BOOK III
“I do hope you’ll make a hit, Patience,” said Hal, regarding her critically. “The public, even the little public of a garden party, is a thing you can’t bet on, but you certainly are stunning. If ever papa loses his fortune, in the curious American way, I shall follow the ever seductive example of the English aristocracy and go in for dressmaking. That frock is a triumph of art, if I do say it myself.”
Patience revolved slowly before the Psyche mirror which stood between two open windows in one corner of Hal’s pretty terra-cotta bedroom. She too was pleased with the airy concoction of violet and white. On a chair lay a picture hat, another bird of the same feather. Hal placed it on Patience’s head, a little back, and the violet velvet of the interior made a very effective frame for the soft ashen hair and white skin.
“You certainly carry yourself well,” continued Hal, “and before long you will acquire an air. Always keep in mind thatthatis the most important thing in life—our life—to acquire. But you look like a lily, a purple and white forest lily.”
“I haven’t the faintest idea what to talk to fashionable people about.”
“Don’t be too clever—don’t frighten the men and antagonise the women. You see, you’re not known at all, so people won’t begin by being afraid of you—as they would if they knew all that went on in that pretty skull of yours. Just be Mrs. Beverly Peele. Nobody would ever suspect Bev of marrying a clever woman. You can’t do the artless and infantile, like May: your face is too strong; but you can be unsophisticated, and that always goes.”
“I’m not unsophisticated!”
“Oh, don’t look like that. All the light seems to go out of your skin. I mean give everybody the impression that you have everything to learn, and that each, individually, can teach it all. It’s awfully fetching. That is what has made May’s success. Of course you wouldn’t be another May, if you could; but you want to begin at the beginning—don’t you know? You must let society feel that it gives you everything, tells you everything. Then it will love you. But if it suspects that you are alien—the least little bit—then there will be the devil to pay. Of course a few of the best sort would like you, but I’m set on your making a hit.”
“I’m afraid I’ll never take,” said Patience, with a sigh, “but I am wild to see Vanity Fair, all the same. It must be great fun—all that brilliancy and life. But somehow I don’t feel in tune with the people I have met, so far.”
“Oh, that’s natural. You are not acclimatised yet, so to speak. Society is a distinctly foreign country to those that have not been brought up in it. Just sit down on the edge of that chair and rest while I take a look at myself.”
“White is certainly my day colour,” she continued, revolving in her turn before the mirror. “It is wonderful how it clears the skin, especially with a touch of blue near the face. Pink would make me as yellow as October, and green would suggest thirty-five. Your grey matter will be spared the wear and tear of The Study of Colour, but if I hadn’t reduced it to a fine art, I’d have had to turn literary or something when May came out.”
“You look just like a fairy! I never saw anything so dainty.”
“Oh, of course; I’m so little and light that I have to work the fairy racket for all it’s worth. It’s a heavenly day, isn’t it? The country’s got its best spring clothes on, sure enough.”
The girls leaned out of each of the windows in turn, scrutinising the grounds. In front and on both sides of the house the land rolled away in great irregular waves. Woods were in the sudden hollows, on the lofty knolls; between, shelving expanses of green, bare but for an occasional oak or elm. Beside the driveway was a long narrow avenue of elms, down which two might pace shoulder to shoulder, and no more. In a deep hollow on the right was the orchard, a riot of pink and white. The immediate grounds were small and trim, and fragrant with the flowers of civilisation; out on the hills beyond the wild-flowers and tall grass, the locust and hawthorn, had their way. Behind all flowed the Hudson under the green Palisades, its surface gay with sail and steamboat.
A dancing booth had been erected on one of the lawns, and the musicians were already assembling under the silken curtains.
“It looks very well,” said Hal, “and you couldn’t have a more perfect day for yourdébut. Not that I care much for garden parties; the fresh air makes me sleepy, and there’s no concentration, as it were—as there is in a ball-room, don’t you know? But mamma decreed that the world should make your acquaintance out of doors, and that is the end of it. I wonder if you’ll manage to induce Bev to go to town for the winter.”
“I hope so! It will be horribly dull to stay here all winter, with all of you away.”
“That’s an edifying sentiment for a bride of three months. However, I agree with you. I’d go mad shut up in a country house in winter with the most fascinating man that ever breathed. And the dickens of it is, mamma always takes his part, whether he’s wrong or right. She’ll preach wifely duty to you until you’d live on a desert island to get rid of her.”
“I’ve heard her,” said Patience, gloomily.
“I wondered if that was what she was at in the library yesterday. When mamma has her chin well up and her lower lip well out I can tell at long range that she’s embracing the cause of virtue. But she tackled you rather early in the game, considering you haven’t made any notable break as yet.”
“I wouldn’t go driving with Beverly yesterday,—the sun makes my head ache,—and I’d also begged him to take me to the theatre to see Rosita, and he wouldn’t.”
“Oh, you’ll never get Bev to the theatre. We’ll go by ourselves to a matinée. However, it’s better than being a newspaper woman on several dollars a week—come now, own up?”
“I enjoyed Florida and New Orleans and Canada immensely.”
“That was a tremendous concession for Bev to make—he detests travelling. He certainly is in love; but I imagine he expects you to live on that same concession for some time to come—thinks it’s your turn to do the self-sacrificing act. Such is man. Anyhow, I’m glad it’s all turned out so comfortably, and that you are here, and that all is settled—”
“I want to ask you something. I couldn’t get it out of Beverly. Did your mother make a very violent objection to his marrying me? Of course I am a social nobody, and she must have made great plans for her only son. She didn’t say anything when she came to call; but, you see, she didn’t call until three days before the wedding, and Beverly’s and your excuses were not very good.”
“Oh, of course she raised Cain,” said Miss Peele, easily; “that was to be expected. But papa put his foot down and said he was glad to have Beverly marry a clever woman: it might be the making of him. AndIjust fought! Of course I’d told papa that you were as high bred as any woman in America, and that you’d look a swell in less than no time. That weighed heavy with him, for, in his opinion, God may have made himself first, but he made the Peeles next, and no mistake. And Bev! He went into the most awful tantrums you ever saw. I think that was what brought mamma round—she was afraid he’d burst a blood-vessel. When she wrote and asked Miss Beale to live with you I knew the day was won. And now that you are Mrs. Beverly Peele she’ll respect you accordingly, although you’ll have some lively tussles. But make her think you adore Bev, and you’ll pull through. Suppose we go down now. Tra-la-la! I wish it were over.”
The girls descended the twisted stair into the wide hall. All the doors and windows were open, and the soft air blew through the great house, lifting the lace and silken curtains.
A girl, looking like a large butterfly, in her yellow frock, was fluttering about the hall amidst the palms and the huge vases of flowers. Her skin was of matchless tints, her large blue eyes as guileless as those of an infant.
“Oh! Oh!” she cried, as Hal and Patience reached the first landing, “how perfectly sweet! Hal, is my frock all right in the back? My things never fit quite as well as yours do. Isn’t Patience too fetching for words? I wish I was just white like that. How perfectly funny that we should be giving a garden party for Bev’s wife! Who would have thought it last year? Isn’t it odd how things do happen? And hasn’t Honora been perfectly lovely about it? I always knew she didn’t care. I wonder if any decent men will come up! It’s so hard—Hal,doesmy frock wrinkle in the back?”
“Oh, no, no,” drawled Hal, without looking at her. She glanced at the tall clock in an angle. “They’ll be here in ten minutes, now—Oh—h—h!”
A portière was pushed aside, and a girl entered the hall from a dark background of books and heavy curtains. She was far above the ordinary height of woman, and extremely slender. Golden hair clustered about a long face, pale rather than white. The large azure eyes had the extraordinary clarity of childhood, and an expression of perfect purity. The nose was long, the mouth thin, but well curved and very red. She wore a clinging gown of white crêpe and a large knot of blue wild-flowers at her belt. She moved slowly forward, managing her long limbs with much dexterity, but could hardly be called graceful. Patience thought her the most beautiful woman she had ever seen, and murmured her admiration to Hal, who snorted in a gentle, ladylike way.
“They will be here in a moment, I suppose,” said Honora, wearily. “I think I shall not go out. I’ll stay in the drawing-room and entertain the older people. Some one must attend to them, and I really prefer the house.”
“You are always so amiable,” said Hal, drily, “and you certainly won’t get freckled.”
“It is true that I don’t like freckles,” said Honora, calmly, “and I do like the older people. Even you, when you have a few white hairs, may become more or less interesting. Patience, dear, you look very lovely. You must let me kiss you.” She bent her cool lips to the brow of the bride, swaying over her. Her voice could not be described by any adjective devoid of the letter L. It was liquid, silvery, cold, light.
“She certainly is a stunning-looking woman,” said Hal, as Honora passed into the drawing-room, “but she’s a whole rattlesnake, and no mistake. I’ve never seen her strike real hard yet; she merely spits occasionally, and always in that amiable way. You can imagine how subtle she is, and what a dangerous force such self-control is. I shall never understand how she failed to get Bev.”
“Perhaps, as May suggests, she didn’t want him.”
“Oh, didn’t she! Just wait! you’ll hear from her yet. There’s the whistle. The train’ll be here in three minutes. Let us group ourselves gracefully under Peele the First.”
They went into the large white drawing-room, whose old-fashioned woodwork was as it had been nearly three hundred years ago, even to the heavy shutters over the small-paned windows. The ceiling was fretted with floral designs, executed inpapier mâché, surrounding abas reliefof “our well beloved Whyte Peele,” who had received the grant of these many acres from James the First. All the woodwork was painted white, and carved. The furniture, modern, but of colonial design, was upholstered in pale pink and blue.
Beyond a side hall was a long dining-room panelled to the ceiling in oak, and hung on all sides with dead and living Peeles. The carved oaken table was spread with the light unsubstantial feast of the modern time. Adjoining the dining-room were two small reception-rooms looking upon the terrace at the back of the rambling old house. In the middle of this hall, under the carved twisted stair, was a round enclosure whose door opened upon a well, from whence a secret passage led to the river.
Mrs. Peele swept across the hall from the dining-room, and raising her lorgnette, considered Patience.
“You look very well,” she said, coldly. “Don’t get nervous, please; it is the one thing for which people have no toleration. Where is Beverly?”
“He has gone for a drive. You know he does not like entertainments.” Patience’s nerves were muttering, and her mother-in-law’s admonition was not of the nature of balm.
Mrs. Peele raised her brows. “It is odd that a bride should have so little influence over her husband,” she remarked; and Patience was now in that equable frame of mind which carries one through the severe ordeals of life.
How she did live through that ordeal of introduction to some five hundred people she never knew. Fortunately, all but the neighbours arrived on the special train which had been sent for them, and there was little for her to do but smile and bend her head as Mrs. Peele named her new daughter-in-law to her guests.
And whatever might be that exalted dame’s private opinion of her son’s choice, whatever methods she might employ in untrammelled domestic hours to make her disapproval felt, to the world she assumed her habitual air of being supremely content with all that pertained to the house of Peele. Had Patience been the daughter of a belted earl she could not have been presented to New York with a haughtier pride, a calmer assumption that New York must embrace with gratitude and enthusiasm this opportunity to meet the daughter-in-law of the Gardiner Peeles.
Her manner gave Patience confidence after a time. Her own pride had already conquered diffidence; and trying as the long ordeal was, she thrilled a little at the sudden realisation of half-formed ambitions. There was no taint of the snob in her; some echo-voice of other generations lifted itself out of the inherited impressions which had moulded her brain cells, and protested against its descendant ranking below the first of the land.
Many of the guests were politely indifferent to the honour provided for them; the girls stared at her in a manner calculated to upset anydébutante’sequilibrium; but the gracious kindness of others and the languid admiration of the men kept her in poise.
The neighbours arrived shortly after the train, and it was an hour before the greater part of the company had dispersed over the grounds, and Patience could sit down. Mrs. Peele remained in the drawing-room with some eight or ten people, and as Hal and May had both disappeared, Patience stayed with her mother-in-law, not knowing where to go.
She thought the girls very forbidding with their pert noses and keen eyes, although she admired their luminous skin and splendid grooming, striking even in the airy attire of spring. The older women looked as if they would patronise her did Mrs. Peele withdraw her protecting wing, and one man, passing the window, inserted a monocle and regarded her deliberately. Suddenly Patience experienced a sensation of profound loneliness. No force in life is surer of touch than the subtle play of spirit on spirit, and Patience read that these people did not like her and never would, that they recognised the alien who would regard their world spectacularly, never acquire their comic seriousness.
“Are you fond of golf, Mrs. Peele?” asked one girl, languidly.
“I never have played golf.”
The girl raised her brows. “Really! Are you fond of tennis?”
“I have never played tennis.” Patience repressed a smile as the girl looked frankly shocked. Still the guest was evidently determined to be amiable.
“I hope you don’t think it frivolous?”
“Oh, no, I should like to learn all those things very much.”
“Well, Miss Peele can teach you. She is awfully clever at all those things. Don’t you think Miss Mairs looks like Mary Anderson?”
“Mary Anderson?”
“Yes, the actress, you know.”
“I have never seen her.”
The girl was visibly embarrassed. Another, who looked as if harbouring a grin in her straight little mouth, came to the rescue.
“Oh, I do think Mr. Peele is so good-looking,” she exclaimed, with a fine show of animation. “We all think you are to be congratulated.”
Patience smiled at the frank rudeness of this remark, and said nothing.
“You know Amy Murray was wild about him. She’s not here to-day, I notice. We did think it too bad that he wouldn’t go out. Some of the girls have met him here, but I never have. They say he is awfully fascinating.”
“Oh, yes, he is fascinating,” said Patience.
“What have you been doing with yourself if you have never learned to golf nor play tennis?” asked another girl, insolently. She was a tall girl, with a wooden face, a tight mouth, and an “air.”
“Oh, I read, mostly,” said Patience, with an extremely bored air.
The mother of the third girl turned swiftly and smiled at the bride, a humorous smile in which there was some pity. Patience had observed her before. She was a tall woman with a slender figure of extreme elegance. Her dark bright face was little older than her daughter’s. Her ease of manner was so great that it was almost self-conscious.
“Oh, say!” she exclaimed, “don’t think we’re all like that. The girls don’t have much time to read—that’s true—but after they settle down they do, really. Hal reads French novels—the little reprobate!—We read French novels too, but a lot else besides. Oh, really! Outsiders—the people that only know society through the newspapers, don’t you know?—misjudge us terribly, really. Some of the brightest women of the world are in New York society—why shouldn’t they be? And if the girls don’t study it’s their own fault; they certainly have every opportunity under the sun. I was made to study. My father was old-fashioned, and had no nonsense about him. I always say I was educated beyond my brains, but I’d rather have it that way than the other. Now, I assure you I read everything. I have a standing order on the other side with an English and a French book-seller, to send me every book the minute it attracts attention—”
“Oh, you’re real intellectual, you are,” drawled Hal’s mocking voice.
The lady turned with a start and a little flush.
“Oh, Hal!” she cried gaily, “how you do take the starch out of one.”
“You’ve got enough to stock a laundry, so you needn’t worry. I’ve come to rescue my fair sister-in-law before you talk her to death. Come, Patience.”
Patience arose with alacrity, and followed her out of the house.
“Don’t you like her?” she asked.
“Oh, immensely. She’s as bright as a woman can be who has so little time to think about it. She’s a tall and majestic pillar of Society, you know, and she carries it—the intellect, not the pillar—round like a chip on her shoulder. That makes me weary at times. I’ve heard her talk for an hour without stopping. The only thing that makes me forgive her is her slang. We have a match occasionally.”
“Her daughter doesn’t look as if she used slang.”
“Oh, she doesn’t. She’s no earthly use whatever. Are you enjoying yourself?”
“Not particularly. But it’s a lovely scene.”
The lawns, and knolls, and woods were kaleidoscopic with fashionettes in gay attire, shifting continually. There were not men enough to mar the brilliant effect. The music of birds soared above the chatter of girls, the sound of wood and brass. The river flashed away into the distance, a silver girdle about Earth’s green gown.
“Yes, very pret,” said Hal. “But come, I’m going to introduce you to my latest.”
“You didn’t tell me that you had a latest.”
“I’ve only met him a few times—he’s from Boston. I expect I forgot about him.”
They were walking over the lawns toward the Tea House, a long low rustic building which stood on the edge of the slope. A hubbub of voices floated through the windows, peals of laughter, affected shrieks.
“A lot of my intimates are there,” said Hal. “I’ve managed to get them together. May is doing the hostess act with her accustomed grace and charm, and I’m taking a half hour off.”
They went round to the front of the house and entered. It was an airy structure of polished maple. Little tables, each with a delicate tea-service, were scattered about with artistic irregularity; round the wall ran a divan, luxurious, but not too low for whaleboned forms. On this the girls were stiffly lounging. The men were more at their ease. All were smoking, the girls daintily, but firmly.
“Hal! Hal! sweet Queen Hal!” cried one of the young men, rising to his feet. “I’ve been keeping this place—directly in the middle—for you. See, it shall be a throne.” He piled three cushions atop, and with exaggerated homage led her forward amidst the ejaculatory applause of the others.
“Isn’t Norry too witty?” said one girl to Patience, as she made room for her, “and so original! Whoever else would have thought of such a thing?—although Hal ought to be a queen, don’t you think so? We just rave about her. Do you smoke? try my kind.”
Patience, thankful that at last she could do something like these people, accepted the cigarette. During her three months’ trip she had not smoked, as Beverly thought it shocking.
“Mr. Wynne,” cried Hal, suddenly, “come over here and talk to my sister-in-law. Patience, this is the young man from Boston, famous as the only New Englander whose ancestors did not come over on the ‘May Flower.’”
A man with a smooth serious face rose from his cushions and came forward.
“Awfully good-looking,” murmured the girl who had proffered the cigarette, “and wonderfully smart, considering he’s not a New Yorker. It’s too bad he’s so beastly poor, for he’s terriblyépriswith Hal.”
The young man, who had paused a moment to speak with Hal, inserted himself as best he could between Patience and her new acquaintance.
“I am glad you are here,” murmured the bride. “You do not look quite at home, and I am not, either.”
He smiled with instant sympathy. “Oh, I don’t care very much for society, and I don’t like to see women smoke. It’s an absurd prejudice to have in these progressive days, but I can’t help it.”
“You mean you don’t like to see Miss Peele smoke,” said Patience, mischievously.
He flushed, then laughed. “Well, perhaps that is it. They are all charming, these girls, but there is something about Miss Peele that distinguishes her. Did you ever notice it?”
“Oh, yes. She is herself, and these others are twelve for a dozen.”
“That is it.” He glanced about at the girls in their bright gowns, which clung to their tiny waists and hips, their narrow chests and modest busts, with the wrinkleless perfection that has made the modern milliner the god he is. Their polished skin and brilliant shallow eyes, their elegant sexless forms, their haughty poise and supercilious air, laid aside among themselves but always in reserve, their consciousness of caste, were the several parts of a unique and homogeneous effect, which, Patience confided to Mr. Wynne, must mark out the New York girl in whatever wilds she trod.
“Oh, it does,” he said. “The New York girl issui generis, and so thoroughly artificial a product that it seems incredible she can exist through another generation. I will venture to predict that the species will be extinct in three, and that American women of a larger and more human type will gradually be drawn into New York, and found a new race, so to speak. Why, it seems to me that the children of these women must be pigmies—imagine one of those girls being the mother of a man. It is well that New York is not America.”
Involuntarily Patience’s eyes wandered to Hal. Her waist was as small, her figure as unwomanly as the others.
“It is true,” said Wynne, answering her thought; “but she is so charming that one is quite willing she should do nothing further for the human race.”
Patience burst into a light laugh.
“What’s the matter?” asked Wynne.
“It suddenly struck me—the almost comical difference between these girls and the ‘Y’s,’ and the ‘King’s Daughters.’ It does not seem possible that such types can exist within ten miles of each other. I should explain that I have passed the last three years in a country town.”
“It is odd how religion holds its own in those small places. It is opera, theatre, balls, Browning societies, everything to those people shut out of the manifold distractions of cities. Religion seems to be the one excitement of the restricted life. Human nature demands some sort of emotional outlet—”
“What on earth are you two talking about?” cried the girl on the other side. “Will you have another cigarette, Mrs. Beverly?—that is what we shall all call you, you know. Mr. Wynne, please talk to me a while. Isn’t this Tea House too sweet?”
“It is more,—it is angelic,” said Wynne, gravely.
“Oh! you’re guying!” Even her voice pouted. “Oh! please shake those ashes off my gown—quick!—thanks. Oh, your eyes are grey. I thought they were brown. I’m afraid of grey eyes, aren’t you, Mrs. Beverly—Oh, dear! your eyes are grey too. What ever shall I do?” and she cast up her hands. Even her sleek hair seemed to quiver.
“It is the misfortune of the American race to run to grey eyes,” said Wynne. “Habit should have steeled you by this time—”
“Oh, he made a pun! he made a pun!” cried the girl.
“I did not!—I beg pardon, but I never did such a thing in my life,” cried Wynne, indignantly; and Patience felt suddenly depressed, although she too had found a friend in habit.
Hal rose while the girl was lisping mock apologies.
“I’ve got to go,” she said. “Isn’t it hateful? But I must go and do my duty. Patience, you must come too. Why are you blocking the doorway, Mr. Wynne?”
“I am going with you.”
“Really? Well, bye-bye;” and the three went off, followed by a gentle chorus of regrets.
“Patience, my dear,” said Hal, “there is a group of people over there looking hideously bored. You go and cheer them up, while I do my duty by those austere and venerable dames who are staring through their lorgnettes at the dining-room windows—”
“Oh, Hal, I can’t! Don’t send me to those people alone. What can I say to them?”
“Patience, my dear, this is a world of woe. One day you will be châtelaine of this place and be giving garden-parties on your own account, so you’d better take the kindergarten course, and be thankful for the chance. Go on.”
Patience walked unwillingly over to a group of four women seated under a drooping oak. She had forgotten the names of nine tenths of the guests, but she recognised Mrs. Laurence Gibbs, a plain rather dowdy little woman with sad face and abstracted gaze. Beside her on the rustic seat was a woman who gave a dominant impression of teeth: they fairly flashed in the shadows. In a chair sat a woman of remarkable prettiness. She would have been a beauty had her features been larger, so regular were they, so sweet her expression, so soft her colouring of pink and white and brown, so tall and full her figure. In another chair was a young woman of no beauty but much distinction. Her prematurely white hair was curled and tied at the base of her head with a black ribbon, realising an eighteenth century effect. Her face was dark and brilliant. She sat forward, her slim figure full of suppressed energy. She had been talking with much animation, but as Patience approached she paused abruptly. The pretty woman burst into a merry laugh.
“Mrs. Lafarge was just remarking what hideous bores garden parties are,” she said audaciously.
“Oh, you needn’t mind me,” said Patience, sitting down on the grass, as there was no other seat. “I quite agree with you.”
“Oh, that’s awfully good of you, Mrs. Peele,” said Mrs. Lafarge, “and awfully mean of you, Mary Gallatin. Of course this is one of the loveliest places on the Hudson, and I love to come here; but there are not enough men. That’s the whole trouble.”
“That always seems to be the cry with you American women,” said she of the teeth. “You have no resources. You should be independent of men. They seem to be of you.”
“Perhaps you are driven to resources in Russia,” said Mrs. Gallatin, sweetly, “but your observation is faulty. We are spoiled over here, and that is the reason we grumble occasionally.”
“You see we haven’t a large leisure class, as you have,” said Mrs. Gibbs, hastily.
“I really think the reason men avoid garden parties is that they are afraid they might be betrayed into sentiment,” broke in Mrs. Lafarge. “They do protect themselves so fiercely. How did you ever make Tom Gallatin propose, Mary dear? He had the most ideal bachelor apartment in New York, and entrenched himself as in a fortress.”
“Oh, one or two fall by the wayside every year, you know, and this time Gally happened to stumble over me. Poor Gally, he told me yesterday that he hadn’t seen me to speak to for a month. The idea of the lower classes grumbling. I should like to know who works as hard as we do. How do you manage to do the society and the charity, both?” she asked of Mrs. Gibbs. “Does Mr. Gibbs ever seeyou?”
“I never neglect my husband,” said Mrs. Gibbs, sternly. “When I must neglect anything it is society. I came to-day because I longed for a glimpse of the country, and I have not been able to go to Woody Cliffs yet—the poverty is so terrible this year. I wish you would come with me sometime and see for yourself—”
“God forbid! I never could stand the smells. I give my pastor so much a year, and I really think that’s doing one’s share. Of course if you like it, it’s another thing.”
“Like it!” cried the Russian. “You speak as if it were her pastime. I cannot express how gratifying it is to me to meet a serious woman occasionally in New York society.”
“I had a lovely time in Petersbourg,” murmured Mrs. Gallatin. “I never met an offensive Russian inside of the country. Poor America!”
“I don’t understand,” said the foreigner, stiffly.
“Oh, I am sure you understand English—you express yourself so clearly. We all weep over America occasionally, you know. It is a sort of dumping ground for foreigners,—who sit at our feet, and abuse us.”
“One is at liberty to abuse insolence,” said the Russian, with suppressed wrath, “and the women of New York are the most insolent I have ever met.”
“Oh, not among ourselves—not really. We think it insolent in outsiders to elbow their way in—”
“Mary! Mary!” cried Mrs. Gibbs. “I hear that you spent some years with Miss Harriet Tremont,” she continued, addressing Patience. “She passed her entire life in charitable work, did she not?”
“Oh, she did, and she enjoyed it too. Don’t you?”
Mrs. Gallatin laughed softly.
“Enjoy it?” said Mrs. Gibbs. “I never have looked at it in that way. I think it my duty to aid my miserable fellow beings, and I am thankful that I am able to aid them.”
“Odd, the fads different people have,” murmured Mrs. Gallatin. “Now mine is Russians. What is yours, Leontine?”
“Oh, Mary, you deserve to be shaken,” exclaimed Mrs. Lafarge, as the Russian sprang to her feet and stalked away.
“I can’t help it. She’s a boor, and I wish she’d go back and live with a Cossack. Foreigners are all very well on their native heath, but as soon as they are transplanted to this side and treated with common decency they become intolerable. They grovel at our feet, swell because we receive them, and sneer at us behind our backs.”
“I think you have a way of irritating them, my dear,” said Mrs. Gibbs. “You are a very naughty girl. Won’t you sit up here by me, Mrs. Peele? I am afraid the ground is damp. I shall ask you some time to explain to me Miss Tremont’s methods. I often feel sadly at sea.”
“Oh, dear!” said Patience, “I doubt if I know them. I just followed her blindly. I may as well confess it—I didn’t take a very great interest in the work.”
“Oh, how lovely!” cried Mrs. Gallatin.
“I am sorry that I have made a mistake,” said Mrs. Gibbs, stiffly.
“Oh, well—you know—there is such a thing as getting too much of anything—”
“Is there?” Mrs. Gibbs rose, and shook out her skirts with an absent air. “I think I will go over and talk to Mrs. Peele;” and she walked away with an awkward gait, her head bent forward. She certainly did not have an “air.”
“Dear! dear!” exclaimed Mrs. Gallatin. “Just think! you have lost the interest of Mrs. Laurence Gibbs. She might have invited you to her exciting musicales or her cast-iron dinners.”
“Oh, don’t abuse her,” said Mrs. Lafarge. “She is a harmless little soul, and does what she thinks is right.”
“She is happier too,” said Patience, her thoughts in Mariaville. “It is odd, but they always are. I think it’s because they’ve unconsciously cultivated the supremest and most inspired form of egoism, and naturally they get a tremendous amount of joy out of it—”
“Hear! Hear!” cried Mrs. Gallatin. “She analyses!”
“My dear, you mustn’t do that out loud,” said Mrs. Lafarge. “You’ll be a terrible failure if you do.”
“That would be a pity, because you are so pretty,” said Mrs. Gallatin, smiling. “I’ve been staring at you whenever I’ve had the chance, and you don’t know how many charming things I’ve heard said of you this afternoon.”
“Oh, have you really?” asked Patience, warming instantly, as much to the kindly sympathy as to the agreeable words.
“Indeed I have. That violet against your hair and skin makes a perfect picture of you.N’est-ce pas, Leontine?”
“It certainly does.”
“I think you are both very kind,” said Patience, with a young impulse to be frank. “I feel so out of it all. You see this is my first experience of this sort of thing, and some of those girls have made me feel like a barbarian.”
“They’d be glad of your freshness, not only of looks but of mind,” said Mary Gallatin. “I should think it would be a blessed relief to have some other sort of interest but just this,” and she swept out her arm disdainfully. “That’s the reason I go, go, all the time. I don’t dare think. When you have no talent, and are not intellectual, and not frantic about your husband, what are you to do? There’s no other resource, in spite of that Russian prig. I’d give a good deal to be beginning it all again at eighteen.”
“There is no spice in life without violent contrasts,” said Mrs. Lafarge. “That’s the real reason why so many of our good young friends are larky. The trouble with this world is that although there is variety enough in it, each variety travels in a different orbit. The social scheme is all wrong, somehow.”
“True! True!” said Mrs. Gallatin, plaintively. “But I see they are about to eat. The open air always makes me hungry. That is variety enough for the present.”
As they crossed the lawn she laid her arm about Patience’s waist. “Bev doesn’t like society,” she said, “and I’m afraid you’re not in any danger of satiety; but don’t think out loud when you are in it. Leontine never does, do you, Leontine? And she is clever too. It must be delightful to be clever. Heigh-ho! Well, you must be sure to come to see me anyhow. I feel positive we shall be friends. Come some morning at eleven. That is just after I have had my tub and am back in bed again. I love to see my friends then. Oh, dear, we must scatter. There are not two seats together anywhere. Bye-bye.”
“Thank God they’re gone.” Hal divested herself of her tight smart frock, got into a lawn gown, lit a cigarette, and extended herself on the divan in her bedroom. “Well, Patience, how did you like it?”
“I don’t think I made the hit you expected.”
“N-o-o-o, you didn’t exactly create afurore; but I don’t know that any one could do that with so much oxygen round: makes peoples so drowsy, don’t you know? But you were admired awfully. And then you are an unconventional beauty, and that always takes longer. Now, May made a howling sensation, but people are tired of her already. That type doesn’t wear. My plain phiz wears much better, because there was never any chance of reaction with me. Oh, dear, here comes Bev.”
A knock, and in response to Hal’s languid invitation, Beverly entered. He was in evening clothes, and as handsome as ever; but he looked rather sulky.
“You might have met me when I got home,” he said to his wife. “I haven’t seen you since luncheon.”
“Tragic!” exclaimed Hal.
“I was so tired I just drifted in here and fell in a heap,” said Patience, apologetically. “My skull feels empty, and aches inside and out.”
“Then you don’t like society?” said Mr. Peele, eagerly.
“Oh, very much indeed! I think it is delightful, delightful! Only the first time is rather trying, you know. I met some charming people, and want to meet them again.”
Peele grunted, and lit his cigar. His eyes devoured his wife’s fair face. Patience looked at Hal.
“My mother says you carried yourself very well,” remarked Mr. Peele, gracefully; “that after the first you were quite at your ease. That was one reason I went away: I was so afraid you’d break down, or something.”
Patience flushed angrily, but made no reply. She had learned that even a slight dispute would move her husband to a violent outbreak.
“She looked more to the manor born than half the guests,” said Hal, “and if you took her out next winter she’d become the rage—”
“I don’t wish my wife to be the rage! And she is going to stay here. If she loves me as much as I love her she’ll be as contented with my society as I am with hers.”
“As if any woman ever loved a man as much as he loved her,” remarked Miss Peele. “I am sure Patience is no such idiot.”
“What?” cried Beverly. Patience rose hastily.
“I think I’ll go and brush my hair,” she said, moving to the door; but he sprang to his feet and stood in front of her.
“Tell me!” he cried, his voice shaking. “Don’t you love me as much as I love you?”
“Oh, Beverly,” she said, impatiently, “how can you get into such tempers about nothing? You have asked me if I loved you about nine thousand times since we were married. How am I to know how much you love me? Have you a plummet and line about you?”
“You are dodging the question. And you have never asked me if I loved you—not once—”
Patience slipped past him and ran down the hall to her room. Before she could close the door he was beside her. He caught her in his arms and kissed her violently.
“I shall always be mad about you,” he said. “And I believe you are growing cold. You have not been the same lately. Sometimes I think that you shrink from me as you did at first. Tell me what I have done. I’d sell my soul to keep you. If you are tired of me, I’ll kill myself—”
She disengaged herself. “Listen,” she said; “I’ve tried to explain—but you don’t seem to understand—that I didn’t want to fall in love with you—not in that way. That should not come first. Then when I found myself made of common clay, I said that I would forget that I had ever been Patience Sparhawk, and begin life again as Mrs. Beverly Peele. Novelty helped me; and when one is travelling, one’s ego appears to be dissolved into the changing scene—one is simply a sensitised plate. But now I am beginning to feel like Patience Sparhawk again, and it frightens me a little.”
Beverly, to whom the larger part of these remarks were pure Greek, blanched to the lips.
“Then you regret it,” he stammered.
“I didn’t say that. I only mean that I seem to spend life readjusting myself; and that now I seem to be all at sea again.”
“You don’t love me any longer! Oh, God!” and he flung himself on the floor, and burying his face in a chair, groaned aloud.
Patience was disgusted, but his suffering, primary as it was, touched her. Moreover, her broad vein of philosophy was active once more. She was by no means prepared to leave him—the tide was ebbing very slowly. She sat down on the chair, and lifted his face to her lap. “There,” she said, “I am sorry I spoke. You don’t seem to understand me. If you did, though, this scene could never have occurred. But I love you—of course—and I do not regret it. So get up and bathe your eyes. It is after seven o’clock.”
He kissed her hands, his face glowing again. The words were all sufficient to him. “Then if you love me you will see how happy I’ll make you,” he exclaimed. “I’ll never leave you a minute I can help; but if you stop loving me I’ll make life hell for you.”
“I thought you said you’d kill yourself.”
“Well, I would, but I’d get square with you first.”
“Well, suppose you go into your own room now, and let me dress for dinner.”
The summer passed agreeably enough. Circumstances prevented Beverly bestowing an undue amount of his society on his wife, and until a woman is wholly tired of a man she retains her self respect. Moreover, Patience chose to believe herself in love with him: “it had been in her original estimate of herself that she had been at fault.” She persuaded herself that she loved him as much as she could love any man, and she did her pathetic best to shed some glimmer of spiritual light into a man who might have been compounded in a laboratory, so little soul was in him. But despite the clay which was hers, she loved it a great deal for a time in loving it at all, for that was her nature.
She went to several other garden-parties, and found them more amusing than her own, although the young men that frequented them were quite uninteresting: even Beverly scintillated by contrast, for he, at least, had a temper; these more civilised youths appeared to have no emotions whatever.
Peele Manor was full of company all summer. Patience found the married men more entertaining than the younger ones, although they usually made love to her; but after she had outgrown her surprise and disapproval of their direct and business-like methods, it amused her to fence with them. They had more self-control than Beverly Peele, and were a trifle more skilful, but their general attitude was, as she expressed it to Hal: “There’s no time to lose, dontcherknow! Life is short, and New York’s a busy place. What the deuce is there to wait for? Sentiment? Oh, sentiment be hanged! It takes too much time.”
Hal was an accomplished hostess, and allowed her guests little time to make love or to yawn. There were constant riding and driving and yachting parties, picnics and tennis and golf. In the evening they danced, romped, or had impromptu “Varieties.”
Patience was fascinated with the life, although she still had the sense of being an alien, and moments of terrible loneliness. But she was too much of a girl not to take a girl’s delight in the dash and glitter and picturesqueness of society. She was not popular, although she quickly outgrew any external points of difference; but the essential difference was felt and resented.
On the whole there was concord between herself and her mother-in-law. Mr. Peele she barely knew. His family saw little of him. He had not attended the wedding. When Patience had arrived at Peele Manor after her trip, he had kissed her formally, and remarked that he hoped she “would make something of Beverly.”
He was an undersized man with scant iron grey hair whose tint seemed to have invaded his complexion. His lips were folded on each other so closely, that Patience watched them curiously at table: when eating they merely moved apart as if regulated by a spring; their expression never changed. His eyes were dark and rather dull, his nose straight and fine, his hands small and very white. He was not an eloquent man at the bar; he owed his immense success to his mastery of the law, to a devilish subtlety, and to his skill at playing upon the weak points of human nature. No man could so adroitly upset an “objection,” no man so terrify a witness. It was said of him that he played upon a jury with the consummate art of a great musician for his instrument. He rarely lost a case.
His voice was very soft, his manners exquisite. He was never known to lose his temper. His cold aristocratic face looked the sarcophagus of buried passions.
He deeply resented his children’s failure to inherit his brain, but in his inordinate pride of birth, forgave them, for they bore the name of Peele. Hal was his favourite, for she, at least, was bright.
May admired her sister-in-law “to death,” as she phrased it, and bored her with attentions. Patience preferred Honora, who puzzled and repelled her, but assuredly could not be called superficial, although her claims to intellectuality were based upon her preference for George Eliot and George Meredith to the lighter order of fiction, and upon her knowledge of the history of the Catholic Church.
One day, as Patience was crossing the lawn in front of the house, May called to her from the hall, beckoning excitedly. She and Hal and Honora were standing by a table on which was a saucer half full of what appeared to be dead leaves. As Patience entered, May lifted the saucer to her sister-in-law’s nostrils.
“Why? What?” asked Patience, then paused.
“Oh,—what a faint, delicious, far-away perfume,” she said after a moment. “What is it?”
May dropped the saucer and clapped her hands. Hal laughed as if much gratified. Honora’s eyes wandered to the landscape with an absent and introspective regard.
“What is it?” asked Patience again.
“Why, it’s dried strawberry leaves,” said May. “Don’t you know that they say in the South that you can’t perceive their perfume unless every drop of blood in your veins is blue? The common people can’t smell it at all.”
Patience blushed and moved her head disdainfully, but she thrilled with pleasure.
“Won’t you come up and see my room?” said Honora, softly. “You’ve never called on me yet, and I think I have a very pretty room.”
“Oh, I’ll be delighted,” said Patience, who was half consciously avoiding Beverly: Peele Manor was without guests for a few hours.
“Now you must tell me if you like my room as much as you do me,” said Honora, who looked more like an angel than ever, in a white mull frock and blue sash. Her manner to Patience was evenly affectionate, with an undercurrent of subtle sadness and reproach.
As she opened the door of her room, Patience exclaimed with admiration. The ceiling was blue, frescoed with golden stars, the walls with celestial visions. A blue carpet strewn with lilies covered the floor, fluttering curtains of blue silk and white muslin, the old windows. From the dome of the brass bedstead mull curtains hung like clouds. A faint odour of incense mixed with the sweet perfumes of summer.
“Is it not beautiful?” said Honora, in a rapt voice. “It makes me think of heaven. Does it not you? It was dear Aunt Honora’s last Christmas gift to me. It was so sweet of her, for of course I am only the poor cousin.”
Patience looked at her, wondering, as she had often done, whether the girl were a fool, or deeper than any one of her limited experience. Honora rarely talked, but she had reduced listening to a fine art, and was a favourite in society. Whether she had nothing to say, or whether she had divined that her poverty would make eloquence unpardonable, Patience had not determined. One thing was patent, however: she managed her aunt, and her wants were never ignored.
“Now,” she said softly, “I am going to show you something that I don’t show to every one—but you are dear Beverly’s wife.” She folded a screen and revealed an altar covered with cloth of silver, antique candlesticks, and heavy silver cross.
“My faith which sustains me in all the trials of life,” whispered Honora, crossing herself. “Ah, if I could have made dear Beverly a convert. Once he seemed balancing—but he slipped away. I have tried to win Hal and May to the true faith too; but we were always so much more to each other—Beverly and I,—playmates from childhood. I think I know him better than anybody in the world.”
Patience felt an interloper, a thief and an alien, but out of her new schooling answered carelessly: “Oh, he is awfully fond of you, but I don’t think he is inclined to be religious. This room is too sanctified to speak above a whisper in. Come to my room and talk to me awhile.”
Honora opened a door by the head of her bed, and they passed through a large lavatory, then through Beverly’s room to that of the bride, a square room whose windows framed patches of Hudson and Palisade, and daintily furnished in lilac and white. A photograph of Miss Tremont hung between the windows. On one side were shelves containing John Sparhawk’s library.
Beverly arose from a deep chair, where he had been smoking and glowering upon the Hudson. Patience caught Honora firmly by the waist and pushed her into the most comfortable chair in the room, then with much skill engaged her in a discussion with Beverly upon the subject of music, the one subject besides horse which interested him.
In August the girls went to Newport, and Patience became very tired of her mother-in-law. May returned engaged to a wealthy Cuban, who had been dancing attendance on her blondinitude for some months past, and Mrs. Peele became so amiable that she forgot to lecture her daughter-in-law or irritate her with the large vigilance of her polaric eyes. The girls left again for Lenox and Tuxedo. On the first of January the family moved to their town house for the winter.
Patience was alone with her husband.
During the first three days of this new connubial solitude it snowed heavily. Beverly could not ride nor drive, and wandered restlessly between the stable and the library, where his wife sat before the blazing logs.
There were some two thousand volumes at Peele Manor. Patience had had no time to read since her marriage, but on the morning of the family’s departure she made for the library, partly in self defence, partly with pleasurable anticipation. She hoped that Beverly would succumb to the charms of the stable, where there were many congenial spirits and a comfortable parlour; but she had barely discovered Heine’s prose and had read but ten pages of the “Reisebilder,” when the door opened, and he came in. She merely nodded, and went on reading. She was barely conscious of his presence, for Heine is a magician, and she was already under his spell.
“Well, you might shut up your book and talk to me,” said Beverly, pettishly, flinging himself into a chair opposite her. “This is a nice way to treat a fellow on a stormy day.”
“Oh, you read too,” murmured Patience.
“No, I will not. I want to talk to you.”
Patience closed the book over her finger and looked at him impatiently. Then an idea occurred to her, and she spoke with her usual impulsiveness.
“Look, Beverly,” she said, “you and I have to spend many months alone together, and if we are to make a success of matrimony we must be companions, and to be companions we must have similar tastes. Now I’ll make a bargain with you: I’ll try to like horses if you’ll try to like books. On pleasant days I’ll ride and drive with you, and when it storms we’ll read together here in the library. I am sure you will like it after a time. If you find it tiresome to read to yourself I’ll read aloud. I don’t mind, and then we can talk it over.”
“All right,” said Beverly. “Anything you say. What’s that you’re reading now?”
“Heine’s prose. He is wonderful—such a style and such sardonic wit, and such exquisite thoughts. I’ll begin all over again. Now light a cigar and make yourself comfortable.”
For a half hour she read aloud, and then Mr. Peele remarked,—
“Hang it! The skating is spoiled for a week.”
“Oh, Beverly, you haven’t been listening.”
“Well, I don’t like it very much. He skips around so. Besides, I always did hate Germans. Give me America every time.”
“Well, read something American then,” said Patience, crossly.
“You find something and read it to me. I like to hear your voice, even if I can’t keep my mind on it. Wait a while though. I guess I’ll go and see how the stable is getting on.”
He bent down to kiss his wife, but she was once more absorbed, and did not see him. He snatched the book from her with an oath and flung it across the room. She sprang to her feet with flashing eyes, pushed him aside with no gentle hand, and ran after the book.
“You sha’n’t read that book!” he cried. “The idea of forgetting your husband for a book—a book! You are a lovely wife! You are a disgrace to the name! You would rather read than kiss your husband! I’ll lock this room up, damned if I don’t.”
“I’ll go and live with Miss Beale and do Temperance work,” sobbed Patience. “I won’t live with you.”
“Oh, you won’t—what? What did I marry you for? My God! What did I marry you for? My life is hell, for I’m no fool. I know you don’t love me. You married me for my money.”
“I wish I had,” she exclaimed passionately, then controlled herself. “I hope we are not going to squabble in the usual commonplace way. I shall not, at any rate. If you lose your temper, you can have the quarrel all to yourself. I shall not pay any attention to you. Now go out to the stable and cool off, and when you come back I’ll read something else to you.”
“Do you love me?”
“Oh, yes—yes.”
And Beverly disappeared, slamming the door behind him.
“I wonder if any one on earth has such a temper,” she thought. “And people believe that vulgarity and lack of control are confined to the lower classes! What is the matter with civilisation anyhow? I can only explain my own remarkable aberration in this way: youthful love is a compound of curiosity, a surplus of vitality, and inherited sentimentalism. It is likely to arrive just after the gamut of children’s diseases has run its course. Of course the disease is merely a complacent state of the system until the germ arrives, which same is the first attractive and masterful man. All diseases run their course, however. I could not be more insensible to Beverly Peele’s dead ancestors out in the vault than I am to him. No woman is capable of loving at nineteen. She is nothing but an overgrown child, a chaos of emotions and imagination. There ought to be a law passed that no woman could marry until she was twenty-eight. Then, perhaps a few of us would feel less like—Well, there is nothing to do but make the best of it, regard life as a highly seasoned comedy, in which one is little more than a spectator, after all—and at present I have Heine.”
Beverly did not return for an hour. When he did she rose at once, and running her eye along the shelves, selected a volume of Webster’s Speeches.
“You like politics,” she said; “and all of us should read the great works of our great men. I’ll read the famous Seventh of March Speech.”
And she did, Beverly listening with considerable attention. When she had finished he remarked enthusiastically,—
“Do you know what that speech has made me make up my mind to do? I’m going to run for the Senate, and make speeches like that myself.”
Patience merely stared at him. She wondered if he were really something more than a fool; if there was a sort of post-graduate course.
“What makes you look at me like that? Don’t you think I can?”
“Well—” She hardly knew what to say.
“Well! Is that the way you encourage a fellow? You are a nice wife. Here my father has been at me all my life to do something, and just as soon as I make up my mind, my wife laughs at me.”
“I didn’t laugh at you.”
“Well, it’s all the same. If I never do anything, it’ll be your fault.”
“Go to the Senate just as fast as ever you can get there. And you might as well spend the rest of the day studying Webster; but suppose you read to yourself for a while: my throat is tired.”
“I don’t like to read to myself.”
“Well, anyhow, I hear Lawson coming. Luncheon is ready.”
The table in the dining-room had been divested of its leaves, and the young couple sat only a few feet apart. The room had once been a banqueting-hall. It was very large and dark. The white light filtered meagrely through the small panes. The wind moaned through the naked elms.
“The country is awfully dull in winter,” remarked Patience. “I wish we were in town.”
“That’s a beautiful speech to make to a husband. I don’t mind so long as you are here.”
“Of course I am deeply flattered,” and she smiled upon him. There seemed nothing else to do.
“Damn it!” cried Beverly, “this steak is as thin as a plate and burnt to a cinder. Patience, I do wish you’d give some of your attention to housekeeping and less to books. It is your place to see that things are properly cooked, now that Honora is gone.”
“Oh, dear. I don’t know anything about cooking, or housekeeping, either.”
“Well, then, I’d be much obliged if you’d learn as quickly as possible. Take this steak out,” he said to the maid, “and bring some cold beef or ham. Damn it! I might have known that when Honora went away I’d have nothing fit to eat, with this new cook.”
But Patience refused to continue the conversation, and when the ham and beef came he ate of them with such relish that his good-nature returned as speedily as it had departed.
During the afternoon the scene of the morning was repeated with variations, and the same might be said of the two following days. Then came an interval of sleighing and skating. Then rain turned the snow to slush, and once again Beverly exhibited the characteristics of a caged tiger.
“I shall have nervous prostration before the winter is over,” thought Patience, who was still determined to take the situation humorously, still refused to face her former self. “I do wish the family would come back, mother-in-law and all.”
Occasionally, despite Beverly’s indignant protests, she went to town for the day, and shopped or paid calls with Hal. On one occasion they went to see Rosita. That “beautiful young prima donna of ever increasing popularity” wore black gauze over gold-coloured tights, and acted and sang and danced and allured with consummate art. The opera house was two-thirds crowded with men, although there was the usual matinée contingent of girls and young married women.
“Well,” thought Patience, “she’s way ahead of me, for she’s made a success of herself, at least, and is not bothered with scruples and regrets.”
The winter dragged along as slowly as if time had lamed the old man, then fallen asleep. The relations between Patience and Beverly became very strained. His frequent tempers were alternated by sulks. He was genuinely unhappy, for limited as he was, mentally and spiritually, he was very human; and in his primitive way he loved his wife.
Patience’s resolution to go through life as a cynical humourist, deaf and blind to the great wants of her nature, died hard, but it died at last. Monotony accentuated fact, and the time came when pretence failed her, and she visibly shrank from his lightest caress. The tide of horror and loathing had risen slowly, but definitely. He threatened to kill her, to commit suicide, to get a divorce; but his threats did not disturb her. He was too weak to kill himself, too proud to make himself ridiculous in the divorce courts, and too much in love to put her beyond his reach. What sustained her was the hope that his passion would die a natural death, and that they would then go their diverse ways as other married people did,—that had come to seem to her the most blessed meaning of the holy state of matrimony. Then she could enjoy her books, and he would permit her to spend the winters in New York, or in travel.
Beverly’s affections, however, showed no sign of dissolution.