CHAPTER XV
Arthur Maxwell over his morning grapefruit, buttered toast and coffee, which he usually had served in his apartment, began in a leisurely way to open his mail.
There was a thick enticing letter from his mother which he laid aside till the last. He and his mother were great pals and her letters were like a bit of herself, almost as good as talking with her face to face. He always enjoyed every word of them.
There were the usual number of business communications which he tore open and read hurriedly as he came to them, frowning over one, putting another in his pocket to be answered in his office, and then at the very bottom, under a long envelope which carried a plea for money for his Alma Mater to help build a new observatory, he came suddenly upon a square, foreign-looking envelope addressed in a dashing illegible hand and emitting a subtle fragrance of rare flowers, a fragrance that had hovered exquisitely about his senses from the moment the mail had been laid by his plate, reminding him dimly of something sweet and forbidden and half forgotten.
He looked at the letter, half startled, a trifle displeased and yet greatly stirred. It represented a matter that he was striving to put out of his life, that he thought he had succeeded in overcoming, even almost forgetting. A grim speculative look came into his face. He hesitated before he reached out his hand to pick up the letter, andquestioned whether he should even open it. Then with a look that showed he had taken himself well in hand he picked it up, ran his knife crisply under the flap of the envelope and read:
“Dear Arthur,“I am passing through Philadelphia tomorrow on my way to Washington and am stopping over for a few hours especially to see you about a matter of grave importance. I feel that you will not be angry at my breaking this absurd silence that you have imposed between us when I tell you that I am in great trouble and need your advice. I remember your promise always to be my friend, and I know you will not refuse to see me now for at least a few minutes.“I am coming down on the two o’clock train from New York and shall go directly to Hotel —— and await your coming anxiously. I know you will not fail me,“Yours eternally,“Evadne.”
“Dear Arthur,
“I am passing through Philadelphia tomorrow on my way to Washington and am stopping over for a few hours especially to see you about a matter of grave importance. I feel that you will not be angry at my breaking this absurd silence that you have imposed between us when I tell you that I am in great trouble and need your advice. I remember your promise always to be my friend, and I know you will not refuse to see me now for at least a few minutes.
“I am coming down on the two o’clock train from New York and shall go directly to Hotel —— and await your coming anxiously. I know you will not fail me,
“Yours eternally,“Evadne.”
The subtle fragrance, the dashing script, the old familiar turn of sentence, reached into his consciousness and gripped him for a second in spite of his being on his guard. Something thrilling and tragic seemed to emanate from the very paper in his hand, from the royal purple of the lining of the expensive envelope. For an instant he felt the old lure, the charm, the tragedy of his life which he was seeking to outlive, which he had supposed was already outlived.
In his senior year in college Arthur Maxwell hadbecome acquainted with Evadne Chantry at a house party where both had been guests. They had been thrown together during the two days of their stay, whether by the hostess’ planning or at the lady’s request is not known, but Arthur, at first not much attracted by her type, found himself growing more and more interested.
Evadne was a slender, dark, sophisticated little thing with dreamy eyes and a naïve appeal. His chivalry was challenged, and when it further appeared that she was just from England, and was of the old family of Chantrys whom his mother knew and visited, he got down from his distance and capitulated. They became close friends, in spite of the fact that Evadne’s ways were not the ways in which he had been brought up, and in which his young manhood had chosen to walk. But he had found himself excusing her. She had not been taught as he had. She had lived abroad where standards were different. She had been in boarding schools and convents, and then travelled. He felt she could be brought to change her ways.
It appeared that she was going to be for sometime in the city where his college was located, and the friendship ripened rapidly, taking Arthur Maxwell into a social group as utterly foreign to his own as one could imagine, in fact one which he did not really enjoy, yet he went for Evadne’s sake.
When he came to the point of telling his mother of the friendship, about which it had been strangely hard to write, he found that it was no easy matter. In thelight of her clear eyes there were matters which could not be so easily set aside as his own conscience had been soothed to do. He suddenly realized what a shock it would be to his conservative mother to see Evadne smoking, to watch her in her sinuous attitudes, to know that her son was deeply interested in a young woman who had plucked eyebrows and used a lip stick freely. When he came to think of it some of her costumes might be exceedingly startling to his mother. Yet he believed in his mother so thoroughly that he felt she could be made to understand how much this girl had suffered from lack of a mother, and how much she was in need of just such a friend as his mother could be.
When the time arrived that Mrs. Maxwell had to learn these things her son was even more startled than herself to find out how much she really was shocked at his choice of a girl. The stricken look that came into her eyes the first time they met told him without further words from her lips. In that moment he might be said to have grown up as he suddenly looked upon the girl whom he thought he loved beyond all women, through the eyes of his mother.
His mother had been wonderful even though she carried the stricken look through the entire interview. She had perhaps not exactly taken Evadne into her arms quite as he had hoped, but she had been gently sweet and polite. His mother would always be that. She had been quiet, so quiet, and watchful, as if she were gravely considering some threatened catastrophe and meeting it bravely.
Afterwards, she had met his eyes with a brave, sad smile, without a hint of rebuke, not a suggestion that he should have told her sooner, only an acceptance of the fact that the girl was here in their lives and must be dealt with fairly. She listened to his story of Evadne’s life, considered his suggestion that she might help the girl, heard how they had met and his reasons for feeling that she was the one and only girl. As he told it all he was conscious of something searching in her sweet, grave eyes that turned a knife in his heart, yet he was full of hope that she would eventually understand and come under Evadne’s spell with himself.
Only once she questioned about the girl. How did he know she belonged to the Chantrys she knew? What relationship did she bear to them? Was she Paul Chantry’s sister? Cousin? She did not remember that there had been a daughter.
Evadne had not taken kindly to his mother. She wept when Arthur talked with her alone after their meeting, and said she was sure his mother did not love her. But the days passed on and Mrs. Maxwell kept her own counsel, and invited the girl to her home, doing all the little gracious social things that might be expected of her, yet with a heavy heart, till one day when it seemed that an announcement of the engagement should be the next thing in order, there came a letter from England in answer to one Mrs. Maxwell had written, disclaiming any relationship between Evadne and the distinguished old family who were her friends.
This was a matter that Arthur could not ignore when his mother brought it to his notice, and Evadne was asked for an explanation.
Evadne met his questions with haughty contempt and then with angry tears and retired into an offended silence that seemed as impenetrable as a winter fog, from which she presently emerged like a martyr with vague explanations of a distant cousinship that seemed full and sufficient to his gallant, young spirit, till he tried to repeat them to his clear-eyed mother and then they did not seem so convincing.
The matter was finally smoothed over, however, and it seemed as if the mother was about to be called upon to set the seal of her approval upon a speedy marriage between the two, when there came a revelation through the medium of an old friend who had met Evadne abroad, and asked her quite casually, in the presence of the Maxwells where her husband was. Explanations followed, of course, and it appeared that Evadne was married already and had left her husband in South Africa without even the formality of a divorce.
There followed days of sore distress, of weepings and sobbed pleadings, Evadne telling the tale of her woes, a tale that gathered tragedy from the sympathy of the young lover who felt that life had reached its depths of sorrow for him and earth would never be bright again.
Gradually, however, the girl’s clever story broke down his indignation at her deception, as she told him sobbingly how lonely she was and how she longed for friendshipand something real in life; and it took many days and nights of agonizing thought before the plummet of his soul was able to swing clear and tell him that no matter how lonely she was or who was to blame, or how much or when or why, there was one thing true, if Evadne was married, she was not for him, no, not even if she got a divorce. So much inheritance had he from long lines of Puritan ancestors, and from the high, fine teachings of his mother. It was a law of God, and it was right. He was not altogether sure just then that he believed in the God who had let all this tragedy come into his life, but he believed in the law and he must keep it. He had felt himself grow old in those days while he was coming to that inevitable conclusion that if it was not right for them to love one another, then they must not see one another.
For days he could not talk about it to his mother, and she spent the hours upon her knees, while he went about stern and white, and Evadne did all in her power to make him see that times had changed and modern ways did not accept those puritan laws any more which he was holding forth as final and inexorable. Sin! What wassin? Therewasno such thing!Law!She laughed. Why keep a law that everyone else was breaking? It was all of a piece with his old fogy notions about drinking wine and having a good time. He was the dearest in all the world of course, but he was narrow. She held out her lily arms from the sheath-like black velvet gown she had assumed and pleaded with him to come with her, come out into the broad, free air of a big life! She was clever.She had caught most of the modern phrases. She knew how to appeal to the finer things in him, andalmostshe won her point. Almost he wavered for just the fraction of a second, and thought, perhaps she is right—perhaps I am narrow. Then he lifted his eyes and saw his mother standing in the doorway, being shown in by a blundering servant, his fine patrician mother with her sweet, true eyes, and pure, sorrowful face, and he knew. He knew that Evadne was wrong, and his mother—yes his mother and he were right. There could be nothing but sin in a love that was stolen—a love that transgressed.
He had gone away then and left his mother to talk to the other woman, and something, somewhere in his manhood had kept him away after that. He had written her fully his final word, with so stern a renunciation that even Evadne knew it was unalterable. He had laid down the law that they must not meet again, and had then gone away to another part of the country and established himself in business and tried to forget.
That had been two years ago. Long years, he called it when he thought of them by himself. The haggard look of the gray young face had past away gradually, and the stern lines had softened as his fine mind and strong body and naturally cheerful spirit came back to normal, but there had been a reserve about him that made people think him a year or two older than he really was, and made some women when they met him call him “distinguished.” He had passed in the struggles of his soul, slowly away from the place where he regarded Evadne as a martyr, and hadcome at last to the time when he could look his experience squarely in the face and realize that she had been utterly untrue to all that was fine and womanly, and that he was probably saved from a life of sorrow and disappointment. Nevertheless, back in his soul there lingered his pity for her slender beauty, her pretty helplessness. A natural conclusion had come to him that all girls were deceitful, all beautiful women were naturally selfish and untrue. There were no more good, sweet, true girls nowadays as there were when his mother was a girl.
Away from home he drifted out of church-going. He immersed himself in business and began to be a brilliant success. He wrote long letters to his mother and enjoyed hers in return, but his epistles were not revealing. She sensed his reserves, and when they met she felt his playful gentleness with her was a screen for a bitterness of soul which she hoped and prayed might pass. And it did pass, gradually, until she had almost come to feel that his soul was healed, and the tragedy forgotten. More and more she prayed now that some day, when he was ready, he might meet a different kind of girl, one who would make him forget utterly the poor little vampire who had almost ruined his life’s happiness. In fact, the last time she had seen him on her recent trip to Philadelphia he had laughingly told her that she needn’t worry about him any more. He was utterly heart whole and happy.
But it is a question, whether if she had been permitted to look in on him this morning as he read Evadne’s letter, she would have felt that his words had been quite true.
He had promised his mother, in those first days after the break with Evadne, that he would not see her nor communicate with her for at least two years. The time was more than past, yet he felt the righteous obligation of his promise still upon him. He knew that he ought not to see Evadne again. He knew that the very sight of her would stir in him the old interest, which he now felt to be of a lower order than the highest of which he was capable. He could see her sitting now flung back in some bewildering costume that revealed the delicate, slim lines of her figure, some costly bauble smouldering on the whiteness of her neck that might have graced an Egyptian queen, her hair moulded in satin-like folds about her small head, and her slanted eyes half closed, studying him tauntingly as she held her cigarette in her jewelled fingers and considered with what clever personality to bind him next.
The distance of time had shown him that he had been bound, that he had been a fool, and had brought him disillusionment; yet he knew that if he gave it half a chance the enchantment would work again upon him, and he felt contempt for himself that it was so. Yet strangely he found a law within himself that longed again to be enchanted, even while he sneered at the emptiness of it all.
Suppose he should go tonight to meet her—it was tonight. He glanced at the date of the letter to make sure. He could tell almost to a flicker of an eyelash what would happen.
She would meet him as if they had parted but yesterday, and she would ignore all that was passed except thatthey loved each other. His soul rebelled at the thought of that for he did not now feel that he loved her any longer. The cleanness of his spirit had put that away. She was not his, she was another’s. She was not fit for a real love, even if there had been no barrier. That had been his maturer thought, especially at times when he remembered her deceit. Yet human nature is a subtle thing. Though he resented her thinking that he had continued to care for her, he feared for himself lest when he saw her he would allow her to think that it was so. And yet he longed to go and see how it would be. He felt curious to try his dearly-bought contentment and see if it would hold. Should he go?
His mother would advise against it, of course. But he was a man now. This was his personal responsibility. Whether he should see her or not. All that about her needing advice in trouble was rot, of course. There were plenty of people who could advise her. He could send the old family lawyer to her if necessary. Her plea had been well planned to make him come because she wished to see if he still cared, or if he had forgotten her. But yet it might be salutary for them both for him to go for a few minutes and show her that there was nothing to all the tragedy that they had thought they were living through.
Well,—there was plenty of time to decide what to do. She wasn’t coming till afternoon—he could go, of course, and take her to the Roof Garden for dinner—or perhaps she would better enjoy one of the quieter places—heknew a little Chinese Restaurant that was more her style. However, he would thrash it out during the day. It was getting late and he must hurry to the office. But he must read his mother’s letter first, of course. There might be something she wanted done at once. She was staying in the mountains for a little while with her sister who was recovering from a severe illness, and there often was some shopping she wanted him to attend to at once.
He opened the letter, his mind preoccupied with thoughts of Evadne.
The letter was filled with wonderful descriptions of views and people his mother had met, mingled with wise and witty comments on politics and current events. He skimmed it hastily through to the last paragraph which read:
“I came on a lovely clump of maidenhair ferns yesterday in my walk, and I had the gardener at the hotel take them up and box them carefully for me. I want to send them to my little friend, the interior decorator whom I met on the train a few weeks ago. You remember? But after they were all ready to go and I came to look for the address I remembered that I left it in the little drawer of the desk in your apartment. I have tried my best to rack my brains for a clue to the street and number, and can’t remember a thing except that her name was Cornelia Copley. I remembered that because of the Copley prints of which we are both so fond. So rather than give up the idea or trust to the ferns finding her in that big city with just her name and no street address I am sending them to you. I want you to slip the box into your car and take a run out that way the very day they come anddeliver them for me, please. I liked that little girl, and I want her to have these beautiful ferns. They will help her decorate her forlorn little house. I hope you won’t consider this a nuisance, son. But you never do when I ask a favor. I know. Be sure to do itat once, for the ferns won’t stand it long without water.”
“I came on a lovely clump of maidenhair ferns yesterday in my walk, and I had the gardener at the hotel take them up and box them carefully for me. I want to send them to my little friend, the interior decorator whom I met on the train a few weeks ago. You remember? But after they were all ready to go and I came to look for the address I remembered that I left it in the little drawer of the desk in your apartment. I have tried my best to rack my brains for a clue to the street and number, and can’t remember a thing except that her name was Cornelia Copley. I remembered that because of the Copley prints of which we are both so fond. So rather than give up the idea or trust to the ferns finding her in that big city with just her name and no street address I am sending them to you. I want you to slip the box into your car and take a run out that way the very day they come anddeliver them for me, please. I liked that little girl, and I want her to have these beautiful ferns. They will help her decorate her forlorn little house. I hope you won’t consider this a nuisance, son. But you never do when I ask a favor. I know. Be sure to do itat once, for the ferns won’t stand it long without water.”
A knock came on the door just then, and the young man looked up to see the wife of the colored janitor, who looked after the apartment and cooked his breakfast, standing in the open door.
“The ’spressman done brung a box, Mr. Maxwell,” she said. “What you want did with it?”
“Oh, it’s come! Well, tell him to put it into my car. It ought to be out at the door waiting by this time, and just sign for it please, Hannah. I’m in a hurry this morning. I have an appointment at half past eight.”
Five minutes later, when Maxwell hurried down, he found the big box on the floor of his car, with feathery fronds reaching out to the light and blowing delicately in the breeze.
“Well, I should say she did send a few!” he grumbled to himself. “Trust mother to do a thing thoroughly! I don’t see when I can possibly manage to deliver these today! I’ll have to get away somehow at lunch time I suppose. I certainly wish mother hadn’t chosen this special day to wish one of her pet enthusiasms on me! She’s always hunting out some nice girl! I wish she wouldn’t!”
With that he slammed shut the door, threw in the clutch, and was off, and never thought of those ferns all day long until late in the afternoon, later than his usualhour for going to his dinner, he climbed wearily into the car again. He had had a hard day, with perplexing problems to solve and a disagreeable visiting head to show all over the Philadelphia branch, and keep in good humor. There had not been a minute to get away, not even for a bit of a run in the car at noon; for the visitor had a cold, and didn’t care to ride; so they lunched in the downstairs restaurant, and went back to work again all the afternoon. The visitor at last was whirled away in the car of another employee to whose home in the suburbs he had been invited to dinner, and Maxwell with a sigh of relief, and feeling somehow very lonesome and tired, was free at last, free to consider the problem of the evening.
He was just backing out of the garage, and turning to see that his wheels had cleared the doorway, his eye caught a gleam of green.
“Oh, doggone those fool ferns!” he said under his breath. “Now I’ll simply have to get them off my hands tonight, or they’ll ‘die on me’ as the elevator man said his first wife did. Mother didn’t know what a nuisance this would be. I haven’t a minute to waste on such fool nonsense tonight. I really ought to call up Evadne at once and let her know I’m coming—ifI am. I wonder if I am. Well, here goes with the ferns first. It won’t take long if I can find the dump, and it will give me a few minutes leisure to decide what I’ll do. I haven’t had a second all day long. I never saw such a day!”
He sent the car shooting forward on the smooth road, climbing the long grade into the sunset.