Maud came out into the open a little more. She talked Anthony. And once she became rather fundamental in her talk—for Maud.
“I haven’t said much about Jim Langley,” she said. “And since I saw him, I’ll admit that he is fascinating. But there are things no girl understands, Horatia. And you don’t realize what a tremendous thing it is to try to change a man’s habits. Langley isn’t a domestic sort and if you marry a man you’re bound to live his life. In the end most women want a regular kind of home. I don’t want to force you, Horatia, but it does seem as if Anthony were so exactly the right man.”
Unexpectedly Horatia kissed her.
“Poor Maud,” she said, “you do want me to be comfortable, don’t you? But if Jim had Anthony’s money I wonder what you’d feel about the right man?”
“Don’t be silly,” Maud returned, with her pragmatism rising to the surface at once. “He hasn’t the money, has he? My dear, if you knew more about things! If you could see the scraping to get along! I don’t see as much of it as I used to, but Heaven knows there are plenty of people who have to do it. There are such a lot of women trying to get along on too little and keep things up.”
“Their trouble is that they are always trying to throw a bluff.”
“Well,” her sister answered reflectively, “youmust admit that some things—babies now, for instance—take money. Of course if you don’t want children you get along without that. But even then there are clothes and houses—and illness.”
Horatia had an impulse to make herself understood on that point.
“As for babies,” she said, “I want babies. Marriage without them isn’t worth bothering about. They weight marriage—make it of consequence.”
“They hold a man,” said Maud. “Now there never was a better man than Harvey. But there have been times when I’ve seen women look at him, wondering just how much married he was and I’ve been glad I had Jackie and the baby. Men are funny in their feelings towards women but they are pretty certain about their children. I’ve known women who didn’t have children who were precious sorry before they got through.”
“You’re strictly utilitarian in your use of emotion, aren’t you, Maud?”
But Maud looked vague at that and turned to the final ordering of her living-room. It was really all in order, deep, willow chairs with bright cushions in their most comfortable hollows, a tea-table before the empty fireplace and tall glasses already on it. Maud was expecting guests for tea. She had informally asked a few important matrons and chosen this date with much care. The last dance of the summer—the only semiformal one, was to be held in a week at the Country Club. Maud wanted to be sure of enjoying herself on that occasion and to be on an easyfamiliar footing with the summer residents. Hence this very informal, extremely important preceding afternoon at her cottage.
Maud was all a-flutter as her first guests came but as more arrived until at length most of the hoped-for were assembled, her asurance rose. The last comer was Mrs. Stanley Clifford in white organdie and a broad-brimmed hat.
“I brought my guest, Mrs. Hill,” she said to Maud in gracious explanation and Maud bubbled with welcomes. But as she turned to introduce Horatia, a sudden constraint was in the air.
“I have met Miss Grant,” said Mrs. Hill, “when she was working onThe Journal. She went to great pains to frustrate my plan for a soldiers’ and sailors’ memorial.”
She spoke quite clearly. Horatia looked at her with cool gravity, conscious that the eyes of everyone in the room were on her.
“I remember,” she said, without the faintest apology.
Marjorie’s laugh came to the rescue.
“Now don’t scold dear Horatia,” she pleaded gaily, “none of us really wanted that memorial job. And Horatia had sense enough to see it.” She moved Mrs. Hill off and the incident passed over. But Horatia felt a little chilled. This was part of the society to which it had seemed so dignified to belong. This woman with her ill-bred onslaught was part of it. Her mind brushed aside these contacts, these people; they were illusions. The strong virility of the life in thenewspaper office—the personal freedom—flashed before her. Here she was not quite free—here she could not be quite straightforward. She could not turn to Mrs. Hill and say again what she thought of that preposterous plan. She must let the matter rest. It was part of the game.
She forgot certain limitations in the newspaper office. For a moment it stood out richly against a paler background.
“Odious creature, she is,” whispered Maud over the tea-table. “Glad you let it pass like a good sport.”
JIM was finding it heavy going. Determined as his effort was to keep himself up to his recent, his Horatia-stirred pitch, he was forced to work harder than was reasonable or good for him. He had given up Horatia, but surely the feeling must have persisted that she might refuse to be given up and that separation for a little while would bring them together again. If he had not been so lonely it would not have been so hard for him. But many as were his acquaintances there was not one to whom he could have confided anything about himself and Horatia. When he was through with his work, and even he must admit that, if he was to work next day, each day must be allowed to end, he took long walks through the city streets, not slow, philosophic, reflective walks, but he hurried along like a man possessed or trying to get away from something—memories perhaps. Despite his careful grooming he was thinner—weary looking. It was very great strength which kept him from going to Horatia—or writing her. Two or three times he went so far as to get time-tables for the trains to the hill district. And how he hungered for news of her showed in the way he spent an hour discussing politics with Seth Heatherly, just back from a cottage near Maud’s—Seth Heatherly,who bored Jim to death but who at the end of the tedious conversation said that he had seen Horatia at a club dance with young Wentworth and that he thought there was something doing. Jim left him shortly after that and yet it was not to work for he did not return toThe Journaloffice at all that afternoon. He went to his own rooms and shut himself up. There was plenty of plain masculine fierceness and jealousy left in Jim under all his careful impersonality and apparent detachment. And so two months passed and it was mid-September.
Little Miss Christie did not think Mr. Langley looked well and, coming back from her vacation, she plucked up courage to tell him that she thought he should go away for a change. Jim was courteously non-committal and a flush rose into the self-conscious freckled cheeks until Jim noticed her sense of a rebuff and spoke to her a little more personally.
“I’m feeling all right. You look fine yourself, Miss Christie.”
“I am fine. Better than I’ve felt in a long time. Better than I’ve ever felt since that dreadful thing happened in Mr. Hubbell’s office.”
Jim idly probed her. He had never asked her about that before.
“You were the girl who was there at the time it happened.”
“Not just then, Mr. Langley. You remember he sent me out on an errand. It was while I was out that he did it. He had been acting queerlyfor some time but I never dreamed of such a thing. If I only hadn’t gone! And he was so good to me. He never minded all the mistakes I used to make—I was just out of business college.”
Jim smiled grimly. It was so absurd to think of Miss Christie’s supposing that her presence would have kept Jack Hubbell from the extreme edge of despair. She was talking on nervously now, tactlessly, as if a spring had been touched.
“It must have been a comfort to you to have his last words.”
“You’re mistaken. I didn’t have any words with him. I got there much later.”
“I meant in the letter he wrote that afternoon.”
“He didn’t write me any letter,” Jim answered, a little impatient of this opening up of intimate things with his stenographer. But Miss Christie opened her eyes and blundered on.
“I mean the one Mrs. Hubbell took—with her own.”
Jim’s body tightened just a little with sudden interest. But he remained calm. His next words put Miss Christie in a fright.
“I want you to tell me exactly what you know about that letter.”
The girl seemed to see all at once that she was making new history.
“Maybe she lost it,” she said feebly.
“Will you please tell me what I ask about that letter? Tell me just what happened that afternoon.”
Miss Christie gasped.
“Mr. Hubbell came in about five, quite excited—very hurried. He went into his office and shut the door—later he called me and said, ‘Letter to Mr. James Langley’—then he changed his mind and said he would write it by hand. About an hour later he came in and told me to go out and get some stamps and then to stamp and mail at once the two letters on his desk. When I came back he’d—done it. I stood staring at him and at the letters—they were to you and Mrs. Hubbell—I saw that. And then poor Mrs. Hubbell came in. The rest all was told at the inquest.”
“Yes—all that about going out for stamps. But why nothing about my letter?”
“Mrs. Hubbell read hers and then picked up yours and said to me that Mr. Hubbell wanted those letters to be a sacred secret—that she would give you yours personally and that I was especially not to mention that she had had any letter. It was his wish. It was all she could say. She put the letters in her dress and fainted dead away.”
Jim sat looking blankly at the credulous little thing before him, reciting her story with such interest in its drama.
“Mrs. Hubbell was good to you?” he asked.
“She was an angel.” The girl’s eyes filled. “Said she would do all she could to carry out his wishes and she told me that the trouble between them had been a hideous misunderstanding. She sorrowed terribly and she sent me away to get away from the reporters. They asked me so manyquestions. But I never told about those letters. Only I supposed——”
“That I got mine? Now, Miss Christie, I want you to keep your silence even more strictly. Never mention those letters or the tragedy again. That will do, today. You needn’t worry. Nothing will happen.”
Poor little Miss Christie was dazed at what she had done, a good romance spoiling in her mind. She had thought Jim and Mrs. Hubbell, lovers, innocent lovers, refusing to marry because of their fidelity to the dead man. And he had killed himself because he had found out that he had accused her unjustly. Had she not seen many a scenario with even more serious complications?
Jim found Rose at home. She was plainly surprised and pleased at his voice over the house telephone and received him in the grey room, in modified negligee,—a white Mandarin coat over a gold silk skirt. She came towards him both hands outstretched but the grimness on his face stopped her.
“I came,” he said, “for my letter.”
And her immediate pallor, preceding her assumed bewilderment, told him that Miss Christie had told the truth.
“What letter—what’s the trouble, Jim?”
“The letter Jack wrote to me the day he died.”
“He didn’t give me any letter to you——”
“No,—you took it—fairly out of his dead hand.”
“You’re crazy, Jim!”
“No—I’ve been interviewing Miss Christie!”
If poor Miss Christie could have seen the hard look on her benefactor’s face, how her scenario would have been shattered!
“Is that girl back here?”
“She’s been working in my office.”
Mrs. Hubbell paused for a second as if to select a cue. She chose it with quick decision and acted without delay.
“You should have looked into her references before you engaged her,” she said coolly.
He was grimly silent, looking at her as if wondering what the best tactics would be.
“That Christie girl,” she said, “seems to have her own reasons for maligning me. I’ve never looked into it closely but it appears—an office liaison with Jack——” she shrugged. “So she hates me—naturally.”
“That’s a wrong twist, Rose. In the first place I knew Jack. In the second place poor Miss Christie evidently idolizes the ground you walk on. No—you’ve become absurd. Where is that letter?”
“I don’t know what you are talking about and I haven’t any desire to argue with you if you’re drunk or crazy.”
He only laughed and sat down.
“A struggle, is it? Well, let’s see the possibilities. If I don’t get that letter I publish your story. I’m not afraid of the press, God knows. And Jack wasn’t. Make a good feature story.With a few pictures of you. The newspapers must still have some of yours on file.”
She looked at him with venomous hate.
“Beast!”
He did not notice her.
“I wonder if you destroyed that letter. There’s a good deal of reason to suppose that you didn’t. People—especially women—don’t destroy letters. They keep them around—even dangerous ones.”
He had his eyes apparently on the ground—cleverly cast down but he caught an uncontrollable movement, not of her angry head but of her eyes, toward the spinet desk in the corner. It would have told anyone all he wished to know. But at that moment her tactics changed again.
“Jim, you fool,” she said, “I’ll tell you about that letter and why I never gave it to you. I did read it—yes. After I read the brutal one to me I had to read yours. In those days I was close to you, you may be gracious enough to remember. I wanted to spare you. I couldn’t give you that dead man’s curse. I burned it. It was a dreadful letter.”
Her shudder was perfect but belated. Earlier she might have hoodwinked Jim again. But not after that little fearful glance at her desk—that utterly involuntary glance.
“Yes,” said Jim, quietly, “but it’s in that desk.”
“So you think I’m a liar!”
“I know that.”
He was impatient now. “And I’m going to search that desk.”
She was before him but he put her aside with one strong hand and forced her into a chair. Some spring broke in her then. He had taken the right method, physical force, the only thing that cows such a woman. He stood over her menacingly.
“I’ll beat you—tie you—if I have to. But I mean to search that desk.”
He pulled the desk open and, disregarding the piles of documents in the pigeon-holes, rummaged through the drawers, pulling them out one by one to see if their bottoms were real. Under one of them was the usual, ridiculous, obvious “secret” drawer. It was locked; he forced it open with a paper-knife and as he did so she sprang again to prevent him. This time he hurled her away with all gentleness forgotten. And within the drawer with three or four other letters was the one he sought.
He put it in an inner pocket with hands that trembled and then turned to her.
“I’ll have you arrested,” she cried, but it was a cry of fear, not of rage.
“You’ve seen your last of me,” he returned. “And you’d better get out of town as fast as you can. I don’t know what this letter says but it’s something you’d like to keep dark. If you leave town I’ll drop the matter, unless it is something which must be seen through. If you don’t——” he paused at the door, “but why didn’t you destroy that letter?”
But the long-standing mystery of why it ishard to destroy letters remained unsolved by Mrs. Hubbell.
“I meant to,” she answered.
Without another word he left her, the letter in his hand. He went to his room and sat for a while before he opened it, terribly shaken by that familiar handwriting. It had been addressed to his rooms, and the flap of the envelope had been steamed loose, untorn. At last he read the incoherent last message of his best friend.
“Dear Jim—“How in the name of mercy I can write what I must I don’t know. I am in hell. I thought I was in hell before when I found what Rose was. But it’s worse now. To find that I’ve put it on you publicly—to have branded you in my crazy anger as her associate is worse. And I can’t bear any more. My head is going to pieces. It’s suicide, degradation—madness. Suicide is best. But first you’ve got to have the facts and my shamed apology and my attempt at reparation. Some things I’ll have to tell you—ugly as they are. But there are women who don’t deserve the decent chivalry of men’s silence. Rose is bad. She never gave me much peace—coldness, hatred, passion—I never knew. But I loved her—a lot of me still loves her—that’s the degrading thing. I got unmistakable proofs of her infidelity. I had been away and while I was gone someone had spent the night in the house—some man. She stupidly left evidences for me to find. I foundthem. I suspect it wasn’t the first time but it was the first time she had been stupid. I demanded the name of the man—she wouldn’t admit anything. I fell pretty low and opened letters. There was that one from you—you spoke of the ‘good time you’d had that night.’ I was crazy, you know. Rose was vicious but she did not show especial outrage at my accusing you. She denied everything so I believed everything.“As far as she was concerned I was right. She was careless enough to receive the man again—at lunch today. With the servant out. I found out and went home to see you and finish with you. But I crept in and found it wasn’t you. It was another fellow. They were laughing and having a gay time over the way they were doing us both. The good joke was my interpretation of your letter. You and not he had been the victim, and Rose said you had been with her enough to make me jealous—that you would never deny anything that she didn’t want you to.“How she’s played us!“I’m through. I can’t see you because you might dissuade me and I don’t want to be dissuaded. The world’s rotten and I want to get out of it. Every ounce of rotten passion in me for that woman drags me down farther. It’s killing her or myself and it’s easier this way. Only please do this for me. Give the statement enclosed to the newspapers. Sounds rather spectacular but it must be done. It must be done.And for God’s sake be careful whom you marry and steer clear of Rose. Good-bye, old Jim.”
“Dear Jim—
“How in the name of mercy I can write what I must I don’t know. I am in hell. I thought I was in hell before when I found what Rose was. But it’s worse now. To find that I’ve put it on you publicly—to have branded you in my crazy anger as her associate is worse. And I can’t bear any more. My head is going to pieces. It’s suicide, degradation—madness. Suicide is best. But first you’ve got to have the facts and my shamed apology and my attempt at reparation. Some things I’ll have to tell you—ugly as they are. But there are women who don’t deserve the decent chivalry of men’s silence. Rose is bad. She never gave me much peace—coldness, hatred, passion—I never knew. But I loved her—a lot of me still loves her—that’s the degrading thing. I got unmistakable proofs of her infidelity. I had been away and while I was gone someone had spent the night in the house—some man. She stupidly left evidences for me to find. I foundthem. I suspect it wasn’t the first time but it was the first time she had been stupid. I demanded the name of the man—she wouldn’t admit anything. I fell pretty low and opened letters. There was that one from you—you spoke of the ‘good time you’d had that night.’ I was crazy, you know. Rose was vicious but she did not show especial outrage at my accusing you. She denied everything so I believed everything.
“As far as she was concerned I was right. She was careless enough to receive the man again—at lunch today. With the servant out. I found out and went home to see you and finish with you. But I crept in and found it wasn’t you. It was another fellow. They were laughing and having a gay time over the way they were doing us both. The good joke was my interpretation of your letter. You and not he had been the victim, and Rose said you had been with her enough to make me jealous—that you would never deny anything that she didn’t want you to.
“How she’s played us!
“I’m through. I can’t see you because you might dissuade me and I don’t want to be dissuaded. The world’s rotten and I want to get out of it. Every ounce of rotten passion in me for that woman drags me down farther. It’s killing her or myself and it’s easier this way. Only please do this for me. Give the statement enclosed to the newspapers. Sounds rather spectacular but it must be done. It must be done.And for God’s sake be careful whom you marry and steer clear of Rose. Good-bye, old Jim.”
That was all except for a signed statement saying that John Hubbell wished to publicly acknowledge that in naming James Langley as co-respondent in the case of Hubbell vs. Hubbell he had been under a complete misapprehension and wished so to state—that Mr. Langley was entirely innocent of any such entanglement. It said nothing whatever about his wife.
“Thank God he knew,” groaned Jim under his breath. “Thank God he knew.” He sat staring bleakly out of his window as if he looked on waste and desolation.
Many thoughts must have been comforting and torturing him. Of course it was too late for the statement to be used but it healed a wound in Jim which even Horatia could not have cured. It must have seemed ironic to him that he had let such a woman come between him and Horatia. That for a promise to such a woman he had waived his right to yield to Horatia’s request—worst of all that in the society of such a woman he had let Horatia linger. If reason told him that the cause of his separation from Horatia might have been anything else, still there might not have been any immediate cause of alienation.
He looked at the time-tables taken from his pocket. They showed him what he knew, that within six hours he could be with Horatia. Butthe flame in his face died out and he looked again bitter—discouraged. There was Anthony!
That night the most dreadful forest fires of years broke out around the city. There were always forest fires—often very bad ones, but never had they been so terrible and so devastating. It was a relief to Jim to bury himself in the work of help as well as of publicity. The Hill district was safe. He kept half a dozen wires busy until he was sure of that. This fire was coming from the other way, sweeping through the farming country, destroying homes, farms, cattle and human life.
That night too, in one of the large city hospitals on the other side of the city, several babies were born. The nurse made the mother of one of them as comfortable as she could and then tiptoed out.
“Rotten to be as alone as that,” she confided to another blue and white figure, whom she met in the nursery. “Usually you have somebody around. But she didn’t have a soul.”
“Where is her husband?”
“I asked her. She said that he was out of the country. She looks respectable enough. Good clothes—not a bit sporty.”
“He probably is away—or a rotter.”
“Put a tape on the kid’s arm, will you?”
“What number is her room?”
“434. Isn’t Mrs. Gordon in 434? Yes.”
“Cute baby. Is she glad it’s a girl?”
“Says she is. I asked her what she was goingto call it. She was sort of sleepy, but she said Horatia. Funny name, isn’t it?”
Mrs. Gordon was Grace Walsh.
Horatia’s old housemate lay back further on her pillow in her bare hospital room and smiled wearily at some thought. Perhaps she was thinking she would not be so alone now.
KEEPING an appointment, Kathleen Boyce dropped in next day. Her tall indolent figure, prematurely wrapped in loosely hanging furs, stood in the doorway surprisedly.
“Not dressed yet, Rose? Have you forgotten that we’re going to that showing at Boyle’s?”
In the afternoon light Mrs. Hubbell’s face looked sallow and mean little lines dragged down the corners of her mouth.
“Boyle’s? I don’t want to go to Boyle’s.”
“Sick or bored?”
“Both—and done with this place. I’m off for New York next week. Look in there. I’m packing. I’ll do better in New York than I could at Boyle’s, I guess. Look here, Kathleen, why don’t you come with me?”
“Can’t afford a winter in New York. My modest alimony isn’t able to hold a candle to your fortune. Sometimes a living husband isn’t as generous as a dead one.”
Rose smiled viciously.
“Jack wasn’t as rich as lots of people think. I’d my own income.”
Kathleen let the statement pass. Delving into Rose’s affairs was fatiguing. But she shrugged just enough to show her friend that the talk about an independent income didn’t deceive her at all.
“What’s driving you away?”
“What’s there to keep me?”
“Well—the gilded Mr. Martin—and me—and always Jim.”
Mrs. Hubbell sneered.
“I wonder,” said Kathleen negligently, “I’ve always wondered what you got out of that Jim proposition. He obviously wasn’t able to take care of you or marry you and you knew some flapper would grab him sooner or later. Rather a nice flapper too. And you didn’t want to marry him!”
“Marry him! I hate him! I never wanted him! He’s crooked anyhow.”
“Oh, come now, Rose.” Kathleen was adroitly probing and thoroughly enjoying herself. It was cheering to know that something was driving Rose away from her last decent quarry. Kathleen had few scruples but she had some and Horatia had waked one of them.
“Drop Jim, then.” Rose was brief. “And better come to New York.”
“Where are you going?”
“Apartment—somewhere.”
“Alone—any attachments?”
“Not yet,” said Rose brazenly.
“Well—I guess I won’t come. I’m not ready. I’ll be along later, maybe.”
Kathleen was not tight-laced but she did not care to spend a winter with Rose. And Rose must have known it and included her in the general hate she was lavishing today. She had had adisagreeable morning with her check-book. What she told Kathleen had been in part true. Her husband had not been as rich as people thought—but the fact that he had died intestate, having somehow forgotten to make a will or perhaps not having cared enough to make one, had left her generously taken care of. She had spent overlavishly however and well as she knew how to supplement her income she was just now more pressed than she cared to admit.
Languidly Kathleen said good-bye and made her exit into the street to be stared at and admired and to wend her way to Boyle’s to study fashions and look at clothes she could not afford to buy. Thence to dinner and the theatre with some man. So futile, so lazy, so stupid a life! But without great malice was Kathleen. She was glad her friend was going, though it would mean that a good organizer of parties was lost to their vague circle.
Rose packed her trunk, and made her plans. A few days before she left she received, by appointment, a heavy, youngish, florid man of perhaps thirty-two or three. She was lovely and soft that night—tinted with rose by the light of her candles. The man sat beside her and caressed her with some enthusiasm.
“About ready to go?” he asked.
“And lonely—I wish you’d come with me.”
“Maybe I will if you ask me nicely. Do you really want me or are you just broke?”
“Both.”
He took that as a rare joke.
“Well, by George, you’re honest anyhow. How much?”
“Later,” she answered negligently. “Time enough for that. Will you come?”
“I will, if you’ll devote yourself to entertaining me. Just me—mind. You will too. We’ve had some great times. I’ve never forgotten what a peach you were that winter after your trouble. And you were pretty clever. No one ever suspected I was implicated. It would have been rotten if they had. Not a cent for little Willie if he doesn’t go straight, says the old man. That means not a cent for Rosie. So I’ve got to be pretty careful here. But in New York——”
“When you get it yourself, will you marry me?”
“The money?” A shrewd, hard little look passed between them. He stroked her arm. “Well, he’s a long liver and there’s a jolly income for me—and you—now. What’s the use of bothering?”
“None.” She knew that he wouldn’t marry her.
“When do we leave?”
“I’ll leave Sunday, and wait over in Chicago. You can meet me by accident on the flyer Tuesday.”
“And you’ll get the accommodations?”
She nodded a little wearily.
Her packing was very complete. Her furniture was put into storage, and the agent of herapartment agreed, after a struggle, to sublet it. When it came to business the languorous eyes of Mrs. Hubbell could become immensely practical and definite and she could out-Herod most of her tradespeople. She got what she wanted out of men whether she had to try wits or emotions on them.
On Sunday, unattended, after a few curiously casual telephone calls of farewell, she left on the Chicago train. Through the early evening, which darkened so early now, the train sped along and in her compartment Rose sat close to the window, still as a sphinx. The shadows crept over her lovely face and softened it. And her thoughts softened it too, making her so alluring that men on their way to the dining-car turned back to repass her open door. But she did not seem to notice them. Who could tell of what she was thinking? Of a misspent selfish life which had ridden cruelly roughshod over the lives of the people around her? Of Jack Hubbell, the gentle, loving, passionate man, who had given her everything a man could give and whom she had cheated in return? Of how she might have been still a revered and loved wife if it had not been for the strange devil in her which hungered after looseness and hated control? No—more likely it was of the man she was to meet day after tomorrow “by accident,” of the way to manage him and bring him to the point of arranging for her future; of his possibilities and financial solidity. There were so many things of which she mighthave been thinking if she looked into her past and future as the train sped along faster and faster, carrying her away from the lives which she had scarred. But the scars were healing and she would never harm those lives again.
Her passing was only casually noted. At the restaurants and hotels they asked after her once or twice. That was all—they soon forgot to ask.
THE hills were in their most magnificent autumn color. When the sun shone the masses of trees were almost unbearably brilliant. Scarlet and yellow shaded into orange and crimson and in all the riot there was not one discordant note. On the shadowy, misty days Horatia loved it best. Then the colors seemed a saddened glory, hinting at their own passing. And to see the leaves reflected in the lakes—wonderful colored mirrors—was the most wonderful sight of all. She loved to take Anthony’s canoe and drift over the reflections, moving so silently and graciously that the movement seemed unreal. The time was coming when she must leave all this and she was clinging to her peace. It had been peace. Only lately had the old restlessness come to disturb her. Only lately had she begun to wonder what was happening in the city. Her weariness had passed and she was eager for life again. But as she made ready for action she realized that she must reconstruct in the light of what she had learned and that one of her first problems would be Anthony.
Anthony, slender and strong in his khaki clothes, bareheaded, energetic, full of life, Anthony kind and tender, Anthony brave and generous, Anthony controlled and yet full of fire, Anthony burning for life himself, intolerant of shabbiness or weakness, Anthony the aristocrat. There was no possible great criticism of Anthony. Little things, perhaps, Horatia would admit to herself, but as a man he showed few weaknesses. He had a great deal to offer and he was offering it in all but words. Marjorie could have told her that Anthony was not himself at all—that the Anthony his sister saw sometimes was a frightened boy with all his self-assurance gone, saying to her:
“She’ll never have me. I know she won’t. I haven’t a thing to offer her—none of this highbrow stuff she’s so keen for.”
And again Anthony was a dominant man who watched for the woman he wanted and as he watched and planned could say exultantly:
“I’ll do everything in the world to make her happy and I know I’m the sort of person to do it. She needs the life I can give her. I’m sure she does—calmness—protection—she needs a husband.”
And yet again he said nothing at all but looked hungry or was exuberantly gay.
Without the slightest resentment Marjorie came very close to Horatia. She liked her more and more, as she told Anthony, and whatever her hopes were, she kept them to herself.
The Country Club dinner-dance had come and Horatia in Maud’s yellow dress with the soft yellow chiffon hat on her head was very beautiful. As Aunt Caroline had sagely said, “yellow was becoming to one so dark,” and the softness of it and the rosy brown of Horatia’s country color made her look like the autumn itself. She had borrowed a black velvet coat from Maud and stood with it over her arm, gazing through the casement window of the living-room. A little early—she had known that he would be—Anthony was there, and he stopped at the door with a long ecstatic whistle.
“Stunning, Horatia! Where did you keep all this radiance? Is this the way you dress in the country?”
“Mostly Maud’s,” said Horatia. “The hat was a debauch—a mortal sin!”
“It’s as attractive as sin,” he agreed, helping her aboard the car.
They had become very used to the roadster, thought Horatia. It seemed as if this place belonged to her. She said so.
“It does belong to you—all of it from the tail light to the carburetor! And the chauffeur is thrown in!”
“Look out—I’ll take it as a deed of gift!”
“I’ll tell you how to take it—no, not now—— Look here—you’re not going next week, are you?”
“We must. Maud has to open up her town house and it’s getting cold for the children.”
“Let them go and stay yourself.”
“I must go to work, young man.”
“On that newspaper? Isn’t that all over?”
Her face clouded, but they were at the club and he could not go on.
It was a successful dinner. Maud found people all over the room whom she knew and whom, after her tea-party, she dared approach. She made inquiries about their plans—tentative advances towards a continuation of their society in the city, and was not rebuffed—to her great delight. Her table, with Anthony and Horatia, was rather noticeable and Maud, more than the absorbed young people, felt the looks and glances of men and women turning towards the lovely girl in yellow and the whispering about the situation which everyone suspected between her and young Wentworth.
Horatia had never been more radiant. The admiration in Anthony’s eyes was answered by the feeling in her own. She felt very young and handsome, part of all this high-bred color and gaiety. And Anthony felt that he had reached the climax of his courting and that at last the time was ripe. They rose from the table and swung into a dance in the open space in the middle of the room, alone on the floor for an instant. He was suddenly immensely conscious of the glances towards them and that the glances recognized Horatia as his. He drew her closer than he usually did. Her arm lay over his shoulder and her cheek was close to his own as they swung into each movement of the dance. The floor grew crowded and he held her protectingly now, guiding her against casual contact as if hewas trying to express his desire to so guide her always. It was not an embrace and yet Horatia felt it as one, and was not as she usually was while she danced—aware of only music and rhythm; now she was aware of Anthony. There was a response in her unexpected to herself. She gave herself up to his leadership and this assumption of control. All the instincts which for generations have encouraged women to lean on men awoke in her and for those few moments she knew the joy which women have always had and will always have in being cared for, in having decisions made for them and their wills bent to the desires of others. Such instincts had never had any encouragement from Horatia. They were latent in the depths of a femininity which she never would willingly develop greatly, but instincts can live along without nourishment, yet now and then rise to the surface of a life with immense power.
The music stopped and he unwillingly released her.
“Horatia,” he said, his voice very soft and grave with emotion, “Horatia—sweetheart——”
She flushed and the flush rose like a tide of feeling.
A little dizzy, they made their way back to the table.
There were many partners for Horatia that night. She danced as she had never danced before. To the old accuracy and conscientiousness of her steps was added a vigor, a vivaciousnessand a pliability that for the moment gave her Rose Hubbell’s gift of motion. She suited herself to each man, but in the dances with Anthony she was more pliable and yet more vigorous than she had ever been.
An evening colored like the autumn with splendid gorgeousness and as transient. The time came when Anthony could stand it no longer.
“Haven’t you had enough of this? Will you come for a ride? And then I’ll take you home.”
Her crisis was upon her and a fear overtopped by courage filled her.
They stopped to tell Maud and Marjorie. Maud’s benignant glance jarred Horatia, but Anthony did not even see it. Nor did he catch the look of half-worry, half-confidence which his sister gave him. All that he felt was Horatia’s hand upon his arm.
Silently they drove through the night, bewildered by the vastness of this thing they had brought upon themselves. They turned from the highway into a country road and there Anthony stopped the car at the beginning of a wooded path they both knew, magical now in the dim moonlight.
“Let’s walk a bit.”
But they had not walked far before he slipped his arm through hers and turned her to him. Gently he drew her closer until her head was near his shoulder. Even then he could only say her name at first, lovingly, longingly, brokenly, and then—
“I love you so, Horatia, I love you so.”
He kissed her forehead and she did not resist. It amazed her that she felt no resistance—no desire to pull away from him, and the next words were the words which best pleaded his cause.
“We were made for each other.”
That was what she had been wondering. It helped her to have him so sure. Perhaps they were made for each other.
“See how your head fits into the curve of my arm. It belongs there. You are so beautiful—so lovely, Horatia.”
But after a little he wanted his response.
“Do you love me a little?”
“I don’t know. I am so puzzled—so unsure of myself. I don’t know.”
That did not frighten him.
“You will love me,” he said, confidently, “because I’ll love you so much that you can’t help it. Because I adore you.”
“I’m afraid I’m only hypnotized by all this atmosphere sometimes—by the kindness and the care you’ve given me.”
“Then you can stay hypnotized—you can stay hypnotized forever because I haven’t begun to be kind to you yet or to care for you as I am going to. There are so many things I want to do.”
“Perhaps I only want to lie back and let you do them—perhaps it’s all laziness. If I can only be sure, Anthony!”
“Don’t worry about it, sweetheart. This is all natural. It will all take its natural course.”
Horatia was not listening.
“A few months ago it was Jim. You remember how I told you it was Jim then. Aren’t you aghast at my infidelity?”
He was glad to have Jim’s name in the open, reluctant as he was to spoil his love-making by discussion.
“It’s not infidelity, sweetheart. It was the excitement—the fascination of certain circumstances. It wasn’t real. You imagined yourself into a situation. This is real. I want you to marry me soon and let me show you how real it can be. I want to live with you. Every moment I spend away from you now is wasted. I want to have you always—with me—in our home—in the depths of me—my wife.”
He had let her go a little, visioning the life as it came to him—emotion enriched by the joy of life together. Horatia watched his face, tender, immensely uplifted by this passion which led so directly to the high-spirited life of which he dreamed. And a change was coming over her. She was no longer relaxed. His love had not repelled her. But this talk of marriage, this pressing intimacy, was that drawing her? Anthony noticed no change in her. Swept by the sense of her presence, he gathered her close again and, passionate now, bent to her lips with the kiss that told of his passion. But everything changed. That caress woke in her a flood of resistance, of defence, that cleared her mind as a thunderstorm clears the air. It was Jim who had kissed herlike that. It could not be done again. It was Jim who had the right!
She wrenched herself away.
“No—Anthony—no!”
“Did I frighten you, darling? I’m sorry—I’m sorry.”
“Not that—you made it clear—I don’t love you—I don’t love you.”
She was almost exultant, so glad was she to have it clear in her mind. He was appalled at her tone, rather than her words.
“What have I done, Horatia? You loved me a moment ago!”
The frightened appeal in his voice broke through her absorption. She faced him quietly, bravely.
“I’ve been wrong, Anthony. I thought perhaps I did love you. But now I’m sure I don’t. I’m sure there can be nothing more between us as I was sure months ago. It’s been wicked to let you in for this—I’m sorry—so terribly sorry. I never in my life liked anyone so much or liked to be with anyone so much, but——”
“But that’s enough to go on. That’s all I ask. You’ve been rushed too hard. Let the question of love go. Let me love you and you like me——”
She left her hands in his.
“It might be enough, dear Anthony, it might be enough except that I love Jim and I must be with Jim.”
There was so much surety, so much yearningin her voice that he dropped her hands. But he could not cease pleading.
“You don’t know what you’re doing. It’s infatuation. It’s so wrong—so unreasonable.”
“I’ve been trying to be reasonable,” she answered, with a little gesture that brushed reason aside as irrelevant. “I’ve been trying to be reasonable and intellectual. Those things don’t matter. I love Jim. That, I’m afraid, is all that does matter.”
“But later,” he cried, tortured, “later you’ll find you’ve done the wrong thing.”
“There’s no right or wrong thing. It’s the only thing.”
The tremendous chastity of love was speaking through her and momentarily it sobered Anthony. Reason, emotion might protest in him but before the fact that she was avowing, that she was given to another man, he was helpless. He turned away, the fine carriage of his shoulders changed into the droop of a disappointed boy. And Horatia’s heart was full of pity and misery at the inexorableness of his love for her and the impossibility of loving him.
“I’m so sorry—so sorry,” she cried.
“It’s all right.” There was a touch of resentment in his tone. “Well, there’s nothing more to be said—and no use prolonging this. I’ll take you back.”
But at the edge of the wood the memory of that first embrace went to his head and he must embrace her pleadingly, demandingly again. Shewas submissive. It was her fault that he felt so. She had made herself clear but she even ventured in her pity to stroke the hair back from his miserable, saddened face.
“I love you, I’ll always love you,” he groaned. “It’s so damned cruel—so unnecessary. Tonight in my arms you loved me. Until you got brooding over memories. I can erase your memories if you give me a chance. I’ll give you everything in the world—all the beauty and power of it. Horatia—we’re young—we belong together.”
But her revelation had been indeed revelation. Cruel, mistaken, even wrong love might be but love was love and to her marrying must include love. It was a stormy drive home. Anthony sullen, angry, pitiful, pleading, almost broke her down. He did break down her confidence and destroy her joy in her revelation, but against the one final fact he battered in vain. At last at the door of Maud’s cottage he kissed her again, almost angrily.
“Must I give up? I’ll wait—wait—if you say.”
“Please give it up, Anthony. It’s no good.”
He was gone and Horatia, weary and disheveled, sat in her unlit room, watching the road in the moonlight. Soon Maud would be home. She would be angry and disappointed. But she would build other ambitions and not waste the advantages she had gained through this summer. Horatia thought of Marjorie. She would be sorry too. And yet she might understand. Some day Horatia thought, she would tell Marjorie all about it. Now she must go back to her work. Back toThe Journalif they wanted her. But perhaps they did not—perhaps not even Jim wanted her. No matter. She was buoyed up by a tremendous surety. She had been faithful to her love—she had made sorrow and she might have to face more of it but she had escaped degradation.
Marjorie found Anthony face downwards on his bed. She had never been sure that he would win and now she knew he had lost. She stole in and sat by him, a wise, white figure in her soft negligee.
“She won’t have me,” he said bitterly.
Marjorie asked no questions—only waited.
“At first she thought she cared—she was so wonderful—but she loves Langley! She found it out when—when I kissed her.”
At the intolerable memory he sprang up and paced the room.
“That’s final,” said his sister, quietly. “She knows.”
“She’s wrong,” cried Anthony. “She belongs to me. I’m the person to make her happy. He’s not.”
“She loves Jim,” said Marjorie under her breath, and dismissing Horatia for a while, she turned to help her brother. There was only a little that she could do but she left him quieter, prouder of himself and his emotion, tortured by the memory of sweetness rather than by bitterness. He was in good hands.
MAUD was very angry. She was not in good form after her late hours at the dance and added to her physical malaise came this crashing disappointment. It had been actually inconceivable to Maud that Horatia would ultimately refuse Anthony. Didn’t he offer everything in the world that Maud held valuable? Before her protests, her storms, her really bitter accusations that Horatia had been cruel and selfish, Horatia was silent, stubbornly silent, Maud said. But it was not stubborn silence. It was sympathy with what Maud wanted and regret for the fact that she could not help her get the things she wanted. Maud had given Horatia a happy summer or she had been at least the occasion of offering her one and Horatia was filled with real gratitude. Maud did not want her to leave. She was full of secret enterprising plans for seeing Marjorie or even Anthony himself and insisting that they press Horatia—Maud stopped at no delicacies when the end was really important. But on that point Horatia was fixed. She would not see Anthony again and she would never allow the question to be reopened. And she was leaving at once.
She left Maud with a wet towel around her head, wailing that her summer had been spoiled.There had been several times during their talk when Horatia had nearly added insult to injury by laughing at her sister. This was one of them. She had such a clear picture of Maud, reviving after her departure, and planning the best way to utilize Horatia’s romance.
“Come, Maud,” she said, “think of all the friends you’ve made.”
“I’d like to know how I can keep friends in the face of all the scandal this will make! People will say—and you did encourage him! Just as I was planning to see a lot of these people this winter. They’ll all wonder——”
“It will make you interesting, Maud.” Horatia did smile a little as she said that.
“Oh, you can laugh!” Maud’s tone was pettish but already there was a touch of secret solace in it.
Horatia left her on that note and took the jitney bus to the station. It was a rickety Ford that rattled and creaked over the hills which she was used to crossing with Anthony or Harvey. But Harvey was in town and there was only the jitney this morning, symbol, thought Horatia, of what the world offered to a woman who had no man to provide for her comfort. The back of the seat hit her spine uncomfortably and she held on to the side, grimly taking pleasure in her own discomfort. Once she saw a roadster coming in a whirl of dust, but it was not Anthony.
The train was no better than the bus. She shared a seat with an amazingly fat and amazingly rude woman who acted as if Horatia’s travelling bag was a personal insult and made little digs at it with her umbrella. Horatia idly wondered why she noticed all these things and later why she found it such a nuisance to carry her own bag.
“I’m quite spoiled,” she said to herself, “spoiled and soft.”
In the station she hesitated. She did not want to go toThe Journaloffice until late afternoon and it was only half past ten. The reporters would be there now. By afternoon they would be out and Jim (at the very thought her heart beat faster), Jim would be alone perhaps. Well, she couldn’t go to Maud’s house. She boarded a car for West Park.
West Park sat complacently still in the sunlight. Horatia was glad to see it again—glad to come back to its acceptance of everything, including herself. She went up the hill to her uncle’s house and Aunt Caroline greeted her with what for Aunt Caroline was almost enthusiasm. She wanted to know all about Maud’s babies and Maud’s rent and how Horatia liked it. Horatia answered a host of petty questions with no irritation. It was a good thing, she thought, that these bland and undesigning aunts are in the world. How they comfort us in all our worries by their placid fronts and limited worlds. If—
“And how is Mr. Langley?” asked her aunt as they finished their lunch. She could never come to calling him Jim.
Horatia could have kissed her for that assumption that everything was all right between her and Jim.
“And by the way, a telephone message came for you here the other day. I said I didn’t know when you’d be back, but I took it down.”
“Funny it should come here——” said Horatia.
Her aunt consulted the memorandum on her desk.
“Here it is—a Mrs. Gordon at Mercy Hospital wanted to see you.”
“Sure it was I?”
“Oh, yes—I was very sure to ask and I spelt the name.”
Horatia reflected. It was now early afternoon. If she went to Mercy Hospital that would be a way to get off and think—and to pass the impatient hours until—
“I must go into town to the office,” she told Aunt Caroline, “but perhaps I’ll come back tonight for supper, unless I have to stay at the office.”
Aunt Caroline said that she hoped Horatia would be very sure to get back by half past six, and that she should expect her. She added that she hoped Horatia wouldn’t tire herself out again with all that newspaper work, and she stood on the top step watching her as she had watched her that first morning when Horatia set off to work. Horatia recalled that day.
“Ah, but now,” she said to herself, “I know where to look for my romance. Romance—howstupidly I went after it—and how glorious that I know where to look for it now.”
Mercy Hospital, flat, clean, yellow brick, fascinated her. Its very paint seemed deliberately sanitary at the expense of charm. She wondered who Mrs. Gordon was. She waited and finally through a maze of corridors was taken to the maternity wing. It appeared that Mrs. Gordon was a maternity case. There was some delay before she was admitted. She stood in the corridor feeling very young and unimpressive. Nurses, holding little blanket bundles, hurried past her. A smell of ether came sickishly from an open door and now, wheeled quickly and expertly, came a table with a covered form under it that was silent and still.
“Is she dead?” Horatia whispered to a nurse at the desk.
The nurse laughed.
“Oh, no indeed. Her baby just came and they’re taking her back to her room. They don’t die that easy.”
But to Horatia it was serious. How close to death people went for their babies, she thought tremulously! To do a thing like that one must be sure of great love. Would she some day be like that silent figure? She shivered in sudden horror. A man came out of a room and paced up and down silently, his face gray with pain. The nurse, passing, spoke to him reassuringly.
“A couple of hours,” she said, “she’s doing fine.”
The man tried to smile and failed. Horatia shivered again. This was the grim side of love. It frightened her.
“You wanted to see Mrs. Gordon?” Still another nurse beckoned. “Go down to 434. Go right in.”
She opened the door a little timidly and a figure on the bed turned slowly toward her. Horatia gasped.
“Grace!”
Grace nodded and smiled. She was pale and her yellow hair in two long braids was beautiful.
“No less than Grace.”
“But I never guessed.”
“I didn’t mean that you should. Or anyone else. That’s the idea in being Mrs. Gordon.”
“And you have a baby!”
“Quite a darling. Here, look at it.”
She pushed the corner of the blanket back from a queer little wrinkled face. Two tiny crumpled fists lay close to the red cheeks.
“Is it a girl?”
“Yes—that’s why I wanted to see you. Can I call it Horatia?”
“After me—but why after me?”
“Because,” said Grace, smiling a little pathetically, “I’d like to have her be like you. Bring her up so that she would be.”
Horatia recovered her poise. She sat down by the bedside.
“I shall be very proud to have that cunningthing have my name,” she answered, “and please, may I know about it?”
“There’s not much to know. It happened. Sometimes such things do happen. At first I thought I wouldn’t have it. Then as I faced the idea of abortion, I couldn’t. Something bigger than me—something racial, I suppose—took hold of me. So I made plans—dressed cleverly and two months ago went on my vacation—buried myself in a lodging house as Mrs. Gordon. Then I came to the hospital when it was about to come. Nobody knows what fun I had creating a character for the records.”
“But will you keep it?”
“Keep it!” cried Grace, “isn’t it mine? I’ll keep it of course. Take it back and say I’ve adopted it. People will believe it—or not. But I’m pretty valuable to my work. I fancy they’ll believe it or, pretend that they do. What do I care if they don’t?”
“And the father?” ventured Horatia.
Grace’s shoulders shrugged just a trifle.
“Gracious, he doesn’t know about it. It’s not his affair. He wasn’t looking for children. It’s mine. Besides I’m done with him and he knows it—months ago. As a matter of fact, Horatia, I’m done with all that.”
She went on talking with her old passion for analysis.
“You mustn’t imagine that this is a heavy reformation. I haven’t any sense of being reformed. I don’t want to be reformed. Indirectlyit’s because of the baby, of course. I’ve had love and now I have my baby. I’m not as greedy as most women. I’m contented with my baby. I don’t have to have love too. I have work and my child and that’s all I want. You told me once that the sum total of my philosophy was wrong. And I think I’ve found out why. It’s because it didn’t have any hope—any chance in it. Since that baby came, I’ve had a tremendous sense of new hopes—of a chance always that a further generation can straighten things out. It’s such a clean slate to write on.”
“You’re a wonderful woman, Grace,” Horatia said, “more brave and more wonderful than almost any woman I know. I’d give anything to be as brave as you are. And I’m so proud to have your daughter bear my name.”
Grace reddened a little awkwardly.
“I’ve talked a lot about myself,” she answered, “let’s have your affairs on the table. Where’s Langley?”
“I don’t know.”
“You’ve just come back to town?”
“I’ve just come back to Jim and I’ve not gone to the office yet. I’m going later.”
“You’re going to marry Jim soon?”
“If he’ll have me. I’ve been rotten, Grace. I’ve been cheap. I wanted to run Jim’s life—choose his friends. Then when I found I couldn’t, instead of respecting his resistance or leaving him a right to decide things for himself I left him and let Anthony Wentworth make love to me.For a while I even let myself get weakened by Anthony—or Anthony plus his possessions. But I came to. And so I’m back here to ask Jim if he will have me.”
“He’ll have you,” answered Grace dryly.
“But I’ve been so rotten—so indirect. When I think how superior I felt to you! And I’ve been a coward all along. Why, even now, in the hall I was fearing having children. And here you—alone——”
“Nonsense,” said Grace, “you were nothing of the sort. I’m quite abnormal. Occasionally good comes out of abnormality. That in the crib is the good. But don’t fool yourself into thinking that you want to be like me. No—my Horatia will be like you. Normal—struggling and lovable in her youth and as you will be—normal, sure and loved in her maturity. I’m glad you are taking Jim, though. Jim won’t make you too normal, ever. Wentworth is a nice lad but not what you want. You want the divine fire burning on your own hearth. It’s a hard fire to watch and keep up but together you and Jim can do it. Wentworth would only give you fires to keep you warm.”
Horatia smiled in comprehension.
“I’m awfully glad I know you, Grace.”
“I’ll be nicer, now,” admitted Grace.
“Can I hold the baby?”
She took the soft little bundle into her arms and walked to the window with it. Below the first twilight was hanging over the city. It was gray and the lights were beginning to outline thebuildings and the streets. Far away on the other side of the city was her man. What did anything matter except that he was there? Problems, their own or society’s, the struggle for existence, birth, illness, death even were glorious if you faced them gravely and with love.
The baby stirred its little fists and she held it tenderly against her. How often she had said glibly that she wanted to live, to have children, to be loved, to work? Yet how much of it had been only talk and how she had shivered when the things that went with children and life and work, pain and disappointment and questionings, had even come near her. For the first time it seemed to her that she really wanted life—wanted it full of joys and pains—wanted it beneath its romantic glamour. She felt her spirit move confidently towards the battle. Not as she had left the stone house that first morning with her heart dancing for the fun and experience. Not as she had left it this afternoon, even, quaking with hopes and fears. Now her heart was beating more steadily, less excitedly, more in time with the heart of the world into which romance and reality unceasingly pump the blood of life.
It was only the mood—the inspiration of the moment—and she knew that it would pass. But it would come again, often, though not often enough to keep the world always sunlit with glow, yet——
Gently she laid the baby in the crib and kissed Grace. “I’ll come again,” she promised, “and now I must go to Jim.”