VISALLIE EALING
IT DID not wait so long as it usually did: Anne came home early, too, at eleven; though the dancing would go on until one, and it was her habit to stay as long as the musicians did. Distant throbbings of dance music from across the links came in at the girl’s open window as she undressed in her pretty room; but she listened without pleasure, for perhaps she felt something unkind in these far-away sounds to-night—something elfish and faintly jeering.
Her mother, coming in, and smiling as she always did when she came for their after-the-party talks, saw that Anne looked serious: her eyes were grave and evasive.
“Did you get tired—or anything, Anne?”
“It wasn’t very exciting—just the same old crowd that you always see there, week after week. I thought I might as well get to bed a little early.”
“That’ll please your father,” Mrs. Cromwell assured her. “I noticed you danced several times with young Hobart Simms. You were dancing with him when I left, I think.”
“Yes?” Anne said, inquiringly, but she did not look toward her mother. She stood facing her dressing-table, apparently preoccupied with it. “I shouldn’t?”
“ ‘Shouldn’t?’ ” Mrs. Cromwell echoed, laughing indulgently. “He’s commonplace, perhaps, but he’s a nice boy, and everybody admires the plucky way he’s behaved about his father’s failure. I only thought——” she hesitated.
“Yes?”
“I only thought—well, heisa little shorter than you——”
“I see,” Anne said; and with that she turned eyes starry with emotion full upon her mother. The look was almost tragic, but her voice was gentle. “Did we seem—ridiculous?”
“No, indeed! Not at all.”
“I think we did,” Anne murmured and looked down at the dressing-table again. “Well—it doesn’t matter.”
“Don’t be so fanciful,” Mrs. Cromwell said. “You couldn’t look ridiculous under any circumstances, Anne.”
“I understand,” said Anne. “You don’t think I danced with Hobart Simms because Iwantedto, do you, Mother?”
“No, it was because you’re kind,” Mrs. Cromwell returned, comfortingly; then continued, in a casual way, “It just happened you were with poor little Hobart during the short time I was looking on. I suppose you weren’ttoopartial to him, dear. You danced with all the rest of the customary besiegers, didn’t you?”
“Oh, I suppose so,” Anne said, wearily. In profile to her mother, she stood looking down upon the dressing-table, her hands moving among little silver boxes and trumperies of ivory and jade and crystal; but those white and shapely hands, adored by the mother, were doing nothing purposeful and were only pretending to be employed—a signal to mothers that daughters wish to be alone but do not know how to put the wish into tactful words. Mrs. Cromwell understood; but she did not go.
“I’m glad you danced with all of ’em,” she said. “You did dance with them all, did you, Anne?”
“I guess so.”
“I’m glad,” the mother said again, and then, as in a musing afterthought, she added, “I only looked on for a little while. I suppose Harrison was there?”
The daughter’s hands instantly stopped moving among the pretty trifles on the dressing-table; she was still from head to foot; but she spoke in a careless enough tone. “Harrison Crisp? Yes. He was there.” And then, as if she must be scrupulously honest about this impression, she added, “At least, Ithinkhe was.”
“Oh!” Mrs. Cromwell exclaimed, enlightened. “Anne, didn’t you dance with him atall?”
“With Harrison?” the girl asked, indifferently. “No; I don’t believe I did, now I come to think of it.”
“Didn’t he ask you at all?”
Anne turned upon her with one of those little gasps that express the exasperated weariness of a person who makes the same explanation for the hundreth time. “Mother! If he didn’t ask me, isn’t that the same as not asking me ‘at all’? What’s the difference between not dancing with a person and not dancing with him ‘at all’? What’s the use of making such a commotion about it? Dear me!”
The unreasonableness of this attack might have hurt a sensitive mother; but Mrs. Cromwell was hurt only for her daughter:—petulance was not “like” Anne, and it meant that she was suffering. Mrs. Cromwell was suffering, too, but she did not show it.
“What in the world was Harrison doing all evening?” she asked. “It seems strange he didn’t come near you.”
“There’s no city ordinance compelling every man in this suburb to ask me to dance. I don’t know what he was doing. Dancing with that girl from nowhere, probably.”
“With whom?”
“Nobody you know,” Anne returned, impatiently. “A girl that’s come here lately. He seemed to be unable to tear himself away from her long enough to even say ‘How-dy-do’ to anybody else. He’s making rather an exhibition of himself over her, they say.”
“I heard something of the kind,” her mother said, frowning. She seated herself in a cushioned chair near the dressing-table. “Is she a commonish girl named Sallie something?”
“Yes, she is,” Anne replied, and added bitterly: “Very!” Having reached this basis, they found that they could speak more frankly; and both of them felt a little relief. Anne sat down, facing her mother. “She’s a perfectly horrible girl, Mother—and that’s what he seems to like!”
“I happened to hear a little about her,” Mrs. Cromwell said. “I noticed some relatives of hers who were there—her mother was one—and they were distinctly what we call ‘common.’ I was so surprised to find such people put up as guests at the club that before I came home I asked some questions about them. The mother and daughter have come here to live, and they’re apparently quite well-to-do. Their name is Ealing, it seems.”
“Yes,” said Anne. “Sallie Ealing.”
“What surprised me most,” Mrs. Cromwell continued, “I learned that they’d not only been given guests’ cards for the club, but had actually been put up for membership.”
“Yes,” Anne said huskily. “It’s Harrison. He did it himself and he’s got about a dozen people to second them. Several of the girls thought it their duty to tell me about that to-night.”
“You poor, dear child!” the mother cried; but her compassion had an unfortunate effect, for the suave youthful contours of the lovely face before her were at once threatened by the malformations of anguish: Anne seemed about to cry vociferously, like a child. She got the better of this impulse, however; but she stared at her mother with a luminous reproach; and the light upon the dressing-table beside her shone all too brightly upon her lowered eyelids, where liquid glistenings began to be visible.
“Oh, Mamma!” she gasped. “What’s the matter with me?”
“The matter with you?” her mother cried. “You’re perfect, Anne! What do you mean?”
Anne choked, bit her lip, and again controlled herself, except for the tears that kept forming steadily and sliding down from her eyes as she spoke. “I mean, why do I mind it so much? Why do I care so about what’s happening to me now? I never minded anything in my life before, that I remember. I was sorry when Grandpa died, but I didn’t feel likethis. Have I been too happy? Is it a punishment?”
Her mother seized her hands. “ ‘Punishment’? No! You poor lamb, you’re making much out of nothing. Nothing’s happened, Anne.”
“Oh, but it has!” Anne cried, and drew her hands away. “You don’tknow, Mamma! It’s been coming on ever since that girl first came to one of the summer dances, a month ago! Mamma, to-night, if it hadn’t been for little Hobart Simms, there were times when I’d have been stranded! Absolutely! It’s such a horribly helpless feeling, Mamma. I never knew what it was before—but I know now!”
“But youweren’t‘stranded,’ dear, you see.”
“I might have been if I hadn’t come away,” Anne said, and her tears were heavier. “Mamma, what can I do? It’s so unfair!”
“You mean this girl is unfair?”
“No; she only does what she thinks will give her a good time.” There was sturdiness in Anne’s character; she was able to be just even in this crisis of feeling. “You can’t blame her, and it wouldn’t do any good if you did. I mean it’s unfair of human nature, I guess. I honestly never knew that men were so stupid and so—sosoft! I mean it’s unfair that a girl like this Sallie Ealing can turn their heads.”
“I just caught a glimpse of her,” Mrs. Cromwell said. “What is she like?”
“She’s awful. The only thing she hasn’t done is bob her wonderful hair, but she’s too clever about making the best of her looks to do that. She smokes and drinks and ‘talks sex’ and swears.”
“Good heavens!” Mrs. Cromwell exclaimed. “And such a girl is put up for membership at our quiet old family country club.”
Anne shook her head, and laughed tearfully. “She’ll never be blackballed for that, Mamma! Nobody thinks anything about those things any more; and besides, she only does them because she thinks they’re ‘what goes.’Theyaren’t what’s made the boys so wild over her!”
“Then what has?”
“Oh, it’s so crazy!” Anne cried. “I could imagine little boys of seven or even ten, being caught that way, at a children’s party, but to see grownmen!”
“Anne!” Mrs. Cromwell contrived to smile, though rather dismally. “How are these ‘grown men’ caught by Miss Sallie Ealing?”
“Why, just by less thannothing, Mamma! Of course, she’s got a kind of style and anybody’d notice her anywhere, but what makes you notice her so much is her being so triumphant: the men are all rushing at her every instant, and that makes you look at her more than you would. But whatstartedthem to rushing and what keeps them going is the thing I feel I can never forgive them for. Mamma, I feel as if I could never respect a man again!”
“Remember your father,” Mrs. Cromwell said indulgently. “Your father——”
“No; if a man like Harrison Crisp can become just a girl’s slave on that account——” Anne interrupted herself. “Why, it’s like Circe’s cup!” she cried. “I suppose that meant Circe’s kiss, really.”
“They don’t do that, do they, Anne?”
“I don’t know,” Anne said. “It’s not that at first, anyhow.”
“Well, how does she enslave them?”
“It’s like this, Mamma. The first time I ever saw her, I was dancing with Harrison, and he happened to point her out to me. He’d just met her and didn’t take any interest in her at all. He really didn’t. Well, a minute or two later she danced near us and spoke to him over her partner’s shoulder as they passed us. ‘I heard something terrible about you!’ was what she said, and she danced on away, looking back at him over her shoulder. Pretty soon someone cut in and took me away, and Harrison went straight and cut in and danced with Sallie Ealing almost all the rest of the evening. The next day he and I were playing over the course and when we finished she was just starting out from the club in a car with one of the boys. She called back to Harrison, ‘I dreamed about you last night!’ and he was terribly silly: he kept calling after her, ‘What was the dream?’ And she kept calling back, ‘I’llnevertell you!’ Mamma, that’s what she does with themall.”
“Tells them she’s dreamed about them?”
“No,” Anne said. “That’s just a sample of her ‘line.’ When she dances near another girl and her partner, she’ll say to the other girl’s partner, ‘Got somethingqueerto tell you,’ or ‘Iheardsomething about you last night,’ or ‘Wait till youhearwhat I know aboutyou,’ or something like that; and, of course, he’ll get rid of the girl he’s with as soon as he can and go to find out. She almost never passes a man at a dance, or on the links, without either calling to him if he’s not near her, or whispering to him if he is. It’s always some absolutely silly little mystery she makes up about him—and almost her whole stock in trade is that she’s heard something about ’em, or thought something curious about ’em, or dreamed about ’em. It’s always something aboutthem, of course. Then they follow her around to find out, and she doesn’t tell ’em, so they keeponfollowing her around, and she gets them so excited about themselves that then they get excited abouther—and she makes ’em think she’s thinking about them mysteriously—and they get so they can’tseeanybody but Sallie Ealing! They don’t know what a cheap bait she’s caught ’em with, Mamma;—they don’t even guess she’susedbait! That’s why I don’t feel as if I could ever respect a man again. And the unfairness of it is sostrange! The rest of us could use those tricks if we were willing to be that cheap and that childish; but we can’t even tell the men that we wouldn’t stoop to do it! We can’t do anything because they’d think we’re jealous of her. Whatcanwe do, Mamma?”
Mrs. Cromwell sighed and shook her head. “I’m afraid a good many generations of girls have had their Sallie Ealings, dear.”
“You mean there isn’t anything we can do?” Anne asked, and she added, with a desolate laugh, “I just said that, myself. Butmendo things when they feel like this, don’t they, Mamma? Why is it a girl can’t? Why do I have to sit still and see men I’ve respected and looked up to and thought so wise and fine—why do I have to sit still and see them hoodwinked and played upon and carried off their feet by such silly little barefaced tricks, Mamma? And why don’t they see what it is, themselves, Mamma? Any girl or woman—the very stupidest—can see it, Mamma, so why doesn’t the cleverest man? Are menalljustidiots, Mamma? Are they?”
This little tumult of hurried and emotional questions pressed upon the harassed mother for but a single reply. “Yes, dear,” she said. “They are. It’s a truth we have to find out, and the younger we are when we find out, the better for us. We have to learn to forgive them for it and to respect them for the intelligence they show in other ways—but about the Sallie Ealings and what we used to call ‘women’s wiles,’ we have to face the fact that men are—well, yes—just idiots!”
“Allmen, Mamma?”
“I’m afraid so!”
“And there’s nothing to do about it?”
“I don’t quite say that,” Mrs. Cromwell returned thoughtfully. “There’s one step I shall certainly be inclined to take. I’m certain these Ealing people wouldnotmake desirable members of the club and I——”
“No, no!” Anne cried, in terrified protest. “You mustn’t try to have them blackballed, Mamma. You couldn’t do a single thing about it that Harrison would hear of, because he’s proposed them himself, and he’d insist on knowing where the opposition came from. Don’t you see what he’d think? It would look that way to everybody else, too. Don’t yousee, Mamma?”
Mrs. Cromwell was forced to admit her helplessness to help her daughter even by this stroke of warfare. “It’s true, I’m afraid, Anne. But what an outrageous thing it is! We can’t even take measures to protect a good old family institution like the Green Hills club from people who’ll spoil it for us—and all because a silly boy was made sillier by a tricky girl’s telling him she’d dreamed about him!”
“Yes,” Anne said, while new tears sidled down her cheeks;—“he must have been silly all the time. I didn’t think he was—not until this happened—but he must have been, since itcouldhappen.” She put out a hand to her mother’s. “Mamma,” she said, piteously, “why does any one have to care what a silly person does? If he’s silly and I know it, why does it matter to me what he does? Why don’t I get over it?”
And with that, the sobbing she had so manfully withheld could be withheld no longer. Her mother soothed her in a mother’s way, but found nothing to say that could answer the daughter’s question. They had an unhappy half-hour before Anne was able to declare that she was ashamed of herself and apologize for “making such an absurd scene”; but after that she said she was “all right,” and begged her mother to go to bed. Mrs. Cromwell complied, and later, far in the night, came softly to Anne’s door and listened.
Anne’s voice called gently, “Mother?”
The door was unlocked, and Mrs. Cromwell went in. “Dearest, I’ve been thinking. You and I might take a trip somewhere abroad perhaps. Would you like to?”
“We can’t. We can’t even do that. Don’t you see if we went now it would look as if I couldn’t stand it to stay here? We can’t do anything, Mother!”
Mrs. Cromwell bent over the bed. “Anne, this isn’t serious, dear. It will pass, and you’ll forget it.”
“No. I think I must have idealized men, Mother. I believe I thought in my heart that they’re wiser than we are.Aretheyallsuch fools, Mother? That’s what I can’t get over. If you were in my place and Papa not engaged to you yet, and he saw Sallie Ealing and she tried for him—oh, Mamma, do you think that evenPapa——”
Mrs. Cromwell responded with a too impulsive honesty; she gave it as her opinion that Sallie would have found Mr. Cromwell susceptible. “I’m afraid so, Anne,” she said. “Perhaps this Ealing girl’s way would be too crude for him now, at his age, but I shouldn’t like him to be exposed to her system in the hands of Madame de Staël, for instance. Somewhere in the world there may be a man who wouldn’t feel any fascination in it, but if there is he’d be a ‘superman,’ and we aren’t likely to meet him. You must go to sleep now.”
“I’ll try to, Mother,” the unhappy girl said obediently. “I’lltrynot to think.”
VIINAPOLEON WAS A LITTLE MAN
ON AN afternoon of June sunshine, a week later, Mrs. Cromwell sat with a book beside one of the long windows of her drawing-room. The window was open, and just outside it a grass terrace, bordered by a stone balustrade, overlooked the lawn that ran down to the shady street. Anne reclined in a wickerchaise longueupon the terrace, protected by the balustrade and a row of plants from the observation of the highway. She, also, had a book; but it lay upon her lap in the relaxed grasp of a flaccid hand. Her eyes were closed, though she was not asleep; and the mother’s frequent side glances took anxious and compassionate note of darkened areas beneath the daughter’s eyelids, of pathetic shapings about her mouth.
The street was lively with motorists on the way to open country, for it was Saturday, and the automobiles were signalling constantly; but among all the signals, so alike, there was one that Anne recognized. Suddenly she opened her eyes, drew herself up, and looked across the top of the balustrade at a shining gray car just then approaching. It was a long, fleet-looking thing, recognizably imported, and impressive in its intimations of power, yet it selfishly had seats for but two people. One was not occupied; and in the other reclined a figure appropriate to the fine car, for, like the car, the figure was long, fleet-looking, and powerful. The young man was bareheaded; his dark hair shone in the sunlight, and his hands were gracefully negligent, but competent, upon the wheel. One of them gave Anne a cordial though somewhat preoccupied wave of greeting.
She waved in return, but did not smile; then she sank back in her chair and closed her eyes again. Her mother sent a hard glance down the street after the disappearing car, looked at Anne, and breathed a deep, inaudible sigh.
A moment later a straw hat upon a head of short sandy hair appeared above the balustrade and little Hobart Simms came up the stone steps that led from the lawn to the terrace. “I hope I’m not disturbing a nap,” he said, apologetically.
Mrs. Cromwell was sorry to see him. There are times when the intrusions of the insignificant are harder to bear than those of the important, and she felt that Anne’s suffering would be the greater for the strain of talking to this bit of insignificance in particular. However, both mother and daughter gave the youth a friendly enough greeting; he sat down in a chair near Anne, and Mrs. Cromwell returned her eyes to her book.
“It’s such a fine day,” Hobart said, fanning himself with his straw hat. “I thought maybe after I get my breath you might like to take a walk, maybe.”
“I believe not,” Anne said, smiling faintly. “How did you lose your breath, Hobart?”
“Hurrying,” he explained. “I’m working with the receiver that’s in charge of my father’s business, you know. As soon as I found he wasn’t coming this afternoon I left. I hurried because I was afraid you’d be out somewhere. We haven’t any car, you know;—they’re in the receiver’s hands, too.”
“I’m so sorry, Hobart.”
“Not at all,” he returned, cheerfully. “It’s a good thing. There are lots of families that ought to learn how to use a sidewalk again. It’s doing all of our family good. We’d got like too many other people; we’d got to believing the only place where we could walk was a golf course. Bankruptcy’s been a great thing for my father—I believe it’ll add ten years to his life.”
Anne laughed and Mrs. Cromwell was pleased, for although the laugh was languid, it was genuine. The mother’s glance passed from her daughter to the caller and lingered with some favour upon his shrewd and cheerful face. Perhaps it was just as well that he had come, if he could amuse Anne a little.
“I never heard of any one who took that view before,” the girl said. “It’s pretty plucky of you, I think.”
“Not at all,” he said. “We’re all of us having a great time. Never had to do anything we didn’t want to before, and it’s such a novelty it’s more fun than Christmas. If it hadn’t happened I doubt if I’d ever have found out that I like to work.”
“But you did work, Hobart.”
“Yes,” he said, dryly. “For my father. This is a pretty good receiver we’ve got, and he’s showed me the difference between working for my father and working for other people.” He paused and chuckled. “Best thing ever happened to me!”
Anne did not hear him. The automobile signal that had caught her attention a little while before was again audible from the street, and she had turned to look. The long, gray, foreign car came slowly by, moving flexibly through a momentary clustering of other machines, and it seemed to guide itself miraculously, for the driver had no apparent interest in where it went. His attention was all upon the occupant of the seat that had been vacant a few minutes before;—upon her he gazed with such aching solicitude that he could be known for a lover at a distance all round about him of fifty paces and more. And not only he, but his companion also seemed enclosed within the spell that comes upon lovers, shutting out the world from them; for, as he gazed upon her, so she likewise gazed receptively upon him. But, being a girl, she was in fact aware of certain manifestations in the world outside the spell, which he was not, and she knew that she was observed from a Georgian terrace.
She detached her eyes from Harrison’s long enough to wave her slim hand, and received in return a beaming smile from Anne, across the balustrade, and a wave of the hand most cordial. Harrison remained in his trance, incapable of making or receiving any salutation, and Hobart Simms, looking after the car as it passed northward, did not see how bleak and blank Anne looked as she sank back in her chair.
He laughed. “Poor old Harry Crisp!” he said. “He didn’t even see us, so it’s all up with him. It’s too bad: he might have got something out of life; but it’s all over now.”
“I don’t follow you, I’m afraid,” Anne said, coldly, in a tired voice.
“No? Well, in the first place, he’s working for his father. That’s bad, but it can be got over. What’s really fatal, he’s going to marry that Miss Ealing. I’ve heard it rumoured, and after looking at ’em just now I see it’s true. That’s something he can’t get over.”
“Can’t he?” Anne’s tired voice was a little tremulous. “You mean he’ll always be in love with her? I should think that rather desirable if they’re to marry.”
“Oh, he’ll get overthat,” Hobart said, briskly. “I mean he’ll never get over his having married Miss Ealing.”
Anne looked puzzled; but she did not try to make him be more explicit. Instead, she asked indifferently, “Don’t you call her ‘Sallie,’ Hobart? I thought all the men called her ‘Sallie’ by this time. She’s been here several weeks.”
“No, I don’t,” he answered. “I haven’t called her anything, in fact.”
“What? Didn’t she take the trouble to fascinate you, Hobart?”
He laughed. “You’d hardly think she would, but she did—a little. I don’t suppose you could say she went out of her way to do it, or took any trouble, exactly; but she did invite me to join, as it were.”
Anne was more interested. Since the passing of Harrison Crisp’s car she had been leaning back in her long chair, but now she sat upright and looked frowningly at her caller.
“ ‘Invited you to join?’ ” she said. “What do you mean?”
“I mean she invited me to get on the bandwagon,” he explained. “Not right up on a front seat, of course; but anyhow I was given a ticket to hang on behind somewhere.”
“I don’t understand you.”
“Probably you don’t,” Hobart said, and he looked thoughtful. “You’re always so above the crowd, Anne, probably you wouldn’t understand Miss Ealing’s invitations. You see I’m in a pretty good position to see things that you wouldn’t, so to speak. Of course, strangers never pay any attention to the little shrimps in a crowd, and when Miss Ealing did pay me a slight attention I wasn’t so grateful as I should have been;—I thought it was pretty funny.”
“ ‘Funny’!” Anne exclaimed. “Why?”
“Because it only showed her up, you see. Of course, it didn’t mean she had any interest in me; it only meant she had a use for me. She already had most of the rest of ’em excited about her; but she’s a real collector and she wanted thewholecollection—even me! You see, the girl that makes ’emallthink she’s thinking about them isn’t thinking aboutanyof ’em, of course. She’s only thinking about herself, like any other selfish little brute.”
“Hobart!”
“Of course, I don’t mean to say she gave me a pressing invitation to join,” he explained, laughing cheerfully at himself. “Naturally, that couldn’t be expected. The big, hand-painted, gilt-edged card was for Harrison Crisp, of course; and then there were a number of handsomely engraved ones for tall eligibles. She just slipped me a little one printed on soft paper—a sort of handbill, you know, when she was delivering ’em around to the residue.”
Anne’s languor had vanished now. She stared at him incredulously. “Hobart Simms,” she cried, “what do you mean by ‘handbills’?”
“It’s simple enough,” he began. “That is, it is to me. Taller men with fathers that aren’t in the hands of a receiver wouldn’t have much of a chance to understand it, I imagine. She’s made a real stir in our little Green Hills midst with her handbills and——”
Anne interrupted sharply: “I asked you what you meant by her ‘handbills.’ ”
“Yes; I’m trying to tell you, but it’s so ridiculous I’m afraid you won’t be able to see what I mean. It’s like this: she’ll be passing you, for instance, dancing with some other man, or hanging to his arm, and she’ll whisper to you quickly over his shoulder, ‘Iheardsomething about you,’ or, ‘I’ve foundoutsomething about you,’ or, maybe, ‘Can’t you evenlookat me?’ Something like that, you know,—and you’re supposed to get excited and follow up the mystery. You’re supposed to wonder just how much sheisthinking about you, you see. That’s what I mean by her handbills, because if youdon’tget excited, but look around a little, you’ll notice she’s passing ’em pretty freely. That’s why I thought it was funny when she even gave me one!”
“Hobart!” Anne cried, and her voice was free and loud, “Hobart Simms!”
“Yes?” he said, inquiringly, not comprehending the vehemence of her exclamation.
Anne did not respond at once. Instead, she sat staring at him, and her mother marked how a small glow of red came into the daughter’s cheek. Then Mrs. Cromwell also stared at little Hobart Simms; and for the first time noticed what a good profile he had and what a well-shaped head. Slowly and wonderingly the daughter’s eyes turned to meet the mother’s, and each caught the marvel of the other’s thought: that it was this unconsidered little Hobart Simms who fitted Mrs. Cromwell’s definition of a “superman.”
“Why, yes,” Anne said, slowly. “If you really care to go for a walk, I’d like to go with you, Hobart.”
Mrs. Cromwell watched them as they went forth, outwardly the most ill-assorted couple in her sight that day; for Hobart was a full “head” the shorter. They talked amiably together as they went, however, and Mrs. Cromwell’s heart was lightened by the sound of Anne’s laughter, which came back to her even when the two had gone but a little distance.
The mother’s heart might have known less relief, that afternoon, had she suspected this walk to be the beginning of “anything serious.” And yet, had she been a good soothsayer and seeress she might well have been pleased; for not many years were to pass before Hobart Simms’s electrified fellow citizens were to remind one another frequently that Napoleon was a little man, too.
VIIIMRS. DODGE’S ONLY DAUGHTER
THAT capable and unsentimental matron, Mrs. Dodge, was engaged in the composition of an essay for the Woman’s Saturday Club (founded 1882) and the subject that had been assigned to her was “Spiritual Life and the New Generation.” Her work upon it moved slowly because the flow of her philosophical thinking met constant interference, due to an anxiety of her own connected with the New Generation, though emphatically not (in her opinion) with its Spiritual Life. Anxiety always makes philosophy difficult; but she sat resolutely at her desk whenever her apprehensions and her general household duties permitted; and she was thus engaged upon a springtime morning a week before her “paper” was to be presented for the club’s consideration.
She wrote quotations from Ruskin, Whitman, Carlyle, and Schopenhauer, muttering pleasantly to herself that the essay was “beginning to sound right well”; but, unfortunately for literature, the window beside her desk looked down upon the street. Nothing in the mild activities of “the finest suburb’s finest residential boulevard” should have stopped an essay, and yet a most commonplace appearance there stopped Mrs. Dodge’s. Her glance, having wandered to the window, became fixed in a widely staring incredulity; then rapidly narrowed into most poignant distaste. She dropped her pen, and from her parted lips there came an outcry eloquent of horror.
Yet what she saw was only a snub-nosed boy shambling up the brick path to her front door, walking awkwardly, and obviously in a state of embarrassment.
At the same moment Mrs. Dodge’s only daughter, Lily, aged eighteen, standing at a window of the drawing-room downstairs, looked forth upon precisely the same scene; but discovered no boy at all upon the brick path. Where her mother saw a snub-nosed boy shambling, Lily beheld a knight of Arthur’s court, bright as the sun and of such grace that he came toward the house like a bird gliding in a suave curve before it lights. Merlin wafted him; she had no consciousness that feet carried him; no consciousness that he wore feet at all. She knew only that this divine bird of hers was coming nearer and nearer to her, while her heart melted within her.
Then, investing him with proper human feet for the purpose of her desire, she wanted to throw herself down before the door, so that he would step upon her as he entered. But, instead, she ran to admit him, and, gasping, took him by the hand, led him into the drawing-room, moaned, and cast herself upon his bosom, weeping.
“They want to separate us!” she sobbed. “Forever! But you have come to me!”
Upstairs, her mother set a paperweight upon the manuscript of “Spiritual Life and the New Generation,” realizing at once that emotional conflict was to occupy her for the next hour or so, if not longer. She descended fiercely to the drawing-room, where the caller, rosy as fire, removed his arm from Lily’s waist, and would have stepped away from her. But Lily moaned, “No!” and clung to him.
“Stand away from my daughter!” Mrs. Dodge said. “Explain what you mean by daring to come here.”
“I—I want to,” he stammered. “That’s just what I—it’s what I came for. I—I want to——”
But Mrs. Dodge interrupted him. “Did you understand me? I said, ‘Stand away from my daughter!’ ”
“I would,” he said, deferentially. “I would, but—but——”
He was unable to explain in words a difficulty that was too evident without them: the clinging Lily resisted his effort to detach himself, and it was clear that in order to obey her mother’s command he would need assistance. This, however, was immediately forthcoming.
“Lily!” Mrs. Dodge rushed upon her; but Lily clung only the more tragically.
“No, no!” she moaned. “This is my place and it is my right!”
Mrs. Dodge set really violent hands upon her, and unmistakably there hovered a possibility, in the imminent future, that Lily would not only be removed from her lover but would also get a shaking. Rather than be seen under such undignified circumstances, she succumbed upon a sofa, weeping there. “Yousee,” she wailed;—“youseehow they treat me!”
“Now, before you march out of here,” her mother said to the intruder, “you explain how you dared to come.”
“Well, that’s what I came for,” he responded. “I wanted to explain.”
“You make it perfectly clear in one stroke,” Mrs. Dodge said. “You came here to explain why you came here!”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Brilliant!” she cried. “But I hadn’t looked for better. I think you may trouble yourself to take your instant departure, Mr. Oswald Osborne!”
As she pronounced this name, which she did with oppressive distinctness, the young man winced as at the twinge of an old wound reopened. “I don’t think that’s fair,” he said, plaintively.
“It isn’t ‘fair’ for me to choose whom I care to see in my own house?” Mrs. Dodge inquired with perfect hypocrisy, for she knew what he meant.
“I’m talking about ‘Oswald’,” he explained. “I can’t help my name, and I don’t think it’s fair to taunt me with it. My parents did have me christened ‘Oswald,’ I admit; but they were sorry when I got older and they saw how I felt about it and what it would do to me. You know as well as I do, Mrs. Dodge, I’ve struggled pretty long to get people to quit calling me ‘Oswald,’ and almost everybody calls me Crabbe now. It isn’t a very good middle name, but anyhow it’s better than——”
“Good heavens!” Mrs. Dodge interrupted. “Are you going to stand here all morning talking about yourname? I’m afraid you overlook the circumstance that you’ve been requested to leave my house.”
“I know it,” he said, apologetically. “But it really isn’t fair to call me ‘Oswald’ any more, when practically nobody else does, and that’s what threw me off. What I came here for, I had to see Lily.”
“Ihad to seeyou!” Lily cried from the sofa. “If I hadn’t, I should have died!” And at a scornful look from her mother, she passionately insisted upon the accuracy of this view. “Oh, yes, I should, Mamma! You don’tknowwhat you and Papa have been putting me through! You don’tknowwhat it does to me! You don’t know what it’s making me suffer! You don’t understand!”
“I understand too much, unfortunately,” the mother retorted. “I understand that you’ve got yourself into such a hysterical state over a young man who couldn’t possibly buy a pair of shoes for you—or for himself!—and that your father and I daren’t let you step out of the house alone for fear you’ll try to run away with him again.”
Young Mr. Osborne protested with some heat. “Why, I’m not barefooted, Mrs. Dodge!” he said. “What I came here to say this morning is right on the point you’re discussing. You and Mr. Dodge haven’t once been fair to me during the whole trouble we’ve had about this matter, and when you say I couldn’t even give Lily a pair of shoes——”
“Could you?” Mrs. Dodge inquired, breathing deeply. “Am I misinformed by my husband? I seem to recall he told me that when you and Lily were eloping last week—in a borrowed car—he overtook you at a refilling station, where she was offering her watch and rings for gasoline.”
“I didn’t ask her to,” Crabbe Osborne said, flushing deeper. “I admit she offered ’em, but I was arguing about it with her when Mr. Dodge got there. Anyhow, the gas man wouldn’t take ’em.”
“Oh, he should have!” Lily moaned. “Then we wouldn’t have all this to go through. We’d have been out of it all. We’d have been together for always!”
“Would you?” her mother asked, with a hard laugh. “Just how would you have obtained a marriage license, since there weren’t enough funds for gasoline?”
“I had that all thought out,” the young man replied. “We were going to stop and get married at Saline. I’ve got a cousin living in Saline, and I could have borrowed as much as we needed from him. He’d have trusted me, because he knows I’d pay him back.”
“And would you?” Mrs. Dodge inquired.
This brought a protest from both of the afflicted lovers. Young Mr. Osborne said, “Oh, look here, Mrs. Dodge,” and swallowed, but Lily made a real outcry. She sprang up, facing her mother angrily.
“Shame!” she cried. “You taunt him with his poverty! Has he ever pretended for one moment to be a rich man? If he had, there might be some point to your taunts, but you know he hasn’t. From the very first I defy you to say he hasn’t been absolutely frank about it! I do, Mamma! I defy you to say so!”
“Sit down,” said her mother.
“ ‘Sit down?’ I won’t, Mamma; I won’t sit down! Indeed, I won’t, and you haven’t any right to make me! You and Papa order me to do this; you order me to do that; you order me to do everything; but the time’s past when I obeyed you like a Myrmidon. I don’t trust your wisdom any more, Mamma; nor Papa’s, either—not since you’ve tried to keep me an absolute prisoner and won’t let Crabbe even step inside the yard!”
“ ‘Inside the yard?’ ” Mrs. Dodge said. “It strikes me he’s rather farther than that.” She turned upon the perplexed young man. “How many times do you usually have to be requested to leave a house?”
“Why, I expect to go,” he responded, feebly. “I do expect to go, Mrs. Dodge. I think I have a right to explain, though, and if you’d just listen a minute——”
“Very well. I’ll give you a minute.”
“It’s like this,” he said. “I know you and Mr. Dodge object to me as—as a son-in-law——”
“We do, indeed!”
“Well, you see,” he went on, “that’s just the injustice of it. I’m twenty-two-and-a-half years old, and while I admit I’ve had considerable trouble in some of the positions I’ve filled in a business way, why, you can’t expect hard luck to keep on being against me forever. It’s bound to turn, Mrs. Dodge. Luck doesn’t always run just one way, not by any means. My own father said last night he wouldn’t be surprised if I’d get hold of something pretty soon that would interest me so much I’d do mighty well at it. Well, he’s been prejudiced against me a good long while now, and I thought if he had faith in me to say as much as that, it was certainly time for other people to begin to show a little faith in me, too. What I came here for this morning, Mrs. Dodge, was to tell Lily about my father saying that to me. I thought she ought to know about it. You see, Father speaking that way started me to thinking, and I’ve realized with the positions I’ve held so far I couldn’t get myself interested in the work. That’s just exactly what’s been the main difficulty. So I wanted to tell Lily I’ve made up my mind I’m going to look for a position where the workwillinterest me. I thought if she knew I’d taken this stand on the question——”
“Excuse me,” Mrs. Dodge interrupted, “I believe the minute I agreed to listen is up. I must remind you of my request to leave this house.”
“Well—” he said, uncertainly, “if you put it like that——”
“I do, if you please.”
“Well——” he said, again, and took a step toward the door, but was detained by Lily, who made an impassioned effort to reach him in spite of the fact that her large and solid mother instantly placed herself between them.
“You sha’n’t go!” Lily cried. “If you do, I’ll go with you. I’ll die if you leave me! I will, Mamma!”
“Stop that!” Mrs. Dodge commanded, and again found herself in the predicament of a lady who is compelled to use force. Lily struggled, and, unable to pass, looked agony upon her lover, wept at him over her mother’s shoulder, and also extended an imploring arm and hand toward him above this same impediment.
“You mustn’t leave me!” she begged, hoarsely. “I can’tstandit! Take meawaywith you!” And to this she added a word that her mother found incredible, even though Mrs. Dodge had been through some amazing scenes lately, and thought the utmost of Lily’s extravagance already within her experience. Yet the mother might have been wiser here, might have understood that for a girl of Lily’s emotional disposition, and in Lily’s condition of tragic love, no limits whatever may be set.
To Lily herself the word she used was not extravagant at all; it was merely her definition of Crabbe Osborne. As he went toward the door Lily saw a brightness moving with him, an effulgence that would depart with him and leave but darkness when he had passed the threshold. No doubt the true being of young Crabbe was neither as Mrs. Dodge conceived it nor as Lily saw it;—no earthly intellect could have defined just what he was: nor, for that matter, can any earthly intellect say what anything is, since all of our descriptive words express nothing more than how the things appear to ourselves; and our descriptions, therefore, are all but bits of autobiography. Thus, Lily’s word really expressed not Crabbe but her own condition, and that was what shocked her mother. Yet Lily sincerely believed that the word described Crabbe; and, in her opinion, since her lover’s effulgence was divine, this word was natural, moderate, and peculiarly accurate.
“Take me away with you,” she wailed; and then, in a voice beset with tears, she hoarsely called him, “Angel”!
“Oh, murder!” cried Mrs. Dodge. And she was inspired to turn upon Crabbe Osborne a look that expressed in full her critical thought of Lily’s term for him.
Unquestionably he found himself in difficulties. Called “angel” in the presence of a third party, he may have been hampered by some sense of personal inadequacy. He produced a few sounds in his throat, but nothing in the way of appropriate response; and under the circumstances the expression of Mrs. Dodge was not long to be endured by any merely human being.
“I guess maybe—maybe I better be stepping along,” he murmured, and acted upon the supposition that his guess was a correct one.
Lily cried, “No! Don’tleaveme!” And piteously she used her strange word for him again; but her mother held her fast until after the closing of the front door was heard. “Oh, Heaven!” Lily wailed, “won’t you even let me go and watch him till he’s out of sight? Won’t you even let melookat him?”
“No, I won’t!”
Upon this the daughter slid downward from the mother’s grasp and cast herself upon the floor. “He’s gone!” she sobbed. “Oh, he’s gone! He’s gone, and you drove him out! You drove him! You did! You drove him!”
“Get up from there,” Mrs. Dodge said, fiercely. “Be quiet! Do you want the servants to hear you?”
“What doIcare who hears me? You drove him! You drove him, Mamma! You did! Youdrovehim!”