Hugh BentonAtwood, N. Y.Meeting with Directors Arranged for Ten Thirty, Sept. 23. Everything Favorable to Date.Templeton, Baird & Co.
Hugh Benton
Atwood, N. Y.
Meeting with Directors Arranged for Ten Thirty, Sept. 23. Everything Favorable to Date.
Templeton, Baird & Co.
“Dearest!” At last she found voice. “How perfectly wonderful! Oh, Iknewyou would make me proud of you!” She flew to him and her arms reached up to cling about his neck. The man’s eyes, too, were dim, but there was in them that which showed he knew now he must not fail,—that he must do all this woman he loved and who loved him believed him capable of. His arms folded about her tenderly. With a sudden thought, though, she drew away a bit to glance once more at the crumpled yellow sheet that meant so much. “Why dear!” she gasped wonderingly, “it’s right away, too! Did you notice? This meeting is forto-morrow!”
Hugh Benton nodded.
“Yes, sweetheart. And I’ve been thinking while you’ve been dreaming and waking up to realities. I’ll take the morning train—I’ll telephone Mr. Birmingham—and I can be back at mid-night. You can get Mrs. Clancy to come over and stay with you.”
Marjorie drew back reproachfully.
“Mrs. Clancy! Oh, Hugh, dear! How can you think I could have anybody about when I’ll have so much to think of—so much to plan——”
Hugh smiled a bit ruefully.
“Seemed to me lately you’d already been planning a lot—got new ones to make?” he asked, half teasingly.
“Hundreds, thousands, millions of them,” declared Marjorie, sweeping her hands in a gesture to include the world. “Oh, I won’t be lonely—you can be sure of that. But,” and her eyes roved toward the table with its untouched food and the coffee pot simmering on the stove, “here we are forgetting to eat. It must be serious. Sit down dear, and let’s plan it all out. I’m going to get the chocolate cake. This isn’t to be an ordinary feast, you know!”
Hugh Benton’s eyes were somber as he watched his wife, her face flushed to a deep wild rose, her eyes shining like stars, as she flew to arrange their belated supper. His thoughts were far off.
“I wonder,” he murmured, as he closely followed her movements, his chin cupped in one hand, his elbow resting on the table with its embroidered doilies, Marjorie’s own handiwork, “I wonder if it is really what she wants. But I’ve got to do it—Imustmake good—I will!”
CHAPTER III
Hugh Benton reached out and took a large piece of the chocolate cake which his wife held toward him. He bit into it hugely with satisfaction.
“Well, little one,” he said, his mouth full of the toothsome morsel, “let’s hear what’s on your mind. Shoot!”
“Hugh, dear!” Marjorie shook a remonstrative finger at him. “You know how I dislike slang! And what if the babies should see you with your mouth crammed like that!”
Her husband grinned boyishly.
“Pardon me,” he said, with exaggerated dignity. “What I meant to say, Mrs. Benton, was, what have you been planning to do when your husband is no longer a wage slave, a poor minion whose chief duty is to watch other people’s money, and shall himself become a personage of wealth and position?”
Marjorie’s eyes sparkled and her cheeks glowed rosy with excitement as she answered enthusiastically. “Oh, such heaps and heaps of wonderful plans, dear. I scarcely know how to begin to tell them all. First of all, of course, we’ll leave here and go to New York. We will purchase a lovely home—somewhere on the Drive, I think. Then we will spend days and days going about in all sorts of quaint little shops searching for rare antiques and selecting beautiful furniture and draperies. When our home is ready, we will have a nurse for the kiddies, and after a couple of years, a governess, and when they grow up, Elinor can go to a select finishing school for young ladies, and Howard can attend college and—oh, I could go on forever and ever planning, but it seems absurd, so many years ahead, and—” She stopped suddenly. “Why dear, you’re not enthusing at all, and you don’t seem to be interested in anything I am saying. Don’t my castles in the air meet with your approval?”
Hugh shook his head sadly. “Well not exactly, dear—the first time since we’ve been married, too, but our ideas are mighty far apart.”
“Well then, what do your ideas happen to be?” Marjorie was a little hurt.
Hugh contemplated his wife for a moment, as though loath to say anything that might dim the enthusiasm that glowed in her blue eyes.
“My thoughts are a long way from New York,” he began, “probably you wouldn’t be interested at all. But all my life I’ve had just one dream.”
“Of course, I’m interested in what you want, Hugh dear,” quietly answered Marjorie, but something in her tone belied the ardor of the words. “Tell me.”
“It’s just this.” For a moment Hugh stopped, and the vision he conjured brought an eagerness to his words when he spoke.
“I want to be a farmer—a gentleman farmer. I want to buy an estate or small farm not far from New York but near this place where we have always been so happy. I’ll hire men to do the rough part of the work, but I want to keep myself busy and occupied overseeing things. I never did like to be idle. You know that. Then we can have that nurse for the children so that we can run up to New York occasionally for a few days and have all the theaters and opera we want. Then when the youngsters are old enough to attend school, I should like to send them to a public school. Some of our greatest men and women have been educated in them, you must recall. I don’t believe in finishing schools—never did—they’d make Elinor a snob. As for colleges, unless a boy is absolutely sincere in wanting to be a professional man, what good would they do him? Howard would just get in with the idle rich, which in the end would surely spell disaster for him morally and financially. You see, my dear, I want my daughter to be arealwoman like her mother; and my son, all I ask is that he be a man!” He stopped, musing.
Had Hugh Benton not been so interested in his own dream, he would have seen on the face of his wife more varying emotions than he had ever seen since he had known her. They would have been new to him. Disappointment she showed, disapproval, injury, then, swiftly following, a real indignation in the narrowing to pin points of the pupils of her wide eyes. But when she spoke, it was in a meek, cool voice.
“And what about your wife?”
Hugh laughed. “Why, everything for my wife,” he said. “You’ll be chatelaine of it all.” He glanced up at her and stopped, fork suspended in midair at the strange expression he saw. “Why, Marjorie, little girl,” he queried, earnestly, “what’s wrong? What is it, dear?”
Marjorie’s foot tapped impatiently on the bare floor of the kitchen-dining room. She gave an almost imperceptible shrug.
“Nothing,” she declared, without apparent interest. “Nothing at all—except that after all these five years of privation and hard work, now when you have prospects of actually becoming wealthy, you sit there and calmly proposeto bury me on a farm!” The scorn in the utterance of the last words brought a look of surprise, quickly followed by pain to the eyes of Hugh Benton. He spoke, slowly, contritely.
“I suppose I’m selfish, like all men,” he said sadly, “but, someway, because I’ve been so happy myself, I’ve never known before that the years we’ve been married had been a burden to you.”
Then the real Marjorie Benton came to the surface. She reached over to grab his hand convulsively.
“I’m the one to be forgiven, dear,” she begged contritely. “Oh, I never meant that—indeed I didn’t—you know I’ve been happy. Oh, I didn’t realize what I was saying!” She forced back the tears.
“Of course, it hasn’t been hard—I’ve had you, haven’t I, and my babies, but somehow, I can’t make you understand how I feel—I’m all unstrung. I do want to try life in a different sphere among an entirely different class of people. I can’t help having aspirations for my children, can I, and I can’t see anything ahead of them if they are narrowed down to a life like ours has been. And what could I do if we go to live on a farm? Just routine—monotony—forever!”
“You could do a great deal of good, dear,” Hugh answered gently. “Think of all the poor and needy that you could aid. You could be a ministering angel right here in our own little town, for you know as well as I do how many there are who would be grateful to have a helping hand.”
“So you think being a ‘ministering angel’ could fill my life?”
“Combined with the love of your husband and children, it most assuredly should. Why, dear, there isn’t anything in the world that can bring you such happiness as helping someone in distress.”
“Well, couldn’t I do that in New York?” Marjorie brightened a little. “There’s lots of room for charity there—I could go in for settlement work or something. Think how much larger a field I would have to ‘minister’ in!”
So earnest was his gravity, that he passed his wife’s bit of levity unheeded.
“There you are!” he exclaimed. “The field’s too large—and there are already too many in it—workers of all kinds,—sincere and insincere. I guess you could find enough to do, if you want to, a lot nearer home.”
With his usual manner of having settled a matter, Hugh Benton rose from the little table and yawned broadly. He never even thought as he saw his wife fingering a doily, nervously folding and unfolding it in creased patterns, that this was a symptom of nervous tumult.
“Oh, well, I guess we’re a couple of kids,” he told her with a laugh. “Day dreaming,—fussing over make believes. We haven’t any money—yet—Time enough to argue when the papers are signed. And if I don’t get to bed pretty quick I won’t be in much shape to talk to those people, either. Coming along?”
Marjorie shook her head.
“Not for a few minutes. I must put the cake away. Butter and eggs still mean something, as you’ve reminded me. So run along.”
Deeply in love with his wife as he was, Hugh Benton would not have dropped off to sleep so quickly had he known how long his wife was to sit where he had left her, brooding over their talk, telling herself of his unfairness, wearing herself into a mood so entirely unlike herself. There was indeed, something radically wrong with Marjorie Benton,—and money was at the bottom of it. Already it had made her almost quarrel with her husband. Now the prospect of it had roused in her a bitterness and resentment of which she would not have believed herself capable a few short weeks before.
When at last she crept softly in beside her sleeping husband, it was with the determination that she would not be put aside in the way Hugh had put her—that she was going to have one great big say as to how that not-yet-earned money was going to be spent. And none of her plans included any farms or ministering angels. Restlessly she turned from side to side, unable to sleep. She was filled with smoldering indignation. Surely she was right about Hugh treating her unfairly. Wasn’t it his duty to live where she would be happiest, if he could afford it? Was it right for him to want to please himself only? And besides—all that talk about the children. Surely she, their mother, should know what was best for them. With her last troubled waking thought a determination to let Hugh understand exactly how she stood in the matter before he left for New York, she dropped into an uneasy slumber.
A dream came. She was walking through a narrow path in a beautiful garden. On each side of her were rows of magnificent roses. She gathered them as she walked along. Repeatedly a voice whispered to her to turn back, but she ignored the warning, and went on her way blithely. As she reached a bend in the path and was about to turn into it Hugh suddenly appeared before her. He, too, implored her to relinquish her roses and return from whence she came. She eyed him haughtily from head to foot, and disdainfully brushing aside his detaining hand, went forward. Then it was that the ground gave way under her, and she found herself slipping downward—downward, with startling rapidity. The weight of the roses in her arms became unbearable. It was impossible to free herself from their overwhelming odor of sickening sweetness; she was submerged beneath them. In desperation she commanded her last ounce of strength and screamed aloud for Hugh to save her.
She awoke to find him bending solicitously over her.
“What is it, honey?” he asked gently. “That nightmare must have been dreadful—you screamed so you awakened us all.” Marjorie sat up in bed dazedly, rubbing her eyes. Through the open door she saw Elinor and Howard peeking at her through the bars of their cribs. “Did I scream?” she asked wonderingly. “How silly—I did have a dreadful dream, but,” she sat up wide awake, “what time is it?”
“Half past six.”
“Already?” She yawned a bit, but strangely was not sleepy. Sudden memory of her determination came to her. “Well, then, I’m going to get up and dress the babies as long as I scared them out of their sleep. I’ll start them with their breakfast, then I want to have a talk with you, Hugh.”
Hugh groaned with mock seriousness.
“Can’t a fellow even go to the big town to make a million dollars without having to carry a lot of samples to match or have to bring home an aluminum pan or something?”
But there was no answering light of humor from his wife. How little Hugh knew how serious had been their talk of the night before, she thought as she deftly swung little Elinor around to fasten her tiny rompers. Well, he would know before he left that she was not going to let him have his own way without a word from her.
As a usual thing Hugh’s not over-melodious whistling as he shaved and dressed was a pleasure to her. She thought of him as a big boy, a grown-up edition of her own small Howard, and it was with an indulgent smile that she would listen to him as she hurried the children with their breakfasts while his coffee was being prepared and the little table set for their own breakfast. This morning, however, it had a strangely disturbing effect. Somehow she wished he wouldn’t do it. He sounded so—well, so overconfident. Of course, she was glad if he felt confident of the success of his mission in New York, but he shouldn’t be planning, as she knew he was, to spend their money as he had proposed the night before.
But Hugh was so full of his plans for selling his invention, so eager in his hurried talk, that he never noticed her attitude, her unusual silence as she opened his eggs, spilling them a little as her hand trembled with the indignation that she had nursed through the night. He hurried through the last mouthful, rose and started to put on his overcoat.
“Got to hurry a little in spite of our early start, honey,” he observed, glancing at his watch. “Hurry up with your orders for the head of the house.”
Still Marjorie Benton was silent until she had followed her husband from the kitchen out onto the little porch and closed the door behind her.
“Hugh,” she began, and there was firmness and determination in her tone and in the set of her daintily-molded young chin. “I’m sorry to have to say this, but I can’t let you go off to New York until we come to a decision about the matter of which we spoke last night.”
“What matter?” For the minute, his mind far away on what he intended to do, the master of the house of Benton had forgotten the talk which had come to mean so much to his wife. Then a light dawned on him, and he grinned. “Oh, yes, I remember,” and his light laugh only further annoyed Marjorie, “we spent several million dollars in several different ways, didn’t we?”
“It’s no laughing matter, Hugh.” At last Hugh turned his wondering gaze on his wife’s set face to see that she was really in earnest. “Why, honey——”
“Oh, it’s all right to put me off with sweet words,” Marjorie burst out with a sudden impatience, “but we must have an understanding before you go. It’s just as well for you to know I won’t be shut up in anybody’s farm house.”
The man glanced again at his watch, and all the smile had died from his eyes as he spoke quietly.
“Don’t you think it just a little unfair to bring up unpleasant things to-day, of all days—when I ought not to think of anything but business. Trivial annoyances of this kind are anything but pleasant at any time, but——”
“Trivial possibly to you,” Marjorie retorted, and her face flushed darkly as she bit her lips to keep back the tears that were imminent, “but it’s a serious matter to me, and I want you to know exactly how I feel. I think it is but right that you should, before even another step is taken. It is just this. Not only do I positively refuse to live on a farm, but I will not have my children given a public-school education if I can afford to give them any other!”
“Said it all?” Hugh bit off his words, and there was a graveness and injury in his manner that was new to Marjorie, and which she did not fail to catch. “If you have, I think I’d better be getting along, or we may not have any money to quarrel over!”
Chameleon that she was, Marjorie Benton was changed in a minute. One soft arm reached up to cling around her husband’s neck, while she pulled him toward her by one overcoat lapel.
“Oh, Hugh dear, we weren’t quarreling, were we? Please say we weren’t! Why, we’ve never had a quarrel in our lives, and—oh, I just wanted you to know how I feel, and try to think as I do. You will, won’t you?”
Hugh Benton bent and kissed both eyes that looked at him so beseechingly.
“I’ll try, dear,” was his grave promise. “You know that your happiness is all that concerns me, just as you know it is for you that I want to put this thing across at all.”
Marjorie Benton sighed with happiness as she bade her husband good-by. What a good place the world was after all!
Busy as she was through the day, Mrs. Hugh Benton often thought afterward that it was the longest day of her life. It seemed that night and the train that would bring Hugh back—back to her with the good news that she was sure he would bring—would never come.
In the afternoon there was one slight diversion. Mrs. Birmingham’s big car stopped outside her gate, and the great lady herself came into Marjorie’s humble little home bearing the books she had promised the day before. But for once in her life, Marjorie was not in the least interested in the chatter of the banker’s wife. She did not even take the trouble to offer any prideful reason for Hugh’s absence in New York. She only wanted to be alone to think what he was doing, and to plan what they would all do with the wealth he would lavish on them.
Four o’clock, five—six at last. Time for Howard’s and Elinor’s supper. At last they were in bed. The last question was answered, little Elinor’s eyes shutting tightly in spite of herself as she crooned the last lines of her “Wock-a baby” she had had in mother’s lap.
Alone, Marjorie was distinctly restless. She even began to be sorry she had not sent for Mrs. Clancy, and once even started for the telephone to send for the garrulous old lady. It was such a long time between six-thirty and mid-night. But no, she would find something to do. It was not with a great deal of success that she tried to busy herself, however. She straightened out the sideboard drawers. Another half hour gone. There was a lot of mending piled in her sewing basket, but somehow she did not feel like that now. She contented herself with rearranging its contents. Scattered about were a lot of magazines she and Hugh had finished reading. Now was a good time to tie them up to be sent to the infirmary. She straightened up from this task to glance at the clock which had never ticked so slowly before. Why, it was only a little after seven now! Her eyes wandered to the table where she had placed the gayly bound books Mrs. Birmingham had brought. She idly turned the pages of one. It did not look uninteresting. Once more her hand reached out for a moment through habit for the mending basket. Then she laughed as she withdrew it. What was the use? They wouldn’t have to be wearing mended things much longer, any of them. She might as well read until Hugh’s train reached Atwood.
“I’ll find out just how Mrs. Birmingham’s sister’s taste in literature runs,” she mused, “though I doubt if Mrs. B. will ever profit very much this time by having her books read for her.”
Another shovelful of coal for the fire, and with the big wicker chair drawn up in front of it, Marjorie Benton gave herself a little shake to settle down comfortably as she opened her book and slipped her fingers between its pages to find if there were any uncut leaves. For the first time that day, she forgot the passage of time. Page after page she turned as the clock ticked on, striking its hours and half hours unheeded. It was a fascinating story, at that.
The soft closing of the kitchen door caused her to look up with a start. She jumped to her feet as though she could not believe her eyes. There was Hugh standing before her, a wide bland smile on his handsome face as he drew off a brand new glove.
“Hugh, dear!” she exclaimed, “how you startled me! I didn’t hear you come up the walk—why, I didn’t even hear the train! Did you get an earlier one? What time is it?”
“Ten after twelve, honey,” he answered. “You must have been reading something mighty good, and here I came in so quietly. Thought you’d be asleep!”
“Asleep! Oh, how could you! Don’t you know I’m just perishing to know what happened! Tell me—quick, quick!”
Hugh Benton’s ready grin broadened. He was teasingly slow in answering as his hand went into his pocket and he drew out a wallet, and with maddening slowness drew from it a certified check.
“Just a scrap of paper,” he commented off-handedly, “but this will tell you what you want to know, and then I’ll tell you the rest.”
Marjorie’s eyes widened with amazement at the startling figures on the face of the small piece of paper he dangled before her. She was too choked with emotion for a moment to speak. Her husband’s arms closed gently around her and he drew her to him.
“We did it, dear—you and I,” he whispered. “And it’s all for you. This is only a starter, too, for if you think this is big, you ought to see the contracts I’ve made for royalties.”
“Hugh! Hugh!” Marjorie’s voice was a sob as she kissed him again and again. “Oh, I’m too happy to tell you! Oh, please don’t wake me out of this wonderful dream!”
“Well, I, for one,” Hugh laughed as he slipped the check between his fingers, “am too used to handling these things belonging to other people to think this is a dream. There is only one thing I’m thinking of, and that is your happiness.” Marjorie drew back from him a step and looked levelly into his eyes.
“Are you quite, quite sure, Hugh dear?” she begged earnestly.
“Quite.” In that one word Hugh Benton put a world of meaning. “I’ve had plenty of time to think, too—and I’ve decided. You shall do with this money just exactly as you please. Whatever your plans are, they must be for the best, so I have given up all thoughts of the farm. And now that’s settled,” he said, in the old way, giving himself a little shake of renunciation.
“Oh, Hugh, youarea darling! And you’ll never regret it—never regret letting me have my way in this one big thing. I promise you!”
For a moment the big man’s eyes were solemn. Into them came just a hint of that far-away look of wonder. But his voice was tender, if a bit grave as he spoke:
“Let’s hope not, sweetheart—let’s hope not!”
CHAPTER IV
Christmas Eve in the new home!
A Christmas tree that glittered and dazzled with its festoons of twinkling little bulbs of sapphire and gold, ruby, and orange, and violet, and pale lemon from its wide-spreading base in the center of the Bentons’ upstairs living room of their fourteen-room house on that most wonderful of driveways, Riverside, in New York—to the top-most branch that swept the high creamy ceiling jostling the fine bisque cherub that adorned that branch— And a house warming.
As Marjorie Benton with a long-drawn sigh of contentment looked for the hundredth time about this one new big room with its sweeping spaces, its gay cretonnes and deep, cushion-piled wicker chairs and out through the row of French windows across the dusky blue of the Hudson to the Palisades with their twinkling starlights, she felt that life at last was worth living. All this—all—and her arms moved in a comprehensive gesture impelled by her thoughts—was hers! Her home! What more fitting than that they should have their house warming on Christmas Eve. Marjorie’s tired nerves and body that ached a bit, too, in sympathy, reminded her that she had not been able to have all this ready for Christmas Eve without effort. But how glad she was that she had done it! Glad!
True, Hugh was glooming a little—sentimental glooming for a time he should be glad to have put behind him, but he would get over that she was sure. He would come to see that her judgment was best, and that this was the way to live. Once more she sighed with utter contentment as she rearranged a heavy strand of silver tinsel that dangled inartistically. It was all ready for the children now and she could take time to breathe. In a deep chair in front of the sputtering open fire on its quaintly tiled hearth she dropped down for a moment’s rest and retrospection.
How busy and interesting had been the few short months that had passed since the night Hugh had come home to her in Atwood with his wonderful news!
They had been most fortunate in securing the services of a capable and competent nurse for the children, so they could catch the early train to New York every day on their house-hunting expeditions. Their reward had been this beautiful little house on the Drive, with its view of the Hudson. To Marjorie it seemed a mansion with its fourteen rooms, its servants’ quarters in the attic, their garage with space for three cars, and oh, so many more things she had not at first thought of herself.
Then had begun the real work and pleasure of furnishing it. What a never-changing miracle it was to Marjorie to be able to select whatsoever she wished without having to hesitate and consider the price and durability of each article as she had always been obliged to do.
Every detail had been completed a few days before Christmas, when they bade farewell to their friends and the little village with its memories of five happy years, and moved into the new home.
Stretched lazily on Marjorie’s wickerchaise longue, smoking his after-dinner cigar, careless of his tumbling of his wife’s carefully selected new pillows, Hugh Benton let his gaze rove over the vivid scene. It paused as his eyes reached his wife sitting before the cheery fire, her slight smile telling of what she saw in the blazing logs. Because they were so close, so much to each other, Marjorie Benton felt this and as she turned in Hugh’s direction, her smile broadened as her features lighted up with expressed happiness. In a moment she was by his side, kneeling on a cushion in the old familiar child manner her husband knew and loved, and her fingers were running caressingly through his shock of dark hair.
“What do you think of it all, dear?” she asked exultingly. “Isn’t the tree wonderful? I think those decorators were marvelous, but I guess I’m not quite used to money yet, for I almost dread to think of the bill they’ll present.”
Slowly Hugh sat up, and reached for her hand. He patted it gently as he spoke.
“It has all been wonderful, dear,” he answered, “and you mustn’t forget you’re to forget the bills—but honey-girl,” and there was a little droop to the corners of his mouth and unmistakable yearning in his earnest eyes as he voiced his plaint, “somehow I can’t help missing the little old Christmas Eves we always had at Atwood. Remember how you and I would sit up nights ahead stringing popcorn, gilding walnuts, tinseling cotton to represent snow, and doing everything we could to have a pretty, effective tree for the kiddies, without hardly investing anything?”
Marjorie laughed as she gave his hand a playful squeeze. To her it was incomprehensible, with all this grandeur before him, that Hugh should regret the Atwood days.
“How funny, those other little trees were compared with this one, weren’t they?” she wanted to know.
But there was no gleam of answering mirth from Hugh.
“Umm, funny, maybe,” he agreed with an air of reservation. But there was a fuller meaning than Marjorie caught, as he added: “You’re right—one couldn’t possibly compare those other trees with this. Still,” and he was so plaintively appealing that his wife’s clear laughter rang out more bubblingly than ever, “still, we got a lot of happiness out of those funny little trees, didn’t we, dear?”
Marjorie was not going to commit herself too far.
“Yes—I suppose we did,” was her reluctant admission.
“And say, do you remember,” Hugh rambled on, his eyes aglow with animation, “the night we cut out the movies to buy two whole ornaments the next day—I’ll tell you——”
Marjorie stopped him a little impatiently. She playfully placed her hand over his mouth.
“Now, Hugh darling, don’t lecture—there’s a good boy! I’m not going to let you on Christmas Eve. You’re just not used to things yet. When you are, you’ll just be bound to admit you have the wisest little wife in the world—” She stopped his protest with a quick caress as she got to her feet, and went over to the tree to place a life-like big doll and a “really, truly” railroad train in more conspicuous positions.
“It is beautiful, though, isn’t it, dear?” she repeated, and without waiting for his reply, hurried on: “There are two people I know who’ll think so if you don’t. Just wait till you see their eyes in the morning!”
She stifled an unwelcome yawn with the pat of fingers.
“More tired than I thought, dear,” she admitted. “I really must get some sleep. There’s so much to enjoy to-morrow. Coming along, or are you going to smoke for awhile?”
“Believe I’ll finish my cigar. Don’t stay awake waiting for me now—good-night, dearest, pleasant dreams, and a world of happy Christmases before you,” and he kissed her as he opened the door for her, in the old-world manner he never neglected.
Alone, Hugh Benton extinguished all the lights in the room, even those on the tree, and seated himself in the rocker before the fire. For a long time he sat smoking his cigar, gazing into the dying embers. His thoughts were of many things—of his years of unalloyed happiness—of his great love for his wife and babies, and then of this newly-acquired fortune. Marjorie’s theory of living he at last concluded appeared to be more sensible than his own, after all, and when he finally arose, it was with the full determination to use every power within his grasp to meet all the requirements due this new position of his. He would mold his life anew; become a man of affairs. With all that was in him he would strive diligently to reach the pinnacle of success that his ambitious wife had planned for him.
Boredom has long been the common complaint of the idle rich. Many things are excused because of it; many useless and reckless occupations condoned for and by that favored class on the ground that the time passes so slowly that they must have something to do. Whether or no this is exactly the case, however, is a moot question. To come right down to it, time generally passes a great deal more quickly for those who have more store of worldly goods than they would wish. To the woman of fashion and wealth months and days seem actually to have flown by from the time she made her more or less blushing début until she suddenly wakes one day to realize that there is gray in her hair, and that it will take arduous hours at the beauty parlors to smooth over the ravages of time in a once-unwrinkled countenance. Men, too—more often than not the man of unlimited means comes to know that middle life is upon him and that he has not accomplished any of the great things that he had once planned, always having known that with wealth to back him he could accomplish them. It is all the fault of time. It flies rapidly—too rapidly for those who have the means for gratifying every wish and whim.
The Bentons were no exception to the rule. Time flew by on such light wings for them that it was hard to realize that so much had been accomplished, so much changed in the three years that might have been so many months since they had left Atwood for New York. Of them all, though, the children had most readily accustomed themselves to the change and long since had become seasoned little New Yorkers with little noses turned up at less lucky youngsters who had no nice warm closed car to command whenever they wished a ride.
Hugh, too, at the end of the three years (though his change had been more gradual), might always have lived on Riverside Drive and known club life since his salad days. Unlike his wife, who in the first flush of her good fortune had elected play as her life work, Hugh had turned his attention to work. Ambitious as he was, and before his first success with his invention with no outlet for it, he had not let grass grow under his feet since he had changed his cottage in Atwood for a house on Riverside Drive. Personal attention to the details of the manufacture of his invention had brought him in contact with business men of wealth and solidity and deep down Hugh Benton was not the sort of man to neglect what opportunity threw in his way. From manufacturing to Wall Street had been but a step. Had Hugh Benton’s lucky fairy been with him day by day to wave her magic wand, he could not have had more fortune in his ventures. His was not the story of the ordinary novice. It was the thousandth one that daily draws more and more grist to the mills of the “big men” who rule so autocratically in that small street called Wall;—the story that draws adventurers with all the fascination that fishermen who daily cast their lines off the bathing beaches know because of tales of a solitary tide runner that some time has been known to become unwary.
So it was, that at the end of three years, Hugh Benton was a rich man. He was becoming richer. He might have been a blood relation of Midas, said those who had come eagerly to watch for a tip that might fall from his lips unguardedly, for in so short a time his had become the platitudinous but nonetheless expressive sobriquet of “Lucky Benton.”
With success, came all that it usually implies. His, too, had become the pleasures of the rich. Almost without knowing it, so subtle had come the transformation, home no longer held the joys it once did for the former bank employee. Roadsters of high speed, cards at any of the many clubs where he had been eagerly welcomed, fishing and hunting expeditions from the base of a hundred-thousand-dollar “shack” in the Adirondacks had taken the place of more homely pleasures. It had all come about so easily too. Looking back in one of his few retrospective moods Hugh Benton smiled as he recalled the thought he would never accustom himself to New York. He smiled a bit disdainfully at his own small viewpoint when he remembered how once he had believed he would be content as a gentleman farmer.
Only Marjorie Benton was dissatisfied, though she was queerly conscious that she ought not to be—that she had everything that she had once so sincerely believed necessary to her happiness. The artificiality of all about her had come to her with a shock, an eye opening all the more distressing because of its suddenness. Marjorie Benton had found out she did not know how to play. More, she had discovered she did not want to. At least she did not want to play as did those with whom she came in contact and who had, from the horizon of Atwood, seemed all that was most desirable in the world. For instance, one of her most eager plans when she once put herself to sleep planning was to play bridge and spend wonderful afternoons in the company of cultured and delightful women such as those of whom she had read and whom she hoped to emulate. One of her first steps had been to get an instructress, so that she would be prepared to enter “society.”
It had not been hard for the Bentons to enter the charmed circle. It had been surprisingly easy, in fact, for Hugh’s financial success opened many doors that might otherwise have been barred, and present-day “society” may well be trusted not to overlook the tales the journals have to tell of sudden wealth (and Hugh had proven good copy) however much they may profess to scorn it.
So she had met a great many people, as the wives of Hugh’s friends had called and invited her to one affair after the other. At first she had been fairly beside herself with joy. But it was of short duration. Try as she would, she simply could not “take” to any of these new friends. They were all so frivolous and petty. Life held nothing for them obviously but bridge, dress, theater and gossip.
Then had come the day of her own first bridge party and her first real shock and mute protest. Somehow the thought of playing for money had never entered her mind. She had imagined that they played for a prize, the same as they had done at home at their little whist socials; or perhaps society matrons simply played for amusement.
“You must be particularly nice to Mrs. Gregory,” Hugh told her when she was starting off for the bridge party at the exclusive Mrs. Arnold’s Fifth Avenue home. “She’s one of ‘the’ Gregorys, you know, and it will mean a great deal socially to have her good will.”
Marjorie promised. This would not be hard, for was it not her way to be particularly nice to all her own and her husband’s friends and acquaintances? It was Mrs. Gregory who gave Mrs. Hugh Benton her surprise and shock, however. At the table where she sat with three other players, including Hugh’s Mrs. Gregory, Mrs. Allen cut the cards languidly and remarked:
“Well, what shall it be? May I suggest a quarter of a cent?”
Mrs. Gregory suppressed a polite yawn.
“Oh, my dear!” was her reproof. “How can you suggest wasting our time so! You know I never play for anything less than two cents—it’s boring enough even then.”
So Marjorie Benton played for money. She had not in the least intended to, but she was too embarrassed to utter a protest. She played, and with a mind perturbed, of course, played badly. At the end of the afternoon she had lost sixty dollars. Her cheeks burned as she made out her check and laid it on the table.
All the way home as she sat comfortably in her limousine she thought of it. It wasn’t the money—sixty dollars meant nothing to Marjorie Benton—she would have felt precisely the same had she won. It was the principle of the thing that worried her—she felt utterly debased to think that she had spent an afternoongambling. She couldn’t imagine just why it should affect her that way, unless it was her puritanical upbringing that arose to the surface, despite all her efforts to force it back.
When she told Hugh about it, he laughed, and called her a “little old-fashioned country girl.”
“Have you forgotten about ‘living in Rome,’ honey?” he said lightly. “Don’t let it upset you. You’ll get used to it!”
But Marjorie knew better. There was only one thing to do. So never again did she play bridge. Bridge bored her, she insisted, and she didn’t enjoy it.
With everything else it was the same. She couldn’t accustom herself to seeing the women drink cocktails at a luncheon, and the first time they passed their cigarette cases she almost gasped. But the thing that disgusted her above all else was the deceit that she discovered all about her.
Her eyes were opened to this. One afternoon she called on Mrs. James, society matron, and the wife of one of Hugh’s friends. When she entered the room, three women she had met previously were seated at the tea-table. Their conversation ceased as abruptly as if a curtain had been rung down in the middle of an act. She paid little attention to the matter at the time, as they were all so charming in their manner toward her, and greeted her so effusively.
For a while they discussed inconsequential topics, and then their conversation drifted to another woman, a member of their own set. At first there wasn’t anything really offensive in their remarks. It merely brought to the surface a feline quality unsuspected. But the conversation changed suddenly. To Marjorie it seemed these women surely couldn’t realize what they were saying. Like a pack of hungry wolves, they tore the woman they discussed into shreds.
Dumfounded, Marjorie sat and listened. She couldn’t believe it possible that four women could say such scandalous things of another they called friend. She was sure their assertions were untrue, as they insinuated things impossible for anyone to know. They surmised merely, and it was upon such scant evidence that they set about to wreck a woman’s reputation. She felt that she could tolerate it no longer, and was about to protest, when the woman who had been under the hammer entered the room.
To Marjorie’s consternation and amazement the four eager talkers welcomed the newcomer with open arms. Their terms of affectionate endearment seemed revolting, but it was when one effusively gushed: “Your ears must be burning, dear, we were just discussing you and remarking how unkind you were to deprive us of your charming society for so long a time,” that Marjorie felt that she had reached the limit of her endurance, and pleading an important engagement, hurried away.
Before she reached home, she remembered how strangely they had all acted when she entered the room. Like a clear light it dawned on her that they must have been discussing her just as they had this other woman.
Instances of this sort taught her shallowness and insincerity of the people with whom she had chosen to mingle, so she managed to see less and less of them all. Instead, she tried to interest herself in charity, and again she failed. Whenever she decided to do a kindness, a reporter would rush in, demand her picture for the front page of the society section, and make a sensation out of nothing at all.
Many women would have craved that very thing, and derived great pleasure from it. But not Marjorie Benton. With true gentility she shrank from publicity. If she wanted to help those in distress, she wanted to do it alone, in her own way, without having the whole world know of it.
She spent as much time as she could with the children while they were small, but as they grew older and tutors and governesses took the place of nurses, she found herself more and more lonely.
Once when Hugh asked her if she were happy, for a moment the inclination was strong to open up her heart and tell him exactly how she felt—but the thought of the children forced her to conquer it. For their sakes she would utter no word of complaint; her own feelings must be sacrificed for them and for her plans for their education and futures.
At the expiration of the five years’ lease on their home, Hugh purchased a magnificent home, within easy motoring distance of New York. A small army of servants were engaged to take charge of it.
Then for a time, Marjorie Benton was again happy. Always she had wanted just such gardens as Hugh’s increased fortune made possible on their new estate. Exquisite rare flowers diffused their perfume; shaded walks wound serpentinely through long vistas of greensward and shrubbery; miniature lakes, crystal clear with water lilies on their shining bosoms; fountains that spouted and sparkled in the sun that seemed never to shine so fair as on this wonder garden. At last she had one place of dreams-come-true. Only the fine stone benches that Hugh had imported were not part of the picture to her. They were so cold and hard—so reminiscent of the people for whom they were made. So, old-fashioned as she had come to admit herself to be, Marjorie Benton had her little rocker placed out in her garden and it was here that her happiest hours were spent, among her cherished flowers, wandering about, or sitting idly, reading or sewing. It disturbed her not one whit that Hugh found cause for mirth in her sewing.
“You can have a dozen women to do that for you, my dear,” he reminded her. “I thought you wanted to get away from all that sort of thing.”
But Marjorie only smiled her slow smile and made no attempt to make Hugh understand that she wanted to do something—that she must feel that her time was not all being wasted.
It was at this period that Hugh Benton branched out as a host. His dinners were becoming famous; his week-end invitations favors to be eagerly bid for. The big new house became the scene of many a social event, and the Bentons’ hospitality a thing to conjure with. When her husband’s friends were invited for the week-end, a dinner party, or any other sort of entertainment, Mrs. Benton was a charming and considerate hostess. Somehow, though, she was always in the background—she was with them, but never of them. She had given up even trying to enter into the spirit of their pleasures and amusements.
Her clothes, always of the finest materials and expensive, lacked style. Her evening gowns all had lace or net yokes, with sleeves reaching to the elbow. She wouldn’t wear a decollete gown, and to her innermost self she was forced to acknowledge that she could not overcome her old-fashioned notions of propriety.
Marjorie couldn’t realize that Hugh, now the ultra-modern host, was the same man who once had protested with bitterness against their present manner of life. While Marjorie stood still, his steps dashed madly ahead. He fairly reveled in it all. As a prince of good fellows he was hailed among his friends. Money he lavished at home and abroad; every whim of the children was indulged with a recklessness that was ruinous.
He couldn’t comprehend Marjorie’s attitude. Surely this was what she had insisted she wanted. What was the matter with women, anyway? He pleaded with her to take her place in society and mingle more among people, but uselessly; he became angry and impatient, and called her attention to the fact that it was she who had planned their new life and not he, and at last had come the settling down, the acceptance of things as they were, Marjorie going on in her strait-laced conventional way, not as unhappy as she might have been had there not come that subtle rift between her and her husband which in five years had reached undreamed-of width; Hugh resigned and indifferent, always kind and courteous, but seeking his own pleasure, and living his life in his own way.
To Marjorie Benton had come one final pang when Hugh had decided it would be more agreeable and comfortable all around if he had his own suite of rooms. She had dropped a few tears of regret as she arranged those rooms for him, and in the general upheaval she had come upon his old ebony military brushes that had so long reposed on their joint bureau in their bedroom in the Atwood cottage. Marjorie remembered how she had got them for his birthday, and hers was a twisted little smile as she laid the little brushes down to compare them with Hugh’s new ones of ivory. How insignificant they looked! And how dear! She turned and her wide eyes roved through the big room in search of familiar objects. Yes, there was his smelly old pipe, the slippers she had embroidered herself, a little shabby now from much wear and with their gay flowers faded, but— And the little beaten metal humidor. It was with a start that she looked up to find Hugh in the room, giving instructions to his impeccable English valet. He saw the little pile on a big wicker table. His hand shot out to sweep them all from their resting places and Marjorie Benton heard the little metal clang of protest as they piled into a waste paper basket.
“Here, take all this old junk out and burn it,” he coolly advised. “Enough stuff around here without all this old junk——”
His wife’s smile was wan. “Old junk—” How far Hugh had gone from the dear sentimental old days! It seemed like so much of the days of Atwood were in the same category. Was everything to go the same way—everything of that old time, only five years as men counted time, but still so infinitely of a long, long ago to go the same way, become “old junk.” It was with a little gesture of benediction that Marjorie laid the little ebony brushes in the basket with the rest.
Hugh turned to her a little querulously.
“My dear,” he observed, “don’t you think it would be just as well to let the servants attend to this? They probably think it strange that you so often show such inclination to do their work.”
And meekly the woman left what was to her a labor of love. She would have liked Hugh to remember when he was in his suite that it was her care that made him so comfortable. She could have thought of him in his deep arm-chair before his blazing logs glancing at the wide mantel where she had placed photographs of herself and the children; of his smile when he saw how carefully she had arranged his smoking materials as he had once liked her to arrange them. But Hugh preferred differently. He preferred the cold, stolid, mechanical efficiency of his expressionless English serving man. Long Marjorie Benton sat before her own little fire in her gold and ivory boudoir and thought it all out. What had happened to them in these five years?
After Hugh’s removal to his own quarters there came times that his wife often did not see him for two or three days at a time. Late returning from his club, he said he did not care to disturb her; mornings he would leave too early or else so late that he would not take the time to see her. And so, these two who had once been soulmates, were slowly drifting apart.
Marjorie had not even the consolation of her children now partly to assuage the loneliness that she had come to admit was the one thing in her life amid all the gaud that was real. But there was some consolation in their very absence. She was accomplishing for them all that she had long ago planned.
Elinor was attending a select school for young ladies, and Howard had been sent to prepare for college. She counted the days until Elinor should grow up and once more be at home. Then she would have a real companion. What wonderful times she and her daughter would have together. Of course, Elinor had been willful and stubborn as a little girl, but she was confident that she would leave all that behind her when she finished school.
And then some day Howard would return from college, ready to take his place in the world, and perhaps after that he would bring a dear, sweet girl to her, and she would have another daughter to love.
Dreaming of days to come, putting from her mind all she could the days that were gone, Marjorie Benton sat gazing into her fire until the clang of the dressing chimes reminded her that she must dress. That was something Hugh always insisted on. And she got languidly to her feet with a sense of being far from happy over the prospective dinner as she recalled the two effusive, pompous business friends Hugh was having to dinner.
She smiled as she saw her children’s pictures looking up at her with answering smiles from their gold frames in their places on her gold-strewn dressing table, the toilet things Hugh had given her the past Christmas with far less interest than he had her celluloid set long ago, the little set she kept tucked away in a bureau drawer so that she might use them when she chose.
How sweet Elinor was!
How manly Howard!
She smiled in her old mother way as she lifted each picture and kissed it in turn. And some day— It could not be long now—time flew so——
“Things are not so bad after all, dear ones,” she whispered as she set them down. “They could not be with any woman who has such lovely children as mine—so much happiness to look forward to.”
• • • • •
And so were bridged the years between.