XVII.
TWO days later Fred Landers returned.
Mrs. Clephane had sent a note begging him to call her up as soon as he arrived. When his call came she asked if she might dine with him that night, and he replied that she ought to have come without asking. Anne, he supposed, would honour him too?
No, she answered; Anne, the day before, had gone down to the Drovers’ on Long Island. She would probably be away for a few days. And would Fred please ask no one else to dine? He assured her that such an idea would never have occurred to him.
He received her in the comfortable shabby drawing-room which he had never changed since his mother and an old-maid sister had vanished from it years before. He indulged his own tastes in the library upstairs, leaving this chintzy room, with its many armchairs, the Steinway piano and the family Chippendale, much as Kate had known it when old Mrs. Landers had given her a bridal dinner. The memory of that dinner, and of Mrs. Landers, large, silvery, demonstrative, flashed through Mrs. Clephane’s mind. She saw herself in an elaboratelylooped gown, proudly followed by her husband, and enclosed in her hostess’s rustling embrace, while her present host, crimson with emotion and admiration, hung shyly behind his mother; and the memory gave her a pang of self-pity.
In the middle of the room she paused and looked about her. “It feels like home,” she said, without knowing what she was saying.
A flush almost as agitated as the one she remembered mounted to Landers’s forehead. She saw his confusion and pleasure, and was remotely touched by them.
“You see, I’m homeless,” she explained with a faint smile.
“Homeless?”
“Oh, I can’t remember when I was ever anything else. I’ve been a wanderer for so many years.”
“But not any more,” he smiled.
The double mahogany doors were thrown open. Landers, with his stiff little bow, offered her an arm, and they passed into a dusky flock-papered dining-room which seemed to borrow most of its lighting from the sturdy silver and monumental cut-glass of the dinner-table. A bunch of violets, compact and massive, lay by her plate. Everything about Fred Landers was old-fashioned, solid and authentic. She sank into her chair with a sense of its being a place of momentary refuge. She did not mean to speak till after dinner—then she would tell him everythingshe thought. “How delicious they are!” she murmured, smelling the violets.
In the library, after dinner, Landers settled her in his deepest armchair, moved the lamp away, pressed a glass of old Chartreuse on her, and said: “And now, what’s wrong?”
The suddenness and the perspicacity of the question took her by surprise. She had imagined he would leave the preliminaries to her, or at any rate beat about the subject in a clumsy effort to get at it. But she perceived that, awkward and almost timorous as he remained in smaller ways, the mere habit of life had given him a certain self-assurance at important moments. It was she who now felt a tremor of reluctance. How could she tell him—what could she tell him?
“Well, you know, I reallyamhomeless,” she began. “Or at least, in remaining where I am I’m forfeiting my last shred of self-respect. Anne has told me that her experiment has been a mistake.”
“What experiment?”
“Having me back.”
“Is that what she calls it—an experiment?”
Mrs. Clephane nodded.
Fred Landers stood leaning against the mantelpiece, an unlit cigar in his hand. His face expressed perplexity and perturbation. “I don’t understand. What has happened? She seemed to adore you.”
“Yes; as a visitor; a chaperon; a travelling companion.”
“Well—that’s not so bad to begin with.”
“No; but it has nothing on earth to do with the real relation between a mother and daughter.”
“Oh,that—”
It was her turn to flush. “You agree with Anne, then, that I’ve forfeited all right to claim it?”
He seemed embarrassed. “What do you mean by claiming it?”
She hesitated a moment; then she began. It was not the story she had meant to tell; she had hardly opened her lips before she understood that it would be as impossible to tell that to Fred Landers as to Anne. For an instant, as he welcomed her to the familiar house, so full of friendly memories, she had had the illusion of nearness to him, the sense of a brotherly reassuring presence. But as she began to speak of Chris every one else in her new life except her daughter became remote and indistinct to her. She supposed it could not be otherwise. She had chosen to cast her lot elsewhere, and now, coming back after so many years, she found the sense of intimacy and confidence irreparably destroyed. What did she really know of the present Fred Landers, or he of her? All she found herself able to say was that when she had heard that Anne meant to marry Chris Fenno she had thought it her duty to try to prevent the marriage; and that thegirl had guessed her interference and could not forgive her. She elaborated on this, lingering over the relatively insignificant details of her successive talks with her daughter in the attempt to delay the moment when Landers should begin to question her.
She saw that he was deeply disturbed, but perhaps not altogether sorry. He had never liked Chris, she knew, and the news of the engagement was clearly a shock to him. He said he had seen and heard nothing of Fenno since Anne and her mother had left. Landers, who could not recall that either Horace Maclew or Lilla had ever mentioned him, had concluded that the young man was no longer a member of their household, and probably not even in Baltimore. If he were, Lilla would have been sure to keep her hold on him; he was too useful a diner and dancer to be lost sight of—and much more in Lilla’s line, one would have fancied, than in Anne’s.
Kate Clephane winced at the unconscious criticism. “He gave me his word that he would go,” she said with a faint sigh of relief.
Fred Landers continued to lean meditatively against the chimney-piece.
“You said nothing at all to Anne herself at the time?” he asked, after another interval.
“No. Perhaps I was wrong; but I was afraid to. I felt I didn’t know her well enough—yet.”
Instantly she saw how he would interpret her avowal, and her colour rose again. She must have felt, then, that she knew Major Fenno better; the inference was inevitable.
“You found it easier to speak to Fenno?”
She hesitated. “I cared so much less for what he felt.”
“Of course,” he sighed. “And you knew damaging things about him? Evidently, since he broke the engagement when you told him to.”
Again she faltered. “I knew something of his past life—enough to be sure he wasn’t the kind of husband for Anne. I made him understand it. That’s all.”
“Ah. Well, I’m not surprised. I suspected he was trying for her, and I own I hated the idea. But now I suppose there’s no help for it—”
“No help?” She looked up in dismay.
“Well—is there? To be so savage with you she must be pretty well determined to have him back. How the devil are you going to stop it?”
“I can’t. Butyou—oh, Fred, you must!”—Her eyes clung imploringly to his troubled face.
“But I don’t know anything definite! If thereisanything—anything one can really take hold of—you’ll have to tell me. I’ll do all I can; but if I interfere without good reason, I know it will only make Anne more determined. Have you forgotten what the Clephanes are like?”
She had lowered her head again, and sat desolately staring at the floor. With the little wood-fire playing on the hearth, and this honest kindly man looking down at her, how safe and homelike the room seemed! Yet her real self was not in it at all, but blown about on a lonely wind of anguish, outside in the night. And so it would always be, she supposed.
“Won’t you tell me exactly what there is against him?” she heard Landers repeat.
The answer choked in her throat. Finally she brought out: “Oh, I don’t know ... women ... the usual thing.... He’s light....”
“But is it all just hearsay? Or have you proof—proof of any one particular rotten thing?”
“Isn’t his giving up and going away sufficient proof?”
“Not if he comes back now when she sends for him.”
The words shot through her like a stab. “Oh, but she mustn’t—she can’t!”
“You’re fairly sure he will come if she does?”
Kate Clephane put up her hands and pressed them against her ears. She could not bear to hear another question. What had been the use of coming to Fred Landers? He had no help to give her, and his insight had only served to crystallize her hazy terrors. She rose slowly from her armchair and held out her hand with a struggling smile.
“You’re right. I suppose there’s nothing more to do.”
“But you’re not going?”
“Yes; I’m tired. And I want to be by myself—to think. I must decide about my own future.”
“Your own future? Oh, nonsense! Let all this blow over. Wait till Anne comes back. The chief thing, of course, is that you should stay with her, whatever happens.”
She put her hand in his. “Goodbye, Fred. And thank you.”
“I’ll do all I can, you know,” he said, as he followed her down the stairs. “But you mustn’t desert Anne.”
The taxi he had called carried her back to her desolate house.