, knobby -and uncomfortable! And she had actually forgotten it in the confused -pleasure of their tête-à-tête! So he had only come home to talk to -her about Amalasuntha. She tried to keep the flatness out of her: "Yes, -dear?" -</p> -<p> -He continued, still fixed on the fire: "You may not know that we've had -a narrow escape." -</p> -<p> -"A narrow escape?" -</p> -<p> -"That damned Michelangelo—his mother was importing him this very -week. The cable had gone. If I hadn't put a stop to it we'd have been -saddled with him for life." -</p> -<p> -Pauline's breath failed her. She listened with straining ears. -</p> -<p> -"You haven't seen her, then—she hasn't told you?" Manford continued. -"She was getting him out on her own responsibility to turn a film for -Klawhammer. Simply that! By the mercy of heaven I headed her off—but -we hadn't a minute to lose." -</p> -<p> -In her bewilderment at this outburst, and at what it revealed, Pauline -continued to sit speechless. "Michelangelo—Klawhammer? I didn't know! -But wouldn't it have been the best solution, perhaps?" -</p> -<p> -"Solution—of what? Don't you think one member of the family on the -screen's enough at a time? Or would it have looked prettier to see him -and Lita featured together on every hoarding in the country? My God—I -thought I'd done the right thing in acting for you ... there was no -time to consult you ... but if <i>you</i> don't care, why should I? He's -none of <i>my</i> family ... and she isn't either, for that matter." -</p> -<p> -He had swung round from the hearth, and faced her for the first time, -his brows contracted, the veins swelling on his temples, his hands -grasping his knees as if to constrain himself not to start up in -righteous indignation. He was evidently deeply disturbed, yet his anger, -she felt, was only the unconscious mask of another emotion—an emotion -she could not divine. His vehemence, and the sense of moving in complete -obscurity, had an intimidating effect on her. -</p> -<p> -"I don't quite understand, Dexter. Amalasuntha was here today. She said -nothing about films, or Klawhammer; but she did say that you'd made it -unnecessary for Michelangelo to come to America." -</p> -<p> -"Didn't she say how?" -</p> -<p> -"She said something about—paying his debts." -</p> -<p> -Manford stood up and went to lean against the mantelpiece. He looked -down on his wife, who in her turn kept her eyes on the embers. -</p> -<p> -"Well—you didn't suppose I made that offer till I saw we were up -against it, did you?" -</p> -<p> -His voice rose again angrily, but a cautious glance at his face showed -her that its tormented lines were damp with perspiration. Her immediate -thought was that he must be ill, that she ought to take his -temperature—she always responded by first-aid impulses to any contact -with human distress. But no, after all, it was not that: he was unhappy, -that was it, he was desperately unhappy. But why? Was it because he -feared he had exceeded his rights in pledging her to such an extent, in -acting for her when there was no time to consult her? Apparently the -idea of the discord between Lita and Jim, and Lita's thirst for scenic -notoriety, had shocked him deeply—much more, in reality, than they -had Pauline. If so, his impulse had been a natural one, and eminently in -keeping with those Wyant traditions with which (at suitable moments) she -continued to identify herself. Yes: she began to understand his thinking -it would be odious to her to see the names of her son's wife and this -worthless Italian cousin emblazoned over every Picture Palace in the -land. She felt moved by his regard for her feelings. After all, as he -said, Lita and Michelangelo were no relations of his; he could easily -have washed his hands of the whole affair. -</p> -<p> -"I'm sure what you've done must be right, Dexter; you know I always -trust your judgment. Only—I wish you'd explain..." -</p> -<p> -"Explain what?" Her mild reply seemed to provoke a new wave of -exasperation. "The only way to stop his coming was to pay his debts. -They're very heavy. I had no right to commit you; I acknowledge it." -</p> -<p> -She took a deep breath, the figure of Michelangelo's liabilities blazing -out before her as on a giant blackboard. Then: "You had every right, -Dexter," she said. "I'm glad you did it." -</p> -<p> -He stood silent, his head bent, twisting between his fingers the cigar -he had forgotten to relight. It was as if he had been startled out of -speech by the promptness of her acquiescence, and would have found it -easier to go on arguing and justifying himself. -</p> -<p> -"That's—very handsome of you, Pauline," he said at length. -</p> -<p> -"Oh, no—why? You did it out of regard for me, I know. -Only—perhaps you won't mind our talking things over a little. -About ways and means ..." she added, seeing his forehead gloom again. -</p> -<p> -"Ways and means—oh, certainly. But please understand that I don't -expect you to shoulder the whole sum. I've had two big fees lately; I've -already arranged—" -</p> -<p> -She interrupted him quickly. "It's not your affair, Dexter. You're -awfully generous, always; but I couldn't think of letting you—" -</p> -<p> -"It is my affair; it's all of our affair. I don't want this nasty -notoriety any more than you do ... and Jim's happiness wrecked into -the bargain..." -</p> -<p> -"You're awfully generous," she repeated. -</p> -<p> -"It's first of all a question of helping Jim and Lita. If that young ass -came over here with a contract from Klawhammer in his pocket there'd be -no holding her. And once that gang get hold of a woman..." He spoke -with a kind of breathless irritation, as though it were incredible that -Pauline should still not understand. -</p> -<p> -"It's very fine of you, dear," she could only murmur. -</p> -<p> -A pause followed, during which, for the first time, she could assemble -her thoughts and try to take in the situation. Dexter had bought off -Michelangelo to keep one more disturbing element out of the family -complication; perhaps also to relieve himself of the bother of having on -his hands, at close quarters, an idle and mischief-making young man. -That was comprehensible. But if his first object had been the securing -of Jim's peace of mind, might not the same end have been achieved, more -satisfactorily to every one but Michelangelo, by his uniting with -Pauline to increase Jim's allowance, and thus giving Lita the amusement -and distraction of having a lot more money to spend? Even at such a -moment, Pauline's practical sense of values made it hard for her to -accept the idea of putting so many good thousands into the pockets of -Michelangelo's creditors. She was naturally generous; but no matter how -she disposed of her fortune, she could never forget that it had been -money—and how much money it had been—before it became something -else. For her it was never transmuted, but only exchanged. -</p> -<p> -"You're not satisfied—you don't think I did right?" Manford began -again. -</p> -<p> -"I don't say that, Dexter. I'm only wondering—. Supposing we'd given -the money to Jim instead? Lita could have done her house over ... or -built a bungalow in Florida ... or bought jewels with it... She's so -easily amused." -</p> -<p> -"Easily amused!" He broke into a hard laugh. "Why, that amount of money -wouldn't amuse her for a week!" His face took on a look of grim -introspection. "She wants the universe—or her idea of it. A woman -with an offer from Klawhammer dangling in front of her! Mrs. Landish -told me the figure—those people could buy us all out and not know -it." -</p> -<p> -Pauline's heart sank. Apparently he knew things about Lita of which she -was still ignorant. "I hadn't heard the offer had actually been made. -But if it has, and she wants to accept, how can we stop her?" -</p> -<p> -Manford had thrown himself down into his armchair. He got up again, -relit his cigar, and walked across the room and back before answering. -"I don't know that we can. And I don't know how we can. But I want to -try... I want <i>time</i> to try... Don't you see, Pauline? The -child—we mustn't be hard on her. Her beginnings were damnable... -Perhaps you know—yes? That cursèd Mahatma place?" Pauline winced, -and looked away from him. He had seen the photograph, then! And heaven -knows what more he had discovered in the course of his investigations -for the Lindons... A sudden light glared out at her. It was for Jim's -sake and Lita's that he had dropped the case—sacrificed his -convictions, his sense of the duty of exposing a social evil! She -faltered: "I do know ... a little..." -</p> -<p> -"Well, a little's enough. Swine—! And that's the rotten atmosphere -she was brought up in. But she's not bad, Pauline ... there's something -still to be done with her ... give me time ... time..." He stopped -abruptly, as if the "me" had slipped out by mistake. "We must all stand -shoulder to shoulder to put up this fight for her," he corrected himself -with a touch of forensic emphasis. -</p> -<p> -"Of course, dear, of course," Pauline murmured. -</p> -<p> -"When we get her to ourselves at Cedarledge, you and Nona and I... -It's just as well Jim's going off, by the way. He's got her nerves on -edge; Jim's a trifle dense at times, you know... And, above all, this -whole business, Klawhammer and all, must be kept from him. We'll all -hold our tongues till the thing blows over, eh?" -</p> -<p> -"Of course," she again assented. "But supposing Lita asks to speak to -me?" -</p> -<p> -"Well, let her speak—listen to what she has to say..." He stopped, -and then added, in a rough unsteady voice: "Only don't be hard on her. -You won't, will you? No matter what rot she talks. The child's never had -half a chance." -</p> -<p> -"How could you think I should, Dexter?" -</p> -<p> -"No; no; I don't." He stood up, and sent a slow unseeing gaze about the -room. The gaze took in his wife, and rested on her long enough to make -her feel that she was no more to him—mauve tea-gown, Chinese -amethysts, touch of rouge and silver sandals—than a sheet of glass -through which he was staring: staring at what? She had never before felt -so inexistent. -</p> -<p> -"Well—I'm dog-tired—down and out," he said with one of his -sudden jerks, shaking his shoulders and turning toward the door. He did not -remember to say goodnight to her: how should he have, when she was no -longer there for him? -</p> - -<p><br></p> - -<p> -After the door had closed, Pauline in her turn looked slowly about the -room. It was as if she were taking stock of the havoc wrought by an -earthquake; but nothing about her showed any sign of disorder except the -armchair her husband had pushed back, the rug his movement had -displaced. -</p> -<p> -With instinctive precision she straightened the rug, and rolled the -armchair back into its proper corner. Then she went up to a mirror and -attentively scrutinized herself. The light was unbecoming, perhaps ... -the shade of the adjacent wall-candle had slipped out of place. She -readjusted it ... yes, that was better! But of course, at nearly -midnight—and after such a day!—a woman was bound to look a -little drawn. Automatically her lips shaped the familiar: "Pauline, don't -worry: there's nothing in the world to worry about." But the rouge had -vanished from the lips, their thin line looked blue and arid. She turned -from the unpleasing sight, putting out one light after another on the -way to her dressing-room. -</p> -<p> -As she bent to extinguish the last lamp its light struck a tall framed -photograph: Lita's latest portrait. Lita had the gift of posing—the -lines she fell into always had an unconscious eloquence. And that little -round face, as sleek as the inside of a shell; the slanting eyes, the -budding mouth ... men, no doubt, would think it all enchanting. -</p> -<p> -Pauline, with slow steps, went on into the big shining dressing-room, -and to the bathroom beyond, all ablaze with white tiling and silvered -taps and tubes. It was the hour of her evening uplift exercises, the -final relaxing of body and soul before she slept. Sternly she addressed -herself to relaxation. -</p> - -<p><br><br><br></p> -</div> -<div class="chapter"> -<h2><a id="chap17"></a>XVII</h2> - -<div> - <img class="drop-cap" src="images/dropcap-w.jpg" width="70" alt="drop_w"> -</div> -<p class="drop-cap"> -WHAT was the sense of it all? -</p> -<p> -Nona, sitting up in bed two days after her nocturnal visit to the -Housetop, swept the interval with a desolate eye. She had made her -great, her final, refusal. She had sacrificed herself, sacrificed -Heuston, to the stupid ideal of an obstinate woman who managed to -impress people by dressing up her egotism in formulas of philanthropy -and piety. Because Aggie was forever going to church, and bossing the -committees of Old Women's Homes and Rest-cures for Consumptives, she was -allowed a license of cruelty which would have damned the frivolous. -</p> -<p> -Destroying two lives to preserve her own ideal of purity! It was like -the horrible ailing old men in history books, who used to bathe in human -blood to restore their vitality. Every one agreed that there was nothing -such a clever sensitive fellow as Stanley Heuston mightn't have made of -his life if he'd married a different kind of woman. As it was, he had -just drifted: tried the law, dabbled in literary reviewing, taken a turn -at municipal politics, another at scientific farming, and dropped one -experiment after another to sink, at thirty-five, into a disillusioned -idler who killed time with cards and drink and motor-speeding. She -didn't believe he ever opened a book nowadays: he was living on the -dwindling capital of his early enthusiasms. But, as for what people -called his "fastness," she knew it was merely the inevitable opposition -to Aggie's virtues. And it wasn't as if there had been children. Nona -always ached for the bewildered progeny suddenly bundled from one home -to another when their parents embarked on a new conjugal experiment; she -could never have bought her happiness by a massacre of innocents. But to -be sacrificed to a sterile union—as sterile spiritually as -physically—to miss youth and love because of Agnes Heuston's notion -of her duty to the elderly clergyman she called God! -</p> -<p> -That woman he said he was going off with... Nona had pretended she -didn't know, had opened incredulous eyes at the announcement. But of -course she knew; everybody knew; it was Cleo Merrick. She had been -"after him" for the last two years, she hadn't a rag of reputation to -lose, and would jump at the idea of a few jolly weeks with a man like -Heuston, even if he got away from her afterward. But he -wouldn't—of course he never would! Poor Stan—Cleo Merrick's -noise, her cheek, her vulgarity: how warm and life-giving they would -seem as a change from the frigidarium he called home! She would hold him -by her very cheapness: her recklessness would seem like generosity, her -glitter like heat. Ah—how Nona could have shown him the -difference! She shut her eyes and felt his lips on her lids; and her -lids became lips. Wherever he touched her, a mouth blossomed... Did he -know that? Had he never guessed? -</p> -<p> -She jumped out of bed, ran into her dressing-room, began to bathe and -dress with feverish haste. She wouldn't telephone him—Aggie had long -ears. She wouldn't send a "special delivery"—Aggie had sharp eyes. -She would just summon him by a telegram: a safe anonymous telegram. She -would dash out of the house and get it off herself, without even waiting -for her cup of coffee to be brought. -</p> -<p> -"Come and see me any time today. I was too stupid the other night." Yes; -he would understand that. She needn't even sign it... -</p> -<p> -On the threshold of her room, the telegram crumpled in her hand, the -telephone bell arrested her. Stanley, surely; he must have felt the same -need that she had! She fumbled uncertainly with the receiver; the tears -were running down her cheeks. She had waited too long; she had exacted -the impossible of herself. "Yes—yes? It's you, darling?" She laughed -it out through her weeping. -</p> -<p> -"What's that? It's Jim. That you, Nona?" a quiet voice came back. When -had Jim's voice ever been anything but quiet? -</p> -<p> -"Oh, Jim, dear!" She gulped down tears and laughter. "Yes—what is it? -How awfully early you are!" -</p> -<p> -"Hope I didn't wake you? Can I drop in on my way down town?" -</p> -<p> -"Of course. When? How soon?" -</p> -<p> -"Now. In two minutes. I've got to be at the office before nine." -</p> -<p> -"All right. In two minutes. Come straight up." -</p> -<p> -She hung up the receiver, and thrust the telegram aside. No time to rush -out with it now. She would see Jim first, and send off her message when -he left. Now that her decision was taken she felt tranquil and able to -wait. But anxiety about Jim rose and swelled in her again. She -reproached herself for having given him so little thought for the last -two days. Since her parting from Stan on the doorstep in the rainy night -everything but her fate and his had grown remote and almost indifferent -to her. Well; it was natural enough—only perhaps she had better not -be so glib about Aggie Heuston's selfishness! Of course everybody who was -in love was selfish; and Aggie, according to her lights, was in love. -Her love was bleak and cramped, like everything about her; a sort of -fleshless bony affair, like the repulsive plates in anatomical manuals. -But in reality those barren arms were stretched toward Stanley, though -she imagined they were lifted to God... What a hideous mystery life -was! And yet Pauline and her friends persisted in regarding it as a -Sunday school picnic, with lemonade and sponge cake as its supreme -rewards... -</p> -<p> -Here was Jim at her sitting-room door. Nona held out her arms, and -slanted a glance at him as he bent his cheek to her kiss. Was the cheek -rather sallower than usual? Well, that didn't mean much: he and she were -always a yellow pair when they were worried! -</p> -<p> -"What's up, old man? No—this armchair's more comfortable. Had your -coffee?" -</p> -<p> -He let her change the armchair, but declined the coffee. He had -breakfasted before starting, he said—but she knew Lita's household, -and didn't believe him. -</p> -<p> -"Anything wrong with Exhibit A?" -</p> -<p> -"Wrong? No. That is..." She had put the question at random, in the -vague hope of gaining time before Lita's name was introduced; and now -she had the sense of having unwittingly touched on another problem. -</p> -<p> -"That is—well, he's nervous and fidgety again: you've noticed?" -</p> -<p> -"I've noticed." -</p> -<p> -"Imagining things—. What a complicated world our ancestors lived in, -didn't they?" -</p> -<p> -"Well, I don't know. Mother's world always seems to me alarmingly -simple." -</p> -<p> -He considered. "Yes—that's pioneering and motor-building, I suppose. -It's the old New York blood that's so clogged with taboos. Poor father -always wants me to behave like a Knight of the Round Table." -</p> -<p> -Nona lifted her eyebrows with an effort of memory. "How did they -behave?" -</p> -<p> -"They were always hitting some other fellow over the head." -</p> -<p> -She felt a little catch in her throat. "Who—particularly—does -he want you to hit over the head?" -</p> -<p> -"Oh, we haven't got as far as that yet. It's just the general principle. -Anybody who looks too hard at Lita." -</p> -<p> -"You <i>would</i> have to be hitting about! Everybody looks hard at Lita. -How in the world can she help it?" -</p> -<p> -"That's what I tell him. But he says I haven't got the feelings of a -gentleman. Guts, he means, I suppose." He leaned back, crossing his arms -wearily behind his back, his sallow face with heavy-lidded eyes tilted -to the ceiling. "Do you suppose Lita feels that too?" he suddenly flung -at his sister. -</p> -<p> -"That you ought to break people's heads for her? She'd be the first to -laugh at you!" -</p> -<p> -"So I told him. But he says women despise a man who isn't jealous." -</p> -<p> -Nona sat silent, instinctively turning her eyes from his troubled face. -"Why should you be jealous?" she asked at length. -</p> -<p> -He shifted his position, stretched his arms along his knees, and brought -his eyes down to a level with hers. There was something pathetic, she -thought, in such youthful blueness blurred with uncomprehended pain. -</p> -<p> -"I suppose it's never got much to do with reasons," he said, very low. -</p> -<p> -"No; that's why it's so silly—and ungenerous." -</p> -<p> -"It doesn't matter what it is. She doesn't care a hang if I'm jealous or -if I'm not. She doesn't care anything about me. I've simply ceased to -exist for her." -</p> -<p> -"Well, then you can't be in her way." -</p> -<p> -"It seems I am, though. Because I do exist, for the world; and as the -boy's father. And the mere idea gets on her nerves." -</p> -<p> -Nona laughed a little bitterly. "She wants a good deal of elbow-room, -doesn't she? And how does she propose to eliminate you?" -</p> -<p> -"Oh, that's easy. Divorce." -</p> -<p> -There was a silence between the two. This was how it sounded—that -simple reasonable request—on the lips of the other partner, the -partner who still had a stake in the affair! Lately she seemed to have -forgotten that side of the question; but how hideously it grimaced at -her now, behind the lines of this boyish face wrung with a man's misery! -</p> -<p> -"Old Jim—it hurts such a lot?" -</p> -<p> -He jerked away from her outstretched hand. "Hurt? A fellow can stand -being hurt. It can't hurt more than feeling her chained to me. But if -she goes—what does she go to?" -</p> -<p> -Ah—that was it! Through the scorch and cloud of his own suffering he -had seen it, it was the centre of his pain. Nona glanced down absently -at her slim young hands—so helpless and inexperienced looking. All -these tangled cross-threads of life, inextricably and fatally -interwoven; how were a girl's hands to unravel them? -</p> -<p> -"I suppose she's talked to you—told you her ideas?" he asked. -</p> -<p> -Nona nodded. -</p> -<p> -"Well, what's to be done: can you tell me?" -</p> -<p> -"She mustn't go—we mustn't let her." -</p> -<p> -"But if she stays—stays hating me?" -</p> -<p> -"Oh, Jim, not <i>hating</i>—!" -</p> -<p> -"You know well enough that she gets to hate anything that doesn't amuse -her." -</p> -<p> -"But there's the baby. The baby still amuses her." -</p> -<p> -He looked at her, surprised. "Ah, that's what father says: he calls the -baby, poor old chap, my hostage. What rot! As if I'd take her baby from -her—and just because she cares for it. If I don't know how to keep -her, I don't see that I've got any right to keep her child." -</p> -<p> -That was the new idea of marriage, the view of Nona's contemporaries; it -had been her own a few hours since. Now, seeing it in operation, she -wondered if it still were. It was one thing to theorize on the -detachability of human beings, another to watch them torn apart by the -bleeding roots. This botanist who had recently discovered that plants -were susceptible to pain, and that transplanting was a major -operation—might he not, if he turned his attention to modern men and -women, find the same thing to be still true of a few of them? -</p> -<p> -"Oh Jim, how I wish you didn't care so!" The words slipped out unawares: -they were the last she had meant to speak aloud. -</p> -<p> -Her brother turned to her; the ghost of his old smile drew up his lip. -"Good old girl!" he mocked her—then his face dropped into his hands, -and he sat huddled against the armchair, his shaken shoulder-blades -warding off her touch. -</p> -<p> -It didn't last more than a minute; but it was the real, the only answer. -He <i>did</i> care so; nothing could alter it. She looked on stupidly, -admitted for the first time to this world-old anguish rooted under all the -restless moods of man. -</p> -<p> -Jim got up, shook back his rumpled hair, and reached for a cigarette. -"That's <i>that</i>. And now, my child, what can I do? What I'd honestly -like, if she wants her freedom, is to give it to her, and yet be able to -go on looking after her. But I don't see how that can be worked out. -Father says it's madness. He says I'm a morbid coward and talk like the -people in the Russian novels. He wants to speak to her himself—" -</p> -<p> -"Oh, no! He and she don't talk the same language..." -</p> -<p> -Jim paused, pulling absently at his cigarette, and measuring the room -with uncertain steps. "That's what I feel. But there's <i>your</i> father; -he's been so awfully good to us; and his ideas are less archaic..." -</p> -<p> -Nona had turned away and was looking unseeingly out of the window. She -moved back hastily. "No!" -</p> -<p> -He looked surprised. "You think he wouldn't understand either?" -</p> -<p> -"I don't mean that... But, after all, it's not his job... Have you -spoken to mother?" -</p> -<p> -"Mother? Oh, she always thinks everything's all right. She'd give me a -cheque, and tell me to buy Lita a new motor or to let her do over the -drawing-room." -</p> -<p> -Nona pondered this answer, which was no more than the echo of her own -thoughts. "All the same, Jim: mother's mother. She's always been awfully -good to both of us, and you can't let this go on without her knowing, -without consulting her. She has a right to your confidence—she has a -right to hear what Lita has to say." -</p> -<p> -He remained silent, as if indifferent. His mother's glittering optimism -was a hard surface for grief and failure to fling themselves on. "What's -the use?" he grumbled. -</p> -<p> -"Let me consult her, then: at least let me see how she takes it." -</p> -<p> -He threw away his cigarette and looked at his watch. "I've got to run; -it's nearly nine." He laid a hand on his sister's shoulder. "Whatever -you like, old girl. But don't imagine it's going to be any use." -</p> -<p> -She put her arms about him, and he submitted to her kiss. "Give me -time," she said, not knowing what else to answer. -</p> -<p> -After he had gone she sat motionless, weighed down with -half-comprehended misery. This business of living—how right she had -been to feel, in her ignorance, what a tortured tangle it was! Where, -for instance, did one's own self end and one's neighbour's begin? And -how tell the locked tendrils apart in the delicate process of -disentanglement? Her precocious half-knowledge of the human dilemma was -combined with a youthful belief that the duration of pain was -proportioned to its intensity. And at that moment she would have hated -any one who had tried to persuade her of the contrary. The only -honourable thing about suffering was that it should not abdicate before -indifference. -</p> -<p> -She got up, and her glance fell on the telegram which she had pushed -aside when her brother entered. She still had her hat on, her feet were -turned toward the door. But the door seemed to open into a gray -unpeopled world suddenly shorn of its magic. She moved back into the -room and tore up the telegram. -</p> - -<p><br><br><br></p> -</div> -<div class="chapter"> -<h2><a id="chap18"></a>XVIII</h2> - -<div> - <img class="drop-cap" src="images/dropcap-l.jpg" width="70" alt="drop_l"> -</div> -<p class="drop-cap"> -"LITA? But of course I'll talk to Lita—" Mrs. Manford, resting one -elbow on her littered desk, smiled up encouragingly at her daughter. On -the desk lay the final version of the Birth Control speech, mastered and -canalized by the skilful Maisie. The result was so pleasing that Pauline -would have liked to read it aloud to Nona, had the latter not worn her -look of concentrated care. It was a pity, Pauline thought, that Nona -should let herself go at her age to these moods of anxiety and -discouragement. -</p> -<p> -Pauline herself, fortified by her morning exercises, and by a "double -treatment" ($50) from Alvah Loft, had soared once more above her own -perplexities. She had not had time for a word alone with her husband -since their strange talk of the previous evening; but already the doubts -and uncertainties produced by that talk had been dispelled. Of course -Dexter had been moody and irritable: wasn't her family always piling up -one worry on him after another? He had always loved Jim as much as he -did Nona; and now this menace to Jim's happiness, and the unpleasantness -about Lita, combined with Amalasuntha's barefaced demands, and the -threatened arrival of the troublesome Michelangelo—such a weight of -domestic problems was enough to unnerve a man already overburdened with -professional cares. -</p> -<p> -"But of course I'll talk to Lita, dear; I always meant to. The silly -goose! I've waited only because your father—" -</p> -<p> -Nona's heavy eyebrows ran together like Manford's. "Father?" -</p> -<p> -"Oh, he's helping us so splendidly about it. And he asked me to wait; to -do nothing in a hurry..." -</p> -<p> -Nona seemed to turn this over. "All the same—I think you ought to -hear what Lita has to say. She's trying to persuade Jim to let her divorce -him; and he thinks he ought to, if he can't make her happy." -</p> -<p> -"But he <i>must</i> make her happy! I'll talk to Jim too," cried Pauline -with a gay determination. -</p> -<p> -"I'd try Lita first, mother. Ask her to postpone her decision. If we can -get her to come to Cedarledge for a few weeks' rest—" -</p> -<p> -"Yes; that's what your father says." -</p> -<p> -"But I don't think father ought to give up his fishing to join us. -Haven't you noticed how tired he looks? He ought to get away from all of -us for a few weeks. Why shouldn't you and I look after Lita?" -</p> -<p> -Pauline's enthusiasm drooped. It was really no business of Nona's to -give her mother advice about the management of her father. These modern -girls—pity Nona didn't marry, and try managing a husband of her own! -</p> -<p> -"Your father loves Cedarledge. It's quite his own idea to go there. He -thinks Easter in the country with us all will be more restful than -California. I haven't influenced him in the least to give up his -fishing." -</p> -<p> -"Oh, I didn't suppose you had." Nona seemed to lose interest in the -discussion, and her mother took advantage of the fact to add, with a -gentle side-glance at her watch: "Is there anything else, dear? Because -I've got to go over my Birth Control speech, and at eleven there's a -delegation from—" -</p> -<p> -Nona's eyes had followed her glance to the scattered pages on the desk. -"Are you really going to preside at that Birth Control dinner, mother?" -</p> -<p> -"Preside? Why not? I happen to be chairman," Pauline answered with a -faint touch of acerbity. -</p> -<p> -"I know. Only—the other day you were preaching unlimited families. -Don't the two speeches come rather close together? You might expose -yourself to some newspaper chaff if any one put you in parallel -columns." -</p> -<p> -Pauline felt herself turning pale. Her lips tightened, and for a moment -she was conscious of a sort of blur in her brain. This girl ... it was -preposterous that she shouldn't understand! And always wanting reasons -and explanations at a moment's notice! To be subjected, under one's own -roof, to such a perpetual inquisition... There was nothing she -disliked so much as questions to which she had not had time to prepare -the answers. -</p> -<p> -"I don't think you always grasp things, Nona." The words were feeble, -but they were the first that came. -</p> -<p> -"I'm afraid I don't, mother." -</p> -<p> -"Then, perhaps—I just suggest it—you oughtn't to be quite so -ready to criticize. You seem to imagine there is a contradiction in my -belonging to these two groups of ... of thought..." -</p> -<p> -"They do seem to contradict each other." -</p> -<p> -"Not in reality. The principles are different, of course; but, you see, -they are meant to apply to—to different categories of people. It's -all a little difficult to explain to any one as young as you are ... a -girl naturally can't be expected to know..." -</p> -<p> -"Oh, what we girls don't know, mother!" -</p> -<p> -"Well, dear, I've always approved of outspokenness on such matters. The -real nastiness is in covering things up. But all the same, age and -experience <i>do</i> teach one... You children mustn't hope to get at all -your elders' reasons..." That sounded firm yet friendly, and as she -spoke she felt herself on safer ground. "I wish there were time to go -into it all with you now; but if I'm to keep up with today's -engagements, and crowd in a talk with Lita besides—Maisie! Will you -call up Mrs. Jim?" -</p> -<p> -Maisie answered from the other room: "The delegation of the League For -Discovering Genius is waiting downstairs, Mrs. Manford—" -</p> -<p> -"Oh, to be sure! This is rather an important movement, Nona; a new -thing. I do believe there's something helpful to be done for genius. -They're just organizing their first drive: I heard of it through that -wonderful Mrs. Swoffer. You wouldn't care to come down and see the -delegation with me? No ... I sometimes think you'd be happier if you -interested yourself a little more in other people ... in all the big -humanitarian movements that make one so proud to be an American. Don't -you think it's glorious to belong to the only country where everybody is -absolutely free, and yet we're all made to do exactly what is best for -us? I say that somewhere in my speech... Well, I promise to have my -talk with Lita before dinner; whatever happens, I'll squeeze her in. And -you and Jim needn't be afraid of my saying anything to set her against -us. Your father has impressed that on me already. After all, I've always -preached the respect of every one's personality; only Lita must begin by -respecting Jim's." -</p> - -<p><br></p> - -<p> -Fresh from a stimulating encounter with Mrs. Swoffer and the encouragers -of genius, Pauline was able to face with a smiling composure her meeting -with her daughter-in-law. Every contact with the humanitarian movements -distinguishing her native country from the selfish <i>laissez faire</i> and -cynical indifference of Europe filled her with a new optimism, and shed -a reassuring light on all her private cares. America really seemed to -have an immediate answer for everything, from the treatment of the -mentally deficient to the elucidation of the profoundest religious -mysteries. In such an atmosphere of universal simplification, how could -one's personal problems not be solved? "The great thing is to believe -that they <i>will</i> be," as Mrs. Swoffer said, à propos of the finding of -funds for the new League For Discovering Genius. The remark was so -stimulating to Pauline that she immediately drew a large cheque, and -accepted the chairmanship of the committee; and it was on the favouring -breeze of the League's applause that she sailed, at the tea-hour, into -Lita's boudoir. -</p> -<p> -"It seems simpler just to ask her for a cup of tea—as if I were -dropping in to see the baby," Pauline had reflected; and as Lita was not -yet at home, there was time to turn her pretext into a reality. -Upstairs, in the blue and silver nursery, her sharp eye detected many -small negligences under the artistic surface: soiled towels lying about, -a half-empty glass of milk with a drowned fly in it, dead and decaying -flowers in the æsthetic flowerpots, and not a single ventilator open in -the upper window-panes. She made a mental note of these items, but -resolved not to touch on them in her talk with Lita. At Cedarledge, -where the nurse would be under her own eye, nursery hygiene could be -more tactfully imparted... -</p> -<p> -The black boudoir was still empty when Pauline returned to it, but she -was armed with patience, and sat down to wait. The armchairs were much -too low to be comfortable and she hated the semi-obscurity of the veiled -lamps. How could one possibly occupy one's time in a pitch-dark room -with seats that one had to sprawl in as if they were deck-chairs? She -thought the room so ugly and dreary that she could hardly blame Lita for -wanting to do it over. "I'll give her a cheque for it at once," she -reflected indulgently. "All young people begin by making mistakes of -this kind." She remembered with a little shiver the set of imitation -tapestry armchairs that she had insisted on buying for her drawing-room -when she had married Wyant. Perhaps it would be a good move to greet -Lita with the offer of the cheque... -</p> -<p> -Somehow Lita's appearance, when she at length arrived, made the idea -seem less happy. Lita had a way of looking as if she didn't much care -what one did to please her; for a young woman who spent so much money -she made very little effort to cajole it out of her benefactors. -"Hullo," she said; "I didn't know you were here. Am I late, I wonder?" -</p> -<p> -Pauline greeted her with a light kiss. "How can you ever tell if you -are? I don't believe there's a clock in the house." -</p> -<p> -"Yes, there is; in the nursery," said Lita. -</p> -<p> -"Well, my dear, that one's stopped," rejoined her mother-in-law, -smiling. -</p> -<p> -"You've been seeing the boy? Oh, then you haven't missed me," Lita -smiled back as she loosened her furs and tossed off her hat. She ran her -hands through her goldfish-coloured hair, and flung herself down on a -pile of cushions. "Tea's coming sooner or later, I suppose. Unless—a -cocktail? No? Wouldn't you be more comfortable on the floor?" she -suggested to her mother-in-law. -</p> -<p> -Every whalebone in Pauline's perfectly fitting elastic girdle contracted -apprehensively. "Thank you; I'm very well here." She assumed as willowy -an attitude as the treacherous seat permitted, and added: "I'm so glad -to have the chance of a little talk. In this rushing life we all tend to -lose sight of each other, don't we? But I hear about you so constantly -from Nona that I feel we're very close even when we don't meet. Nona's -devoted to you—we all are." -</p> -<p> -"That's awfully sweet of you," said Lita with her air of radiant -indifference. -</p> -<p> -"Well, my dear, we hope you reciprocate," Pauline sparkled, stretching a -maternal hand to the young shoulder at her knee. -</p> -<p> -Lita slanted her head backward with a slight laugh. Mrs. Manford had -never thought her pretty, but today the mere freshness of her parted -lips, their rosy lining, the unspoilt curves of her cheek and long white -throat, stung the older woman to reluctant admiration. -</p> -<p> -"Am I expected to be devoted to you <i>all</i>?" Lita questioned. -</p> -<p> -"No, dear; only to Jim." -</p> -<p> -"Oh—" said Jim's wife, her smile contracting to a faint grimace. -</p> -<p> -Pauline leaned forward earnestly. "I won't pretend not to know something -of what's been happening. I came here today to talk things over with -you, quietly and affectionately—like an older sister. Try not to -think of me as a mother-in-law!" -</p> -<p> -Lita's slim eyebrows went up ironically. "Oh, I'm not afraid of -mothers-in-law; they're not as permanent as they used to be." -</p> -<p> -Pauline took a quick breath; she caught the impertinence under the -banter, but she called her famous tact to the rescue. -</p> -<p> -"I'm glad you're not afraid of me, because I want you to tell me -perfectly frankly what it is that's bothering you ... you and Jim..." -</p> -<p> -"Nothing is bothering me particularly; but I suppose I'm bothering Jim," -said Lita lightly. -</p> -<p> -"You're doing more than that, dear; you're making him desperately -unhappy. This talk of wanting to separate—" -</p> -<p> -Lita rose on her elbow among the cushions, and levelled her eyes on Mrs. -Manford. They looked as clear and shallow as the most expensive topazes. -</p> -<p> -"Separations are idiotic. What I want is a hundred per cent New York -divorce. And he could let me have it just as easily..." -</p> -<p> -"Lita! You don't know how wretched it makes me to hear you say such -things." -</p> -<p> -"Does it? Sorry! But it's Jim's own fault. Heaps of other girls would -jump at him if he was free. And if I'm bored, what's the use of trying -to keep me? What on earth can we do about it, either of us? You can't -take out an insurance against boredom." -</p> -<p> -"But why should you be bored? With everything on earth..." Pauline -waved a hand at the circumjacent luxuries. -</p> -<p> -"Well; that's it, I suppose. Always the same old everything!" -</p> -<p> -The mother-in-law softened her voice to murmur temptingly: "Of course, -if it's this house you're tired of... Nona told me something about -your wanting to redecorate some of the rooms; and I can understand, for -instance, that this one..." -</p> -<p> -"Oh, this is the only one I don't utterly loathe. But I'm not divorcing -Jim on account of the house," Lita answered, with a faint smile which -seemed perverse to Pauline. -</p> -<p> -"Then what is the reason? I don't understand." -</p> -<p> -"I'm not much good at reasons. I want a new deal, that's all." -</p> -<p> -Pauline struggled against her rising indignation. To sit and hear this -chit of a Cliffe girl speak of husband and home as if it were a matter -of course to discard them like last year's fashions! But she was -determined not to allow her feelings to master her. "If you had only -yourself to think of, what should you do?" she asked. -</p> -<p> -"Do? Be myself, I suppose! I can't be, here. I'm a sort of all-round -fake. I—" -</p> -<p> -"We none of us want you to be that—Jim least of all. He wants you to -feel perfectly free to express your personality." -</p> -<p> -"Here—in this house?" Her contemptuous gesture seemed to tumble it -down like a pack of cards. "And looking at him across the dinner-table -every night of my life?" -</p> -<p> -Pauline paused; then she said gently: "And can you face giving up your -baby?" -</p> -<p> -"Baby? Why should I? You don't suppose I'd ever give up my baby?" -</p> -<p> -"Then you mean to ask Jim to give up his wife and child, and to assume -all the blame as well?" -</p> -<p> -"Oh, dear, no. Where's the blame? I don't see any! All I want is a new -deal," repeated Lita doggedly. -</p> -<p> -"My dear, I'm sure you don't know what you're saying. Your husband has -the misfortune to be passionately in love with you. The divorce you talk -of so lightly would nearly kill him. Even if he doesn't interest you any -longer, he did once. Oughtn't you to take that into account?" -</p> -<p> -Lita seemed to ponder. Then she said: "But oughtn't he to take into -account that he doesn't interest me any longer?" -</p> -<p> -Pauline made a final effort at self-control. "Yes, dear; if it's really -so. But if he goes away for a time... You know he's to have a long -holiday soon, and my husband has arranged to have him go down with Mr. -Wyant to the island. All I ask is that you shouldn't decide anything -till he comes back. See how you feel about him when he's been away for -two or three weeks. Perhaps you've been too much together—perhaps New -York has got too much on both your nerves. At any rate, do let him go -off on his holiday without the heartbreak of feeling it's good-bye... -My husband begs you to do this. You know he loves Jim as if he were his -son—" -</p> -<p> -Lita was still leaning on her elbow. "Well—isn't he?" she said in her -cool silvery voice, with innocently widened eyes. -</p> -<p> -For an instant the significance of the retort escaped Pauline. When it -reached her she felt as humiliated as if she had been caught concealing -a guilty secret. She opened her lips, but no sound came from them. She -sat wordless, torn between the desire to box her daughter-in-law's ears, -and to rush in tears from the house. -</p> -<p> -"Lita ..." she gasped ... "this insult..." -</p> -<p> -Lita sat up, her eyes full of a slightly humorous compunction. "Oh, no! -An insult! Why? I've always thought it would be so wonderful to have a -love-child. I supposed that was why you both worshipped Jim. And now he -isn't even that!" She shrugged her slim shoulders, and held her hands -out penitently. "I <i>am</i> sorry to have said the wrong -thing—honestly I am! But it just shows we can never understand -each other. For me the real wickedness is to go on living with a man you -don't love. And now I've offended you by supposing you once felt in the -same way yourself..." -</p> -<p> -Pauline slowly rose to her feet: she felt stiff and shrunken. "You -haven't offended me—I'm not going to allow myself to be offended. I'd -rather think we don't understand each other, as you say. But surely it's -not too late to try. I don't want to discuss things with you; I don't -want to nag or argue; I only want you to wait, to come with the baby to -Cedarledge, and spend a few quiet weeks with us. Nona will be there, and -my husband ... there'll be no reproaches, no questions ... but we'll -do our best to make you happy..." -</p> -<p> -Lita, with her funny twisted smile, moved toward her mother-in-law. -"Why, you're actually crying! I don't believe you do that often, do -you?" She bent forward and put a light kiss on Pauline's shrinking -cheek. "All right—I'll come to Cedarledge. I am dead-beat and fed-up, -and I daresay it'll do me a lot of good to lie up for a while..." -</p> -<p> -Pauline, for a moment, made no answer: she merely laid her lips on the -girl's cheek, a little timidly, as if it had been made of something -excessively thin and brittle. -</p> -<p> -"We shall all be very glad," she said. -</p> - -<p><br></p> - -<p> -On the doorstep, in the motor, she continued to move in the resonance of -the outrageous question: "<i>Well</i>—<i>isn't he</i>?" The -violence of her recoil left her wondering what use there was in trying -to patch up a bond founded on such a notion of marriage. Would not Jim, -as his wife so lightly suggested, run more chance of happiness if he -could choose again? Surely there must still be some decent right-minded -girls brought up in the old way ... like Aggie Heuston, say! But -Pauline's imagination shivered away from that too... Perhaps, after all, -her own principles were really obsolete to her children. Only, what was -to take their place? Human nature had not changed as fast as social -usage, and if Jim's wife left him nothing could prevent his suffering in -the same old way. -</p> -<p> -It was all very baffling and disturbing, and Pauline did not feel as -sure as she usually did that the question could be disposed of by -ignoring it. Still, on the drive home her thoughts cleared as she reflected -that she had gained her main point—for the time, at any rate. -Manford had enjoined her not to estrange or frighten Lita, and the two -women had parted with a kiss. Manford had insisted that Lita should be -induced to take no final decision till after her stay at Cedarledge; and -to this also she had acquiesced. Pauline, on looking back, began to be -struck by the promptness of Lita's surrender, and correspondingly -impressed by her own skill in manœuvring. There <i>was</i> something, after -all, in these exercises of the will, these smiling resolves to ignore or -dominate whatever was obstructive or unpleasant! She had gained with an -almost startling ease the point which Jim and Manford and Nona had -vainly struggled for. And perhaps Lita's horrid insinuation had not been -a voluntary impertinence, but merely the unconscious avowal of new -standards. The young people nowadays, for all their long words and -scientific realism, were really more like children than ever... -</p> -<p> -In Pauline's boudoir, Nona, curled up on the hearth, her chin in her -hands, raised her head at her mother's approach. To Pauline the -knowledge that she was awaited, and that she brought with her the secret -of defeat or victory, gave back the healing sense of authority. -</p> -<p> -"It's all right, darling," she announced; "just a little summer shower; -I always told you there was nothing to worry about." And she added with -a smile: "You see, Nona, some people <i>do</i> still listen when your old -mother talks to them." -</p> - -<p><br><br><br></p> -</div> -<div class="chapter"> -<h2><a id="chap19"></a>XIX</h2> - -<div> - <img class="drop-cap" src="images/dropcap-i.jpg" width="70" alt="drop_i"> -</div> -<p class="drop-cap"> -IF only Aggie Heuston had changed those sour-apple curtains in the front -drawing-room, Nona thought—if she had substituted deep upholstered -armchairs for the hostile gilt seats, and put books in the marqueterie -cabinets in place of blue china dogs and Dresden shepherdesses, -everything in three lives might have been different... -</p> -<p> -But Aggie had probably never noticed the colour of the curtains or the -angularity of the furniture. She had certainly never missed the books. -She had accepted the house as it came to her from her parents, who in -turn had taken it over, in all its dreary frivolity, from their father -and mother. It embodied the New York luxury of the 'seventies in every -ponderous detail, from the huge cabbage roses of the Aubusson carpet to -the triple layer of curtains designed to protect the aristocracy of the -brown-stone age from the plebeian intrusion of light and air. -</p> -<p> -"Funny," Nona thought again—"that all this ugliness should prick me -like nettles, and matter no more to Aggie than if it were in the next -street. She's a saint, I know. But what I want to find is a saint who -hates ugly furniture, and yet lives among it with a smile. What's the -merit, if you never see it?" She addressed herself to a closer -inspection of one of the cabinets, in which Aggie's filial piety had -preserved her mother's velvet and silver spectacle-case, and her -father's ivory opera-glasses, in combination with an alabaster Leaning -Tower and a miniature copy of Carlo Dolci's Magdalen. -</p> -<p> -Queer dead rubbish—but queerer still that, at that moment and in that -house, Nona's uncanny detachment should permit her to smile at it! Where -indeed—she wondered again—did one's own personality end, and -that of others, of people, landscapes, chairs or spectacle-cases, begin? -Ever since she had received, the night before, Aggie's stiff and agonized -little note, which might have been composed by a child with a -tooth-ache, Nona had been apprehensively asking herself if her -personality didn't even include certain shreds and fibres of Aggie. It -was all such an inextricable tangle... -</p> -<p> -Here she came. Nona heard the dry click of her steps on the stairs and -across the polished bareness of the hall. She had written: "If you could -make it perfectly convenient to call—" Aggie's nearest approach to a -friendly summons! And as she opened the door, and advanced over the -cabbage roses, Nona saw that her narrow face, with the eyes too close -together, and the large pale pink mouth with straight edges, was -sharpened by a new distress. -</p> -<p> -"It's very kind of you to come, Nona—" she began in her clear -painstaking voice. -</p> -<p> -"Oh, nonsense, Aggie! Do drop all that. Of course I know what it's -about." -</p> -<p> -Aggie turned noticeably paler; but her training as a hostess prevailing -over her emotion, she pushed forward a gilt chair. "Do sit down." She -placed herself in an adjoining sofa corner. Overhead, Aggie's -grandmother, in a voluted gilt frame, held a Brussels lace handkerchief -in her hand, and leaned one ruffled elbow on a velvet table-cover -fringed with knobby tassels. -</p> -<p> -"You say you know—" Aggie began. -</p> -<p> -"Of course." -</p> -<p> -"Stanley—he's told you?" -</p> -<p> -Nona's nerves were beginning to jump and squirm like a bundle of young -vipers. Was she going to be able to stand much more of these paralyzing -preliminaries? -</p> -<p> -"Oh, yes: he's told me." -</p> -<p> -Aggie dropped her lids and stared down at her narrow white hands. Then a -premonitory twitch ran along her lips and drew her forehead into little -wrinkles of perplexity. -</p> -<p> -"I don't want you to think I've any cause of complaint against -Stanley—none whatever. There has never been a single unkind word... -We've always lived together on the most perfect terms..." -</p> -<p> -Feeling that some form of response was required of her, Nona emitted a -vague murmur. -</p> -<p> -"Only now—he's—he's left me," Aggie concluded, the words -wrung out of her in laboured syllables. She raised one hand and smoothed -back a flat strand of hair which had strayed across her forehead. -</p> -<p> -Nona was silent. She sat with her eyes fixed on that small twitching -mask—real face it could hardly be called, since it had probably never -before been suffered to express any emotion that was radically and -peculiarly Aggie's. -</p> -<p> -"You knew that too?" Aggie continued, in a studiously objective tone. -</p> -<p> -Nona made a sign of assent. -</p> -<p> -"He has nothing to reproach me with—nothing whatever. He expressly -told me so." -</p> -<p> -"Yes; I know. That's the worst of it." -</p> -<p> -"The worst of it?" -</p> -<p> -"Why, if he had, you might have had a good row that would have cleared -the air." -</p> -<p> -Suddenly Nona felt Aggie's eyes fixed on her with a hungry penetrating -stare. "Did you and he use to have good rows, as you call it?" -</p> -<p> -"Oh, by the hour—whenever we met!" Nona, for the life of her, could -not subdue the mocking triumph in her voice. -</p> -<p> -Aggie's lips narrowed. "You've been very great friends, I know; he's -often told me so. But if you were always quarrelling how could you -continue to respect each other?" -</p> -<p> -"I don't know that we did. At any rate, there was no time to think about -it; because there was always the making-up, you see." -</p> -<p> -"The making-up?" -</p> -<p> -"Aggie," Nona burst out abruptly, "have you never known what it was to -have a man give you a jolly good hug, and feel full enough of happiness -to scent a whole garden with it?" -</p> -<p> -Aggie lifted her lids on a glance which was almost one of terror. The -image Nona had used seemed to convey nothing to her, but the question -evidently struck her with a deadly force. -</p> -<p> -"A man—what man?" -</p> -<p> -Nona laughed. "Well, for the sake of argument—Stanley!" -</p> -<p> -"I can't imagine why you ask such queer questions, Nona. How could we -make up when we never quarrelled?" -</p> -<p> -"Is it queer to ask you if you ever loved your husband?" -</p> -<p> -"It's queer of you to ask it," said the wife simply. Nona's swift retort -died unspoken, and she felt one of her slow secret blushes creeping up -to the roots of her hair. -</p> -<p> -"I'm sorry, Aggie. I'm horribly nervous—and I suppose you are. Hadn't -we better start fresh? What was it you wanted to see me about?" -</p> -<p> -Aggie was silent for a moment, as if gathering up all her strength; then -she answered: "To tell you that if he wants to marry you I shan't oppose -a divorce any longer." -</p> -<p> -"Aggie!" -</p> -<p> -The two sat silent, opposite each other, as if they had reached a point -beyond which words could not carry their communion. Nona's mind, racing -forward, touched the extreme limit of human bliss, and then crawled back -from it bowed and broken-winged. -</p> -<p> -"But <i>only</i> on that condition," Aggie began again, with deliberate -emphasis. -</p> -<p> -"On condition—that he marries me?" -</p> -<p> -Aggie made a motion of assent. "I have a right to impose my conditions. -And what I want is"—she faltered suddenly—"what I want is that -you should save him from Cleo Merrick..." Her level voice broke and two -tears forced their way through her lashes and fell slowly down her -cheeks. -</p> -<p> -"Save him from Cleo Merrick?" Nona fancied she heard herself laugh. Her -thoughts seemed to drag after her words as if she were labouring up hill -through a ploughed field. "Isn't it rather late in the day to make that -attempt? You say he's already gone off with her." -</p> -<p> -"He's joined her somewhere—I don't know where. He wrote from his club -before leaving. But I know they don't sail till the day after tomorrow; -and you must get him back, Nona, you must save him. It's too awful. He -can't marry her; she has a husband somewhere who refuses to divorce -her." -</p> -<p> -"Like you and Stanley!" -</p> -<p> -Aggie drew back as if she had been struck. "Oh, no, no!" She looked -despairingly at Nona. "When I tell you I don't refuse now..." -</p> -<p> -"Well, perhaps Cleo Merrick's husband may not, either." -</p> -<p> -"It's different. He's a Catholic, and his church won't let him divorce. -And it can't be annulled. Stanley's just going to live with her ... -openly ... and she'll go everywhere with him ... exactly as if they -were husband and wife ... and everybody will know that they're not." -</p> -<p> -Nona sat silent, considering with set lips and ironic mind the picture -thus pitilessly evoked. "Well, if she loves him..." -</p> -<p> -"Loves him? A woman like that!" -</p> -<p> -"She's been willing to make a sacrifice for him, at any rate. That's -where she has a pull over both of us." -</p> -<p> -"But don't you see how awful it is for them to be living together in -that way?" -</p> -<p> -"I see it's the best thing that could happen to Stanley to have found a -woman plucky enough to give him the thing he wanted—the thing you and -I both refused him." -</p> -<p> -She saw Aggie's lifeless cheek redden. "I don't know what you mean by ... -refusing..." -</p> -<p> -"I mean his happiness—that's all! You refused to divorce him, didn't -you? And I refused to do—what Cleo Merrick's doing. And here we both -are, sitting on the ruins; and that's the end of it, as far as you and I -are concerned." -</p> -<p> -"But it's not the end—it's not too late. I tell you it's not too -late! He'll leave her even now if you ask him to ... I know he will!" -</p> -<p> -Nona stood up with a dry laugh. "Thank you, Aggie. Perhaps he -would—only we shall never find out." -</p> -<p> -"Never find out? When I keep telling you—" -</p> -<p> -"Because even if I've been a coward that's no reason why I should be a -cad." Nona was buttoning her coat and clasping her fur about her neck -with quick precise movements, as if wrapping herself close against the -treacherous sweetness that was beginning to creep into her veins. -Suddenly she felt she could not remain a moment longer in that stifling -room, face to face with that stifling misery. -</p> -<p> -"The better woman's got him—let her keep him," she said. -</p> -<p> -She put out her hand, and for a moment Aggie's cold damp fingers lay in -hers. Then they were pulled away, and Aggie caught Nona by the sleeve. -"But Nona, listen! I don't understand you. Isn't it what you've always -wanted?" -</p> -<p> -"Oh, more than anything in life!" the girl cried, turning breathlessly -away. -</p> -<p> -The outer door swung shut on her, and on the steps she stood still and -looked back at the ruins on which she had pictured herself sitting with -Aggie Heuston. -</p> -<p> -"I do believe," she murmured to herself, "I know most of the new ways of -being rotten; I only wish I was sure I knew the best new way of being -decent..." -</p> - -<p><br><br><br></p> -</div> -<div class="chapter"> -<h2><a id="BOOK_III"><i>BOOK III</i></a></h2> - -<p><br><br><br></p> - -<h2><a id="chap20"></a>XX</h2> - -<div> - <img class="drop-cap" src="images/dropcap-a.jpg" width="70" alt="drop_a"> -</div> -<p class="drop-cap"> -AT the gates of Cedarledge Pauline lifted her head from a last hurried -study of the letters and papers Maisie Bruss had thrust into the motor. -</p> -<p> -The departure from town had been tumultuous. Up to the last minute there -had been the usual rush and trepidation, Maisie hanging on the -footboard, Powder and the maid hurrying down with final messages and -recommendations. -</p> -<p> -"Here's another batch of bills passed by the architect, Mrs. Manford. -And he asks if you'd mind—" -</p> -<p> -"Yes, yes; draw another cheque for five thousand, Maisie, and send it to -me with the others to be signed." -</p> -<p> -"And the estimates for the new orchid-house. The contractor says -building-materials are going up again next week, and he can't guarantee, -unless you telephone at once—" -</p> -<p> -"Has madame the jewel-box? I put it under the rug myself, with madame's -motor-bag." -</p> -<p> -"Thank you, Cécile. Yes, it's here." -</p> -<p> -"And is the Maison Herminie to deliver the green and gold teagown here -or—" -</p> -<p> -"Here are the proofs of the Birth Control speech, Mrs. Manford. If you -could just glance over them in the motor, and let me have them back -tonight—" -</p> -<p> -"The Marchesa, madam, has called up to ask if you and Mr. Manford can -receive her at Cedarledge for the next week-end—" -</p> -<p> -"No, Powder; say no. I'm dreadfully sorry..." -</p> -<p> -"Very good, madam. I understand it was to bring a favourable answer from -the Cardinal—" -</p> -<p> -"Oh; very well. I'll see. I'll telephone from Cedarledge." -</p> -<p> -"Please, madam, Mr. Wyant's just telephoned—" -</p> -<p> -"Mr. Wyant, Powder?" -</p> -<p> -"Mr. Arthur Wyant, madam. To ask—" -</p> -<p> -"But Mr. Wyant and Mr. James were to have started for Georgia last -night." -</p> -<p> -"Yes, madam; but Mr. James was detained by business, and now Mr. Arthur -Wyant asks if you'll please ring up before they leave tonight." -</p> -<p> -"Very well. (What can have happened, Nona? You don't know?) Say I've -started for Cedarledge, Powder; I'll ring up from there. Yes; that's -all." -</p> -<p> -"Mrs. Manford, wait! Here are two more telegrams, and a special—" -</p> -<p> -"Take care, Maisie; you'll slip and break your leg..." -</p> -<p> -"Yes; but Mrs. Manford! The special is from Mrs. Swoffer. She says the -committee have just discovered a new genius, and they're calling an -emergency meeting for tomorrow afternoon at three, and couldn't you -possibly—" -</p> -<p> -"No, no, Maisie—I can't! Say I've <i>left</i>—" -</p> - -<p><br></p> - -<p> -The waves of agitation were slow in subsiding. A glimpse, down a side -street, of the Marchesa's cheap boarding-house-hotel, revived them; and -so did the flash past the inscrutable "Dawnside," aloof on its height -above the Hudson. But as the motor slid over the wide suburban -Boulevards, and out into the budding country, with the roar and menace -of the city fading harmlessly away on the horizon, Pauline's serenity -gradually stole back. -</p> -<p> -Nona, at her side, sat silent; and the mother was grateful for that -silence. She had noticed that the girl had looked pale and drawn for the -last fortnight; but that was just another proof of how much they all -needed the quiet of Cedarledge. -</p> -<p> -"You don't know why Jim and his father have put off starting, Nona?" -</p> -<p> -"No idea, mother. Probably business of Jim's, as Powder said." -</p> -<p> -"Do you know why his father wants to telephone me?" -</p> -<p> -"Not a bit. Probably it's not important. I'll call up this evening." -</p> -<p> -"Oh, if you would, dear! I'm really tired." -</p> -<p> -There was a pause, and then Nona questioned: "Have you noticed Maisie, -mother? She's pretty tired too." -</p> -<p> -"Yes; poor Maisie! Preparing Cedarledge has been rather a rush for her, -I'm afraid—" -</p> -<p> -"It's not only that. She's just been told that her mother has a cancer." -</p> -<p> -"Oh, poor child! How dreadful! She never said a word to me—" -</p> -<p> -"No, she wouldn't." -</p> -<p> -"But, Nona, have you told her to see Disterman <i>at once</i>? Perhaps an -immediate operation ... you must call her up as soon as we arrive. -Tell her, of course, that I'll bear all the expenses—" -</p> -<p> -After that they both relapsed into silence. -</p> -<p> -These domestic tragedies happened now and then. One would have given the -world to avert them; but when one couldn't one was always ready to foot -the bill... Pauline wished that she had known ... had had time to -say a kindly word to poor Maisie... Perhaps she would have to give her -a week off; or at least a couple of days, while she settled her mother -in the hospital. At least, if Disterman advised an operation... -</p> -<p> -It was dreadful, how rushed one always was. Pauline would have liked to -go and see poor Mrs. Bruss herself. But there were Dexter and Lita and -the baby all arriving the day after tomorrow, and only just time to put -the last touches to Cedarledge before they came. And Pauline herself was -desperately tired, though she had taken a "triple treatment" from Alvah -Loft ($100) that very morning. -</p> -<p> -She always meant to be kind to every one dependent on her; it was only -time that lacked—always time! Dependents and all, they were swept -away with her in the same ceaseless rush. When now and then one of them -dropped by the way she was sorry, and sent back first aid, and did all -she could; but the rush never stopped; it couldn't stop; when one did a -kindness one could only fling it at its object and whirl by. -</p> -<p> -The blessèd peace of the country! Pauline drew a deep breath of -content. Never before had she approached Cedarledge with so complete a -sense of possessorship. The place was really of her own making, for -though the house had been built and the grounds laid out years before -she had acquired the property, she had stamped her will and her wealth -on every feature. Pauline was persuaded that she was fond of the -country—but what she was really fond of was doing things to the -country, and owning, with this object, as many acres of it as possible. -And so it had come about that every year the Cedarledge estate had -pushed the encircling landscape farther back, and substituted for its -miles of golden-rod and birch and maple more acres of glossy lawn, and -more specimen limes and oaks and cut-leaved beeches, domed over more and -more windings of expensive shrubbery. -</p> -<p> -From the farthest gate it was now a drive of two miles to the house, and -Pauline found even this too short for her minutely detailed appreciation -of what lay between her and her threshold. In the village, the glint of -the gilt weathercock on the new half-timbered engine-house; under a rich -slope of pasture-land the recently enlarged dairy-farm; then woods of -hemlock and dogwood; acres of rhododendron, azalea and mountain laurel -acclimatized about a hidden lake; a glimpse of Japanese water-gardens -fringed with cherry bloom and catkins; open lawns, spreading trees, the -long brick house-front and its terraces, and through a sculptured -archway the Dutch garden with dwarf topiary work and endless files of -bulbs about the commander's baton of a stately sundial. -</p> -<p> -To Pauline each tree, shrub, water-course, herbaceous border, meant not -only itself, but the surveying of grades, transporting of soil, -tunnelling for drainage, conducting of water, the business -correspondence and paying of bills, which had preceded its existence; -and she would have cared for it far less—perhaps not at all—had -it sprung into being unassisted, like the random shadbushes and wild cherry -trees beyond the gates. -</p> -<p> -The faint spring loveliness reached her somehow, in long washes of pale -green, and the blurred mauve of budding vegetation; but her eyes could -not linger on any particular beauty without its dissolving into soil, -manure, nurserymen's catalogues, and bills again—bills. It had all -cost a terrible lot of money; but she was proud of that too—to her -it was part of the beauty, part of the exquisite order and suitability -which reigned as much in the simulated wildness of the rhododendron glen -as in the geometrical lines of the Dutch garden. -</p> -<p> -"Seventy-five thousand bulbs this year!" she thought, as the motor swept -by the sculptured gateway, just giving and withdrawing a flash of turf -sheeted with amber and lilac, in a setting of twisted and scalloped -evergreens. -</p> -<p> -Twenty-five thousand more bulbs than last year ... that was how she -liked it to be. It was exhilarating to spend more money each year, to be -always enlarging and improving, in small ways as well as great, to face -unexpected demands with promptness and energy, beat down exorbitant -charges, struggle through difficult moments, and come out at the end of -the year tired but victorious, with improvements made, bills paid, and a -reassuring balance in the bank. To Pauline that was "life." -</p> -<p> -And how her expenditure at Cedarledge was justifying itself! Her -husband, drawn by its fresh loveliness, had voluntarily given up his -annual trip to California, the excitement of tarpon-fishing, the -independence of bachelorhood—all to spend a quiet month in the -country with his wife and children. Pauline felt that even the twenty-five -thousand additional bulbs had had a part in shaping his decision. And -what would he say when he saw the new bathrooms, assisted at the village -fire-drill, and plunged into the artificially warmed waters of the new -swimming pool? A mist of happiness rose to her eyes as she looked out on -the spring-misted landscape. -</p> - -<p><br></p> - -<p> -Nona had not followed her mother into the house. Her dogs at her heels, -she plunged down hill to the woods and lake. She knew nothing of what -Cedarledge had cost, but little of the labour of its making. It was -simply the world of her childhood, and she could see it from no other -angle, nor imagine it as ever having been different. To her it had -always worn the same enchantment, stretched to the same remote -distances. At nineteen it was almost the last illusion she had left. -</p> -<p> -In the path by the lake she felt herself drawn back under the old spell. -Those budding branches, the smell of black peaty soil quivering with -life, the woodlands faintly starred with dogwood, all were the setting -of childish adventures, old games with Jim, Indian camps on the -willow-fringed island, and innocent descents among the rhododendrons to -boat or bathe by moonlight. -</p> -<p> -The old skiff had escaped Mrs. Manford's annual "doing-up" and still -leaked through the same rusty seams. Pushing out upon the lake, Nona -leaned on the oars and let the great mockery of the spring dilate her -heart... -</p> - -<p><br></p> - -<p> -Manford questioned: "All right, eh? Warm enough? Not going too fast? The -air's still sharp up here in the hills;" and Lita settled down beside -him into one of the deep silences that enfolded her as softly as her -furs. By turning his head a little he could just see the tip of her nose -and the curve of her upper lip between hat-brim and silver fox; and the -sense of her, so close and so still, sunk in that warm animal hush which -he always found so restful, dispelled his last uneasiness, and made her -presence at his side seem as safe and natural as his own daughter's. -</p> -<p> -"Just as well you sent the boy by train, though—I foresaw I'd get off -too late to suit the young gentleman's hours." -</p> -<p> -She curled down more deeply at his side, with a contented laugh. -</p> -<p> -Manford, intent on the steering wheel, restrained the impulse to lay a -hand over hers, and kept his profile steadily turned to her. It was -wonderful, how successfully his plan was working out ... how -reasonable she'd been about it in the end. Poor child! No doubt she -would always be reasonable with people who knew how to treat her. And he -flattered himself that he did. It hadn't been easy, just at first—but -now he'd struck the right note and meant to hold it. Not paternal, -exactly: she would have been the first to laugh at anything as -old-fashioned as that. Heavy fathers had gone out with the rest of the -<i>tremolo</i> effects. No; but elder brotherly. That was it. The same free -and friendly relation which existed, say, between Jim and Nona. Why, he had -actually tried chaffing Lita, and she hadn't minded—he had made fun -of that ridiculous Ardwin, and she had just laughed and shrugged. That -little shrug—when her white shoulder, as the dress slipped from it, -seemed to be pushing up into a wing! There was something birdlike and -floating in all her motions... Poor child, poor little girl... He -really felt like her elder brother; and his looking-glass told him that -he didn't look much too old for the part... -</p> -<p> -The sense of having just grazed something dark and lurid, which had -threatened to submerge them, gave him an added feeling of security, a -holiday feeling, as if life stretched before him as safe and open as his -coming fortnight at Cedarledge. How glad he was that he had given up his -tarpon-fishing, managed to pack Jim and Wyant off to Georgia, and -secured this peaceful interval in which to look about him and take stock -of things before the grind began again! -</p> -<p> -The day before yesterday—just after Pauline's departure—it had -seemed as if all their plans would be wrecked by one of Wyant's fits of -crankiness. Wyant always enjoyed changing his mind after every one -else's was made up; and at the last moment he had telephoned to say that -he wasn't well enough to go south. He had rung up Pauline first, and -being told that she had left had communicated with Jim; and Jim, -distracted, had appealed to Manford. It was one of his father's usual -attacks of "nervousness"; cousin Eleanor had seen it coming, and tried -to cut down the whiskies-and-sodas; finally Jim begged Manford to drop -in and reason with his predecessor. -</p> -<p> -These visits always produced a profound impression on Wyant; Manford -himself, for all his professional acuteness, couldn't quite measure the -degree or guess the nature of the effect, but he felt his power, and -preserved it by seeing Wyant as seldom as possible. This time, however, -it seemed as if things might not go as smoothly as usual. Wyant, who -looked gaunt and excited, tried to carry off the encounter with the -jauntiness he always assumed in Manford's presence. "My dear fellow! Sit -down, do. Cigar? Always delighted to see my successor. Any little hints -I can give about the management of the concern—" -</p> -<p> -It was his usual note, but exaggerated, overemphasized, lacking the -Wyant touch—and he had gone on: "Though why the man who has failed -should offer advice to the man who has succeeded, I don't know. Well, in -this case it's about Jim... Yes, you're as fond of Jim as I am, I -know... Still, he's <i>my</i> son, eh? Well, I'm not satisfied that it's -a good thing to take him away from his wife at this particular moment. -Know I'm old-fashioned, of course ... all the musty old traditions have -been superseded. You and your set have seen to that—introduced the -breezy code of the prairies... But my son's my son; he wasn't brought up -in the new way, and, damn it all, Manford, you understand; well, -no—I suppose there are some things you never <i>will</i> -understand, no matter how devilish clever you are, and how many millions -you've made." -</p> -<p> -The apple-cart had been near upsetting; but if Manford didn't understand -poor Wyant's social code he did know how to keep his temper when it was -worth while, and how to talk to a weak overexcited man who had been -drinking too hard, and who took no exercise. -</p> -<p> -"Worried about Jim, eh? Yes—I don't wonder. I am too. Fact is, Jim's -worked himself to a standstill, and I feel partly responsible for it, -for I put him onto that job at the bank, and he's been doing it too -well—overdoing it. That's the whole trouble, and that's why I feel -responsible to you all for getting him away as soon as possible, and -letting him have a complete holiday... Jim's young—a fortnight off -will straighten him out. But you're the only person who can get him away -from his wife and baby, and wherever Lita is there'll be jazz and -nonsense, and bills and bothers; that's why his mother and I have -offered to take the lady on for a while, and give him his chance. As man -to man, Wyant, I think we two ought to stand together and see this thing -through. If we do, I guarantee everything will come out right. Do you good -too—being off like that with your boy, in a good climate, loafing -on the beach and watching Jim recuperate. Wish I could run down and join -you—and I don't say I won't make a dash for it, just for a week-end, -if I can break away from the family. A-1 fishing at the island—and I -know you used to be a great fisherman. As for Lita, she'll be safe enough -with Pauline and Nona." -</p> -<p> -The trick was done. -</p> -<p> -But why think of it as a trick, when at the time he had meant every word -he spoke? Jim <i>was</i> dead-beat—<i>did</i> need a -change—and yet could only have been got away on the pretext of -having to take his father south. Queer, how in some inner fold of one's -conscience a collection of truths could suddenly seem to look like a -tissue of lies! ... Lord, but what morbid rubbish! Manford was on his -honour to make the whole thing turn out as true as it sounded, and he -was going to. And there was an end of it. And here was Cedarledge. The -drive hadn't lasted a minute... -</p> -<p> -How lovely the place looked in the twilight, a haze of tender tints -melting into shadow, the long dark house-front already gemmed with -orange panes! -</p> -<p> -"You'll like it, won't you, Lita?" A purr of content at his elbow. -</p> -<p> -If only Pauline would have the sense to leave him alone, let him enjoy -it all in Lita's lazy inarticulate way, not cram him with statistics and -achievements, with expenditures and results. He was so tired of her -perpetual stock-taking, her perpetual rendering of accounts and -reckoning up of interest. He admired it all, of course—he admired -Pauline herself more than ever. But he longed to let himself sink into -the spring sweetness as a man might sink on a woman's breast, and just -feel her quiet hands in his hair. -</p> -<p> -"There's the dogwood! Look! Never seen it in bloom here before, have -you? It's one of our sights." He had counted a good deal on the effect -of the dogwood. "Well, here we are—Jove, but it's good to be here! -Why, child, I believe you've been asleep..." He lifted her, still -half-drowsing, from the motor— -</p> -<p> -And now, the illuminated threshold, Powder, the footmen, the inevitable -stack of letters—and Pauline. -</p> -<p> -But outside the spring dusk was secretly weaving its velvet spell. He -said to himself: "Shouldn't wonder if I slept ten hours at a stretch -tonight." -</p> - -<p><br><br><br></p> -</div> -<div class="chapter"> -<h2><a id="chap21"></a>XXI</h2> - -<div> - <img class="drop-cap" src="images/dropcap-t.jpg" width="70" alt="drop_t"> -</div> -<p class="drop-cap"> -THE last day before her husband's arrival had been exhausting to -Pauline; but she could not deny that the results were worth the effort. -When had she ever before heard Dexter say on such a full note of -satisfaction: "Jove, but it's good to be back! What have you done to -make the place look so jolly?", or seen his smiling glance travel so -observantly about the big hall with its lamps and flowers and blazing -hearth? "Well, Lita, this is better than town, eh? You didn't know what -a good place Cedarledge could be! Don't rush off upstairs—they're -bringing the baby down. Come over to the fire and warm up; it's nipping -here in the hills. Hullo, Nona, you quiet mouse—didn't even see you, -curled up there in your corner..." -</p> -<p> -Yes; the arrival had been perfect. Even Lita's kiss had seemed -spontaneous. And Dexter had praised everything, noticed all the -improvements; had voluntarily announced that he meant to inspect the new -heating system and the model chicken hatchery the next morning. -"Wonderful, what a way you have of making things a hundred per cent -better when they seemed all right before! I suppose even the eggs at -breakfast tomorrow will be twice their normal size." -</p> -<p> -One such comment paid his wife for all she had done, and roused her -inventive faculty to fresh endeavour. Wasn't there something else she -could devise to provoke his praise? And the beauty of it was that it all -looked as if it had been done so easily. The casual observer would never -have suspected that the simple life at Cedarledge gave its smiling -organizer more trouble than a season of New York balls. -</p> -<p> -That also was part of Pauline's satisfaction. She even succeeded in -persuading herself, as she passed through the hall with its piled-up -golf clubs and tennis rackets, its motor coats and capes and scarves -stacked on the long table, and the muddy terriers comfortably rolled up -on chintz-cushioned settles, that it was really all as primitive and -impromptu as it looked, and that she herself had always shared her -husband's passion for stamping about in the mud in tweed and homespun. -</p> -<p> -"One of these days," she thought, "we'll give up New York altogether, -and live here all the year round, like an old-fashioned couple, and -Dexter can farm while I run the poultry-yard and dairy." Instantly her -practical imagination outlined the plan of an up-to-date chicken-farm on -a big scale, and calculated the revenues to be drawn from really -scientific methods of cheese and butter-making. Spring broilers, she -knew, were in ever-increasing demand, and there was a great call in -restaurants and hotels for the little foreign-looking cream-cheeses in -silver paper... -</p> - -<p><br></p> - -<p> -"The Marchesa has rung up again, madam," Powder reminded her, the second -morning at breakfast. Everybody came down to breakfast at Cedarledge; it -was part of the simple life. But it generally ended in Pauline's -throning alone behind the tea-urn, for her husband and daughter revelled -in unpunctuality when they were on a holiday, and Lita's inability to -appear before luncheon was tacitly taken for granted. -</p> -<p> -"The Marchesa?" Pauline was roused from the placid enjoyment of her -new-laid egg and dewy butter. Why was it that one could never completely -protect one's self against bores and bothers? They had done everything -they could for Amalasuntha, and were now discovering that gratitude may -take more troublesome forms than neglect. -</p> -<p> -"The Marchesa would like to consult you about the date of the Cardinal's -reception." -</p> -<p> -Ah, then it was a fact—it was really settled! A glow of satisfaction -swept away Pauline's indifference, and her sense of fairness obliged her -to admit that, for such a service, Amalasuntha had a right to a Sunday -at Cedarledge. "It will bore her to death to spend two days here alone -with the family; but she will like to be invited, and in the course of -time she'll imagine it was a big house-party," Pauline reflected. -</p> -<p> -"Very well, Powder. Please telephone that I shall expect the Marchesa -next Saturday." -</p> -<p> -That gave them, at any rate, the inside of a week to themselves. After -six days alone with his women-kind perhaps even Dexter would not be -sorry for a little society; and if so, Pauline, with the Marchesa as a -bait, could easily drum up a country-neighbour dinner. The Toys, she -happened to remember, were to be at the Greystock Country Club over -Easter. She smiled at the thought that this might have made Dexter -decide to give up California for Cedarledge. She was not afraid of Mrs. -Toy any longer, and even recognized that her presence in the -neighbourhood might be useful. Pauline could never wholly believe—at -least not for many hours together—that people could be happy in the -country without all sorts of social alleviations; and six days of quiet -seemed to her measurable only in terms of prehistoric eras. When had her -mind ever had such a perspective to range over? Knowing it could be -shortened at will she sighed contentedly, and decided to devote the -morning to the study of a new refrigerating system she had recently seen -advertised. -</p> -<p> -Dexter had not yet made his tour of inspection with her; but that was -hardly surprising. The first morning he had slept late, and lounged -about on the terrace in the balmy sunshine. In the afternoon they had -all motored to Greystock for a round of golf; and today, on coming down -to breakfast, Pauline had learned with surprise that her husband, Nona -and Lita were already off for an early canter, leaving word that they -would breakfast on the road. She did not know whether to marvel most at -Lita's having been coaxed out of bed before breakfast, or at Dexter's -taking to the saddle after so many years. Certainly the Cedarledge air -was wonderfully bracing and rejuvenating; she herself was feeling its -effects. And though she would have liked to show her husband all the -improvements she felt no impatience, but only a quiet satisfaction in -the success of her plans. If they could give Jim back a contented Lita -the object of their holiday would be attained; and in a glow of optimism -she sat down at her writing-table and dashed off a joyful letter to her -son. -</p> -<p> -"Dexter is wonderful; he has already coaxed Lita out for a ride before -breakfast... Isn't that a triumph? When you get back you won't know -her... I shouldn't have a worry left if I didn't think Nona is looking -too pale and drawn. I shall persuade her to take a course of -Inspirational treatment as soon as we get back to town. By the way," her -pen ran on, "have you heard the news about Stan Heuston? People say he's -gone to Europe with that dreadful Merrick woman, and that now Aggie will -really have to divorce him... Nona, who has always been such a friend -of Stan's, has of course heard the report, but doesn't seem to know any -more than the rest of us..." -</p> -<p> -Nothing amused Arthur Wyant more than to be supplied with such tit-bits -of scandal before they became common property. Pauline couldn't help -feeling that father and son must find the evenings long in their island -bungalow; and in the overflow of her own satisfaction she wanted to do -what she could to cheer them. -</p> - -<p><br></p> - -<p> -In spite of her manifold occupations the day seemed long. She had -visited the baby, seen the cook, consulted with Powder about the working -of the new burglar-alarm, gone over the gardens, catalogues in hand, -with the head-gardener, walked down to the dairy and the poultry yard to -say that Mr. Manford would certainly inspect them both the next day, and -called up Maisie Bruss to ask news of her mother, and tell her to -prepare a careful list for the reception to the Cardinal; yet an -astonishing amount of time still remained. It was delightful to be in -the country, to study the working-out of her improvements, and do her -daily exercises with windows open on the fresh hill breezes; but already -her real self was projected forward into complicated plans for the -Cardinal's entertainment. She wondered if it would not be wise to run up -to town the next morning and consult Amalasuntha; and reluctantly -decided that a talk on the telephone would do. -</p> -<p> -The talk was long, and on the whole satisfactory; but if Maisie had been -within reach the arrangements for the party would have made more -progress. It was most unlucky that the doctors thought Maisie ought to -stay with her mother till the latter could get a private room at the -hospital. ("A room, of course, Maisie dear; I won't have her in a ward. -Not for the world! Just put it down on your account, please. So glad to -do it!") She really was glad to do all she could; but it was unfortunate -(and no one would feel it more than Maisie) that Mrs. Bruss should have -been taken ill just then. To fill the time, Pauline decided to go for a -walk with the dogs. -</p> -<p> -When she returned she found Nona, still in her riding-habit, settled in -a sofa-corner in the library, and deep in a book. -</p> -<p> -"Why, child, where did you drop from? I didn't know you were back." -</p> -<p> -"The others are not. Lita suddenly took it into her head that it would -be fun to motor over to Greenwich and dine at the Country Club, and so -father got a motor at Greystock and telephoned for one of the grooms to -fetch the horses. It sounded rather jolly, but I was tired, so I came -home. It's nearly full moon, and they'll have a glorious run back." Nona -smiled up at her mother, as if to say that the moon made all the -difference. -</p> -<p> -"Oh, but that means dancing, and getting home at all hours! And I -promised Jim to see that Lita kept quiet, and went to bed early. What's -the use of our having persuaded her to come here? Your father ought to -have refused to go." -</p> -<p> -"If he had, there were plenty of people lunching at Greystock who would -have taken her on. You know—the cocktail crowd. That's why father -sacrificed himself." -</p> -<p> -Pauline reflected. "I see. Your father always has to sacrifice himself. -I suppose there's no use trying to make Lita listen to reason." -</p> -<p> -"Not unless one humours her a little. Father sees that. We mustn't let -her get bored here—she won't stay if we do." -</p> -<p> -Pauline felt a sudden weariness in all her bones. It was as if the -laboriously built-up edifice of the simple life at Cedarledge had -already crumbled into dust at a kick of Lita's little foot. The -engine-house, the poultry yard, the new burglar-alarm and the heating of -the swimming pool—when would Dexter ever have time to inspect and -admire them, if he was to waste his precious holiday in scouring the -country after Lita? -</p> -<p> -"Then I suppose you and I dine alone," Pauline said, turning a pinched -little smile on her daughter. -</p> - -<p><br><br><br></p> -</div> -<div class="chapter"> -<h2><a id="chap22"></a>XXII</h2> - -<div> - <img class="drop-cap" src="images/dropcap-w.jpg" width="70" alt="drop_w"> -</div> -<p class="drop-cap"> -WHAT a time of year it was—the freed earth suddenly breaking into -life from every frozen seam! Manford wondered if he had ever before had -time to feel the impetuous loveliness of the American spring. -</p> -<p> -In spite of his drive home in the small hours he had started out early -the next morning for a long tramp. Sleep—how could a man sleep -with that April moonlight in his veins? The moon that was -everywhere—caught in pearly puffs on the shadbush branches, -scattered in ivory drifts of wild plum bloom, tipping the grasses of the -wayside with pale pencillings, sheeting the recesses of the woodland -with pools of icy silver. A freezing burning magic, into which a man -plunged, and came out cold and aglow, to find everything about him as -unreal and incredible as himself... -</p> -<p> -After the blatant club restaurant, noise, jazz, revolving couples, -Japanese lanterns, screaming laughter, tumultuous good-byes, this white -silence, the long road unwinding and twisting itself up again, blind -faces of shuttered farmhouses, black forests, misty lakes—a cut -through a world in sleep, all dumb and moon-bemused... -</p> -<p> -The contrast was beautiful, intolerable... -</p> -<p> -Sleep? He hadn't even gone to bed. Just plunged into a bath, and -stretched out on his lounge to see the dawn come. A mysterious sight -that, too; the cold fingers of the light remaking a new world, while men -slept, unheeding, and imagined they would wake to some familiar -yesterday. Fools! -</p> -<p> -He breakfasted—ravenously—before his wife was down, and swung -off with a couple of dogs on a long tramp, he didn't care where. -</p> -<p> -Even the daylight world seemed unimaginably strange: as if he had never -really looked at it before. He walked on slowly for three or four miles, -vaguely directing himself toward Greystock. His long tramps as a boy, in -his farming days, had given him the habit of deliberate steady walking, -and the unwonted movement refreshed rather than tired him—or at -least, while it tired his muscles, it seemed to invigorate his brain. -Excited? No—just pleasantly stimulated... -</p> -<p> -He stretched himself out under a walnut tree on a sunny slope, lit his -pipe and gazed abroad over fields and woods. All the land was hazy with -incipient life. The dogs hunted and burrowed, and then came back to doze -at his feet with pleasant dreamings. The sun on his face felt warm and -human, and gradually life began to settle back into its old ruts—a -comfortable routine, diversified by pleasant episodes. Could it ever be -more, to a man past fifty? -</p> -<p> -But after a while a chill sank on his spirit. He began to feel cold and -hungry, and set out to walk again. -</p> -<p> -Presently he found it was half-past eleven—time to be heading for -home. Home; and the lunch-table; Pauline; and Nona; and Lita. Oh, God, -no—not yet... He trudged on, slowly and sullenly, deciding to pick -up a mouthful of lunch somewhere by the way. -</p> -<p> -At a turn of the road he caught sight of a woman's figure strolling -across a green slope above him. Strong and erect in her trim golfing -skirt, she came down in his direction swinging a club in her hand. Why, -sure enough, he was actually on the edge of the Greystock course! The -woman was alone, without companions or caddies—going around for a -trial spin, or perhaps simply taking a stroll, as he was, drinking in the -intoxicating air... -</p> -<p> -"Hul<i>lo</i>!" she called, and he found himself advancing toward Gladys -Toy. -</p> -<p> -Was this active erect woman in her nut-brown sweater and plaited skirt -the same as the bejewelled and redundant beauty of so many wearisome -dinners? Something of his old interest—the short-lived fancy of a -week or two—revived in him as she swung along, treading firmly but -lightly on her broad easy shoes. -</p> -<p> -"Hul<i>lo</i>!" he responded. "Didn't know you were here." -</p> -<p> -"I wasn't. I only came last night. Isn't it glorious?" Even her -slow-dripping voice moved faster and had a livelier ring. Decidedly, he -admired a well-made woman, a woman with curves and volume—all the -more after the stripped skeletons he had dined among the night before. Mrs. -Toy had height enough to carry off her pounds, and didn't look ashamed -of them, either. -</p> -<p> -"Glorious? Yes, you <i>are</i>!" he said. -</p> -<p> -"Oh, <i>me</i>?" -</p> -<p> -"What else did you mean, then?" -</p> -<p> -"Don't be silly! How did you get here?" -</p> -<p> -"On my feet." -</p> -<p> -"Gracious! From Cedarledge? You must be dead." -</p> -<p> -"Don't you believe it. I walked over to lunch with you." -</p> -<p> -"You've just said you didn't know I was here." -</p> -<p> -"You mustn't believe everything I say." -</p> -<p> -"All right. Then I won't believe you walked over to lunch with me." -</p> -<p> -"Will you believe me when I tell you you're awfully beautiful?" -</p> -<p> -"Yes!" she challenged him. -</p> -<p> -"And that I want to kiss you?" -</p> -<p> -She smiled with the eyes of a tired swimmer, and he saw that her slender -stock of repartee was exhausted. "Herman'll be here tonight," she said. -</p> -<p> -"Then let's make the most of today." -</p> -<p> -"But I've asked some people to lunch at the club." -</p> -<p> -"Then you'll chuck them, and come off and lunch with me somewhere else." -</p> -<p> -"Oh, will I—shall I?" She laughed, and he saw her breast rise on her -shortened breath. He caught her to him and planted a kiss in the middle -of her laughter. -</p> -<p> -"Now will you?" -</p> -<p> -She was a rich armful, and he remembered how splendid he had thought -plump rosy women in his youth, before money and fashion imposed their -artificial standards. -</p> - -<p><br></p> - -<p> -When he reëntered the doors of Cedarledge the cold spring sunset was -slanting in through the library windows on the tea-table at which his -wife and Nona sat. Of Lita there was no sign; Manford heard with -indolent amusement that she was reported to be just getting up. His -sentiment about Lita had settled into fatherly indulgence; he no longer -thought the epithet inappropriate. But underneath the superficial -kindliness he felt for her, as for all the world, he was aware of a -fundamental indifference to most things but his own comfort and -convenience. Such was the salutary result of fresh air and recovered -leisure. How absurd to work one's self into a state of fluster about this -or that—money or business or women! Especially women. As he looked -back on the last weeks he saw what a fever of fatigue he must have been -in to take such an exaggerated view of his own emotions. After three -days at Cedarledge serenity had descended on him like a benediction. -Gladys Toy's cheeks were as smooth as nectarines; and the keen morning -light had shown him that she wasn't in the least made up. He recalled -the fact with a certain pleasure, and then dismissed her from his -mind—or rather she dropped out of herself. He wasn't in the humour to -think long about anybody or anything ... he revelled in his own -laziness and indifference. -</p> -<p> -"Tea? Yes; and a buttered muffin by all means. Several of them. I'm as -hungry as the devil. Went for a long tramp this morning before any of -you were up. Mrs. Toy ran across me, and brought me back in her new -two-seater. A regular beauty—the car, I mean—you'll have to -have one like it, Nona... Jove, how good the fire feels ... and what is it -that smells so sweet? Carnations—why, they're giants! We must go over -the green-houses tomorrow, Pauline; and all the rest of it. I want to -take stock of all your innovations." -</p> -<p> -At that moment he felt able to face even the tour of inspection, and all -the facts and calculations it would evoke. Everything seemed easy now -that he had found he could shake off his moonlight obsession by spending -a few hours with a pretty woman who didn't mind being kissed. He was to -meet Mrs. Toy again the day after tomorrow; and in the interval she -would suffice to occupy his mind when he had nothing more interesting to -think of. -</p> -<p> -As he was putting a match to his pipe Lita came into the room with her -long glide. Her boy was perched on her shoulder, and she looked like one -of Crivelli's enigmatic Madonnas carrying a little red-haired Jesus. -</p> - -<p><br></p> - -<p> -"Gracious! Is this breakfast or tea? I seem to have overslept myself -after our joy-ride," she said, addressing a lazy smile to Manford. -</p> -<p> -She dropped to her knees before the fire and held up the boy to Pauline. -"Kiss his granny," she commanded in her faintly derisive voice. -</p> -<p> -It was very pretty, very cleverly staged; but Manford said to himself -that she was too self-conscious, and that her lips were too much -painted. Besides, he had always hated women with prominent cheekbones -and hollows under them. He settled back comfortably into the afternoon's -reminiscences. -</p> - -<p><br><br><br></p> -</div> -<div class="chapter"> -<h2><a id="chap23"></a>XXIII</h2> - -<div> - <img class="drop-cap" src="images/dropcap-d.jpg" width="70" alt="drop_d"> -</div> -<p class="drop-cap"> -DECIDEDLY, there was a different time-measure for life in town and in -the country. -</p> -<p> -The dinner for Amalasuntha organized (and the Toys secured for it), -there were still two days left in that endless inside of a week which -was to have passed so rapidly. Yet everything had gone according to -Pauline's wishes. Dexter had really made the promised round of house and -grounds, and had extended his inspection to dairy, poultry yard and -engine-house. And he had approved of everything—approved almost too -promptly and uncritically. Was it because he had not been sufficiently -interested to note defects, or at any rate to point them out? The -suspicion, which stirred in his wife when she observed that he walked -through the cow-stables without making any comment on the defective -working of the new ventilating system, became a certainty when, on their -return to the house, she suggested their going over the accounts -together. "Oh, as long as the architect has o.k'd them! Besides, it's -too late now to do anything, isn't it? And your results are so splendid -that I don't see how they could be overpaid. Everything seems to be -perfect—" -</p> -<p> -"Not the ventilating system in the Alderneys' stable, Dexter." -</p> -<p> -"Oh, well; can't that be arranged? If it can't, put it down to profit -and loss. I never enjoyed anything more than my swim this morning in the -pool. You've managed to get the water warmed to exactly the right -temperature." -</p> -<p> -He slipped out to join Nona on the putting green below the terrace. -</p> -<p> -Yes; everything was all right; he was evidently determined that -everything should be. It had been the same about Michelangelo's debts. -At first he had resisted his wife's suggestion that they should help to -pay them off, in order to escape the young man's presence in New York; -then he had suddenly promised the Marchesa to settle the whole amount, -without so much as a word to Pauline. It was as if he were engrossed in -some deep and secret purpose, and resolved to clear away whatever -threatened to block his obstinate advance. She had seen him thus -absorbed when a "big case" possessed him. But there were no signs now of -professional preoccupation; no telephoning, wiring, hurried arrivals of -junior members or confidential clerks. He seemed to have shaken off "the -office" with all his other cares. There was something about his serene -good humour that obscurely frightened her. -</p> -<p> -Once she might have ascribed it to an interest—an exaggerated -interest—in his step-son's wife. That idea had already crossed -Pauline's mind: she remembered its cold brush on the evening when her -husband had come home unexpectedly to see her, and had talked so -earnestly and sensibly about bringing Lita and her boy to Cedarledge. -The mere flit of a doubt—no more; and even then Pauline had felt its -preposterousness, and banished it in disgust and fear. -</p> -<p> -Now she smiled at the fear. Her husband's manner to Lita was -perfect—easy, good humoured but slightly ironic. At the time of Jim's -marriage Dexter had had that same smile. He had thought the bride silly -and pretentious, he had even questioned her good looks. And now the -first week at Cedarledge showed that, if his attitude had grown -kindlier, it was for Jim's sake, not Lita's. Nona and Lita were together -all day long; when Manford joined them he treated both in the same way, -as a man treats two indulged and amusing daughters. -</p> -<p> -What was he thinking of, then? Gladys Toy again, perhaps? Pauline had -imagined that was over. Even if it were not, it no longer worried her. -Dexter had had similar "flare-ups" before, and they hadn't lasted. -Besides, Pauline had gradually acquired a certain wifely philosophy, and -was prepared to be more lenient to her second husband than to the first. -As wives grew older they had to realize that husbands didn't always keep -pace with them... -</p> -<p> -Not that she felt herself too old for Manford's love; all her early -illusions had rushed back to her the night he had made her give up the -Rivington dinner. But her dream had not survived that evening. She had -understood then that he meant they should be "only friends"; that was -all the future was to hold for her. Well; for a grandmother it ought to -be enough. She had no patience with the silly old women who expected -"that sort of nonsense" to last. Still, she meant, on her return to -town, to consult a new Russian who had invented a radium treatment which -absolutely wiped out wrinkles. He called himself a Scientific Initiate ... -the name fascinated her. -</p> -<p> -From these perplexities she was luckily distracted by the urgent -business of the Cardinal's reception. Even without Maisie she could do a -good deal of preparatory writing and telephoning; but she was mortified -to find how much her handwriting had suffered from the long habit of -dictation. She never wrote a note in her own hand nowadays—except to -distinguished foreigners, since Amalasuntha had explained that they -thought typed communications ill-bred. And her unpractised script was so -stiff and yet slovenly that she decided she must have her hands -"treated" as she did her other unemployed muscles. But how find time for -this new and indispensable cure? Her spirits rose with the invigorating -sense of being once more in a hurry... -</p> - -<p><br></p> - -<p> -Nona sat on the south terrace in the sun. The Cedarledge experiment had -lasted eight days now, and she had to own that it had turned out better -than she would have thought possible. -</p> -<p> -Lita was giving them wonderfully little trouble. After the first flight -to Greenwich she had shown no desire for cabarets and night-clubs, but -had plunged into the alternative excitement of violent outdoor sports; -relapsing, after hours of hard exercise, into a dreamy lassitude -unruffled by outward events. She never spoke of her husband, and Nona -did not know if Jim's frequent—too frequent—letters, were -answered, or even read. Lita smiled vaguely when he was mentioned, and -merely remarked, when her mother-in-law once risked an allusion to the -future: "I thought we were here to be cured of plans." And Pauline effaced -her blunder with a smile. -</p> -<p> -Nona herself felt more and more like one of the trench-watchers pictured -in the war-time papers. There she sat in the darkness on her narrow -perch, her eyes glued to the observation-slit which looked out over -seeming emptiness. She had often wondered what those men thought about -during the endless hours of watching, the days and weeks when nothing -happened, when no faintest shadow of a skulking enemy crossed their span -of no-man's land. What kept them from falling asleep, or from losing -themselves in waking dreams, and failing to give warning when the attack -impended? She could imagine a man led out to be shot in the Flanders mud -because, at such a moment, he had believed himself to be dozing on a -daisy bank at home... -</p> -<p> -Since her talk with Aggie Heuston a sort of <i>curare</i> had entered into -her veins. She was sharply aware of everything that was going on about her, -but she felt unable to rouse herself. Even if anything that mattered -ever did happen again, she questioned if she would be able to shake off -the weight of her indifference. Was it really ten days now since that -talk with Aggie? And had everything of which she had then been warned -fulfilled itself without her lifting a finger? She dimly remembered -having acted in what seemed a mood of heroic self-denial; now she felt -only as if she had been numb. What was the use of fine motives if, once -the ardour fallen, even they left one in the lurch? -</p> -<p> -She thought: "I feel like the oldest person in the world, and yet with -the longest life ahead of me ..." and a shiver of loneliness ran over -her. -</p> -<p> -Should she go and hunt up the others? What difference would that make? -She might offer to write notes for her mother, who was upstairs plunged -in her visiting-list; or look in on Lita, who was probably asleep after -her hard gallop of the morning; or find her father, and suggest going -for a walk. She had not seen her father since lunch; but she seemed to -remember that he had ordered his new Buick brought round. Off -again—he was as restless as the others. All of them were restless -nowadays. Had he taken Lita with him, perhaps? Well—why not? -Wasn't he here to look after Lita? A sudden twitch of curiosity drew -Nona to her feet, and sent her slowly upstairs to her sister-in-law's -room. Why did she have to drag one foot after the other, as if some -hidden influence held her back, signalled a mute warning not to go? What -nonsense! Better make a clean breast of it to herself once for all, and -admit— -</p> -<p> -"I beg pardon, Miss." It was the ubiquitous Powder at her heels. "If -you're going up to Mrs. Manford's sitting-room would you kindly tell her -that Mr. Manford has telephoned he won't be back from Greystock till -late, and she's please not to wait dinner?" Powder looked a little as if -he would rather not give that particular message himself. -</p> -<p> -"Greystock? Oh, all right. I'll tell her." -</p> -<p> -Golf again—golf and Gladys Toy. Nona gave her clinging preoccupations -a last shake. This was really a lesson to her! To be imagining horrible -morbid things about her father while he was engaged in a perfectly -normal elderly man's flirtation with a stupid woman he would forget as -soon as he got back to town! A real Easter holiday diversion. "After -all, he gave up his tarpon-fishing to come here, and Gladys isn't a bad -substitute—as far as weight goes. But a good deal less exciting as -sport." A dreary gleam of amusement crossed her mind. -</p> -<p> -Softly she pushed open the door of one of the perfectly appointed -spare-rooms: a room so studiously equipped with every practical -convenience—from the smoothly-hung window-ventilators to the jointed -dressing-table lights, from the little portable telephone, and the -bed-table with folding legs, to the tall threefold mirror which lost no -curve of the beauty it reflected—that even Lita's careless ways -seemed subdued to the prevailing order. -</p> -<p> -Lita was on the lounge, one long arm drooping, the other folded behind -her in the immemorial attitude of sleeping beauty. Sleep lay on her -lightly, as it does on those who summon it at will. It was her habitual -escape from the boredom between thrills, and in such intervals of -existence as she was now traversing she plunged back into it after every -bout of outdoor activity. -</p> -<p> -Nona tiptoed forward and looked down on her. Who said that sleep -revealed people's true natures? It only made them the more enigmatic by -the added veil of its own mystery. Lita's head was nested in the angle -of a thin arm, her lids rounded heavily above the sharp cheek-bones just -swept by their golden fringe, the pale bow of the mouth relaxed, the -slight steel-strong body half shown in the parting of a flowered -dressing-gown. Thus exposed, with gaze extinct and loosened muscles, she -seemed a mere bundle of contradictory whims tied together by a frail -thread of beauty. The hand of the downward arm hung open, palm up. In -its little hollow lay the fate of three lives. What would she do with -them? How could one conceive of her knowing, or planning, or -imagining—conceive of her in any sort of durable human relations to -any one or anything? -</p> -<p> -Her eyes opened and a languid curiosity floated up through them. -</p> -<p> -"That you? I must have fallen asleep. I was trying to count up the -number of months we've been here, and numbers always make me go to -sleep." -</p> -<p> -Nona laughed and sat down at the foot of the lounge. "Dear me—just as -I thought you were beginning to be happy!" -</p> -<p> -"Well, isn't this what you call being happy—in the country?" -</p> -<p> -"Lying on your back, and wondering how many months there are in a week?" -</p> -<p> -"A week? Is it only a week? How on earth can you be sure, when one day's -so exactly like another?" -</p> -<p> -"Tomorrow won't be. There's the blow-out for Amalasuntha, and dancing -afterward. Mother's idea of the simple life." -</p> -<p> -"Well, all your mother's ideas <i>are</i> simple." Lita yawned, her pale -pink mouth drooping like a faded flower. "Besides, it's ages till tomorrow. -Where's your father? He was going to take me for a spin in the new -Buick." -</p> -<p> -"He's broken his promise, then. Deserted us all and sneaked off to -Greystock on his lone." -</p> -<p> -A faint redness rose to Lita's cheek-bones. "Greystock and Gladys Toy? -Is that <i>his</i> idea of the simple life? About on a par with your -mother's... Did you ever notice the Toy ankles?" -</p> -<p> -Nona smiled. "They're not unnoticeable. But you forget that father's -getting to be an old gentleman... Fathers mustn't be choosers..." -</p> -<p> -Lita made a slight grimace. "Oh, he could do better than that. There's -old Cosby, who looks heaps older—didn't he want to marry you? ... -Nona, you darling, let's take the Ford and run over to Greenwich for -dinner. Would your mother so very much mind? Does she want us here the -whole blessed time?" -</p> -<p> -"I'll go and ask her. But on a Friday night the Country Club will be as -dead as the moon. Only a few old ladies playing bridge." -</p> -<p> -"Well, then we'll have the floor to ourselves. I want a good practice, -and it's a ripping floor. We can dance with the waiters. It'll be fun to -shock the old ladies. I noticed one of the waiters the other -day—must be an Italian—built rather like Tommy Ardwin... I'm -sure he dances..." -</p> -<p> -That was all life meant to Lita—would ever mean. Good floors to -practise new dance-steps on, men—any men—to dance with and -be flattered by, women—any women—to stare and envy one, dull -people to startle, stupid people to shock—but never any one, Nona -questioned, whom one wanted neither to startle nor shock, neither to be -envied nor flattered by, but just to lose one's self in for good and -all? Lita lose herself—? Why, all she wanted was to keep on -finding herself, immeasurably magnified, in every pair of eyes she met! -</p> -<p> -And here were Nona and her father and mother fighting to preserve this -brittle plaything for Jim, when somewhere in the world there might be a -real human woman for him... What was the sense of it all? -</p> - -<p><br><br><br></p> -</div> -<div class="chapter"> -<h2><a id="chap24"></a>XXIV</h2> - -<div> - <img class="drop-cap" src="images/dropcap-t.jpg" width="70" alt="drop_t"> -</div> -<p class="drop-cap"> -THE Marchesa di San Fedele's ideas about the country were perfectly -simple; in fact she had only one. She regarded it as a place in which -there was more time to play bridge than in town. Thank God for -that!—and the rest one simply bore with... Of course there was the -obligatory going the rounds with host or hostess: gardens, glass, dairy, -chicken-hatchery, and heaven knew what besides (stables, thank goodness, -were out of fashion—even if people rode they no longer, unless they -kept hounds, dragged one between those dreary rows of box stalls, or -made one admire the lustrous steel and leather of the harness room, or -the monograms stencilled in blue and red on the coach-house floor). -</p> -<p> -The Marchesa's life had always been made up of doing things as dull as -going over model dairies in order to get the chance, or the money, to do -others as thrilling to her as dancing was to Lita. It was part of the -game: one had to pay for what one got: the thing was to try and get a -great deal more than the strict equivalent. -</p> -<p> -"Not that I don't marvel at your results, Pauline; we all do. But -they make me feel so useless and incapable. All this wonderful -creation—baths and swimming-pools and hatcheries and fire-engines, -and everything so perfect, indoors and out! Sometimes I'm glad you've never -been to our poor old San Fedele. But of course bathrooms will have to be -put in at San Fedele if Michelangelo finds an American bride when he -comes over..." -</p> -<p> -Pauline laid down the pen she had taken up to record the exact terms in -which she was to address the Cardinal's secretary. ("A <i>personal</i> -note, dear; yes, in your own writing; they don't yet understand your new -American ways at the Vatican...") -</p> -<p> -"When Michelangelo comes over?" Pauline echoed. -</p> -<p> -The Marchesa's face was sharper than a knife. "It's my little surprise. -I didn't mean you or Dexter to know till the contract was signed..." -</p> -<p> -"What contract?" -</p> -<p> -"My boy's to do Cæsar Borgia in the new film. Klawhammer cabled a -definite offer the day you left for the country. And of course I -insisted on Michelangelo's sailing instantly, though he'd planned to -spend the spring in Paris and was rather cross at having to give it up. -But as I told him, now is the moment to secure a lovely American bride. -We all know what your rich papas-in-law over here always ask: 'What -debts? What prospects? What other women?' The woman matter can generally -be arranged. The debts <i>are</i>, in this case—thanks to your -generosity. But the prospects—what were <i>they</i>, I ask you? -Months of green mould at San Fedele for a fortnight's splash in Rome ... -oh, I don't disguise it! And what American bride would accept -<i>that</i>? The San Fedele pearls, yes—but where is the San -Fedele plumbing? But now, my dear, Michelangelo presents himself as an -equal ... superior, I might say, if I weren't afraid of being partial. -Cæsar Borgia in a Klawhammer film—no one knows how many millions -it may mean! And of course Michelangelo is the very type..." -</p> -<p> -"<i>To do me the favour to transmit to his Eminence</i>... Yes; this really -is a surprise, Amalasuntha." Inwardly Pauline was saying: "After all, -why not? If his own mother doesn't mind seeing him all over the place on -film posters. And perhaps now he may pay us back—in common decency -he'll have to!" -</p> -<p> -She saw no serious reason for displeasure, once she had dropped her -carefully cultivated Wyant attitude. "If only it doesn't upset Lita -again, and make her restless!" But they really couldn't hope to keep all -Lita's friends and relations off the screen. -</p> -<p> -"Arthur was amazed—and awfully pleased, after the first recoil. Dear -Arthur, you know, always recoils at first," the Marchesa continued, with -her shrewd deprecating smile, which insinuated that Pauline of course -wouldn't. (It was odd, Pauline reflected; the Marchesa always looked -like a peasant when she was talking business.) -</p> -<p> -"Arthur? You've already written to him about it?" -</p> -<p> -"No, dear. I ran across him yesterday in town. You didn't know Arthur'd -come back? I thought he said he'd telephoned to Nona, or somebody. A -touch of gout—got fidgety because he couldn't see his doctor. But -he looked remarkably well, I thought—so handsome still, in his -<i>élancé</i> Wyant way; only a little too flushed, perhaps. Yes ... -poor Eleanor... Oh, no; he said Jim was still on the island. Perfectly -contented fishing. Jim's the only person I know who's always perfectly -contented ... such a lesson..." The Marchesa's sigh seemed to add: "Very -restful—but how I should despise him if he were my Michelangelo!" -</p> -<p> -Pauline could hear—oh, how distinctly!—all that her former -husband would have to say about Michelangelo's projects. They would be -food for an afternoon's irony. But that did not greatly trouble -her—nor did Wyant's unexpected return. He was always miserable out -of reach of his doctor. And the fact that Jim hadn't come back proved -that there was nothing seriously wrong. Pauline thought: "I'll write to -Jim again, and tell him how perfect Dexter has been about Lita and the -baby, and that will convince him there's no need to hurry back." -</p> -<p> -Complacency returned to her. How should it not, with the list for the -Cardinal's reception nearly complete, and the telephonic assurance of -the Bishop of New York and the Chief Rabbi that both these dignitaries -would be present? Socially also, though the season was over, the -occasion promised to be brilliant. Lots of people were coming back just -to see how a Cardinal was received. Even the Rivingtons were -coming—she had it from the Bishop. Yes, the Rivingtons had -certainly been more cordial since she and Manford had thrown them over -at the last minute. That was the way to treat people who thought -themselves so awfully superior. What wouldn't the Rivingtons have given -to capture the Cardinal? But he was sailing for Italy the day after -Pauline's reception—that was the beauty of it! No one else could -possibly have him. Amalasuntha had stage-managed the whole business very -cleverly. She had even overcome the Cardinal's scruples when he heard -that Mrs. Manford was chairman of the Birth Control committee... And -tonight, at the dinner, how pleasant everybody's congratulations would -be! Pauline gloried in her achievement for Manford's sake. Despite his -assurance to the contrary she could never imagine, for more than a -moment at a time, that such successes were really indifferent to him. -</p> - -<p><br></p> - -<p> -Lita appeared in the drawing-room after almost everybody had arrived. -She was always among the last; and in the country, as she said, there -was no way of knowing what time it was. Even at Cedarledge, where all -the clocks agreed to a second, one could never believe them, and always -suspected they must have stopped together, twelve hours before. -</p> -<p> -"Besides, what's the use of knowing what time it is in the country? Time -for <i>what</i>?" -</p> -<p> -She came in quietly, almost unnoticeably, with the feathered gait that -was half-way between drifting and floating; and at once, in spite of the -twenty people assembled, had the shining parquet and all the mirrors to -herself. That was her way: that knack of clearing the floor no matter -how quietly she entered. And tonight—! -</p> -<p> -Well; perhaps, Manford thought, all the other women <i>were</i> a little -overdressed. Women always had a tendency to overdress when they dined -with the Manfords; to wear too many jewels, and put on clothes that -glistened. Even at Cedarledge Pauline's parties had a New York -atmosphere. And Lita, in her straight white slip, slim and unadorned as -a Primitive angel, with that close coif of goldfish-coloured hair, and -not a spangle, a jewel, a pearl even, made the other women's clothes -look like upholstery. -</p> -<p> -Manford, by the hearth, slightly bored in anticipation, yet bound to -admit that, like all his wife's shows, it was effectively -done—Manford received the shock of that quiet entrance, that -shimmer widening into light, and then turned to Mrs. Herman Toy. Full -noon there; the usual Rubensy redundance flushed by golfing in a high -wind, by a last cocktail before dressing, by the hurried wriggle into -one of those elastic sheaths the women—the redundant -women—wore. Well; he liked ripeness in a fruit to be eaten as soon -as plucked. And Gladys' corn-yellow hair was almost as springy and full -of coloured shadows as the other's red. But the voice, the dress, the -jewels, the blatant jewels! A Cartier show-case spilt over a strawberry -mousse... And the quick possessive look, so clumsily done—brazen, -yet half-abashed! When a woman's first business was to make up her mind -which it was to be... Chances were the man didn't care, as long as her -ogling didn't make him ridiculous... Why couldn't some women always be -in golf clothes—if any? Gala get-up wasn't in everybody's line... -There was Lita speaking to Gladys now—with auburn eyebrows lifted -just a thread. The contrast—! And Gladys purpler and more -self-conscious—God, why did she have her clothes so tight? And -that drawing-room drawl! Why couldn't she just sing out: "Hul<i>lo</i>!" -as she did in the open? -</p> -<p> -The Marchesa—how many times more was he to hear Pauline say: -"Amalasuntha on your right, dear." Oh, to get away to a world where -nobody gave dinners, and there were no Marchesas on one's right! He knew -by heart the very look of the little cheese soufflés, light as cherubs' -feathers, that were being handed around before the soup on silver-gilt -dishes with coats-of-arms. Everything at Cedarledge was silver-gilt. -Pauline, as usual, had managed to transplant the party to New York, when -all he wanted was to be quiet, smoke his pipe, and ride or tramp with -Nona and Lita. Why couldn't she see it? Her vigilant eye sought -his—was it for approval or admonition? What was she saying? "The -Cardinal? Oh, yes. It's all settled. So sweet of him! Of course you must -all promise to come. But I've got another little surprise for you after -dinner. No; not a word beforehand; not if you were to put me on the -rack." What on earth did she mean? -</p> -<p> -"A surprise? Is this a surprise party?" It was Amalasuntha now. "Then I -must produce mine. But I daresay Pauline's told you. About Michelangelo -and Klawhammer... Cæsar Borgia ... such a sum that I don't dare to -mention it—you'd think I was mixing up the figures. But I've got them -down in black and white. Of course, as the producers say, Michelangelo's -so supremely the type—it's more than they ever could have hoped for." -What was the woman raving about? "He sails tomorrow," she said. Sailing -again—was that damned Michelangelo always sailing? Hadn't his debts -been paid on the express condition—? But no; there's been nothing, as -the Marchesa called it, "in black and white." The transaction had been -based on the implicit understanding that nothing but dire necessity -would induce Michelangelo to waste his charms on New York. Dire -necessity—or the chance to put himself permanently beyond it! A -fortune from a Klawhammer film. As Amalasuntha said, it was incalculable... -</p> -<p> -"It's the type, you see: between ourselves, there's always been a rumour -of Borgia blood on the San Fedele side. A naughty ancestress! Perhaps -you've noticed the likeness? You remember that wonderful profile -portrait of Cæsar Borgia in black velvet? What gallery is it in? Oh, I -know—it came out in 'Vogue'!" Amalasuntha visibly bridled at her -proficiency. She was aware that envious people said the Italians knew -nothing of their own artistic inheritance. "I remember being so struck by -it at the time—I said to Venturino: 'But it's the image of our boy!' -Though Michelangelo will have to grow a beard, which makes him furious... -But then the millions!" -</p> -<p> -Manford, looking up, caught a double gaze bent in his direction. Gladys -Toy's vast blue eyes had always been like searchlights; but tonight they -seemed actually to be writing her private history over his head, like an -advertising aeroplane. The fool! But was the other look also meant for -him? That half-shaded glint of Lita's—was it not rather attached to -the Marchesa, strung like a telephone wire to her lips? Klawhammer ... -Michelangelo ... a Borgia film... Those listening eyes missed not a -syllable... -</p> -<p> -"The offers those fellows make—right and left—nobody takes much -account of them. Wait till I see your contract, as you call it... If -you really think it's a job for a gentleman," Manford growled. -</p> -<p> -"But, my friend, gentlemen can't be choosers! Who are the real -working-class today? Our old aristocracies, alas! And besides, is it -ever degrading to create a work of art? I thought in America you made so -much of creativeness—constructiveness—what do you call it? Is -it less creative to turn a film than to manufacture bathtubs? Can there be -a nobler mission than to teach history to the millions by means of -beautiful pictures? ... Yes! I see Lita listening, and I know she -agrees with me... Lita! What a Lucrezia for his Cæsar! But why look -shocked, dear Dexter? Of course you know that Lucrezia Borgia has been -entirely rehabilitated? I saw that also in 'Vogue.' She was a perfectly -pure woman—and her hair was exactly the colour of Lita's." -</p> - -<p><br></p> - -<p> -They were finishing coffee in the drawing-room, the doors standing open -into the tall library where the men always smoked—the library which -(as Stanley Heuston had once remarked) Pauline's incorruptible honesty had -actually caused her to fill with books. -</p> -<p> -"Oh, what is it? Not a fire? ... A chimney in the house? ... But -it's actually here... Not a ..." -</p> -<p> -The women, a-flutter at the sudden siren-shriek, the hooting, rushing -and clattering up the drive, surged across the parquet, flowed with -startled little cries out into the hall, and saw the unsurprisable -Powder signalling to two perfectly matched footmen to throw open the -double doors. -</p> -<p> -"A fire? The engine ... the ... oh, it's a <i>fire-drill</i>! ... A -<i>parade</i>! How realistic! How lovely of you! What a beauty the engine -is!" -</p> -<p> -Pauline stood smiling, watch in hand, as the hook-and-ladder motor -clattered up the drive and ranged itself behind the engine. The big -lantern over the front door illuminated fresh scarlet paint and -super-polished brasses, the firemen's agitated helmets and perspiring -faces, the flashing hoods of the lamps. -</p> -<p> -"Just five minutes to the second! Wonderful!" She was shaking hands with -each member of the amateur brigade in turn. "I can't tell you how I -congratulate you—every one of you! Such an achievement ... you really -manœuvre like professionals. No one would have believed it was the -first time! Dexter, will you tell them a hot supper has been prepared -downstairs!" To the guests she was explaining in a triumphant undertone: -"I wanted to give them the chance to show off their new toy ... Yes, I -believe it's absolutely the most perfected thing in fire-engines. Dexter -and I thought it was time the village was properly equipped. It's really -more on account of the farmers—such a sense of safety for the -neighbourhood... Oh, Mr. Motts, I think you're simply wonderful, all -of you. Mr. Manford and my daughter are going to show you the way to -supper... Yes, yes, you <i>must</i>! Just a sandwich and something hot." -</p> -<p> -She dominated them all, grave and glittering as a goddess of Velocity. -"She enjoys it as much as other women do love-making," Manford muttered -to himself. -</p> - -<p><br><br><br></p> -</div> -<div class="chapter"> -<h2><a id="chap25"></a>XXV</h2> - -<div> - <img class="drop-cap" src="images/dropcap-m.jpg" width="70" alt="drop_m"> -</div> -<p class="drop-cap"> -MANFORD didn't know what first gave him the sense that Lita had slipped -out among the departing guests; slipped out, and not come back. When the -idea occurred to him it was already lodged in his mind, hard and -definite as a verified fact. She had vanished from among them into the -darkness. -</p> -<p> -But only a moment ago; there was still time to dash round to the shed in -the service court, where motors were sometimes left for the night, and -where he had dropped his Buick just in time to rush in and dress for -dinner. He would have no trouble in overtaking her. -</p> -<p> -The Buick was gone. -</p> -<p> -Hatless and coatless in the soft night air, he rushed down the drive on -its track. No moon tonight, but a deceptive velvet mildness, such as -sometimes comes in spring before the wind hauls round to a frosty -quarter. He hurried on, out of the open gate, along the road toward the -village; and there, at the turn of the New York turnpike—just the -road he had expected her to take—stood his Buick, a figure -stooping over it in the lamp-glare. A furious stab of jealousy shot -through him—"There's a man with her; who?" But the man was only -his own overcoat, which he had left on the seat of the car when he -dashed home for dinner, and which was now drawn over Lita's shoulders. -It was she who stood in the night, bent over the mysteries of the car's -insides. -</p> -<p> -She looked up and called out: "Oh, look here—give me a hand, will -you? The thing's stuck." Manford moved around within lamp-range, and she -stared a moment, her little face springing out at him uncannily from the -darkness. Then she broke into a laugh. "You?" -</p> -<p> -"Were you asking a total stranger to repair your motor? Rather risky, on -a country road in the middle of the night." -</p> -<p> -She shrugged and smiled. "Not as risky as doing it myself. The chances -are that even a total stranger would know more about the inside of this -car than I do." -</p> -<p> -"Lita, you're mad! Damn the car. What are you doing here anyhow?" -</p> -<p> -She paused, one hand on the bonnet, while with the other she pushed back -a tossed lock from her round forehead. "Running away," she said simply. -</p> -<p> -Manford took a quick breath. The thing was, he admonished himself, to -take this lightly, as nearly as possible in her own key—above all to -avoid protesting and exclaiming. But his heart was beating like a -trip-hammer. She was more of a fool than he had thought. -</p> -<p> -"Running away from that dinner? I don't blame you. But it's over. Still, -if you want to wash out the memory of it, get into the motor and we'll -go for a good spin—like that one when we came back from Greenwich." -</p> -<p> -Her lips parted in a faint smile. "Oh, but that ended up at Cedarledge." -</p> -<p> -"Well—?" -</p> -<p> -"Bless you; I'm not going back." -</p> -<p> -"Where <i>are</i> you going?" -</p> -<p> -"To New York first—after that I don't know... Perhaps my aunt's... -Perhaps Hollywood..." -</p> -<p> -The rage in him exploded. "Perhaps Dawnside—eh? Own up!" -</p> -<p> -She laughed and shrugged again. "Own up? Why not? Anywhere where I can -dance and laugh and be hopelessly low-lived and irresponsible." -</p> -<p> -"And get that blackguard crew about you again, all those—. Lita! -Listen to me. Listen. You've got to." -</p> -<p> -"Got to?" She rounded on him in a quick flare of anger. "I wonder who -you think you're talking to? I'm not Gladys Toy." -</p> -<p> -The unexpectedness of the challenge struck him dumb. For challenge it -was, unmistakably. He felt a rush of mingled strength and fear—fear -at this inconceivable thing, and the strength her self-betrayal gave him. -He returned with equal violence: "No—you're not. You're something so -utterly different..." -</p> -<p> -"Oh," she burst in, "don't tell me I'm too sacred, and all that. I'm fed -up with the sanctities—that's the trouble with me. Just own up you -like 'em artificially fattened. Why, that woman's ankles are half a yard -round. Can't you <i>see</i> it? Or is that really the way you admire 'em? I -thought you wanted to be with me... I thought that was why you were -here... Do you suppose I'd have come all this way just to be taught to -love fresh air and family life? The hypocrisy—!" -</p> -<p> -Her little face was flashing on him furiously, red lips parted on a -glitter of bright teeth. "She must have a sausage-machine, to cram her -into that tube she had on tonight. No human maid could do it... -'Utterly different'? I should hope so! I'd like to see <i>her</i> get a job -with Klawhammer—unless he means to do a 'Barnum,' and wants a Fat -Woman... I ..." -</p> -<p> -"<i>Lita</i>!" -</p> -<p> -"You're <i>stupid</i> ... you're stupider than anything on God's earth!" -</p> -<p> -"Lita—" He put his hand over hers. Let the whole world crash, after -this... -</p> - -<p><br></p> - -<p> -Pauline sat in her upstairs sitting-room, full of that sense of repose -which comes of duties performed and rewards laid up. How could it be -otherwise, at the close of a day so rich in moral satisfactions? She -scanned it again, from the vantage of her midnight vigil in the sleeping -house, and saw that all was well in the little world she had created. -</p> -<p> -Yes; all was well, from the fire-drill which had given a rather -languishing dinner its requisite wind-up of excitement to the -arrangements for the Cardinal's reception, Amalasuntha's skilful -turning of that Birth Control obstacle, and the fact that Jim -was philosophically remaining in the south in spite of his -father's unexpected return. The only shadow on the horizon was -Michelangelo's—Dexter would certainly be angry about that. But she -was not going to let Michelangelo darken her holiday, when everything else -in life was so smooth and sunshiny. -</p> -<p> -She remembered her resolve to write to Jim, and took up her pen with a -smile. -</p> - -<blockquote><p> -"I can guess what heavenly weather you must be having from the delicious -taste of spring we're having here. The baby is out in the sunshine all -day: he's gained nearly a pound, and is getting almost as brown as if it -were summer. Lita looks ever so much better too, though she'd never -forgive my suggesting that she had put on even an ounce. But I don't -believe she has, for she and Nona and Dexter are riding or golfing or -racing over the country from morning to night like a pack of children. -You can't think how jolly and hungry and sleepy they all are when they -get home for tea. It was a wonderful invention of Dexter's to bring Lita -and the baby here while you were having your holiday, and you'll agree -that it has worked miracles when you see them. -</p> -<p> -"Amalasuntha tells me your father is back. I expected to hear that he -had got restless away from his own quarters; but she says he's looking -very well. Nona will go in and see him next week, and report. Meanwhile -I'm so glad you're staying on and making the most of your holiday. Do -get all the rest and sunshine you can, and trust your treasures a little -longer to your loving old -</p> -<p style="text-align:right">"MOTHER."</p></blockquote> - -<p> -There—that would certainly reassure him. It had reassured her merely -to write it: given her the feeling, to which she always secretly inclined, -that a thing was so if one said it was, and doubly so if one wrote it -down. -</p> -<p> -She sealed the letter, pushed back her chair, and glanced at the little -clock on her writing-table. A quarter to two! She had a right to feel -sleepy, and even to curtail her relaxing exercises. The country -stillness was so deep and soothing that she hardly needed them... -</p> -<p> -She opened the window, and stood drinking in the hush. The spring night -was full of an underlying rustle and murmur that was a part of the -silence. But suddenly a sharp sound broke on her—the sound of a motor -coming up the drive. In the stillness she caught it a long way off, -probably just after the car turned in at the gate. The sound was so -unnatural, breaking in on the deep nocturnal dumbness of dim trees and -starlit sky, that she drew back startled. She was not a nervous woman, -but she thought irritably of a servants' escapade—something that the -chauffeur would have to be spoken to about the next day. Queer, -though—the motor did not turn off toward the garage. Standing in the -window she followed its continued approach; then heard it slow down and -stop—somewhere near the service court, she conjectured. -</p> -<p> -Could it be that Lita and Nona had been off on one of their crazy trips -since the guests had left? She must really protest at such imprudence... -She felt angry, nervous, uncertain. It was uncanny, hearing that -invisible motor come so near the house and stop... She hesitated a -moment, and then crossed to her own room, opened the door of the little -anteroom beyond, and stood listening at her husband's bedroom door. It -was ajar, all dark within. She hesitated to speak, half fearing to wake -him; but at length she said in a low voice: "Dexter—." -</p> -<p> -No answer. She pronounced his name again, a little louder, and then -cautiously crossed the threshold and switched on the light. The room was -empty, the bed undisturbed. It was evident that Manford had not been up -to his room since their guests had left. It was he, then, who had come -back in the motor... She extinguished the light and turned back into -her own room. On her dressing-table stood the little telephone which -communicated with the servants' quarters, with Maisie Bruss's office, -and with Nona's room. She stood wavering before the instrument. Why -shouldn't she call up Nona, and ask—? Ask what? If the girls had been -off on a lark they would be sure to tell her in the morning. And if it -was Dexter alone, then— -</p> -<p> -She turned from the telephone, and slowly began to undress. Presently -she heard steps in the hall, then in the anteroom; then her husband -moving softly about in his own room, and the unmistakable sounds of his -undressing... She drew a long breath, as if trying to free her lungs -of some vague oppression... It was Dexter—well, yes, only Dexter ... -and he hadn't cared to leave the motor at the garage at that hour... -Naturally... How glad she was that she hadn't rung up Nona! Suppose -her doing so had startled Lita or the baby... -</p> -<p> -After all, perhaps she'd better do her relaxing exercises. She felt -suddenly staring wide awake. But she was glad she'd written that -reassuring letter to Jim—she was glad, because it was <i>true</i>... -</p> - -<p><br><br><br></p> -</div> -<div class="chapter"> -<h2><a id="chap26"></a>XXVI</h2> - -<div> - <img class="drop-cap" src="images/dropcap-w.jpg" width="70" alt="drop_w"> -</div> -<p class="drop-cap"> -WHEN Nona told her mother that she wanted to go to town the next day to -see Mrs. Bruss and Maisie, Mrs. Manford said: "It's only what I expected -of you, darling," and added after a moment: "Do you think I ought—?" -</p> -<p> -"No, of course not. It would simply worry Maisie." -</p> -<p> -Nona knew it was the answer that her mother awaited. She knew that -nothing frightened and disorganized Pauline as much as direct contact -with physical or moral suffering—especially physical. Her whole life -(if one chose to look at it from a certain angle) had been a long -uninterrupted struggle against the encroachment of every form of pain. -The first step, always, was to conjure it, bribe it away, by every -possible expenditure—except of one's self. Cheques, surgeons, nurses, -private rooms in hospitals, X-rays, radium, whatever was most costly and -up-to-date in the dreadful art of healing—that was her first and -strongest line of protection; behind it came such lesser works as -rest-cures, change of air, a seaside holiday, a whole new set of teeth, -pink silk bed-spreads, lace cushions, stacks of picture papers, and -hot-house grapes and long-stemmed roses from Cedarledge. Behind these -again were the final, the verbal defenses, made of such phrases as: "If I -thought I could do the least good"—"If I didn't feel it -might simply upset her"—"<i>Some</i> doctors still consider it -contagious"—with the inevitable summing-up: "The fewer people she -sees the better..." -</p> -<p> -Nona knew that this attitude was not caused by lack of physical courage. -Had Pauline been a pioneer's wife, and seen her family stricken down by -disease in the wilderness, she would have nursed them fearlessly; but -all her life she had been used to buying off suffering with money, or -denying its existence with words, and her moral muscles had become so -atrophied that only some great shock would restore their natural -strength... -</p> -<p> -"Great shock! People like mother never have great shocks," Nona mused, -looking at the dauntless profile, the crisply waving hair, reflected in -the toilet-mirror. "Unless I were to give her one ..." she added with -an inward smile. -</p> -<p> -Mrs. Manford restored her powder-puff to its crystal box. "Do you know, -darling, I believe I'll go to town with you tomorrow. It was very brave -of Maisie to make the effort of coming here the other day, but of -course, I didn't like to burden her with too many details at such a time -(when's the operation—tomorrow?), and there are things I could -perfectly well attend to myself, without bothering her; without her even -knowing. Yes; I'll motor up with you early." -</p> -<p> -"She'll always delegate her anxieties," Nona mused, not unenviously, as -Cécile slipped Mrs. Manford's spangled teagown over her firm white -shoulders. Pauline turned a tender smile on her daughter. "It's so like -you, Nona, to want to be with Maisie for the operation—so -<i>fine</i>, dear." -</p> -<p> -Voice and smile were full of praise; yet behind the praise (Nona also -knew) lurked the unformulated apprehension: "All this running after sick -people and unhappy people—is it going to turn into a vocation?" -Nothing could have been more distasteful to Mrs. Manford than the idea -that her only daughter should be not only good, but merely good: like -poor Aggie Heuston, say... Nona could hear her mother murmuring: "I -can't imagine where on earth she got it from," as if alluding to some -physical defect unaccountable in the offspring of two superbly sound -progenitors. -</p> - -<p><br></p> - -<p> -They started early, for forty-eight hours of accumulated leisure had -reinforced Pauline's natural activity. Amalasuntha, mysteriously smiling -and head-shaking over the incommunicable figures of Klawhammer's offer, -had bustled back to town early on Monday, leaving the family to -themselves—and a certain feeling of flatness had ensued. Dexter, his -wife thought, seemed secretly irritated, but determined to conceal his -irritation from her. It was about Michelangelo, no doubt. Lita was -silent and sleepy. No one seemed to have anything particular to do. Even -in town Mondays were always insipid. But in the afternoon Manford "took -Lita off their hands," as his wife put it, by carrying her away for the -long-deferred spin in the Buick; and Pauline plunged back restfully into -visiting-lists and other domestic preoccupations. She certainly had -nothing to worry about, and much to rejoice in, yet she felt languid and -vaguely apprehensive. She began to wonder if Alvah Loft's treatment were -of the lasting sort, or if it lost its efficacy, like an uncorked drug. -Perhaps the Scientific Initiate she had been told about would have a new -panacea for the mind as well as for the epiderm. She would telephone and -make an appointment; it always stimulated her to look forward to seeing -a new healer. As Mrs. Swoffer said, one ought never to neglect a -spiritual opportunity; and one never knew on whom the Spirit might have -alighted. Mrs. Swoffer's conversation was always soothing and yet -invigorating, and Pauline determined to see her too. And there was -Arthur—poor Exhibit A!—on Jim's account it would be kind to -look him up if there were time; unless Nona could manage that too, in the -intervals of solacing Maisie. It was so depressing—and so -useless—to sit in a hospital parlour, looking at old numbers of -picture papers, while those awful white-sleeved rites went on in the secret -sanctuary of tiles and nickel-plating. It would do Nona good to have an -excuse for slipping away. -</p> -<p> -Pauline's list of things-to-be-done had risen like a spring tide as soon -as she decided to go to town for the day. There was hair-waving, -manicuring, dressmaking—her dress for the Cardinal's reception. How -was she ever to get through half the engagements on her list? And of course -she must call at the hospital with a big basket of grapes and flowers... -</p> - -<p><br></p> - -<p> -On the steps of the hospital Nona paused and looked about her. The -operation was over—everything had "gone beautifully," as beautifully -as it almost always does on these occasions. Maisie had been immensely -grateful for her coming, and as surprised as if an angel from the -seventh heaven had alighted to help her through. The two girls had sat -together, making jerky attempts at talk, till the nurse came and said: -"All right—she's back in bed again"; and then Maisie, after a burst -of relieving tears, had tiptoed off to sit in a corner of her mother's -darkened room and await the first sign of returning consciousness. There -was nothing more for Nona to do, and she went out into the April -freshness with the sense of relief that the healthy feel when they -escape back to life after a glimpse of death. -</p> -<p> -On the hospital steps she ran into Arthur Wyant. -</p> -<p> -"Exhibit, dear! What are you doing here?" -</p> -<p> -"Coming to inquire for poor Mrs. Bruss. I heard from Amalasuntha..." -</p> -<p> -"That's kind of you. Maisie'll be so pleased." -</p> -<p> -She gave him the surgeon's report, saw that his card was entrusted to -the right hands, and turned back into the street with him. He looked -better than when he had left for the south; his leg was less stiff, and -he carried his tall carefully dressed figure with a rigid jauntiness. -But his face seemed sharper yet higher in colour. Fever or cocktails? -She wondered. It was lucky that their meeting would save her going to -the other end of the town to see him. -</p> -<p> -"Just like you, Exhibit, to remember poor Maisie..." -</p> -<p> -He raised ironic eyebrows. "Is inquiring about ill people obsolete? I -see you still keep up the tradition." -</p> -<p> -"Oh, I've been seeing it through with Maisie. Some one had to." -</p> -<p> -"Exactly. And your mother held aloof, but financed the whole business?" -</p> -<p> -"Splendidly. She always does." -</p> -<p> -He frowned, and stood hesitating, and tapping his long boot-tip with his -stick. "I rather want to have a talk with your mother." -</p> -<p> -"With mother?" Nona was on the point of saying: "She's in town -today—" then, remembering Pauline's crowded list, she checked the -impulse. -</p> -<p> -"Won't I do as a proxy? I was going to suggest your carrying me off to -lunch." -</p> -<p> -"No, my dear, you won't—as a proxy. But I'll carry you off to lunch." -</p> -<p> -The choice of a restaurant would have been laborious—for Wyant, when -taken out of his rut, became a mass of manias, prejudices and -inhibitions—but Nona luckily remembered a new Bachelor Girls' Club -("The Singleton") which she had lately joined, and packed him into a -taxi still protesting. -</p> -<p> -They found a quiet corner in a sociable low-studded dining-room, and she -leaned back, listening to his disconnected monologue and smoking one -cigarette after another in the nervous inability to eat. -</p> -<p> -The ten days on the island? Oh, glorious, of course—hot -sunshine—a good baking for his old joints. Awfully kind of her -father to invite him ... he'd appreciated it immensely ... was going to -write a line of thanks... Jim, too, had appreciated his father's being -included... Only, no, really; he couldn't stay; in the circumstances he -couldn't... -</p> -<p> -"What circumstances, Exhibit? Getting the morning papers twenty-four -hours late?" -</p> -<p> -Wyant frowned, looked at her sharply, and then laughed an uneasy -wrinkled laugh. "Impertinent chit!" -</p> -<p> -"Own up, now; you were bored stiff. Communion with Nature was too much -for you. You couldn't stick it. Few can." -</p> -<p> -"I don't say I'm as passive as Jim." -</p> -<p> -"Jim's just loving it down there, isn't he? I'm so glad you persuaded -him to stay." -</p> -<p> -Wyant frowned again, and stared past her at some invisible antagonist. -"It was about the only thing I <i>could</i> persuade him to do." -</p> -<p> -Nona's hand hung back from the lighting of another cigarette. "What else -did you try to?" -</p> -<p> -"What else? Why to <i>act</i>, damn it ... take a line ... face things ... -face the music." He stopped in a splutter of metaphors, and dipped his -bristling moustache toward his coffee. -</p> -<p> -"What things?" -</p> -<p> -"Why: is he going to keep his wife, or isn't he?" -</p> -<p> -"He thinks that's for Lita to decide." -</p> -<p> -"For Lita to decide! A pretext for his damned sentimental inertness. A -man—my son! God, what's happened to the young men? Sit by and see ... -see... Nona, couldn't I manage to have a talk with your mother?" -</p> -<p> -"You're having one with me. Isn't that enough for the moment?" -</p> -<p> -He gave another vague laugh, and took a light from her extended -cigarette. She knew that, though he found her mother's visits -oppressive, he kept a careful record of their number, and dimly resented -any appearance of being "crowded out" by Pauline's other engagements. "I -suppose she comes up to town sometimes, doesn't she?" -</p> -<p> -"Sometimes—but in such a rush! And we'll be back soon now. She's got -to get ready for the Cardinal's reception." -</p> -<p> -"Great doings, I hear. Amalasuntha dropped in on me yesterday. She says -Lita's all agog again since that rotten Michelangelo's got a film -contract, and your father's in an awful state about it. Is he?" -</p> -<p> -"The family are not used yet to figuring on the posters. Of course it's -only a question of time." -</p> -<p> -"I don't mean in a state about Michelangelo, but about Lita." -</p> -<p> -"Father's been a perfect brick about Lita." -</p> -<p> -"Oh, he has, has he? Very magnanimous.—Thanks; no—no cigar... -Of course, if anybody's got to be a brick about Lita, I don't see why it's -not her husband's job; but then I suppose you'll tell me..." -</p> -<p> -"Yes; I shall; please consider yourself told, won't you? Because I've -got to get back to the hospital." -</p> -<p> -"The modern husband's job is a purely passive one, eh? That's your idea -too? If you go to him and say: 'How about that damned scoundrel and your -wife'—" -</p> -<p> -"What damned scoundrel?" -</p> -<p> -"Oh, I don't say ... anybody in particular ... and he answers: -'Well, what am I going to do about it?' and you say: 'Well, and your -honour, man; what about your honour?' and he says: 'What's my honour got -to do with it if my wife's sick of me?' and you say: 'God! But <i>the other -man</i> ... aren't you going to break his bones for him?' and he sits and -looks at you and says: 'Get up a prize-fight for her?'... God! I give -it up. My own son! We don't speak the same language, that's all." -</p> -<p> -He leaned back, his long legs stretched under the table, his tall -shambling body disjointed with the effort at a military tautness, a kind -of muscular demonstration of what his son's moral attitude ought to be. -</p> -<p> -"Damn it—there was a good deal to be said for duelling." -</p> -<p> -"And to whom do you want Jim to send his seconds? Michelangelo or -Klawhammer?" -</p> -<p> -He stared, and echoed her laugh. "Ha! Ha! That's good. Klawhammer! Dirty -Jew ... the kind we used to horsewhip... Well, I don't understand -the new code." -</p> -<p> -"Why do you want to, Exhibit? Come along. You've got me to look after in -the meantime. If you want to be chivalrous, tuck me under your arm and -see me back to the hospital." -</p> -<p> -"A prize-fight—get up a prize-fight for her! God—I should -understand even that better than lying on the beach smoking a pipe and -saying: 'What can a fellow do about it?' <i>Do</i>!" -</p> - -<p><br></p> - -<p> -Act—act—act! How funny it was, Nona reflected, as she -remounted the hospital steps: the people who talked most of acting -seldom did more than talk. Her father, for instance, so resolute and -purposeful, never discoursed about action, but quietly went about what -had to be done. Whereas poor Exhibit, perpetually inconsequent and -hesitating, was never tired of formulating the most truculent plans of -action for others. "Poor Exhibit indeed—incorrigible amateur!" she -thought, understanding how such wordy dilettantism must have bewildered -and irritated the young and energetic Pauline, fresh from the buzzing -motor works at Exploit. -</p> -<p> -Nona felt a sudden exasperation against Wyant for trying to poison Jim's -holiday by absurd insinuations and silly swagger. It was lucky that he -had got bored and come back, leaving the poor boy to bask on the sands -with his pipe and his philosophy. After all, it was to be supposed that -Jim knew what he wanted, and how to take care of it, now he had it. -</p> -<p> -"At all events," Nona concluded, "I'm glad he didn't get hold of mother -and bother her with his foolish talk." She shot up in the lift to the -white carbolic-breathing passage where, with a heavy whiff of ether, -Mrs. Bruss's door opened to receive her. -</p> - -<p><br><br><br></p> -</div> -<div class="chapter"> -<h2><a id="chap27"></a>XXVII</h2> - -<div> - <img class="drop-cap" src="images/dropcap-t.jpg" width="70" alt="drop_t"> -</div> -<p class="drop-cap"> -THE restorative effect of a day away from the country was visible in -Pauline's face and manner when she dawned on the breakfast-table the -next morning. The mere tone in which she murmured: "How lovely it is to -get back!" showed how lovely it had been to get away—and she lingered -over the new-laid eggs, the golden cream, all the country freshnesses -and succulences, with the sense of having richly earned them by a long -day spent in arduous and agreeable labours. -</p> -<p> -"When there are tiresome things to be done the great thing is to do them -at once," she announced to Nona across the whole-wheat toast and -scrambled eggs. "I simply hated to leave all this loveliness yesterday; -but how much more I'm going to enjoy it today because I did!" -</p> -<p> -Her day in town had in truth been exceptionally satisfactory. All had -gone well, from her encounter, at Amalasuntha's, with one of the -Cardinal's secretaries, to the belated glimpse of Maisie Bruss, haggard -but hopeful on the hospital steps, receiving the hamper of fruit and -flowers with grateful exclamations, and assurances that the surgeon was -"perfectly satisfied," and that there was "no reason why the dreadful -thing should ever reappear." In a wave of sympathetic emotion Pauline -had leaned from the motor to kiss her and say: "Your mother must have a -good rest at Atlantic City as soon as she can be moved—I'll arrange -it. Sea air is such a tonic ..." and Maisie had thanked and wept again... -It was pleasant to be able, in a few words, to make any one so happy... -</p> -<p> -She had found Mrs. Swoffer too; found her in a super-terrestrial mood, -beaming through inspired eye-glasses, and pouring out new torrents of -stimulation. -</p> -<p> -Yes: Alvah Loft was a great man, Mrs. Swoffer said. She, for her part, -had never denied it for a moment. How could Pauline have imagined that -her faith in Alvah Loft had failed her? No—but there were periods of -spiritual aridity which the brightest souls had to traverse, and she had -lately had reason to suspect, from her own experience and from -Pauline's, that perhaps Alvah Loft was at present engaged in such a -desert. Certainly to charge a hundred dollars for a "triple treatment" -(which was only three minutes longer than the plain one), and then -produce no more lasting results—well, Mrs. Swoffer preferred not to -say anything uncharitable... Then again, she sometimes suspected that -Alvah Loft's doctrine might be only for beginners. That was what Sacha -Gobine, the new Russian Initiate, plainly intimated. Of course there -were innumerable degrees in the spiritual life, and it might be that -sometimes Alvah Loft's patients got beyond his level—got above -it—without his being aware of the fact. Frankly, that was what Gobine -thought (from Mrs. Swoffer's report) must have happened in the case of -Pauline. "I believe your friend has reached a higher plane"—that was -the way the Initiate put it. "She's been at the gate" (he called the -Mahatma and Alvah Loft "gatekeepers"), "and now the gate has opened, and -she has entered in—entered into ..." But Mrs. Swoffer said she'd -rather not try to quote him because she couldn't put it as beautifully -as he did, and she wanted Pauline to hear it in his own mystical -language. "It's eternal rejuvenation just to sit and listen to him," she -breathed, laying an electric touch on her visitor's hand. -</p> -<p> -Rejuvenation! The word dashed itself like cool spray against Pauline's -strained nerves and parched complexion. She could never hear it without -longing to plunge deep into its healing waters. Between manicure and -hair-waver she was determined to squeeze in a moment with Gobine. -</p> -<p> -And the encounter, as she told Nona, had been like "a religious -experience"—apparently forgetful of the fact that every other meeting -with a new prophet had presented itself to her in identical terms. -</p> -<p> -"You see, my dear, it's something so entirely new, so completely -different ... so emotional; yes, emotional; that's the word. The -Russians, of course, are emotional; it's their peculiar quality. Alvah -Loft—and you understand that I don't in the least suggest any loss of -faith in him; but Alvah Loft has a mind which speaks to the <i>mind</i>; -there is no appeal to the feelings. Whereas in Gobine's teaching there is a -mystic strain, a kind of Immediacy, as Mrs. Swoffer calls it... -Immediacy..." Pauline lingered on the term. It captivated her, as any -word did when she first heard it used in a new connection. "I don't know -how one could define the sensation better. 'Soul-unveiling' is Gobine's -expression... But he insists on time, on plenty of time... He says -we are all parching our souls by too much hurry. Of course I always felt -that with Alvah Loft. I felt like one of those cash-boxes they shoot -along over your head in the department stores. Number one, number two, -and so on—always somebody treading on your heels. Whereas Gobine -absolutely refuses to be hurried. Sometimes he sees only one patient a -day. When I left him he told me he thought he would not see any one else -till the next morning. 'I don't want to mingle your soul with any -other.' Rather beautiful, wasn't it? And he does give one a wonderful -dreamy sense of rest..." -</p> -<p> -She closed her eyes and leaned back, evoking the gaunt bearded face and -heavy-lidded eyes of the new prophet, and the moist adhesive palm he had -laid in benediction on her forehead. How different from the thick-lipped -oily Mahatma, and from the thin dry Alvah Loft, who seemed more like an -implement in a laboratory than a human being! "Perhaps one needs them -all in turn," Pauline murmured half-aloud, with the self-indulgence of -the woman who has never had to do over an out-of-fashion garment. -</p> -<p> -"One ought to be able to pass on last year's healers to one's poor -relations, oughtn't one, mother?" Nona softly mocked; but her mother -disarmed her with an unresentful smile. -</p> -<p> -"Darling! I know you don't understand these things yet—only, child, I -do want you to be a little on your guard against becoming bitter, won't -you? There—you don't mind your old mother's just suggesting it?" -</p> -<p> -Really Nona worried her at times—or would, if Gobine hadn't shed -over her this perfumed veil of Peace. Yes—Peace: that was what she -had always needed. Perfect confidence that everything would always come -right in the end. Of course the other healers had taught that too; some -people might say that Gobine's evangel was only the Mahatma's doctrine -of the Higher Harmony. But the resemblance was merely superficial, as -the Scientific Initiate had been careful to explain to her. Her previous -guides had not been Initiates, and had no scientific training; they -could only guess, whereas he <i>knew</i>. That was the meaning of -Immediacy: direct contact with the Soul of the Invisible. How clear and -beautiful he made it all! How all the little daily problems shrivelled -up and vanished like a puff of smoke to eyes cleared by that initiation! -And he had seen at once that Pauline was one of the few who <i>could</i> -be initiated; who were worthy to be drawn out of the senseless modern -rush and taken in Beyond the Veil. She closed her eyes again, and felt -herself there with him... "Of course he treats hardly anybody," Mrs. -Swoffer had assured her; "not one in a hundred. He says he'd rather -starve than waste his time on the unmystical. (He saw at once that you -were mystical.) Because he takes time—he must have it... Days, -weeks, if necessary. Our crowded engagements mean nothing to him. He -won't have a clock in the house. And he doesn't care whether he's paid -or not; he says he's paid in soul-growth. Marvellous, isn't it?" -</p> -<p> -Marvellous indeed! And how different from Alvah Loft's Taylorized -treatments, his rapidly rising scale of charges, and the unbroken stream -of patients succeeding each other under his bony touch! And how one came -back from communion with the Invisible longing to help others, to draw -all one's dear ones with one Beyond the Veil. Pauline had gone to town -with an unavowed burden on her mind. Jim, Lita, her husband, that -blundering Amalasuntha, that everlasting Michelangelo; and Nona, -too—Nona, who looked thinner and more drawn every day, and whose -tongue seemed to grow sharper and more derisive; who seemed—at barely -twenty—to be turning from a gay mocking girl into a pinched -fault-finding old maid... -</p> -<p> -All these things had weighed on Pauline more than she cared to -acknowledge; but now she felt strong enough to lift them, or rather they -had become as light as air. "If only you Americans would persuade -yourselves of the utter unimportance of the Actual—of the total -non-existence of the Real." That was what Gobine had said, and the words -had thrilled her like a revelation. Her eyes continued to rest with an -absent smile on her daughter's ironic face, but what she was really -thinking of was: "How on earth can I possibly induce him to come to the -Cardinal's reception?" -</p> -<p> -That was one of the things that Nona would never understand her caring -about. She would credit—didn't Pauline know!—her mother with -the fatuous ambition to use her united celebrities for a social "draw," -as a selfish child might gather all its toys into one heap; she would -never see how important it was to bring together the representatives of -the conflicting creeds, the bearers of the multiple messages, in the -hope of drawing from their contact the flash of revelation for which the -whole creation groaned. "If only the Cardinal could have a quiet talk -with Gobine," Pauline thought; and, immediately dramatizing the -possibility, saw herself steering his Eminence toward the innermost -recess of her long suite of drawing-rooms, where the Scientific -Initiate, shaggy but inspired, would suddenly stand before the Prince of -the Church while she guarded the threshold from intruders. What new life -it might put into the ossified Roman dogmas if the Cardinal could be -made to understand that beautiful new doctrine of Immediacy! But how -could she ever persuade Gobine to kiss the ring? -</p> -<p> -"And Mrs. Bruss—any news? I thought Maisie seemed really hopeful." -</p> -<p> -"Yes; the night wasn't bad. The doctors think she'll go on all -right—for the present." -</p> -<p> -Pauline frowned; it was distasteful to have the suggestion of suffering -and decay obtruded upon her beatific mood. She was living in a world -where such things were not, and it seemed cruel—and -unnecessary—to suggest to her that perhaps all Mrs. Bruss had -already endured might not avail to spare her future misery. -</p> -<p> -"I'm sure we ought to try to resist looking ahead, and creating -imaginary suffering for ourselves or others. Why should the doctors say -'for the present'? They can't possibly tell if the disease will ever -come back." -</p> -<p> -"No; but they know it generally does." -</p> -<p> -"Can't you see, Nona, that that's just what <i>makes</i> it? Being prepared -to suffer is really the way to create suffering. And creating suffering is -creating sin, because sin and suffering are really one. We ought to -refuse ourselves to pain. All the great Healers have taught us that." -</p> -<p> -Nona lifted her eyebrows in the slightly disturbing way she had. "Did -Christ?" -</p> -<p> -Pauline felt her colour rise. This habit of irrelevant and rather -impertinent retort was growing on Nona. The idea of stirring up the -troublesome mysteries of Christian dogma at the breakfast-table! Pauline -had no intention of attacking any religion. But Nona was really getting -as querulous as a teething child. Perhaps that was what she was, -morally; perhaps some new experience was forcing its way through the -tender flesh of her soul. The suggestion was disturbing to all Pauline's -theories; yet confronted with her daughter's face and voice she could -only take refuge in the idea that Nona, unable to attain the Higher -Harmony, was struggling in a crepuscular wretchedness from which she -refused to be freed. -</p> -<p> -"If you'd only come to Gobine with me, dear, these problems would never -trouble you any more." -</p> -<p> -"They don't now—not an atom. What troubles me is the plain human -tangle, as it remains after we've done our best to straighten it out. -Look at Mrs. Bruss!" -</p> -<p> -"But the doctors say there's every chance—" -</p> -<p> -"Did you ever know them not to, after a first operation for cancer?" -</p> -<p> -"Of course, Nona, if you take sorrow and suffering for granted—" -</p> -<p> -"I don't, mother; but, apparently, Somebody does, judging from their -diffusion and persistency, as the natural history books say." -</p> -<p> -Pauline felt her smooth brows gather in an unwelcome frown. The child -had succeeded in spoiling her breakfast and in unsettling the happy -equilibrium which she had imparted to her world. She didn't know what -ailed Nona, unless she was fretting over Stan Heuston's disgraceful -behaviour; but if so, it was better that she should learn in time what -he was, and face her disillusionment. She might actually have ended by -falling in love with him, Pauline reflected, and that would have been -very disagreeable on account of Aggie. "What she needs is to marry," -Pauline said to herself, struggling back to serenity. -</p> -<p> -She glanced at her watch, wondered if it were worth while to wait any -longer for her husband, and decided to instruct Powder to keep his -breakfast hot, and produce fresh coffee and rice-cakes when he rang. -</p> -<p> -Dexter, the day before, had taken Lita off on another long excursion. -They had turned up so late that dinner had to be postponed for them, and -had been so silent and remote all the evening that Pauline had ventured -a jest on the soporific effects of country air, and suggested that every -one should go to bed early. This morning, though it was past ten -o'clock, neither of the two had appeared; and Nona declared herself -ignorant of their plans for the day. -</p> -<p> -"It's a mercy Lita is so satisfied here," Pauline sighed, resigning -herself to another dull day at the thought of the miracle Manford was -accomplishing. She had felt rather nervous when Amalasuntha had appeared -with her incredible film stories, and her braggings about the -irresistible Michelangelo; but Lita did not seem to have been unsettled -by them. -</p> -<p> -"Jim will have a good deal to be grateful for when he gets home," -Pauline smiled to her daughter. "I do hope he'll appreciate what your -father has done. His staying on the island seems to show that he does. -By the way," she added, with another smile, "I didn't tell you, did I, -that I ran across Arthur yesterday?" -</p> -<p> -Nona hesitated a moment. "So did I." -</p> -<p> -"Oh, did you? He didn't mention it. He looks better, don't you think so? -But I found him excited and restless—almost as if another attack of -gout were coming on. He was annoyed because I wouldn't go and see him -then and there, though it was after six, and I should have had to dine -in town." -</p> -<p> -"It's just as well you didn't, after such a tiring day." -</p> -<p> -"He was so persistent—you know how he is at times. He insisted that -he must have a talk with me, though he wouldn't tell me about what." -</p> -<p> -"I don't believe he knows. As you say, he's always nervous when he has -an attack coming on." -</p> -<p> -"But he seemed so hurt at my refusing. He wanted me to promise to go -back today. And when I told him I couldn't he said that if I didn't he'd -come out here." -</p> -<p> -Nona gave an impatient shrug. "How absurd! But of course he won't. I -don't exactly see dear old Exhibit walking up to the front door of -Cedarledge." -</p> -<p> -Pauline's colour rose again; she too had pictured the same possibility, -only to reject it. Wyant had always refused to cross her threshold in -New York, though she lived in a house bought after her second marriage; -surely he would be still more reluctant to enter Cedarledge, where he -and she had spent their early life together, and their son had been -born. There were certain things, as he was always saying, that a man -didn't do: that was all. -</p> -<p> -Nona was still pondering. "I wouldn't go to town to see him, mother; why -should you? He was excited, and rather cross, yesterday, but he really -hadn't anything to say. He just wanted to hear himself talk. As long as -we're here he'll never come, and when this mood passes off he won't even -remember what it was about. If you like I'll write and tell him that -you'll see him as soon as we get back." -</p> -<p> -"Thank you, dear. I wish you would." -</p> -<p> -How sensible the child could be when she chose! Her answer chimed -exactly with her mother's secret inclination, and the latter, rising -from the breakfast-table, decided to slip away to a final revision of -the Cardinal's list. It was pleasant, for once, to have time to give so -important a matter all the attention it deserved. -</p> - -<p><br><br><br></p> -</div> -<div class="chapter"> -<h2><a id="chap28"></a>XXVIII</h2> - -<div> - <img class="drop-cap" src="images/dropcap-w.jpg" width="70" alt="drop_w"> -</div> -<p class="drop-cap"> -WHEN Nona came down the next morning it was raining—a cold blustery -rain, lashing the branches about and driving the startled spring back -into its secret recesses. -</p> -<p> -It was the first rain since their arrival at Cedarledge, and it seemed -to thrust them back also—back into the wintry world of town, of -dripping streets, early lamplight and crowded places of amusement. -</p> -<p> -Mrs. Manford had already breakfasted and left the dining-room, but her -husband's plate was still untouched. He came in as Nona was finishing, -and after an absent-minded nod and smile dropped silently into his -place. He sat opposite the tall rain-striped windows, and as he stared -out into the grayness it seemed as if some of it, penetrating into the -room in spite of the red sparkle of the fire, had tinged his face and -hair. Lately Nona had been struck by his ruddiness, and the vigour of -the dark waves crisping about his yellow-brown temples; but now he had -turned sallow and autumnal. "What people call looking one's age, I -suppose—as if we didn't have a dozen or a hundred ages, all of us!" -</p> -<p> -Her father had withdrawn his stare from the outer world and turned it -toward the morning paper on the book-stand beside his plate. With lids -lowered and fixed lips he looked strangely different again—rather -like his own memorial bust in bronze. She shivered a little... -</p> -<p> -"Father! Your coffee's getting cold." -</p> -<p> -He pushed aside the paper, glanced at the letters piled by his plate, -and lifted his eyes to Nona's. The twinkle she always woke seemed to -struggle up to her from a long way off. -</p> -<p> -"I missed my early tramp and don't feel particularly enthusiastic about -breakfast." -</p> -<p> -"It's not enthusiastic weather." -</p> -<p> -"No." He had grown absent-minded again. "Pity; when we've so few days -left." -</p> -<p> -"It may clear, though." -</p> -<p> -What stupid things they were saying! Much either he or she cared about -the weather, when they were in the country and had the prospect of a -good tramp or a hard gallop together. Not that they had had many such -lately; but then she had been busy with her mother, trying to make up -for Maisie's absence; and there had been the interruption caused by the -week-end party; and he had been helping to keep Lita amused—with -success, apparently. -</p> -<p> -"Yes... I shouldn't wonder if it cleared." He frowned out toward the -sky again. "Round about midday." He paused, and added: "I thought of -running Lita over to Greystock." -</p> -<p> -She nodded. They would no doubt stay and dine, and Lita would get her -dance. Probably Mrs. Manford wouldn't mind, though she was beginning to -show signs of wearying of tête-à-tête dinners with her daughter. But -they could go over the reception list again; and Pauline could talk -about her new Messiah. -</p> -<p> -Nona glanced down at her own letters. She often forgot to look at them -till the day was nearly over, now that she knew the one writing her eyes -thirsted for would not be on any of the envelopes. Stanley Heuston had -made no sign since they had parted that night on the doorstep... -</p> -<p> -The door opened, and Lita came in. It was the first time since their -arrival that she had appeared at breakfast. She faced Manford as she -entered, and Nona saw her father's expression change. It was like those -funny old portraits in the picture-restorers' windows, with a veil of -age and dust removed from one half to show the real surface underneath. -Lita's entrance did not make him look either younger or happier; it -simply removed from his face the soul-disguising veil which life -interposes between a man's daily world and himself. He looked -stripped—exposed ... exposed ... that was it. Nona glanced at Lita, -not to surprise her off her guard, but simply to look away from her -father. -</p> -<p> -Lita's face was what it always was: something so complete and -accomplished that one could not imagine its being altered by any -interior disturbance. It was like a delicate porcelain vase, or a smooth -heavy flower, that a shifting of light might affect, but nothing from -within would alter. She smiled in her round-eyed unseeing way, as a -little gold-and-ivory goddess might smile down on her worshippers, and -said: "I got up early because there wasn't any need to." -</p> -<p> -The reason was one completely satisfying to herself, but its effect on -her hearers was perhaps disappointing. Nona made no comment, and Manford -merely laughed—a vague laugh addressed, one could see, less to her -words, which he appeared not to have noticed, than to the mere luminous -fact of her presence; the kind of laugh evoked by the sight of a -dazzling fringed fish or flower suddenly offered to one's admiration. -</p> -<p> -"I think the rain will hold off before lunch," he said, communicating -the fact impartially to the room. -</p> -<p> -"Oh, what a pity—I wanted to get my hair thoroughly drenched. It's -beginning to uncurl with the long drought," Lita said, her hand wavering -uncertainly between the dishes Powder had placed in front of her. -"Grape-fruit, I think—though it's so awfully ocean-voyagy. Promise -me, Nona—!" She turned to her sister-in-law. -</p> -<p> -"Promise you what?" -</p> -<p> -"Not to send me a basket of grape-fruit when I sail." -</p> -<p> -Manford looked up at her impenetrable porcelain face. His lips half -parted on an unspoken word; then he pushed back his chair and got up. -</p> -<p> -"I'll order the car at eleven," he said, in a tone of aimless severity. -</p> -<p> -Lita was scooping a spoonful of juice out of the golden bowl of the -grape-fruit. She seemed neither to heed nor to hear. Manford laid down -his napkin and walked out of the room. -</p> -<p> -Lita threw back her head to let the liquid slip slowly down between her -lips. Her gold-fringed lids fluttered a little, as if the fruit-juice -were a kiss. -</p> -<p> -"When are you sailing?" Nona asked, reaching for the cigarette-lighter. -</p> -<p> -"Don't know. Next week, I shouldn't wonder." -</p> -<p> -"For any particular part of the globe?" -</p> -<p> -Lita's head descended, and she turned her chestnut-coloured eyes softly -on her sister-in-law. "Yes; but I can't remember what it's called." -</p> -<p> -Nona was looking at her in silence. It was simply that she was so -beautiful. A vase? No—a lamp now: there was a glow from the interior. -As if her red corpuscles had turned into millions of fairy lamps... -</p> -<p> -Her glance left Nona's and returned to her plate. "Letters. What a bore! -Why on earth don't people telephone?" -</p> -<p> -She did not often receive letters, her congenital inability to answer -them having gradually cooled the zeal of her correspondents; of all, -that is, excepting her husband. Almost every day Nona saw one of Jim's -gray-blue envelopes on the hall table. That particular colour had come -to symbolize to her a state of patient expectancy. -</p> -<p> -Lita was turning over some impersonal looking bills and advertisements. -From beneath them the faithful gray-blue envelope emerged. Nona thought: -"If only he wouldn't—!" and her eyes filled. -</p> -<p> -Lita looked pensively at the post-mark and then laid the envelope down -unopened. -</p> -<p> -"Aren't you going to read your letter?" -</p> -<p> -She raised her brows. "Jim's? I did—yesterday. One just like it." -</p> -<p> -"Lita! You're—you're perfectly beastly!" -</p> -<p> -Lita's languid mouth rounded into a smile. "Not to you, darling. Do you -want me to read it?" She slipped a polished finger-tip under the flap. -</p> -<p> -"Oh, no; no! Don't—not like that!" It made Nona wince. "I wish she -<i>hated</i> Jim—I wish she wanted to kill him! I could bear it -better than this," the girl stormed inwardly. She got up and turned -toward the door. -</p> -<p> -"Nona—wait! What's the matter? Don't you really want to hear what -he says?" Lita stood up also, her eyes still on the open letter. -"He—oh..." She turned toward her sister-in-law a face from which -the inner glow had vanished. -</p> -<p> -"What is it? Is he ill? What's wrong?" -</p> -<p> -"He's coming home. He wants me to go back the day after tomorrow." She -stood staring in front of her, her eyes fixed on something invisible to -Nona, and beyond her. -</p> -<p> -"Does he say why?" -</p> -<p> -"He doesn't say anything but that." -</p> -<p> -"When did you expect him?" -</p> -<p> -"I don't know. Not for ages. I never can remember about dates. But I -thought he liked it down there. And your father said he'd arranged—" -</p> -<p> -"Arranged what?" Nona interrupted. -</p> -<p> -Lita seemed to become aware of her again, and turned on her a smooth -inaccessible face. "I don't know: arranged with the bank, I suppose." -</p> -<p> -"To keep him there?" -</p> -<p> -"To let him have a good long holiday. You all thought he needed it so -awfully, didn't you?" -</p> -<p> -Nona stood motionless, staring out of the window. She saw her father -drive up in the Buick. The rain had diminished to a silver drizzle shot -with bursts of sun, and through the open window she heard him call: -"It's going to clear after all. We'd better start." -</p> -<p> -Lita went out of the door, humming a tune. -</p> -<p> -"Lita!" Nona called out, moved by some impulse to arrest, to warn—she -didn't know what. But the door had closed, and Lita was already out of -hearing. -</p> - -<p><br></p> - -<p> -All through the day it kept on raining at uncomfortable intervals. -Uncomfortable, that is, for Pauline and Nona. Whenever they tried to get -out for a walk a deluge descended; then, as soon as they had splashed -back to the house with the dripping dogs, the clouds broke and mocked -them with a blaze of sunshine. But by that time they were either -revising the list again, or had settled down to Mah-jongg in the -library. -</p> -<p> -"Really, I can't go up and change into my walking shoes <i>again</i>!" -Pauline remonstrated to the weather; and a few minutes later the streaming -window-panes had justified her. -</p> -<p> -"April showers," she remarked with a slightly rigid smile. She looked -deprecatingly at her daughter. "It was selfish of me to keep you here, -dear. You ought to have gone with your father and Lita." -</p> -<p> -"But there were all those notes to do, mother. And really I'm rather -fed-up with Greystock." -</p> -<p> -Pauline executed a repetition of her smile. "Well, I fancy we shall have -them back for tea. No golf this afternoon, I'm afraid," she said, -glancing with a certain furtive satisfaction at the increasing downpour. -</p> -<p> -"No; but Lita may want to stay and dance." -</p> -<p> -Pauline made no comment, but once more addressed her disciplined -attention to the game. -</p> -<p> -The fire, punctually replenished, continued to crackle and drowse. The -warmth drew out the strong scent of the carnations and rose-geraniums, -and made the room as languid as a summer garden. Dusk fell from the -cloud-laden skies, and in due course the hand which tended the fire drew -the curtains on their noiseless rings and lit the lamps. Lastly Powder -appeared, heading the processional entrance of the tea-table. -</p> -<p> -Pauline roused herself from a languishing Mah-jongg to take her expected -part in the performance. She and Nona grouped themselves about the -hearth, and Pauline lifted the lids of the little covered dishes with a -critical air. -</p> -<p> -"I ordered those muffins your father likes so much," she said, in a tone -of unwonted wistfulness. "Perhaps we'd better send them out to be kept -hot." -</p> -<p> -Nona agreed that it would be better; but as she had her hand on the bell -the sound of an approaching motor checked her. The dogs woke with a -happy growling and bustled out. "There they are after all!" Pauline -said. -</p> -<p> -There was a minute or two of silence, unmarked by the usual yaps of -welcome; then a sound like the depositing of wraps and an umbrella; then -Powder on the threshold, for once embarrassed and at a loss. -</p> -<p> -"Mr. Wyant, madam." -</p> -<p> -"Mr. Wyant?" -</p> -<p> -"Mr. Arthur Wyant. He seemed to think you were probably expecting him," -Powder continued, as if lengthening the communication in order to give -her time. -</p> -<p> -Mrs. Manford, seizing it, rose to the occasion with one of her heroic -wing-beats. "Yes—I was. Please show him in," she said, without -risking a glance at her daughter. -</p> -<p> -Arthur Wyant came in, tall and stooping in his shabby well-cut clothes, -a nervous flush on his cheekbones. He paused, and sent a half-bewildered -stare about the room—a look which seemed to say that when he had made -up his mind that he must see Pauline he had failed to allow for the -familiarity of the setting in which he was to find her. -</p> -<p> -"You've hardly changed anything here," he said abruptly, in the far-off -tone of a man slowly coming back to consciousness. -</p> -<p> -"How are you, Arthur? I'm sorry you've had such a rainy day for your -trip," Mrs. Manford responded, with an easy intonation intended to reach -the retreating Powder. -</p> -<p> -Her former husband took no notice. His eyes continued to travel about -the room in the same uncertain searching way. -</p> -<p> -"Hardly anything," he repeated, still seemingly unaware of any presence -in the room but his own. "That Raeburn, though—yes. That used to be -in the dining-room, didn't it?" He passed his hand over his forehead, as if -to brush away some haze of oblivion, and walked up to the picture. -</p> -<p> -"Wait a bit. It's in the place where the Sargent of Jim as a youngster -used to hang—Jim on his pony. Just over my writing-table, so that I -saw it whenever I looked up..." He turned to Pauline. "Jolly picture. What -have you done with it? Why did you take it away?" -</p> -<p> -Pauline coloured, but a smile of conciliation rode gallantly over her -blush. "I didn't. That is—Dexter wanted it. It's in his room; it's -been there for years." She paused, and then added: "You know how devoted -Dexter is to Jim." -</p> -<p> -Wyant had turned abruptly from the contemplation of the Raeburn. The -colour in Pauline's cheek was faintly reflected in his own. "Stupid of -me ... of course... Fact is, I was rather rattled when I came in, -seeing everything so much the same... You must excuse my turning up in -this way; I had to see you about something important... Hullo, Nona—" -</p> -<p> -"Of course I excuse you, Arthur. Do sit down—here by the fire. You -must be cold after your wet journey ... so unseasonable, after the weather -we've been having. Nona will ring for tea," Pauline said, with her -accent of indomitable hospitality. -</p> - -<p><br><br><br></p> -</div> -<div class="chapter"> -<h2><a id="chap29"></a>XXIX</h2> - -<div> - <img class="drop-cap" src="images/dropcap-n.jpg" width="70" alt="drop_n"> -</div> -<p class="drop-cap"> -NONA, that night, in her mother's doorway, wavered a moment and then -turned back. -</p> -<p> -"Well, then—goodnight, mother." -</p> -<p> -"Goodnight, child." -</p> -<p> -But Mrs. Manford seemed to waver too. She stood there in her rich dusky -draperies, and absently lifted a hand to detach one after the other of -her long earrings. It was one of Mrs. Manford's rules never to keep up -her maid to undress her. -</p> -<p> -"Can I unfasten you, mother?" -</p> -<p> -"Thanks, dear, no; this teagown slips off so easily. You must be tired..." -</p> -<p> -"No; I'm not tired. But you..." -</p> -<p> -"I'm not either." They stood irresolute on the threshold of the warm -shadowy room lit only by a waning sparkle from the hearth. Pauline -switched on the lamps. -</p> -<p> -"Come in then, dear." Her strained smile relaxed, and she laid a hand on -her daughter's shoulder. "Well, it's over," she said, in the weary yet -satisfied tone in which Nona had sometimes heard her pronounce the -epitaph of a difficult but successful dinner. -</p> -<p> -Nona followed her, and Pauline sank down in an armchair near the fire. -In the shaded lamplight, with the glint of the fire playing across her -face, and her small head erect on still comely shoulders, she had a -sweet dignity of aspect which moved her daughter incongruously. -</p> -<p> -"I'm so thankful you've never bobbed your hair, mother." -</p> -<p> -Mrs. Manford stared at this irrelevancy; her stare seemed to say that -she was resigned to her daughter's verbal leaps, but had long since -renounced the attempt to keep up with them. -</p> -<p> -"You're so handsome just as you are," Nona continued. "I can understand -dear old Exhibit's being upset when he saw you here, in the same -surroundings, and looking, after all, so much as you must have in his -day... And when he himself is so changed..." -</p> -<p> -Pauline lowered her lids over the vision. "Yes. Poor Arthur!" Had she -ever, for the last fifteen years, pronounced her former husband's name -without adding that depreciatory epithet? Somehow pity—an indulgent -pity—was always the final feeling he evoked. She leaned back against -the cushions, and added: "It was certainly unfortunate, his taking it -into his head to come out here. I didn't suppose he would have -remembered so clearly how everything looked... The Sargent of Jim on -the pony... Do you think he minded?" -</p> -<p> -"Its having been moved to father's room? Yes; I think he did." -</p> -<p> -"But, Nona, he's always been so grateful to your father for what he's -done for Jim—and for Lita. He <i>admires</i> your father. He's often -told me so." -</p> -<p> -"Yes." -</p> -<p> -"At any rate, once he was here, I couldn't do less than ask him to stay -to dine." -</p> -<p> -"No; you couldn't. Especially as there was no train back till after -dinner." -</p> -<p> -"And, after all, I don't, to this minute, know what he came for!" -</p> -<p> -Nona lifted her eyes from an absorbed contemplation of the fire. "You -don't?" -</p> -<p> -"Oh, of course, in a vague way, to talk about Jim and Lita. The same old -things we've heard so many times. But I quieted him very soon about that. -I told him Lita had been perfectly happy here—that the experiment -had been a complete success. He seemed surprised that she had given up -all her notions about Hollywood and Klawhammer ... apparently -Amalasuntha has been talking a lot of nonsense to him ... but when I -said that Lita had never once spoken of Hollywood, and that she was -going home the day after tomorrow to join her husband, it seemed to -tranquillize him completely. Didn't he seem to you much quieter when he -drove off?" -</p> -<p> -"Yes; he was certainly quieter. But he seemed to want particularly to -see Lita." -</p> -<p> -Pauline drew a quick breath. "Yes. On the whole I was glad she wasn't -here. Lita has never known how to manage Arthur, and her manner is -sometimes so irritating. She might have said something that would have -upset him again. It was really a relief when your father telephoned that -they had decided to dine at Greystock—though I could see that Arthur -thought that funny too. His ideas have never progressed an inch; he's -always remained as old-fashioned as his mother." She paused a moment, -and then went on: "I saw you were a little startled when I asked him if -he wouldn't like to spend the night. But I didn't want to appear -inhospitable." -</p> -<p> -"No; not in this house," Nona agreed with her quick smile. "And of -course one knew he wouldn't—" -</p> -<p> -Pauline sighed. "Poor Arthur! He's always so punctilious." -</p> -<p> -"It wasn't only that. He was suffering horribly." -</p> -<p> -"About Lita? So foolish! As if he couldn't trust her to us—" -</p> -<p> -"Not only about Lita. But just from the fact of being here—of having -all his old life thrust back on him. He seemed utterly unprepared for -it—as if he'd really succeeded in not thinking about it at all for -years. And suddenly there it was: like the drowning man's vision. A -drowning man—that's what he was like." -</p> -<p> -Pauline straightened herself slightly, and Nona saw her brows gather in -a faint frown. "What dreadful ideas you have! I thought I'd never seen -him looking better; and certainly he didn't take too much wine at -dinner." -</p> -<p> -"No; he was careful about that." -</p> -<p> -"And I was careful too. I managed to give a hint to Powder." Her frown -relaxed, and she leaned back with another sigh, this time of -appeasement. After all, her look seemed to say, she was not going to let -herself be unsettled by Nona's mortuary images, now that the whole -business was over, and she had every reason to congratulate herself on -her own share in it. -</p> -<p> -Nona (but it was her habit!) appeared less sure. She hung back a moment, -and then said: "I haven't told you yet. On the way down to dinner..." -</p> -<p> -"What, dear?" -</p> -<p> -"I met him on the upper landing. He asked to see the baby ... that was -natural..." -</p> -<p> -Pauline drew her lips in nervously. She had thought she had all the -wires in her hands; and here was one—She agreed with an effort: -"Perfectly natural." -</p> -<p> -"The baby was asleep, looking red and jolly. He stood over the crib a -long time. Luckily it wasn't the old nursery." -</p> -<p> -"Really, Nona! He could hardly expect—" -</p> -<p> -"No; of course not. Then, just as we were going downstairs, he said: -'Funny, how like Jim the child is growing. Reminds me of that old -portrait.' And he jerked out at me: 'Could I see it?'" -</p> -<p> -"What—the Sargent?" -</p> -<p> -Nona nodded. "Could I refuse him?" -</p> -<p> -"I suppose that was natural too." -</p> -<p> -"So I took him into father's study. He seemed to remember every step of -the way. He stood and looked and looked at the picture. He didn't say -anything ... didn't answer when I spoke... I saw that it went -through and through him." -</p> -<p> -"Well, Nona, byegones are byegones. But people do bring things upon -themselves, sometimes—" -</p> -<p> -"Oh, I know, mother." -</p> -<p> -"Some people might think it peculiar, his rambling about the house like -that—his coming here at all, with his ideas of delicacy! But I don't -blame him; and I don't want you to," Pauline continued firmly. "After -all, it's just as well he came. He may have been a little upset at the -moment; but I managed to calm him down; and I certainly proved to him -that everything's all right, and that Dexter and I can be trusted to -know what's best for Lita." She paused, and then added: "Do you know, -I'm rather inclined not to mention his visit to your father—or to -Lita. Now it's over, why should they be bothered?" -</p> -<p> -"No reason at all." Nona rose from her crouching attitude by the fire, -and stretched her arms above her head. "I'll see that Powder doesn't say -anything. And besides, he wouldn't. He always seems to know what needs -explaining and what doesn't. He ought to be kept to avert cataclysms, -like those fire-extinguishers in the passages... Goodnight, -mother—I'm beginning to be sleepy." -</p> - -<p><br></p> - -<p> -Yes; it was all over and done with; and Pauline felt that she had a -right to congratulate herself. She had not told Nona how "difficult" -Wyant had been for the first few minutes, when the girl had slipped out -of the library after tea and left them alone. What was the use of going -into all that? Pauline had been a little nervous at first—worried, -for instance, as to what might happen if Dexter and Lita should walk in -while Arthur was in that queer excited state, stamping up and down the -library floor, and muttering, half to himself and half to her: "Damn it, -am I in my own house or another man's? Can anybody answer me that?" -</p> -<p> -But they had not walked in, and the phase of excitability had soon been -over. Pauline had only had to answer: "You're in my house, Arthur, -where, as Jim's father, you're always welcome..." That had put a stop -to his ravings, shamed him a little, and so brought him back to his -sense of what was due to the occasion, and to his own dignity. -</p> -<p> -"My dear—you must excuse me. I'm only an intruder here, I -know—" -</p> -<p> -And when she had added: "Never in my house, Arthur. Sit down, please, -and tell me what you want to see me about—" why, at that question, -quietly and reasonably put, all his bluster had dropped, and he had sat -down as she bade him, and begun, in his ordinary tone, to rehearse the -old rigmarole about Jim and Lita, and Jim's supineness, and Lita's -philanderings, and what would the end of it be, and did she realize that -the woman was making a laughing-stock of their son—yes, that they -were talking about it at the clubs? -</p> -<p> -After that she had had no trouble. It had been easy to throw a little -gentle ridicule over his apprehensions, and then to reassure him by her -report of her own talk with Lita (though she winced even now at its -conclusion), and the affirmation that the Cedarledge experiment had been -entirely successful. Then, luckily, just as his questions began to be -pressing again—as he began to hint at some particular man, she didn't -know who—Powder had come in to show him up to one of the spare-rooms -to prepare for dinner; and soon after dinner the motor was at the door, and -Powder (again acting for Providence) had ventured to suggest, sir, that -in view of the slippery state of the roads it would be well to get off -as promptly as possible. And Nona had taken over the seeing-off, and -with a long sigh of relief Pauline had turned back into the library, -where Wyant's empty whisky-and-soda glass and ash-tray stood, so -uncannily, on the table by her husband's armchair. Yes; she had been -thankful when it was over... -</p> -<p> -And now she was thankful that it had happened. The encounter had -fortified her confidence in her own methods and given her a new proof of -her power to surmount obstacles by smiling them away. She had literally -smiled Arthur out of the house, when some women, in a similar emergency, -would have made a scene, or stood on their dignity. Dignity! Hers -consisted, more than ever, in believing the best of every one, in -persuading herself and others that to impute evil was to create it, and -to disbelieve it was to prevent its coming into being. Those were the -Scientific Initiate's very words: "We manufacture sorrow as we do all -the other toxins." How grateful she was to him for that formula! And how -light and happy it made her feel to know that she had borne it in mind, -and proved its truth, at so crucial a moment! She looked back with pity -at her own past moods of distrust, her wretched impulses of jealousy and -suspicion, the moments when even those nearest her had not been proof -against her morbid apprehensions... -</p> -<p> -How absurd and far away it all seemed now! Jim was coming back the day -after tomorrow. Lita and the baby were going home to him. And the day -after that they would all be going back to town; and then the last -touches would be put to the ceremonial of the Cardinal's reception. Oh, -she and Powder would have their hands full! All of the big silver-gilt -service would have to be got out of the safety vaults and gone over... -Luckily the last reports of Mrs. Bruss's state were favourable, and no -doubt Maisie would be back as usual... Yes, life was really falling -into its usual busy and pleasurable routine. Rest in the country was all -very well; but rest, if overdone, became fatiguing... -</p> -<p> -She found herself in bed, the lights turned off, and sleep descending on -her softly. -</p> -<p> -Before it held her, she caught, through misty distances, the sound of -her husband's footfall, the opening and shutting of his door, and the -muffled noises of his undressing. Well ... so he was back ... and -Lita ... silly Lita ... no harm, really... Just as well they -hadn't met poor Arthur... Everything was all right ... the Cardinal... -</p> - -<p><br><br><br></p> -</div> -<div class="chapter"> -<h2><a id="chap30"></a>XXX</h2> - -<div> - <img class="drop-cap" src="images/dropcap-p.jpg" width="70" alt="drop_p"> -</div> -<p class="drop-cap"> -PAULINE sat up suddenly in bed. It was as if an invisible hand had -touched a spring in her spinal column, and set her upright in the -darkness before she was aware of any reason for it. -</p> -<p> -No doubt she had heard something through her sleep; but what? She -listened for a repetition of the sound. -</p> -<p> -All was silence. She stretched out her hand to an onyx knob on the table -by her bed, and instantly the face of a miniature clock was illuminated, -and the hour chimed softly; two strokes followed by one. Half-past -two—the silentest hour of the night; and in the vernal hush of -Cedarledge! Yet certainly there had been a sound—a sharp explosive -sound... Again! There it was: a revolver shot ... somewhere in the -house... -</p> -<p> -Burglars? -</p> -<p> -Her feet were in her slippers, her hand on the electric light switch. -All the while she continued to listen intently. Dead silence everywhere... -</p> -<p> -But how had burglars got in without starting the alarm? Ah—she -remembered! Powder had orders never to set it while any one was out of -the house; it was Dexter who should have seen that it was connected when -he got back from Greystock with Lita. And naturally he had forgotten to. -</p> -<p> -Pauline was on her feet, her hair smoothed back under her fillet-shaped -cap of silver lace, her "rest-gown" of silvery silk slipped over her -night-dress. This emergency garb always lay at her bedside in case of -nocturnal alarms, and she was equipped in an instant, and had already -reconnected the burglar-alarm, and sounded the general summons for -Powder, the footmen, the gardeners and chauffeurs. Her hand played -irresolutely over the complicated knobs of the glittering switchboard -which filled a panel of her dressing-room; then she pressed the button -marked "Engine-house." Why not? There had been a series of bad suburban -burglaries lately, and one never knew... It was just as well to rouse -the neighbourhood... Dexter was so careless. Very likely he had left -the front door open. -</p> -<p> -Silence still—profounder than ever. Not a sound since that second -shot, if shot it was. Very softly she opened her door and paused in the -anteroom between her room and her husband's. "Dexter!" she called. -</p> -<p> -No answer; no responding flash of light. Men slept so heavily. She -opened, lighted—"Dexter!" -</p> -<p> -The room was empty, her husband's bed unslept in. But then—what? -Those sounds of his return? Had she been dreaming when she thought she -heard them? Or was it the burglars she had heard, looting his room, a -few feet off from where she lay? In spite of her physical courage a -shiver ran over her... -</p> -<p> -But if Dexter and Lita were not yet back, whence had the sound of the -shot come, and who had fired it? She trembled at the thought of -Nona—Nona and the baby! They were alone with the baby's nurse on the -farther side of the house. And the house seemed suddenly so immense, so -resonant, so empty... -</p> -<p> -In the shadowy corridor outside her room she paused again for a second, -straining her ears for a guiding sound; then she sped on, pushing back -the swinging door which divided the farther wing from hers, turning on -the lights with a flying hand as she ran... On the deeply carpeted -floors her foot-fall made no sound, and she had the sense of skimming -over the ground inaudibly, like something ghostly, disembodied, which -had no power to break the hush and make itself heard... -</p> -<p> -Half way down the passage she was startled to see the door of Lita's -bedroom open. Sounds at last—sounds low, confused and -terrified—issued from it. What kind of sounds? Pauline could not -tell; they were rushing together in a vortex in her brain. She heard -herself scream "Help!" with the strangled voice of a nightmare, and was -comforted to feel the rush of other feet behind her: Powder, the -men-servants, the maids. Thank God the system worked! Whatever she was -coming to, at least they would be there to help... -</p> -<p> -She reached the door, pushed it—and it unexpectedly resisted. Some -one was clinging to it on the inner side, struggling to hold it shut, to -prevent her entering. She threw herself against it with all her -strength, and saw her husband's arm and hand in the gap. "Dexter!" -</p> -<p> -"Oh, God." He fell back, and the door with him. Pauline went in. -</p> -<p> -All the lights were on—the room was a glare. Another man stood -shivering and staring in a corner, but Pauline hardly noticed him, for -before her on the floor lay Lita's long body, in a loose spangled robe, -flung sobbing over another body. -</p> -<p> -"Nona—Nona!" the mother screamed, rushing forward to where they lay. -</p> -<p> -She swept past her husband, dragged Lita back, was on her knees on the -floor, her child pressed to her, Nona's fallen head against her breast, -Nona's blood spattering the silvery folds of the rest-gown, destroying -it forever as a symbol of safety and repose. -</p> -<p> -"Nona—child! What's happened? Are you hurt? Dexter—for pity's -sake! Nona, look at me! It's mother, darling, mother—" -</p> -<p> -Nona's eyes opened with a flutter. Her face was ashen-white, and empty -as a baby's. Slowly she met her mother's agonized stare. "All right ... -only winged me." Her gaze wavered about the disordered room, lifting -and dropping in a butterfly's bewildered flight. Lita lay huddled on the -couch in her spangles, twisted and emptied, like a festal garment flung -off by its wearer. Manford stood between, his face a ruin. In the corner -stood that other man, shrinking, motionless. Pauline's eyes, following -her child's, travelled on to him. -</p> -<p> -"Arthur!" she gasped out, and felt Nona's feeble pressure on her arm. -</p> -<p> -"Don't ... don't... It was an accident. Father—an accident! -<i>Father</i>!" -</p> -<p> -The door of the room was wide now, and Powder stood there, unnaturally -thin and gaunt in his improvised collarless garb, marshalling the gaping -footmen, with gardeners, chauffeurs and maids crowding the corridor -behind them. It was really marvellous, how Pauline's system had worked. -</p> -<p> -Manford turned to Arthur Wyant, his stony face white with revenge. Wyant -still stood motionless, his arms hanging down, his body emptied of all -its strength, a broken word that sounded like "honour" stumbling from -his bedraggled lips. -</p> -<p> -"<i>Father</i>!" At Nona's faint cry Manford's arm fell to his side also, -and he stood there as powerless and motionless as the other. -</p> -<p> -"All an accident ..." breathed from the white lips against Pauline. -</p> -<p> -Powder had stepped forward. His staccato orders rang back over his -shoulder. "Ring up the doctor. Have a car ready. Scour the gardens... -One of the women here! Madam's maid!" -</p> -<p> -Manford suddenly roused himself and swung about with dazed eyes on the -disheveled group in the doorway. "Damn you, what are you doing here, all -of you? Get out—get out, the lot of you! Get out, I say! Can't you -hear me?" -</p> -<p> -Powder bent a respectful but controlling eye on his employer. "Yes, sir; -certainly, sir. I only wish to state that the burglar's mode of entrance -has already been discovered." Manford met this with an unseeing stare, -but the butler continued imperturbably: "Thanks to the rain, sir. He got -in through the pantry window; the latch was forced, and there's muddy -footprints on my linoleum, sir. A tramp was noticed hanging about this -afternoon. I can give evidence—" -</p> -<p> -He darted swiftly between the two men, bent to the floor, and picked up -something which he slipped quickly and secretly into his pocket. A -moment later he had cleared his underlings from the threshold, and the -door was shut on them and him. -</p> -<p> -"Dexter," Pauline cried, "help me to lift her to the bed." -</p> -<p> -Outside, through the watchful hush of the night, a rattle and roar came -up the drive. It filled the silence with an unnatural clamour, immense, -mysterious and menacing. It was the Cedarledge fire-brigade, arriving -double quick in answer to their benefactress's summons. -</p> -<p> -Pauline, bending over her daughter's face, fancied she caught a wan -smile on it... -</p> - -<p><br><br><br></p> -</div> -<div class="chapter"> -<h2><a id="chap31"></a>XXXI</h2> - -<div> - <img class="drop-cap" src="images/dropcap-n.jpg" width="70" alt="drop_n"> -</div> -<p class="drop-cap"> -NONA MANFORD'S room was full of spring flowers. They had poured in, sent -by sympathizing friends, ever since she had been brought back to town -from Cedarledge. -</p> -<p> -That was two weeks ago. It was full spring now, and her windows stood -wide to the May sunset slanting across the room, and giving back to the -tall branches of blossoming plum and cherry something of their native -scent and freshness. -</p> -<p> -The reminder of Cedarledge would once have doubled their beauty; now it -made her shut her eyes sharply, in the inner recoil from all the name -brought back. -</p> -<p> -She was still confined to her room, for the shot which had fractured her -arm near the shoulder had also grazed her lung, and her temperature -remained obstinately high. Shock, the doctors said, chiefly ... the -appalling sight of a masked burglar in her sister-in-law's bedroom; and -being twice fired at—twice! -</p> -<p> -Lita corroborated the story. She had been asleep when her door was -softly opened, and she had started up to see a man in a mask, with a -dark lantern... Yes; she was almost sure he had a mask; at any rate -she couldn't see his face; the police had found the track of muddy feet -on the pantry linoleum, and up the back stairs. -</p> -<p> -Lita had screamed, and Nona had dashed to the rescue; yes, and Mr. -Manford—Lita thought Mr. Manford had perhaps got there before Nona. -But then again, she wasn't sure... The fact was that Lita had been -shattered by the night's experience, and her evidence, if not -self-contradictory, was at least incoherent. -</p> -<p> -The only really lucid witnesses were Powder, the butler, and Nona -Manford herself. Their statements agreed exactly, or at least dovetailed -into each other with perfect precision, the one completing the other. Nona -had been first on the scene: she had seen the man in the room—she -too thought that he was masked—and he had turned on her and fired. At -that moment her father, hearing the shots, had rushed in, half-dressed; -and as he did so the burglar fled. Some one professed to have seen him -running away through the rain and darkness; but no one had seen his -face, and there was no way of identifying him. The only positive proof of -his presence—except for the shot—was the discovery by Powder, -of those carefully guarded footprints on the pantry floor; and these, of -course, might eventually help to trace the criminal. As for the -revolver, that also had disappeared; and the bullets, one of which had -been found lodged in the door, the other in the panelling of the room, -were of ordinary army calibre, and offered no clue. Altogether it was an -interesting problem for the police, who were reported to be actively at -work on it, though so far without visible results. -</p> -<p> -Then, after three days of flaming headlines and journalistic -conjectures, another sensation crowded out the Cedarledge burglary. The -newspaper public, bored with the inability of the police to provide -fresh fuel for their curiosity, ceased to speculate on the affair, and -interest in it faded out as quickly as it had flared up. -</p> -<p> -During the last few days Nona's temperature had gradually dropped, and -she had been allowed to see visitors; first one in the day, then two or -three, then four or five—so that by this time her jaws were beginning -to feel a little stiff with the continual rehearsal of her story, -embellished (at the visitors' request) with an analysis of her own -emotions. She always repeated her narrative in exactly the same terms, -and presented the incidents in exactly the same order; by now she had -even learned to pause at the precise point where she knew her -sympathizing auditors would say: "But, my dear, how perfectly -awful—what did it feel like?" -</p> -<p> -"Like being shot in the arm." -</p> -<p> -"Oh, Nona, you're so cynical! But before that—when you <i>saw the -man</i>—weren't you absolutely sick with terror?" -</p> -<p> -"He didn't give me time to be sick with anything but the pain in my -shoulder." -</p> -<p> -"You'll never get her to confess that she was frightened!" -</p> -<p> -And so the dialogue went on. Did her listeners notice that she recited -her tale with the unvarying precision of a lesson learned by heart? -Probably not; if they did, they made no sign. The papers had all been -full of the burglary at Cedarledge: a masked burglar—and of the -shooting of Miss Manford, and the would-be murderer's escape. The -account, blood-curdling and definite, had imposed itself on the public -credulity with all the authority of heavy headlines and continual -repetition. Within twenty-four hours the Cedarledge burglary was an -established fact, and suburban millionaires were doubling the number of -their night watchmen, and looking into the newest thing in -burglar-alarms. Nona, leaning back wearily on her couch, wondered how -soon she would be allowed to travel and get away from it all. -</p> -<p> -The others were all going to travel. Her mother and father were off that -very evening to the Rocky Mountains and Vancouver. From there they were -going to Japan and, in the early autumn, to Ceylon and India. Pauline -already had letters to all the foremost Native Princes, and was -regretting that there was not likely to be a Durbar during their visit. -The Manfords did not expect to be back till January or February; -Manford's professional labours had become so exhausting that the -doctors, fearing his accumulated fatigue might lead to a nervous -break-down, had ordered a complete change and prolonged absence from -affairs. Pauline hoped that Nona would meet them in Egypt on their way -home. A sunny Christmas together in Cairo would be so lovely... -</p> -<p> -Arthur Wyant had gone also—to Canada, it was said, with cousin -Eleanor in attendance. Some insinuated that a private inebriate asylum -in Maine was the goal of his journey; but no one really knew, and few -cared. His remaining cronies, when they heard that he had been ill, and -was to travel for a change, shrugged or smiled, and said: "Poor old -Arthur—been going it too strong again," and then forgot about him. -He had long since lost his place in the scheme of things. -</p> -<p> -Even Lita and Jim Wyant were on a journey. They had sailed the previous -week for Paris, where they would arrive in time for the late spring -season, and Lita would see the Grand Prix, the new fashions and the new -plays. Jim's holiday had been extended to the end of August: Manford, -ever solicitous for his stepson, had arranged the matter with the bank. -It was natural, every one agreed, that Jim should have been dreadfully -upset by the ghastly episode at Cedarledge, in which his wife might have -been a victim as well as Nona; and his intimates knew how much he had -worried about his father's growing intemperance. Altogether, both Wyants -and Manfords had been subjected to an unusual strain; and when rich -people's nerves are out of gear the pleasant remedy of travel is the -first prescribed. -</p> - -<p><br></p> - -<p> -Nona turned her head uneasily on the cushions. She felt incurably weary, -and unable to rebound to the spring radiance which usually set her blood -in motion. Her immobility had begun to wear on her. At first it had been -a relief to be quiescent, to be out of things, to be offered up as the -passive victim and the accepted evidence of the Cedarledge burglary. But -now she was sick to nausea of the part, and envious of the others who -could escape by flight—by perpetual evasion. -</p> -<p> -Not that she really wanted to be one of them; she was not sure that she -wanted to go away at all—at least in the body. Spiritual escape was -what she craved; but by what means, and whither? Perhaps it could best -be attained by staying just where she was, by sticking fast to her few -square feet of obligations and responsibilities. But even this idea made -no special appeal. Her obligations, her responsibilities—what were -they? Negative, at best, like everything else in her life. She had -thought that renunciation would mean freedom—would mean at least -escape. But today it seemed to mean only a closer self-imprisonment. She -was tired, no doubt... -</p> -<p> -There was a tap on the door, and her mother entered. Nona raised her -listless eyes curiously. She always looked at her mother with curiosity -now: curiosity not so much as to what had changed in her, but as to what -had remained the same. And it was extraordinary how Pauline, the old -Pauline, was coming to the surface again through the new one, the -haggard and stricken apparition of the Cedarledge midnight... -</p> -<p> -"My broken arm saved her," Nona thought, remembering, with a sort of -ironical admiration, how that dishevelled spectre had become Pauline -Manford again, in command of herself and the situation, as soon as she -could seize on its immediate, its practical, sides; could grasp those -handles of reality to which she always clung. -</p> -<p> -Now even that stern and disciplined figure had vanished, giving way, as -the days passed and reassurance grew, to the usual, the everyday -Pauline, smilingly confident in herself and in the general security of -things. Had that dreadful night at Cedarledge ever been a reality to -her? If it had, Nona was sure, it had already faded into the realms of -fable, since its one visible result had been her daughter's injury, and -that was on the way to healing. Everything else connected with it had -happened out of sight and under ground, and for that reason was now as -if it had never existed for Pauline, who was more than ever resolutely -two-dimensional. -</p> -<p> -Physically, at least, the only difference Nona could detect was that a -skilful make-up had filled in the lines which, in spite of all the arts -of the face-restorers, were weaving their permanent web about her -mother's lips and eyes. Under this delicate mask Pauline's face looked -younger and fresher than ever, and as smooth and empty as if she had -just been born again—"And she <i>has</i>, after all," Nona concluded. -</p> -<p> -She sat down by the couch, and laid a light hand caressingly on her -daughter's. -</p> -<p> -"Darling! Had your tea? You feel really better, don't you? The doctor -says the massage is to begin tomorrow. By the way—" she tossed a -handful of newspaper cuttings onto the coverlet—"perhaps some of -these things about the reception may amuse you. Maisie's been saving -them to show you. Of course most of the foreign names are wrong; but the -description of the room is rather good. I believe Tommy Ardwin wrote the -article for the 'Looker-on.' Amalasuntha says the Cardinal will like it. -It seems he was delighted with the idea of the flash-light photographs. -Altogether he was very much pleased." -</p> -<p> -"Then you ought to be, mother." Nona forced her pale lips into a smile. -</p> -<p> -"I <i>am</i>, dear. If I do a thing at all I like to do it well. That's -always been my theory, you know: the best or nothing. And I do believe -it was a success. But perhaps I'm tiring you—." Pauline stood up -irresolutely. She had never been good at bedsides unless she could play -some active and masterful part there. Nona was aware that her mother's -moments alone with her had become increasingly difficult as her strength -had returned, and there was nothing more to be done for her. It was as -well that the Manfords were starting on their journey that evening. -</p> -<p> -"Don't stay, mother; I'm all right, really. It's only that things still -tire me a little—" -</p> -<p> -Pauline lingered, looking down on the girl with an expression of anxiety -struggling through her smooth rejuvenation. -</p> -<p> -"I wish I felt happier about leaving you, darling. I know you're all -right, of course; but the idea of your staying in this house all by -yourself—" -</p> -<p> -"It's just what I shall like. And on father's account you ought to get -away." -</p> -<p> -"It's what I feel," Pauline assented, brightening. -</p> -<p> -"You must be awfully busy with all the last things to be done. I'm as -comfortable as possible; I wish you'd just go off and forget about me." -</p> -<p> -"Well, Maisie is clamouring for me," Pauline confessed from the -threshold. -</p> -<p> -The door shut, and Nona closed her eyes with a sigh. -Tomorrow—tomorrow she would be alone! And in a week, perhaps, she -would get back to Cedarledge, and lie on the terrace with the dogs about -her, and no one to ask questions, to hint and sympathize, or be discreet -and evasive... Yes, in spite of everything, the idea of returning to -Cedarledge now seemed more bearable than any other... -</p> -<p> -In a restless attempt to ease her position she stretched her hand out, -and it came in contact with the bundle of newspaper cuttings. She shrank -back with a little grimace; then she smiled. After the night at -Cedarledge every one had supposed—even Maisie and Powder -had—that the Cardinal's reception would have to be given up, -since, owing to his Eminence's impending departure, it could not be -deferred. But it had come off on the appointed day—only the fourth -after the burglary—and Pauline had made it a success. The girl -really admired her mother for that. Something in her own composition -responded to the energy with which the older woman could meet an -emergency when there was no way of turning it. The party had been not -only brilliant but entertaining. Every one had been there, all the -official and ecclesiastical dignitaries, including the Bishop of New -York and the Chief Rabbi—yes, even the Scientific Initiate, -looking colossal and Siberian in some half-priestly dress that added its -note to the general picturesqueness; and yet there had been no crush, no -confusion, nothing to detract from the dignity and amenity of the -evening. Nona suspected her mother of longing to invite the Mahatma, -whose Oriental garb would have been so effective, and who would have -been so flattered, poor man! But she had not risked it, and her chief -lion, after the great ecclesiastics, had turned out to be Michelangelo, -the newly arrived, with the film-glamour enhancing his noble Roman -beauty, and his mother at his side, explaining and parading him. -</p> -<p> -"The pity is that dear Jim and Lita have sailed," the Marchesa declared -to all who would give ear. "That's really a great disappointment. I did -hope Lita would have been here tonight. She and my Michelangelo would -have made such a glorious couple: the Old World and the New. Or as -Antony and Cleopatra—only fancy! My boy tells me that Klawhammer is -looking for a Cleopatra. But dear Lita will be back before long—." -And she mingled her hopes and regrets with Mrs. Percy Landish's. -</p> - -<p><br><br><br></p> -</div> -<div class="chapter"> -<h2><a id="chap32"></a>XXXII</h2> - -<div> - <img class="drop-cap" src="images/dropcap-n.jpg" width="70" alt="drop_n"> -</div> -<p class="drop-cap"> -NONA shut her eyes again. Ever since that intolerable night she had -ached with the incessant weariness of not being able to sleep, and of -trying to hide from those about her how brief her intervals of oblivion -had been. During the hours of darkness she seemed to be forever toiling -down perspectives of noise and glare, like a wanderer in the labyrinth -of an unknown city. Even her snatches of sleep were so crowded with -light and noise, so dazzled with the sense of exposure, that she was not -conscious of the respite till it was over. It was only by day, alone in -her room, that her lids, in closing, sometimes shut things out... -</p> -<p> -Such a respite came to her now; and she started up out of nothingness to -find her father at her side. She had not expected to see him alone -before they parted. She had fancied that her parents would contrive to -postpone their joint farewells till after dinner, just before driving -off to their train. For a moment she lay and looked up at Manford -without being clearly conscious that he was there, and without knowing -what to say if he were. -</p> -<p> -It appeared that he did not know either. Perhaps he had been led to her -side, almost in spite of himself, by a vague craving to be alone with -her just once before they parted; or perhaps he had come because he -suspected she might think he was afraid to. He sat down without speaking -in the chair which Pauline had left. -</p> -<p> -Dusk had fallen, and Nona was aware of the presence at her side only as -a shadowy bulk. After a while her father put out his hand and laid it on -hers. -</p> -<p> -"Why, it's nearly dark," she said. "You'll be off in an hour or so now." -</p> -<p> -"Yes. Your mother and I are dining early." -</p> -<p> -She wound her fingers into his, and they sat silent again. She liked to -have him near her in this way, but she was glad, for his sake and her -own, that the twilight made his face indistinct. She hoped their silence -might be unbroken. As long as she neither saw nor heard him there was an -unaccountable comfort in feeling him near—as if the living warmth he -imparted were something they shared indissolubly. -</p> -<p> -"In a couple of hours now—" he began, with an attempt at briskness. -She was silent, and he went on: "I wanted to be with you alone for a minute -like this. I wanted to say—" -</p> -<p> -"Father—." -</p> -<p> -He turned suddenly in his chair, and bending down over her pressed his -forehead against the coverlet. She freed her hand and passed it through -the thin hair on his temples. -</p> -<p> -"Don't. There's nothing to say." -</p> -<p> -She felt a tremor of his shoulders as they pressed against her, and the -tremor ran through her own body and seemed to loosen the fibres of her -heart. -</p> -<p> -"Old dad." -</p> -<p> -"Nona." -</p> -<p> -After that they remained again without speaking till a clock chimed out -from somewhere in the shadows. Manford got up. He gave himself one of -his impatient shakes, and stooped to kiss his daughter on the forehead. -</p> -<p> -"I don't believe I'll come up again before we go." -</p> -<p> -"No." -</p> -<p> -"It's no use—" -</p> -<p> -"No." -</p> -<p> -"I'll look after your mother—do all I can... Goodbye, dear." -</p> -<p> -"Goodbye, father." -</p> -<p> -He groped for her forehead again, and went out of the room; and she -closed her eyes and lay in the darkness, her heart folded like two hands -around the thought of him. -</p> - -<p><br></p> - -<p> -"Nona, darling!" There were still the goodbyes to her mother to be gone -through. Well, that would be comparatively easy; and in a lighted room -too, with Pauline on the threshold, slim, erect and consciously equipped -for travel—complete and wonderful! Yes; it would be almost easy. -</p> -<p> -"Child, it's time; we're off in a few minutes. But I think I've left -everything in order. Maisie's downstairs; she has all my directions, and -the list of stations to which she's to wire how you are while we're -crossing the continent." -</p> -<p> -"But, mother, I'm all right; it's not a bit necessary—" -</p> -<p> -"Dear! You can't help my wanting to hear about you." -</p> -<p> -"No; I know. I only meant you're not to worry." -</p> -<p> -"Of course I won't worry; I wouldn't <i>let</i> myself worry. You know how -I feel about all that. And besides," added Mrs. Manford victoriously, -"what in the world is there to worry about?" -</p> -<p> -"Nothing," Nona acquiesced with a smile. -</p> -<p> -Pauline bent down and placed a lingering kiss where Manford's lips had -just brushed his daughter's forehead. Pauline played her part -better—and made it correspondingly easier for her fellow-actors to -play theirs. -</p> -<p> -"Goodbye, mother dear. Have all sorts of a good time, won't you?" -</p> -<p> -"It will be a very interesting trip—with a man as clever and -cultivated as your father... If only you could have come with us! But -you'll promise to join us in Egypt?" -</p> -<p> -"Don't ask me to promise anything yet, mother." -</p> -<p> -Pauline raised herself to her full height and stood looking down -intently at her daughter. Under her smooth new face Nona again seemed to -see the flicker of anxiety pass back and forward, like a light moving -from window to window in a long-uninhabited house. The glimpse startled -the girl and caught her by the heart. Suddenly something within her -broke up. Her lips tightened like a child's, and she felt the tears -running down her cheeks. -</p> -<p> -"Nona! You're not crying?" Pauline was kneeling at her side. -</p> -<p> -"It's nothing, mother—nothing. Go! Please go!" -</p> -<p> -"Darling—if I could only see you happy one of these days." -</p> -<p> -"Happy?" -</p> -<p> -"Well, I mean like other people. Married—" the mother hastily -ventured. -</p> -<p> -Nona had brushed away her tears. She raised her head and looked straight -at Pauline. -</p> -<p> -"Married? Do you suppose being married would make me happy? I wonder why -you should! I don't want to marry—there's nobody in the world I would -marry." She continued to stare up at her mother with hard unwavering -eyes. "Marry! I'd a thousand times rather go into a convent and have -done with it," she exclaimed. -</p> -<p> -"A convent—Nona! Not a <i>convent</i>?" -</p> -<p> -Pauline had got to her feet and stood before her daughter with distress -and amazement breaking through every fissure of her paint. "I never -heard anything so horrible," she said. -</p> -<p> -Deeper than all her eclectic religiosity, deeper than her pride in -receiving the Cardinal, deeper than the superficial contradictions and -accommodations of a conscience grown elastic from too much use, Nona -watched, with a faint smile, the old Puritan terror of gliding priests -and incense and idolatry rise to the surface of her mother's face. -Perhaps that terror was the only solid fibre left in her. -</p> -<p> -"I sometimes think you want to break my heart, Nona. To tell me this -now! ... Go into a convent ..." the mother groaned. -</p> -<p> -The girl let her head drop back among the cushions. -</p> -<p> -"Oh, but I mean a convent where nobody believes in anything," she said. -</p> - -<p><br><br><br></p> - -<p class="center">THE END</p> - -<p><br><br><br></p> -</div> -<div style='display:block; margin-top:4em'>*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK TWILIGHT SLEEP ***</div> -<div style='text-align:left'> - -<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'> -Updated editions will replace the previous one—the old editions will -be renamed. -</div> - -<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'> -Creating the works from print editions not protected by U.S. copyright -law means that no one owns a United States copyright in these works, -so the Foundation (and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United -States without permission and without paying copyright -royalties. 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