Where Laurence sat was the head of the table; he dominated all by his vivid colour, his intense physical vitality, and he kept the talk going easily. He and Lavery were in evening dress, rather dandified, with soft plaited shirt-bosoms and diamond studs. Old Mr. Carlin, sitting between Timothy and John, appeared perfectly at ease in his well-brushed suit. His bright grey eyes contemplated the scene and the company with an aloof and philosophic interest.
Mary, in her usual dress for the evening, of plain black velvet, cut square at the neck, and with long close-fitting sleeves, was beautiful, as Laurence had said and Lavery's long gaze recognized. She wore no ornaments except a pair of heavy earrings of dull gold filagree. The light from the big cut-glass chandelier over the table fell unshaded upon her, bringing out the pale copper colour of her rippling hair and the whiteness of her skin. It emphasized too the hollows in her cheeks and at her temples, the lines of the forehead and of the neck below the ear. Her face, as in her youth, was like a mask; but now it was a mask of sorrow. Calm and unmoved in expression, it was yet an abstract of sad experience.
The years had left a more complex mark on Laurence. There were deeper furrows in his brow and running down from the nostrils to bury themselves in his blackbeard. A passionate expressiveness, a restless irritability, spoke in his voice, his gestures, his constant flow of talk. "Carlin's temper" was a proverb by now. A racial inheritance came out strongly in him. He was "the black Irish"; dangerous at times. But there was another side to this temperament. Often when he smiled, and always when he looked at the boy who sat beside him, there was a deep sweetness in his eyes, a deep tenderness. John's place was always beside his father; he hung on Laurence's words and looks with hushed eagerness. And Laurence, keenly conscious of the sensitive boy, was careful what he said, instinctively suppressed anything that might shock or hurt a young idealistic spirit; and never drank more than a glass or two of wine, in his presence.
The wine was always on the dinner-table, however. It was Laurence's idea that the boys had better get used to seeing it, and to taking a little now and then. Mary never touched it, and hated the sight of it; but she had long since ceased to oppose Laurence in any detail of life. The house was managed as he wished, though he was away more than half the time. Now there were three kinds of wine on the table—sherry, claret and port. Laurence was proud of his wine-cellar, down in the deep foundations of the house.
Lavery drank delicately. He had guided Laurence's choice of the claret, and confined himself to that. He much preferred to remain perfectly sober; especially when other people were drunk; but in any case he disliked the least blurring of the fine edge of sensation and perception. He liked to watch the play of human feeling, and to guess what was going on below thesurface; and for this one must be alert and cool. He was immensely curious, for example, about the human situation under his eyes. Old Mr. Carlin had suddenly come in for a share of this interest. Lavery studied him across the table, and addressed frequent remarks to him, with amenity. He discovered that the old man, in point of quick wit, suavity and coolness, was by no means his inferior, although the elder had, from the beginning of the dinner, applied very steadily to each decanter in turn.
After the coffee Mary rose, as was her custom, leaving the men at the table. The three boys followed her; Jim with evident reluctance. His manly dignity was hurt at being classed with women and children; but he was quite aware that his company would not be longer desired in the room, where heavy drinking and free talk were apt to be the order of the evening. Lavery sprang up to open the door for Mary, and she passed out with a slight bow, the boys waiting till the edge of her long velvet train had ebbed over the threshold.
Timothy and John went upstairs to the billiard-room on the top floor; and Mary, slipping her hand through Jim's arm, led him into the parlour where the piano stood. She wanted to ask him about his excursion of the night before—he had been out till three o'clock—but more than that she wanted him to stay with her a little while. But Jim was restive, wouldn't sit down. He feared an inquisition, and also he wanted to get away to the stable and smoke. Mary, both irritated and hurt by his unwillingness, spoke more sharply than she had intended.
"Where were you all last night?"
"I went out for a long ride," said Jim sulkily.
"And were you riding from eight o'clock till three?"
"No—I stopped a while to see a friend."
"What friend?"
"Oh, somebody you don't know—a fellow."
Controlling himself, he answered more gently; his dark eyes met hers imperturbably.
"Well, you oughtn't to stay out all night!"
"I didn't," said Jim reasonably. "And a fellow has to do something in this dead place."
"You shouldn't have taken your father's horse either, without permission."
"Why, Mother, he was simply spoiling for exercise—you know he doesn't get ridden half enough."
"I don't like you to ride him, he's dangerous—"
"Oh, I can manage him, all right, don't you worry!" Jim smiled cheerfully. "But I've got to run out now and see to the pony—he's a bit lame still—"
She let him go, turning away from him and walking to the end of the long room. Yes, he wanted to escape—he had his own life now, was beginning to be a man and to take his secret way, like the rest of them. Her mouth curved bitterly. She did not believe Jim, about the friend—she suspected something else, and she recoiled jealously, miserably.... Yes, her son too—he was like the rest....
She stood by the open window, looking out blindly on the garden. The night was mild, it was moonlight, greenish, like a glowworm's light. The long lace curtains waved inward in the soft breeze. There were sounds of life astir all about. She heard a burst oflaughter from the dining-room; then the faint click of the billiard-balls and a shout from Timothy. Then, on the lake, some one began to sing Schubert's boat-song. A clear soprano trilled out joyously the song of love and youth....
A piercing sense of loneliness, of life passing by her, leaving her, stabbed to her very heart. She gave a long, shuddering sigh.... Youth, love—they had passed by. Like the song growing fainter, receding into distance. And the bitter thing was, one did not realize them till they were gone. The sweetness of life—all it was, might have been—one did not feel it till it had slipped away.... Gone, lost—then, in loneliness you felt it....
Some one came into the room. She turned, and at sight of her face, Lavery's gay apology dropped half-spoken. He came and stood beside her at the window.
"I hate music," she said abruptly. "Some one was singing out there. It makes one sad.... It makes one remember all the things—"
"I don't like it myself," said Lavery, when she stopped as abruptly. "Unless it's an opera—with gay dresses, lights, all that—then it distracts you."
"That's trying to shut it out, the sadness of life. Like making merry in a room, shut in, with a storm outside."
"Well, you know, that's the sensible thing to do. Youhaveto shut it out."
"But supposing youcan't?"
He met the misery of her eyes, her voice, with a gravity that he seldom showed to any one.
"We all have to go through that phase," he saidcurtly. "A kind of despair. It comes—and passes, generally."
"Does it? Does it pass?"
"I think it does.... You see, it's natural. It comes to us at the end of youth—it's the end of some things—then we have to take stock, see what we've spent, what we've got left to go on with—"
"And supposing we've spent everything?"
"Well, that isn't likely—though it may look so. Most of us go through a kind of bankruptcy. The hopes and ambitions of youth are gone—our dreams are gone, as a rule. We face what we've actually done, what we're really capable of—it doesn't correspond to what we believed we could do, what we thought we were. The reality is hard, and we despair.... But then, we get our second wind, so to speak, and go on, somehow."
"Do we? But why? Why go on—"
"Well, most of us by that time have certain ties, responsibilities, we're necessary, or think we are—"
"But if wedon'tthink we are? If we're not needed?"
Her lips quivered, her tone was hard and desperate.
"Well, then—there may be some work we're interested in. Or if not that, there's a good deal of pleasure to be got out of life, you know, if one understands how to do it."
"Pleasure?"
"Yes, surely.... Youth doesn't appreciate the good things of life, it's too eager, too intent on its own purposes.... The real pleasures of the mind and thesenses come later—they're the consolation for what we were speaking of."
"No, no! That's no consolation! It's impossible to live that way!"
"You want to keep your youth," he said. "I think you're suffering from youth unlived."
"Youth unlived!" she repeated, in a low voice. "I didn't have it ... it went by me somehow—"
"Yes, and now you want it."
"I don't want anything!"
"That's what we say when we can't get what we want," observed Lavery. "But then, we take what we can get."
"No, I hate that!" she burst out. "That resignation, creeping into old age! No, I can't live that way. That's being beaten!"
"Well, most of usarebeaten," Lavery said philosophically, showing his brilliant teeth in a smile. "But then, as I said, there are consolations—"
"No, there's no consolation for that."
She moved, sat down on one of the long sofas, looking straight before her with a fixed absent gaze. Lavery dropped into a chair beside her, contemplative, admiring.
Emotion was becoming to her. It called a faint colour to her cheeks and lips, gave light to her still grey eyes. In some ways she looked strangely young. The lines of her figure were wonderfully girlish.... But also she looked as though she had lived ... not happily, though. He judged a sympathetic silence best at the moment, though there were a lot of things he wanted to say. He would have liked to preach his own gospel of enjoyment, he thought he could be rathereloquent on that theme. But still more he wantedherto talk, so he was quiet, glancing now and then about the big room, whose furniture had too much gilt to suit him. His own taste ran to very quiet though rich effects, and he thought the house "rococo" and out of date. Still, in a way, the gilding and light stuffs and long mirrors made a good setting for her tall figure in its sombre dress and her tragic face.... She sat there, looking into space, apparently forgetting that a pleasant confidant was at her elbow. She hadn't a touch of the ordinary agreeable coquetry, he reflected—didn't seem to realize that people of their age could still be agreeable to one another. Rather barbarous ... yes, both Carlin and his wife were a little uncivilized. They would fit better into a former, doubtless more heroic age, than into the present time. There was a slightly rough-hewn pioneer quality about them. But, perhaps from that very thing, they were both interesting, decidedly so. And he could wait indefinitely for the interest to develop. His calm pulses never hurried now for anything.
His thought reverted to Laurence and to the old gentleman whom he had left drinking whiskey. A queer fish, Laurence's father—he had never known Laurencehada father. A black sheep probably. Laurence was plainly nervous about him. It was the tactful thing to leave them together—even if there hadn't been Mrs. Carlin alone in here, needing somebody to talk to. Laurence neglected her, that was quite evident, and she felt it bitterly.... He wondered, with narrowed gaze, how much she knew about Laurence's life. He could tell her a good deal more than she knew, probably—but, naturally, he wouldn't.