XIIHER HAPPIEST HOUR
THUS Cornelia saved herself from replying to intrusive questions about where she was going, and why; but in her impulsive haste she had forgotten something. Upon her desk, upstairs, lay her heart’s secret, her mountain, all in loose sheets of paper. Beside the desk was an open window;—she had left the door open, too, and this was a breezy day. Such was instantly her condition at sight of Mr. Bromley; and with no thought but to have more sight of him, she flitted across the back yard and through an alley gate, leaving calamity brooding behind her.
Mr. Bromley, returning homeward with a book under his arm, after his morning’s browsing in the suburban public library, was not surprised to see one of his pupils emerge from a cross-street before him, since this was the neighbourhood in which most of the school’s day scholars lived; but he wondered why Cornelia Cromwell was so deeply preoccupied. She seemed to look toward him, though vaguely, and he lifted his hand to his hat; but before he could complete his salutation she looked away, apparently unconscious of him. She was walking in a rather elderly manner, with her head inclined forward and her hands meditatively clasped behind her—the right posture for an engrossed statesman philosopher, but not frequently expected of sixteen. At the corner she turned northward upon the boulevard sidewalk, Mr. Bromley’s own direction, and went pensively on before him, some thirty yards or so in advance.
His gait was slow, for that was his thoughtful habit; and the distance between them, like Cornelia’s attitude, remained unvaried until the next cross-street was reached. Here, without altering that scholarly attitude of hers by a hair’s-breadth, she walked straight into what was the proper path and right-of-way demanded by an oncoming uproarious taxicab.
With his hoarse warning signal and with his own hoarse voice, the driver raved; she heeded him not. So, taking his life in his hands, he saved her by charging into the curbstone. The wheels providentially mounted and bore him fairly upon the sidewalk;—he crashed down again to the pavement of the boulevard and roared onward, biblically oratorical about women, let hear him who would.
Mr. Bromley rushed forward and seized Cornelia’s arm. “Miss Cromwell!”
She looked up, smiling absently. “Do you think there was any danger?” she asked. “I didn’t notice.”
“Good gracious!” he cried. “Don’t you know you can’t cross streetsanywhere, these days, without looking to see what’s coming? What was the matter with you?”
“The matter?” she repeated, vaguely, as she began to walk onward with him. “Why, nothing.”
“I mean: What on earth were you thinking of to step right in front of a——”
“Oh, that? Yes,” she said, gently. “I see what you mean now, Mr. Bromley. I was thinking about life.”
“You were, indeed?”
“And books,” she added.
“Well, I wouldn’t!” he said, for he had long since forgotten his advice to her in the matter. “If I were you, I’d put my mind more upon street crossings, especially during pedestrian excursions.”
She accepted the reproof meekly, not replying, and for some moments walked beside him in silence. Then she said gravely: “I believe I haven’t thanked you for saving my life.”
“What?”
She repeated it: “I haven’t thanked you for saving my life.”
“Good gracious!” he exclaimed. “I didn’t do anything of the kind.”
“You did, Mr. Bromley.”
“I certainly did not,” he said, astonished that she seemed genuinely to believe such a thing. “The taxicab was banging around all over the sidewalk by the time I reached you.”
“No,” she insisted. “I heard you call my name, and then you took hold of me. If you hadn’t, I’d have gone straight on.”
“Well, you’d have been all right to go straight on, because by that time the taxicab was twenty or thirty feet away.”
“No, I’d have been killed,” she said. “If you hadn’t caught me, I’d have been killed absolutely.”
He stared at her, perplexed, though he knew that people often retain but a confused recollection of exciting moments, even immediately after those moments have passed. Then, with this thought in his mind, he was a little surprised to find that she simultaneously had it in her mind, too.
“Maybe you were a little excited to see a person in danger,” she said. “It might have got you mixed up or something. When things happen so quickly, it’s hard to remember exactly whatdidhappen. You may not know it, but you saved my life, Mr. Bromley.”
He laughed. “I didn’t; but if you insist on thinking so, I suppose there’s no harm.”
This seemed to content her; she nodded her head, smiled sunnily, then became grave again. “And to think you’d risk your own life to save—even mine!” she murmured.
“That’s merely absurd, Miss Cromwell. By not the remotest possibility could it be conceived that I placed myself in any jeopardy whatever.”
“Well”——she returned, indefinitely, but seemed to reserve the right to maintain her own conviction in the matter. “I think ‘jeopardy’ is a beautiful word, Mr. Bromley,” she added, after a moment’s silence. “I mean, whether you admit you were in jeopardy or not, it’s a word I think ought to be used oftener because it’s got such a distinguished kind of sound.” She repeated it softly, to herself. “Jeopardy.” Then, in a somewhat louder voice, but as if merely offering a sample sentence in which this excellent word appeared to literary advantage, she murmured: “He placed his life in jeopardy—for me.”
“I didn’t!” her companion said, sharply. “The word is extremely inappropriate in any such connection.”
“I just used it to see how it would sound,” Cornelia explained. “I mean, whether you did get in jeopardy or anything, or not, on my account, Mr. Bromley, I was just seeing how it would sound if I said it. I mean, like this.” And she began to repeat, “He placed his life in jeopardy——”
“Please oblige me,” Mr. Bromley interrupted. “Don’t say it again.”
His tone was brusque, and she looked up inquiringly to find him frowning with annoyance. She decided to change the subject.
“Do you care much for Christmas, Mr. Bromley?” she asked, in the key of polite small talk. “It strikes me as terribly tiresome, myself. I’m positively looking forward to the next school term.”
“Are you?”
“Yes—and oh! there was something I thought of the other day I wanted to ask you. Are you a Republican or a Democrat, Mr. Bromley?”
“Neither.”
“That’s so much more distinguished,” Cornelia said. “I mean it seems so much more distinguished not to be in politics. Do you believe in woman suffrage?”
“No.”
“Neither do I,” she said, and made a serious decision instantly. “I’m never going to vote, myself. The more I think about books and life, Mr. Bromley, the less I care about—about”—she hesitated, having begun the sentence without foreseeing its conclusion—“well, about things in general and everything,” she finally added.
The gentleman beside her looked puzzled; but Cornelia was unaware of the sweeping vagueness of her remark. She was not in a condition to take note of such details, her consciousness being too preoccupied with the fact that she was walking with him who dwelt upon the summit of her mountain—walking with him and maintaining a conversation with him upon an intellectual footing, so to speak. And as she felt that a special elegance was demanded by the occasion, she made her voice a little artificial and obliterated our alphabet’s least fashionable consonant from her enunciation entirely.
She waved a pretty little ungloved hand in a gesture of airy languor. “Most things seem such a baw, don’t you think?” she said.
“Bore?” he inquired, correctly interpreting her effort. “They certainly shouldn’t seem so to you, at your age.”
“Myage?” she echoed, and gave forth an affected little scream. “Don’t talk to me about myage! Why, half the time I feel I’m at least a hundred.”
Her companion’s reception of the information was somewhat dry. “Not muchmore, I trust,” he said, and looked hopefully forward into the distance as if to some goal or terminus of this excursion.
But Cornelia’s exaltation was too high for her to be aware of any slight appearances that might lower it. “Indeed I do,” she insisted. “Why, when I look at the classes of younger girls that have come into the school in the years and years I’ve been there, I feel a thousand. I do, positively, I do assure you.”
From beneath a plaintive brow, Mr. Bromley’s eyes continued to search the distance hopefully, and he made no response.
Then, as he still remained silent, Cornelia did what most people do when their ebulliences are received without encouraging comment—she eased herself by a series of repetitions, enthusiastic at first, but tapering in emphasis until she had settled down again into the casual. “It’s the positive fact; these younger girlsdomake me feel a thousand—positively, I do assure you! You mayn’t believe it, but it’s the mere simple truth, I do assure you. It is, I do——” She checked herself, being about to say “I do assure you” again; and although her own ability to use the phrase charmed her, she feared that too much of it might appear to indicate a lack of versatility. She coughed delicately, as a proper bit of punctuation for the unfinished sentence;—then, as further punctuation, uttered sounds resembling a courteous kind of laughter, to signify amusement caused by her own remarks, and thus gradually reached a point where she could regard the episode as closed.
Having successfully passed this rather difficult point, she looked up at him with the air of a person suddenly overtaken by a belated thought that should have arrived earlier. “Oh, by the by,” she said, “I suppose I ought to’ve asked this sooner, but I expect I forgot it because I was a little excited about your risking your li——”
“I did nothing of the kind,” he interrupted, promptly and sharply. “What is it you wanted to ask me?”
“Well, it was this, Mr. Bromley. We got to walking along together after you saved—after I nearly got run over—and I didn’t even ask you where you’re going.”
“I’m on my way to lunch at the Blue Tea Room.”
“You—youare?” Cornelia said in a strange tone. An impulse, rash and sudden, had affected her throat.
She had never before been quite alone with the solitary inhabitant of her mountain’s summit; she had never before walked with him. Her walking was upon air, moreover. She was self-conscious, yet had no consciousness of walking—the rather, she floated in the crystal air of great altitudes; and, rapt in the transcendent presence beside her, she became intoxicated by the experience.
Cornelia had fallen in love with Mr. Bromley sublimely, instantly, upon that day when he told her to think about books and life;—there seemed to be no other reason, though her own explanation defined him as the only man who had ever spoken to her inner self—and now that she found herself alone with him for the first time, she could not bear for that time to be brief. She was already expected at home for lunch, and she knew that her unexplained absence might cause more than mere comment in her domestic circle. Her impulse was, therefore, something more than indiscreet, taking all circumstances and the strictness of her mother into account. But the exciting moment had prevailed with Cornelia before she took anything into account.
“To lunch at the Blue Tea Room?” she cried. “Why, Mr. Bromley, so am I! That’s just where I was going. Isn’t thatqueer? Why, we can have lunch together.”
The hopeful gleam passed out of Mr. Bromley’s expression, though perhaps the bright eyes looking up at him so eagerly were able to interpret his gloom as merely the thoughtfulness habitual to a scholar. His was not a practical mind; he had no thought that Cornelia’s lunching with him might have any result save to spoil the cozy hour he had planned for himself with his book as a table companion. To him she was one of the hundred pupils at the school—a little girl who had lately developed odd mannerisms and airy affectations, for no reason except that many little girls seemed to pass through such phases—and so far as his interest in her as an individual human being was concerned, Cornelia might as well have been eight years old as sixteen. He saw nothing, except that he would have to listen to her instead of reading his book, for, since she meant to lunch at the Blue Tea Room, she would probably talk to him anyhow, whether they sat at the same table or not.
“Ah—if such be the case, very well,” he said, without enthusiasm. “Very well, Miss Cromwell.” Then he added hastily, “I mean to say”—and paused hoping to think of something that might avoid the proposed tête-à-tête; but he failed. “I mean to say—ah—if you wish, Miss Cromwell.”
“DoI!” she exclaimed, breathlessly; but the radiant face she showed him only gave him the idea that she was probably excited by the prospect of waffles.
Yet, when waffles—the Blue Tea Room’s specialty—were placed, as a second course, upon the small blue-and-white painted table between her and Mr. Bromley, Cornelia showed no avidity for them. She had resumed her elegant manner, and but toyed with the food. Her elegance, indeed, was almost oppressive to her companion;—she told the blue-aproned waitress, whose cultivation was betokened by horn-rimmed spectacles, that forgetting to bring butter was a “dreadful baw.” She said “baw” as frequently as she could, in fact; and she appeared to view the people at the other tables through a frigid though invisible lorgnette.
Her disdain of them as plebeians, beings unknown and not to be known, was visible in her expression;—so much so that it made Mr. Bromley uncomfortable; and here was a small miracle in its way; for in reality she did not see the other people in the room at all distinctly. They were only blurred planes of far-away colour to her; she was but dimly aware of their outlines, and failed to recognize two of them whom she knew very well.
For Cornelia all life and light centred upon the little painted table at which she sat with Mr. Bromley. The world to her was like a shadowy room at sunset, when through a window a last shaft from the rosy sun illumines one spot alone, making it glorious, and all else dim and formless. Mr. Bromley and she sat together in this golden glow, an aura that shimmered out to nothing all round about them, so that there was no definite background; and for anything more than two or three feet away she was astigmatic.
Elation sweet as music possessed her. She was not only lunching at a restaurant with a Distinguished Man, quite as if she were a prima donna in Paris, but that Distinguished Man was Mr. Bromley—Mr. Bromley himself, pale with studious wisdom, yet manly, and incomparably more exciting than the symbol of him drawn with five lines and a dot upon her mountain. She had sometimes trembled when she looked at that emaciated symbol: What wonder could there be that she became a little too elegant, that her laughter rang a little too loudly, or that she showed herself disdainful of lowly presences in a dim background, now, when she sat facing her Ideal made actual in all his beauty?
Beauty it was, in good faith, to Cornelia, and, so far as she was concerned, Praxiteles, experimenting to improve Mr. Bromley, could only have marred him. There was gray in his hair, but it was not emphasized, since he was an ashen blond; and for Cornelia—unaware of his actual years and content to remain so—he had no age, he had only perfection. So beautiful he was in the rosy light with which she encircled him.
“Aren’t you going to eat your waffles, now you’ve got ’em?” he asked, a little querulously.
“Waffles?” she said, as if she knew of none and the word were strange to her. “Waffles?”
“Aren’t you going to eat them? I supposed that was why you came here.”
She looked down at her plate, appeared surprised to find it occupied, and uttered a courtesy laughter with such grace it seemed almost that she sang the diatonic scale. This effect was so pronounced, indeed, that several people at other tables turned—again—to look at her, and Mr. Bromley reddened. “Oh, yes,” she said. “You mean these waffles. Yes, indeed!” And here she repeated her too musical laughter, accompanying it with several excited gestures of amazement as she exclaimed, “Imaginemy not noticing them when they’re absolutely my favourite food! Absolutely they are, my dear man, I do assure you!”
Then, having touched a waffle with her fork, she set the fork down, placed her elbows on the table, rested her chin in her hands and gazed upon her companion lustrously. “Mr. Bromley,” she said, “how did your father and mother happen to choose ‘Gregory’ for your first name? Were you named for somebody else, or did they just have kind of an inspiration to call you Gregory.”
“I was named for an uncle,” he replied briefly.
“How beautiful!” she murmured.
“What?”
“It’s a beautiful name,” she said, and, not changing her attitude, continued to gaze upon him.
“Why in the world don’t you eat your food?” he asked, impatiently. He had become but too well aware that Cornelia was attracting a covertly derisive attention; and he began to think her a bothersomely eccentric child. Following her noticeable elegance and her diatonic laughter, her dreamy attitude in the presence of untouched waffles was conspicuous, and he was annoyed in particular by the interest with which two occupants of a table against the opposite wall were regarding him and Cornelia.
One of these interested persons was another of his pupils, a girl of Cornelia’s age. He could not fail to note how frequently she glanced at him, and after each glance whispered seriously with her mother across their table; then both would stare surreptitiously at him and his rapt vis-à-vis. There was something like a disapproving surveillance—even something inimical—in their continuing observation, he thought; nor was he remote from the truth in this impression.
Cornelia’s schoolmate was enjoying herself, excited by what she had easily prevailed upon a nervous mother to see as a significant contretemps. Moreover, the daughter had just imparted to the mother a secret known to half the school, but not to Mrs. Cromwell.
“Crazy about him!” the schoolmate whispered. “Absolutely! She picked up the stub of his pencil and kept it, and a piece of an old broken pipe. We teased her, and she got red and ran away. She won’t speak to us for days if we say anything about him she doesn’t like. Everybody knows she’s simply frantic. Did you ever see such airs as she’s been putting on, and did you hear her calling him her ‘dear man’ and talking about ‘I do assure you’? And then looking at him likethat—the poor smack!”
“I never in all my life saw anything like it!” the mother returned, her brow dark and her eyes wide. “She looked straight at us and never made the slightest sign when we bowed to her! The idea of as careful a woman as Mrs. Cromwell allowing her daughter to get into such a state, in the first place, is very shocking to me; and in the second, to permit her to come here, at her age, and lunch in public with a man she’s in such a stateabout—a man supposed to be her teacher and old enough to be almost her grandfather—I simply can’t imagine what she means by it.”
The schoolmate giggled. “Cornelia’s mother? Don’t you believe it. Mrs. Cromwell doesn’t know a thing about it.”
“Then sheoughtto know, and immediately. If one of my daughters behaved like that, I should certainly be thankful to any one who informed me of it. I certainly——”
“Look!” the schoolmate whispered, profoundly stirred. “Look at hernow!”
Cornelia was worth the look thus advised. Under repeated pressure to dispose of her waffles, she had made some progress with them, but now with the plate removed and a cooling sherbet substituted before her, she had resumed her rapt posture, her elbows upon the table, her chin upon her hands, her wistful bright eyes fixed upon the face of the uncomfortable gentleman opposite her.
“Was your uncle a very distinguished man, Mr. Bromley?” she asked. “I mean the one they named you ‘Gregory’ after.”
“Not in any way,” he said. He had finished his own lunch, and moved back slightly but significantly in his chair. “Hadn’t you better eat your sherbet?” he suggested. “I believe it’s about time for me to go.”
She sighed, lowered her eyes, and obediently ate the sherbet; but ate it so slowly that by the time she had finished it they were alone in the room except for a waitress, who made her own lingering conspicuous.
“Now, then,” Mr. Bromley said, briskly, “if you’ve quite concluded your——”
“But I haven’t had any coffee,” Cornelia interrupted. “I always have a small cup after lunch.”
“Does your mother——”
“Mamma?” she said, appearing greatly surprised. “Oh, dear, yes. She takes it herself.”
He resigned himself, and the waitress brought the little cup; but as Cornelia conveyed the contents to her lips entirely by means of the accompanying tiny spoon, and her care not to be injured by hot liquid was extreme, he thought that never in his life had he seen any person drink an after-dinner cup of coffee so slowly. And, all the while, Cornelia, silent, seemed to be dreamily yet completely engrossed with this long process of consumption; her lowered eyes were always upon the tiny spoon. The impatient Mr. Bromley sat and sat, and finally lost his manners so far as to begin a nervous tapping upon the rugless floor with the sole of his right shoe.
This was the oddest child in the world, he thought. A little while ago she had looked at him with so intent a curious dreaminess that she had annoyed him; now she seemed to have forgotten him in her epicurean absorption in half a gill of coffee. And so he frowned, and shifted in his chair and tapped the floor with his shoe, and did not know that the tapping had grown rhythmical. For, though her eyes were lowered and her lips were silent, Cornelia was keeping time to it with a song. Each tap of Mr. Bromley’s foot was a syllable of the song.
The hours I spent with thee, dear heart,Are as a string of pearls to me;I count them over, every one apart——
The hours I spent with thee, dear heart,Are as a string of pearls to me;I count them over, every one apart——
The hours I spent with thee, dear heart,Are as a string of pearls to me;I count them over, every one apart——
The hours I spent with thee, dear heart,
Are as a string of pearls to me;
I count them over, every one apart——
. . . But at last her pearls were gone; the little cup was empty. “Now,” he said, “if you’ve finished, Miss Cromwell——” And he pushed back his chair decisively, rising as he did so.
Still she sat and did not look up, but with her eyes upon the empty cup, she asked: “Would you let this be my lunch, Mr. Bromley? Would you mind if I charged it to Papa?”
“Nonsense,” he said. He had already paid the waitress. “Ah—if you intend remaining here——”
“No, I’m coming,” she said, meekly. “I just——” She rose, and as she did she looked up at him radiantly, facing him. “You—you’ve been ever so nice to me, Mr. Bromley.”
Her cheeks were glowing, her lifted happy eyes were all too worshipfully eloquent; and for a moment, as the two stood there, Mr. Bromley felt a strange little embarrassment, this time not an annoyed embarrassment. Who can know what is in a young girl’s heart? Suddenly, to his own surprise, he felt a slight, inexplicable emotion;—something in Cornelia’s look pleased him and even touched him. Just for the five or six seconds that he knew this feeling, something mysterious, something charming, seemed about to happen.
“No,” he said. “It’s you who were nice to me. I—I’ve enjoyed it—truly.”
She drew a deep breath. “Have youreally?” she cried. And with that, she turned and ran to the door, all sixteen. But, with the door open, she called back to him over her shoulder, “I’m glad it’s Friday, Mr. Bromley.”
“Why?”
“Because it’s only till Monday when school begins!”
XIIIHEARTBREAK
SHE RAN out of the door and to the street, where she turned northward, away from home, with her cheeks afire and her heart still singing; but what it sang now was, “Monday! Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday—Monday again!” All through the year she would see him on every one of those days. Cornelia was happy.
She was altogether happy; and she had just spent the happiest hour of her life. Other happy hours she might know, and many different kinds of happiness, but never again an hour of such untouched happiness as this. Happiness unshadowed cannot come often after childhood, and sixteen is one of the years that close childhood.
She was too happy to be with any one except herself; she could not talk to any one except herself; and so her feet bore her lightly to the open country outside the suburban town, and here, pleased with the bracing winter wind upon her face, she walked and walked—and her walking was more like dancing. She did not come home until the twilight of the short day had begun to verge into dusk; and, when she entered the house she went quickly up to her own room without seeing anybody on the way. In her heart she was singing gaily, “Monday! Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday——”
But as she pressed the light on at a lamp upon her dressing-table, something disquieted her. She flew to her open desk, and, breathless, clasped both hands about her throat, for before her was her sacred mountain, but not as she had left it. The little papers had blown about the room. Someone had closed the window, and gathered the drawings together. Someone had left a paperweight upon them. Someone had seen the mountain.
The door opened behind her, as Cornelia stood staring at this violation, and she turned to face her mother.
Mrs. Cromwell closed the door, but she did not sit down or even advance farther into the room. “Cornelia, where have you been all day?”
“What? Nowhere in particular.”
“Where did you lunch?”
“What? Nowhere in particular.”
“Cornelia!”
“Yes, Mamma.” Cornelia had resumed her armour; her look was moody and her tone fatigued.
“Cornelia, I am asking you where you lunched.”
“I said, ‘Nowhere in particular,’ Mamma.”
“I know you did.” And upon this Mrs. Cromwell’s voice trembled a little. “I wish you to tell me the truth, Cornelia.”
Cornelia stood before her, apparently imperturbable, with passive eyes evasive; and Mrs. Cromwell, not knowing that her daughter’s knees were trembling, began to speak with the severity she felt.
“Cornelia, your father and I have been talking in the library, and we’ve made up our minds this sort of thing must come to a stop.”
“What sort of thing?”
“This rudeness of yours, this moodiness and secretiveness.”
“I’m not secretive.”
“You are. You’re an entirely changed girl. Last year you’d no more have done what you’re doing now than you’d have flown!”
“What am I doing now?”
“You’re standing there trying to deceive me,” Mrs. Cromwell answered sharply. “But I’m not deceived any longer, Cornelia; I’ve learned the truth. We knew that a change had come over you, and you were moody and indifferent toward your family, but we did at least suppose your mind was on your books. But to-day——”
“To-day!” Cornelia cried out suddenly, her look of moodiness all gone. She pointed to her desk. “Wereyouin here to-day after I went out? Did you——”
“You left your door open and your window, and those sheets of paper were blowing clear out into the hall. Naturally, I——”
“Mamma!” Cornelia’s voice was loud now, and her finger trembled violently as she pointed to the mountain. “Mamma, did you—did you——”
Mrs. Cromwell laughed impatiently. “Naturally, as I picked them up I couldn’t very well help seeing what they were and drawing certain conclusions.”
“Youdared!” Cornelia cried, fiercely. “Mamma, youdared!”
“Cornelia, you will please not speak to me in that tone. I’m very glad it happened because, though of course I shouldn’t take those little drawings of yours seriously, and they’re of no significance worth mentioning, there was one of them that did shed a light on something I heard later in the afternoon.”
“What? What did you hear?”
Mrs. Cromwell came a step nearer her, gravely. “Cornelia, you needn’t have tried to deceive me about where you went when you slipped out of the house before lunch and caused me so much anxiety. I telephoned and telephoned——”
Cornelia interrupted; her shaking finger still pointed to the desk: “I don’t care to hear this. What I want to know is how you dared—how youdaredto——”
“Cornelia, you must not ask your mother how she ‘dares’ to do anything. We know where you lunched, and you might have guessed that you couldn’t do such a thing without our hearing of it. A lady who saw you came straight here to know if it was by my consent, and I’m very grateful to her for it. In conjunction with the drawing I’d just seen, which surprised me greatly, to say the least, what this lady told me was a shock to me, as it is to your father, too, Cornelia. To think that you’d deceive us like this—to say nothing of the indiscretion of a schoolmaster who is supposed to be inchargeof——”
“Mr. Bromley?” Cornelia cried. “Do you mean Mr. Bromley?”
“I certainly do. I think his conduct——”
“I asked him,” Cornelia interrupted fiercely. “I saw him from the window and I ran down and walked ahead of him, and almost got run over by a taxicab on purpose, and he saved me, and I asked him to let me have lunch with him and told him I was going there anyway. Mamma, don’t you dare——” Her voice broke; she gulped and choked; her trembling was but too visible now. “Mamma, if you ever dare say anything against Mr. Bromley——”
“I agree that we may quite as well leave him out of it,” her mother said, sharply. “Your own excitement is all the evidence I need that your father and I have been wise in the decision we’ve just come to.”
Something ominous in this arrested Cornelia’s anger; and she stared at her mother incredulously. “ ‘Decision’?” she repeated, slowly. “What ‘decision’?”
“We’re going to put you into Miss Remy’s school on the Hudson,” Mrs. Cromwell said. “Your father’s already engaged a drawing-room for us on the afternoon train to-morrow. I’m going with you, and you’ll begin the new term there on Monday.”
Cornelia still stared. “No——” she said. “No, Mamma, no——”
Mrs. Cromwell was touched, seeing the terror that gathered in her child’s eyes. “You’ll love it there after a little while, dear. You may think it’s pleasant to stay here, but after you’ve been there a week or so, it’s such a lovely place that you——”
But Cornelia threw herself down passionately at her mother’s feet. “No! No!No!” she sobbed, over and over again; and in this half-articulate anguish, Mrs. Cromwell read and understood Cornelia’s secret indeed. She was compassionate, yet all the more confirmed in her belief that the decision just made with her husband was a wise one.
Cornelia could bring no eloquence to alter her fate. “No! No!No!” was only her protest against what she understood was inevitable, though, as she wept brokenly upon her pillow that night, she thought of one resource that would avoid the inevitable, so desperate she was. But she decided to live, and found living hardest when she was on her way to the train next day, and the route chosen by her father’s chauffeur cruelly passed the Blue Tea Room.
On the train, thinking of the flying miles that so bitterly lengthened between her and that sacred little blue-painted room, she came to the end of the song her heart had chanted there in time to a tapping foot;—it was the refrain of the car wheels upon the humming rails all that aching way:
I tell each bead unto the end and thereA cross is hung.
I tell each bead unto the end and thereA cross is hung.
I tell each bead unto the end and thereA cross is hung.
I tell each bead unto the end and there
A cross is hung.
XIVMRS. DODGE’S NEXT-DOOR NEIGHBOUR
AT FIVE o’clock upon a February afternoon the commodious rooms on the lower floor of Mrs. Cromwell’s big house resounded with all the noise that a hundred women unaided by firearms could make. A hundred men, gathered in a similar social manner, if that were possible, might either be quiet or produce a few uproariously bellowing groups, a matter depending upon the presence or absence of noisy individuals; but a hundred habitually soft-voiced women, brought together for a brief enjoyment of one another’s society and a trifling incidental repast, must almost inevitably abandon themselves to that vocal rioting ultimately so helpful to the incomes of the “nerve specialists.”
The strain, of course, is not put upon the nerves by the overpitched voices alone. At times during Mrs. Cromwell’s “tea” the face of almost every woman in the house was distressed by the expression of caressive animation maintained upon it. The most conscientious of the guests held this expression upon their faces from the moment they entered the house until they left it; they went about from room to room, from group to group, shouting indomitably; and, without an instant’s relaxation, kept a sweet archness frozen upon their faces, no matter how those valiant faces ached.
Men may not flatter themselves in believing it is for them that women most ardently sculpture their expressions. A class of women has traduced the rest: those women who are languid where there are no men. The women at Mrs. Cromwell’s “tea,” with not a man in sight, so consistently moulded their faces that the invitations might well have read, “From Four to Six: a Ladies’ Masque.”
What gave most truly the colour of a masquerade was the unmasking. This, of course, was never general, nor at any time simultaneous, except with two or three; yet, here and there, withdrawn a little to the side of a room, or near a corner, ladies might be seen who wore no expression at all, or else looked jaded or even frostily observant of the show. Sometimes clubs of two seemed to form temporarily, the members unmasking to each other, exhibiting their real faces in confidence, and joining in criticism of the maskers about them. At such times, if a third lady approached, the two would immediately resume their masks and bob and beam; then they might seem to elect her to membership; whereupon all three would drop their masks, shout gravely, close to one another’s ears, then presently separate, masking again in facial shapings designed to picture universal love and jaunty humour.
But among the hundred merrymakers there was one of whom it could not be said that she was masked; yet, strange to tell, neither could it be said of her that she was not masked; for either she wore no mask at all or wore one always. Her face at Mrs. Cromwell’s was precisely as it was when seen anywhere else; though where it seemed most appropriately surrounded was in church.
Calm, pale, the chin uplifted a little, with the slant of the head always more toward heaven than earth, this angelic face was borne high by the straight throat and slender figure like the oriflamme upon its staff; and so it passed through the crowd of shouting women, seeming to move in a spiritual light that fell upon them and illuminated them, yet illuminated most the uplifted face that was its source. Moreover, upon the lips the exquisite promise of a smile was continuously hinted; and the hint foreshadowed how fine the smile would be: how gentle, though a little martyred by life, and how bravely tolerant.
The beholder waited for this promised heavenly smile, but waited in vain. “You always think she’s just going to until you see her often enough to find she never does,” a broad-shouldered matron explained to two of her friends at Mrs. Cromwell’s. The three had formed one of the little clubs for a temporary unmasking and were lookers-on for the moment. “It’s an old worn-out kind of thing to say,” the sturdy matron continued;—“but I never can resist applying it to her. Nobody can ever possibly be so good as Mrs. Leslie Braithwaite looks. I’ll even risk saying that nobody can ever possibly be so good as she seems to behave!”
“Oh, Mrs. Dodge!” one of the others exclaimed. “But isn’t behaviour the final proof? My husband says conduct is the only test of character.”
“He doesn’t know what he’s talking about,” the brusque Mrs. Dodge returned. “When we do anything noble, it’s in spite of our true character; that’s what makes it a noble thing to do. I’ve lived next door to that woman for five years, and, though I seldom exchange more than a word with her, I can’t help having her in my sight pretty often. She always looks noble and she always sounds noble. Even when she says, ‘Isn’t it a lovely day,’ she sounds noble—and, for my part, I’m sick and tired of her nobility!”
“But my husband says——”
“I don’t care what Mr. Battle says,” Mrs. Dodge interrupted. “The woman’s a nuisance!”
“To me,” said the third of the group, gravely, “that sounds almost like sacrilege. I’ve always felt that even though Mrs. Leslie Braithwaite is still quite a young woman, she’s the focus of spiritual life for this whole community. I think the people here generally look upon her as the finest inspiration we have among us.”
“I know they do,” Mrs. Dodge said, irritably. “That’s one reason I think she’s a pest. People are always trying to live up to her, and it makes cowards and hypocrites of ’em. Look at her now!”
Mrs. Braithwaite had reached the hostess, who was shouting in concert with several new arrivals; but when Mrs. Braithwaite appeared, the voices of all this group were somewhat lowered (though they could not be lowered much and hope to be audible) and, what was more remarkable, Mrs. Cromwell’s expression and her manner were instantly altered perceptibly:—so were the expressions and manners of the others about her, as Mrs. Dodge vindictively pointed out.
“Look at that!” she said. “Every one of those poor geese is trying to look likeher;—they feel they have to seem as noble as she is! Instinctively they’re all trying to take on her hushed sweetness. Nobody dares be natural anywhere near her.”
“But that’s because of the affection people feel for her,” Mrs. Battle explained. “Don’t you feel——”
“Affection your grandmother!” the brusque lady interrupted. “What are you talking about?”
“Well, reverence, then. Perhaps that’s the better word for the feeling people have about her. They know how much of her life she gives to good works. She’s at the head of——”
“Yes, she certainly is!” Mrs. Dodge agreed, bitterly. “She’s the head and front of every uplifting movement among us. You can’t open your mail without finding benefit tickets you have to buy for some good cause she’s chairman of. She’s always the girl that passes the hat: she’s the one that makes us feel like selfish dogs if we don’t give till it hurts! She’s the star collector, all right!”
“Well, oughtn’t we to be grateful that she takes such duties upon herself?”
“Do we ever omit any of our gratitude? Why, the papers are full of it: ‘It is the sense of this committee that, except for the noble, unflagging, and self-sacrificing devotion of Mrs. Leslie Braithwaite, this fund could never have reached the generous dimensions necessary for the carrying on of this work. Therefore, be it resolved that the thanks of this entire organization’—and so forth. And, as a matter by the way, you never hear whether she gave any of the fund herself.”
“She gives time. She gives energy. Mr. Battle says, ‘Who gives himself gives all.’ Mrs. Braithwaite gives herself.”
“Yes, she does,” Mrs. Dodge agreed. “It’s her form of recreation!”
Her two auditors stared at her incredulously, so that she could plainly see how shocked they were; but, before either of them spoke, a beautiful change in look and manner came upon them. Both of them elevated their chins a little, so that their faces slanted more toward heaven than toward earth; both of them seemed about to smile angelically, but stopped just short of smiling; a purified softness came into their eyes; and, altogether, by means of various other subtle little manifestations, the two ladies began to look noble.
Mrs. Dodge had turned her back toward the group about the hostess, but without looking round she understood what the change in her two companions portended. “Good-bye, ladies of Shalott,” she said. “The curse has come upon you!” And she moved away, just as the ennobled two stepped forward to meet Mrs. Leslie Braithwaite in her approach to them.
“Clever of me!” Mrs. Dodge thought, with some bitterness. “Getting myself the reputation of a ‘dangerous woman’!” For she understood well enough that she would do no injury to Mrs. Braithwaite in attacking her;—on the contrary, the injury would inevitably be to the assailant; and yet Mrs. Dodge could not forbear from a little boomerang practice at this shining and impervious mark. The reason, unfortunately, was personal, as most reasons are: Mrs. Dodge had come to the “tea” in an acute state of irritation that had been increasing since morning. In fact, she had begun the day with a breakfast-table argument of which Mrs. Braithwaite was the subject.
Mr. Dodge made the unfortunate admission that he had recently sent Mrs. Braithwaite a check for a hundred dollars, his subscription to the Workers’ Welfare League; and he was forced into subsequent admissions: he had no interest in the Workers’ Welfare League, and could give no reason for sending a check to it except that Mrs. Braithwaite had written him appealing for a subscription. She was sure he wouldn’t like to miss the chance to aid in so splendid a movement, she said. Now, as Mrs. Braithwaite had previously written twice to Mrs. Dodge in almost the same words, and as Mrs. Dodge had twice replied declining to make a donation, the argument (so to call it) on Mrs. Dodge’s part was a heated one. It availed her husband little to protest that he had never heard of Mrs. Braithwaite’s appeals to his wife; Mrs. Dodge was too greatly incensed to be reasonable.
Later in the day she was remorseful, realizing that she had taken poor Mr. Dodge for her anvil because he was within reach, and what she really wanted to hammer wasn’t. Her remorse applied itself strictly to her husband, however, and she had none for her feeling toward the lady next door. Mrs. Dodge and her neighbour had never discovered any point of congeniality: Mrs. Braithwaite’s high serenity, which Mrs. Dodge called suavity, was of so paradoxical a smoothness that Mrs. Dodge said it “rubbed the wrong way from the start.” The uncongeniality had increased with time until it became a settled dislike, so far as Mrs. Dodge was concerned; and now, after Mrs. Leslie Braithwaite’s successful appeal to Mr. Dodge for what Mr. Dodge’s wife had refused, the dislike was rankling itself into a culmination not unlike an actual and lusty hatred.
Mrs. Dodge realized her own condition;—she knew hatred is bad for the hater; but she could not master the continuous anger within her. Fascinated, she watched Mrs. Leslie Braithwaite at the “tea”; could not help watching her, although, as the victim of this fascination admitted to herself in so many words, the sight was “poison” to her. Nor was the poison alleviated by the effect of Mrs. Braithwaite upon the other guests: everywhere the angelic presence moved about the capacious rooms it was preceded and followed by deference. And when Mrs. Braithwaite joined a woman or a group of women, Mrs. Dodge marked with a hot eye how that woman or group of women straightway hushed a little and looked noble.