XXI.
IT had been decided that Mrs. Clephane must, of course, stay over the Sunday; on Monday morning she would return to town with Anne. Meanwhile Aline was summoned with week-end raiment; and Kate Clephane, after watching the house-party drive off to a distant polo match, remained alone in the great house with her sister-in-law.
Mrs. Drover’s countenance, though worn from the strain of incessant hospitality, had lost its look of perturbation. It was clear that the affectionate meeting between mother and daughter had been a relief to the whole family, and Mrs. Drover’s ingenuous eye declared that since now, thank heaven, that matter was settled, there need be no farther pretence of mystery. She invited her sister-in-law to join her in her own sitting-room over a quiet cup of tea, and as she poured it out observed with a smile that she supposed the wedding would take place before Christmas.
“The wedding? Anne’s wedding?”
“Why, my dear, isn’t everything settled? We all supposed that was what you’d come down for. She told us of her engagement as soon as she arrived.” Wrinkles of apprehension reluctantly reformedthemselves on Mrs. Drover’s brow. “At least you might have let me have my tea without this new worry!” her look seemed to protest. “Hendrik has the highest opinion of Major Fenno, you know,” she continued, in a tone that amicably sought to dismiss the subject.
Kate Clephane put down her untasted cup. What could she answer? What was the use of answering at all?
Misled by her silence, Mrs. Drover pursued with a clearing brow: “Of course nowadays, with the cut of everything changing every six months, there’s no use in ordering a huge trousseau. Besides, Anne tells me they mean to go to Europe almost immediately; and whatever people say, itismore satisfactory to get the latest models on the spot....”
“Oh, Enid—Anne mustn’t marry him!” Kate Clephane cried, starting to her feet.
Mrs. Drover set down her own cup. Lines of disapproval hardened about her small concise mouth; but she had evidently resolved to restrain herself to the last limit of sisterly forbearance.
“Now, my dear, do sit down again and drink your tea quietly. What good will all this worrying do? You look feverish—and as thin as a rail. Are you sure you haven’t picked up one of those dreadful tropical microbes?... Of course, I understand your being unhappy at parting so soon again with Anne.... She feels it too; I know she does.It’s a pity you couldn’t have been together a little longer, just you two; but then—. And, after all, since Anne wants you to keep the Fifth Avenue house for yourself, why shouldn’t the young people buy that property just round the corner? Then the lower floors of the two houses could be thrown into one for entertaining. I’m not clever about plans, but Lilla’ll tell you exactly how it could be done. She’s got hold of such a clever young architect to modernize their Baltimore house. Of course, though Horace didn’t realize it, it wasalllibrary; no room for dancing. And I daresay Anne—not that Anne ever cared much for dancing.... But I hear Major Fenno likes going out, and a young wife can’t make a greater mistake than to have a dull house if her husband is fond of gaiety. Lilla, now, has quite converted Horace—”
Kate Clephane had reseated herself and was automatically turning the spoon about in her cup. “It won’t happen; it can’t be; he’ll never dare.” The thought, flashing in on her aching brain, suddenly quieted her, helped her to compose her features, and even to interject the occasional vague murmur which was all her sister-in-law needed to feed her flow of talk. The mention of the Maclews and their clever architect had served to deflect the current of Mrs. Drover’s thoughts, and presently she was describing how wonderfully Lilla managed Horace, and how she and the architect had got him to thinkhe could not live without the very alterations he had begun by resolutely opposing, on the ground that they were both extravagant and unnecessary.
“Just an innocent little conspiracy, you know.... They completely got the better of him, and now he’s delighted, and tells everybody it was his own idea,” Mrs. Drover chuckled; and then, her voice softening, and a plump hand reassuringly outstretched to Mrs. Clephane: “You’ll see, my dear, after you get over the first loneliness, what a lovely thing it is to have one’s child happily married.”
“It won’t happen; it can’t be; he’ll never dare!” the other mother continued to murmur to herself.
Horace Maclew, among numerous other guests, arrived for dinner. He sat nearly opposite Mrs. Clephane, and in the strange whirl and dazzle that surrounded her she instinctively anchored her gaze on his broad frame and ponderous countenance. What had his marriage done to him, she wondered, and what weight had it given him in the counsels of his new family? She had known of him but vaguely before, as the conscientious millionaire who collects works of art and relieves suffering; she imagined him as having been brought up by equally conscientious parents, themselves wealthy and scrupulous, and sincerely anxious to transmit their scruples, with their millions, to their only son. But other influences and tendencies had also been in play;one could fancy him rather heavily adjusting them to his inherited principles, with the “After all” designed to cover venial lapses. His marriage with Lilla must have been the outcome, the climax, of these private concessions, and have prepared him to view most of the problems of life from an easier angle. Undoubtedly, among the men present, though no quicker-witted than the others, he would have been the one most likely to understand Kate Clephane’s case, could she have put it to him. But to do so—one had only to intercept their glances across the table to be sure of it—would have been to take Lilla also into her confidence; and it suddenly became clear to Mrs. Clephane that no recoil of horror, and no Pharisaical disapproval, would be as intolerable to her as Lilla’s careless stare and Lilla’s lazy: “Why, what on earth’s all the fuss about? Don’t that sort of thing happen all the time?”
It did, no doubt; Mrs. Clephane had already tried to adjust her own mind to that. She had known such cases; everybody had; she had seen them smoothed over and lived down; but that she and Anne should ever figure as one of them was beyond human imagining. She would have felt herself befouled to the depths by Lilla’s tolerance.
Her unquiet eyes wandered from Horace Maclew to her daughter. Anne shone with recovered joy. Her anxiety had left only the happy traces of a summer shower on a drooping garden. Every nowand then she smiled across the table at her mother, and Kate felt herself irresistibly smiling back. There was something so rich, dense and impregnable in the fact of possessing Anne’s heart that the mother could not remember to be alarmed when their eyes met.
Suddenly she noticed that Anne was absorbed in conversation with one of her neighbours. This was the Reverend Dr. Arklow, Rector of St. Stephen’s, the New York church of the Clephane and Drover clan. Old Mrs. Clephane had been a pillar of St. Stephen’s, and had bequeathed a handsome sum to the parish. Dr. Arklow, formerly the curate, had come back a few years previously as Rector of the church, and was now regarded as one of the foremost lights of the diocese, with a strong possibility of being named its Coadjutor, or possibly Bishop of the American Episcopal Churches in Europe.
The Drovers and all their tribe took their religion with moderation: they subscribed handsomely to parochial charities, the older members of the family still went to church on Sunday mornings, and once in the winter each of the family invited the Rector to a big dinner. But their relations with him, though amicable, were purely formal, and Kate concluded that his presence at one of the Drover week-ends was to be attributed to the prestige he had acquired as a certain Coadjutor or possible Bishop. The Drover social scheme was like a gameof chess in which Bishops counted considerably more than Rectors.
The Rector of St. Stephen’s struck Mrs. Clephane, who had met him only once before, as a man accustomed to good company, and eager to prove it. He had a face as extensive as Mr. Maclew’s but running to length instead of width. His thin gray hair was carefully brushed back from a narrow benevolent forehead, and though he loved a good cigar, and wore a pepper-and-salt suit on his travels, he knew his value as a decorative element, and was fastidiously clerical on social occasions. His manly chest seemed outspread to receive the pectoral cross, and all his gestures were round and full, like the sleeves for which they were preparing.
As he leaned back, listening to Anne with lowered lids, and finger-tips thoughtfully laid against each other, his occasional faint smile and murmur of assent suggested to Mrs. Clephane that the girl was discussing with him the arrangements for the wedding; and the mother, laying down her fork, closed her eyes for an instant while the big resonant room reeled about her. Then she said to herself that, after all, this was only what was to be expected, and that if she hadn’t the courage to face such a possibility, and many others like it, she would assuredly never have the courage to carry out the plan which, all through the afternoon and evening,had been slowly forming in her mind. That plan was simply, for the present, to hold fast to Anne, and let things follow their course. She would return to New York the next day with Anne, she would passively assist at her daughter’s preparations—for an active share in them seemed beyond her powers—and she would be there when Chris came, and when they announced the engagement. Whatever happened, she would be there. She would let Chris see at once that he would have to reckon with that. And how would he be able to reckon with it? How could he stand it, day after day? They would perhaps never exchange another word in private—she prayed they might not—but he would understand by her mere presence what she meant, what she was determined on. He would understand that in the end he would have to give up Anne because she herself would never do so. The struggle between them would become a definite, practical, circumscribed thing; and, knowing Chris as she did, she felt almost sure she could hold out longer than he.
This new resolve gave her a sort of light-headed self-confidence: when she left the dinner-table she felt so easy and careless that she was surprised to see that the glass of champagne beside her plate was untouched. She felt as if all its sparkles were whirling through her.
On the return of the gentlemen to the drawing-roomDr. Arklow moved to her side, and she welcomed him with a smile. He opened with some mild generalities, and she said to herself that he was too anxiously observant of the social rules to speak of her daughter’s marriage before she herself alluded to it. For a few minutes she strove to find a word which should provide him with an opening; but to say to any one: “My daughter is going to be married” was beyond her, and they lingered on among slumbrous platitudes.
Suddenly Anne drifted up, sat down an on arm of her mother’s chair, and took her mother’s hand. Kate’s eyes filled, and through their mist she fancied she saw Dr. Arklow looking at her attentively. For the first time it occurred to her that, behind the scrupulous social puppet, there might be a simple-hearted man, familiar with the humble realities of pain and perplexity, and experienced in dealing with them. The thought gave her a sense of relief, and she said to herself: “I will try to speak to him alone. I will go to see him when we get to New York.” But meanwhile she merely continued to smile up at her daughter, and Dr. Arklow to say: “Our young lady has been telling me about the big tennis finals. There’s no doubt all these sports are going to be a great factor in building up a healthier, happier world.”
None of the three made any allusion to Anne’s engagement.