THEJournalwas making money. It was February and the hopes based on the election had already been fulfilled. Circulation had increased and with it had come modest advertisers. Two extra rooms across the hall, one boldly labelled Circulation Department and one Advertising, were in charge of efficient looking young men, and the original editorial rooms were crowded by desks for two new reporters. Bob Brotherton talked boastingly of soon doing their own printing, and thoughThe Journalwas still an undersized little sheet, comparing queerly in size with the other dailies, its editorials were more often quoted in other cities than were those of other local papers.
Langley was trying his skill as a writer to its utmost in those editorials. There were no serious political issues in the city and he turned his comment with a great pleasure to national affairs and the larger political and industrial situation. What he said, being actuated by no partisanship, was really the product of deep thought and experience and keen and true. Men began to read his comments and finding good thinking and conclusive evidence kept on reading them. At first they did it warily, expecting at any moment to beplunged into Bolshevism, but though Langley refused to fear that current bogie he recognized it in such a way that the potency and sting went out of it. He began to reassure his public by the method of assuring them that issues were not too terrible to be faced. There was a new note in his writing which took him out of the rank of merely caviling radical and put him with the constructionists.
Horatia thrilled at the new vigor in the paper. They regarded her as a mascot in the office. With her luck had come, as Bob said, and the old reporters and the new competed for chances to help her and to do things for her. Unless Langley was with her, when they withdrew before her absorption in him.
They had not announced an engagement, although the office force saw that the chief was as devoted to Horatia as they were, and perhaps drew its own conclusions. But Jim and Horatia gave them nothing definite to go upon. That decision had been reached after Maud and Langley had met and Maud with instinctive wisdom had pressed home to him Horatia’s youth and inexperience and impetuosity.
“I’m sure that you might be very happy,” said Maud, trying to be tactful. “But surely she can wait a little. Till she knows her own mind. It’s for life.” Maud looked sweetly sentimental. “You tell her how unwise it is to rush into such serious matters, Mr. Langley.”
Poor Langley saw through Maud perfectly, inspite of all her sweetness. But he had to admit that Maud had a case. He smoked a perfunctory cigar with Harvey and went home. Maud became much more sympathetic with Horatia after that visit. Her own antagonism to Langley personally had vanished or been metamorphosed into excitement at her daring in braving such a very irregular, fine-looking and interesting person as Jim. She had lost all animosity at the end of his call and Horatia, who had consented to bring Langley there only after much begging from Maud, had great fun in seeing her sister thaw and finally in watching Langley try to avoid Maud’s persistent invitations. But she had even more amusement when her sister heard that Mrs. Hubbell had reappeared in the city. She broke the news to Horatia with a great air of imparting necessary scandal and was completely filled with horror when Horatia confessed not only to previous knowledge of Maud’s information but also to an acquaintanceship with Mrs. Hubbell.
She offered to take Maud to call but Maud was at the point where she could bear no more shocking.
“It’s dreadful and dangerous,” she told Horatia. “I’m sure I don’t know what you’re getting into. What does the creature look like?”
Horatia told her with some enthusiasm. She had somehow come to see a good deal of Rose Hubbell. It was not that she particularly wanted to and Langley had once or twice rathergravely protested. But there was a timeliness, a psychological correctness about Mrs. Hubbell’s invitations that made them very hard to refuse. She destroyed your alibis, too, before she asked you to do something. And then it was good fun for Horatia and really did provide varied amusement for her. Mrs. Hubbell’s settled occupation was having a good time and being modern. Like so many other women she had preëmpted the right to call her kind of living perfectly modern. Grace did the same thing—Horatia did the same thing. And each of them was using the phrase modernism to express satisfaction with the plan of her own existence. Mrs. Hubbell so justified her deviations from the paths orderly people travel, Grace for the same reason as well as to excuse her fashion of intellectualizing all enthusiasms and apparently all emotions out of her life, and Horatia to define the spirit of adventure and desire to explore the depths of life which animated her. Each of them had a different mold which she called modernism and each of them poured her actions into her own mold, delighted to see that they hardened into the shape of the vessel.
Horatia was less conscious than the other two. She was trying their ways, learning their precepts of life and ways of living. She liked things about each of them—Grace’s absorption in her work and Mrs. Hubbell’s more decorative social skill. Mrs. Hubbell knew how to arrange, start off and keep up a dinner party, and shedanced with amazing grace and beauty. Horatia danced too, of course, vigorously, healthily, accurately—but the dancing of Rose Hubbell was a gift. “She is not a partner but an inspiration,” said one of the enthusiasts, and Horatia agreed. She guided a bad partner and brought out the best in a mediocre one, but with Jim Langley she moved as if they were strung to one rhythm. There were many opportunities for Horatia to see them together. Mrs. Hubbell arranged parties at country inns and hotels, at all kinds of public places which Horatia had never dreamed of attending, and which she had always regarded as somewhat dubious. But she found them, on the surface at least, innocuous enough places where people spent an enormous amount for eating and drinking, and committed many sins of gluttony and bad taste, but no other serious ones. They danced unpleasantly sometimes and they might be noisy, but on the whole they were passable people, as full of the lesser virtues as were Maud’s friends. They had a fascination about them, too. They were an unanchored lot, with no regularity even in their social intercourse. Extremely well-dressed, often beautiful, the women gave no impression of having antecedents or backgrounds. They emerged from obscurity into the dazzling glare of a hotel ballroom. They were seemingly respectable, extravagant, careless, picking at the surface of life and to some extent they typified a phase of the era—its brilliant, shop-window phase.
Maud’s friends were residents and taxpayers. They had a proper scorn of the transient and held aloof. Yet, to a certain extent, they dovetailed with the other group. The men of Maud’s group were to be seen in hotels as well as at private dinner parties, mostly without their wives in the hotels, if they were married. And once Horatia saw Anthony Wentworth at the Orient.
He was with a party of men and girls at the next table. The party had come in late and Horatia had not seen Anthony until she was conscious of his bow. Then she remembered who he was and as she smiled at him she had a feeling of meeting someone of her own kind;—a sudden thought and one she indignantly refused to harbor, as, blaming him as if he had suggested it, she turned from her smile to him to plunge into conversation with a thin little man who was at her right—a thin, awkward, rich little man.
The little man danced badly. It irritated Horatia to feel ashamed of him in front of Wentworth, but she hoped that Anthony knew enough about dancing to realize that it was not her fault that she looked absurd. Why did the little man jump about so? She pressed her hand on his shoulder to steady him and then jumped away in disgust as she felt her hand squeezed in misunderstanding. They bumped into another couple and stopped. It was Anthony. He smiled and stopped too.
The girl with whom he was dancing was of Horatia’s kind too.
“So you do play sometimes, Miss Grant?” asked Wentworth.
“Of course.”
His partner put her hand on Anthony’s arm, acknowledging a hurried introduction to Horatia.
“Weird place, isn’t it?” she said. “Here, Anthony, we’re holding up traffic. We’d all better be moving.”
He put a deft arm about the girl’s shoulders, glancing back at Horatia.
“May I have the next fox-trot?”
Horatia nodded and steered her little man away in a series of contortions to that oasis of safety—their table.
“Tired—already?” he inquired fatuously.
She sat surveying the members of her group as they came back to the table and was struck by the fact that the women looked very stupid. And the men. The men were “out for a good time,” and that meant an individual reason in each case.
Langley was drawing out Rose Hubbell’s chair. She was wearing a black dinner-dress that fitted her suppleness like a glove and her long black earrings set off that perfect paleness and blondness. Horatia felt that she was the redeeming feature of the party. But she didn’t like Jim’s closeness to Rose. She didn’t like the way he was arranging the scarf about her shoulders. She reminded herself that Jim had begged her not to come tonight but to spend the evening alone with him and that she herself had insisted that they had no right to spoil Mrs. Hubbell’s party after they half agreed to come. Perhaps, after all, this had allured her—this glare and noise and excitement.
“You’re so solemn, Horatia dear.”
Mrs. Hubbell had slipped into the use of her Christian name, a slip that once made it was impossible to correct.
“Am I?”
“You looked like a fifteenth century saint—a Renaissance saint frowning on worldliness, but secretly indulging in it.”
Jim’s glance was on Horatia too. She turned the conversation a little impatiently and Anthony Wentworth came to claim his dance and be extravagantly greeted by those at the table who knew him, except Langley.
They swept into the dance and silences. It was not until the encore that they spoke. He danced simply and easily and Horatia followed him well, although it was her first dance with him.
“So this is what you do for amusement.”
“Sometimes,” she answered, “and sometimes it really is amusing. Not tonight. Tonight the enchantment has vanished. I see only an overlighted room with horrible garish decorations and a lot of noisy women, too many of whom are fat.”
He chuckled.
“I did want to see you again. And I did my best to work it. But short of making myself a public nuisance I couldn’t get a glimpse.”
“I didn’t know you were staying in the city.”
“I’m spending the winter with my sister. The family is gone—by family, I mean mother and father—gone South—and I live partly at home in the empty house and partly at my sister’s, playing with her children.”
The music stopped definitely, deaf to the entreaties of clapping hands.
“Can I take you for a ride one of these days? I suggest that because you said you’d like it.”
“I can’t tell when I can get off.”
“Let me telephone and re-telephone—this proves that you get off sometimes.”
She liked his half-laughing persistence.
“I’d like to ride with you in that car of yours,” she told him.
He smiled down at her in healthy young friendliness and suddenly the people to whom she was returning seemed very unreal and pretentious. He did not ask any of the others for dances but went back to his table.
“You made a very handsome couple,” said Rose Hubbell, sweetly. “Didn’t they, Jim?”
Langley looked tired. He said merely that it was Horatia’s dance with him. As before, they danced without a word.
“You were a handsome couple,” he said at last.
“Please don’t be silly, Jim.”
“I’m such an old man and such an ass, my dear. He is a nice boy and you must play with him a lot.”
“I’d sooner work with you.”
“Let’s not go back to the table. Let’s collect our coats and get out.”
He waltzed her to the door and they went home. Such petty informalities “went” with the Hubbell crowd. It was considered bad form in thatmilieuto be too conventional. Modern people went and came as they pleased. That was the idea. But Horatia had a vague feeling that, none the less, Mrs. Hubbell might not approve of their going.
Wentworth was as good as his word.
“He is parked below,” said Jim whimsically, two days later. “Better go and get your ride or he’ll sit there and freeze to death.”
He closed the office door.
“But you might let me kiss you before you go out to be admired by dashing young men,” he finished.
“I’d lots sooner stay and be kissed,” complained Horatia.
“You won’t, after you feel the wind in your face.”
He was right. Horatia had not done much motoring and the knowledge she had of it was largely confined to being “picked up” and taken from one place to another. Maud had an electric and Rose Hubbell travelled in a hired sedan, and she had been with them often. But this was different. In this low, open car she was unprotected except for a single fur rug over her knees. Anthony drove along easily until they struck thecity limits and then was off in a burst of speed, cut-out throbbing. The state highways were almost clear of snow and they sped along through the barren country with its skeletons of trees sticking up through the snow and the little villages closed tight for the winter. Already evening lights showed in their windows.
“They’re like Christmas postcards,” exclaimed Horatia.
“They look funny from the top when you are flying over them. You don’t want to go back, do you?”
“Never less. I want to plunge into the country farther and farther.”
“Maybe we can find a road that is fair driving. There is one near here which leads to a summer place of mine. And if we cut through from there to the high-road, there’s a hotel where we can get supper. If you aren’t afraid of country driving in the winter, let’s try it.”
“Of course, I’m not afraid. Plunge.”
They were soon on a road which twisted among tall pine trees, gravely holding great burdens of snow. They lost all sound except the chug of the motor—all sense of distance as the car broke its way and left deep furrows of snow along the road. It slipped, skidded, growled forward—striking the ground unevenly and lurching about. Then it chugged a slow disapproval and stopped. Anthony put it unto first gear and started his motor. Again it chugged,slipped, stopped; he turned to Horatia and laughed.
“I’ll get out and see what this hole is like.”
She clambered out, too, and watched him inspect the hollows into which the car had run. Then he climbed in again and started with all his power on. The back wheels spun around without traction. They could not grip the smooth snow and each movement plowed their trap deeper. He shut off the power again.
“You can’t get out,” said Horatia interestedly.
“Oh, yes, I can.”
Anthony stripped off his coat and went off into the woods. He came back with a great bundle of fir boughs that he strewed under the wheels, making a pathway forward and backward. Then from somewhere in the car he produced a shovel and dug the snow away from the wheels.
“Let me help,” begged Horatia.
“Climb into the car and keep warm.”
“I will not be a parasite.”
“Then push those branches under the wheels while I dig.”
They worked together quietly for a while. Again he started and again the wheels were impotent.
“At it again,” cried Anthony.
He was exhilarated by the problem of getting out and this time he succeeded. The car, roaring with power, pulled itself over the branches and out of the hollow. Then, with all their poweron, they shot ahead and drove down the dusky road. It was growing quite dark.
“This is our cottage. Think I’ll stop and give the car a drink.”
They climbed out and over a drifted path into the veranda.
“Jolly place in summer,” said Wentworth, finding the right key on his ring and pushing the door open. “You can get a little warmer in here if you’re cold.”
There were electric lights and he switched them on quickly. The bright chintzes of the living-room looked warm and Horatia’s sense of well-being increased. What a nice place and how pleasant to be rich! He made her sit down and put her feet for fear of chill on a cushioned hassock. Then he brought her a glass of water.
“With apologies. Next time we’ll have food and a real party. If I’d thought we would have had one tonight.”
“Is this your cottage?”
“Father gave it to me when I was twenty-one. We had lots of house parties here while I was in college and he liked it. I suppose he thought it kept us straight—a place like this. My sister uses it now every summer. It’s a great place for kids. And now to fill the radiator and be off again to civilization.”
Civilization was a small table in a hotel dining-room and a hot supper, ordered for her by Anthony without a question. Horatia was very hungry, hungry as she seldom was, healthythough she was. And it was a pleasant hotel, like everything else in this excursion. A hotel with no music and no place for dancing—with oldish waitresses instead of waiters in dinner-coats, and with red wall-paper and gas-lights—and somewhere an inimitable chef—no, a woman cook, who put onions frankly in her soup and let the pudding confess to a cornstarch origin and made biscuits that were light as air. They talked about many things over the soup. It warmed them into immense friendliness. Horatia told how she had always loved weather—loved all kinds of it, rains and storms and winds, how it excited her; and how she loved all things that stimulated her energies and made her work—and how she loved her work for the same reasons; because on a newspaper one day was up and the next down so that you were always on the alert; and how you lived in touch with the raw material of events before they’d been softened or hardened or molded by public opinion. He listened and nodded and the friendly old waitress had to push a platter of fried chicken before them to hush them.
Then somehow they were talking of what they had done when they were children, and little tales of West Park popped up in Horatia’s mind, tales which she had almost forgotten—of the time when Uncle George had fled before Aunt Caroline’s dictum that he should spank Maud and Horatia for dancing on a broken spring on the leather sofa in the living-room. It was all irrelevant and friendly. Anthony had his own tales. He had been a nice little boy, Horatia decided, a little boy fond of dogs and swimming. She liked his saying that the old veterinary surgeon had been his best friend when he was a boy. He told her about his mother and his sister and the brother who had looked like his father and who had died at sixteen, which saddened them momentarily. Then over the bones of the fried chicken they talked of futures—hers and his. Of the places on the earth which they would like to see. He had much more background than Horatia, having been to Germany and England before the war, and he had seen England and France again while he was flying abroad. The Europe of before the war was what he liked to talk about.
“For during the war it wasn’t real. It was like a house with all the rugs up and chairs out, and arranged to accommodate a lot of strangers—that is, the cities were like that. And the country where they were fighting was no longer France or Belgium or Germany any more than the slaughter-houses of Chicago are Chicago. I want to give it time to get back and then see it again.”
Not only Europe. He wanted to see South America, China, and to get acquainted with the East.
“What is the use of living if you live in a little suburb all your life?”
“But aren’t you going to do any work?” asked Horatia.
“Yes—later I mean to go into business with father. I shall like exporting. It makes me proud of my own country and keeps me in touch with the others. But I need background. Then, when I ship my wheat, I’ll know where I am shipping it.”
She regarded him gravely.
“There’s no loafer in you,” she admitted.
“No—I hope not. I want to work and to live in America, of course. First of all that. I’ve small patience with these globe-trotters. And I want an American wife and to help stabilize the country. All this discontent is the result of trying to bring in a vicious element which we don’t know how to handle because we’re ignorant of the nations from which these people come.”
“Don’t you think we treat them badly?”
“We treat them altogether too well. We overpay them—we excite them—we give them standards of living which make them discontented.”
“I think you need to see some of the budgets of laborers’ expenditures,” said Horatia; “they don’t show any great extravagances. They must have food and clothes and——”
He broke in impatiently.
“That’s beside the point. A working man and his family don’t starve or freeze unless there’s something wrong with them. What we ought to do is to pay wages which represent what a man earns, and not what he demands. Otherwise it’s pauperization. We will have to stop all this catering to labor. We ought to stop being afraid of it, and then it would come down to earth.”
“Suppose labor quits.”
“It won’t, and if it did, what about it? Face it down. Why should employers all be cowards? Why are they temporizing, giving way inch by inch? Mind, I wouldn’t care if——”
Horatia was fascinated. Strength of aristocracy shot from his eyes. He was amazingly handsome and if his point of view was wrong, it was at least vigorous, thought Horatia. Mistaken, anti-social, probably—but she couldn’t think of a way to convince him. She didn’t want to seem theoretic and sentimental——
But he had calmed down. He was laughing.
“I don’t see why I should spoil our evening with all this stuff. But I feel that the world’s on an awfully wrong track. All this dominance by strikes. It’s highwayman stuff. It’s bullying. I know these social work fellows and they are a white-livered lot. And the men they try to deal with respect and understand only one thing—strength.”
“But labor doesn’t work through social workers. It’s a force by itself.” There were a few points in his illogic that Horatia could not let pass.
“It’s becoming a very ugly force—you’re right. But these social workers foment a lot of discontent. And the workers get surly and commence to bully. No man worthy of the name is everthreatened successfully, but these cowards keep making concessions and concessions——”
How she liked the sheer mannishness of it! And she wondered what Langley would have answered and tried to interpret what he might have said. But Anthony hardly listened. He wanted to drop the argument or the tirade and to be personal now. He wanted to talk about her and how much he would like to do things with her. Over their large cups of coffee and cream their acquaintanceship ripened into friendship.
“I don’t approve of half the things you say,” laughed Horatia. “But I like you anyhow.”
“Of course you must.”
“We’ll have to go,” she sighed. “It must be eight o’clock.”
“It’s half-past nine,” said Wentworth triumphantly. “Have you always an hour at which you must fly away?”
“And no glass slippers. Isn’t it bad luck?”
He wrapped her closely in the fur robe, tucking it in with never a sentimental gesture and then they were off, skimming through the white night. At her door he said good-night.
“We must have lots of good times,” he said.
She wanted to tell him about Jim, but it seemed like assuming that his interest was unduly sentimental. After all there hadn’t been a touch of that in his manner. And Jim had insisted that it be a secret. Next time it might be more natural to tell Anthony about her love.
She slept hard and dreamed of Anthony Wentworth attacking a laborer who was throwing bombs at his head. She was all for Anthony in the dream.
MAUD heard about that ride with much satisfaction. Her respect for her sister was going up by leaps and bounds. To be clever enough to land a man with a past that was frightening as well as a young and wealthy hero was a genuine achievement worthy of record. Secretly Maud dreamed of a life to be a continual flirtation, and to hint at these romantic things deftly as part of Horatia’s doings made a very interesting topic. She sighed and said:
“It’s all very easy to decide what you ought to do in abstract cases, but when one’s own young sister is involved!”
How Horatia would have writhed if she had heard those conversations! If she had guessed how Maud made her a girl whose allure was irresistible—whose danger to men was terrific, and yet who was so innocent and unsophisticated herself that the very streetcars held danger. But she did not guess. Nor did she dream that it was Maud who took pains to inform Anthony Wentworth about Langley. Maud wanted to be connected with the Wentworths and she did not intend to have the Langley affair scare Anthony off. So, meeting him at a dance, she rallied him gaily.
“What did you do to my young sister?”
Anthony asked her for a dance, paying off his dinner debt and also thinking he would like to know the reason for her remark. They sat it out.
“What did I do to your sister? You tell me. I didn’t think she knew I was alive.”
“Oh, yes, she very much knows it. She doesn’t say much—Horatia never does—but she certainly did enjoy that ride with you.” Horatia had not mentioned it to Maud, but Maud was sinning for the greater cause.
“And I’m glad she has a wholesome man friend. I don’t know if you know——”
Anthony expressed total ignorance.
“Well—you know Jim Langley.”
“Oh, yes.”
“He’s a fascinating sort of person, you know. And Horatia has seen far too much of him. She went to work on that paper just out of devilment.”
That didn’t tally with what Horatia had told Anthony about her work.
“Well—she thinks she’s in love with him and he—is certainly in love with her. Of course, she’s young and beautiful—any man would. But Jim Langley isn’t the sort of person one would pick out for a husband for one’s sister, of course. There are things we’ve all heard——”
“I like Jim very much, myself,” said Anthony, surprisingly.
Maud drew in her horns.
“Why, we all do—he’s wonderfully fascinating. But he’s so much older than Horatia, and then I myself never would be sure of the stability of such a man’s affection. And Horatia is so wonderful. I’m sure I don’t know why I’ve told you all this.” Which both of them knew was another falsehood.
Anthony went away leaving Maud with a feeling that he understood her better than was comfortable to know. She might have guessed that he had not been a sought-after young man for years without growing pretty astute. At his club he met an old acquaintance and after a few moments’ conversation asked him,
“What about Jim Langley? How’s he coming on?”
“Oh, he’s a queer fish. Doing rather better lately. They tied the can to him socially when he got involved in that Hubbell scandal.
“Mrs. Hubbell’s back, isn’t she?”
The man nodded. “And charming as ever in her mourning clothes. She says, I believe, that her great sorrow is not that her husband died but that he died insane—because otherwise she can not explain his suing for divorce and his suicide. She says, ‘Poor Jack. He must have been quite insane!’ very touchingly. She gets away with it.
“Langley still in her train?”
“Trust her. I suppose so. But Langley’s all right. He’s been doing damned good writing lately. Now if he could get a job on a newspaper somewhere else, I believe he’d go far. Here, of course, he got off with the wrong foot.”
“Must be thirty-five or six—1904, wasn’t he at the University?”
“Yes—about that. Well, that’s not too late for a man to begin to make real headway. If he married the right woman. It’s marriage these queer ducks need, you know.”
Wentworth agreed.
“Still, he’s hardly the right man for a young girl and——”
“No—not a match for youth and innocence—not Jim Langley. However, that’s the kind they usually pick.”
Wentworth snapped the conversation off there. Perhaps he had heard enough. He went home—not to his sister’s house but to the half-closed house of his father, and sat in his own room before his fire, musing. The fire made his fine profile unusually handsome. He looked about the room appreciatively. These were the deep chairs that had welcomed him on vacations and furloughs—the Remington that his father had given him—his few books, his pipes and the big windows that almost made up one wall.
“Why should I leave it?” he murmured, and fell to smoking luxuriously.
And so the winter slipped into spring, with Horatia revelling in the work of the office and in the thrills which shot through her at the mere presence of Langley; enjoying, too, the friendliness of Anthony Wentworth and the pleasant things he devised for them to do; enjoying everything all the more because of the flashes of wonder and fear and depression with which she was touched sometimes; with Langley working and watching Horatia; with Maud making plans and buying spring clothes with morbid carefulness; with Mrs. Hubbell buying clothes too and planning little entertainments and pressing people to attend them; with the chains which bound them all together being drawn tighter and tighter, and the web of their drama being spun on the vast frame of life. Each of them undoubtedly dreamed that the pattern was different from what it was and each of them must have had a pattern clearly in mind; while Nature, the scene-painter, began to change her set and shaking the white burdens from the trees, helped them to bud again.
With the spring, too, Aunt Caroline and Uncle George came back from the South, Aunt Caroline laden with little bronze alligators and pictures of herself picking oranges and Uncle George frankly rejoicing in getting back and with a tendency to disparage everything Southern. They took Langley and the news of the engagement, which Horatia felt they should know, rather more quietly than either of the nieces had expected, but as they thought about it they realized that these two West Parkians were, after all, too far out of the world to understand all its ways and meanings. Perhaps if Aunt Caroline haddiscussed it at the Ladies’ Guild she might have heard disturbing things, but since it was a secret and couldn’t be discussed she formed her opinions on the impression Langley made on her, which was pleasant enough. He knew how to listen interminably and defer properly and that was enough for Aunt Caroline. For those hours of listening to her over a heavy Sunday dinner, Langley was paid by Sunday afternoons with Horatia, long walks out by the lake through the mists or the winds when everything evil and unhappy seemed to drop away from him and the world was all life and energy and Horatia. The tediums of Aunt Caroline were a very little thing to bear.
Horatia kept her apartment in the city, pleading an unbreakable lease to her aunt, but she liked to get back to West Park once in a while, just for the “clean, fresh dullness” of it, she said. She had not yet learned what she was to learn, that dullness is one of the most beautiful things in the world for an harassed spirit to come back to, and that dullness is not always stupidity, but sometimes safety. So she patronized West Park mentally and laughed at herself for looking forward to Sundays there. It was natural enough that she should look forward to them as a respite from the existence about her. She was seeing a great deal of very concentrated life. When a woman shoots a man, a newspaper office has the real facts of the case very quickly. When a man suddenly retires from politics and his wife leavestown for a few months and a fatherless child is reported in the “Birth” columns, the public may not connect the three events. But often enough the newspaper knows that there is a link. It knows, too, how so many fortunes are made and it connects them with queer obscurities. They did not reveal ugliness to Horatia willingly in that little office, but she saw and heard it because she was there and could not always be well shielded. Some of the worst of it never reached her but she saw enough. She began to know that the things that happened in the world were not based on justice and she saw that pain can not always be healed and that the wages of sin were sometimes opulence and public respect. She, who had crusaded out into the world, loving its beauty and its freshness and yearning for all it had to offer, began to see that it offered a selection of things which had to be looked over very carefully.
None of this saddened her, because it had not touched her yet, but it aroused her pity and her wonder and her scorn. With the assurance of her age, it never frightened her to see and hear of trouble. These tragedies might happen to others, but not to her—not to her who had work and love. If she ever thought of her future she admitted that she would have “her share of trouble,” but that trouble was so delightfully in the distance as to be merely a romantic ingredient of life—a spice—and not a thing to be afraid of. But there began to be a complexity ofthoughts back of her clear eyes, where once there had been only curiosity and eagerness. Day by day it deepened and day by day she loved her work more. It brought many a chance to do interesting things—to render little services to all kinds of people. There was beginning to be an increasing number of women in politics and many of these came to make use of the “woman onThe Journal.” If they came merely to make use of her they usually departed without accomplishing anything. Horatia understood them very easily and disconcertingly. It was very obvious to her who had no axe of her own to grind, that some of these women had. If they came to ask her advocacy of something decent and necessary, it was easy to explain and easy to get support. But if they came to barter or exchange favors, as so many of them did, they went away empty-handed, simply because they had nothing to give Horatia and because she desired no favors—or offices—or social advancement.
She made enemies. When Mrs. Perry Hill, president of the City Symphony Society, came down toThe Journaloffice one day, she came with an air of concession and as one descended from a pedestal. She explained her purpose lengthily to Horatia. The City Symphony wanted to raise a hundred thousand dollars to put up a musical studio building as a memorial for soldiers and sailors who had been killed during the war. She told enthusiastically of the struggle of the Symphony to raise itself from a little club into a greatorganization which brought the artists of America to the city to play and to sing. She outlined the tremendous need for a studio building and told of the music-students and teachers who would bless the city and the City Symphony for a place to study and teach. She touched upon the needs of a commercial age and the general low level of musical appreciation. And she ended by telling of the other great lack—the lack of a suitable Soldiers’ and Sailors’ Memorial. “Nothing could be a more fitting tribute to those noble lads.”
Horatia frowned. “I’m afraid I don’t understand.”
She stopped Mrs. Hill, who was just about to repeat her entire speech. “I understand, of course, that the Symphony is a worthy organization—of course—and it has given its members much pleasure—but why should a studio building be a tribute to soldiers and sailors? What good will it do them, living or dead?”
“Only by upholding the highest ideals can we be worthy of those noble boys,” answered Mrs. Hill sententiously.
Horatia persevered.
“But how would it touch them?”
“In the proposed auditorium we would have many fine concerts for everyone.”
“Free?”
“My dear young lady, it costs a thousand dollars to bring great artists here.”
“I see.” Horatia’s tone was not encouraging.“Have you seen many soldiers and sailors, Mrs. Hill?”
“My own son was an aviator.”
“I mean common soldiers. The kind that like ‘Ja-da’ and ‘Come On, Papa’ and would go to sleep at a concert, most of them. They need—oh, tremendously, to be educated in just the things you speak of. But you can’t do it by building recherché auditoriums. They need lots of things more than that—and lots of things before that. Mrs. Hill, I haven’t an objection in the world to a studio building for the Symphony—I’d be glad to contribute if you’ll bring Galli-Curci and Kreisler—but to go about asking funds from people on the plea that you are doing something in the name of those unfortunate boys who were killed or of those commoners who once were soldiers is to me an absurdity.”
It was not the sort of reception to which Mrs. Hill was accustomed when she went to society editors.
“May I see Mr. Langley?”
Horatia opened the door to his office and ushered in Mrs. Hill, who went into some detail as to her worthy project and Horatia’s inadequate appreciation. Horatia chuckled at her desk outside, wondering how Langley would deal with her, and was fully satisfied when Mrs. Hill swept out with a last overheard comment—“Of course, there are many reasons why you are taking this attitude, sir, and none of them does you credit.”
She was ruined, however. Horatia ran acolumn on the new auditorium studio building and memorial, touching gently on the fact that the question of its erection was in dispute, and then she telephoned some of her friends and some of the real women thinkers of the city for opinions. Also she telephoned some architects. The article was not condemnatory. It was gently questioning, but many a business man read it and agreed heartily with the questions in it, having them ready as an excuse for not contributing. The project failed and Mrs. Hill knew why it had failed. She took to saying “there was opposition from the sort of places from which you might expect it,” which was cryptic, hinted at scandal and saved her face. But even with her face saved she detested Horatia.
It was only an incident, but there were other incidents which, added together, made the “woman onThe Journal” a subject of much speculation. There was the woman who wanted to be made city commissioner in order to enhance her husband’s chances of getting city contracts and who failed to getJournalsupport. There was the case of the teacher who resigned from the schools in order to run for the School Board and work for raises in teachers’ salaries. She and Horatia had many a consultation inThe Journaloffice and many a plan hatched there finally put across the woman’s successful election. It was undoubtedly true that Horatia had a straight eye, Bob Brotherton said—and notonly did she have a straight eye but she used it. She came to be in demand for many things—as a member of committees projecting new schemes, as a member of boards of directors. The men liked to have her because she had a sense of humor and of brevity in discussion and the women liked to have her because the meetings were usually a success when she came and because she never wanted to be chairman. Horatia enjoyed all these things too, but most of all she liked to get back to the office, to her own papers and her own companions and to the welcome of its familiarity and to Langley’s smile, which had all the love of the world in it. The love of the work and the love of Langley ran so intermingled in her that they sometimes blended. They seemed already married in the things they were doing. The other marriage could only complete this one. So she told herself, but the “other marriage” sounded in her soul sometimes with a solemn note which frightened her a little. Her inexperience frightened her. Women on the street, with shapeless figures and worn faces, commanded respect from her for these women had been married. They knew what living with a man meant. Perhaps they had not played the game very well, but they had played it and they knew the rules.
“IF you look at me like that,” said Anthony, “I will kiss you and ask you to marry me. I don’t know which I’ll do first, but I’ve put both things off long enough.”
This on the springiest of spring days with Horatia clambering back into the car which Anthony had stopped by the roadside until she found some cowslips; she was smiling her perfect happiness at Anthony. Her smile disappeared.
“Don’t do that——”
“Which?”
“Either. I should have told you long ago, Anthony. But it assumed that you cared if I told you this—and I couldn’t assume such awful conceit. You don’t. It’s just the day and the fun we’ve been having.”
“But you were going to tell me——”
“That I love Jim Langley and I’m going to marry him.” She held her head high and her blush was triumphant.
“When?” asked Anthony.
“I don’t know—not for a year, perhaps, but sooner or later I’m—we’re—going to.”
Anthony twisted the wheel idly without starting his motor.
“Well—there’s nothing I can do about it except to wish you joy. Langley’s all right—and if you are sure you love him, it’s all right. But don’t let the work deceive you. That’ll stop after you are married and the glamour——”
“No, indeed, I shall work right along—right along—that’s our whole idea.”
Anthony did not look impressed. He started the car and drove on silently. Then——
“Look here, Horatia, I know you’ll damn me for a reactionary, but I want to say a few things. I ought to go away and leave you alone but I don’t want to. I can’t exactly admit Langley as a rival on the strength of what you say. You see what I want to give you is something very different. I want you to marry me and to—to organize our lives, but I want to assume the rough steady work and I want you to be relieved of strain.” She flushed and he went quickly on. “I’ve seen a lot of this radical married stuff, your own name business, this both earning business, and I’ve never seen it lead anywhere yet. And—wait. I’ve seen a lot of the other kind—the awfully domestic, submerged woman. I never in my life wanted to marry until I saw you. It always looked like a trap. But with you marriage would be a wonderful game—a limitless voyage, an endless happiness. I don’t want you to work or wear yourself out as the women on newspapers do wear out. I want you to be strong and fine and happy. I want to see the world with you—and to plan a big useful lifewith you—to do big things largely. I can’t say it, Horatia, because I’m an ass. But I love you and I want to fight for you.”
There were tears in Horatia’s eyes.
“I wish I did love you, Anthony,” she cried. “I like you awfully. But, Anthony, Jim is written all over my heart. I tremble when he’s near me.”
“That’s not necessarily a sign of love.”
“It’s Jim, Anthony.”
Anthony may have been thinking of what Maud had said. He turned to her pleadingly.
“Anyway let me make a fight, won’t you?”
“It’s no good.”
“But I can’t lose you like this—without a struggle.”
She said nothing more. They drove back to the city and he dropped Horatia at her office. She mounted the steps feeling very much troubled, and a little outraged. Anthony was sweet, but the intrusion of such feeling on the one between her and Jim shamed her.
Jim welcomed her not at all. It was a bad and busy afternoon and Horatia had really been playing truant. He came up to her in a hurry.
“You’ll have to hurry your column for the fourth page, Miss Grant. It was late yesterday and we had to hold everything up for it. Please hurry.”
Horatia guessed that for that moment she was not his lover but his reporter. She flushed. And then, loyally, she gloried in his attitude. Shewanted to be more than a woman to Jim. She wanted to be a part of his work.
“I’ve good news for you,” he said later. “I’ve a typist coming up to see me in a few minutes. I have decided that you need a typist if we are to ever have clean copy.”
They laughed.
The typist came in and Langley looked her over. She was a washed-out girl with a freckled face and stringy hair. She had come in answer to Langley’s advertisement and with a memory of having seen her somewhere before, he took her into his office to question her. Finally he asked her:
“Haven’t I seen you in somebody’s office around here?”
“Yes,” said Miss Christie, “I used to work for Mr. John Hubbell.”
Langley winced. That was it. His momentary impulse to dismiss the girl she guessed from his manner.
“I left town right after that,” she went on, “and I have only just come back. Mrs. Hubbell sent me away for a while and then I found work in Chicago. But it’s hot and lonely there and I thought that the trouble would be all over and the reporters would leave me alone, so I came back.”
“How long had you been with Mr. Hubbell?”
“Six years, sir—since I left business college. There never was anyone who treated me so well.”
Perhaps out of loyalty to any of Jack’s friendsor even employees, he engaged her. For he did engage her and took her out to Horatia. “We will share Miss Christie, Miss Grant,” he said. “Try to get your typing done while I am out of the office.”
So Miss Christie was installed. She was not a gossip, so Horatia never heard about her position in Jack Hubbell’s office or connected the drab little figure with the grace and beauty of Mrs. Hubbell. And no one thought to give Mrs. Hubbell information that might have been interesting about Miss Christie being in Langley’s office. Miss Christie took an instant liking to Horatia. Horatia treated her well and treated her intelligently, admiring her clerical skill from the depths of her own lack of it. Miss Christie was drawn into the atmosphere of the office and in her quiet little way she came to love it.
There was another confidence which was not made. Horatia did not tell Jim that Anthony had asked her to marry him. She wanted to and she didn’t want to. There seemed almost immodesty in telling Jim that another man loved her. And then it didn’t seem fair to Anthony. She had refused him but there was no need to make the refusal embarrassing by telling even Jim.
Anthony told no one. He evidently did not consider himself out of the game. But he dropped his emotional attitude as abruptly as he had picked it up. It worried Horatia nevertheless that he turned up at many places where she went, though usually it was fun to see him and to jokewith him and ride home with him or to have him appear for supper on Sunday evenings, with a supply of food under his arm. He arranged to have Horatia meet his sister too, and Maud was all a-flutter when she heard that Horatia had been asked to dinner at the Clapps’.
“Will you borrow my gold net?” she begged.
“Why no,” said Horatia. “That blue dress is good enough.”
Maud had to content herself with the fact of the invitation and Horatia was more than contented with the event itself. She enjoyed the simple dinner in the lovely big house and the visit to the nursery where every device for good health and happiness had been joined together and she enjoyed the conversation of the Clapp family. At Maud’s one always had a sense of striving or of smug content in attainment, but these people were not like that at all. They were living as it seemed best and wise and happy to live—luxuriously but unpretentiously. So Anthony would live, surrounded by his nurseries and his children and his servants and his pleasant diversions. They talked of Italy and of a proposed trip to China. It made her feel ignorant and little. But she looked neither ignorant nor little, with her face glowing with interest and the table candles bringing out the color in her blue gown and the dusky shadows of her hair. She looked charming and she was charming and the Clapps admitted it cordially to Anthony.
“That’s all right,” said Anthony. “Of courseyou’d like her. The question is how did we strike her?”
Mr. Clapp was talking to Horatia during this colloquy. Anthony’s sister talked to her later.
“You must see a great deal of the world from your office, Miss Grant.”
“A great deal.”
“It’s a very fascinating sight, of course. Romantic, full of excitement.”
“Why does everyone think I’m romantic on first sight?” wondered Horatia aloud.
“You are romantic. It’s romantic in itself that a beautiful young girl goes out to work in a newspaper office. I know that lots of them do but they haven’t yet dried up the romance. Because beauty and charm in a woman were designed for such other purposes.”
Horatia frowned. “You don’t really think that?”
“I think so. Beauty and charm mean love and love means life. That’s why it excites us to see beauty.”
“So many people say I’m good-looking now. Do you know I was a frightful little girl?”
“That’s natural enough. But it’s not your face or features. It’s what lights you up from within.”
She took Horatia’s hands in both of hers as she said good night.
“Be good to Anthony,” she said, “and don’t let your fires be dimmed, will you?”
“I’ve met a splendid woman,” said Horatia to Jim, next day. “Do you know Mrs. Clapp?”
“She is splendid,” agreed Langley. “Yes. I was brought up with her. We went to school together. So Anthony wants you to know her. You’d better. She is a real person.”
“Jim,” Horatia went on, “why don’t you keep up with people like that instead of this Hubbell crowd? Don’t you like nice people better than anything? Not that Mrs. Hubbell isn’t nice. But after all she hasn’t much to contribute, now has she?”
“She can dance,” he answered lightly.
“What’s dancing?”
“It’s quite a lot of fun.”
“But I don’t see why you should need that sort of fun. I’m sure that these other people have fun too and they don’t take it in dancing and going around to public places. Not that I haven’t enjoyed myself a lot. You mustn’t think I’m ungracious enough not to admit that it was all fun for me—this going around with the Hubbell crowd. But after we’re married—don’t you think we might do the other crowd a bit? It sets you up.”
Jim reflected. He seemed to be thinking over his answer very carefully. Then he spoke.
“You want to realize, Horatia, that these people are interested in you and not in me. They like you and undoubtedly would be glad to have you in their circle—and in their family. They don’t want me. They don’t trust me and theydon’t like me and that’s all there is to that. And if you marry me, I’m afraid they’ll drop you. As my wife you won’t be as—desirable.”
Horatia had flushed.
“Don’t, Jim,——” she begged, “don’t talk like that. Why, you’re so infinitely their superior—they aren’t in your mental class.”
“They’ve played a better game,” said Jim. “Horatia, dear, don’t you want to call it off between us? You can go to the end of the world without me. But with me you’d just be burdened. You’d be doomed to the society of queer people. And me. And you’d tire of the queer people first and then of me.”
“I don’t see why it must mean queer people,” objected Horatia. “Why must it? Not that I don’t like queer people, but I like the others too. And you most of all. And I won’t give you up.”
“But swear not to marry me to reform me——”
“I swear.”
That argument was over and yet they had reached no outcome and they both knew it. Horatia said fiercely to herself that there was no use in being trivial and that it certainly didn’t matter. But she felt that she had stumbled upon a strange quality in her lover—a resistance—a kind of weakness too. And with the assurance of all lovers she told herself that it must not happen again.
It had not been a good time for the conversation either. They were bound for a dinner atRose Hubbell’s, and Horatia felt that she had been stupid and that all evening he would be feeling her criticism of the people she was with. In the shadow of the cab she leaned against him.
“I’m an easily influenced fool, Jim. I’m just plain stupid. And the only thing that matters is you. Repeat that, please.”
Which he did, very satisfactorily.
The big rooms at Rose Hubbell’s were decorated with jonquils. It was fortunate that Mrs. Hubbell, not being poor, never had to stint her setting. Her company, tonight, included two regular army officers, both very distinguished looking, the illustrator, Starling, who had recently come into such repute, Austin Benedict, a dilettante of everything, the cynical Mrs. Boyce, and two of the dancers from the Russian troupe at the theatre, who were really young women savoring much more of New York than Russia. They were a gay company. Horatia forgot her criticisms. Mrs. Hubbell’s deft servant called them to a perfectly appointed supper. The atmosphere was artificial; the company was artificial; the gaiety was artificial, and Horatia knew it but she could not help admiring the perfection of the artifice. The wonder came over her again at the baffling quality in Jim which could say that the hunt for pleasure was becoming a dangerous chase for the world and at the same time suffer himself to be part of such a company. She did not realize that his inconsistency was a common enough one among men—and that his need forcompany, for society of any kind had been very great. A mind more skilled in psychology would have grasped the fact of the pride that kept him from the society of the people he had formerly known and the other pride which had kept him in this company after his calamitous public connection with it. And they sat around the table with its sparkling little service and the talk grew gayer and gayer. Settings, thought Horatia, are queer. Perhaps this in its way is as desirable as great open rooms and nurseries. If one had to choose. But she did not choose between settings. It was a glorious thought—her choice—her choice was between men.
Austin Benedict paid Horatia laughing exaggerated attentions. She must do nothing for herself.
“You working women are getting too independent,” he said. “It makes us afraid. I heard someone say the other day in a certain distinguished company that you should not be a working woman.”
They all insisted on the rest of it, Mrs. Hubbell in the lead.
“Why, as a matter of fact, it wasn’t a man, as you all are thinking. It was Mrs. John Clapp—a discerning lady. She said ‘that to think of you waiting for street cars in the rain made her shudder’—not that she dislikes either street cars or rain but because she feels that you should be protected from both.”
Clouds on Langley’s face, the faintest amusement on Mrs. Hubbell’s and the frankest embarrassment on Horatia’s.
“He delights in baiting me,” she said laughingly and tried to turn the conversation. But she was helpless.
“Marjorie Clapp,” contributed Mrs. Hubbell, “is trying to make the old-fashioned woman fashionable. She knows that it’s the only chance the poor thing has to get back into favor. Make it fashionable to churn the butter and make the candles and that sort of thing will go. And Marjorie knows where she would shine! At a butter-churn!”
“Just where you wouldn’t, Rose,” said Kathleen Boyce, satirically, “the butter wouldn’t—what is it—wouldn’t butter—for you, ever.”
“Oh, I admit that. I admit a great deal of capability in Marjorie.”
“But what’s the use of churning butter,” Kathleen went on, “when you can buy it in beautiful molds and what’s the use of devoting all your time to a house and family when there are maids and nursemaids?”
“I don’t think it’s any good with maids and nursemaids having too much command,” said Horatia. She had forgotten that the conversation hinged on her. “They are all right for hotels. But a house has to express a woman—just as my aunt’s house in West Park with its Nottingham lace curtains and bronze alligators and coldly clean floors expresses her and just as Mrs. Clapp’s big, easy house expresses her.”
“I wonder what yours would be like. Tell us what you think.”
Mrs. Hubbell’s question was light and Horatia should have parried it. But one of her moods of seriousness had come on her and she wanted to bring them all into it for a minute. She wanted to tell them before Langley what their home would be like. It was one of the revelations that an older person would have refused to make for fear of mockery but Horatia’s youth drove her on.
“My house? My house won’t be perfect because of lots of lacks. But I can tell you what I’d like to have. A house, quite large and spacious with just as little furniture in it as was necessary. Open spaces and deep halls and built-in settees with bright cushions where you could lie when you came home tired and where children could play and forget their toys. Room for everyone so no one would irritate anyone else. Fireplaces so that people could dream before them. A few guest-rooms for friends who wanted to come when they were tired or when they especially wanted to see me,—guest-rooms with the morning sun so that any tired person would wake up cheerful. Not too much service and not too many meals together. Breakfast, maybe, together, and then everyone would be free for the day. Trees about the house—big trees which would seem part of it. I would like a hospitable house and a free house. You see I was brought up in one inwhich crumbs on the floor were a mortal sin. It’s an atmosphere instead of a particular place that I want. I just get it vaguely—a long dark oak hall—with the light through windows at the back——” She broke off with an appealing half-laugh and half-sigh and the most involuntary look at Langley—“But I shall have to get the atmosphere in a six-room apartment probably. And I’m sure I can. And I want to.”
Then somehow she knew she had hurt Jim again and she stopped abruptly. Her description had been far too serious for the company and they were embarrassedly sober. But Mrs. Hubbell did not let go, quite yet.
“It was a beautiful description, dear,” she said, “wasn’t it, Jim?”
Jim gave her a quick side look and Mrs. Hubbell stopped. She could afford to, for Horatia wondered about that look. She felt she had made rather a fool of herself and had a sudden memory that Jim and the blonde lady were very old friends.
“I,” said Benedict, “want what I have achieved. A few rooms for which I pay rent and not taxes. A man whose services I can share with my neighbor, thereby reducing his wages. A shaving brush, the morningTimes, a telephone and a light beside my bed. Keep your ambitions down, my friends, and you’ll be happy.”
“What I want,” the Russian dancer broke in, “is a suite at the Plaza. Perfectly good enoughfor me. And a bank account to keep the hotel clerk off my neck.”
“And since wishes aren’t horses, let’s change the subject before our discontents run away with us,” said Jim quietly.
They rolled up the rugs in the living-room and Kathleen Boyce played jazz music and the Russian dancers gave themselves over to the army officers, who danced beautifully. Horatia preferred to watch them, she told Jim, and he watched with her until Mrs. Hubbell, gay and informal as hostess, came up to claim him. Then Mrs. Boyce, resigning her place to the Victrola, joined Horatia.
They watched Mrs. Hubbell’s grace in silence, paying little attention to the others.
“They dance perfectly.”
“Perfectly,” agreed Mrs. Boyce. “Rose taught Jim to dance. Taught him other things too. He is her prize possession, you know.”
Horatia longed to cry out to this faintly smiling woman at her side, “He is my possession,” but she did not dare for fear of what it might lead to. And Mrs. Boyce went on:
“Of course Jim’s a romanticist. He’d stand by any woman whose name was connected with his and whom he dreamed that he might have hurt. But I’ve sometimes wondered if she hasn’t hoodwinked him a little about that whole affair. It may have been a pity that Jack Hubbell decided that he wouldn’t take it through the courts.”
Horatia said nothing.
“You are probably damning me for not minding my own business. Of course you are. But, my dear child, you’re no match for Rose. If you want Jim Langley, get him out of this crowd. It’s not much good. And it’s certainly not good for him. Rose Hubbell may not make men respect her but she doesn’t care.”
“Please,” begged Horatia and Kathleen waved Benedict to come and dance with her. Horatia expected that Jim would stop and join her but he kept on dancing. The illustrator was informally reading a magazine. She sat alone, with an odd sensation of being a wall-flower at a children’s party.
“Perhaps,” she thought, “my face is drawing down at the corners and soon my lip will quiver. I must look natural. There’s nothing to be silly about.” But for all that the forlorn little feeling persisted cruelly.
Then, just as she thought she could sit there no longer, and was trying to decide whether to break in on the illustrator’s reading or to go out into the other room, the music stopped and with the easiest grace in the world Langley and Rose both came towards her. Not in the least apologetic. Smiling at her gaily. No more hurt expression on Langley but a look of sheer enjoyment which made him look young and debonair.
“You have a gift, Rose. I was always awkward on that turn. I never understood it before. But when you get it, like most other things, it’s easy.”
“Horatia thinks we are silly, Jim.”
“Horatia is right. We are silly.”
He took Horatia out on the floor and they danced well, silently, but without abandon.
“I love you,” whispered Langley.
Horatia’s voice was low as she answered:
“Ah, but I love you—utterly—completely.”
Perhaps then Langley longed for the chance to take off ten years of his age as men do long once in a lifetime when a great opportunity comes too late. How was he to explain—or fully understand himself—that only in the strength of very young emotions is everything else automatically shut out except the emotions themselves and that later the beauty is in relating love to a life already known?