Margaret, on her way to Lennox that afternoon, wondered whether it might not be possible for them to live elsewhere.
Born and bred in the sordid hell with a blue sky that New York was before the war, latterly the sky itself had darkened. The world in which she moved, distressed her. Its parure of gaiety shocked. Those who peopled it were not sordid, they were not even blue. Europe agonised and they dined and danced, displayed themselves at the opera, summarised the war as dreadful, dismissed it, gossiped and laughed. It was that attitude which distressed this girl who, had she been capable of wishing ill to any one, might have wished them treated as were the élegantes of Brussels.
Margaret had no such evil wish. But she did hope that when married, she might reside elsewhere.
"There goes that Mrs. Tomlinson," said her mother. "Last night at the Bazaar—what do you suppose? She asked me to dinner. She actually did! The woman must be mad."
Margaret made no reply. Park Avenue was very bright. To her also for the moment the scientific savagery of the Huns was remote. The brightness of the April day was about her.
"I am in rags," continued Mrs. Austen, who was admirably dressed. "On Monday I must really look in on Marguerite. She is an utter liar, but then you feel so safe with her. Where is it that your young man lives? Somebody said that lies whiten the teeth. It must be there, isn't it? Or is it here? These places all look alike, none of them seems to have any numbers and that makes it so convenient."
They had reached a chalk cliff, on the face of which were windows, balconies and, at the base, two low steps. On the upper step, in large black letters, was the cliff's name.
Through glasses, which she did not need, Mrs. Austen surveyed it. "The Sandringham! Why not The Throne?"
Margaret went on and up. Mrs. Austen followed. At once they were in a large, marble-flagged hall. Beyond, from a lift, a boy in green and gilt, peered greedily. At the left was a door with a brass plate that said: "Dr. Winship." Opposite was another door with another plate on which was "Lennox."
That, also, Mrs. Austen surveyed. "I did not know your young man was an earl, but perhaps he is merely a duke. Shall we send that boy or do we ring? In bachelor quarters one hardly knows what to do—or what goes on in them either," she immediately and suggestively added.
The door at the right had opened. Cassy was coming out. The flush was still on her face and in her hand was the money. Mechanically she thumbed it. She had looked down at the roll of bills and through them at the butcher, the baker, the candlestickmaker. She looked up and saw Margaret whose photograph she had seen a moment before. Instantly she recognised her. Instantly she realised that it was for her the violets and the sack of bonbons were waiting. As quickly she understood why the teapot had shouted: "Be off!"
From Margaret she glanced at Mrs. Austen, who was well worth it. In and about her eyes and mouth there was an expression of such lofty aloofness, an air of such aristocratic disdain, that though she stood without motion, movement, or gesture; though, too, there was no draught, the skirt of her admirable frock seemed to lift and avert itself. It was the triumph of civilised life. Yet that triumph she contrived to heighten. Raising the glasses which she did not need, she levelled them at Cassy.
Cassy, who had but glanced at her, arrested the glance and, for a second, held it on her, but with an unconcern so obliterating that it had the effect of blotting-paper. Mrs. Austen felt herself disappearing. It was as though Cassy had looked at her and had seen nothing whatever.
And that to Mrs. Austen! The lady squirmed but she rallied, the more readily perhaps since now Cassy had gone, and she said and pleasantly enough: "What a charming vestal! Such an engaging manner! Seemed, too, so at home! Let me see? It was she, was it not, who was singing last night? Rather a coincidence, don't you think?"
Margaret made no reply. The incident, though long in the telling, had barely outlasted a moment, and crossing the hall, she was approaching Lennox' door.
Without haste, Mrs. Austen circumvented her. "Not to-day, my dear. As it is, it is fortunate we came on foot. Otherwise, it would have been awkward and that is always so distressing. Another day."
Quietly, easily she had got herself in front of Margaret who, without shoving, could not reach the bell.
With candid eyes she looked at her mother. "You seem to be suggesting——"
"Perish the thought!" Mrs. Austen sweetly and quickly cut in. "I would not even suggest that one and two make three, for perhaps they don't. No, my dear, I suggest nothing. I merely insist. To-day we must postpone our little visit and to-night, when he comes, you can have it out with him. A lover's quarrel! What more could you wish? But here now is the lift-boy. We must dissemble. It's quite like a play.
"No," she interrupted herself to remark at the approaching, greedy and enquiring youth, "I want nothing whatever except not to be engaged in conversation."
"Whachyer mean?" asked the boy, who, however, promptly blighted by her level stare, omitted to pursue it.
She turned again to Margaret. "We will find a taxi at the corner. These first spring days are so enervating."
Margaret faced her. "I am going in."
The sight of Cassy issuing from Lennox' rooms had surprised her, as the unexpected will surprise. But in saying that she was going in, it was not at all for explanations. Explanations are for strangers. Love understands—or should understand, and Margaret divined that Cassy had come on some errand from her father, of whose waylaying and rescue Lennox had long since told her.
"Will you please move a little?" she added.
Mrs. Austen, after routing the boy, had lowered her glasses. She raised them again. "Look there!"
At the entrance were two women with a child between them. On the stair was a man. The door marked "Dr. Winship" had opened. The wide hall was suddenly full of people.
Mrs. Austen lowered her lorgnette. "Don't make a scene, my dear. At least, don't make one over my dead body."
Resistance was easy, but to what end? Margaret felt that she could persist, insist, ring and go in, but now only to be accompanied by her mother's mocking and stilted sneers. The consciousness of that subtracted the brightness from the day, the pleasure from the visit. Then, too, that evening he would come. Then they would be alone.
She turned. A moment more and both were in the street, where Mrs. Austen forgot about the taxi. Other matters occupied the good woman and occupied her very agreeably. She had been playing a game, and a rare game it is, with destiny. The stakes were extravagant, but her cards were poor. Then abruptly, in one of the prodigious shuffles that fate contrives, a hand, issuing from nowhere, had dealt her a flush. She purred at it, at the avenue, at the world, at her daughter.
"I am so glad we are not going anywhere to-night." A car flew by, a gloved hand waved and the purr continued. "Wasn't that Sarah Amsterdam? By the way, what did the medium tell you? Anything about a dark man crossing your path? If not, it was very careless of her. But what was I talking about? Oh, yes, I am so glad we are to be at home. You can have a nice, quiet evening with your young man. Only, do you know, I wouldn't say anything about that little vestal. He might not like it. Men are so queer. They hate to be misunderstood and to be understood makes them furious. No, I wouldn't mention it. But now isn't he as full of surprises as a grab-bag? I thought him a model of the most perfect propriety, and that only shows how wrong it is to judge by appearances. Model young men always remind me of floor-walkers. Who was that that just bowed? Dear me, so it was, and he looked so down in the mouth he might have been a dentist. On Monday I really must go to my dentist. He does hurt terribly and that is so reassuring. You feel that you are getting your money's worth. Don't your teeth need attending to? Ah, here we are at last! God bless our home!"
Entering the hall, she looked at a little room to the right in which the manager awed prospecting tenants. Usually it was empty. It was empty then. Mrs. Austen looked, passed on and, preceding Margaret, entered a lift that floated them to the home on which she had asked a blessing.
The Italians have a proverb about waiting for some one who does not come. They call it deadly. Among the lapping shadows Lennox felt the force of it. But concluding that visitors had detained his guests, he dressed and went around a corner or two to the Athenæum Club where usually he dined.
In the main room which gives on Fifth Avenue, he found Ten Eyck Jones talking war. Jones was a novelist, but he did not look like one. There was nothing commercial in his appearance, which was that of a man half-asleep, except when he talked and then he seemed very much awake. He was not fat and though an inkbeast, he dressed after the manner of those who put themselves in the best hands and then forget all about it. But for Lennox he had a superior quality, he was a friend. With him was Harry Cantillon, who, the night before, had danced away with Kate Schermerhorn. Straddling an arm of Cantillon's chair was Fred Ogston, a young man of a type that, even before the war, was vanishing and which was known as about town. Adjacently sat Peter Verelst. Servants brought little decanters and removed others. In a corner an old man glared with envious venom at the liquors of which he had consumed too many and of which, at the price of his eyesight, he could consume no more.
Jones waved at Lennox. "I have been telling these chaps that before they are much older they will be in khaki."
"Houp!" cried Cantillon. He sprang up, ran to the arched entrance, where, lightly, without effort, he turned a somersault and was gone.
The old man in the corner raised himself, shuffled to a table, sat down and wrote to the house committee. Such conduct could not be tolerated! Having said it, he raised himself again and shuffled over with the letter to Dunwoodie, a lawyer with the battered face of a bulldog and a ruffian's rumpled clothes.
Dunwoodie, instead of taking the letter, gave the old man a look, one look, his famous look, the look with which—it was said—he reversed the Bench. Angrily the old man turned tail, collided with Paliser, apologised furiously, damning him beneath his breath, damning Dunwoodie, damning the house committee, damning the club.
"Are you to dine here?" Jones asked Ogston, who swore gently, declaring that, worse luck, he was due at his aunt's.
"But you are," Jones told Lennox. "Come on and I'll make your hair stand on end." He turned: "And yours, too."
Peter Verelst smoothed the back of his head. "Thank you, Ten Eyck. But such hair as I have I prefer should remain as it is."
The two men went on and up into another room, spacious, high-ceiled, set with tables, where a captain got them seated, took their orders, carefully transmitted them to a careful waiter, an omnibus meanwhile producing ice-water which Jones had promptly removed.
He smiled at Lennox. "Who was the jeunesse you and Paliser were talking to last night? She had been singing."
Lennox unfolded a napkin. "I thought you were to make my hair stand on end."
"Well," said the novelist, who spoke better than he knew, "she may make Paliser's. There's a young man with plenty of perspective. I saw him in London just before the deluge. He was then en route for the Marquesas. I envied him that. I envied him the vanilla-scented nights; the skies, a solid crust of stars, and also, and particularly, the tattooed ghosts. But I am forgetting your hair. Were you ever in Berlin?"
Lennox scowled. "Yes. Once."
"And once is too often. The last time I was there, I looked down the Wilhelmstrasse and it got up and threatened me. Barring the possibilities of future avatars, I shall not promenade there again. But I would give a red pippin, I would give two of them, to have been in Potsdam on that night, that cloudless night, the night in July, when in a room, gorgeous as only vulgarity could made it, there was sounded the crack of doom."
Jones gestured and a waiter hurried to him. He motioned him away.
"You can picture it, Lennox, or, if not, who am I to refuse my aid? At the doors were lackeys; at the gates were guards. Without and beyond, to the four points of the compass, an unsuspecting world slept, toiled, feasted, fasted, occupied with its soap-bubble hates and loves. But, in that room, saurians, with titles as long as your arm, were contriving a cataclysm that was to exceed the deluge. Since then, and though it be but through the headlines, you and I stand witness to events that no mortal ever saw before. That night, in that room they were concocted. By comparison, what are the mythical exploits of Homer's warriors, the fabulous achievements of Charlemagne's paladins, the fading memories of Napoleon's campaigns? What are they all by comparison to a world in flames? Hugo, with his usual sobriety, said that Napoleon inconvenienced God. Napoleon wanted Europe. These gunmen want the earth. They won't get it. Hell is their portion. But, while they were planning the crib-cracking, I would give a red pippin to have been in their joint that night. A little more trout?"
Jones turned to the waiter. "Take it away and fetch the roast."
He was about to give other orders, yet these Lennox interrupted.
"But look here. You spoke of an unsuspecting world. The Kaiser had been rattling the sabre for years. Everybody knew that."
"So he had," said Jones, who contradicted no one. "But England did not take him seriously, nor did this country either. Consequently, when the war began it was regarded as but another robber-raid which shortly would be over. That was an idea that everybody shared, even to the Kaiser, who afterward said that he had not wanted this war. Incredible as it may seem he spoke the truth. He did not want a war in which he would be tripped on the Marne, blocked on the Yser and foiled at Verdun. He wanted a war in which France would be felled, Russia rolled back, a war in which, over Serbia's ravaged corpse, his legions could pour down across the Turkish carpet into the realm where Sardanapalus throned, beyond to that of Haroun-al-Raschid, on from thence to Ormus and the Ind, and, with the resulting thralls and treasure, overwhelm England, gut the United States, destroy civilisation and, on the ruins, set Deutschland über Alles!"
"Hear! Hear!" said Lennox from between bites.
Jones, after a momentary interlude with a fork, got back at it. "That is what he wanted! But to get it, he lacked one thing, one thing only. He had everything else, he had everything that forethought, ingenuity and science could provide. The arsenals were stocked. The granaries were packed, the war-chests replete. Grey-green uniforms were piled endlessly in heaps. Kiel—previously stolen from Denmark, but then reconstructed and raised to the war degree—at last was open. The navy was ready. The army was ready. Against any possible combination of European forces, the oiled machine was prepared. In addition, clairvoyance had supplied the pretext and stupidity the chance. Petersburg was then in the throes of a general strike—which the Wilhelmstrasse had engineered. In Paris, the slipshod condition of the army had been publicly denounced. England and Ireland were nearly at each other's throats. Yet, had they been in each other's arms, the Kaiser was convinced that England would not interfere. Moreover in France, mobilisation required weeks; in Russia, months; and even then the Russian army, otherwise unequipped, the Tsarina had supplied with two hundred Teuton generals. That woman used to exclaim at her resemblance to Marie Antoinette. She flattered herself. It is Bazaine whom she resembled. But where was I? Oh, yes. The opportunity was so obvious and everything so neatly prepared that, for good measure, the pretext was added. An archduke, sinister when living and still more sinister dead, was, by the Kaiser's orders, bombed to bits and the bombing fastened on Serbia. Allied stupidity provided the opportunity, imperial forethought supplied the rest. Since highwayry began, never was there such a chance. On the last gaiter was the last button. The Kaiser lacked but one thing."
Lennox shoved at his plate. "So you have said."
Jones, abandoning his fork, repeated it. "One thing! In Potsdam, on that cloudless July night, when the world, on which he proposed to batten, slept, toiled, feasted, fasted, occupied with its futile loves and hates, that thing must have occurred to him."
"Yes, but confound it, what was it?"
Jones lit a cigar. "Bernstorff said, or is said to have said—I do not count him among my acquaintances—that on that night this supercanaille showed symptoms of what I think I have seen described as vacillation. That is quite on the cards. It bears out my theory. In any event the fellow had his ambitions. He wanted to descend into the red halls of history disguised. He might have succeeded. History is very careless and to-day barely recalls that at five o'clock on the morning succeeding his marriage to a dowdy fat girl, he treated his regiment to a drill. The fact is uninteresting and would be equally unimportant were it not for the note that it struck. Subsequently, when he leaped on the throne, he shouted that those who opposed him he would smash. "There is no other law than mine"; he later announced—a fine phrase and yet but a modern variant of Domitian's: "Your god and master orders it." Incidentally, in addition to the Garter, an honorific which the Duke of Cambridge admirably summarised as "having, sir, none of the damned nonsense of merit about it," he had other distinctions. He had—and has—uranomania, that is to say, a flight of fancy in which the patient believes himself associated with God. He had also defilirium tremens, which manifested itself in those man[oe]uvres that are war's image and in which the troops defile. Yet, when it came to the real thing, it may be that this paradomaniac lacked the stomach. Apart from the Kruger incident, and one or two other indecencies, his observance of international etiquette was relatively correct. The lackeys of history might therefore have deodorised him. With a sow's ear a lot may be done. Have a cigar?"
Lennox laughed. "I would prefer the point."
"Now, how greedy you are. Well then, here it is. On that fatidic night in July, this fellow was fifty-five."
"What of it?"
"Everything. At his age Alexander had been dead twenty years."
As Jones spoke he raised his hands. "Spirit of the Great Sinner, forgive me! This scrofulous dwarf has no kinship with thee!"
"No," Jones, dropping his hands, resumed. "None. His kin are Herod, Caracalla, Attila, Genghis Khan, and Cloacus, Lord of Sewers. Those are his kin. To the shade of the Lampsacene, whom the world had forgotten; to that of Cloacus, whom civilisation had ignored, subsequently he devoted the army. For the troops he invoked them. But that night the ghosts of the others gave him pause. At his age, Caracalla, Attila, Genghis, were dead. They had died hideous, monstrous—but young. Herod alone may have seemed a promising saint to swear by, though, in the obscurities of Syrian chronology, even of him he could not be sure. The one kindred hyena who, at fifty-five, had defied the world was Tsi An, the Chinese Empress, and he had helped to squelch her. Do you see it now? To burglarise the world, this thug had every advantage. The police were asleep. The coast was clear. The jimmies and the dynamite sticks were ready. Even the dark lantern was packed. The kit was complete. He had everything. He lacked nothing, except the one essential—Youth! The eyes of youth are clear. His were too dimmed to foresee that the allies——"
Lennox was rising.
Amiably Jones switched on and off again. "Hold on a minute. You have not given me the "Who's Who" of that young woman."
In Lennox' brain, instantly cells latent, alert, and of which he was entirely unconscious, functioned actively. Before him Cassy stood. Beside her was another. This other, very lovely, was a saint. Yet, prompted still by the cells and equally unaware of it, it occurred to him that a lovely saint may resemble a vase that is exquisite, but unresilient and perhaps even empty. Whereas a siren, like Cassy——
Abruptly he caught himself up. The unawaited disloyalty into which he had floundered, surprised and annoyed him. He could not account for the delicate infidelity and perplexedly he looked at Jones who still was at it.
"The diva I mean. The diva in duodecimo who sang at the Bazaar."
Lennox shook himself and sat down again. Modestly then the thrice-told tale was repeated—Angelo Cara, a violin in one hand, a sword-cane in the other, trudging home. The attack, the rout, the rescue, the acquaintance with Cassy that ensued.
Jones, absorbing the story, pigeonholed his memory with the details which, sometime, for copy purposes, might be of use.
"They are Portuguese," Lennox, rising again, concluded.
Jones peered about. The great room was filled with members, eating, drinking, laughing, talking—talking mainly of nothing whatever. He motioned. "Isn't that Cantillon over there with—of all people!—Dunwoodie?"
Lennox looked and nodded. "Cantillon is in Dunwoodie's office. He asked me to give him my law business." Indifferently, with the air of one considering the improbable, Lennox added: "Some day I may. Good-night."
But in the night into which he then went, already that day was breaking.
That same evening, as Lennox was leaving the club, Mrs. Austen, rising from the dinner-table, preceded Margaret into the drawing-room and looked at the clock, a prostrate nymph, balancing a dial on the soles of her feet. At the figures on the dial, the nymph pointed a finger.
From the clock Mrs. Austen turned and exclaimed at the windows which she had already examined. "The jardinières have not yet been attended to! It is inconceivable!"
Margaret, who had seated herself, said: "You might send for the manager."
"He would only keep me waiting and then expect me to tell him what I wanted. He ought to know. Besides, I might have forgotten. It is very tiresome."
Margaret stood up. "I will tell him."
With a click, Mrs. Austen unfurled a fan and, with another click, refurled it. "No. I will see him myself. I am quite in the humour."
Margaret looked after her mother, who was leaving the room. The sudden tempest in a flowerpot surprised her. But the outer door closed. Margaret reseated herself. Presently he would come and together they would make those plans that lovers make—and then unmake, unless, elsewhere, they have been made for them.
Meanwhile she waited. The incident at the Sandringham, the sight of Cassy, her mother's facile insinuations, these things had distressed her, because, and only because, they had prevented her from enjoying the innocent pleasure of the innocent visit to the rooms of her betrothed, whom she loved with a love that was too pure and too profound, to harbour doubt and suspicion and that evil child of theirs which jealousy is. Her faith was perfect. That faith showed in her face and heightened her beauty with a candour that should have disarmed her mother, who, in the hall below, was, at that moment, instructing a man and not about flower-boxes either.
"Mr. Lennox, you may know him, by sight I mean, will be coming here shortly. Please have him shown into that room there."
Mrs. Austen passed on. The little room at which she had glanced that afternoon received her—a hospitality in which a mirror joined. The latter welcomed her with a glimpse of herself. It was like meeting an old friend. But no; a friend certainly, yet not an old one. Age had not touched this lady, not impudently at least, though where it may have had the impertinence to lay a finger, art had applied another, a moving finger that had written a parody of youth on her face which was then turning to some one behind her whom the mirror disclosed.
In turning, she smiled.
"It is so good of you, Mr. Lennox, to look in on me. The door-man told you about Margaret, did he not? No? How careless of him. The dear child has a headache and has gone to bed."
"Has she?" said Lennox. He found but that. But at least he understood why Margaret had not come to his rooms. The headache had prevented her.
"It is nothing." Mrs. Austen was telling him. "To-morrow she will be herself again. Nice weather we are having."
"Very," Lennox answered.
As he would have said the same thing if Mrs. Austen had declared that the weather was beastly, the reply did not matter. It did not matter to her; it did not matter to him. She was thinking of something else and he was also. He was thinking of Margaret, wondering whether he might not go to her. Were it not for the strait-jacket that conventionality is and which pinions the sturdiest, he would have gone. He was a little afraid of Mrs. Austen, as an intelligent man sometimes is afraid of an imbecile woman. But his fear of her fainted beside the idea that if, disregarding the bagatelles of the door, he made his way to Margaret, she herself might not like it. That alone restrained him. Afterward he wished he had let nothing prevent him. Afterward he regretted it. It is the misery of life—and sometimes its reward—that regret should be futile.
But, at the moment, grim and virile, a hat in one hand, a stick in the other, his white tie just showing between the lapels of his overcoat, already he was consoling himself. He had not seen Margaret in the afternoon, and he was not to see her this evening. No matter. The morrow would repay—that morrow which is falser than the former day.
Pleasantly at him and at his thoughts, Mrs. Austen played the flute. "Won't you sit down?" In speaking, she sank on a sofa which she occupied amply.
Lennox, shifting his stick, took a chair. Later, in one of those evil moods that come to the best, as well as to the worst, he wished he had brained her with it.
With the magic flute, Mrs. Austen continued: "To-morrow is Sunday, is it not? You must be sure to come. Dear me! I can remember when everybody went to church on Sunday and then walked up and down Fifth Avenue. Fifth Avenue had trees then instead of shops and on the trees were such funny little worms. They used to hang down and crawl on you. The houses, too, were so nice. They all had piazzas and on the piazzas were honeysuckles. But I fear I am boasting. I don't really remember all that. It was my father who told me. Those must have been the good old days!"
Lennox again shifted his stick. "To-day I had hoped that you would look in on me."
The flute caressed the strain. "Yes. It was too bad! We had quite counted on it. Bachelor quarters must be so exciting."
"Well, not mine at any rate. They are rather dark."
"But that must make them all the more exciting! Blindman's buff! Hide and go seek! What fun you must have with your friends romping about!"
"My friends are too busy for that. Though to-day——"
"Yes?"
Lennox hesitated. He knew that this woman took no interest in him whatever, but he had intended to tell Margaret about Cassy.
Pleasantly Mrs. Austen prodded him. "Yes?"
"Nothing of any moment. This afternoon, Miss Cara, the girl who sang last night, came to see me. You may remember I told you I knew her father."
"It seems to me I do."
"Things have not gone well there and I advanced her a trifle for him."
Mrs. Austen unfurled her fan. It was all Honest Injun. She had not a doubt of it and never had. But if she had thought it a Sioux and Comanche story, it would have been the same to her.
"I am sorry you did not meet her," Lennox continued. "You might have lent her a hand."
"Professionally, you mean?"
"Yes."
"I might have her sing here," replied Mrs. Austen, who would have seen Cassy hanged first.
Lennox considered the picture: Mrs. Austen in the rôle of shepherdess, herding for Cassy's benefit the flock of sheep that society is. But the picture did not detain him. He stood up.
"That would be very good of you. Please tell Margaret I am sorry she has a headache and that I will look in on her to-morrow."
No you won't, thought Mrs. Austen, who said: "Yes, do."
In a moment, when he had gone, she looked again in the mirror. It showed her a woman who would not steal, unless she could do so undetectably; a woman who would not forge, because she did not know how. Crimes ridiculous or merely terrific she was too shrewd to commit. But there are crimes that the law cannot reach. There are cards, too, that fate may deal.
After looking at the woman, she looked at the cards. They were dreamlike. Even so, they needed stacking. Mrs. Austen arranged them carefully, ran them up her sleeve and floated to the room where Margaret waited.
As she entered, Margaret turned to her. Her face had that disquieting loveliness which Spanish art gave to the Madonna, the loveliness of flesh eclipsed certainly by the loveliness of the soul, but still flesh, still lovely.
At sight of it Mrs. Austen experienced the admiration tinctured with the vitriol of jealousy that some mothers inject. Mrs. Austen had been a belle in the nights when there were belles but her belledom, this girl, who was not a belle, outshone. Yet the glow of it while necessarily physical had in it that which was moral. Unfortunately the radiance of moral beauty only those who are morally beautiful can perceive. Mrs. Austen was blind to it. It was her daughter's physical beauty that she always saw and which, though she was jealous of it, had, she knew, a value, precisely as beauty had a value in Circassia where, before the war, it fetched as much as a hundred Turkish pounds. In New York, where amateurs are keener and beauty is more rare, it may run into millions.
Commercially conscious of that, Mrs. Austen felt for the cards and carelessly produced one.
"Do you know, I believe we are to have a shower. Your young man got off just in time."
Margaret, who had glanced at the prostrate nymph, looked at her upright mother. "Do you mean that Keith has come—and gone?"
Mrs. Austen sat down and extracted another card. "My dear, when I went below he was coming in. We——"
Margaret, with her usual directness, interrupted. "But he is coming back?"
"That depends on you."
"On me? How? What do you mean?"
"That you must do as you like, of course. But if you elect to see him, for goodness' sake don't refer to it."
"Refer to it!" Margaret exclaimed. "Refer to what?"
"The vestal whom we saw this afternoon."
"I don't understand."
Indulgently Mrs. Austen motioned. "It is hardly proper that you should."
Margaret winced and coloured. "Your insinuation is horrible."
Cheerfully Mrs. Austen smiled. Margaret's start, her heightened colour, her visible annoyance, these things comforted her. A grandee of Spain warmed his hands at the auto-da-fé. There are people just like him. There are people that take comfort in another's distress. Mrs. Austen did not know that she resembled them. She had nothing but Margaret's welfare in view. Nothing but that and her own. Her own though came first.
She raised the fan. "My dear, you misjudge me. I always said that he is a good young man and I stick to it. He is good, far too good, too good to be true." With that, lowering the fan, she produced a trump. "Downstairs, a moment ago, he told me so."
Margaret gasped. "He told you—he told you——"
"Precisely. That is just what he did tell me."
Margaret straightened. "I don't believe it."
Mrs. Austen waved at her. "Oh, I don't mean that he has deceived you. He has done nothing of the kind. It is you who have deceived yourself. That was to be expected. At your age I deceived myself quite as thoroughly. I thought your father a conquering hero and he was merely a bore. But he pointed a moral, though he adorned no tale. He married to settle down. That is this young man's idea and I must give him credit for the fact that while he has not deceived you, he did deceive me. I thought him a tedious person; whereas, not a bit of it. He is exceedingly lively. If he keeps it up, his wife will be blessed among women. But that is just it. He won't keep it up. He swore he would not and I believe him. He has turned over a new leaf. I can't cry over it, but it is really too bad."
Margaret, who had straightened, stiffened. "If I believed a word of what you tell me, I would forgive him entirely."
Mrs. Austen, unprepared for that, leaned forward. "My dear, I had no idea you were so sensible."
"I would forgive entirely," Margaret continued. "But I would never see him again."
How good that tasted! Mrs. Austen swallowed it contentedly. "Of course you will see him. You are not going blind, I suppose. But when you do see him, it will be only decent of you to ignore the matter which is not a fit subject for you to discuss."
Margaret, who had straightened and stiffened, now was rigid. "I certainly shall ignore it. It is not worth talking about."
Mrs. Austen leaned back. "Ah, my dear, how right you are. He could not tell you that he had loved wisely, it would not be very flattering. He could not say he had loved too well, for that would be embarrassing. What a pretty frock you have on. Did Marguerite make it? Of course he could not. It would not be nice at all. But to me he made a soiled breast of it. Don't you think the skirt a bit too long? Stand up a minute."
Margaret coloured again. She coloured with a flush that put two red spots on her. She did not believe it. She could not and would not. Yet credence, like the wind, bloweth where it listeth.
Mrs. Austen, noting the spots, knew that the card had been well played and leisurely selected another.
"Perhaps it is the way you are sitting. Yes, altogether it is quite ducky. I really must go to Marguerite on Monday. Don't let me forget about it or the dentist either. I shall have my hands full and my mouth also. The proper caper, too, apparently. That little dollymop, whom we saw this afternoon, had her hands full. Did you notice the roll of bills that she was counting? Such an enjoyable occupation! But it won't last. You need not worry on that score. He had been paying her off. He assured me of that and so unnecessarily. Why, I saw the whole thing at a glance. Anybody but you would have seen it too. But you are so theosophically nearsighted. It was for that reason I took you away. Now, though, he is going to begin on a clean slate. Those were his very words, and you, I suppose, are the clean slate. He has such original expressions, hasn't he? But there! I forgot. He did not mean me to tell you. In fact, he begged me not to."
From Margaret's face the flush retreating left it white with that whiteness which dismay creates. A bucket of mud had drenched her. It did more, it dazed her. The idea that the bucket was imaginary, the mud non-existent, that every word she had heard was a lie, did not occur to this girl who, if a Psyche, was not psychic. In her heart was the mud; in her mother's hand was the bucket. But the mire itself, he had put there. The evidence of her own eyes she might have questioned. But he had admitted it and the fact that he had induced in her the purely animal feeling to get away, to be alone and to suffer unseen.
She left the room, went to her own, closed the door and at a prie-Dieu fell on her knees, not to pray—she knew that the Lords of Karma are not to be propitiated or coerced—but in humiliation.
In humiliation there may be self-pity and that is always degrading. With uncertain hands she tried to transform that pity into sorrow, not for herself, but for him. The burnt offering seared her. In the secret chambers of her being her young soul tripped and fell. For support she clutched at her creed. Ordinarily it would have sustained her. Ordinarily it would have told her that her suffering was the penalty for suffering which she had caused, a penalty that the gods of the doors that close behind our birth were measuring to her. Ordinarily she would have realised that in some anterior, enigmatic and forgotten life, she, too, had debased herself and that this cross was the punishment for that debasement. Ordinarily the creed would have sustained her. But as she clutched at it, it receded. Only the cross remained and that was too heavy.
In the drawing-room an indifferent nymph pointed a finger at hours, all of which wound and of which the last one kills.
In that room Mrs. Austen was writing a note. Addressed to Montagu Paliser, jr., esqre., it asked him to dinner.
In the subway, the following evening, Cassy saw a man eyeing her. She turned and saw another man who also was eyeing her. On the seat opposite two women were discussing her clothes.
The clothes, her own manufacture, were not of the fashion, not behind it, or ahead of it, but above it. A mode, or a mood of her own, they consisted in a blue silk smock and a yellow cloth skirt. On the sleeves and about the neck of the smock there was also yellow, touches of it, with which the skirt married. Therewith she was hatless, rebellious and handsome.
Accustomed to the inquisitiveness of appraising eyes, she ignored the women as, already, she had ignored the men. With obliterating unconcern, she reduced them to the fluidity of the inchoate. Other matters occupied her, and, primarily, a trick, an extremely shabby one, from which she had not yet recovered.
The day before, after paying the butcher, the baker, and the punctual and pertinacious agent, she had scaled the walk-up where she found her father with the violin, on which, an hour earlier, Lennox had loaned her the money.
The spectacle flabbergasted her. Then, realising what Lennox had done, his iniquity struck her as hateful. At once, in an effort to account, however imaginatively, for the apparent sorcery of it all, she tried to invent a fairy-tale. But the tale would not come. Nor was it needed. Her father dispensed with any. Impatient of detail, as the artist usually is, he required none. The extraordinary perspicacity of the police who had nailed and returned the violin instanter, this wizardry that would have thrown any one else into stupors of bewilderment, interested him not at all. He had the violin. That sufficed. The rest did not matter.
It mattered though and monumentally to Cassy. To owe the butcher, the baker, the candlestickmaker, and to have them look slantingly at you, that was disgusting. But to be beholden for a gift, which you had refused to accept, and which then, behind your back, was dumped in on you, that was degrading. Consequently, while conjecturing new versions of Perrault, versions which it relieved her to find were not wanted, she gnashed her milk-white teeth at Lennox, felt that she hated him, yet felt, too, and the feeling was maddening, that the hatred was very tender.
All this was irritating enough and the Tamburini had contrived to add to the irritation. It had been arranged that the fallen star was to come to the walk-up and accompany Cassy to the Splendor. Instead of which, at the last moment, the ex-diva had telephoned that she would join her at the hotel, and Cassy foresaw a tedious sitting about in the lobby, for Ma Tamby was always late. But when have misfortunes come singly? Cassy foresaw, too, that the tedium would not be attenuated by Paliser's conversation.
It was not for that, or for him, that she was then in the subway, but for dinner. Young, healthy and consequently carnal, though not otherwise carnal than hunger can make you, she liked food, on condition that she had not prepared it, and—in particular, and why not?—she liked the savorously truffled menus that walk-ups lack. She had another reason for being in the subway, one that Ma Tamby had lodged, like a flea, in her ear.
But now, near the heart of Manhattan, the train had stopped. Cassy got out, looked at her white gloves, wondered if they smelled of benzine, decided that they did, took them off and went on to the Splendor where Paliser was waiting.
Other people appeared to be similarly occupied. In the high, wide hall were groups of careful men and careless women, the latter very scrumptious in their imported frocks. The sight of these Parisianisms abashed Cassy no more than her appearance abashed Paliser. Etiquette, Formality, the Proper Thing, the great inane gods of the ante-bellum heavens, he had never acknowledged and now, though locally their altars remained and their worship persisted, he knew they were forever dead, blown into the dust-bin of the things that were, tossed there in derision by that atheist, the War.
The careless women looked at Cassy and carefully looked away. The careful men looked at her and carelessly looked again. In the severity of the wide, high hall, the girl with her rebellious beauty and harlequin gown, struck a note which it lacked, struck two of them, the go-and-be-hanged-to-you and originality.
In evening clothes that said Savile Row, Paliser approached. "You are punctual as a comet and equally luminous."
Cassy, ignoring the remark, ignoring, too, the hand that accompanied it, cut him short. "Haven't seen Madame Tamburini, have you?"
Paliser's hair had the effect of a mirror. He smoothed the back of it. The ex-diva he had certainly seen and not later than just before she telephoned to Cassy. But it is injudicious, and also tiresome, to tell everything. With the wave of a cheque, the complicity of the former first-lady had been assured, and assured moreover without a qualm on her part. Ma Tamby did not know what it is to have a qualm—which she could not have spelled if she had known. She was differently and superiorly educated. In the university that life is, she had acquired encyclopedias of recondite learning. She knew that ice is not all that it is cracked up to be: that a finger in the pie is better than two in the fire, and that angels have been observed elsewhere than at Mons—learning which, as you may see, is surprising.
Over the ham and eggs of an earlier evening, the syllables of Paliser's name had awakened echoes of old Academy nights and Mapleson's "grand revivals" of the Trovatore, echoes thin and quavering, yet still repeating hymns in glory of the man's angelic papa. On the way from ham and eggs to Harlem, she had, in consequence, conjured, for Cassy's benefit, with performing fleas. But when, on this afternoon, M. P.jr., had come and waved cheques at her, she had felt that her worst hopes were realised, that her finger was really in the pie, and she had agreed to everything, which, however, for the moment, was nothing at all, merely to abandon Cassy that evening; merely also to collaborate later in the evocation of a myth, and meanwhile to keep at it with the fleas.
Now, in the hall of the Splendor, as Paliser patted the back of his head, he was enjoying Cassy's open-air appearance that needed only a tennis-racket to be complete.
Cassy glanced about. She had a penny or two more than her carfare and yet, if she had owned the shop, she could not have appeared more at ease in this smartest of smart inns, a part of which, destiny, in its capriciousness, was to offer her.
"No," he answered. "But I have a private room somewhere. She can find her way there, unless you prefer palms and an orchestra."
"I do," said Cassy, to whom a room with this man said only boredom and who liked to see what was going on.
Then when, presently, they were seated at a table, to which the chastened captain of the ham-and-egg night had piloted the way, Cassy beheld what she had never beheld before, and what few mortals ever do behold, a cradled bottle of Clos de Vougeot. But to her, the royal crû was very much like the private room. It said nothing. A neighbouring table was more eloquent.
Among the people seated there was an imperial woman with an imperial manner, whom Cassy instantly recognised. She was prima donna, prima donna assoluta, and though Cassy did not know it—nor would it have interested her if she had known—dissoluta also.
To be in her shoes!
In that seven-leagued dream, she forgot Paliser, the delinquent Tamburini, the trick that Lennox had played. In a golden gloom, on a wide stage, to a house packed to the roof, Cassy was bowing. Her final roulade had just floated on and beyond, lost now in cyclonic bravas.
"It was the Duc d'Aumale," Paliser was saying.
"Eh?" Abruptly Cassy awoke.
"Or, if not, some other chap who, recognising it, ordered his regiment to halt and present arms."
"To whom?"
"To the vineyard where the grape in that bottle was grown."
Cassy shook out a napkin. "You talk just like my janitress. I never understand a word she says."
But now a waiter was bringing delicacies other than those obtainable in Harlem; in particular, a dish that had the merit of pleasing Cassy.
"What is it?" she asked.
"Muskrat."
"What!"
"Muskrat with terrapin for a pseudonym. The pseudonym shows imagination. Let us be thankful for that. Gastronomy is bankrupt. Formerly it was worshipped. Formerly gastronomy was a goddess. To-day the sole tributes consist in bills-of-fare that are just like the Sahara minus the oases. It is the oases we want and it is muskrat we get. That is all wrong. The degree of culture that any nation may claim is shown in its cookery and if there is anything viler than what we get here it must be served in Berlin. It must have been Solon who said: 'Tell me what you eat and I will tell you who you are.' He added, or should have, that animals feed, man dines and, when permitted, dines devoutly. There are dishes, as there are wines, to which one should rise and bow. But hereabouts it is only by special dispensation that one gets them. In a hotel such as this there is an outward show of reverence, but it is sheer hypocrisy; of real piety there is none, a sham attempt to observe the sacred rites without knowing how. I admit I don't know either. From me the divine afflatus has been withheld. But elsewhere I have been conscious of the presence. Once or twice I was blessed. Here, though, in default of shrines there should be chairs. Harvard, Yale, Columbia, should establish a few. When I was in college I was taught everything that it is easiest to forget. If the youth of the land were instructed in gastronomy we would all be wiser and better. Chairs on gastronomy, that is what we need!"
Cassy laughed. "Why not tables?"
Paliser laughed with her. The laughter was a bond. It joined them however tenuously. It was what he had been driving at. Accustomed to easy successes, Cassy's atmosphere, with its flavour of standoffishness and indifference, appealed to this man, who had supped on the facile and who wanted the difficult. Cassy, he could have sworn, would supply it and, if he had, he would have sworn very truly.
Meanwhile the muskrat had gone. Dishes less false but equally fair had followed. Now, with the air of a conjurer, the waiter just showed them an entremets which he hastened to serve. It was a soufflée.
At it, Cassy, just showing the point of her strawberry tongue, exclaimed without rancour: "Ma Tamby has thrown us over."
Paliser lit a cigarette. "She may be singing in the private room."
Cassy laughed again. "Yes. 'Una voce poco fa!' That would be just the thing—wouldn't it?—to sing privately in private."
Paliser answered, though what, she did not hear. The orchestra drowned it and for a moment she considered him, conscious that he was less objectionable than he had seemed, yet entirely unconscious that such objection as she had experienced was due to his extreme good-looks, which in a man are always objectionable to a woman when she herself is handsome, for they make him resemble her and, in so doing, constitute an encroachment on her prerogatives, which, in itself, is an affront.
Cassy, ignorant of the psychology of it, equally unaware that familiarity which may breed contempt can also dissolve dislike, and feeling merely a lessening of her instinctive hostility, told herself that he was perhaps not as cocky as he looked and drank of the glass before her.
The Clos de Vougeot which, to the educated palate, is art, literature and song combined, meant nothing more to her than if it had been Médoc. She drank it because it was there at her hand, as she would have drunk water, without savouring it, without any realisation of the enormity of the crime. Yet though it meant nothing, nothing at least of which she was aware, the royal crû was affecting her. It modified and mollified, admonishing her that this man was an inoffensive insect who, circumstances favouring, might, as Ma Tamby when inserting the flea had told her, put her father on his feet.
In just what the favouring circumstances could consist, the fallen star had not bothered to indicate, and she had not bothered because they were too obvious and also because she was sure that Cassy was not insane.
Paliser abandoned his cigarette. "If you like, we might look in at the Metropolitan. I believe I have a box."
Apart from down-stage and the centre of it, apart, too, from the flys and the dressing-rooms, Cassy's imagination had not as yet conceived anything more beckoning than a box at the opera, even though, as on this occasion, the opera happened to be a concert. "Why, yes. Only——" Pausing, she looked about. The imperial lady had gone.
"Only what?" Paliser very needlessly asked for he knew.
"I fear I am a bit overdressed."
"Not for Sunday. The house will be full and nobody in it. Besides, what do you care?"
Cassy shrugged. "Personally, not a rap. It was of you I was thinking."
Paliser, who had been signing the check and feeing the waiter, looked at her. "I did not know that you were so considerate."
Cassy, in surprise not at him, but at herself, laughed. "Nor did I."
Paliser stood up and drew back her chair. "Be careful. You might become cynical. It is in thinking of others that cynicism begins."
The platitude slipped from him absently. He had no wish for the concert, no wish to hear Berlinese trulls and bubonic bassi bleat. But, for the tolerably delicate enterprise that he had in hand, there were the preliminary steps which could only be hastened slowly and anything slower than the Metropolitan on a Sunday night, it was beyond him to conjecture.
But though on that evening a basso did bleat, it may be that he was not bubonic. Moreover he was followed by a soprano who, whether trullish or not, at any rate was not Berlinese and whose voice had the lusciousness of a Hawaiian pineapple. But the selections, which were derived from old Italian cupboards, displeased Paliser, who called them painted mush.
But not twice! Cassy turned her back on him. The painted mush shook stars in her ears, opened vistas on the beyond. Save for him she would have been quite happy. But his remark annoyed her. It caused her to revise her opinion. Instead of an inoffensive insect he was an offensive fool. None the less, as the concert progressed, she revised it again. On entering the box she had seen his name on the door. The memory of that, filtering through the tinted polenta from the ancient cupboards, softened her. A man so gifted could express all the imbecilities he liked. Elle s'enfichait.
As a result, before it was over, in lieu of her back, she gave him the seduction of her smile, and, later when, in his car, on the way to the walk-up, he spoke of future dinners, fresher songs, she had so far forgotten the painted mush insult, that momentarily she foresaw but one objection. She had nothing to wear and frankly, with entire unconcern, she out with it.
For that he had a solution which he kept to himself. The promptly obliterating stare with which she would have reduced him to non-existence, he dodged in advance.
Apparently changing the subject, he said: "You know—or know of—Mrs. Beamish, don't you?"
"Never heard of her," said Cassy, entirely unaware that no one else ever had either.
"She was at the Bazaar the other night and admired your singing."
"Very good of her I am sure," replied Cassy, who, a born anarchist and by the same token a born autocrat, loathed condescension.
Paliser corrected it. "No, not good—appreciative. She wants you to sing at her house. If you are willing, could she arrange about it through Madame Tamburini?"
"If she tried very hard, I suppose she might," Cassy, with the same loftiness, answered.
But the loftiness was as unreal as Mrs. Beamish. Inwardly she jubilated, wondering how much she would get. A hundred? In that case she could repay Lennox at once. At the thought of it, again she revised her opinion. Paliser was young and in her judgment all young men were insects. On the other hand he was serviceable. Moreover, though he looked cocky, he did not presume. He talked rot, but he did not argue. Then, too, his car was a relief.
But now the car, after bolting through the Park and flying along the Riverside, had swerved. It was mounting the upper reaches of the longest highway on the planet. There it swerved again. From Broadway it barked loudly into a side-street where easily, with a soapy slide, it stopped.
Paliser got out, preceded Cassy to the steps of the walk-up and smiled in her face. "When?"
Cassy, the revised opinion of him about her, gave him her hand. "Ask the telephone."
The hall took her. She was scaling the stairs. On the way Mrs. Beamish accompanied her. She wished she could tell her father. Yet, if she told him, how could she account for what she did with the money? And would it be a hundred? Perhaps fifty, perhaps less.
But Paliser saw to it that Mrs. Beamish behaved properly. On the morrow Ma Tamby dumped in Cassy's astonished lap two hundred and fifty—less ten per cent., business is business—for samples of the bel canto which Mrs. Beamish was not to hear, and for an excellent reason, there was no such person.
Mrs. Austen looked at Lennox, who had been looking at her, but who was then looking at the rug, in the border of which were arabesques. He did not see them. The rug was not there. The room itself had disappeared. The nymph, the dial, the furniture, the decorations and costly futilities with which the room was cluttered, all these had gone. Mrs. Austen had ceased to be. In that pleasant room, in the presence of this agreeable woman, Lennox was absolutely alone, as, in any great crisis of the emotions, we all are.
Of one thing he was conscious. He was suffering atrociously. Pain blanketed him. But though the blanket had the poignancy of thin knives, he kept telling himself that it was all unreal.
He raised his eyes. During the second in which they had been lowered, a second that had been an eternity in hell, his expression had not altered. He was taking it, apparently at least, unmoved.
Mrs. Austen, who was looking at him, saw it and thought: He is a gentleman. The reflection encouraged her and she sighed and said: "Believe me, I am sorry."
Lennox did not believe her, but he let it go. What he did believe was that Margaret could not see him. But whether she would, if she could, was another matter. On Saturday he had expected her at his rooms. She had not come. In the evening he had called. She had a headache. On the following day he had returned. She was not feeling well. Now on this third day, Mrs. Austen, who on the two previous occasions had received him, once more so far condescended, yet on this occasion to tell him that he was free, that it was Margaret's wish, that the engagement was ended.
In so telling him, Mrs. Austen told, for a wonder, the truth, though as will sometimes happen even to the best of us, not all the truth. It were extravagant to have expected it of her. But she told all that she thought good for him; more exactly good for Margaret; more precisely for herself.
It was then that the pleasant room with its clutter of costly futilities disappeared and this agreeable woman ceased to be. The avalanche of the modulated announcement sent Lennox reeling not merely out of the room, but out of the world, deeply into hell.
It was then, too, that with a sigh, modulated also, Mrs. Austen had added: "Believe me, I am sorry."
Lennox looked at her. "You say that Margaret wants our engagement broken. Why?"
"She has changed her mind."
"So I infer. But why?"
"Because she is a woman."
"But not the ordinary woman. It is the ordinary woman who changes her mind—when she has one to change. Margaret is not of that kind. Margaret is not the kind to promise herself to a man and then throw him over. You will forgive me if I speak heatedly, but I do not believe it."
With frosty indulgence Mrs. Austen reassured him. "You do not believe that I will forgive you? But, really, there is nothing to forgive. Though, whether Margaret is ordinary or superior, has nothing to do with it. Dear me, no. Women are not what they were. One often hears that and often, too, one hears people wondering why. That always amuses me. The reason is so simple, isn't it? Women are not what they were because they used to be girls. Before that they were children. At one time they were babes. Naturally they change. They can't help it. It must be a general law. Or at least one may suppose so. One may suppose, too, that, in changing, they develop and in developing acquire the extraordinary ability to think things over. That is just what Margaret had done. It is no reflection on you, Mr. Lennox, and I should be very sorry if you thought so. I am sure Margaret has the highest esteem for you. I know that I have."
Mrs. Austen, smiling frostily as she lied, thought: Now why doesn't he take it and go? I hope he won't be tedious.
Lennox too had his thoughts. She is trying to swamp me in words, he told himself. That angered him and he showed it.
"What are these things? When I last saw Margaret she said nothing about any things. There was no change in her then. I would stake my life that she had no idea of breaking our engagement. There must be a reason for it. What is it?"
Arrogantly Mrs. Austen took it up. "There is no reason for your raising your voice, at any rate. As for the things, they ought to be obvious. In addition to habits and customs, very suitable in Wall Street no doubt, but not otherwise appealing, Margaret has found you a bit rough, high-tempered, domineering for all I know to the contrary, and——"
That's a damned lie, thought Lennox, who aggressively cut in: "Margaret never found me anything of the kind. What is more I will thank you to understand that I will not accept this dismissal—if it be one—from you."
There is a show of decency that is due to any woman. But the veneer of civilisation is very thin. From beneath it, the potential troglodyte, that lurks in us all, is ready enough to erupt. Ready and eager then, he was visible in Lennox' menacing eyes, manifest in his threatening voice.
Mrs. Austen saw the brute, saw rather that little, if anything, restrained Lennox from jumping up, banging about, hunting for Margaret's room, entering there and catechising her violently. Margaret was ill but never too ill to tell the truth. Once he learned that, there was the fat in the fire.
She had no time to lose. From the wardrobe of the actress that she was, she snatched at an oleaginous mask and with the mucilage of it smiled at him.
"Why, of course not. Not for a moment would I have you accept it from me. I never dreamed of such a thing. It wouldn't be right. Margaret shall tell you herself. She would be here now, but the poor child had such a wretched night. You never had neuralgia, have you? At her age I was a martyr to it. I remember I took something that ended in 'ine.' Yesterday I suggested it but the doctor would not hear of it. Said she needed building up. Spoke of her just as though she were a town out West; so unsympathetic I thought him, but of course I did not say so. He might have charged extra and he is expensive enough as it is, and always so ready to talk about his own affairs, just like my dentist. I told him once—the dentist I mean—that I really could not afford to pay him thirty dollars an hour to hear about his wife and I don't think he liked it. I know I didn't when I got his bill. But where was I? Oh, yes. To-morrow or the next day, as soon as Margaret is the least bit better, you will be sure to have a line from her and if you do not, and you care to, you must certainly look in. For you must always regard us as friends. Me at any rate. Won't you, Mr. Lennox?"
Moistening her lips, mentally she continued: Yes, count on that. But inwardly she relaxed. Such danger as there may have been had gone. Under the dribble of the mucilage the fire in his eyes had flickered and sunk. He was too glued now for revolt. So she thought, but she did not know him.
During the sticky flow of her words, he knew she was trying to gammon him. But he knew quite as well that Margaret would make no such attempt, and he knew it for no other reason than because he knew she was incapable of it. Incidentally he determined what he would do. Having determined it, he stood up.
"Very good. I shall expect to hear from Margaret to-morrow. If I do not hear I will come, and when I come——"
Lennox paused and compressed his lips. The compression finished the sentence. If come he did, no power of hers, or of any one else, would budge him an inch until he saw Margaret and had it out with her.
"Good-evening," he added and Mrs. Austen found herself looking at his retreating back which, even in retreat, was a menace.
"Merciful fathers!" she exclaimed, and, with that sense of humour which is the saving grace, the dear woman put her hand to her stays. She was feeling for her heart. She had none. Or any appetite, she presently told a servant who came to say that dinner was served.
She misjudged herself. For twenty-five minutes, in an adjoining room, she ate steadily and uncomplainingly. She had bouillon, skate in black butter, cutlets in curl-papers, sweetbread and cockscombs, a cold artichoke, hot almond pudding, an apricot, a bit of roquefort, a pint of claret, a thimble of bénédictine and not a twinge, none of the indigestion of square-dealing, none of gastritis of good faith. She was a well-dressed ambition, intent on her food. No discomfort therefore. On the contrary. Margaret was in bed—safe there. Fate and the cook were kind.
With the taste of the liqueur still in her mouth, she went to her daughter who was ill with one of those maladies which, being primarily psychical, science cannot treat. Science is a classification of human ignorance. It has remedies for the flesh, it has none for the soul. The remedies exist, but they are dispensed only by the great apothecaries that time and philosophy are.
At the moment neither was available. Behind Margaret's forehead a monster crouched and crunched. That was nothing. It was in the tender places of her heart that the girl agonised and by comparison to the torture there, the monster was benign.
Margaret was nineteen, which is a very mature age; perhaps the most mature, since all girlhood lies behind it. Beyond are the pharmacop[oe]ias of time and, fortune favouring, the sofas of philosophy. But these sofas, even when within reach, are not adapted to everybody. To the young, they are detestable. Reposefully they admonish that nothing is important. They whisper patience to the impatient. To hope, they say, "Be still"; to desire, "Be quiet"; to wisdom, "Be foolish."
Conversation of that kind is very irritating, when you have heard it, which Margaret never had. She was otherwise ignorant. She did not know that a sage wrote a book in praise of folly. But she acted as though she knew it by heart. She believed, as many of us do believe, that love confers the right to run a fence around the happy mortals for whom we care. It is a very astounding belief. Margaret, who believed in many wonderful things, believed in that and, being credulous, believed also that her betrothed had crawled under the fence and into what mire! It polluted her, soiled her thoughts, followed and smeared her in the secret chambers of her being. Any cross is heavy. This cross was degrading.
In her darkened room, on her bed of pain, she had shrunk from it. Her forehead was a coronet of fire. That was nothing. A greater pain suppresses a lesser one. The burn of her soul was a moxa to the burn of the flesh.
The cross, at first, seemed to her more than she could bear. She tried to put it from her. Failing in that, she tried to endure it. But there are times and occasions when resignation in its self-effacement resembles suicide. She tried to resign herself, but she could not, her young heart rebelled.
In that rebellion, evil came, peered at her, sat at her side, pulled at her sleeve, sprang at her. The evil was hatred for this man who had taken her love and despoiled it. She clasped it to her. It bruised but it comforted. It dulled both the flame in her forehead and the shame in her soul. Then as suddenly she began to cry.
Philosophy she lacked, but theosophy, which is a pansophy, she possessed—when she did not need it. Now, when she needed it most, it was empty as the noise in the street. Even otherwise it could not have changed the unchangeable course of events.
There are sins that are scarlet. There are others, far worse, that are drab. Melancholy tops them. It is a mere duty to be serene. That she could not be. She could not face life, as life perhaps is. She could not smile at a lover who loved elsewhere. It was not herself, it was he who prevented her. So she thought and for hours in her darkened room she washed her hands of him, washed them in tears. It took a wise man to write the praise of folly.
The door of the room opened. It opened slowly, noiselessly, obviously. With exasperating precautions Mrs. Austen entered. The taste of bénédictine was still in her mouth and, savouring it, she whispered:
"Are you asleep?"
"No."
"Will you eat anything?"
"No."
"Are you able to talk?"
Margaret turned. She could talk, but to what end and to whom? Certainly not to her mother, who possessed in its perfection, the household art of misinterpreting everything. Margaret had tried to love her. But perhaps any affection is a habit when it does not happen to be an instinct. The habit had never been formed, the instinct had been repressed. Always her mother had treated her with that indulgence which is as empty as an unfilled grate. There was no heat there. You could not warm your heart at it. But a child must love some one. Margaret had begun by loving her mother. That is the way with children. They begin by loving their parents. Later they judge them. Sometimes, though not always, they forgive. One should not judge anybody. Margaret knew that, but she was a human being. She thought her mother a worldly woman. The fact that she was false as Judas was not apparent to this girl whose knowledge of Iscariotism was as hearsay as her knowledge of gorillas.
Now, as she turned in her bed, it was in defence against intrusion. Deference to her mother she had always observed. But she could not admit her to the privacy of her thoughts and, in turning her face to the wall, she told herself that she would not be cross-questioned.
Mrs. Austen had no intention of putting her daughter in the confessional. Anything of the kind would have bored her. Besides, what she thought was unimportant. It was what she did or might do that mattered.
Vacating the door she approached the bed. "Are you feeling any better?"
Margaret was feeling, if possible, worse. But she never complained, or, if she had to complain, then the complaint was solely by way of explanation. She turned again.
"For if you are," Mrs. Austen continued, "I ought to say something."
Margaret put a hand to her forehead.
But Mrs. Austen persisted. "It is important."
Margaret's eyes were open. She closed them and said: "Yes, mother, what is it?"
Through the door came light from the hall. Mrs. Austen looked about. Nearby was a chair on which was one of those garments, made of franfreluches, which the French call a Jump-from-bed. Removing it, she sat down.
"It is too bad. I know you don't feel like discussing affairs of State, but it is Luxemburg all over again. If I were alone concerned, I am sure I would capitulate. But where the State is concerned, and by that I mean you, I am like the little grand-duchess—pretty child, from her pictures, didn't you think?—and I must resist the invader. It is true, I don't know exactly what the grand-duchess did do, though they said she sat in a motor on a bridge and flourished a revolver. But you never can tell. I daresay she and her maids of honour hid in a cellar. Perhaps we may have to."
Margaret lowered her hand. "Mother, what are you talking about?"
"Your young man, of course. What else? A half-hour ago, he was roaring and stamping about and calling me a liar. If it had not been for my dead body, he would have rushed in here and killed you. My dead body, or what I told him about passing over it, was the revolver that I flourished. He has gone, but he swore he would return. Now, unless you rally to the colours, we will have to hide in the cellar, or rather, as we haven't any, in the pantry. Don't you think you could eat a bit of sweetbread, or perhaps some almond pudding?"