Dear Joe:I will marry you now, if you won’t ask me to give up my job.
Dear Joe:
I will marry you now, if you won’t ask me to give up my job.
“I don’t wonder you wrote it,” said Hardy, when he met her for lunch.
“Joe, it’s the only way!”
“It’s notmyway,” said he.
She reminded him that he had promised her to do whatever she wanted, and he replied that he would do so—except in this instance.
“Well, I won’t let you have the burden of taking care of Aunt Bessie,” she told him. “It’s bad enough for you to think of getting married, anyhow, when you’re so young, and just at the beginning of a wonderful career—”
“Young, am I? Then what about you?” he asked. “No! When you marry me, you’ll be done with offices. That’s something I won’t argue about.”
She pretended to be angry, but in her heart she adored him when he was magnificent and arbitrary.
“It isn’t really a lie,” said Edith. “I really do go to the French class.”
“It’s too near a lie to suit me,” said Hardy bluntly. “I’m sick of this hole-and-corner business. It’s—can’t you see for yourself that it’s degrading to both of us? Edith, can’t we be honest about this? Let me go and see your aunt, and tell her the whole thing. If she makes a row, I dare say I can live through it.”
“I dare sayyoucould,” Edith answered briefly.
They were coming near to one of the gates of Central Park. Their walk together was almost at an end—a walk which only a few weeks ago would have been a delight almost unsupportable, a thing to lie awake at night remembering, to think of all through a busy day. Now that rapture, that glamour, was gone. With all their love, their hope, their blind tenderness for each other, they were bitter at heart.
It was a wild, bright October evening. The moon seemed rocking in the fitful clouds, the wind sprang like a kitten along the paths after the dry leaves, the bare trees creaked stiff and resistant. All the world was in motion, restless, hurried. All things were free—except themselves. It was intolerable to Hardy, an affront to his fine young pride in himself, his magnificent assurance. It was petty, base, shameful!
“Edith!” he said suddenly. “I won’t go on like this!”
She stopped short in the middle of the path.
“I’m tired of hearing that,” she replied, in a queer, unsteady voice. “You’re always saying that—always blaming me; and you know we’ve got to go on like this—or not go on at all!”
“We haven’t. That’s what I’m always trying to tell you,” he said stormily. “We don’t have to meet this way—in this beastly, lying way—pretending to your aunt that your French lesson is for two hours instead of one, so that we can have one hour a week alone together. Tell her! Let her be upset! She’ll have to know some time. Then at least I can come to see you in your own place, decently and honorably.”
“I will not tell her now! You do[Pg 154]n’t realize what it’ll mean to Aunt Bessie. You don’t care. She hasn’t any one but me. Iwon’ttell her now, and let her have all that long time to think about—losing me. She’s going to be happy as long as possible.”
Hardy took her arm.
“Come on,” he said, “or you’ll be ten minutes late, and she’ll have a nervous attack and keep you up all night, as usual!”
But when he felt how she was shivering in her thin jacket, a terrible compunction seized him.
“Oh, Edith!” he cried. “Edith, never mind all that! Darling little Edith, it’s only our affair, after all! Let’s get married now, before I go!”
“You know we can’t,” she said, with a sob. “Not when you’re so obstinate and—and unkind. You know we couldn’t manage for ourselves and Aunt Bessie, too, in any place where she’d be comfortable, just on your salary; and you’re so unreasonable about my job!”
“Look here, Edith—I’ll sell that blamed stock, and that’ll provide for Aunt Bessie until I’ve got my raise.”
“You won’t! You shan’t!” She pulled her arm away from him, and roughly wiped away the tears running down her cheeks. “Don’t you dare to mention such a thing! I’m not going to ruin your whole life just for—”
“Well, you’ve ruined it!” said Hardy. “I can tell you that, if it’s any satisfaction to you. I don’t care now what happens to me, or whether I go on or not. You’ve shown me how little you care for me. You’ve—Edith!”
She had started running along the path, but he easily overtook her. All at once their arms were about each other, Edith’s wet cheek against his, and all their pain, their bitterness, lost in a passion of tenderness and remorse.
Still Hardy went about the office, magnificent as ever, very well aware of being a remarkable young fellow, who was to be made assistant buyer at twenty-three, a man talked about, admired, and envied. He was still proud of himself, still sure of himself, but some of the magic had gone out of it, some of the zest. He couldn’t look forward to that trip to Europe with unmixed joy now.
Indeed, all the joys he had at this time were so mixed with anxiety and impatience that he could scarcely recognize them. He dreaded leaving Edith. He imagined all sorts of misfortunes that might befall her in his absence. Sometimes he even resented his splendid future, because it so burdened and harassed the present. He wanted to livenow, not to wait.
Worst of all was the humiliation he endured from their furtive and hasty meetings. He had never before in his life been furtive, or even cautious. He had lived boldly and rashly, in the light of day, and it hurt and angered him to do otherwise. He wanted to love boldly and rashly. He wanted to be proud of his love.
Well, he wasn’t proud; he was ashamed.
He couldn’t understand Edith’s viewpoint. Her life had been so repressed, so weighted down by unjust and inordinate demands upon her, that she was thankful for the briefest minutes of happiness. If she could meet Hardy for ten minutes on a street corner, she was joyous for those ten minutes—when he would let her be. He tried to let her. He would watch her coming toward him—such a gallant little figure!—and he would make up his mind to be tender and considerate; but when she was with him, when he saw her ill dressed and ill nourished, and couldn’t help her, when he saw her glance at her watch even when he was speaking, his good resolutions only too often vanished, and he reproached her bitterly.
She didn’t endure his reproaches meekly. He wouldn’t have loved her, if she had. On the contrary, she replied to him vigorously, and so many, many times they had left each other in anger, to be paid for later by hours of remorse.
Neither of them was quarrelsome by nature, nor was there any lack of real harmony between them. They were both generous, quick to forgive, eager to understand, passionately loyal to each other. Every one of their disagreements would have been quickly adjusted and forgotten, if they had had time; but they never did have time, and neither did this fellow of twenty-three and this girl of twenty have any greater amount of patience and ripe wisdom than others of their age.
Sometimes a sort of panic seized them, and they felt it necessary to “explain.” They had fallen into the habit of taking a little more than the allotted hour for lunch. Though Edith had been solemnly warned[Pg 155]by her superior, she found it impossible to leave Joe in the middle of a speech. He was so unreasonable about her always being in a hurry.
So there was lunch almost every day, and the walk to the Subway, and that hour stolen from the French class once a week, all through October and November, until the trip to Europe was only a few weeks ahead of them. Mr. Plummer hadn’t actually told Hardy he was to go, but the thing was understood. Mr. Loomis, the buyer, was taking pains to train him, and had once or twice said such things as:
“You’ll see how that is for yourself, Hardy, when you’re in France.”
“It’ll probably be before Christmas,” said Hardy. “The idea is that I’m not to be told until Hallock is gone, because I might slack up on my present work. Silly, childish way to do—as if it was a treat for a good boy!”
“Well, it will be a treat, won’t it?” said Edith. “You’ve always—”
He looked across the table at her. The cold air had brought no color into her cheeks. She looked weary, downcast. He could see that her smile was an effort, and in her eyes was the look that he couldn’t bear.
“No!” he said. “I wish to Heaven I wasn’t going! I mean it! If I have to leave you like this—”
“Joe,” she began, and was silent for a minute. “I—I know it’s selfish of me; but—oh, Joe, when I think of your going away—”
Mr. Plummer, who was also taking lunch in that restaurant, saw his promising young man lean across the table and lay his hand on that of Miss Patterson from the auditing department.
“Too bad!” thought Mr. Plummer. “A boy with a remarkable future before him—and getting himself entangled before he’s begun! Too bad! Too bad!”
Fortunately, however, he could not hear what monstrous folly the boy spoke.
“I won’t go, Edith! I’ll stay here with you. Nothing else counts with me but you—only you. I’ll—”
“I want you to go, Joe, darling,” said she, with quivering lips; “but I thought—only I know you wouldn’t! I—if we could just get married before you go, and not tell any one till you come back—just so that we’d really belong to each other—then it wouldn’t be so hard!”
And Hardy, the bold, the rash, the magnificent, who hated anything secret and furtive, looked only once at her dear face, and agreed.
“You’re late again, Miss Patterson,” said Mr. Dunne.
“I’m awfully sorry,” said Edith. “I’ll really try not to again.”
But she didn’t look sorry. She sat down at her desk, flushed and a little out of breath, and, to Mr. Dunne’s great displeasure, there was a smile hovering about her lips.
“Miss Patterson,” said he, “I’m afraid this is once too often.”
Edith looked up in alarm.
“But, you see—” she began, and stopped.
She couldn’t explain to Mr. Dunne that this was a most pardonable lateness, and not at all likely to happen again. Going to the City Hall for a marriage license wouldn’t occupy much of her time in the future. Thinking of this, she smiled again—and lost her job. Mr. Dunne didn’t like people who smiled when they were late.
So it happened that just when she badly needed a smile she hadn’t one. The wretched little imitation she gave to Hardy, an hour later, didn’t deceive him for an instant. He stopped beside her desk—a thing he had never done before.
“What’s the matter?” he demanded, and would not be put off.
No use to tell him that he shouldn’t stand there and talk to her! He knew that very well, and he didn’t care. A mighty rage filled him. Edith, his Edith, his own girl, to be discharged and humiliated like this!
“Get on your hat and jacket,” he commanded, “and come on!”
“Joe! You mustn’t—”
“Look here!” said he. “I won’t have you here like this. If Dunne told you to go, then go now. Good Lord! Haven’t you any pride?”
She was too wretched to be angry at him. She did get on her hat and jacket, and, in full view of every one. Hardy walked out of the office with her at three o’clock on a busy afternoon.
“We’ll go to the flat,” he said, “and talk it over.”
They had a flat of their own. Hardy had insisted upon this.
“We’ll take it now,” he had said: “and[Pg 156]whenever we see anything especially good in the way of furniture, we’ll buy it. Then, when I come back, we’ll have a place of our own all ready for us.”
It wasn’t quite what they wanted, but Hardy had very little money just then, and their only time for house hunting was what they had been able to pilfer from their lunch hour; so they had taken the first one that seemed at all suitable. It consisted of three tiny rooms in a remodeled house west of Central Park.
They had already become inordinately fond of this future home. To be sure, there was nothing in it except a barrel containing a Limoges dinner set, which Hardy had bought from a shipment received at the office; but Edith had made a flying visit and measured the windows for curtains, and after that she could look upon the place as her own.
This afternoon, when Hardy opened the door with his latchkey, the place was obviously afuturehome. It was bare, bleak, and dusty, with slanting sun rays falling across the ill laid board floor of what was going to be the sitting room.
The door closed behind them, and there they were, alone, with plenty of time for talking now, and neither of them said one word. Hardy began walking about. His footsteps made a loud and somehow a melancholy sound. His voice in the empty little rooms was not at all his confident office voice, but boyish, and, to Edith, terribly touching.
She sat down on the barrel, struggling against her despair and misery, while he moved about in the kitchen, mocked by a gas stove with no gas in it, and water taps that gave forth no water. She knew how he felt; she knew what he would say.
“But I won’t!” she thought. “I’ll get another job. I won’t let him take care of Aunt Bessie now. I won’t! I won’t! Not now, when he’s just beginning.”
If she were making resolves in the sitting room, so was Hardy in the kitchen. He hadn’t been singled out by Mr. Plummer because of his gentleness and consideration. He had a remarkable future because he was remarkably persistent and clear-sighted about getting his own way, and Edith was no match for him.
“No!” said he. “No more jobs! We’ll tell your auntnow, and we’ll get married to-morrow, as we planned, and we’ll move in here.”
“We can’t, Joe. We haven’t any furniture, you know—”
“Then we’ll get it.”
“And Aunt Bessie—”
“We’ll see Aunt Bessie now. Look here, little Edith! It’s got to be this way. I couldn’t have my wife running about looking for a job. I couldn’t go away and leave you working in a strange office. It was bad enough in the old place. Look here, Edith, don’t you think you can be happy with me? Don’t you love me enough?”
“I love you too much, Joe! It’s not fair to you. You’ll—oh, Joe, you’ll have to sell your stock, and Mr. Plummer—”
“Edith,” he said, “I’ve been thinking lately—I don’t know how to put it very well—but it seems to me that maybe it’s a mistake to live so much in the future. Suppose there wasn’t any future—for us? Suppose something happened to one of us? Edith, I can’t stand thinking of that! Look here! Let’s just live now, and not be afraid of what’s going to happen. Let’s start this thing”—he stopped for a moment—“with courage and confidence,” he finished.
She put her hand on his cheek and turned his head so that she could look into his honest, steady eyes.
“Let’s!” she said, with a very unsteady little smile. “I feel that way, too, Joe. We’ll begin this minute, and unpack the china, just so that we’ll—we’ll feel at home!”
Hardy turned his back upon Mr. Plummer, and looked out of the window. It was a cold, rainy day. The people far below on the street were hurrying by under umbrellas.
“In that case, Hardy,” said Mr. Plummer, “I’m sorry, but—”
“Yes, sir,” said Hardy.
He couldn’t, at that moment, say anything more. Something had risen into his throat and silenced him. He would have liked to speak, to tell the man who had shown so kindly an interest in him that he regretted his hasty and violent words. He hadn’t meant all that he said. He had come to tell Mr. Plummer that he wanted to sell his stock. He had listened, as patiently as he could, while his employer remonstrated with him. He had endured a pretty stiff lecture upon his recent slackness and lack of attention to work, because[Pg 157]he knew he deserved it; but when Mr. Plummer undertook to warn him about “entangling” himself with that “young woman in the auditing department;” all his genuine respect for his chief had vanished in an overwhelming anger. That “young woman” was his Edith!
He didn’t like, now, to recall what he had said.
“I’m sorry, Hardy,” said Mr. Plummer again. He was looking at the boy with an odd expression on his lined face, a look half respectful, half sorrowful. As a man, he liked Hardy the better for his outburst, but as a business man he deplored it.
“I wish you the best of luck, my boy,” he said. “Refer to me at any time.”
“Thank you, sir,” said Hardy.
Off he went, with his words of apology unsaid, with five years of friendly interest unrewarded, and with his own heart like lead. He walked through the office for the last time, and into the corridor, leaving so much behind him.
Edith was waiting for him in the lobby.
“Oh, Joe!” she cried. “I found a place uptown where they promised to deliver the furniture this afternoon. Imagine! And I got the dearest material for curtains! I brought a sample to show you.”
She was opening her hand bag, but he stopped her.
“No, don’t,” he said curtly. “Not just now.”
Here she was, chattering about curtains, after all that had happened! He remembered how he had left her the evening before, after a horrible interview with her aunt. He remembered her pitiful attempts to soothe and comfort that hysterical old demon, and her anguish when she failed so utterly, and was told that if she married “that man” she would be cast off—except for the trifling communications necessary to continuing her support of the martyr.
“And I couldn’t sleep for worrying about her!” he thought bitterly. “I thought she’d be ill, and look at her now—perfectly happy, talking about curtains!”
“Come on!” he said aloud, and then stopped, with a frown. “Haven’t you any umbrella?” he asked.
“I have one,” she replied, “but not here. It wasn’t raining when I started.”
“Edith!” he said suddenly. “Don’t you remember?”
How could he have imagined that she was happy, or that her mind was filled with thoughts of curtains? That small, gallant, smiling thing, so pale, so troubled, with the shadow of her suffering dark in her eyes!
“It’s nearly twelve, Joe,” she said, looking at her watch. “We haven’t much time.”
“Oh, yes, we have!” he told her. “We have any amount of time, for I’m never going back there.”
“Joe!” she cried. “Oh, Joe! Oh, no, no! Don’t tell me you’ve—”
He drew a long breath, and then looked down at her with a grin.
“You’ve got a young man with a remarkably uncertain future,” he said. “Never mind—we’ll start a new future. Anyhow, I shan’t have to go to Europe now, and leave you.”
“Oh, Joe! What have I done?”
“I did it myself,” he said sturdily, “and I’m glad. Thank Heaven, we’ve got time, now, for a nice, peaceful wedding![Pg 158]”
MUNSEY’SMAGAZINE
JULY, 1924Vol. LXXXIINUMBER 2
[Pg 159]
By Elisabeth Sanxay Holding
AFTER each stroke of the brush her bright hair flew out in glittering threads, and in the strong light that centered upon the mirror her vivid little face seemed framed in a sort of unearthly radiance. She looked at the reflected image, at her great, solemn amber eyes, at her white shoulders, at that sparkling flood of hair.
A brief moment of joy that was, however, for almost at once came other thoughts that put an end to it. She grew disconsolate and troubled. With a sigh she threw down the hairbrush, and, going over to the table, picked up her book. Being pretty wasn’t going to do her any good. On the contrary, it might well be another charge against her, another offense in a list already very long.
“They’ll say he married me just because I’m pretty,” she reflected.
And it was not so! Her incomparable Denis had seen and loved and praised all those things in her heart of which she was honestly proud. He loved her because she was valiant and loyal and tender.
“Of course, he does like my looks,” she thought; “but even when I’m old and ugly, he’ll still feel the same toward me. He said so—and I know it!”
But how was she to make these terrible people see all that? What she needed for the ordeal before her was dignity, assurance, poise—that was it. She had even gone so far as to buy a book on etiquette, to find the secret. Useless! No situation like hers was mentioned in the portentous volume. The bride received a visit from her husband’s family, or he brought her to visit them, but there was no help offered to a bride who was suddenly commanded to go all alone to meet her new people for the first time.
She looked through the pages again. “The Etiquette of Weddings”—there had been precious little of that abouttheirwedding—just she and Denis and a strange clergyman, with a deaconess and the sexton for witnesses. “The Bride’s Family”—hers was hundreds of miles away, in Maine. “The Groom’s Family”—she closed the book violently.
“I ought to be ashamed of myself!” she cried.
It seemed like treachery toward her own people, this fear of Denis’s family. There was no reason on earth why she shouldn’t go to them with her head high, no reason why she shouldn’t have poise. She must; she would summon it up from the depth of her anxious heart, so that she might do credit to her Denis.
“And they may be very nice to me,” she said to herself, without for an instant believing in the probability.
She remembered the letters that Denis had received from his mother after he had written to tell her of his engagement. He had never read a word of them to Emily, but his face told her enough, and the black gloom that settled over him. He admitted that his mother wanted him to wait—he didn’t say how long, or for what, but Emily knew very well. His mother was hoping that time would cure his deplorable and unaccountable folly of wishing to marry an American stenographer.
Well, it hadn’t. Their engagement had lasted five months—not a very happy time for either of them, because of the depression that seized Denis every time he had a letter from his people, or was in any way reminded of them. Emily had endured this with admirable patience. She knew that he loved her with all his honest heart, that he was proud of her, and that he could[Pg 160]n’t help his queer, tribal notions about his family. He was always saying that “a fellow owes it to his family” to do this or that, and it was the strongest possible proof of his love for Emily that he clung to her in spite of their opposition.
Still, no matter how willing she was to understand Denis’s point of view, Emily couldn’t be expected to share his reverence for his relatives. On the contrary, she often found it very hard to hold her tongue—as, for instance, on the day when he came to her with the air of an absolutely desperate man, and told her that he was ordered off to New Orleans on forty-eight hours’ notice, to survey a damaged hull, and that they must be married before he left.
When she objected, he threatened to throw up the whole business—that flourishing business as a marine surveyor which was the very apple of his eye—because he could not and would not leave Emily unless he left her as his wife. She was secretly delighted by this impetuous and domineering conduct, and sorry for him, too, because he was so obviously upset; and yet she was exasperated. He couldn’t hide the fact that he was making a tremendous sacrifice in affronting his sacrosanct people for her sake.
After the wedding he had sent a cable announcing it to his mother. Then a reckless gayety had come over him, like that of a man who has nothing more to lose.
“I don’t care!” said Emily to herself, with tears in her eyes. “It’s all part of his darlingness. He’s so terribly loyal!”
Of course, he hadn’t imagined that his family would descend upon Emily like this, when he was away. He had expected them to stay in England, where they belonged. He would have been appalled at the thought of this meeting.
The latest development had come upon Emily like a thunderbolt. That morning a letter had been brought up to her, and, without the faintest suspicion, she had opened it to read:
My Dear Emily:I should be very pleased if you would dine with us this evening at half past seven.Most sincerely yours,Maude Lanier.
My Dear Emily:
I should be very pleased if you would dine with us this evening at half past seven.
Most sincerely yours,Maude Lanier.
She had sent a messenger boy with her acceptance, because she knew that that was what Denis would have wished; but she couldn’t make the best of it, couldn’t recapture the smiling, careless bravery that Denis so loved in her. She had had courage enough to leave her dear, shabby old home at eighteen and go off to try her luck in the wide world. She had been able to give Denis the most gallant, bright farewell. She had faced more than one black moment in her twenty years, but she could not face Denis’s family untroubled.
She had given herself two hours to dress in, and she needed every second of the time. Her prettiness seemed to ebb away with every breath she drew. That radiant hair was an unruly tangle when she tried to put it up. The brightness fled from her face, leaving it pale and strained. The dark dress that Denis had admired so much was admirable no longer, but austerely plain and grievously unbecoming. Emily could have wept at her own image in the mirror.
“I look so—so mean!” she cried, with a sob. “Such a meek, scared, silly little object!”
This wouldn’t do. The thing that the serious Denis had loved best of all in her was her absurd, delightful gayety. She straightened her shoulders and drew a long breath.
“You know,” she said to her own reflection, “Denis pickedyouout from all the other girls in the world, and now you’ve simply got to show the reason why. Even if you’re hideous, you needn’t be dismal. Here goes!”
So she managed a smile, after all.
She had been Mrs. Denis Lanier for only five weeks, had had a check book and money to spend for the same short time, and it was still a little intoxicating. She ordered a taxi from her room by telephone, and when it was announced she went down into the lobby almost her own debonair self again. Think of Mrs. Denis Lanier, in a fur coat and a pearl necklace, getting into her taxi!
Her father was a professor in a small New England college, and Emily had been brought up with a full understanding of the woeful discrepancy between the tastes and the incomes of professors and their families. She had learned to be happy without any of the things for which her young heart thirsted. It was the very essence of her nature to be happy; but it cannot be denied that she was a hundred times more happy now that she possessed some share of worldly goods. She wished[Pg 161]and tried to be high-minded, and still she couldn’t forget her pearl necklace.
Mrs. Lanier was established in a hotel of the sort which Emily had never yet entered. Directly she entered its august portals, she felt herself dwindle again. What were her fur coat and her necklace here? Who was Mrs. Denis Lanier? Nothing at all!
She went up to the desk and told the haughty young man there that Mrs. Denis Lanier wished to see Mrs. Cecil Lanier; and then she waited.
It was the waiting that unnerved her. If some one had come at once, if she had been taken upstairs without delay, her courage might have held out; but to sit there, alone and unregarded, while fifteen endless minutes went by, was too much for her. She began seriously to contemplate running away.
“She’s doing it on purpose—just to be rude and hateful!” she thought. “I won’t stay! Denis wouldn’t want me to stay. It’s humiliating and—”
She was aware then that some one had come up behind her and stopped at her side, looking down at her. What is more, she felt certain that it was a critical, hostile look.
“Very well!” said she to herself. “Go ahead and stare! It doesn’t bother me the least little bit in the world!”
She sat quite still, trying valiantly not to care; but it was unendurable. She felt her face flush. She stirred uneasily, and very soon she turned, to glance up into a pair of glacial blue eyes.
“Is this Emily?” asked the other. “I fancied so.”
Remarkable, the implications that could be put into six short words!
“Yes,” said Emily. “I’m—I am. And you’re—this is Denis’s mother?”
For a moment they regarded each other in silence, and each with the same thought, almost audible:
“Iknewyou’d be like this!”
Of course Denis’s mother was like this—a handsome, gray-haired woman, tall, rather angular, with a disdainful nose and a faint, chilly little smile. In spite of her queer, stiff, high-waisted figure, her very unbecoming coiffure, her positively ugly black satin dress, she produced an effect of extraordinary magnificence.
“It’s very odd of Denis to go off that way,” she said.
“He couldn’t help it,” returned Emily hotly. “He had to go.”
“Cecil, my younger son, called in at Denis’s office directly we landed, and he was told that Denis had gone away,” Mrs. Lanier went on, without noticing the interruption. “As soon as we had his cable, we arranged to come. It seems to me very odd that he should run off like that! However”—she paused for a moment, looking carefully at Emily—“perhaps we’d better dine upstairs, alone,” she added, “instead of in the restaurant. I know quite a number of people here.”
With burning cheeks and eyes averted, Emily murmured:
“That would be nicer.”
As they walked together toward the lift, she tried to smile, to talk brightly; but she was terribly hurt—even more hurt than angry.
But this was Denis’s mother, a person of supreme importance in his world. He couldn’t help but be influenced by her opinion; so her opinionmustbe favorable.
“Is it—do you find it comfortable here?” Emily asked politely.
Mrs. Lanier seemed surprised that any one should imagine her comfortable here. She smiled wearily.
“I’ve been in the States before,” she answered. “I dare say I shall do very well for a time. I’m sorry, though, to hear that you and Denis are going to live about in hotels.”
“But we’re not! We’re going to start housekeeping just as soon as he—”
“Denis is very domestic, like his father. I’m sorry to think of his having to live about in hotels,” Mrs. Lanier went on. “However—”
She preceded Emily down a corridor. At the end she opened a door, and they entered a small sitting room.
“We must have a little chat,” said Mrs. Lanier, “before Cecil comes in.”
She took up a packet of letters from the console near her, and began looking over them.
“Let me see,” she said. “Ah, here it is! ‘She is only twenty, and very young for her age,’ Denis tells me. Are you really? And then he says—let me see—‘a remarkably sweet disposition.’ That’s very nice, I’m sure. ‘Her people are thoroughly respectable, decent people, but[Pg 162]they’—well, no matter. ‘She is a very clever and amusing girl.’”
This went on for an intolerable time. Extracts from poor Denis’s letters were read aloud, as if for purposes of comparison with the real Emily, and from time to time Mrs. Lanier asked very direct questions about her parents, her education, her financial position. In the end, Emily had an excellent picture of herself as she appeared to Denis’s mother—a silly, awkward girl, without money or position, who had somehow cajoled a fine young man to his destruction.
She made no attempt to defend herself. She had no great talent for that. She was a sensitive, impulsive creature, quite lacking in self-satisfaction. Moreover, she was very young and inexperienced, and perhaps a little too willing to learn.
She began to think that she really was the contemptible creature that Mrs. Lanier believed her to be. A sense of guilt oppressed her. She sat before her imperturbable judge, pale and downcast, answering the older woman’s questions in a low, unsteady voice.
Presently Mrs. Lanier had an ally in her daughter Cynthia, a cool, casual blond girl, who looked as if she could be beautiful if she liked, but didn’t think it worth trying. Cynthia didn’t ask questions. That, too, she seemed to think not worth trying. She simply began conversations which died at once, because Emily could take no share in them.
There was really no malice in Cynthia—only a measureless indifference to other people and their unimportant feelings. When she discovered that Emily had never set foot in Paris, had never been to the opera or to a race, and bought her clothes in department stores, she saw that poor Denis’s wife was hopeless, and simply stopped talking.
By this time Emily quite agreed with her. The window was open, and Mrs. Lanier had asked her daughter to shut off “that horrible heat.” In a temperature that caused Emily to shiver in misery, those two superior creatures sat in calm comfort.
Very well—if they could endure the cold, in their low-cut frocks, then Emily, in a cloth dress, could also endure it, and would. She would endure their little stinging, icy words, too—every one of them.
In desperation she made an effort to imitate Cynthia’s cool and casual air. A pitiable failure! There was precious little coolness in her strained smile, her faltering words. The last trace of poise had slipped from her. She no longer tried to hold her own, but simply to endure.
“They’ll tell Denis,” she thought, over and over again. “Nothing could really make him change toward me; but oh, this will hurt him so! If only they had waited! Oh, if only they had waited until—until I was a little older and—and had more poise!”
A waiter came in to lay the table, and Mrs. Lanier ordered a dinner of all the things that Emily most heartily disliked—such a cold, flat sort of dinner!
“Cecil should be here by now,” observed Mrs. Lanier, with a glance at the clock. “He promised to make a particular effort to come, on Denis’s account. Poor Cecil!”
Emily wondered in what way she had injured Cecil, that he should be sighed over in this fashion.
It was now after eight o’clock, but Mrs. Lanier decided to wait for the poor boy until half past eight; so there they sat, in the icy room, and all of them silent now. Cynthia had given up, Mrs. Lanier had asked all the questions in her mind, and certainly Emily was not inclined to introduce any topic on her own account. She was stiff with cold, and she fancied her miserable heart was numbed, too. She didn’t care very much about anything.
“Hello, people!” cried a jolly voice.
There in the doorway stood a most engaging young fellow—a real human being, thought Emily, a creature warm and happy, and able to smile. Smile he did, and directly at Emily.
“Cecil!” said Mrs. Lanier. “Denis’s wife, you know.”
He went over to her gladly, and took her cold little hand in a cordial grasp.
“Clever of Denis!” he observed. “Very!”
She looked up at him, half incredulous, but in his face there was no mockery, no disdain—nothing but a very frank approbation. Sheknewthat he thought her pretty. In the bright glow of his admiration her prettiness seemed suddenly to come to life again, her frozen heart beat faster, and color rose in her cheeks. A friend had come!
What is more, Cecil was a powerful[Pg 163]friend. He had a cheerful, domineering sort of way with his mother and sister, and it was obvious that they idolized him. He said that Emily was chilly, and that the window was to be closed and the heat turned on. They suffered terribly, but did not complain. He consulted Emily about the proposed menu. He insisted upon knowing what she really liked, and saw that she got it. He made her talk and made her laugh, because he was so persistently cheerful and silly, and his mother and sister looked on with an air of patient indulgence.
Back came all her native gayety. She didn’t fear or dislike these frigid women any more. She wasn’t a meek, scared, silly little object now; she was the girl Denis loved, and they would have to love her, too. She felt sure of herself, radiant, happy, no longer alien and oppressed; and beyond all measure grateful to her new friend, her brother Cecil.
Nothing had been said by any of the Laniers about seeing her again, and Emily had consulted her book on etiquette in vain for a hint. She was the more disturbed by this because she had had a letter from Denis—a solemn, miserable letter, filled with careful descriptions of the scenery and the weather. Through it all, in every line, she could read his longing for her and his great anxiety about her. Such a dear,stupidletter—honest and serious and manly, like Denis himself. He knew well enough how to love, but nothing at all about making love.
He hadn’t heard yet of his family’s arrival in New York, and, thought Emily, he was not going to get the news from them first. Very likely his mother would write to him by the same mail, but he would surely read Emily’s letter first, and he should have her account of the meeting.
Just what ought she to tell him? She would say, of course, that she had dined with his people.
“And then shall I say I’m going to call on them? Or should I invite them here to dinner?” she thought. “Or ought I just to wait?”
She was in her room, struggling with this problem, when Mr. Cecil Lanier was announced. She hastened down into the lounge, very much pleased. Here was something else to tell Denis. There was at least one member of his family that she could praise with candor.
She welcomed Cecil with frank pleasure, and he, on his part, seemed so remarkably glad to see her again, so very friendly, that a new and daring idea sprang up in her mind. It might be more diplomatic and more polite to wait a little, however. In spite of his jolly, friendly manner, there was something rather impressive about Cecil. He wasn’t to be treated too casually.
He was really younger than Denis, but he seemed older, not only because his face was a little worn, and his smiling eyes a little tired, but because of his affable worldliness. Denis, in his earnestness, his straightforward simplicity, had sometimes seemed quite boyish to Emily, but there was no trace of boyishness in Cecil. He was a charming fellow, handsome, courteous, and amusing, and he knew it. Emily had mighty little worldly wisdom, but she did not lack intuition, and she thought—and rightly—that Cecil would be extraordinarily kind and obliging to any one he liked, and by no means so to those he did not like; so she decided to make him like her.
It was not difficult. He had already been attracted to her the evening before, and he was delighted with her this afternoon. The time fairly flew. They had tea together at five o’clock; and after what seemed only a few minutes, it was seven.
“Let’s go out somewhere and have dinner,” said he.
“Oh!” said Emily. “I’d like to, but—aren’t there other things you have to do?”
She was thinking of his mother.
“I never have anything to do,” Cecil assured her cheerfully. “That’s the great advantage of being hopelessly incompetent. Ican’tdo anything, you know.”
“I don’t believe that. I’m sure you could do almost anything, if you tried,” said Emily.
She hadn’t meant to say it in quite that tone, or with quite that admiring glance, and she grew a little red as he returned the glance with interest.
“I’m never going to try,” said he. “Once you start, people begin to expect things of you.” He paused. “But if there’s anythingyou’dlike done, Emily—”
She had no more poise left then than you could put into a thimble. She had a favor to ask of Cecil, and she felt sure he would grant it. She was determined to ask it,[Pg 164]too, and saw no reason why she should not, and yet—and yet, in spite of his kindliness, Cecil made her uneasy and confused.
“I just thought,” she began, “that if you were going to write to Denis—”
“Never wrote to him in my life,” said Cecil; “but look here, Emily!”
She did not look there, but down at her clasped hands. After a glance around the empty tea room, Cecil bent forward and took one of these hands.
“Look here!” he said again. “Do you mean—you poor little kid!—do you mean there’s something you don’t like to tell him yourself? Denis is such a confoundedly high-minded—”
“Oh,no!” cried Emily, shocked. “Mercy, no! I only thought—if you were going to write—” Well, she had to finish it now. “I thought maybe you’d tell him that you’d met me, and that you—you didn’t think I was so horrible.”
Cecil looked at her for a moment with a singular expression.
“I see!” he said, with a faint smile. “I don’t think you’re exactly horrible, Emily; but still, I don’t think I’d better write and tell old Denis so.”
“Why?”
“Well, you see—”
Emily, looking at him, did see, in a vague, uneasy fashion. She did not care to ask Cecil for any explanation. Suddenly she didn’t want to talk to him any more. She made all sorts of polite excuses, which he accepted very good-humoredly, and they parted in the most friendly way; but in her heart, Emilyneverwanted to see him again.
She cried herself to sleep that night, longing for her dear, honest, comprehensible Denis, and wishing she need see nobody else but Denis all the rest of her life.
When Cecil came again the next afternoon, she could think of no good reason for refusing to see him. After all, what had she against him? Nothing at all—nothing real. He hadn’t said a word that she could resent. It was only—well, she didn’t know what—something in his smile, in his tired eyes.
“It’s my own fault,” she decided. “I know he’d be all right, if I weren’t so—silly. If I had more poise—”
This afternoon she had an unusual amount of poise, for she had had a letter from Denis that made her happy. She was Denis’s wife, and she really didn’t care a snap of her fingers about any one else on earth.
She found Cecil charming that day.
“Let’s go out somewhere,” he suggested. “It would do me no end of good—that is, if you’ll be jolly and a little bit kind to me. I’m not happy to-day, Emily.”
She believed that. She fancied that perhaps he was never very happy, and she felt sorry for him. She was still more sorry when she saw how quickly he responded to her own cheerful mood.
It cannot be denied that this very superficiality of his made him a most engaging companion. They took a taxi up to the Botanical Gardens, went into the hemlock forest there, and wandered about for two hours, breaking the enchanted stillness with their careless, happy talk, without a moment’s constraint or weariness. Away from hotels and family conventions, Cecil was a very different fellow. His polite sophistication vanished, and with it his misleading pretense of being a cheerful idiot. He wasn’t that. He was clever, adroit, and by no means apathetic.
As the sun was beginning to sink, they strolled out of the forest and across the hilltop and the smooth meadows, past the greenhouses, to the entrance. It was growing chilly, and they were tired and furiously hungry.
“We’ll have tea now,” said Cecil. “Please don’t always object, Emily!”
So they took another taxi down town, to a sedate little tea room that Emily suggested, and after tea he left her at her hotel.
“Thank you, Emily,” he said simply. “I’ve never had a better day.”
Emily, too, was happy. She wanted to rush upstairs and write all about it to Denis. He was always pleased when she spent her time out of doors, and he looked upon walking as a solemn duty. He said that she didn’t walk nearly enough—that no American girls did.
“Mrs. Lanier!” said the desk clerk, as she stopped for her key.
With a cordial smile, he handed her a note. She recognized the handwriting as her mother-in-law’s, and took the envelope with no great pleasure. Nor was she in a hurry to open it. She took off her dusty shoes and her street suit, put on slippers and a mandarin coat, let down her glittering flood of hair, and only then, when she[Pg 165]was lying in comfort on the bed, did she open the thing.