XIV
Moirahad considered Mathilda not at all in the swift, sudden, almost cyclonic romance with Hal Blaydon, no more indeed than in any of her flirtations. There had been many others, of all ages, from her own up to fifty, and she had vaguely realized that when her choice was made, if she made a choice, her mother would have to be counted in. At times during the past week of incredible magic, she had feared the possibility of a clash between them, owing to the good Episcopalian views, to which Mathilda still clung, despite the advanced and advancing habits of thought that surrounded her. But the logic with which the girl faced this possibility was serene: harmony had always prevailed between them, too much harmony perhaps, and some conflict was inevitable sooner or later. It had better occur over this biggest and most important choice of her youth.
She had begun to wonder, of late, just how she felt toward her mother. Certainly she was very fond of her, but it seemed hardly a filial fondness. She admired Mathilda’s little fantasticalities; it was clear that she had in her time been something of an idol-breaker; but it was equally clear that her cherished image of herself as a person ofgreat independence of mind was somewhat out-worn. The daughter had gone far beyond the older woman, or so she thought, and there lurked small matters on which they concealed their opinions from each other. Moreover, Moira had loved her most for the brightness and charm of her manner and these were becoming clouded by a new development that touched her closely—a secret in her brother’s life. Mathilda had discovered the truth with amazement, but to all appearances had reconciled herself to it. So long, she argued, as the apartment he kept in town remained only a rendezvous for discreet meetings, she did not greatly care. But more and more this other establishment was taking Blaydon away from them. Could her brother possibly bring himself to marry the woman—not now perhaps—but when age had weakened his resistance and laid him open to appeals to sentiment and protection? He was already far from a young man.... It was a situation that had a profound effect upon her accustomed poise, because it was one which she could not influence nor even speak of in his presence.
After Hal had left on his trip that night, Moira put up her car—she had driven him to the station herself—and walked into the library. She found Mathilda embroidering, a pastime in which she was skilful, and took a frank pride. It was her substitute for artistic expression, as she said, agift she had always honestly envied. Everybody they knew, Moira thought, longed for artistic expression—and Hal had been right to scorn it. There were Mary Cawthorn and Tempe Riddle—as soon as people like that had taken up writing verse, she herself had dropped it. She had turned exclusively to her painting. That, at least, you couldn’t do at all, without some foreground, some knowledge and practice. She was happy that her youth had been industrious enough to bring her a measure of these. And she did not take it seriously.
“Well,” said Mathilda, “you’ve seen your darling off?”
The girl did not attempt to conceal her surprise. Then she laughed.
“I suppose nobody could really have failed to know, who had been around the house these last few days. Still, we thought we were so clever.”
“There’s such a thing as being too clever. When you and Hal began to be stiff toward each other, I knew what was happening.”
“We must have been a fine pair of actors.”
“But I’ve seen it coming all along. Before either of you did, I believe.”
Moira flopped upon the cricket at her mother’s feet, and looked into her face affectionately.
“And that means, darling, that you don’t object?”
Mathilda ran her slim hand through the short, dark curls leaning against her knee.
“Of course not, my child. It’s the most perfect thing that could have happened.”
“Mother,” asked the girl, looking up at her whimsically, “when are we ever going to quarrel, you and I?”
“Never, I hope.”
“Isn’t it rather unhealthy never to quarrel? Hal and I do, frequently, and I’m glad of it.”
“You won’t think that way when you are my age.”
“Maman, are you very miserable about Uncle Sterling?”
Mathilda’s reply was preceded by a short pause and a quick glance.
“How did you know that?” she asked.
“I have ears and eyes—and can put things together, you know,” laughed Moira. Then she added, more gravely, “I really don’t think many people know. When Selden hinted about it I denied the story flatly—for his benefit.”
“Why deny the truth?” It was one of Mathilda’s traits to be able to say things the implications of which were unpleasant to her.
“Oh, one must to busybodies. Only I do wish you wouldn’t be unhappy about it.”
“I’m not,” said the other, “so long as matters remain as they are.”
“I see what you mean, dear. People who have professionally renounced marriage ought to have some pride. They ought to observe the ethics of their profession.”
Mathilda smiled.
“I’m afraid my attitude is not so impersonal. Isn’t that somewhere in Shaw?”
“It must be,” replied the girl. “But I’m quite thrilled over the whole thing. Please forgive me for saying so. To think of Uncle Sterling being so delightfully biblical!”
She went to the table and brought the cigarettes. The older woman took one from her and laid aside her embroidery. “You’ll do something for me, you two?” she asked.
“What?”
“Get married as soon as possible.”
“Oh, my dear! I’m only nineteen.”
“Do you think you would ever change?”
“No, I don’t think that.”
“Then why not marry? I can’t understand the modern idea of waiting until life is over to marry. It’s good for people to have their youth together—when they can.”
“Well, Hal has done all the planning, and I think it is very sensible. In the first place, he’s going on with his chemistry. He doesn’t want to go into the brokerage office, and you mustn’t tell Uncle yet.”
“I approve of that. Brokerage will do for Robert.”
“It means two more years for him at college. The first of them I shall spend in New York studying. The next I want to spend in Paris, and I want you to come with me, dear. How about it? And then—married in Paris, and the Sorbonne or some German University for Hal. Isn’t that a glorious programme? He really didn’t plan all of it.”
“No, I imagine not,” laughed Mathilda. “He would probably have planned it as I would, by beginning with the end. But I shan’t oppose you. I’ve never opposed you much, Moira, not even when I might have done so with justice. And the reason is that I have always wanted to live to see one completely happy person. I hope you are going to be the one.”
Mathilda concluded with a wistful note.
“Darling,” cried the girl. “How good you have been to me. And I wonder if I am going to be completely happy. I’ll try, and I shan’t be ashamed or modest about it, either. Is that—egotistical?”
A few minutes later as she passed Hal Blaydon’s door on the way to her own, she could not resist the temptation to go in. She had never done that before deliberately, and she felt a little like an intruder. She had a great distaste forthe practice of assuming privileges with those one cared for, but she knew he would be pleased if he saw her patting his bed affectionately and looking around at his belongings. As she stopped in front of the untidy book-shelves, she smiled at their incongruous juxtaposition of textbooks, modern novels and classic survivals of adolescence—“This Side of Paradise” between a Latin grammar and a Dictionary of Physics; “Cytherea,” which reminded her just then of many men she knew, alongside of “Plutarch’s Lives.” She reflected that she would probably not sleep very early to-night and had no fresh reading in her bedroom. She quickly pulled out a volume and went to her room.
With her clothes off and three pillows behind her back, and a cigarette between her lips, she picked up the book she had borrowed. There had been a certain degree of method in her selection. It was an old, loose-backed, green-covered copy of “Les Misérables,” one of her long and growing list of “duty books,” that is to say, books she ought to have read years ago and had not. This happened also to belong to the classification of “school-piece” books. An English reader had contained a selection from it, and she had once resolved, in a fit of rebellion against the academic, never to read any books that yielded school pieces for the boredom of the young. Later the conscienceof a cultivated adult had forced her to recant, and herindex librorum prohibitorumhad become an index obligatory.
The book in her hand was a long one. She would just about finish it by the time Hal came back, and that would be killing two birds with one stone.
She opened it at random and as she removed her thumbs the pages leaped back to a marked place, occupied by a letter. She picked it up. It was an old and faded letter, addressed to “Mrs. Ellen Williams, 21 Trezevant Place.” That was Ellen, the cook, of course. She smiled a little at the thought of Ellen reading a monstrous book like this. She had never seen Ellen read anything except a recipe or a label. But, of course, humble people did like Hugo. She had read “Notre Dame” and “Ninety-Three.”
Moira would have put the letter aside at once to hand it to the servant in the morning had she not noticed two markings on the envelope that strangely interested her. One was the date, just a month after she was born. The other was the inscription on the flap in back, which read as follows:
from Miss Moira McCoy,Lutheran Maternity Hospital,2243 Bismarck Street.
Her own name, on a letter almost as old as she was! She laid it down. She ought not to read it, of course. But it certainly was hard to resist knowing what some little Irish girl in the hospital (who made her capital “m’s” with three vertical lines and a horizontal bar across the top) was thinking and doing a month after she was born. Wasn’t there a “statute of limitations” on letters? No letter nearly twenty years old could be private. The lure of romance that lurked in the envelope was too strong. She hastily drew out the folded sheet and read:
My Dear Mrs. Williams:Just a note to tell you how honoured and tickled I am that you are going to name your little daughter after me.I hope to see her sometime soon, and you also. I am so busy now, but in two or three weeks I could call on my day off, Thursday, if it could be arranged.So you love your new place? I’m so glad. We all miss you and—my pretty little namesake. How proud it makes me.Sincerely your friend,Moira McCoy.
My Dear Mrs. Williams:
Just a note to tell you how honoured and tickled I am that you are going to name your little daughter after me.
I hope to see her sometime soon, and you also. I am so busy now, but in two or three weeks I could call on my day off, Thursday, if it could be arranged.
So you love your new place? I’m so glad. We all miss you and—my pretty little namesake. How proud it makes me.
Sincerely your friend,Moira McCoy.
She had never heard of Ellen’s having a baby, and if she had just been naming it when this letterwas written it should have been about the same age as herself. How curious it was that she and Ellen’s baby should have had the same name. Perhaps her mother had liked the name and borrowed it from Ellen, for Mathilda would take what she wanted; but it did seem unlikely she would take the name of the cook’s baby for her own. And what had become of Ellen’s Moira? She would ask Ellen about it in the morning. Never had her curiosity been so oddly and intensely aroused.
She cast the letter from her and opened Hugo, but her eyes were heavy and her mind weary with the thoughts and excitements of that day. In a few moments she was asleep.
When she awoke in the morning the first thing she thought of was the letter, and she reread it. The mystery had clearly taken a strong hold upon her mind. While dressing she decided to postpone seeing Ellen, and every time she went to her room during the day she read the letter again and asked herself more and more puzzling questions about it. Why, for example, had Ellen never spoken of her child, particularly if it had the same name as herself? Was there something distasteful in the recollection either to Ellen or to her mistress?
Moira could not get into the Hugo book at all. Instead she took a long drive in her car and, finding that a bore, she tried riding which proved nobetter. She was tempted to hunt up Rob or telephone for Selden and go somewhere for a cocktail and a dance. Failing to reach either of them or to decide on anything definite to do, she began to find Ellen a source of enormous interest. Hardly realizing it, she spied upon her all afternoon, and searched her smiling, unconcerned features whenever she appeared. It was hard to think of Ellen ever having had a baby. She stopped herself from pursuing this obsession a half a dozen times, but the spell of curiosity lingered. And still she could not bring herself to speak to the woman. By nightfall she was scattered and depressed, with the feeling of having spent a wasted day.
She went to bed early and tried again to read Hugo, but instead, she found herself rereading the McCoy letter. It drew her like a sinister charm. She threw on a dressing gown and began walking in the room. For the first time in her whole life her fingers shook as she started to take a cigarette from her box, and actually muffed it. This made her angry, and she lit the cigarette swiftly and fiercely and clattered the box down on the table. Then she was able to laugh and upbraid herself.
“Good Lord!” she cried. “What has the cook and her offspring to do with me? Why am I so excited?”
But even as the words died on her lips her reassurancedeparted. She would never get control of herself until she investigated. Why hadn’t she talked to Ellen that day and got this foolish curiosity off her mind? The woman would think it strange if she called on her at this late hour to return a twenty-year-old letter, even though it contained sacred memories. Yet why should Ellen think that? She would simply slip down and hand her the letter with some gay nonsense about it being better twenty years late than never, and if Ellen wasn’t tired and seemed talkative she would ask her about the coincidence of names. It was certainly no new thing in that house for Moira to do whimsical and unexpected things. She could come back and sleep and dream of her blessed Hal—poor Hal, he had hardly had a thought from her all day.
The regular servants’ rooms were at the top of the house, but Ellen lived alone in the little wing off the kitchen. She had chosen this ground floor room because it was closer to the affairs that directly concerned her, outside and in, and because she was a privileged person, the dean of the servants. Moira’s visit then would disturb nobody. She drew her pretty gown about her and walked boldly downstairs, knocked, made a laughing request to be admitted and waited for the startled woman to put something around her and unlock the door.
“Is this your letter, Ellen?” she asked. “Ifound it last night and meant to give it to you to-day, but forgot it. I thought you’d be so glad to get it back, I’d just come down and give it to you before I went to sleep. You see ... I read it—the date was so near my birthday.”
Ellen opened the letter and read it through with apparent awkwardness and difficulty.
“Why, Miss Moira, where did you get this? It’s been lost for years. I didn’t know it was in existence.”
“I found it in a book upstairs.”
“My land! How did it get there, I wonder?”
“It was an old volume of Hugo’s—‘Les Misérables.’”
The girl winced a little as Ellen repeated the name after her and mispronounced it schoolboy fashion.
“Oh, yes, yes, I remember. That’s so many years ago. To think this letter has been there all that time!”
“I didn’t know you had ever had a baby, Ellen. Tell me about it. Are you too sleepy?”
“No, I’m not sleepy, Miss Moira—” Ellen’s politeness prompted the words, yet the girl caught a hint that she would have liked to end the conversation. “You—you startled me so,” she went on. “But—there isn’t anything to tell.”
“Did she die?”
“Yes, Miss Moira.”
The fidgety excitement which seized the grey-haired woman was understandable on the ground of old memories being suddenly aroused. Moira’s voice expressed the tenderest sympathy.
“How sad. She would have been such a comfort to you now.”
“Yes. But that’s all so long ago, ma’am. It’s the way things happen in this world for some of us.”
“And your husband? Is he dead, too?”
The questioning was becoming more and more difficult for Ellen. When she answered it was with a touch of impatience.
“I don’t know. I don’t know where he is.”
“He deserted you?”
“Yes.”
Moira felt the need of some apology, induced by Ellen’s uneasiness, but the very fact that the information was unsatisfactory made her perversely eager to stay, although the little room oppressed her.
“I suppose you think I’m awfully curious, Ellen,” she said, with a short laugh. “And very inconsiderate to come and talk to you about these things at this time of night. But it seems so strange that you’ve been here ever since I can remember, and I’ve never heard about them—I suppose I thought you didn’t have an early life. You’re so cheerful, one doesn’t imagine you’ve had sorrows.”
“People forget, ma’am. You can’t stay sad always.”
“Isn’t it funny,” Moira broke in, “that I’ve got the same name your daughter had?”
“Ye-es—I guess it is.”
Ellen’s forced laugh and strained expression, and the tongue-tied moment that followed, were as hard for Moira as for the speaker. The silence lengthened. The older woman twisted in her uncomfortable seat on the bed. She obviously did not want to be looked at nor to look at the girl. Why, thought Moira, should she make all this fuss over old memories? What harm was in them? Ellen was not naturally shy—she could be voluble enough at times, and quite intelligent.
“And we were just about the same age, weren’t we?”
“No, oh, no,” burst out the other, and stopped suddenly.
“But the letter is dated so near my birthday,” said Moira, a little brusquely, “and speaks of your baby’s christening. We’d have to be.”
“Bu-but—my little girl was christened very late.”
“She was christened about the time I was, by the same name, and in the same house? Why, it’s really a romantic idea, isn’t it?”
“Yes,” said Ellen, “that was how it was. Your—your mother liked the name too.”
Moira felt a wave of compassion for the lonely old woman. There seemed to be nothing left to do but to go. She rose as if to do so, and then that impulse of sympathy caused her to sit down beside the other on the bed. She spoke very gently.
“Ellen, I’m sorry, I’ve been opening an old wound, haven’t I? I can see that it hurts you. You understand why I am so interested—because of the name? That’s natural, isn’t it? But I’m glad to have learned about it. I shall think of you so differently from now on.”
“Yes, Miss Moira, thank you.” The girl’s closeness to her and sympathy made Ellen’s voice tremble. She looked down at the letter which she had been rolling and twisting in her fingers, and following her glance, Moira realized that her own curiosity was not appeased at all. The mystery was as much a mystery as ever.
“Why, you’re destroying your letter,” she said with a laugh, and took it from her and straightened it out. “You must have been fond of Miss McCoy,” she added gently. “Was she your friend?”
“Yes.”
“Was she sick, in the hospital?”
“No, she—she was a nurse.”
“Oh, of course. She speaks of being so busy and of missing you. And you had your baby there?”
“Yes.”
“That old hospital is still there, Ellen. I’ve driven by it a dozen times going to town. It doesn’t look like a very cheerful place to have a baby, but I guess it was nicer in those days.”
“It was all right,” said Ellen. Moira impulsively reached an arm about her waist.
“Well, I’m going now. You don’t want to talk any more about it, do you, dear? I’ll ask mother to tell me the story. Can I—can I keep this letter, just to show her? I’ll tell her the odd way I came across it.”
Ellen’s hand flew in terror to the crumpled letter.
“No—no, please, Miss Moira. Give it to me,” she begged.
The violence of her action, its commanding tone, brought a flush of anger to Moira’s face. She relinquished the letter.
“Oh,” she said, in a changed voice. “I suppose I should apologize—that is, no doubt you are angry that I read it.”
“Yes, you shouldn’t have done that.”
The servant spoke for the first time naturally, sincerely and vigorously, and by contrast it made all her previous answers seem to Moira like a patch-work of unreality and embarrassed evasion. Moreover, the accusing tone of the remark added fuel to her resentment. She arose and drew her dressing gown about her with a gestureof dignity. This time she certainly must go. And yet she was hurt and offended. Her only intent had been one of genuine interest and sympathy, and it had been badly received. As she stood in the floor in this puzzled, dissatisfied state, she caught sight of Ellen’s face appealing to her pathetically.
“Please, Miss Moira,” the woman whispered hoarsely, “don’t tell Mrs. Seymour, don’t tell her about this letter, or that you were here, or anything.”
The girl answered with an abrupt gesture of impatience.
“Ellen, I don’t understand. What is all this secrecy, this mystery for? I found your letter, I came to give it back to you and asked a simple question—and you treat me as though I had done something criminal. It’s foolish. I don’t see why I shouldn’t ask mother.”
A blank panic seemed to have seized Ellen. She snatched the girl’s hand and went on in the same hoarse voice:
“I can’t explain, but only don’t, don’t say anything to her. For her sake, for everybody’s sake, please!”
Moira experienced a momentary insane illumination. It made her heart stop and then flutter and then stop again. Twice in her life she had felt herself near death—once in an accident with her car, and once when her horse had thrown her.She felt now the same sensation she had felt then. The questions that came to her lips would have seemed to her idiotic a moment before. Yet they came irresistibly.
“Ellen,” she cried, “what does all this mean? Have I got anything to do with it?”
“You? Oh, no, no,” cried Ellen. “No, you mustn’t think that!”
“Was that baby me?”
“Oh, Miss Moira, how can you—how can you dream—?”
“Are you my mother, Ellen? Tell me the truth. I’ll never leave here until I hear the truth. I’ll search this room, every inch of it.”
But she did not need her answer in words. Ellen’s strength was gone. Her mouth gibbered and her face ran tears. The girl sat down heavily, as though she were facing a job that had to be got over with. She never doubted the truth after that first glimpse of it, never tried to find a loophole. There were simply details to be heard, the future to be considered. She must get the whole story from Ellen, talk it over, make some decision. It would be half the night before she was through with it, and she hated it....
The sun had, in fact, appeared when she emerged from the little room, with a strange tale in her possession, pieced together from the incoherent reminiscences of Ellen. She had forgiven Mrs. Seymour, forgiven her real mother, forgivenall of them for the deception. It was only herself that she could not forgive, herself, humiliated by the degrading masquerade of twenty years.
The knowledge that gave her most courage was her illegitimacy—which was clear from Ellen’s reticence. Better that a thousand times, better a complete outcast, than a respectable nobody. She would go, of course, go in secret, that day. She could take the fewest possible things, put them in her car when no one was looking, and drive to town. What money she needed to get established elsewhere she would have to take from her own account at the bank, as a loan. Ellen had been sworn to say nothing of the discovery.
She stood at her window watching the first sun gild the tops of the knolls, drive the low-lying mists slowly before it. This great knee of a hill, this Penthesilea’s knee, had been a mother’s knee to her, more truly than any human one. There were no relationships in Nature, and this, the memory of her youth, could not be taken from her.... But it would be long before she would see the morning rise from that window again, and she lingered over it; not sentimentally. Why couldn’t she feel sad? Why was she so hard—why had she been so cruel to Ellen? She could hear her now pleading that she had given up Moira for her good, pleading the advantages that had come to them by the sacrifice. Empty advantages, thought their possessor, immorally got anduseless to her now, just so many more things to bid good-bye to. The only thing that counted was Hal; if she was bitter it was because she feared yielding to that. Fate had thrown her to Hal and snatched her away in the moment of realization....
She turned from the full day flooding the window and went to her desk. She wanted to write to him now, while she was strongest.
Dear [she wrote]: I know what you would say. You would say that it made no difference, and it would not now. But some day it would, it would grow upon us and smother us. It would be ‘my past,’ and the time would come when your pride might make you hate me, for I would hate myself. I can face this now. I don’t know whether I could face it later. I must go away and do something to absolve myself in my own eyes. And you must not interfere—you cannot. It will be years before I can see you again. I shall never forget these short days, too precious to describe. It is almost enough, that memory, without anything more. Good-bye.
Dear [she wrote]: I know what you would say. You would say that it made no difference, and it would not now. But some day it would, it would grow upon us and smother us. It would be ‘my past,’ and the time would come when your pride might make you hate me, for I would hate myself. I can face this now. I don’t know whether I could face it later. I must go away and do something to absolve myself in my own eyes. And you must not interfere—you cannot. It will be years before I can see you again. I shall never forget these short days, too precious to describe. It is almost enough, that memory, without anything more. Good-bye.
She could write no more, explain no more, though she wanted to. She suddenly reflected on the injustice of having to carry all the responsibility herself. She would have to repulse everyadvance, however much she might long to accept it.
She laid down her pen—a gold one that matched the other little tools on her writing table—with a gesture that signified she was laying down everything else in the room, the thousand things she had used and loved, the horses, the trees, the long, dear roads, the very air of Thornhill.