This marrying

By Margaret Culkin Banning

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Title: This marrying


Author: Margaret Culkin Banning

Release date: December 31, 2023 [eBook #72563]

Language: English

Original publication: NYC: George H. Doran Company, 1920

Credits: Chuck Greif and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Archive)


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THIS MARRYING ***




                             THIS MARRYING

                                  BY
                        MARGARET CULKIN BANNING

                               NEW YORK
                        GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY


                           COPYRIGHT, 1920,
                      BY GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY


                PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA


                                  TO

                            VIOLA ROSEBORO




                             THIS MARRYING




CHAPTER I


“You should have been a bridesmaid,” said Aunt Caroline. “Everyone was
so surprised that you weren’t. And the yellow would have been so
becoming with you so dark.”

Horatia smiled and her smile carried no regrets for her lost
opportunity. Everyone, as her aunt said, had been surprised at her
refusal to be a bridesmaid at the wedding of her friend. But with a
quick reminiscent glance back at the ceremony, Horatia congratulated
herself again on the decision that had held out against the requests of
Edna and the expostulations of her aunt. She recalled the hurried fussy
little ceremony, and the curious people, the space reserved in the front
parlor with its tall cathedral candles, its lavish ten yards of white
satin ribbon and the rose pink prayer rug. A faint odor of candles and
coffee and perfume clung to the memory. In the minds of her aunt and
West Park these things were vastly suitable, just as to them Edna
Wallace was still her “best” friend, because they had played together as
children and gone through High School together. But Horatia realized
that her college experience and her four years of absence from West
Park had made great gaps between her and the bride of last night as well
as between her and this middle-aged aunt and uncle with whom she sat at
breakfast. She looked just then as if not only yellow but any color
would become her. She was fairly tall and well made and carried herself
with the easy distinctive swing that comes from perfect health and no
corsets. Her hair was brown and heavy and shaded into the brown of her
eyes to add still another tone to the whole that her aunt characterized
as “you so dark.” Her clothes were simple for she scorned on principle
all the minor affectations of dress and quick changes of fashion, but
she had an eye for color and line which developed gowns which were
sometimes beautiful and sometimes startling. Not that there was an
unlimited number of them. Uncle George was generous but generous by West
Park standards and by Aunt Caroline’s expenditures, and Aunt Caroline
still considered fifty dollars a scandalous price for a suit or cloak.
Horatia never grumbled about money or about clothes. This morning she
was dressed for the City and her satin blouse and slim tailored suit set
off her young health perfectly. Even her aunt and uncle were conscious
of fresh energy at the breakfast table.

“I didn’t want to be a bridesmaid,” she answered. “It always makes me
seasick to try to walk to music.”

“Horatia’s waiting,” said Uncle George, over the top of his newspaper,
“until she can be the chief performer.”

Horatia smiled at him. “You want to get rid of me, don’t you, and you
don’t care what I take. I’ll tell you what I am going to do. I’m going
to town this morning to get a job. When I try that for a while I’ll
decide whether I want to get married or not.”

“Get a job? What do you want a job for? You want to stay home with your
aunt and me now.” Uncle George went so far as to put his paper down and
repeat himself. “What do you want to do that for?”

“Earn money.”

He reached for his check book in all seriousness, but Horatia leaned
over and put her hand on it.

“Truly I want to earn it. Everyone earns money nowadays, unless she is
feeble-minded--or married. I don’t particularly want money just now
anyway. I still have some of that last fifty. But I want to work. All
the people I know are either married or going to be or working. I must
get in some class. Of course I don’t mean to leave you. I’d be here
nights, you see.”

“They’d probably find a position for you at the High School if you feel
that way,” said Aunt Caroline, with the consciousness of being an
important member of the community to whom even educational gateways were
glad to open.

“Oh--_teach_,” said Horatia. “I don’t want to teach!”

Uncle George rose with heavy dignity.

“Well--let me know when you get broke.” He went out of the room with
masculine indifference to these whims and in the knowledge that Horatia
was only marking time in her own way until the inevitable happened.
She’d marry. Of course she’d marry. And chuckling a little, he went down
the street.

Aunt Caroline was more inquiring. She rose from the table, not being one
to linger and keep the “help” waiting. But she followed her niece into
the hall.

“Is it this social work you want to do?” she asked, remembering dimly
things she had heard of new standpoints.

“Why, I don’t think so. I thought I’d try to get on a newspaper. And if
that doesn’t work, I cut some ads out of the paper.”

“You don’t mean you’d do housework!” gasped her aunt to whom
advertisements in newspapers meant “girl wanted for general housework.”

Horatia laughed in pure joy. It was one of those rare free moments which
come at the beginning of new work and new adventures and she enjoyed
shaking up Aunt Caroline.

“Not--especially.” Then from the foot of the steps she turned to wave
back at the stout lady on the doorstep.

“Don’t fret,” she called. “Home for dinner.”

“Everyone,” she sang to herself as she went down the hill, “has the
right to shock an older person once in a while. It’s the breath of
youth. And the old dears really love it. So long as you are
respectable--they love it.”

As she turned the corner she looked back for a moment at the house she
had left, dramatizing her new freedom and the house too as a sober
symbol of what she was so gladly leaving. The Grant house stood high on
a hill overlooking the lake. It was built of blackish stone, which at
one time had been the material of wealth and dignity in the city, and it
still looked down on the stucco and plaster new houses which clustered
beneath it, with a kind of glum faith in its superiority. But the
illusion was its own. It awed no one any more, least of all Horatia, who
had been brought up to respect it.

Inside were rooms papered in browns and streaked green and filled with
walnut furniture which had all the ugliness of an ugly outworn fashion
and yet none of the interest of antiques. There were several unsoftened
leather sofas--unsoftened because the Grants had never been a family to
“lie down in the daytime,” and the chairs were chairs--so many places to
sit down, but boasting neither beauty nor comfort. At the windows
curtains of imitation Brussels lace gave the finishing touch to the
unimaginative furnishings. They too were stiff and artificial, like the
stone dog who sat so grimly on the terrace outside. Horatia had called
the place home since she was six years old. She had no quarrel with it
but it had ceased to interest her. It stood still--impassive--and she,
like the breeze and the sunlight, was moving.

It was a clear morning--a bright morning, one of the days on which
someone always should start out to seek a fortune. There was energy in
the wind and good luck in the sunlight and romance in the face of
everyone she met. Even on the way to the suburban train, though she knew
nearly everyone she met, they all seemed imbued with new spirit and more
interesting qualities. She met Miss Pettikin, and saw not the shabby
little dressmaker but the heroine of some blighted romance. She saw the
Reverend Williams, not as the man who had read the marriage service so
stupidly the night before but as a man with a holy mission. She saw Joe
Peter, the neighborhood gardener, and he became Labor just as Mr. Jeffry
panting on his way to the train became Capital. She saw herself as a
lovely and interesting young woman in whom everyone on the train was
interested and she hoped that behind every newspaper lurked a man with a
brain, worth her knowing. The world was full of life and interest and
she was going to get her share of it. And as the train swayed and jerked
as only a suburban train can do, she pulled out her notebook and
speculated on her first adventure.

She had listed the newspapers with their addresses. There were four and
it was quite within possibility that one of them would want her. She had
several courses in journalism to her credit at the university and if
there was a vacancy in any office she meant to press her claims hard.
The mere idea of working stimulated her and as the train stopped at the
city station she pushed out with the hurrying crowd, almost feeling
already that she was one of those to whom being “on time” was a
necessity.

The newspaper offices were down near the water-front. Below the main
street of big shops and glittering restaurants, the streets became grey
and businesslike. Wholesale houses, impassive and undecorated, with
great trucks backed up before their entrances, dingy employment offices,
the repair shops of garages that fronted gaily on the other street, and
straggly buildings, without elevators, housing a multitude of little
businesses, lived on this street. A block above, the streets were
already filled with shoppers, looking in windows, loitering along,
wondering what they would do next. But on Market Street everyone seemed
to know where he was going and to be going there quickly. Horatia
hastened her own footsteps, though her time was all her own. It made her
feel less conspicuous.

_The Times_ was the morning paper and the presence of it on the
breakfast table all her life made Horatia feel more acquainted with it
than with the others. Besides her picture had appeared in it three times
after she had done something worth newspaper notice at the University,
and while she was vaguely amused at those reasons for going there first
she argued further that as it was the paper with the largest
circulation there might be more opportunities open. Its dinginess
surprised her. The offices were housed in a nondescript wooden building
and the manager’s office to which Horatia found herself referred by the
boy in the general office was reached by a worn stairway.

“He’s probably not in yet,” said the boy, “doesn’t get here until eleven
o’clock, usually.”

But Horatia’s luck was working. A stout, shirt-sleeved man looked her
over without getting up from his desk.

“We don’t take on women reporters except in the society department,” he
told her. “There’s to be a change there shortly. What experience have
you had?”

“No experience except journalism courses at the University.”

“They can’t teach newspaper work at any university,” growled the man.
“Can teach them more here in a week than they’d get in ten years at any
school, don’t care where it is. Leave your name and if anything does
turn up, or Miss Eliot--she’s society editor--needs help--I’ll have her
take it up with you. Of course you understand she wants hack work. We’ve
no room for essays, you know.”

Horatia looked him over without a blush at his semi-insolence.

“No--I don’t suppose you have,” she said, and her stock went up with her
tone. She left her name on the pad he pushed towards her and went out.

“Lucky there are three others,” she said. “I wouldn’t care for that
gentleman--nor yet his Miss Eliot. But I suppose you can’t choose. _The
Buzz-saw_ next.”

_The Buzz-saw_ was not subscribed to by the Grants. It was a murderous
little political journal, full of gossip, and it exposed scandals rather
than printed news. Its circulation was heavy and stray copies of it,
brought home by Uncle George, had made Horatia wonder a good deal about
it. She knew everyone read it, more or less under cover, and its
unorthodoxy troubled her not at all. If it were rotten it would be fun
to uncover its methods. So she toiled up another flight of stairs into a
much smaller office where the editor, a typist and two lean,
pipe-smoking reporters looked furtively amused at her appearance. She
took the scrutiny well. Quite unembarrassed in her own glances, she had
a way of putting herself in her own class immediately. It was impossible
to look at her, at her dress and her unaffected hat, and not know that
she meant to be quite impersonal. The reporters took their pipes to the
other corner and the editor straightened up a little to offer her a
chair and ask her business. When she told him he seemed to ruminate.

“What is your name?”

She told him and he seemed to connect it with Uncle George by a swift
mental gesture.

“George Grant--dry-goods?”

“His niece. I live with him.”

“Well.” He thought again and then leaned forward with a confidential air
that Horatia imagined him using habitually as he unearthed his scandals.

“We don’t take on girls. But I don’t say you couldn’t be useful to us.
If you could run a column of good gossipy stuff about the
swells--particularly the women, of course. Nothing that would let us in
for libel--well, I’d edit it anyway, of course. But the preliminary
stuff to these scandals--the first rumors of divorces and
elopements--particularly concerning women more or less in the public
eye. We don’t want stories about everyone. I could give you a list of
people to watch. You know--the Town Topics sort of thing. Get us a lot
more women readers.”

Horatia was enjoying herself.

“But how would I unearth these stories about people I don’t know?”

“You’d have to work around. A girl like you has got the----” (he fumbled
and decided to be a plain American) “the entry everywhere. You’d feel
around, listen to them talk, draw them out. There’s things a man can’t
do.”

“Yes,” agreed Horatia, wisely, “there are.”

“Now of course a thing like that would be a trial column. Might not work
out at all. Couldn’t be long-winded. And then, too, it isn’t worth an
awful lot. But a girl like you, living at home, doing it for experience
and pin-money, would realize that we couldn’t pay too much.”

His little eyes bored through her as he tried to feel her out. Horatia
felt suddenly disgusted.

“I’ll think it over,” she said, getting to her feet. “I’m not sure I
could do just what you want, but I’ll think it over. And come in in a
day or so.”

The man seemed a little anxious to keep her and vaguely worried lest he
had said too much.

“Our little journal tries to tell the truth,” was his parting comment
and it followed Horatia sardonically down the stairs.

“You’re not an adventure,” thought Horatia, proceeding. “You’re a nasty,
open debauch. My chances are narrowing.”

They narrowed further. The _Evening Reporter_ was cleaner than the other
two, more brusque, more businesslike. She could not see the editor. They
needed no one. There remained the _Evening Journal_ and that Horatia
hardly knew by sight. She had bought a copy at the newsstand the other
day when she was getting addresses and making her plans. It was a
thinner sheet than the others and seemed to have a great deal of space
for semi-philosophical editorials. A kind of labor journal she
classified it and then felt that she had not been complete. It had
hinted at Socialism but it was not Socialist frankly. Horatia knew the
strong colors of Socialist publications, to a couple of which she
subscribed, just as a matter of being open-minded.

There was no buzz or stir about the office of _The Journal_. It was high
up in a kind of office building which fronted the lake, and its rooms
seemed to be very few. In one a couple of typewriting machines with
papers strewn about them were deserted. In the adjoining room, open in
spite of a “private” sign on the door, a big desk was also deserted. At
the back of the room a big window gave on the lake, ignoring the rush
and noise of the brown streets below. Horatia looked around for someone
and seeing nobody went to the window. She stood there, a little tired
and reflective, thinking of the queerness of being in such a spot
instead of in some big classroom or lecture hall or in the sedate
comfort of West Park. The adventure spirit was wearying a little. What
sort of places were these to see and feel life in? And how tawdry or how
conventional one might become. She thought of Edna, speeding away with
her husband on some luxurious train and wondered how she was feeling
today. Suddenly she herself felt lonely and ignored. No one really cared
where she was or what she was doing. It was glorious to be free but it
would be---- She did not finish the thought, for someone came into the
office and at the sound of his step she hurriedly turned to confront
business or furtiveness or whatever might be there. She saw a tall man
of about thirty-five with a lean face and slow, observing, cynical eyes.

“I am sorry you found the office deserted. I am Langley, the editor.
What can I do for you? If it’s books, I don’t buy books. If it’s
subscriptions, I can’t afford it.”

“It’s a job,” said Horatia.

“For me or you?” asked the man with a lazy smile. She liked his voice.
It was well-bred. He was well-bred too and there was something vaguely
familiar about his name.

“You’ve got one,” she countered.

He smiled neither in assent nor dissent.

“And you want one?”

“On a newspaper.”

“There are more substantial sheets than this one, you know.”

He spoke pleasantly and Horatia felt suddenly expansive and ready to
talk.

“I’ve been to them all. One won’t have me, another wants me possibly to
do society personals, and another wants me to run a spicy scandal column
for them.”

“So they would. But as fourth fiddle I’ve nothing much better to offer,
I’m afraid. I don’t need reporters, which I suppose is what you are
hankering for, nearly as much as other ingredients for this paper.”

“I’m sorry,” said Horatia. “I’d like to work next to this view.”

“That’s why I took the office. I thought that too. But I can’t put the
things that view tells me across with the public.”

“They would be pleasant things,” said Horatia. She was interested and
meant to find out as much as she could about this man and his queer
paper. And she felt in him a willingness to prolong the conversation. To
test it, she turned to go.

“Good morning,” she said brightly. “Again I’m sorry.”

“It’s too bad. Will you give up the journalistic life now that the Big
Four have offered you so infinitely less than nothing?”

“I suppose I’ll have to.”

“Have you done any of it yet? I beg your pardon for the question, which,
not being a prospective employer, I haven’t any right to ask. Don’t
answer if you don’t like.”

“I don’t mind. I’ve done no work--of any kind. Just raw--out of
college.”

“University?”

She nodded and at the word the train of association became complete.
Langley--of course--the 1905 Langley, who had been the big man in his
day and left a train of college glory behind him that even yet was not
obliterated by the hundreds of more recent graduates. He had begun the
student government--but possibly it was not the same one. She was sure
she hadn’t better ask him.

“Isn’t it odd,” he was saying, “how many college graduates think they
can reform the world just by getting on a newspaper? They think such
foolish things--that papers are forums of opinions--that they can write
things they want to write. My dear young lady, a newspaper is only a
medium for advertisers, that is, if it’s successful.”

“But I know that,” answered Horatia, “perfectly. I’m quite practical
about it. And I don’t want to reform the world. I want to live right in
it. I’m not the least bit of a reformer. I rather like the world.”

She looked so engagingly young and sweet and sensible that the man’s
face brightened--almost involuntarily, as if he did not want it to
brighten.

“You’re a romanticist, young lady.”

“I started out this morning from an ugly stone house on a lovely hill to
seek my fortune. There was only one trouble. No one put any obstacles in
my way and no one knew I was going to seek it really. The people I told
didn’t understand. You’re the first person who has begun to talk to me,
so I told you. And I’m getting too expansive. But I feel much better.”

“I wish I could give you a job, young adventurer,” answered the man, a
little irrelevantly. “You might bring back some of the enthusiasm I had
when I was as young as you are. But I was more solemn.”

“Oh, I can be solemn on occasion,” said Horatia. She was having a
tremendously good time, talking to this man who didn’t know her name and
to whom it was so easy to talk. And he too was warming to the
conversation.

“You see, I haven’t much of a newspaper. Three of us run it and we don’t
do our own printing. There is one man who had hopes as I did. There is
another who drinks too much--when he writes well--and writes badly when
he drinks too little. We started out to make a newspaper which would not
muck-rake, you know, but tell the truth about things. And we find, dear
young lady, that nobody wants us. Even you wouldn’t want a job from us.”

“I truly think I would,” said Horatia. “Don’t you want a woman’s
department? I really would enjoy doing society personals for a paper
with a purpose.”

He laughed uproariously and she noticed how young he could look.

“Will you come to lunch and talk it over? I’ll tell you all about
it--hopes and failures, young lady adventurer.”

“If I can pay for my own lunch.”

He bowed, then added with a twinkle:

“Of course we aren’t absolutely down to bedrock. I could pay for your
lunch.”

“But it’s easier for me to beg for a job if I’m paying for my own. My
name is Horatia Grant, Mr. Langley.”

“Miss Grant,” said Langley, holding the door open, “no matter who pays
for it, I am going to enjoy my lunch.”




CHAPTER II


It was an amazingly pleasant lunch. Horatia was not too sophisticated in
this matter of eating with men in public restaurants and under the
flattering charm of Jim Langley’s interest and attention she sparkled
with excitement and response. She liked him. She liked his easy careless
manners and his half-mocking, half-kind indulgence towards her remarks
and the real amusement in his smile and the skill he showed in ordering
food. And Langley across from her, along with his faint note of
self-mockery, showed that he enjoyed himself too, for Horatia’s face was
young and her mind was clear and above all she did not seem tired but
fresh and vigorous. He asked her about herself, subtly keeping the
conversation on her, and she told him of the house on the hill and her
married sister and her aunt and uncle and the neighbors.

“They are kind, you know,” she finished, “but they are so simple that
they all call me intellectual and set me apart as queer.”

“And you aren’t queer at all,” said Langley, “you’re a perfect product
of what the nice cleanliness of West Park would produce with a college
education superimposed on it. Why don’t you leave things alone, young
lady? Your realities may be stupid but they are clean and straight. Why
do you want to get tangled up and wrinkled up? Wouldn’t the West Park
High School perhaps be a better solution than the newspaper? Or a good
husband?”

She smiled at him.

“You smile now but later you’ll be sorry. You think you know about
troubles because you’ve studied sociology and heard a lot of war
lecturers. But you really are quite untouched. And life hurts. Even in
West Park it must hurt, but in a city, in work--it probably will hurt
much more. And besides the world isn’t the place it used to be, with
clean-cut issues and a welcome for the young romanticist. It is worn
with war, and very tired and a bit unscrupulous and there are no ideals
left which haven’t been tampered with----”

“But we have to live in it just the same,” argued Horatia.

“You might enter a convent.” At which they both laughed, for it was so
absurd to think of Horatia in a convent.

“Your people will probably object to your taking a job on my paper,”
said Langley at length; “maybe you will when you hear more about me. I
can’t pay you enough to make it worth your while financially. But
perhaps if you want to come and will take the work I can give you and
try to increase our circulation, I can find a desk for you anyway.” And
having committed himself, the editor looked as if he were calling
himself a fool in his thoughts.

“I’ll work for anything you’ll pay me,” said Horatia, “and I don’t think
anyone can frighten me away from your paper, Mr. Langley. When can I
come?”

“Good luck to begin on Monday.”

“I shall be at the office on Monday morning,” she promised, with a
thrill, a young thrill in her voice.

She left the restaurant with all the spirit of the morning reinforced.
Friday--Saturday--Sunday--then she would be at work. It wasn’t hard to
find work. She would try very hard to make what she wrote interesting
and possibly soon people would be buying the newspaper to read what she
had written, and Langley would say--even so do fresh college graduates
dream. But the college graduate of ten years back walked back to the
office over the lake and told Bob Brotherton apropos of nothing that
there was always a new way in which to make a damned fool of oneself.

What he was to do with her, why he had taken on an added responsibility
just when _The Journal_ seemed on its last legs were doubtless
sufficiently irritating questions. But more irritating must have been
the flare-up of impulsiveness, the response to youth and romance, which
he had been deliberately trying to deaden in himself and which he had
hoped were permanently deadened. He had waded through realism and
discouragements to a kind of refusal to care about anything more and
here he was lending a hand to someone who would go through the same
weary mess. She would be far better off in her stupid suburbanism.
Someone would marry her and use the youth and the freshness to decorate
another suburban home somewhere. She shouldn’t be encouraged. The
persistence of the devil that had made all that old stuff leap up in him
again!

Horatia went on to Maud’s. Maud was her sister, who had married to the
full approbation of West Park and her own satisfaction. It came upon
Horatia in the midst of her excitement at the beautiful way things were
turning out that she was sorry for people who couldn’t have all this
interest in their lives and particularizing she discovered a localized
regret that Maud’s life wasn’t more colorful. She hadn’t seen her sister
often that summer. Maud’s two babies had come close together, and on the
advent of the second they had moved from their first apartment to a
house on one of the city boulevards, which pleased Aunt Caroline
immensely. Horatia had been in the house only once or twice, for Maud
brought the children to West Park on Sundays and that had been almost
enough sisterly intercourse for Horatia. But now she wanted to spread
out her inspiration and she turned her steps towards Elm Boulevard.

It was a newly-built section of the city which took great pride in its
residential restrictions and its extremely up-to-date houses of brick or
stucco, each of them representing a vague travesty on some architectural
period or “style.” The sleek, small lawns were chopped off neatly, one
from another, by little hedges which were not too high to hide any of
the beauties or improvements of the place from the passing motorist.
Well polished cars stood in front of some of the houses, children in
smocked frocks and gaily colored half-socks played in the lawn-swings or
walked up and down the sidewalks. It was mid-afternoon and the
comfortable-prosperous were enjoying themselves. Horatia felt the still
orderliness of the atmosphere and realized again why Aunt Caroline was
given to occasional remarks about how “well Maud had done.”

She turned in at her sister’s house and Maud, who was sitting on the
porch with her baby in her arms, jumped up to welcome her volubly and to
introduce her to two other ladies as cool and plump and white-clad as
Maud herself.

“Did you walk out this wretchedly hot day--all the way from town?”

Horatia had not felt the heat but she put a suddenly self-conscious hand
up to her hair and hat under her sister’s solicitous inquiry. She found
she was hot and moist beside these cool suburban ladies.

“I am hot,” she admitted. “May I go up and wash?”

The inside of the house was pleasanter than she had remembered. It was
cool, its shades were drawn against the heat. Clean, pretty colors
everywhere, and as she passed the children’s room the whiteness and
pinkness of it charmed her.

She went down to the porch refreshed and admiring. Even if the Williams
had chosen this location where there was no lake view and the houses
were rather closely set, it had distinct advantages. She told Maud so
and Maud was obviously greatly pleased.

“I knew I was right in insisting on this part of town,” she said. “A
lake view is all right and so is the country. But unless you have oodles
of money and three or four cars and a regular estate it is much better
to settle in one of the good residence districts.”

“What makes a residence district good?” asked Horatia, quizzically,
though she knew perfectly well.

The three suburban ladies looked a little shocked.

“Why the people, the people who live here. This district is restricted.
You can’t build houses here that cost less than twelve thousand. That
keeps out undesirables.”

“I see,” said Horatia, waiving her rights to controversy.

“Of course, with growing children,” began Maud in an instructive
matronly tone.

Growing children, it appeared, were all important to the three ladies.
Horatia dropped out of the conversation but kept a look of bright
intelligence focused on her informants. Growing children must be
carefully watched and not allowed to make acquaintances among those
whose residence districts were not restricted. They “picked up
everything.” They were the subject of a long conversation which went
from schools to carrots. The interest of the three ladies never flagged.
Horatia held the baby in her lap and played with its wisps of hair,
hardly attending to what was said. She vaguely heard the talk pass from
undesirable children to undesirable mothers and the voices became more
tense. The names were nothing to her and she was in no mood to combat
the intolerances of the others. The baby was so small and pink and clean
and desirable. Maud must have a lot of fun. It must be fun to share
children with a man---- She heard a familiar name and broke off her
thoughts abruptly. What was that they were saying?

“She was seen downtown having lunch with that Jim Langley--and you know
what he is.”

“Oh, she doesn’t care what she does,” said Maud. “Whatever happened
between her and her husband--do you know?”

“They say that after their baby died, she refused flatly to have any
more--and you know how men are. If a woman can’t be tactful about those
things and the way she feels--she said outrageous things about not being
able to endure more such suffering. And yet when the child was alive she
was hardly ever home.”

“That’s the way with those women,” said Maud sagely.

“And then running around with Jim Langley----”

The sick little feeling in Horatia grew acute. She had heard the name
rightly.

“Who’s the pernicious gentleman?” she asked lightly enough.

“Jim Langley--no one you ought to know.” Maud was quick to adopt the
tone of chaperonage.

“But I should know all about him,” persisted Horatia, easily, “because
he’s just given me a job.”

There was a dangerous little pause. Then Maud spoke.

“You’re joking.”

“No--truly. He promised to give me a position on _The Journal_.
Reporting, I suppose. I went to all the newspapers this morning.”

A flush had mounted to her sister’s cheeks.

“Horatia,” she said with a tense air of lightness, “where did you get
this sudden notion of going to work at all?”

Horatia felt a little sorry. She realized that Maud was being humiliated
by the turn the conversation had taken. But still she did want to know
about Jim Langley.

“Of course I’ll want to do something. No one sits around any more with
folded hands waiting to be married.”

This was a trifle better. It at least showed the callers that the work
project was a freak and not a necessity. Maud decided to try to pass it
off as a joke and reckon with Horatia later, but before she could speak
one of her guests was inquiring:

“Really on Jim Langley’s paper, Miss Grant?”

“Why not?” asked Horatia. “He seems pleasant enough. What is the matter
with him?”

“Horatia hasn’t been home except summers for four years,” said Maud
shortly. “Why, he’s got a bad reputation, and was mixed up with a
dreadful scandal here. He was named in the Hubbell divorce suit.”

“And he didn’t marry Mrs. Hubbell.”

“Should he?” Horatia sought instruction.

Maud rose with an air of exasperation.

“You shouldn’t go about alone to newspaper offices, Horatia,” she said.
“It’s ridiculous. As for your working on _The Journal_, you just talk to
Harvey and see what he says. Come, let’s see the garden.”

Horatia saw the garden obediently and the guests’ departure, followed
close by the bedtime ceremonies at which Maud helped and presided,
forced the matter out of the way. It was only as they sat at dinner that
the topic rose again. Maud had composed herself and, considering that
Horatia’s conversation had merely shown inexperience and ignorance, was
no longer angry. She was rarely angry for any length of time. Now,
looking at her husband over the neat central fern-dish, she said,
half-jocularly, “You’ll really have to take Horatia in hand, Harvey. She
is dreadful. Here she went and saw this Jim Langley person today and
asked him for a position on his paper.”

“But the point is, Maud, that he gave me a job.”

Harvey looked at his sister-in-law and came at the question from a man
angle.

“You don’t want to work on his paper, Horatia. If you want that kind of
work, try either _The Tribune_ or _The Reporter_. Langley’s paper is one
of those enterprises that run themselves into the ground early. He’s
always uncertain--no policy, no circulation to amount to anything. And
then of course--Langley, himself.”

Horatia leaned towards him.

“But tell me about it, Harvey. There was a chorus of horror when I
mentioned his name this afternoon. And he was the only gentleman I met
this morning. I did try _The Tribune_ and _The Reporter_. I even tried
_The Buzz-saw_.”

Harvey threw back his head and roared.

“That’s a modern young woman. Why didn’t you take a job on that?”

“They offered me one--a scandal column, but I turned it down. Seriously,
tell me about Mr. Langley.”

“Why, there’s not so much to tell,” said Harvey. “He’s in pretty bad
odor, that’s all. The women are all interested in him because he was
co-respondent in a divorce suit. Isn’t that it, Maud?”

“Don’t be silly, Harvey. You know what he is and you ought to tell
Horatia.”

Harvey tried again with that disinclination to hurt the personal
reputation of a man which most men show in such discussion.

“Jack Hubbell sued his wife for divorce and named Langley, who’d been
philandering a lot. Langley always did that. He was a University man
about my time and a tremendous fellow. Everybody worshipped his
footsteps.”

“I’ve heard of him there,” said Horatia.

“He had a little money and started this newspaper, which would have been
all right if he hadn’t refused to tie himself up with any political
party and hadn’t also refused to make any concessions to advertisers.
Seemed to have an idea that newspapers are run like books. Then he got a
lot of booze-fighters working for him and sort of lost his grip. That’s
all there’s to it. When his money gives out his paper will go to the
wall.”

“But the divorce suit?”

“You’re as bad as the rest of them,” sighed poor Harvey. “Stick to the
scandal. It never came to trial at all. Hubbell killed himself after the
suit was filed.”

Maud finished.

“And he didn’t marry the woman or make any attempt to justify the
situation. Just stopped going places and refused to explain anything.
Naturally people assume the worst.”

Horatia felt a little pale. She could hear his kind voice, with the
tinge of bitterness in it. And his remark, “Probably you won’t want to
work for me after you hear what people say.” Well, she had heard. And
she did want to work for him. They’d outlawed him from their silly
society because he’d held his tongue. Probably none of it was true. And
if it was true it didn’t matter. She brought her last reflection into
words.

“But after all it doesn’t much matter, does it? He doesn’t want me to
marry him or to take stock in his newspaper. All he offers is a job and
even if all these things are as dreadful as they are reported to be,
they don’t enter in. I’m old enough to be incorruptible surely. And I
need newspaper experience.”

“I think, maybe I could get you on _The Tribune_ if I talked to
Weissner,” said Harvey.

“There,” said Maud, “why didn’t you come to us first? Of course it’s the
thing just now to work, since the war. Dorothy Macdonald is studying
stenography and you know how rich she is. And lots of others. But you
might have asked us or Uncle George.”

“I wanted to find work for myself,” said Horatia, the memory of that
morning’s somewhat torn glory still shining in her eyes. “And I’ve
promised Mr. Langley, Maud. I couldn’t work on another paper. It would
be too insulting.”

“You don’t want to ruin your reputation and the reputation of all the
rest of us, do you?” asked Maud sharply.

“Oh, it’s not as bad as all that, you know, Maud,” interposed her
husband. “Langley pays his bills and is in good standing at his clubs.
Of course he isn’t getting anywhere, but it wouldn’t hurt Horatia’s
reputation. Nothing hurts a girl’s reputation any more,” added Harvey,
chuckling. “Debutantes appear in banks and come delivering laundry. You
never know when you’ll come on them next. Let her do as she likes.”

“You’re a darling, Harvey. And I promise you, Maud, that I’ll tell you
all the scandal from the inside and you can flourish it, copyrighted,
around the boulevard.”

At which sally they all laughed; but the last thing Horatia heard that
night as she climbed into Maud’s guest-room bed was Maud’s voice from
her dressing-room, somewhat muffled but distinct, as she talked to her
husband.

“I don’t like it, Harvey. He’s probably fascinated her, and they say he
hasn’t any principles.”

“Oh, come dear, let it wear itself out. Horatia’s not a child and she
can look out for herself. Come here, sweetheart, and take a look at
these white flannels. Are they fit for tennis?”




CHAPTER III


Like Harvey, Horatia had no doubts as to her ability to look out for
herself. To a certain extent she had been already doing it and she had
begun doing it early so that it was natural for her to be independent
and vigorous. Her father had died when she was five and after that her
mother had not seemed to care enough about living to keep it up. She had
been a pretty, intense woman who had taken her wifehood and maternity
very seriously, so seriously that she had quickly faded and at the time
of her death had not looked at all like the lovely young girl in
leg-o’-mutton sleeves, who smiled out of the photograph in the West Park
parlor.

She had two children, both girls to her secret relief and her husband’s
secret disappointment, and she fussed over their clothes and their
childish illnesses interminably. In spite of or perhaps because of her
fussing, they were, when she left them, two sturdy little girls with
pleasant tempers and good digestions. They accepted the change in their
fortunes quietly, taking all the kissing and patting and uncomprehended
signs of sympathy which came their way, and, climbing into the big
walnut bed at the Grant house on the first night of their transference
there, they cuddled closely together and fell asleep.

George Grant, their uncle, came in to see if they were asleep a little
later and stood looking down at them in a kind of puzzled wonder and
with a rusty throb of pity at the fact that they looked very small
indeed in the big bed. It was as near to a definite emotion towards them
as he ever got. He was their father’s brother and had officially “taken
them” because it was the natural and proper thing to do. He was the head
of a dry-goods establishment and by dint of steady application and
learning one thing, the wholesale dry-goods business, well, he had made
money in a slow accumulating way. And he had built his house, which
perfectly expressed him. Like it he was good and substantial and like it
also, provincial, unimaginative and unconscious of his limitations and
lacks. His wife was enough like him to have been his sister and whether
this was the result of slow absorption of his characteristics or had
been the original bond between them, no one knew. Mrs. Grant knew as
much about clean housekeeping as he knew about dry-goods. She had a
subsidiary passion for church work and was an authority on church
suppers and foreign missions.

She also had taken her brother-in-law’s children because it was the
obvious thing for a childless, well-to-do couple to do. But perhaps
because the Grants had been married for twelve years without having any
children, the desire for them had either died or never been cultivated
and they took Maud and Horatia without warmth. From the very beginning
the house on the hill meant repression to them. There was never cruelty
or even unkindness but it was all cold. Even in the kitchen there was no
freedom or expansion. The food was measured and counted and it was not a
place where an enterprising or hungry girl might take a pot of jam or a
dozen cookies and abscond with them for an after-school lunch. To be
sure if they were hungry they were allowed to have bread and butter and
brown sugar--or a doughnut perhaps. But their aunt or the raw-boned
Swedish girl who helped her gave it out always with an air of rationing
and several admonitions not to drop the crumbs.

At intervals, all along their path through grammar school, High School
and Sabbath school, came the supposedly high spots of recreation,
parties which they themselves gave or which they went to as guests. Even
at a very early age they had no question as to which kind they enjoyed
most. They liked to go to parties and they hated them at home. Parties
in other houses usually involved some stiffness at the beginning but
they warmed up to gaiety and a joyous kind of disorderliness which sent
all the children home flushed, tired and happy. At the Grant house they
were functions all the way through. Mrs. George Grant modeled them on
the parties she gave to the ladies of the Missionary Guild.

“I hate parties at home,” Maud would grumble to her sister when some
morning Mrs. Grant would gravely announce that she thought one was due,
and Horatia, always braver, would say, “But Aunt Caroline, what shall we
do at the party?” Aunt Caroline, her mind already on the refreshments
and the exact dozen of napkins which she would dedicate to the use of
the children, had always the same answer, “Why, play games,
Horatia--just as you always do.”

The children all came. Parties were never events to be ignored, and the
young public of West Park was not discriminating if refreshments were
involved. They came, all clean and scrubbed, and were sent down to the
big bare hall which a freshly-lit fire tried in vain to heat, and they
seconded the embarrassed efforts of Maud and Horatia to get up some
games. But Mrs. Grant sat by the wall and watched with a mother or two
flanking her, and there was no abandon. The refreshments, served in the
big dining-room, were all that saved the situation, and even those were
spoiled for the two hostesses by a feeling of their aunt’s eyes lurking
for crumbs. Yet, afterwards, when the children had gone home again and
all traces of them were carefully removed, Mrs. Grant would smile and
say to her nieces, “Did you have a nice time?” And faithfully, true to a
convention which they did not in the least understand, they answered,
“Oh, yes, Aunt Caroline.”

Of course even all Mrs. Grant’s passion for routine could not prevent
some crises arising. One came when Maud refused to do any more studying
after she graduated from the High School. In spite of her lamentable
monthly report card, Maud had been destined for a teacher and her sudden
rebellion at the end of her seventeenth year shocked her aunt terribly.
But Maud had a way of being silent and sullen and she had secret
reinforcement from Harvey Williams, who was one of the reasons why she
did not intend to go to the University. She rather concealed the fact of
Harvey at the time of her rebellion, but after she had gained her point,
Harvey became a steady caller at the Grant house. Maud had insisted that
she was going to earn her own living but she postponed beginning to do
it and it shortly became very obvious that she might better spend her
few unmarried days preparing a trousseau. Harvey was quite an eligible
person, beginning a law practice in the city and living with his mother
in West Park. The Grants, once adjusted, smiled in their cheerless way
upon the match. Maud’s love-making had gone on during Horatia’s last
year at High School and first year at the University. She was at first
tremendously impressed by the fact that Maud’s brown curls and pink skin
were desirable to the point of matrimony. She recognized the fact that
Maud was pretty but rooming with the prettiness and eternally removing
jars of cold cream and boxes of pink powder from her side of the bureau
had lessened its effectiveness for her. It was, none the less, a great
thing to have Maud being made love to and to think of her in secret as
the recipient of passionate kisses and delightful murmured phrases of
love. Maud jarred on the romance by being Maud throughout, inclined to
giggle and enjoy even Uncle George’s crude jokes about Harvey, and
Harvey had done his share of the jarring by being a blushful, diffident
young man who shot side glances at his fiancée and giggled heavily
himself. Horatia did her best to forget them actually and to remember
the delightful fact that they were lovers, hoping against hope that they
spent their evenings in moonlight walks instead of holding hands at the
movies.

By the time Maud was married, her sister was more sophisticated. She had
finished her first year at the University and begun to read a great
deal. Many subjects, more or less taboo in West Park, she had heard
discussed freely by both students and professors. She had decided that
there was something wrong with the social and economic systems of the
world, that West Park was a small and narrow place, that flirting was
silly, that she must devote a great deal of time to reading essays and
books on psychology, and that she would like to meet some “real men” and
get away from West Park. In spite of all this accumulated philosophy,
she was oddly glad to get on a street-car labeled “West Park” when she
came home on her first vacation, and to see all the familiar landmarks
on the way to the stone house on the hill. She never forgot that
homecoming. It was home, and not even the facts that Aunt Caroline was
at a missionary meeting and that Maud had a cold in her head and wanted
to talk about the initialing of her linen could keep Horatia from
romancing somewhat over it.

But by evening she felt indefinably let down. It was a warm June night
and the windows were open in the dining-room so that as they sat at
dinner Horatia could see the city below, its lights just beginning to
sparkle through the first dusk, and the slow freighters on the great
lake beyond passing and repassing with grave dignity. It was all
beautiful and quiet and familiar outside and yet no one at the table
seemed to feel it except herself. Uncle George at the head of the table
in his black house-jacket, ate silently, his broad, unemotional face
fallen into heavy lines of contentment. The day was over, his day’s
business had been good and after dinner he would water the lawn.

At the other end of the table his wife was talking to the girls about
Maud’s coming wedding. And as usual her mind was focused on the food,
the napkins and silver and especially the cleaning necessary, and
Horatia once more suffered the feeling of reluctant chill of the old
days when her aunt proposed a children’s party. Thank God this one would
be the last.

Her aunt broke into her thought.

“And then I suppose Horatia will be the next one,” she said with a heavy
facetiousness.

“Didn’t you meet any fellows at the ‘U’?” asked Maud. “Most of the
girls come back simply laden with pictures. Esther Dinsmore has a man
who motors up to see her every week or so--clear across the state.”

“I didn’t go in for that sort of thing.” There was a trace of
self-righteousness mingled with the humor in Horatia’s tone. “And I am
afraid I won’t be the next one, Aunt Caroline, because I don’t want to
get married for ages. I’ve lots of things to do first.”

“Teaching?” asked Maud in disgust.

“No--I don’t think so. Social work, maybe.”

“Slum work?” It was Aunt Caroline this time.

“We don’t call it that any longer.” Horatia was patient. “No---- Lots of
the social work is scientific work in an office. Collecting statistics.”

Aunt Caroline preened herself just a little.

“I may be very old-fashioned but this statistic collecting seems very
foolish to me. Just a fad. Now when we send out a missionary to a
heathen country we don’t ask for statistics. We want to know how many
souls he has saved.”

“That might in itself be a modest statistic,” laughed Horatia.

“And,” concluded Aunt Caroline with the air of one who quotes the
irrefutable and has a right to quote it, “I’m sure ‘the poor ye have
always with you.’”

There was a moment’s silence. Then Maud giggled.

“Let’s stop the deep stuff, for pity’s sake. There he comes, Horatia.”

Harvey could be seen passing the dining-room windows. Maud giggled again
and jumped up to look at herself in the mirror of the sideboard. Then
she went through the hall to meet her fiancé.

“Horatia’s home,” they could hear her saying, “she’s an awful highbrow.
Not much like poor chicken-brained me.” She made her apologies for her
lack of mind with enormous pride and Harvey said something in a low
voice at which there was another giggle. Horatia felt reluctant to meet
him again but she folded her napkin and went out on the porch where the
two lovers had settled themselves. Harvey shook hands with her a little
awkwardly but not as awkwardly as she had expected. Working in the city
had put a keener edge on him. He held his head better and talked better
English--not entirely the slangy boy and girl stuff which she had always
had from him. On the whole, as she looked him over, Horatia thought her
sister was doing rather well. Nothing exceptional in Harvey, of course,
but after all he would make a good husband. They talked for a little and
Harvey was intelligent on all the subjects which she, a little
priggishly, introduced. He was a graduate of her University and full of
reminiscence. But for all his pleasant conversation Horatia found
herself feeling in the way. Harvey’s arm stealing over the back of
Maud’s chair--Maud’s affected, immensely assured little laugh as if she
had a world at her feet and need make no effort--it puzzled Horatia. It
seemed inconceivable that this well-ordered young man should want her to
go so that he could make silly love to a giggling Maud and yet---- She
stood up and prepared to go into the house. Neither protested.

From that vacation on, Horatia began to be the “intellectual one” in her
circle of friends. At first she resented it, then liked it and grew
ultimately into complete indifference to what West Park did or didn’t
think. But that was later. At first she found herself set apart and left
out of the jokes. Before she went back to the University Maud was
“settled,” not in West Park, but in an apartment in the city itself,
more accessible for Harvey and better suited to his wife’s budding
passion for storming the society of the city. With her going Horatia had
dropped out of the circle of friends who used to come to the children’s
parties. The girls had married or gone East or to Normal schools. The
boys were marrying or flirting with city girls. Yet, though the reality
of her relations with the suburb had all changed, faded, she never lost
the feeling that she belonged to it and was in a measure bound to go
back to it. She knew that her aunt and uncle wanted her to live with
them--and that dull as their affection was, they were used to her and
wanted her. But stronger than their call was her feeling of West Park’s
physical beauty, of the vigor of its cool, brisk winds and of the
greatness of the great lakes spread out at the foot of the city and all
its suburbs. It was always a relief to come back from the flat little
university town.

She had done rather well at the University, though, as she told Maud,
she had not “gone in” for the social side of the undergraduate life, the
life which was so important to many of the girl students. A great deal
of that side of the University bothered her and repelled her. There were
girls who seemed to care about nothing except prolonged tumultuous
flirtations which included an immense amount of kissing and physical
demonstration. Horatia allied herself with the group which considered
such things a disgrace to the college. It was a strong group, not too
large, and they substituted for the flirtations of the other girls an
intense interest in and elaborate discussion of the modern woman and her
relations to men. They were constantly exchanging cold-blooded little
ideas for perfecting the sex. And underneath their scorn for the
hand-holding undoubtedly persisted an interest in the very thing they
scorned, judging by the time they put on the subject.

Once in a while they tried to put some of their theories into practice.
Horatia would find some young man attracted to her and meet him honestly
and simply as she would have met any girl. She would talk in her best
manner and tell him about the things she was thinking. And inevitably
she drove him away, for the young men were not at the age when they
looked for straight comradeship from girls. There was another code among
them. They liked Horatia well enough, rather admired her, but they left
her alone. It worried her a little. She did not want to go through life
without love. She had heard and read too much about it. And,
transcending her talk about the new spirit of friendship between men and
women, of a partnership marriage, came flashes of feeling as she read
her Keats or stumbled on a boy and a girl saying a clinging good-night
in some dark corner of the campus. She felt left out.

After all it did not matter much, because in the spring of her Sophomore
year everything changed. The United States had declared war and all the
most interesting young men had melted away, leaving only
indistinguishable stars in the University service flag. And it was by
the war that Horatia’s last two years at the University were colored.
She had not had much of a point of view about the European trouble as
she vaguely characterized it when it had been purely European. She had
talked once of becoming a nurse and going abroad but it was one of her
wildest dreams and not an especially cherished one. But now for a year
and a half the University had mobilized itself. Appeals for help,
lectures from returned soldiers, classrooms and halls filled with
flaring war posters, constant campaigns for funds, a sudden hierarchy
springing up among Red Cross workers, blue veils, red veils and white
veils shrouding the heads of the earnest bandage makers, and constant
efforts on the part of every instructor to relate his or her branch of
study to the great war, realizing that only by so doing could he hold
any number of his pupils--such things did the war mean to the college.
The interest in athletics died down like an untended fire--seriousness
came into vogue--and there was even more to it. All these young
students, still mentally adolescent, suffered. They suffered because
they had been taught that they should understand life, because the
supernatural had been left out of their philosophies and blind faith had
been discarded. Yet they were face to face with horrors, with facts,
philosophies which they could not comprehend and they strained their
minds trying to understand. Those who had been mildly Socialist turned
with repugnance from Bolshevism. Those who had always had a smug trust
in their financial solidity saw fortunes vanish or become useless in the
face of misfortune. Individualists realized that their social duty was
unescapable. For two years these students who had gone to college to
learn facts, as they supposed, found themselves in a chaos of changing
ideas, guided only unsurely by instructors as bewildered as they were
themselves. No one wanted to stay in college. They stayed only because
of parental pressure and because the University authorities introduced
as much practical war work as was possible. And the cold-blooded
philosophy and psychology Horatia had been absorbing was melted in the
heat of the great world emotionality.

Then at the height of all this enthusiasm came the armistice revealing
to the world suddenly and fearfully the confusion the world was
in--confusion of politics, of sociology, and ethics.

For the first few months after the signing of the armistice the word
“reconstruction” flew about the campus. War funds became “reconstruction
funds.” And then doubt began to creep about. What did reconstruction
mean and what would it lead to? Discontents penetrated the campus
grounds. The instructors, their own opinions in a state of flux and
bound to wait for further developments before crystallizing, were poor
leaders, dealing out generalities and ambiguousness. A certain fixed
curriculum dragged its way through the months. They were all conscious
that they were holding to outworn forms. Who knew what the University of
the future would be? Perhaps those diplomas given out in June, 1919,
were the least valuable of any ever given. Students went out into a life
which the instructors could not forecast. In wartime it was possible to
preach courage and sacrifice. In these strange new peace times who knew
whether courage and sacrifice were cardinal virtues?

This of course was all under the surface, hardly felt perhaps by many of
both teachers and students. But the unrest, the doubts were there,
revealed to the least probing. To some of them, among them Horatia, a
strange thing happened. She had been trained at first to believe in a
pragmatic philosophy which the war had swept away in its wind of
romantic sacrifice and heroism. In her first two years she had felt
rather scornful of the silliness of college men. And then they were
drawn out of her life into the great struggle and became heroes. Horatia
had come to believe in heroism. She had heard of so many young lives
offered nobly, read many young loose-hung fighting autobiographies. And
she had come out of college as thorough a young romanticist as ever
lived in the Middle Ages, but a puzzled young romanticist with neither
Church nor king to give her guidance. She brought her strong faith in
young men, her growing desire for all the romance life could give, home.
Home to West Park and after a taste of the dull routine of Aunt
Caroline’s days and the gossiping wedding of Edna, had decided that she
could not bear the let-down, the drop from romantic idealism and noble
ideas into the actuality of a corner of life. There was more in life
which she must have and go after posthaste. And so it was that the
morning after the wedding, she had set off adventuring and found the
road open and pleasant.




CHAPTER IV


From _The Journal_ office the lake looked blue and calm, disdaining the
stray gusts of wind that tossed newspapers and rubbish about in the
alleys below Main Street. Horatia had moved her typewriter over to the
window so typewriting might be accompanied by some compensations.
Langley said it increased her mistakes one hundred per cent, but Horatia
insisted that it doubled her inspirations.

“Which is necessary,” she added, “when one is trying to be both
brilliant and informational. The two things don’t track.”

She hated typewriting. Her fingers, untrained to accuracy, stumbled and
missed their aim and wrote absurdities. But typewriting was one of the
things which must be done if she was to do journalistic work, they told
her, and Horatia had decided that working on a newspaper was worth a
good many sacrifices. She had gone through some of them already in the
shape of family protests and disapprovals and if another one was to take
the shape of a 1913 Oliver typewriter, that too was to be borne. Gladly
borne for the sake of the thrilling contact with unprinted, raw news,
with information on a hundred subjects that had never interested her
before, for the sake of the kaleidoscopic picture of the city’s life
and means of life, for the caustic brilliant comments of Jim Langley and
Bob Brotherton, sitting with their pipes smoking furiously as they
uncoiled the truth about some happening, or wrote editorials of things
as they ought to be. Out of the terrific tangle of the philosophies and
political economies of the world she saw these men draw threads and wind
them neatly on a spool of thought. The tangle remained a tangle but a
fascinating instead of a discouraging one. It was more what was said
than what was written, though enough out of tune with the current
hysteric dread of American Bolshevism was published to account for
Harvey’s characterization that Langley had “no policy” which meant the
fatal lack of the right one. Horatia knew now why Jim Langley’s paper
had never appeared in the Grant household. She had seen the president of
the Dry-Goods Association of which Uncle George was a pillar denounced
in its pages for crooked political dealing. She knew why the
advertisements that _The Journal_ ran were those of obscure stores or
coöperative establishments or small firms employing union labor. In two
months she had learned more about politics, psychology, philosophy and
labor problems than she had known there was to learn. Most of it had
come direct from Langley. He had looked a little surprised when she had
turned up that Monday morning, whimsically surprised.

“So you came?” he said simply with a thousand implications in his tone.

And she had answered, “I came,” giving therewith the answer to all his
implied questionings in her tone. He gave her a desk and told her
briefly, almost abruptly, what he thought she could do. She could
“cover” certain meetings for them, mostly big lectures and concerts that
must be reported, with such theater notices as would be necessary and
for the rest, it would be mostly writing up the notes of Bob Brotherton,
or Charley Jones, the other reporter, when their work crowded them too
much.

“You see,” he explained, “you take no one’s place but you can relieve
the pressure on all of us.”

That was the outline of her work but compressed in the outline she found
ten and sometimes twelve hours a day of fascination. The two other men
had taken her advent rather smilingly but they soon found her useful.
She learned to read their handwriting, to decipher their notes, to write
a story from their verbal outline. And “in spite of her typewriting,”
said Langley, “it is good copy.”

Little by little she had come into the confidences of the office. The
men talked freely in front of her, tried to show her how to typewrite,
explained their standards, told of their own histories and ambitions.
Bob Brotherton had meant to write and was particularly expansive about
his wasted ambition when he had been drinking a little. Horatia came to
recognize the effect of liquor in his conversation and to discount it.
She liked him too because Langley had told her something of Bob’s
miseries, his domestic tragedy of an insane wife and a feeble-minded
child, both now in institutions somewhere. And it was impossible to keep
from liking Charley Jones, out of college three years and hoping,
praying and urging that Labor would come into its own soon. All the
problems of the city and of the country, even of the world, were met in
the little office by Bob’s literary pessimism, Charley’s cure-all and
the philosophical endurance of Langley. Langley never got angry or
excited. When the others were tangled as to policy or inner meanings, he
hit the truth on the head with some single sentence. Horatia, sitting at
her typewriter or at her table with her back to them all, would catch
herself listening for his comment and when it came would seize upon it
as truth and final.

She had no idea of how much she had changed the office, of how much more
work and less idling had come with her. Perhaps because her dogged
determined industry made them ashamed, perhaps because her uplifted
profile at the window or her apologetic frowning smile at some mistake
she had made charmed them, they all worked with a new energy. And they
were all amazed at her lack of self-consciousness. They were
experienced, each in his own way, and they watched her for those traces
of self-consciousness which break down the barriers between business
and personal relations. But there was none of it. She never blushed,
she never seemed afraid. It was all interest--pure interest.

“I can’t get it,” said Bob one day after she had left the office. “She
likes it here. What does she see in this decrepit sheet to interest her?
She ought to be listening to troubadours under her window, instead of
pounding a typewriter.”

“Precisely,” said Langley, a little over-dryly. “She ought, but she
wouldn’t. She’s gone on a hunt for her own romance--that’s what the
modern young girl does instead of having it brought to her.”

“And she’s found it here?” grinned Bob.

Langley shrugged his shoulders and tilted his pipe.

“Temporarily. The view helps.”

He sent Bob out on an assignment shortly after and then stood before the
window watching the darkness close down on the water.

There was no doubt that _The Journal’s_ affairs were looking up. A new
movement had come into the city--a non-partisan political element who in
default of a paper of their own were using his. They were backing a
strong man and a comparatively decent one for mayor in the November
elections and political advertising had swelled the funds of _The
Journal_ as much as its advocacy of a strong candidate had increased its
circulation. And Langley found his old nerve coming back into his
writing. He admitted occasionally to some of his companions that it was
worth while writing if someone was reading what he wrote. But there
seemed to be other things that stimulated his thought. He had a way of
watching Horatia’s profile, clear and pure against the window, of
drinking in the frank admiration in her tone and her face as she talked
to him, the sweetness of her impersonality--those things were getting
into his writing too. But he never admitted that. So on this October day
when Horatia sat struggling with her typewriter, he acted quite as if he
was oblivious to her presence.

She rose at last and brought her copy to him and he groaned as usual at
the misplaced letters and figures.

“But read it,” said Horatia gaily. “It’s a description of the mass
meeting the women got up for our candidate which mentions the name of
every lady present who can afford to subscribe to the paper. I’m getting
on to the game. And please don’t give me any more to do this afternoon
because I want to go.”

“Nice businesslike attitude,” said the editor.

“Everything’s done,” said Horatia, defensively.

“All right.”

“I’ll tell you what I want to do,” volunteered Horatia.

Langley had permitted himself no inquisitiveness but he seemed glad and
composed himself to listen.

“My revered uncle and aunt feel so nieceless since I work all day and
sleep all the time that I’m home that they have decided to do a very
wonderful thing. They are going to Florida for the rest of the winter to
look at beauties which they are getting too old to appreciate. And as it
seemed useless to keep the stone house open for me, I am told to go to
live with Maud. I don’t want to live with Maud, however, and, truth to
tell, I don’t think Maud, though she won’t admit it, wants me to very
much. I’m not much help to her and I rile her pool of life. She has
admitted that if I could get a ‘cunning little apartment and some girl
to live with me,’ I might be more content. And so I have found a cunning
little apartment and the friend dropped from heaven to live with me. She
is the new woman in the government labor office, Grace Walsh. I heard
about her--she was five or six years ahead of me at the University--and
I went to see her and she’s very keen about it, living with me, I mean.”

“Where is the cunning place?”

“On Sixth Street. New apartment building. I’m going to meet Grace there
now and when we get the pictures hung, you can drop your editorial
mantle and come to call.”

Langley flushed a little. It was a long time since he had had such
light-hearted invitations flung at him--or so it must have seemed to
him. And, vaguely understanding the flush, Horatia was suddenly enraged
at the ostracism which had been forced upon him.

“Won’t you walk over and see the place now with me?” she said,
impulsively. “It isn’t half a mile.”

She expected him to refuse her. He had not repeated his invitation to
lunch since she had been in the office and, courteous as he always was,
Horatia fancied that he avoided personal contact with her when he could.
But now, to her surprise, he rose.

“I’d like to. I’ve been wanting a walk all day.”

They swung along briskly and this time the sardonic Langley seemed left
behind in the office. The new one laughed like a boy and walked as if
all the rigidity had melted out of his body. On the street, as they
passed people whom he or Horatia knew, his hat was off almost with a
flourish as if he greeted the world afresh.

“You act as if you’d dropped all the cares of the world,” laughed
Horatia.

“No--I’m still carrying them. But it isn’t the cares of the world that
weigh you down. It’s your own little cares. If you have none of those
and no ugly scars left by them you can carry the troubles of the world
easily enough. What an easy problem to solve Bolshevism is, if you
aren’t trying to solve it with a mind diseased by personal aches and
worries.”

Horatia did not answer. She hoped he would go on into fuller, more
specific confidence. She hated herself for the question that so often
cropped up in her mind as to what were the real facts of the Hubbell
trouble. She understood so much of him now that she wanted to know
about that. It would be the last link in the chain--no, the last step in
the ladder that mounted--whither she did not know. Somewhere in her
vaguest thoughts she and Jim Langley understood each other perfectly,
scoffed at the rest of the world that did not understand.

But he did not go on. They reached the apartment building, and Horatia,
pulling out her latch-key long before it was necessary, rang for the
elevator.

“Your friend is there?” asked Langley, suddenly, sharply.

This time it was Horatia’s turn to flush. She dropped from the clouds.

“Of course,” she said, impatiently. “But I like to use my latch-key.”

She rapped on the door where a card already announced the names of Miss
Walsh and Miss Grant. There was no answer and she unlocked the door and
pushed it open. A note lay on the little table in the hall. Horatia
picked it up and read it. Then she turned to Langley with her head a
little higher than usual.

“Grace had to go downtown for some things. She’ll be back later. You can
come in anyway, can’t you, and let me show you the place?”

His eyes met hers squarely.

“It’s better not,” he said, quietly.

They stood confronting the silly, awkward little situation with varying
emotions. His rage at the fact that he couldn’t be natural for fear of
compromising her--that he had to protect her not from himself but from
his reputation, was natural enough. And Horatia raged because she did
not know that she dared urge him, and she wanted to.

“It’s absurd,” she cried impatiently. “It’s stupid. It’s beastly. You’ve
been abominably treated. Do you think I care what people say?”

His eyes seemed to melt at the championing kindness of her tone--then
froze again.

“The oppressed always appeal to the romantic. But you want to make sure
of the merits of the oppressed. Some other time, Miss Grant. I enjoyed
my walk.”

He was gone immediately and Horatia flung furniture and rugs into place
until her anger was cooled. Grace came in half an hour later to find
things in amazing order.

“You’ve done everything.”

“I wanted to work,” answered Horatia, briefly.

And then----

“Look here, do I have to have a chaperon every time I want a man to come
up here? Do you?”

Grace pulled off her gloves, sat down on the sofa and surveyed the room
and the question calmly. She was a calm person, who balanced an
unshocked acceptance of any laxity or scandal in the world of literature
against an equally uncomplaining acceptance of the restraints of the
world of action. And she seemed fond of Horatia, though Horatia had a
feeling of getting acquainted only up to a certain point.

“I suppose not,” Grace said slowly. “People may be a little vicious in
their talk if you’re not somewhat circumspect. I wouldn’t advise
sessions with married men--or ones with highly colored reputations----”

“What does it matter what people say?” urged Horatia.

“Oh, it doesn’t--and it does. I think it would to you. But the question
of having men here alone isn’t likely to arise. For the kind of men
you’d want wouldn’t come if they thought your reputation would be
endangered. There are a few survivals of romance, and the knightly
spirit, and one of the last to go, if it ever goes, will be the care
that men take of women’s names. It’s my experience that names rank more
highly than bodies in male psychology.”

There was no sign of any remembrance of the episode in Langley’s manner
the next day and Horatia found no difference in his attitude towards
her. She never saw him outside the office. The curtains were hung in the
little apartment. Grace sat up an informal tea-table at which Horatia
assisted. Even Maud came occasionally with some of her friends to savor
this bachelor life, and they pretended to envy for half an hour. It was
a very pleasant apartment and Horatia found that being an intellectual
in the city was far different from being an intellectual in the confines
of West Park or a highbrow at the University. Not all men were afraid
of brains. Charley Jones came and brought young men with him, several
friends of Harvey’s came and there were others justifying themselves by
this claim or that to a seat near that tea-table where Grace Walsh,
looking like a Dutch picture, poured out tea and calm cynical judgments
and Horatia, in a yellow silk dress on Sundays and blue serge on
weekdays, pressed lemon, cream, tea cakes and joy of living on them.

It was wonderful to see how the excitement of the new life brought a
richer color into Horatia’s cheeks and a glow into her eyes which made
every gown the most becoming one. It was amazing to see how her power
over men grew. She seemed to toss a mental challenge to every man she
met, a challenge not to a combat of words or phrases but to a struggle
over the interesting and vital things in the world. She was enjoying
herself so much that she tempted them all to discover her secret of
enjoyment.

But she allowed nothing to interfere with her work and more and more of
her time was spent at the office as the fall days grew shorter and the
lake more steadily grey and the work heavier. The November election
promised to be a most important one in the history of the city. _The
Journal’s_ candidate, Nels Johnson, came and went in the office. He was
a heavy little man with a kind shrewd face and a tolerant smile. Horatia
liked him and she liked to hear him talk and give opinions for
publication. Langley liked him too, she knew. She could hear them often
through the door of his office discussing things which had nothing to do
with the election.

“The Reds are rotten, physically and morally, and they run on a single
track mentally, most of them,” Langley would say, “but I’ll be damned if
they aren’t much more attractive than the slinking crowd that want to
put out all the pipes in the country. I’d sooner have an old-style
Tammany man than one of these ministerial sneaks.”

And Bob Brotherton, his nose a little red still and his utterance a
trifle thick from indulgence in some private store of liquor to which he
seemed to have eternal access, would agree. And the candidate for office
would agree. And Charley Jones, with some comment on the attempt of the
churches to dominate labor, would agree. And Horatia, vigorously nodding
at her typewriter, would agree too that she wanted the world run by
freedom and not by imprisonments.

But perhaps the nicest moments and hours for Horatia were the evenings
in the office when they all worked late and tobacco and accomplishment
were thick in the air. Sometimes the reporters would all be out on some
errands and Langley would talk to her--always impersonally, never
emotionally, but expansively, going back into the history of the city to
explain some political anomaly to her and telling her, in spite of
himself, about his ideas and plans. She came to respect him more and
more and to believe in the fineness of his instincts. But still she
never heard him say a word of his personal affairs. She wondered how and
where he lived. Somewhere on the other side of the city, she knew, and
that was all. He never told her about the old scandal and she never
could find out more about it. At a certain point in his career Langley
had simply shut his mouth and there was no one else who knew more than
Harvey Williams.

Horatia gloried in the growing prestige of _The Journal_. Even Harvey
bought it now and Maud’s early opposition had changed into a feeling
that Horatia with all her eccentricity was bringing distinction upon
them. She never said that to Horatia. But she talked of her
“intellectual sister” without embarrassment now on the Boulevard.




CHAPTER V


Maud had her own plans for Horatia. She herself was finding life very
pleasantly successful and she followed her leaders carefully, trusting
no habits of life which they did not trust and indeed regarding all
other types of living as either impossible to attain or impossible to
endure. She was developing the best possible setting for herself and her
family. Her house broke none of the rules laid down in “House and
Garden,” with its striped cretonnes and plain linens and comfortable
furniture. It was not too ostentatious because the young people around
her were not ostentatious, but it was a beginning. And she saw her
future before her with delightful clearness through a succession of
increasingly expensive automobiles, through a succession of increasingly
elaborate gowns up to the day when she would own a great brick house in
the city and a winter home in California. She did not take great credit
to herself for this ambition. It was due to her own astuteness and
Harvey’s cleverness.

So she gave dinner parties to people whom she knew and liked and other
dinner parties to people who were useful to her husband, and enjoyed her
progress along the reasonable way of luxury and importance. The things
Horatia talked about, odd things picked up in her newspaper office, of a
new spirit in the world, of the relentless advance of the hordes of
workers, bothered her not at all. She knew that servants were
increasingly hard to get and to keep “in their place” and that there
were “labor troubles” in some of the manufactories managed by people
whom she knew and that “everybody was striking.” But she knew too that
Harvey placed the responsibility on the war for much of the trouble, and
she had no doubt that, the war being over, those little matters would
adjust and allow the right people to run things as they should be run.
Horatia talked a great deal but Maud had no doubts about her sister’s
ultimate destiny. Somewhere along the line, and not too far along, she
meant to marry Horatia to some desirable man. She had discovered that
Horatia was an asset at a dinner party just as she was a blight at a
bridge. She was one person when she was making inexcusable and enraging
blunders at a bridge-table and another when she appeared at a tea, able
and willing to talk of the newest local interest or problem to important
and serious-minded ladies or when, in some queer effective dinner-dress,
she sat with her bright, grave face turned in constant interest to the
man beside her.

“Horatia plays up to men awfully well,” Maud told her husband. And was
wholly wrong. Horatia was too interested to play up to anyone, man or
woman. She had come from her University into a world vastly more
stimulating than she had imagined. It was, as Langley had told her, a
world tired and worn by war, a world in vast upheaval over the division
of material things, but through the weariness and worn places relentless
new life, undiscouraged energies were already pushing their way. Since
the war young people had come to feel their power and their
indispensability; young plans for life and ways of life, less greedy
than the old ones, pushed themselves forward, sure that they could not
fail as deplorably as the old systems had done. Women were no longer
tremulous about their possibilities; an under-supply of men had forced
them out of their dependencies and they faced life more sturdily. Men,
shocked into the realization that death comes devastatingly to whole
generations of the young, faced life more sturdily too, though
temporarily with less responsibility, with more desire for immediate
pleasures, for immediate achievements, and with an undertone of mental
insecurity. The whole world seemed to feel unstable and ready for
experiments, any experiments. That was the world which Horatia had found
and it mated badly with Maud’s. Maud’s world, Maud’s friends, lived by
the rules laid down by old-fashioned success and decency. They held to
the old order but not to the spirit of the old order. The spirit of the
old order had been far-reaching, far-seeking, anxious to perpetuate its
own ideas and to raise generation after generation like itself. But Maud
and Harvey had no thought of grandchildren or of the future of their
own ideas. Their ideas reached not much farther than the brick mansion
and the house in California.

Through their circles and through her own Horatia came and went and
everywhere she touched life and tingled with the contact, unconscious
that it was she herself who was electric. Langley watched her as she
dashed in and out of his office and tried not to do so and on his
failure cursed himself under his breath for a doddering fool and worked
harder than ever.

He sent Horatia home at five o’clock on the afternoon of the election,
for they had put out a special edition the day before and he noticed the
unnatural flush of her cheeks.

“Come back tonight if you like,” he said. “You can answer the telephones
after the returns begin to come in. But there’ll be nothing before ten.”

Horatia went obediently. At the apartment she found an urgent message
from Maud. Someone had failed her and would Horatia come to dinner?
Horatia called her to beg off and yielded. Maud was very serious about
her dinner parties and this one, it appeared, was especially important.

“You can go at ten, if you have to. But don’t leave me with an
unbalanced table. There’d be two men sitting next each other. Please.”

Horatia promised and hung up the receiver, smiling a little at the
enormity of two men sitting next each other. But after all it gave her
something to do and she was not sorry.

Harvey greeted her admiringly in the living-room.

“How are politics?”

“I’d give a lot to know.”

“Well,” he admitted, “your candidate really does stand a show. It’s
amazing the way he has come on, without more backing. The chances are
that he’ll run second or third.”

“I think he’ll be first,” said Horatia, and was going on when Maud came
in, resplendent in black satin and with her blond hair drawn back from
her forehead in perfect waves. She looked Horatia over critically.
Horatia’s dress was the color of burnt orange and obviously she had done
her hair herself and quickly. But even Maud could not cavil.

“I’ve given you young Wentworth,” she said, with the air of one who
confers great benefits, “and don’t talk his arm off about politics. He’s
rather sporty--was an aviator--is awfully rich, they’re the grain
exporters, you know. And do be nice to him, won’t you?”

“It’s easier to be nice to the poor than the sporty rich. But I’ll try.”

She found it surprisingly easy to be nice after all. Anthony Wentworth
had the charm of a young man and the finesse of an older one. He talked
on all sorts of subjects--about soldiers and soldiering, not from the
point of view Horatia heard most often in _The Journal_ office, the
economic standpoint, but from the romantic one. And Horatia, who had
given up the hope that there was anything romantic in war, listened to
him as he talked of chances and perils and adventures, never for a
minute in self-exploitation but for sheer joy in having found a listener
who knew what he was trying to say.

“But you got out of it,” she protested. “Why didn’t you keep on flying?”

He smiled a little apologetically.

“I don’t enjoy flying for mere sport--or commercially. There’s no
pleasure in it as there can be in driving a car or riding a horse. But
to run the risks and take the chances and know there’s a reason why you
should is different.”

He relapsed into an attack on his salad and Horatia broke up a cracker
and thought of the difference between his ideas of war and the war as it
was seen by ex-soldiers who drifted into _The Journal_ office with
gossip and complaints. But she did not pursue the idea, for when the
salad was finished Anthony Wentworth had more to say to her, so much
that she forgot about the election and thought of how wonderful it would
be to travel through all the queer countries of the world with a man who
could ride and shoot and drive an airplane and whose hair grew back from
his forehead naturally. Maud, from the head of the table, looked at them
and even found time to dream a very hasty dream in which she figured
largely as the sister-in-law of Mr. Anthony Wentworth.

But in the living-room Horatia remembered and to her horror it was
half-past ten. Signalling to Maud, she started to leave the room and was
annoyed to find Wentworth following her.

“It’s very early, Miss Grant.”

“I know, but I am just going to work. I work in _The Journal_ office and
it’s election night and I meant to get back by ten o’clock. Now it will
be eleven.”

He did not show the slightest perturbation at the announcement of her
work, but pulled out his watch.

“Not if you let me take you down in my car. Can’t I, please?”

“I’d love it.”

They seemed to fly along the streets and she loved the sureness of his
driving. Huddled beside him in her cloak, with the wind in her face,
that too was an adventure. The city streets were more crowded than usual
and knots of men stood together on the corner, arguing and discussing.
At _The Journal_ office, Horatia noted with satisfaction that there was
a crowd around the hall, a large enough crowd to prove the importance of
_The Journal_ politically, she thought. She and Anthony Wentworth pushed
through it up to the door of the office and Wentworth followed her in.
The tobacco smoke was thick in the room. It was crowded and unfamiliar,
with a man sitting at her desk with his feet on her table and Langley
laughing rather uproariously at something. As she came in the
conversation halted abruptly. Some of the men knew her but to most of
them the slim beautiful girl in evening clothes and the tall, immaculate
man beside her seemed a curious apparition. There was an awkward moment.
Horatia seemed chiefly conscious of Jim Langley’s eyes suddenly eager,
suddenly hostile, suddenly cynical again. It was her companion who broke
the silence as he greeted Langley cordially.

“Why, I didn’t know what I was getting into, Langley,” he said. “Is it
your paper Miss Grant works on? I brought her down because she was in
such a hurry to get here----”

To Horatia her hurry now seemed absurd. What had she hurried for? They
didn’t need her. She was simply out of place.

“You told me I could answer the telephones.”

She tried to make a joke of it but Langley did not help her.

“Miss Grant is over-conscientious,” he said, half to Wentworth, and then
wholly to her, “I am sorry you hurried away from your party.”

“It wasn’t a party,” said Horatia. “I was at my sister’s house for
dinner. And please put me to work at something. I know I look silly but
I’ll keep my coat on.”

Her self-consciousness had gone and the situation was easy and real
again. But the two men who were talking to her looked at each other for
the space of a second measuringly. Then with a few casual inquiries as
to the progress of the election Wentworth went out.

“You can take the ’phone in my room,” said Langley. “Tell people who
call that returns are only beginning to come in but that Johnson runs
second on a count of nine precincts. Emphasize Johnson. I’ll get the
news on the other wire and pass it on to you.”

She nodded understandingly and holding her cloak over her shoulders
passed through the crowded room with her perfectly friendly disarming
smile. It was significant that no one said anything about her or even
exchanged a glance or smile after she had passed. Langley, looking on
the alert to check any such demonstration, seemed satisfied.

The smoke thickened and the telephone was incessant. Horatia answered
innumerable inquiries--of men who gave their names as if it gave them a
first right to information--of women who seemed to try to make their
anxious voices anonymous. It was amazing how many people cared. And
didn’t care! She remembered the nonchalance of the people at Maud’s
dinner party--the perfect courtesy of the young ex-aviator towards the
triviality of the local election. What did he know or care about the
future of _The Journal_ or Jim Langley? What did she know--why did she
care? She mechanically kept on, answering questions--listening to the
voices of the men in the other room, now excited, now indifferent, now
voicing an analysis of this or that chance. The smoke was even thicker.
It hung like a cloud over the desks and tables--it created an atmosphere
of masculinity. Women can not smoke in such a way. It seemed as if the
smoke were a cloud of hopes and chances and ideals in which these men
were floating.

Things went well--then badly. Horatia’s philosophy melted away. Nothing
mattered except success, Johnson’s success. She felt a strange
exhilaration at the fact that they didn’t know--couldn’t know yet--and
that there might be whole precincts which would go exclusively for
Johnson. The men at the tables labelling the 39th as Catholic--“nothing
there”--“maybe 40 in the 27th,” irritated her. Why did they frighten
themselves with all these calculations?

She looked up at Langley, who had come in with a report.

“He’s got to win--he’s gone so far. Things couldn’t be so contrary as to
let him lose now.”

Suddenly he smiled at her.

“Incurable romanticist,” he said, and went out again.

At twelve o’clock things were in utter confusion--at one o’clock it was
clear as daylight. If Johnson had not won he had so nearly done so that
only a trick of luck would defeat him. His chances were good.

At half past one he looked secure and the office was slowly emptying.
The telephone calls had nearly ceased. The last of the politicians
departed, hoping to get a bit of stray news at the city hall and
promising to telephone it as soon as possible. Horatia still sat at
Langley’s desk--her head on her hand--her cloak thrown back--dreaming
of what this might mean and mixing her dreams with a hundred
irrelevancies.

“Well,” said Langley, “we’ve won, I think.” His voice was very quiet and
yet there was a new sureness in it.

Horatia got up a little wearily, dragging her cloak.

“I have never been so glad of anything,” she answered.

He came behind her to lift the wrap and put it about her shoulders.

“I must take you home.”

It was very quiet. All the excitement seemed to have given way to
stupor. In the hazy office they spoke slowly and Horatia felt vaguely
unreal.

“Aren’t you glad?” she pressed for an answer.

“Very.” He spoke tenderly, as if to reassure a child, folding the wrap
lingeringly over her shoulders.

“And you’ll be happier now?”

“Happier--romanticist--what’s happiness?”

“It’s everything,” said Horatia.

She looked up at him and the dark circles under her eyes and the pallor
of her cheeks made her suddenly pathetic. A tremendous tenderness woke
in Langley’s face. Tenderness and pain. The cynicism which had guarded
his emotions seemed to slip away.

“I’m happy just to be near you--near you.”

He drew her gently back against him and bent towards her lips. They met
his--so sweetly, so softly, with the innocence of their touch matching
the wonder in her eyes. Wonder that love had dawned on her life.

He did not speak--only held her. It was she who broke the silence.

“All the wonderful things in the world are coming true.”

But at that he released her, lifting her face in his hands.

“You’ve brought me back to life. You’ve made me come back when I was
afraid to come--and when I hated to come. You’ve made me want to try all
over. And there’s not a thing in the world I can do for you--nothing to
offer you--nothing.”

She felt suddenly grown-up and maternal.

“Isn’t it enough to--love me?” she asked, hesitating a little.

“My love!” He scorned it.

“It’s a strong, beautiful love.”

He turned away drearily.

“You romance--you can’t help romancing. No, it’s not beautiful; it’s
strong, God knows, but not beautiful. Don’t you see, Horatia--don’t you
see I’m a spent sort of person. I can’t take your youth and loveliness.
I haven’t a right. You belong to someone young and fine like yourself.”

“I belong where I love.” Horatia was impatient of argument. She was a
woman in love and a hundred instincts pulled at her heart.

Langley paled at the words. Then again he held her close to
him--despairingly close.

“Anything in the world I have,” he breathed. “And now I must take you
home.”

They went out into the quiet street and went along swiftly, Horatia too
happy for silence or leisurely walking.

“There are more stars and the wind is a wind of joy,” she exulted.

Langley said nothing but at her door he kissed her again--gently and
sweetly.

“Good-night, my love, good-night. You must sleep well. And I’ll never,
never hurt you or let you hurt yourself.”

“Can’t you stop worrying?” begged Horatia. “Can’t you just love? I don’t
even think.”

“I’ll try.”

When she looked at her face in her mirror the exaltation of it startled
her.

“Love makes you beautiful,” she thought and slipped into her bed to lie
ecstatically still, thinking of nothing except the touch of lean brown
hands and the smell and touch of his rough coat. And her mind sang hymns
to the wonder of love.

       *       *       *       *       *

She was for telling everyone at once but Langley demurred. Going to the
office next morning she lingered to enjoy her own anticipations. It was
different now. All restraints were over between them, she thought.

He was not there. That was the first disappointment. Later, when he
came in, there were other men with him and his greeting was as formal as
it had been the day before. She bent over her work, went out on
assignments with her mind repeating and repeating every quiver of
incident of the night before. At five o’clock she was alone again and he
came in. But instead of going to the inner office he came to her desk
and as she looked up she saw that his face was suffering, greatly
stirred.

“Horatia,” he asked, “did you mean it--do you mean it now--in daylight?”

She lifted her arms towards him and was swept off her feet.

“My God,” she heard him say, “I was so sure you couldn’t have meant it.
I can’t fight any longer.”

“Do you know that every footstep of yours about this office has sounded
in my heart?”

“My arms are so weary with waiting.”

“I never hoped--but once in a while I dreamed, although I had no
right--no right at all.”

He was a wonderful lover, so wonderful that he silenced her own
enthusiasms.

But again he grew fearful.

“You don’t see me as I am, Horatia. Now close your eyes. I can’t have
you looking at me, I might exaggerate. Listen. I am thirty-five. I have
no great enthusiasms--except you. I have no money to speak of, no
home--my faith in my feeble talents is shaken--my faith in the world
isn’t settled. I’m not even strong physically. There’s nothing,
Horatia.”

“There’s you.”

“There’s me, transfused and illuminated by your feeling for me, by your
wonderful romance, by the brightness of your own spirit. But if you
withdraw it----”

“Silly--it isn’t true, and if it were I shan’t withdraw it ever. Because
it’s love and can’t be withdrawn.”

“Love is perishable.”

“Not my love.” The splendid perennial dogmatism spoke again.

He was serious. Then, “I want a promise from you, Horatia. If the time
comes when you don’t see it with all this enthusiasm you’ll tell
me--won’t you--freely, knowing that already you’ve given me more than I
deserve--and that I won’t be hurt or angry--will you?”

At his insistence she promised.

“When can we be married?”

“Not too soon, Horatia--not till you know me, not as an editor but as a
man, a man who makes mistakes and is stupid.”

“I don’t care about that silly scandal.”

“Oh, I didn’t mean the scandal. I meant until you know more of the
little things about me--that I have a nasty, early-morning temper--that
I can be trivial over the kind of dinner I get.”

She put her hand over his mouth.

“Such things matter,” answered Langley sagely. “Well--you’ve promised
anyway.”




CHAPTER VI


The next day was Sunday. Horatia told Maud her news after dinner as they
sat on Maud’s comfortable veranda. She was neither surprised nor
disappointed at Maud’s reception of the news. There was just about as
big a storm as she had expected. Maud, having laid the worrying ghost of
Langley, was enraged at its reappearance.

“And Anthony Wentworth was so taken with you the other night,” she
wailed. “Don’t you ever want to get anywhere? You little fool----”

Horatia had quite forgotten about Anthony. For a moment she did wonder
vaguely what he would think. But she was too absorbed in herself to
wonder about such trivialities. Her whole being was full of an
exaltation which seemed to run stirringly through every vein. Her
ignorance of emotion made everything more amazing. There did not seem
much resemblance in what she was feeling to anything she had ever read
or talked about. Her love was so warm, so alive, so much hers----

“I really think you could have had Anthony Wentworth.” Maud harped
desperately on her own disappointment.

“I _wish_ you wouldn’t talk that way about a man I’ve met only once.
It’s indecent, Maud. It’s disgusting.”

“It’s indecent to engage yourself to a man who is twice as old as you
are--who’s been the talk of the city! At your age! It will ruin you!
It’s impossible! Talk to Harvey and you’ll see.”

Horatia permitted herself a smile.

“I knew when you went down there that something dreadful would happen,”
Maud went on. “I should think you’d see the fatality of mixing up with a
man like that.”

“Please, Maud, stop; there’s no sense in being so violent. It’s my
affair after all.”

“It’s a family affair. I didn’t marry a man who’d disgrace us all.”

Horatia turned from coaxing tolerance into sudden hauteur.

“Nor shall I.”

Maud was politic enough to abandon a hopeless cause. She laid a hand on
her sister’s unresponding shoulder.

“You get me all worked up. I don’t blame you really. You’re so young and
inexperienced. And he is fascinating. So people say. But he hasn’t a
thing to offer you.”

“Marriage to me isn’t a question of offerings.”

Maud looked skeptical.

“Marriage, my dear,” she said, “isn’t a matter of love in the moonlight
purely. And the question of bread and butter is pretty important.”

“I can earn my bread and butter.”

“Not after you’re married.”

“Just as I’m doing now. I wouldn’t think of not working. That’s been the
whole trouble with marriage,” went on Horatia, recalling some of her
early college theories. “It’s been an exploitation on both sides. It
ought to be a partnership.”

She wasted her breath. Maud, convinced that Horatia was merely talking,
returned to the main issue.

“I’m sure you’ll see, dear, if you’ll be reasonable, how utterly
impossible this is. He’s not young and----”

“For heaven’s sake, Maud, why attack all sides at once? Isn’t it bad
enough to destroy his character without also attacking him on the score
of age?”

“You haven’t made any plans for marriage, have you?”

“When we marry we’ll do it without planning. I’ll not hang around
waiting for guest towels.”

Maud cheered at this lack of definiteness.

“Well,” she said, “there’s no use in being hasty. Take your time and
think it over. But remember that marriage is a very serious thing.”

“And very expensive,” Horatia added satirically.

“Bring him up to call. I’d like to meet him and talk to him.”

“He never makes calls.”

“He used to.”

Horatia flushed a little again.

“Did he tell you about Mrs. Hubbell?” asked Maud with some eagerness.

“If you are going to be spiteful, Maud, I shall not come here any more
at all. I am not bothering about--Jim’s--past personal affairs nor the
fact that a lot of old gossips have nothing better to do than to pry
into them.”

“Well, I’d never marry a man without finding out a little something
about his past. And such a past! It’s all very well to be high and
mighty, Horatia, but when a man has been a co-respondent!”

But Horatia had put on her hat and gone down the steps. Maud ceased with
a gesture and looked after her sister thoughtfully.

Horatia went home to her apartment and threw herself down to fume in
rage. Grace Walsh laughed. Horatia, in ardent need of a confidante, had
told her about Jim that morning and Grace guessed where Horatia had
been.

“What did you expect? What you want to do is to make Langley a social
asset. Don’t growl so. I mean what I say. There’s no reason why he
shouldn’t be. Turn the tables on Mrs. Williams.”

Grace’s own attitude had not brought much satisfaction to Horatia. Her
modernism apparently involved cutting the roots of all sentiments. Love
and marriage were to her states which were productive of many
epigrams--interesting studies. She had a stock of opinions about such
things made of a blend of W. L. George, Havelock Ellis, W. G. Robinson
and the more skeptical modern specialists in sex literature. A rather
brilliant conversationalist when discussion hinged upon such things, in
the face of an emotional awakening like Horatia’s she had little to say.
But she had not been satirical. A little questioning, non-committal--her
attitude satisfied nothing in Horatia’s heart.

“Your sister,” she went on, “only approves of something quite
fashionable in matrimony and Jim Langley is a bit out of style.”

Horatia laughed and telephoned Jim, first at his rooms and failing
there, tried the office, where she located him. There was a delicious
sense of possession in conversation with him now.

“I want to go out in the country to shake off a lot of foolish talk.
Can’t you come?”

The very tone of his voice over the wire brought back the glow in her
heart but he told her that it must be later, that he was busy.

“Then I’ll come down too and work and we’ll pretend that the office is
the country.”

He welcomed that suggestion. She put on a different dress, her choicest
one, which she had meant to save for a very special occasion with
Langley. But then she meant today to be a special occasion. She meant to
ask him about this Hubbell affair. She should know about it so that she
could contradict false impressions, correct them. It was essential that
these silly wonderings in her own mind should be laid to rest too.

As she entered the office a woman sitting at Horatia’s own desk,
dangling a dry pen from lazy white-gloved fingers, looked up at her and
then questioningly at Langley opposite.

She was a delicately blonde person with a close-fitting black hat,
smartly trimmed with black paradise feathers and a French veil. The rest
of her was in harmony with the black and pale yellow of her head. She
looked--not faded--but cleverly artificial, as if created in the image
of some lovely picture. Her face was raised in delicate expectancy for
Langley’s move.

Horatia felt suddenly blundering. She was conscious of herself, awkward,
and before she had time to collect herself Langley introduced her.

“Miss Grant--one of my colleagues on _The Journal_--Mrs. Hubbell.”

Horatia had guessed the identity of the lady before he spoke. She
half-hesitated. But Mrs. Hubbell was in languorous command at once.

“I knew you must be working under stimulus, Jim,” she smiled.

Horatia felt affronted and bereft of repartee, but Langley inclined his
head gravely.

“I am.”

Mrs. Hubbell waived that point and continued.

“I’ve just come back to town and I’m so eager to meet people. I’ve quite
gotten out of touch. I have taken a little apartment in Hanover Street,
Miss Grant, and I hope you’ll come to see me there. I can promise you
tea, music and a place where gossiping women are absolutely not
admitted--and only those can come who are above gossip or else
tremendously gossiped about.” She smiled a little plaintively, thus
delicately dealing with her own situation.

Horatia rather liked it. Perhaps there was more in this Mrs. Hubbell
than she imagined. She was lovely to look at anyhow.

“And we must find a place to dance, Jim,” said Mrs. Hubbell, turning to
him again.

“But I’m working hard, Rose. I’ve not much time to be frivolous.”

How queer it was, thought Horatia, to hear him call another woman by her
first name. Of course last night was the first time he had called her
‘Horatia,’ but it had seemed---- She wasn’t quite sure what it had
seemed.

“Then you will come to see me, Miss Grant?”

Oddly insistent, thought Horatia.

“I would love to.”

“Do you always work on Sunday--both of you?”

Mrs. Hubbell’s questions came lightly but they were questions that had
to be answered.

“Miss Grant was going to take me for a walk.”

An astute glance flashed under the black hat from Horatia to Langley.

“Then why don’t you walk out my way now? Towards the South Shore and
stop for tea? It’s a lovely walk. I’ve just come back, of course, and my
apartment isn’t really comfortable yet, but I can usually brew a good
cup of tea, can’t I, Jim? And you deserve it after working over my
tiresome affairs this afternoon. I bounce in on him with my usual tangle
of papers that need signing and he shows me where the dotted lines are
and tells me whether I’m renewing my mortgages or signing a Bolshevik
constitution. Come, both of you, walk out with me. Won’t you?”

Horatia, finding decision left to her, tried to think quickly of a way
out. But Langley did not help her and she hesitated too long to do
anything but acquiesce.

They walked badly, for Mrs. Hubbell was hampered by her conversation and
the tightness of her skirts and seemed continually to be appealing to
Langley for petty gallantries. Horatia, who liked to walk swiftly and
silently, found herself again unhappily awkward, moving badly and
getting ahead of the others. It annoyed her that Langley had not told
Mrs. Hubbell that they were more to each other than office companions,
and yet she could not think what he should have said. They reached the
apartment with Horatia rather dreading the rest of the encounter.

But Mrs. Hubbell pushed open her door with an apologetic smile,
revealing a large living-room of most unusual charm. The ceiling was
very high and the walls held few pictures so that the two great soft
blue couches, armchairs and stools were comfortably spaced. A long
narrow table between the windows held two delicately shaded lamps and
many books. Horatia hadn’t connected Mrs. Hubbell with books and while
that lady went to remove her hat and “find tea,” Horatia stood by the
table examining the titles of the volumes. It was all very up-to-date
material, much of it feminist--sparkling novels, plays.

“She doesn’t read them,” said Langley lightly, watching Horatia. “She
has them here because she entertains the people who read or write them
sometimes. But she doesn’t know that she doesn’t read them. I imagine
she absorbs a deal through the covers.”

“I’m sorry she spoiled our walk,” said the man under his breath, “and
you’ll forgive me if I seemed odd. But I’d hate to have her the medium
through which to announce our--feeling.”

“I told Maud.”

“Your sister--was she horrified?”

She smiled at him humorously. “Quite.”

Their hostess came in. She had taken off her hat and the great coil of
flaxen hair was even more effective than Horatia had guessed. She looked
like a Saxon princess, thought Horatia--no, the lovely servant of a
princess, the one who is mistress of the king.

She had not been long in town but they were not her only callers. Three
men came in while they were there and one woman, a slim, well-dressed
unhappy looking woman called Mrs. Boyce, or Kathleen, who smoked
constantly and contributed cynicisms. She stared frankly at Horatia and
the men showed great interest in her too. Horatia sat on a straight oak
chair, her color a little heightened by the attention and implied
admiration and not displeased. She was conscious vaguely that Mrs.
Hubbell thought she was an asset. Well--asset or not, it was
interesting. Mrs. Hubbell listened to everyone and talked little
generalities, sometimes foolish, sometimes keen. It appeared that two of
the attendant men were married. No one asked after their wives but there
were references to engagements which must be kept. With an odd sort of
informality they did not seem to consider that Mrs. Hubbell was included
in some activities they mentioned. Nor did she seem to expect to be
included. But when they spoke of theaters and of dancing, she became an
immediate authority.

“I teach them to dance,” she said mockingly to Horatia, “these heavy
awkward men--and then they run off and forget me.”

“Did she teach you, Jim?”

“Absolutely.”

Langley had a half-mocking, half-indulgent attitude towards Mrs. Hubbell
that was new to Horatia. She had never seen him alternate his grave
courtesy to women with anything except his new attitude towards herself.

No one spoke of Mr. Hubbell or of trouble. This room, so much a source
of scandal to so many people, showed within itself only good feeling and
security. There was nothing awkward or forced in anyone’s tone or
manner. The conversation was of dancing, places to dance and to eat,
theaters, novelties in New York entertainments. And they talked of
things and people which were behind the times and of modern points of
view, reminding Horatia oddly of the talk which went on in her own
apartment with Grace, and yet this talk seemed to lack a solidity, and a
depth, which she felt in Grace’s conversations. However, in its way this
was commendable and on the right track. Horatia had an enormous respect
for people of new ideas and she contrasted the “let live” of this room
with the gossiping group on Maud’s porch--and believed she deeply
preferred this. And as they easily included her, she found herself
enjoying it immensely. It was Langley who suggested going. He had been
friendly but aloof a little, and only Mrs. Hubbell talked much to him.
She had a special little air of appropriation for him, as if she leaned
on him, mentally and spiritually, as she had leaned on his arm during
their walk. And he responded with a cynical gallantry which was too
trivial to be taken seriously and too deft to be insulting. Horatia
marvelled at this new glimpse of him. He was no longer the man who saw
clear issues in politics, who wrote angry philippics about the abuse of
men, women and governments. This tall, easy-mannered man bending over a
tea-table was entirely different. He seemed at ease in his pose and
Horatia had a vision of him as he must have been before he had given up
society so abruptly--how sought after, how fascinating he must have
been. There was a trace of the philanderer----

“Now,” said Horatia, emerging from the elevator and the repeated
requests of Mrs. Hubbell to be sure to come to see her often, “let’s
walk--and walk fast.”

“It’s a shame to have taken you there,” said Langley, “but I thought it
might be an experience and you like experience. She came to see me
unexpectedly--you came in, and I couldn’t just see a way to explain to
her that we would prefer to walk alone without giving her something to
get her claws into.”

“Claws--bad as that?”

“No--not really. She’s really quite harmless most of the time, but she
has times when she is dangerous.”

“She’s very good-looking.”

“Always good-looking--always amusing--and she’s had on the whole a raw
deal.”

“Jim,” Horatia spoke warmly out of the gathering darkness, “what is it
about you and Mrs. Hubbell? Who is she?”

He hesitated and for a moment Horatia thought with a little fear that he
was going to evade her question. But he began to speak quietly.

“Mrs. Hubbell, Horatia, is just a woman--not much more than that. She
didn’t live here until after her marriage, and I met her through her
husband, who was one of my best friends. He met her somewhere out West
and married her and he was one of the most tremendously--tremendously
in love persons that I ever saw. He was absolutely swayed by all that
daintiness and delicateness that you saw this afternoon.

“After they had been married about a year or so she began to see a good
deal of other men than Jack. I was there a good deal--so were lots of
others. It was a pleasant place to go and none of us realized that Jack
was jealous--except perhaps Rose--I don’t know. Anyway, he got hold of a
fool letter that I wrote”--he stopped and Horatia was ashamed of her
curiosity and passionately eager to gratify it further.

“The letter didn’t mean anything at all. But Jack came to ask me--to
accuse me of inconceivable outrages towards him. I denied them, of
course, but he was crazy--he wouldn’t believe me--and he sued Rose for a
divorce and named me. Of course for her sake I should have fought it
through and I think I could have cleared up Jack’s mind as well as the
situation, but three weeks later Jack killed himself. The thing that
gave the affair so much publicity was his suicide.

“It left his wife and me in a rotten unjustified situation. But for his
sake we decided to let the matter drop. There was nothing on our
consciences and she was very game. She said she didn’t care to clear her
skirts by dragging poor Jack’s feeling into publicity after he was dead.
And that he had paid the biggest price. Of course I had really, however
innocently, created the situation, so I felt more cut up than I can
ever tell you. So we let the matter drop and people thought what they
liked.”

Horatia was quiet. They walked along under the darkened trees for a long
way in silence.

“So you know what no one else knows,” said Jim. “It is a big
confidence.”

“Of course.”

“And I like to confide in you.”

She thanked him by a pressure of her hand his arm.

“You know, Jim,” she told him, “that whole thing needn’t have happened
so easily. Most of the trouble in the world comes from these women who
work men up so terribly and have nothing in the world to do except love
and marry.”

“There’s a lot to that job if it’s done right.”

“Not enough. I want love and--marriage, but----”

He held her closer to his side in the darkness and her voice caught for
a minute.

“Horatia, you are so heavenly sweet----”

Afterwards Horatia was to remember that evening and to try in vain to
recapture its charm and warmth. She felt it then as the beginning of
many wonderful evenings. Jim’s story had been saddening but reassuring.
It had stolen none of her romance. They were closer than before. They
went back to Horatia’s rooms and Grace Walsh, having helped to provide
supper, left them alone afterwards. Horatia told the usual callers, who
telephoned, that she would not be home and laughed joyously at her
casual lying.

She was altogether so joyous, so anticipatory, flying about the little
kitchen, setting a table in front of the fire, for the apartment boasted
a real fireplace, washing dishes, flinging gay comments about her, that
she radiated it to the others. Langley’s face relaxed and he laughed as
she had never seen him laugh. But after Grace had gone out a sudden
shyness fell upon them both. Then Horatia slipped down before the fire
on a hassock and Jim came to sit beside her.

“Tell me wise things,” she begged.

“It’s you who know wisdom.”

“I know how we shall live when we are married. I was thinking of it this
afternoon. I want a place without too much household machinery--awfully
few napkins and pillowcases. But such a happy sunny place--with lots of
light and color. And I want to make you so comfortable but it won’t take
all my time. I want to work too.”

“Working after you’re married is hard. I’m not sure----”

“It’s the only solution,” said Horatia firmly. “Otherwise you get soft.
I want to work. To come home at night feeling tired and glad to get
home--to meet you and not be bored with myself and my home.”

“I want to care for you, Horatia, as I have never cared for anything.”

“I don’t want care--I want love--love----”

A cloud came over Langley’s face--the faintest frowning cloud.

“Of course,” said Horatia somewhat irrelevantly, “even if I work, I
don’t mean I shan’t want children. I do want them.”

He caught her in a quick, stirred embrace.

“What do you know about children?” he mocked. And then, under his
breath--“Darling, darling, I want them too. But I shall be a poor
father--and husband.”

And then again they fell silent and in the glow of the fire every now
and again he pressed his lips to the hollow of her hand or held her hand
against his cheek. They were very happy.

       *       *       *       *       *

Mrs. Hubbell was quite forgotten. She was sitting in her living room
just then, before the spinet desk in the corner, reading and
methodically sorting letters and placing them in drawers and
pigeon-holes. There was one letter she hesitated over. Once she made a
gesture as if to tear it across. Then she reconsidered and placed it in
the desk again.




CHAPTER VII


The _Journal_ was making money. It was February and the hopes based on
the election had already been fulfilled. Circulation had increased and
with it had come modest advertisers. Two extra rooms across the hall,
one boldly labelled Circulation Department and one Advertising, were in
charge of efficient looking young men, and the original editorial rooms
were crowded by desks for two new reporters. Bob Brotherton talked
boastingly of soon doing their own printing, and though _The Journal_
was still an undersized little sheet, comparing queerly in size with the
other dailies, its editorials were more often quoted in other cities
than were those of other local papers.

Langley was trying his skill as a writer to its utmost in those
editorials. There were no serious political issues in the city and he
turned his comment with a great pleasure to national affairs and the
larger political and industrial situation. What he said, being actuated
by no partisanship, was really the product of deep thought and
experience and keen and true. Men began to read his comments and finding
good thinking and conclusive evidence kept on reading them. At first
they did it warily, expecting at any moment to be plunged into
Bolshevism, but though Langley refused to fear that current bogie he
recognized it in such a way that the potency and sting went out of it.
He began to reassure his public by the method of assuring them that
issues were not too terrible to be faced. There was a new note in his
writing which took him out of the rank of merely caviling radical and
put him with the constructionists.

Horatia thrilled at the new vigor in the paper. They regarded her as a
mascot in the office. With her luck had come, as Bob said, and the old
reporters and the new competed for chances to help her and to do things
for her. Unless Langley was with her, when they withdrew before her
absorption in him.

They had not announced an engagement, although the office force saw that
the chief was as devoted to Horatia as they were, and perhaps drew its
own conclusions. But Jim and Horatia gave them nothing definite to go
upon. That decision had been reached after Maud and Langley had met and
Maud with instinctive wisdom had pressed home to him Horatia’s youth and
inexperience and impetuosity.

“I’m sure that you might be very happy,” said Maud, trying to be
tactful. “But surely she can wait a little. Till she knows her own mind.
It’s for life.” Maud looked sweetly sentimental. “You tell her how
unwise it is to rush into such serious matters, Mr. Langley.”

Poor Langley saw through Maud perfectly, in spite of all her sweetness.
But he had to admit that Maud had a case. He smoked a perfunctory cigar
with Harvey and went home. Maud became much more sympathetic with
Horatia after that visit. Her own antagonism to Langley personally had
vanished or been metamorphosed into excitement at her daring in braving
such a very irregular, fine-looking and interesting person as Jim. She
had lost all animosity at the end of his call and Horatia, who had
consented to bring Langley there only after much begging from Maud, had
great fun in seeing her sister thaw and finally in watching Langley try
to avoid Maud’s persistent invitations. But she had even more amusement
when her sister heard that Mrs. Hubbell had reappeared in the city. She
broke the news to Horatia with a great air of imparting necessary
scandal and was completely filled with horror when Horatia confessed not
only to previous knowledge of Maud’s information but also to an
acquaintanceship with Mrs. Hubbell.

She offered to take Maud to call but Maud was at the point where she
could bear no more shocking.

“It’s dreadful and dangerous,” she told Horatia. “I’m sure I don’t know
what you’re getting into. What does the creature look like?”

Horatia told her with some enthusiasm. She had somehow come to see a
good deal of Rose Hubbell. It was not that she particularly wanted to
and Langley had once or twice rather gravely protested. But there was a
timeliness, a psychological correctness about Mrs. Hubbell’s invitations
that made them very hard to refuse. She destroyed your alibis, too,
before she asked you to do something. And then it was good fun for
Horatia and really did provide varied amusement for her. Mrs. Hubbell’s
settled occupation was having a good time and being modern. Like so many
other women she had preëmpted the right to call her kind of living
perfectly modern. Grace did the same thing--Horatia did the same thing.
And each of them was using the phrase modernism to express satisfaction
with the plan of her own existence. Mrs. Hubbell so justified her
deviations from the paths orderly people travel, Grace for the same
reason as well as to excuse her fashion of intellectualizing all
enthusiasms and apparently all emotions out of her life, and Horatia to
define the spirit of adventure and desire to explore the depths of life
which animated her. Each of them had a different mold which she called
modernism and each of them poured her actions into her own mold,
delighted to see that they hardened into the shape of the vessel.

Horatia was less conscious than the other two. She was trying their
ways, learning their precepts of life and ways of living. She liked
things about each of them--Grace’s absorption in her work and Mrs.
Hubbell’s more decorative social skill. Mrs. Hubbell knew how to
arrange, start off and keep up a dinner party, and she danced with
amazing grace and beauty. Horatia danced too, of course, vigorously,
healthily, accurately--but the dancing of Rose Hubbell was a gift. “She
is not a partner but an inspiration,” said one of the enthusiasts, and
Horatia agreed. She guided a bad partner and brought out the best in a
mediocre one, but with Jim Langley she moved as if they were strung to
one rhythm. There were many opportunities for Horatia to see them
together. Mrs. Hubbell arranged parties at country inns and hotels, at
all kinds of public places which Horatia had never dreamed of attending,
and which she had always regarded as somewhat dubious. But she found
them, on the surface at least, innocuous enough places where people
spent an enormous amount for eating and drinking, and committed many
sins of gluttony and bad taste, but no other serious ones. They danced
unpleasantly sometimes and they might be noisy, but on the whole they
were passable people, as full of the lesser virtues as were Maud’s
friends. They had a fascination about them, too. They were an unanchored
lot, with no regularity even in their social intercourse. Extremely
well-dressed, often beautiful, the women gave no impression of having
antecedents or backgrounds. They emerged from obscurity into the
dazzling glare of a hotel ballroom. They were seemingly respectable,
extravagant, careless, picking at the surface of life and to some extent
they typified a phase of the era--its brilliant, shop-window phase.

Maud’s friends were residents and taxpayers. They had a proper scorn of
the transient and held aloof. Yet, to a certain extent, they dovetailed
with the other group. The men of Maud’s group were to be seen in hotels
as well as at private dinner parties, mostly without their wives in the
hotels, if they were married. And once Horatia saw Anthony Wentworth at
the Orient.

He was with a party of men and girls at the next table. The party had
come in late and Horatia had not seen Anthony until she was conscious of
his bow. Then she remembered who he was and as she smiled at him she had
a feeling of meeting someone of her own kind;--a sudden thought and one
she indignantly refused to harbor, as, blaming him as if he had
suggested it, she turned from her smile to him to plunge into
conversation with a thin little man who was at her right--a thin,
awkward, rich little man.

The little man danced badly. It irritated Horatia to feel ashamed of him
in front of Wentworth, but she hoped that Anthony knew enough about
dancing to realize that it was not her fault that she looked absurd. Why
did the little man jump about so? She pressed her hand on his shoulder
to steady him and then jumped away in disgust as she felt her hand
squeezed in misunderstanding. They bumped into another couple and
stopped. It was Anthony. He smiled and stopped too.

The girl with whom he was dancing was of Horatia’s kind too.

“So you do play sometimes, Miss Grant?” asked Wentworth.

“Of course.”

His partner put her hand on Anthony’s arm, acknowledging a hurried
introduction to Horatia.

“Weird place, isn’t it?” she said. “Here, Anthony, we’re holding up
traffic. We’d all better be moving.”

He put a deft arm about the girl’s shoulders, glancing back at Horatia.

“May I have the next fox-trot?”

Horatia nodded and steered her little man away in a series of
contortions to that oasis of safety--their table.

“Tired--already?” he inquired fatuously.

She sat surveying the members of her group as they came back to the
table and was struck by the fact that the women looked very stupid. And
the men. The men were “out for a good time,” and that meant an
individual reason in each case.

Langley was drawing out Rose Hubbell’s chair. She was wearing a black
dinner-dress that fitted her suppleness like a glove and her long black
earrings set off that perfect paleness and blondness. Horatia felt that
she was the redeeming feature of the party. But she didn’t like Jim’s
closeness to Rose. She didn’t like the way he was arranging the scarf
about her shoulders. She reminded herself that Jim had begged her not to
come tonight but to spend the evening alone with him and that she
herself had insisted that they had no right to spoil Mrs. Hubbell’s
party after they half agreed to come. Perhaps, after all, this had
allured her--this glare and noise and excitement.

“You’re so solemn, Horatia dear.”

Mrs. Hubbell had slipped into the use of her Christian name, a slip that
once made it was impossible to correct.

“Am I?”

“You looked like a fifteenth century saint--a Renaissance saint frowning
on worldliness, but secretly indulging in it.”

Jim’s glance was on Horatia too. She turned the conversation a little
impatiently and Anthony Wentworth came to claim his dance and be
extravagantly greeted by those at the table who knew him, except
Langley.

They swept into the dance and silences. It was not until the encore that
they spoke. He danced simply and easily and Horatia followed him well,
although it was her first dance with him.

“So this is what you do for amusement.”

“Sometimes,” she answered, “and sometimes it really is amusing. Not
tonight. Tonight the enchantment has vanished. I see only an overlighted
room with horrible garish decorations and a lot of noisy women, too many
of whom are fat.”

He chuckled.

“I did want to see you again. And I did my best to work it. But short of
making myself a public nuisance I couldn’t get a glimpse.”

“I didn’t know you were staying in the city.”

“I’m spending the winter with my sister. The family is gone--by family,
I mean mother and father--gone South--and I live partly at home in the
empty house and partly at my sister’s, playing with her children.”

The music stopped definitely, deaf to the entreaties of clapping hands.

“Can I take you for a ride one of these days? I suggest that because you
said you’d like it.”

“I can’t tell when I can get off.”

“Let me telephone and re-telephone--this proves that you get off
sometimes.”

She liked his half-laughing persistence.

“I’d like to ride with you in that car of yours,” she told him.

He smiled down at her in healthy young friendliness and suddenly the
people to whom she was returning seemed very unreal and pretentious. He
did not ask any of the others for dances but went back to his table.

“You made a very handsome couple,” said Rose Hubbell, sweetly. “Didn’t
they, Jim?”

Langley looked tired. He said merely that it was Horatia’s dance with
him. As before, they danced without a word.

“You were a handsome couple,” he said at last.

“Please don’t be silly, Jim.”

“I’m such an old man and such an ass, my dear. He is a nice boy and you
must play with him a lot.”

“I’d sooner work with you.”

“Let’s not go back to the table. Let’s collect our coats and get out.”

He waltzed her to the door and they went home. Such petty informalities
“went” with the Hubbell crowd. It was considered bad form in that
_milieu_ to be too conventional. Modern people went and came as they
pleased. That was the idea. But Horatia had a vague feeling that, none
the less, Mrs. Hubbell might not approve of their going.

       *       *       *       *       *

Wentworth was as good as his word.

“He is parked below,” said Jim whimsically, two days later. “Better go
and get your ride or he’ll sit there and freeze to death.”

He closed the office door.

“But you might let me kiss you before you go out to be admired by
dashing young men,” he finished.

“I’d lots sooner stay and be kissed,” complained Horatia.

“You won’t, after you feel the wind in your face.”

He was right. Horatia had not done much motoring and the knowledge she
had of it was largely confined to being “picked up” and taken from one
place to another. Maud had an electric and Rose Hubbell travelled in a
hired sedan, and she had been with them often. But this was different.
In this low, open car she was unprotected except for a single fur rug
over her knees. Anthony drove along easily until they struck the city
limits and then was off in a burst of speed, cut-out throbbing. The
state highways were almost clear of snow and they sped along through the
barren country with its skeletons of trees sticking up through the snow
and the little villages closed tight for the winter. Already evening
lights showed in their windows.

“They’re like Christmas postcards,” exclaimed Horatia.

“They look funny from the top when you are flying over them. You don’t
want to go back, do you?”

“Never less. I want to plunge into the country farther and farther.”

“Maybe we can find a road that is fair driving. There is one near here
which leads to a summer place of mine. And if we cut through from there
to the high-road, there’s a hotel where we can get supper. If you aren’t
afraid of country driving in the winter, let’s try it.”

“Of course, I’m not afraid. Plunge.”

They were soon on a road which twisted among tall pine trees, gravely
holding great burdens of snow. They lost all sound except the chug of
the motor--all sense of distance as the car broke its way and left deep
furrows of snow along the road. It slipped, skidded, growled
forward--striking the ground unevenly and lurching about. Then it
chugged a slow disapproval and stopped. Anthony put it unto first gear
and started his motor. Again it chugged, slipped, stopped; he turned to
Horatia and laughed.

“I’ll get out and see what this hole is like.”

She clambered out, too, and watched him inspect the hollows into which
the car had run. Then he climbed in again and started with all his power
on. The back wheels spun around without traction. They could not grip
the smooth snow and each movement plowed their trap deeper. He shut off
the power again.

“You can’t get out,” said Horatia interestedly.

“Oh, yes, I can.”

Anthony stripped off his coat and went off into the woods. He came back
with a great bundle of fir boughs that he strewed under the wheels,
making a pathway forward and backward. Then from somewhere in the car he
produced a shovel and dug the snow away from the wheels.

“Let me help,” begged Horatia.

“Climb into the car and keep warm.”

“I will not be a parasite.”

“Then push those branches under the wheels while I dig.”

They worked together quietly for a while. Again he started and again the
wheels were impotent.

“At it again,” cried Anthony.

He was exhilarated by the problem of getting out and this time he
succeeded. The car, roaring with power, pulled itself over the branches
and out of the hollow. Then, with all their power on, they shot ahead
and drove down the dusky road. It was growing quite dark.

“This is our cottage. Think I’ll stop and give the car a drink.”

They climbed out and over a drifted path into the veranda.

“Jolly place in summer,” said Wentworth, finding the right key on his
ring and pushing the door open. “You can get a little warmer in here if
you’re cold.”

There were electric lights and he switched them on quickly. The bright
chintzes of the living-room looked warm and Horatia’s sense of
well-being increased. What a nice place and how pleasant to be rich! He
made her sit down and put her feet for fear of chill on a cushioned
hassock. Then he brought her a glass of water.

“With apologies. Next time we’ll have food and a real party. If I’d
thought we would have had one tonight.”

“Is this your cottage?”

“Father gave it to me when I was twenty-one. We had lots of house
parties here while I was in college and he liked it. I suppose he
thought it kept us straight--a place like this. My sister uses it now
every summer. It’s a great place for kids. And now to fill the radiator
and be off again to civilization.”

Civilization was a small table in a hotel dining-room and a hot supper,
ordered for her by Anthony without a question. Horatia was very hungry,
hungry as she seldom was, healthy though she was. And it was a pleasant
hotel, like everything else in this excursion. A hotel with no music and
no place for dancing--with oldish waitresses instead of waiters in
dinner-coats, and with red wall-paper and gas-lights--and somewhere an
inimitable chef--no, a woman cook, who put onions frankly in her soup
and let the pudding confess to a cornstarch origin and made biscuits
that were light as air. They talked about many things over the soup. It
warmed them into immense friendliness. Horatia told how she had always
loved weather--loved all kinds of it, rains and storms and winds, how it
excited her; and how she loved all things that stimulated her energies
and made her work--and how she loved her work for the same reasons;
because on a newspaper one day was up and the next down so that you were
always on the alert; and how you lived in touch with the raw material of
events before they’d been softened or hardened or molded by public
opinion. He listened and nodded and the friendly old waitress had to
push a platter of fried chicken before them to hush them.

Then somehow they were talking of what they had done when they were
children, and little tales of West Park popped up in Horatia’s mind,
tales which she had almost forgotten--of the time when Uncle George had
fled before Aunt Caroline’s dictum that he should spank Maud and Horatia
for dancing on a broken spring on the leather sofa in the living-room.
It was all irrelevant and friendly. Anthony had his own tales. He had
been a nice little boy, Horatia decided, a little boy fond of dogs and
swimming. She liked his saying that the old veterinary surgeon had been
his best friend when he was a boy. He told her about his mother and his
sister and the brother who had looked like his father and who had died
at sixteen, which saddened them momentarily. Then over the bones of the
fried chicken they talked of futures--hers and his. Of the places on the
earth which they would like to see. He had much more background than
Horatia, having been to Germany and England before the war, and he had
seen England and France again while he was flying abroad. The Europe of
before the war was what he liked to talk about.

“For during the war it wasn’t real. It was like a house with all the
rugs up and chairs out, and arranged to accommodate a lot of
strangers--that is, the cities were like that. And the country where
they were fighting was no longer France or Belgium or Germany any more
than the slaughter-houses of Chicago are Chicago. I want to give it time
to get back and then see it again.”

Not only Europe. He wanted to see South America, China, and to get
acquainted with the East.

“What is the use of living if you live in a little suburb all your
life?”

“But aren’t you going to do any work?” asked Horatia.

“Yes--later I mean to go into business with father. I shall like
exporting. It makes me proud of my own country and keeps me in touch
with the others. But I need background. Then, when I ship my wheat, I’ll
know where I am shipping it.”

She regarded him gravely.

“There’s no loafer in you,” she admitted.

“No--I hope not. I want to work and to live in America, of course. First
of all that. I’ve small patience with these globe-trotters. And I want
an American wife and to help stabilize the country. All this discontent
is the result of trying to bring in a vicious element which we don’t
know how to handle because we’re ignorant of the nations from which
these people come.”

“Don’t you think we treat them badly?”

“We treat them altogether too well. We overpay them--we excite them--we
give them standards of living which make them discontented.”

“I think you need to see some of the budgets of laborers’ expenditures,”
said Horatia; “they don’t show any great extravagances. They must have
food and clothes and----”

He broke in impatiently.

“That’s beside the point. A working man and his family don’t starve or
freeze unless there’s something wrong with them. What we ought to do is
to pay wages which represent what a man earns, and not what he demands.
Otherwise it’s pauperization. We will have to stop all this catering to
labor. We ought to stop being afraid of it, and then it would come down
to earth.”

“Suppose labor quits.”

“It won’t, and if it did, what about it? Face it down. Why should
employers all be cowards? Why are they temporizing, giving way inch by
inch? Mind, I wouldn’t care if----”

Horatia was fascinated. Strength of aristocracy shot from his eyes. He
was amazingly handsome and if his point of view was wrong, it was at
least vigorous, thought Horatia. Mistaken, anti-social, probably--but
she couldn’t think of a way to convince him. She didn’t want to seem
theoretic and sentimental----

But he had calmed down. He was laughing.

“I don’t see why I should spoil our evening with all this stuff. But I
feel that the world’s on an awfully wrong track. All this dominance by
strikes. It’s highwayman stuff. It’s bullying. I know these social work
fellows and they are a white-livered lot. And the men they try to deal
with respect and understand only one thing--strength.”

“But labor doesn’t work through social workers. It’s a force by itself.”
There were a few points in his illogic that Horatia could not let pass.

“It’s becoming a very ugly force--you’re right. But these social workers
foment a lot of discontent. And the workers get surly and commence to
bully. No man worthy of the name is ever threatened successfully, but
these cowards keep making concessions and concessions----”

How she liked the sheer mannishness of it! And she wondered what Langley
would have answered and tried to interpret what he might have said. But
Anthony hardly listened. He wanted to drop the argument or the tirade
and to be personal now. He wanted to talk about her and how much he
would like to do things with her. Over their large cups of coffee and
cream their acquaintanceship ripened into friendship.

“I don’t approve of half the things you say,” laughed Horatia. “But I
like you anyhow.”

“Of course you must.”

“We’ll have to go,” she sighed. “It must be eight o’clock.”

“It’s half-past nine,” said Wentworth triumphantly. “Have you always an
hour at which you must fly away?”

“And no glass slippers. Isn’t it bad luck?”

He wrapped her closely in the fur robe, tucking it in with never a
sentimental gesture and then they were off, skimming through the white
night. At her door he said good-night.

“We must have lots of good times,” he said.

She wanted to tell him about Jim, but it seemed like assuming that his
interest was unduly sentimental. After all there hadn’t been a touch of
that in his manner. And Jim had insisted that it be a secret. Next time
it might be more natural to tell Anthony about her love.

She slept hard and dreamed of Anthony Wentworth attacking a laborer who
was throwing bombs at his head. She was all for Anthony in the dream.




CHAPTER VIII


Maud heard about that ride with much satisfaction. Her respect for her
sister was going up by leaps and bounds. To be clever enough to land a
man with a past that was frightening as well as a young and wealthy hero
was a genuine achievement worthy of record. Secretly Maud dreamed of a
life to be a continual flirtation, and to hint at these romantic things
deftly as part of Horatia’s doings made a very interesting topic. She
sighed and said:

“It’s all very easy to decide what you ought to do in abstract cases,
but when one’s own young sister is involved!”

How Horatia would have writhed if she had heard those conversations! If
she had guessed how Maud made her a girl whose allure was
irresistible--whose danger to men was terrific, and yet who was so
innocent and unsophisticated herself that the very streetcars held
danger. But she did not guess. Nor did she dream that it was Maud who
took pains to inform Anthony Wentworth about Langley. Maud wanted to be
connected with the Wentworths and she did not intend to have the Langley
affair scare Anthony off. So, meeting him at a dance, she rallied him
gaily.

“What did you do to my young sister?”

Anthony asked her for a dance, paying off his dinner debt and also
thinking he would like to know the reason for her remark. They sat it
out.

“What did I do to your sister? You tell me. I didn’t think she knew I
was alive.”

“Oh, yes, she very much knows it. She doesn’t say much--Horatia never
does--but she certainly did enjoy that ride with you.” Horatia had not
mentioned it to Maud, but Maud was sinning for the greater cause.

“And I’m glad she has a wholesome man friend. I don’t know if you
know----”

Anthony expressed total ignorance.

“Well--you know Jim Langley.”

“Oh, yes.”

“He’s a fascinating sort of person, you know. And Horatia has seen far
too much of him. She went to work on that paper just out of devilment.”

That didn’t tally with what Horatia had told Anthony about her work.

“Well--she thinks she’s in love with him and he--is certainly in love
with her. Of course, she’s young and beautiful--any man would. But Jim
Langley isn’t the sort of person one would pick out for a husband for
one’s sister, of course. There are things we’ve all heard----”

“I like Jim very much, myself,” said Anthony, surprisingly.

Maud drew in her horns.

“Why, we all do--he’s wonderfully fascinating. But he’s so much older
than Horatia, and then I myself never would be sure of the stability of
such a man’s affection. And Horatia is so wonderful. I’m sure I don’t
know why I’ve told you all this.” Which both of them knew was another
falsehood.

Anthony went away leaving Maud with a feeling that he understood her
better than was comfortable to know. She might have guessed that he had
not been a sought-after young man for years without growing pretty
astute. At his club he met an old acquaintance and after a few moments’
conversation asked him,

“What about Jim Langley? How’s he coming on?”

“Oh, he’s a queer fish. Doing rather better lately. They tied the can to
him socially when he got involved in that Hubbell scandal.

“Mrs. Hubbell’s back, isn’t she?”

The man nodded. “And charming as ever in her mourning clothes. She says,
I believe, that her great sorrow is not that her husband died but that
he died insane--because otherwise she can not explain his suing for
divorce and his suicide. She says, ‘Poor Jack. He must have been quite
insane!’ very touchingly. She gets away with it.

“Langley still in her train?”

“Trust her. I suppose so. But Langley’s all right. He’s been doing
damned good writing lately. Now if he could get a job on a newspaper
somewhere else, I believe he’d go far. Here, of course, he got off with
the wrong foot.”

“Must be thirty-five or six--1904, wasn’t he at the University?”

“Yes--about that. Well, that’s not too late for a man to begin to make
real headway. If he married the right woman. It’s marriage these queer
ducks need, you know.”

Wentworth agreed.

“Still, he’s hardly the right man for a young girl and----”

“No--not a match for youth and innocence--not Jim Langley. However,
that’s the kind they usually pick.”

Wentworth snapped the conversation off there. Perhaps he had heard
enough. He went home--not to his sister’s house but to the half-closed
house of his father, and sat in his own room before his fire, musing.
The fire made his fine profile unusually handsome. He looked about the
room appreciatively. These were the deep chairs that had welcomed him on
vacations and furloughs--the Remington that his father had given
him--his few books, his pipes and the big windows that almost made up
one wall.

“Why should I leave it?” he murmured, and fell to smoking luxuriously.

       *       *       *       *       *

And so the winter slipped into spring, with Horatia revelling in the
work of the office and in the thrills which shot through her at the mere
presence of Langley; enjoying, too, the friendliness of Anthony
Wentworth and the pleasant things he devised for them to do; enjoying
everything all the more because of the flashes of wonder and fear and
depression with which she was touched sometimes; with Langley working
and watching Horatia; with Maud making plans and buying spring clothes
with morbid carefulness; with Mrs. Hubbell buying clothes too and
planning little entertainments and pressing people to attend them; with
the chains which bound them all together being drawn tighter and
tighter, and the web of their drama being spun on the vast frame of
life. Each of them undoubtedly dreamed that the pattern was different
from what it was and each of them must have had a pattern clearly in
mind; while Nature, the scene-painter, began to change her set and
shaking the white burdens from the trees, helped them to bud again.

With the spring, too, Aunt Caroline and Uncle George came back from the
South, Aunt Caroline laden with little bronze alligators and pictures of
herself picking oranges and Uncle George frankly rejoicing in getting
back and with a tendency to disparage everything Southern. They took
Langley and the news of the engagement, which Horatia felt they should
know, rather more quietly than either of the nieces had expected, but as
they thought about it they realized that these two West Parkians were,
after all, too far out of the world to understand all its ways and
meanings. Perhaps if Aunt Caroline had discussed it at the Ladies’
Guild she might have heard disturbing things, but since it was a secret
and couldn’t be discussed she formed her opinions on the impression
Langley made on her, which was pleasant enough. He knew how to listen
interminably and defer properly and that was enough for Aunt Caroline.
For those hours of listening to her over a heavy Sunday dinner, Langley
was paid by Sunday afternoons with Horatia, long walks out by the lake
through the mists or the winds when everything evil and unhappy seemed
to drop away from him and the world was all life and energy and Horatia.
The tediums of Aunt Caroline were a very little thing to bear.

Horatia kept her apartment in the city, pleading an unbreakable lease to
her aunt, but she liked to get back to West Park once in a while, just
for the “clean, fresh dullness” of it, she said. She had not yet learned
what she was to learn, that dullness is one of the most beautiful things
in the world for an harassed spirit to come back to, and that dullness
is not always stupidity, but sometimes safety. So she patronized West
Park mentally and laughed at herself for looking forward to Sundays
there. It was natural enough that she should look forward to them as a
respite from the existence about her. She was seeing a great deal of
very concentrated life. When a woman shoots a man, a newspaper office
has the real facts of the case very quickly. When a man suddenly retires
from politics and his wife leaves town for a few months and a
fatherless child is reported in the “Birth” columns, the public may not
connect the three events. But often enough the newspaper knows that
there is a link. It knows, too, how so many fortunes are made and it
connects them with queer obscurities. They did not reveal ugliness to
Horatia willingly in that little office, but she saw and heard it
because she was there and could not always be well shielded. Some of the
worst of it never reached her but she saw enough. She began to know that
the things that happened in the world were not based on justice and she
saw that pain can not always be healed and that the wages of sin were
sometimes opulence and public respect. She, who had crusaded out into
the world, loving its beauty and its freshness and yearning for all it
had to offer, began to see that it offered a selection of things which
had to be looked over very carefully.

None of this saddened her, because it had not touched her yet, but it
aroused her pity and her wonder and her scorn. With the assurance of her
age, it never frightened her to see and hear of trouble. These tragedies
might happen to others, but not to her--not to her who had work and
love. If she ever thought of her future she admitted that she would have
“her share of trouble,” but that trouble was so delightfully in the
distance as to be merely a romantic ingredient of life--a spice--and not
a thing to be afraid of. But there began to be a complexity of thoughts
back of her clear eyes, where once there had been only curiosity and
eagerness. Day by day it deepened and day by day she loved her work
more. It brought many a chance to do interesting things--to render
little services to all kinds of people. There was beginning to be an
increasing number of women in politics and many of these came to make
use of the “woman on _The Journal_.” If they came merely to make use of
her they usually departed without accomplishing anything. Horatia
understood them very easily and disconcertingly. It was very obvious to
her who had no axe of her own to grind, that some of these women had. If
they came to ask her advocacy of something decent and necessary, it was
easy to explain and easy to get support. But if they came to barter or
exchange favors, as so many of them did, they went away empty-handed,
simply because they had nothing to give Horatia and because she desired
no favors--or offices--or social advancement.

She made enemies. When Mrs. Perry Hill, president of the City Symphony
Society, came down to _The Journal_ office one day, she came with an air
of concession and as one descended from a pedestal. She explained her
purpose lengthily to Horatia. The City Symphony wanted to raise a
hundred thousand dollars to put up a musical studio building as a
memorial for soldiers and sailors who had been killed during the war.
She told enthusiastically of the struggle of the Symphony to raise
itself from a little club into a great organization which brought the
artists of America to the city to play and to sing. She outlined the
tremendous need for a studio building and told of the music-students and
teachers who would bless the city and the City Symphony for a place to
study and teach. She touched upon the needs of a commercial age and the
general low level of musical appreciation. And she ended by telling of
the other great lack--the lack of a suitable Soldiers’ and Sailors’
Memorial. “Nothing could be a more fitting tribute to those noble lads.”

Horatia frowned. “I’m afraid I don’t understand.”

She stopped Mrs. Hill, who was just about to repeat her entire speech.
“I understand, of course, that the Symphony is a worthy organization--of
course--and it has given its members much pleasure--but why should a
studio building be a tribute to soldiers and sailors? What good will it
do them, living or dead?”

“Only by upholding the highest ideals can we be worthy of those noble
boys,” answered Mrs. Hill sententiously.

Horatia persevered.

“But how would it touch them?”

“In the proposed auditorium we would have many fine concerts for
everyone.”

“Free?”

“My dear young lady, it costs a thousand dollars to bring great artists
here.”

“I see.” Horatia’s tone was not encouraging. “Have you seen many
soldiers and sailors, Mrs. Hill?”

“My own son was an aviator.”

“I mean common soldiers. The kind that like ‘Ja-da’ and ‘Come On, Papa’
and would go to sleep at a concert, most of them. They need--oh,
tremendously, to be educated in just the things you speak of. But you
can’t do it by building recherché auditoriums. They need lots of things
more than that--and lots of things before that. Mrs. Hill, I haven’t an
objection in the world to a studio building for the Symphony--I’d be
glad to contribute if you’ll bring Galli-Curci and Kreisler--but to go
about asking funds from people on the plea that you are doing something
in the name of those unfortunate boys who were killed or of those
commoners who once were soldiers is to me an absurdity.”

It was not the sort of reception to which Mrs. Hill was accustomed when
she went to society editors.

“May I see Mr. Langley?”

Horatia opened the door to his office and ushered in Mrs. Hill, who went
into some detail as to her worthy project and Horatia’s inadequate
appreciation. Horatia chuckled at her desk outside, wondering how
Langley would deal with her, and was fully satisfied when Mrs. Hill
swept out with a last overheard comment--“Of course, there are many
reasons why you are taking this attitude, sir, and none of them does you
credit.”

She was ruined, however. Horatia ran a column on the new auditorium
studio building and memorial, touching gently on the fact that the
question of its erection was in dispute, and then she telephoned some of
her friends and some of the real women thinkers of the city for
opinions. Also she telephoned some architects. The article was not
condemnatory. It was gently questioning, but many a business man read it
and agreed heartily with the questions in it, having them ready as an
excuse for not contributing. The project failed and Mrs. Hill knew why
it had failed. She took to saying “there was opposition from the sort of
places from which you might expect it,” which was cryptic, hinted at
scandal and saved her face. But even with her face saved she detested
Horatia.

It was only an incident, but there were other incidents which, added
together, made the “woman on _The Journal_” a subject of much
speculation. There was the woman who wanted to be made city commissioner
in order to enhance her husband’s chances of getting city contracts and
who failed to get _Journal_ support. There was the case of the teacher
who resigned from the schools in order to run for the School Board and
work for raises in teachers’ salaries. She and Horatia had many a
consultation in _The Journal_ office and many a plan hatched there
finally put across the woman’s successful election. It was undoubtedly
true that Horatia had a straight eye, Bob Brotherton said--and not only
did she have a straight eye but she used it. She came to be in demand
for many things--as a member of committees projecting new schemes, as a
member of boards of directors. The men liked to have her because she had
a sense of humor and of brevity in discussion and the women liked to
have her because the meetings were usually a success when she came and
because she never wanted to be chairman. Horatia enjoyed all these
things too, but most of all she liked to get back to the office, to her
own papers and her own companions and to the welcome of its familiarity
and to Langley’s smile, which had all the love of the world in it. The
love of the work and the love of Langley ran so intermingled in her that
they sometimes blended. They seemed already married in the things they
were doing. The other marriage could only complete this one. So she told
herself, but the “other marriage” sounded in her soul sometimes with a
solemn note which frightened her a little. Her inexperience frightened
her. Women on the street, with shapeless figures and worn faces,
commanded respect from her for these women had been married. They knew
what living with a man meant. Perhaps they had not played the game very
well, but they had played it and they knew the rules.




CHAPTER IX


“If you look at me like that,” said Anthony, “I will kiss you and ask
you to marry me. I don’t know which I’ll do first, but I’ve put both
things off long enough.”

This on the springiest of spring days with Horatia clambering back into
the car which Anthony had stopped by the roadside until she found some
cowslips; she was smiling her perfect happiness at Anthony. Her smile
disappeared.

“Don’t do that----”

“Which?”

“Either. I should have told you long ago, Anthony. But it assumed that
you cared if I told you this--and I couldn’t assume such awful conceit.
You don’t. It’s just the day and the fun we’ve been having.”

“But you were going to tell me----”

“That I love Jim Langley and I’m going to marry him.” She held her head
high and her blush was triumphant.

“When?” asked Anthony.

“I don’t know--not for a year, perhaps, but sooner or later
I’m--we’re--going to.”

Anthony twisted the wheel idly without starting his motor.

“Well--there’s nothing I can do about it except to wish you joy.
Langley’s all right--and if you are sure you love him, it’s all right.
But don’t let the work deceive you. That’ll stop after you are married
and the glamour----”

“No, indeed, I shall work right along--right along--that’s our whole
idea.”

Anthony did not look impressed. He started the car and drove on
silently. Then----

“Look here, Horatia, I know you’ll damn me for a reactionary, but I want
to say a few things. I ought to go away and leave you alone but I don’t
want to. I can’t exactly admit Langley as a rival on the strength of
what you say. You see what I want to give you is something very
different. I want you to marry me and to--to organize our lives, but I
want to assume the rough steady work and I want you to be relieved of
strain.” She flushed and he went quickly on. “I’ve seen a lot of this
radical married stuff, your own name business, this both earning
business, and I’ve never seen it lead anywhere yet. And--wait. I’ve seen
a lot of the other kind--the awfully domestic, submerged woman. I never
in my life wanted to marry until I saw you. It always looked like a
trap. But with you marriage would be a wonderful game--a limitless
voyage, an endless happiness. I don’t want you to work or wear yourself
out as the women on newspapers do wear out. I want you to be strong and
fine and happy. I want to see the world with you--and to plan a big
useful life with you--to do big things largely. I can’t say it,
Horatia, because I’m an ass. But I love you and I want to fight for
you.”

There were tears in Horatia’s eyes.

“I wish I did love you, Anthony,” she cried. “I like you awfully. But,
Anthony, Jim is written all over my heart. I tremble when he’s near me.”

“That’s not necessarily a sign of love.”

“It’s Jim, Anthony.”

Anthony may have been thinking of what Maud had said. He turned to her
pleadingly.

“Anyway let me make a fight, won’t you?”

“It’s no good.”

“But I can’t lose you like this--without a struggle.”

She said nothing more. They drove back to the city and he dropped
Horatia at her office. She mounted the steps feeling very much troubled,
and a little outraged. Anthony was sweet, but the intrusion of such
feeling on the one between her and Jim shamed her.

Jim welcomed her not at all. It was a bad and busy afternoon and Horatia
had really been playing truant. He came up to her in a hurry.

“You’ll have to hurry your column for the fourth page, Miss Grant. It
was late yesterday and we had to hold everything up for it. Please
hurry.”

Horatia guessed that for that moment she was not his lover but his
reporter. She flushed. And then, loyally, she gloried in his attitude.
She wanted to be more than a woman to Jim. She wanted to be a part of
his work.

“I’ve good news for you,” he said later. “I’ve a typist coming up to see
me in a few minutes. I have decided that you need a typist if we are to
ever have clean copy.”

They laughed.

The typist came in and Langley looked her over. She was a washed-out
girl with a freckled face and stringy hair. She had come in answer to
Langley’s advertisement and with a memory of having seen her somewhere
before, he took her into his office to question her. Finally he asked
her:

“Haven’t I seen you in somebody’s office around here?”

“Yes,” said Miss Christie, “I used to work for Mr. John Hubbell.”

Langley winced. That was it. His momentary impulse to dismiss the girl
she guessed from his manner.

“I left town right after that,” she went on, “and I have only just come
back. Mrs. Hubbell sent me away for a while and then I found work in
Chicago. But it’s hot and lonely there and I thought that the trouble
would be all over and the reporters would leave me alone, so I came
back.”

“How long had you been with Mr. Hubbell?”

“Six years, sir--since I left business college. There never was anyone
who treated me so well.”

Perhaps out of loyalty to any of Jack’s friends or even employees, he
engaged her. For he did engage her and took her out to Horatia. “We will
share Miss Christie, Miss Grant,” he said. “Try to get your typing done
while I am out of the office.”

So Miss Christie was installed. She was not a gossip, so Horatia never
heard about her position in Jack Hubbell’s office or connected the drab
little figure with the grace and beauty of Mrs. Hubbell. And no one
thought to give Mrs. Hubbell information that might have been
interesting about Miss Christie being in Langley’s office. Miss Christie
took an instant liking to Horatia. Horatia treated her well and treated
her intelligently, admiring her clerical skill from the depths of her
own lack of it. Miss Christie was drawn into the atmosphere of the
office and in her quiet little way she came to love it.

There was another confidence which was not made. Horatia did not tell
Jim that Anthony had asked her to marry him. She wanted to and she
didn’t want to. There seemed almost immodesty in telling Jim that
another man loved her. And then it didn’t seem fair to Anthony. She had
refused him but there was no need to make the refusal embarrassing by
telling even Jim.

Anthony told no one. He evidently did not consider himself out of the
game. But he dropped his emotional attitude as abruptly as he had picked
it up. It worried Horatia nevertheless that he turned up at many places
where she went, though usually it was fun to see him and to joke with
him and ride home with him or to have him appear for supper on Sunday
evenings, with a supply of food under his arm. He arranged to have
Horatia meet his sister too, and Maud was all a-flutter when she heard
that Horatia had been asked to dinner at the Clapps’.

“Will you borrow my gold net?” she begged.

“Why no,” said Horatia. “That blue dress is good enough.”

Maud had to content herself with the fact of the invitation and Horatia
was more than contented with the event itself. She enjoyed the simple
dinner in the lovely big house and the visit to the nursery where every
device for good health and happiness had been joined together and she
enjoyed the conversation of the Clapp family. At Maud’s one always had a
sense of striving or of smug content in attainment, but these people
were not like that at all. They were living as it seemed best and wise
and happy to live--luxuriously but unpretentiously. So Anthony would
live, surrounded by his nurseries and his children and his servants and
his pleasant diversions. They talked of Italy and of a proposed trip to
China. It made her feel ignorant and little. But she looked neither
ignorant nor little, with her face glowing with interest and the table
candles bringing out the color in her blue gown and the dusky shadows of
her hair. She looked charming and she was charming and the Clapps
admitted it cordially to Anthony.

“That’s all right,” said Anthony. “Of course you’d like her. The
question is how did we strike her?”

Mr. Clapp was talking to Horatia during this colloquy. Anthony’s sister
talked to her later.

“You must see a great deal of the world from your office, Miss Grant.”

“A great deal.”

“It’s a very fascinating sight, of course. Romantic, full of
excitement.”

“Why does everyone think I’m romantic on first sight?” wondered Horatia
aloud.

“You are romantic. It’s romantic in itself that a beautiful young girl
goes out to work in a newspaper office. I know that lots of them do but
they haven’t yet dried up the romance. Because beauty and charm in a
woman were designed for such other purposes.”

Horatia frowned. “You don’t really think that?”

“I think so. Beauty and charm mean love and love means life. That’s why
it excites us to see beauty.”

“So many people say I’m good-looking now. Do you know I was a frightful
little girl?”

“That’s natural enough. But it’s not your face or features. It’s what
lights you up from within.”

She took Horatia’s hands in both of hers as she said good night.

“Be good to Anthony,” she said, “and don’t let your fires be dimmed,
will you?”

“I’ve met a splendid woman,” said Horatia to Jim, next day. “Do you know
Mrs. Clapp?”

“She is splendid,” agreed Langley. “Yes. I was brought up with her. We
went to school together. So Anthony wants you to know her. You’d better.
She is a real person.”

“Jim,” Horatia went on, “why don’t you keep up with people like that
instead of this Hubbell crowd? Don’t you like nice people better than
anything? Not that Mrs. Hubbell isn’t nice. But after all she hasn’t
much to contribute, now has she?”

“She can dance,” he answered lightly.

“What’s dancing?”

“It’s quite a lot of fun.”

“But I don’t see why you should need that sort of fun. I’m sure that
these other people have fun too and they don’t take it in dancing and
going around to public places. Not that I haven’t enjoyed myself a lot.
You mustn’t think I’m ungracious enough not to admit that it was all fun
for me--this going around with the Hubbell crowd. But after we’re
married--don’t you think we might do the other crowd a bit? It sets you
up.”

Jim reflected. He seemed to be thinking over his answer very carefully.
Then he spoke.

“You want to realize, Horatia, that these people are interested in you
and not in me. They like you and undoubtedly would be glad to have you
in their circle--and in their family. They don’t want me. They don’t
trust me and they don’t like me and that’s all there is to that. And if
you marry me, I’m afraid they’ll drop you. As my wife you won’t be
as--desirable.”

Horatia had flushed.

“Don’t, Jim,----” she begged, “don’t talk like that. Why, you’re so
infinitely their superior--they aren’t in your mental class.”

“They’ve played a better game,” said Jim. “Horatia, dear, don’t you want
to call it off between us? You can go to the end of the world without
me. But with me you’d just be burdened. You’d be doomed to the society
of queer people. And me. And you’d tire of the queer people first and
then of me.”

“I don’t see why it must mean queer people,” objected Horatia. “Why must
it? Not that I don’t like queer people, but I like the others too. And
you most of all. And I won’t give you up.”

“But swear not to marry me to reform me----”

“I swear.”

That argument was over and yet they had reached no outcome and they both
knew it. Horatia said fiercely to herself that there was no use in being
trivial and that it certainly didn’t matter. But she felt that she had
stumbled upon a strange quality in her lover--a resistance--a kind of
weakness too. And with the assurance of all lovers she told herself that
it must not happen again.

It had not been a good time for the conversation either. They were bound
for a dinner at Rose Hubbell’s, and Horatia felt that she had been
stupid and that all evening he would be feeling her criticism of the
people she was with. In the shadow of the cab she leaned against him.

“I’m an easily influenced fool, Jim. I’m just plain stupid. And the only
thing that matters is you. Repeat that, please.”

Which he did, very satisfactorily.

The big rooms at Rose Hubbell’s were decorated with jonquils. It was
fortunate that Mrs. Hubbell, not being poor, never had to stint her
setting. Her company, tonight, included two regular army officers, both
very distinguished looking, the illustrator, Starling, who had recently
come into such repute, Austin Benedict, a dilettante of everything, the
cynical Mrs. Boyce, and two of the dancers from the Russian troupe at
the theatre, who were really young women savoring much more of New York
than Russia. They were a gay company. Horatia forgot her criticisms.
Mrs. Hubbell’s deft servant called them to a perfectly appointed supper.
The atmosphere was artificial; the company was artificial; the gaiety
was artificial, and Horatia knew it but she could not help admiring the
perfection of the artifice. The wonder came over her again at the
baffling quality in Jim which could say that the hunt for pleasure was
becoming a dangerous chase for the world and at the same time suffer
himself to be part of such a company. She did not realize that his
inconsistency was a common enough one among men--and that his need for
company, for society of any kind had been very great. A mind more
skilled in psychology would have grasped the fact of the pride that kept
him from the society of the people he had formerly known and the other
pride which had kept him in this company after his calamitous public
connection with it. And they sat around the table with its sparkling
little service and the talk grew gayer and gayer. Settings, thought
Horatia, are queer. Perhaps this in its way is as desirable as great
open rooms and nurseries. If one had to choose. But she did not choose
between settings. It was a glorious thought--her choice--her choice was
between men.

Austin Benedict paid Horatia laughing exaggerated attentions. She must
do nothing for herself.

“You working women are getting too independent,” he said. “It makes us
afraid. I heard someone say the other day in a certain distinguished
company that you should not be a working woman.”

They all insisted on the rest of it, Mrs. Hubbell in the lead.

“Why, as a matter of fact, it wasn’t a man, as you all are thinking. It
was Mrs. John Clapp--a discerning lady. She said ‘that to think of you
waiting for street cars in the rain made her shudder’--not that she
dislikes either street cars or rain but because she feels that you
should be protected from both.”

Clouds on Langley’s face, the faintest amusement on Mrs. Hubbell’s and
the frankest embarrassment on Horatia’s.

“He delights in baiting me,” she said laughingly and tried to turn the
conversation. But she was helpless.

“Marjorie Clapp,” contributed Mrs. Hubbell, “is trying to make the
old-fashioned woman fashionable. She knows that it’s the only chance the
poor thing has to get back into favor. Make it fashionable to churn the
butter and make the candles and that sort of thing will go. And Marjorie
knows where she would shine! At a butter-churn!”

“Just where you wouldn’t, Rose,” said Kathleen Boyce, satirically, “the
butter wouldn’t--what is it--wouldn’t butter--for you, ever.”

“Oh, I admit that. I admit a great deal of capability in Marjorie.”

“But what’s the use of churning butter,” Kathleen went on, “when you can
buy it in beautiful molds and what’s the use of devoting all your time
to a house and family when there are maids and nursemaids?”

“I don’t think it’s any good with maids and nursemaids having too much
command,” said Horatia. She had forgotten that the conversation hinged
on her. “They are all right for hotels. But a house has to express a
woman--just as my aunt’s house in West Park with its Nottingham lace
curtains and bronze alligators and coldly clean floors expresses her and
just as Mrs. Clapp’s big, easy house expresses her.”

“I wonder what yours would be like. Tell us what you think.”

Mrs. Hubbell’s question was light and Horatia should have parried it.
But one of her moods of seriousness had come on her and she wanted to
bring them all into it for a minute. She wanted to tell them before
Langley what their home would be like. It was one of the revelations
that an older person would have refused to make for fear of mockery but
Horatia’s youth drove her on.

“My house? My house won’t be perfect because of lots of lacks. But I can
tell you what I’d like to have. A house, quite large and spacious with
just as little furniture in it as was necessary. Open spaces and deep
halls and built-in settees with bright cushions where you could lie when
you came home tired and where children could play and forget their toys.
Room for everyone so no one would irritate anyone else. Fireplaces so
that people could dream before them. A few guest-rooms for friends who
wanted to come when they were tired or when they especially wanted to
see me,--guest-rooms with the morning sun so that any tired person would
wake up cheerful. Not too much service and not too many meals together.
Breakfast, maybe, together, and then everyone would be free for the day.
Trees about the house--big trees which would seem part of it. I would
like a hospitable house and a free house. You see I was brought up in
one in which crumbs on the floor were a mortal sin. It’s an atmosphere
instead of a particular place that I want. I just get it vaguely--a long
dark oak hall--with the light through windows at the back----” She broke
off with an appealing half-laugh and half-sigh and the most involuntary
look at Langley--“But I shall have to get the atmosphere in a six-room
apartment probably. And I’m sure I can. And I want to.”

Then somehow she knew she had hurt Jim again and she stopped abruptly.
Her description had been far too serious for the company and they were
embarrassedly sober. But Mrs. Hubbell did not let go, quite yet.

“It was a beautiful description, dear,” she said, “wasn’t it, Jim?”

Jim gave her a quick side look and Mrs. Hubbell stopped. She could
afford to, for Horatia wondered about that look. She felt she had made
rather a fool of herself and had a sudden memory that Jim and the blonde
lady were very old friends.

“I,” said Benedict, “want what I have achieved. A few rooms for which I
pay rent and not taxes. A man whose services I can share with my
neighbor, thereby reducing his wages. A shaving brush, the morning
_Times_, a telephone and a light beside my bed. Keep your ambitions
down, my friends, and you’ll be happy.”

“What I want,” the Russian dancer broke in, “is a suite at the Plaza.
Perfectly good enough for me. And a bank account to keep the hotel
clerk off my neck.”

“And since wishes aren’t horses, let’s change the subject before our
discontents run away with us,” said Jim quietly.

They rolled up the rugs in the living-room and Kathleen Boyce played
jazz music and the Russian dancers gave themselves over to the army
officers, who danced beautifully. Horatia preferred to watch them, she
told Jim, and he watched with her until Mrs. Hubbell, gay and informal
as hostess, came up to claim him. Then Mrs. Boyce, resigning her place
to the Victrola, joined Horatia.

They watched Mrs. Hubbell’s grace in silence, paying little attention to
the others.

“They dance perfectly.”

“Perfectly,” agreed Mrs. Boyce. “Rose taught Jim to dance. Taught him
other things too. He is her prize possession, you know.”

Horatia longed to cry out to this faintly smiling woman at her side, “He
is my possession,” but she did not dare for fear of what it might lead
to. And Mrs. Boyce went on:

“Of course Jim’s a romanticist. He’d stand by any woman whose name was
connected with his and whom he dreamed that he might have hurt. But I’ve
sometimes wondered if she hasn’t hoodwinked him a little about that
whole affair. It may have been a pity that Jack Hubbell decided that he
wouldn’t take it through the courts.”

Horatia said nothing.

“You are probably damning me for not minding my own business. Of course
you are. But, my dear child, you’re no match for Rose. If you want Jim
Langley, get him out of this crowd. It’s not much good. And it’s
certainly not good for him. Rose Hubbell may not make men respect her
but she doesn’t care.”

“Please,” begged Horatia and Kathleen waved Benedict to come and dance
with her. Horatia expected that Jim would stop and join her but he kept
on dancing. The illustrator was informally reading a magazine. She sat
alone, with an odd sensation of being a wall-flower at a children’s
party.

“Perhaps,” she thought, “my face is drawing down at the corners and soon
my lip will quiver. I must look natural. There’s nothing to be silly
about.” But for all that the forlorn little feeling persisted cruelly.

Then, just as she thought she could sit there no longer, and was trying
to decide whether to break in on the illustrator’s reading or to go out
into the other room, the music stopped and with the easiest grace in the
world Langley and Rose both came towards her. Not in the least
apologetic. Smiling at her gaily. No more hurt expression on Langley but
a look of sheer enjoyment which made him look young and debonair.

“You have a gift, Rose. I was always awkward on that turn. I never
understood it before. But when you get it, like most other things, it’s
easy.”

“Horatia thinks we are silly, Jim.”

“Horatia is right. We are silly.”

He took Horatia out on the floor and they danced well, silently, but
without abandon.

“I love you,” whispered Langley.

Horatia’s voice was low as she answered:

“Ah, but I love you--utterly--completely.”

Perhaps then Langley longed for the chance to take off ten years of his
age as men do long once in a lifetime when a great opportunity comes too
late. How was he to explain--or fully understand himself--that only in
the strength of very young emotions is everything else automatically
shut out except the emotions themselves and that later the beauty is in
relating love to a life already known?




CHAPTER X


Horatia made another effort to stop Anthony. She found herself disturbed
beyond all control by this love of his. It seemed to her that such a
thing had no right to exist in the same world with her feeling for Jim.
She did not want to hurt Anthony--she did not want to argue about his
love. She merely wanted his love not to exist--not to be there to
affront her. If ever a woman’s psychology was pure in trying to arrest
the affections of a man, Horatia’s was. So it was not enough to refuse
Anthony. He must be recreated into the jolly friend that he had been.
She would not have him as a lover. All this she tried to tell him and of
course in the telling she laid herself open to misconstruction.

For Anthony could not see but that the discussion itself was a sign of
his growing importance in her eyes. To him it probably would have been
natural enough to have her refuse him and then decline to see him at
all. But that did not suit Horatia. She wanted him to be just a
friend--to stop loving her. He was comparatively acquiescent. He told
her that he thought she might some time come to care for him, and when
she protested in real horror, he was gentlemanly enough to yield the
point and adjust his conversation to the comfortable tone she wanted.
It cheered Horatia immensely. She was too inexperienced to know that men
have always yielded to women in form when they won a victory in fact.
There was a new vigor in Anthony’s walk as he left her after that.

That talk straightened “everything out,” according to Horatia, and she
went to her window and drew a long breath of relief. She was clean again
and fit for Jim. How tremendously she loved Jim that day! She wanted to
bring him something finer, something cleaner, something purer than
anyone in the world had ever brought to any man. She wanted to bring him
all that the world could give a man. Her ardor almost frightened him
that night. It was so great--so tempestuous.

“How can women play with men they love?” she wondered. “I suppose it’s
because they don’t love. You’re warned to keep your distance--to give a
little at a time. Why I--I want to give everything in the world all at
once--everything. And then I wouldn’t have enough. I want to do foolish,
extravagant things to show you my love--only because it is love they
wouldn’t be foolish or extravagant.”

“Do you know how I love you?” asked Jim. “I love you as a man loves a
woman once in a long, long while, so much that all the primal things,
the violent things have been refined out of it. I love you so much that
the lightest touch of your hand on my shoulder turns me to fire and so
much that if it would harm a hair of your head or bring a shadow of
trouble to your soul, I’d never see you again. I love you because you
are beautiful of body--that least and first--and I love your fine, clean
soul which is like a candlelight before the altar of life, and I
love--most of all, your warm, warm heart that warms everything which is
near it at all. No--most of all I love you and I’d love you if you were
ugly and vicious and cold--because you’d be you. You attached me and
you’ll never shake me off now.”

No--for all his protestations that he would give her up if it were best
for her, his arms around her did not seem to be willing to even give her
up for a moment. They were talking a little more practically now. _The
Journal_ was really commencing to pay and an amazing offer had come to
Langley offering him an editorship on an Eastern paper. But he had
refused it, with Horatia’s connivance, because they both felt that they
did not want to leave so soon the lake and the city which had brought
them together and the familiar office.

“A flat it will have to be.”

“But some day there will be the house with the dark oak hall,” he
promised. “Some day there will be those sunny guest-rooms. Once,
Horatia, I had a little money and I lost it all. It was what my father
left me. Well, I never missed it. I didn’t care--much. But now I covet
that money. I see things in windows that I want to give you. I want to
smother you with presents.”

“You’re a capitalist in spirit for all your protestations!”

“Don’t you dare tell anyone, but I’ve the making of a rare one in me.
All that I care about just now is giving things to you--myself and other
things.”

“You care about your work.”

“Ah, but that’s so that I may be more worthy to give myself to you.”

“But this flat business!”

They thought perhaps that they could marry in the autumn. Late autumn
with the leaves turning to wonderful colors and the lake shimmering with
the first cold winds. It would put spirit into that most marvellous of
honeymoons. And after that they would come back to the office--and the
flat.

“Let’s look at flats and furniture--sort of surreptitiously----” begged
Horatia.

He was stern.

“If this is to be a secret,” he said, “how on earth can we go about
asking for furniture? Now I will tell you anyway that we are not going
to buy much furniture. And I will show you why we are not if you will
call on me next Sunday morning.”

“You have furniture of your own.”

“I have a few nice things--not awfully valuable--but you shall see.”

She saw them and they were far more lovely than he had told her. His
little apartment was much more luxurious than she had imagined. There
were small, beautiful rugs and several pictures which had signatures
which startled Horatia, and an inlaid table stood beside a great velvet
chair and faced another chair, a rocker, low-seated and high-backed, not
at all a man’s chair.

“I suppose I was rocked to sleep in that chair,” said Langley
whimsically.

He showed her the dining-room with its smooth-oiled mahogany table and
then laid his hand lightly on the panel of the other door.

“In there,” he said softly, “is the bedroom furniture which was my
mother’s. Would you like that too?”

The color faded from Horatia’s cheeks and the gravity of her eyes
deepened.

“I want it,” she answered.

Her pallor frightened him.

“You’re not afraid of me, are you, darling?”

“A little afraid of life--not you--and the curious thing is that I don’t
know what part of life does frighten me. It’s only that sometimes there
seem to be so many things I don’t know yet--or understand----”

Langley often thought of her as she was when she said those words,
standing in his shadowy living-room, with the light from the window on
her face half-turned away from him towards things she did not
understand. So young--so instinctively brave and so instinctively
honest. And so beautiful.

“I shall tell you of as many as I can and there will be things we both
don’t understand that we must find out together. But we will go--hand in
hand--with our heads up--to meet them.”

She turned and caught his hands in her own outstretched ones.

“Oh, let us start, soon--soon,” she begged. “I want to go with you.”

“Yes--soon,” answered Langley. His head was high and his face the face
of a young man. “Soon--my darling--wife.”




CHAPTER XI


And then suddenly came one of those swift unexpected tragedies which
knock the heart out of life for those who see and must witness them.
This came on Horatia like a thunderbolt. Life was magnificently clean
about Horatia--clean and beautiful--and then it was sullied by a
contact.

She had told Grace Walsh that she was to spend the night with Maud and
then she changed her mind. Going home from the office late and entering
quietly so as not to wake Grace, she heard voices. It was midnight and
she wondered. The voices were from Grace’s room, not from the
sitting-room, and Horatia stood weakly still in the dark and heard them.
One was a man’s and the other was Grace’s and they were saying things,
half-laughing things which turned Horatia weak and sick. Somehow she
stumbled out of the room--somehow got quietly down the stairs and out of
the building. She walked to Maud’s blindly and when Harvey let her in
said that she was very dizzy and must go straight to her room. Not to
sleep. To listen to what Grace had said and the man had said and to see
things of horror. Life was like that, was it? Foul--ugly? Was that love
too? They had used the word--that word--her word! No, no, no, she cried
to her tortured brain--not love. But Grace. Why should Grace be like
that? Had she always been? Grace who was fond of her. She was agonized
not by the facts as much as by her vision, her hearing of them.
Abstractly her brain tried to argue. Argue modern things she had heard.
Suddenly she understood many things that had puzzled her about
Grace--understood conversations which they had had together. She tried
to get Grace’s view of this, tried desperately. Grace had a right to
live--to be herself, to act as she pleased. But her senses, her heart
kept denying that--kept suffering its denial.

Harvey told her flatly at breakfast that she must cut out the night work
if she didn’t want to ruin her health--and her looks. He took her
downtown in his car and left her at the office for Jim to worry over.
Her white face and her shocked eyes told Jim that something had
happened. But she could not tell him. She worked mechanically, facing
the time when she would have to see Grace.

At six o’clock she took advantage of Jim’s absence to slip out and go
over to the apartment. Grace was there. She was paring potatoes in the
kitchenette. Sometimes they got their own supper.

Horatia did not take her hat off. She stood and watched the knife scrape
the skin from the potatoes. Grace looked at her.

“Why, what’s wrong, my dear?”

Horatia’s knees were weak and queer. She felt herself apt to faint if
she were not very, very slow and precise in what she said.

“I came back last night and heard--you.”

Grace’s face turned scarlet and then a different color--a color mixed of
anger, shame and defiance. She seemed about to speak several
times--several ways--and at last she succeeded.

“I really don’t see how it concerns you,” she said, viciously.

“No,” said poor Horatia, “I suppose it doesn’t. Only I can’t stay here.”

Grace’s expression hardened to an ugly sneer.

“So virtuous as all that,” she said. “Do I say a word when you go to Jim
Langley’s rooms? Don’t play the high and mighty lady with me.”

Grace had lost her intellectuality like a dropped cloak. She was pure,
raging passion, discovered in sin and accused. But Horatia did not stop
to analyze. She was stricken with horror. She couldn’t speak and Grace
raged on.

“You’re like all the rest. I knew you’d be or I’d have told you. Pretend
to be broadminded and yet scurry to get behind a fence of conventions if
your own skirts are involved. What business is it of yours if I have a
lover? If he isn’t married to me? He would marry me if he could and if
I’d let him. He’s married now to one of the silly fools who runs around
with your sister. He can’t stand her. He hates her presence--and he
loves me and I love him. We get what we can and then you come with your
face of horror to preach to me--to tell me I’m not fit to live with!
Fit to live with! I’m fit as the rest of the hypocrites that you live
with. Women or men--they’re all alike--covering their traces better. I
wonder where your brother-in-law spends some of his nights when he has
to go out of town. Do you think those silly little doll-faced prattlers
can hold a man? As for you--you go as far as you dare with Langley. How
do I know how far you go? I don’t spy on you when you go to his rooms on
Sunday! Not fit to live with! God, this prating of righteousness--sex
righteousness, the most silly lying farce in the world. There is no such
thing as righteousness. But there is love and passion, little
white-face.”

Still Horatia did not speak. Before this ugly situation she had become
powerless to attack or to defend. She had neither weapons nor skill for
such a fight. And Grace tore on, through a tirade of defense and
condemnation, revealing her shattered pride and her spirit torn by the
sense of guilt, of satisfactions and strangled discontents, trying to
believe in its own rectitude. But poor Horatia could not analyze it
then. She was only able to see facts and to hear the anger and
accusations against herself. She knew instinctively that Grace did not
mean them but she had said them and in the saying had irretrievably
marred and stained some things in Horatia.

Stray phrases hit her ear cruelly. Grace was now condemning her--now
men--now women.

“Modern women! Modern with your tongues! Love should be free. Love
should be above conventions. How often you’ve said it! And I with my
real beliefs did not dare to tell you how I chose to carry out your
phrases because I knew that you were only talking. Doing lip service to
modernism! Easy, isn’t it? But before modernism--naked--you’d be
horrified and pursing your shocked lips and running for veils.”

Horatia sank down in a chair and covered her face with her hands.

“My God,” cried Grace, “why shouldn’t I do as I please? Why should I say
one thing and act another? If I know marriage is rotten why should I
hold to its forms? Haven’t we all said marriage was archaic--love should
be free?”

There was no answer.

“Come now, isn’t that one of the great Sunday afternoon subjects for
discussion?”

Horatia nodded. “But this is different.”

“Why different?”

“Because it is furtive and hidden--don’t you see it’s--ugly?”

“It’s hidden because of just such cowards as you. You for whom I am not
fit!”

“It’s not a question of fitness. I don’t condemn you, Grace. Perhaps you
are right. Maybe I am cheap and cowardly. But I can’t--live with it.”

Generations of Grants and Ferrises living in holy wedlock speaking
through her--rash current phrases, fine modern leniencies dropping from
her before the facts of furtive illicit love and adultery. The
education of modern thought and modern living dashed to the ground by
the healthy instinct of race, healthy still in spite of its soaking in
strong, acidulous, dangerous ideas. Poor Horatia--so feeble in her
humiliation and yet stronger than ever before because there was only one
thing that she could do. Living with Grace was not a debatable issue. It
was an impossibility.

“Heaven knows that I don’t want to live with you,” said Grace hotly.
“But I would like to have you see that wherever you turn you can’t do
more than keep your own skirts clean. You can’t guarantee the skirts of
others.”

She walked up and down furiously and Horatia, not looking at her, knew
nevertheless how she looked. Her strong figure, her neat hair bound
about her head, her smart tailored gown did not make a proper figure of
passion but of restraint. But the passion was breaking through the
physical restraints.

“You were born in West Park,” Grace went on, “and brought up in a quiet
orderly way, told nothing ugly, seeing nothing ugly. I wasn’t. I was
born in a cheap hotel in a small town. Two years afterward my mother
either skipped or died. I suppose she skipped. And my father sent the
woman who kept the hotel a little money to keep me. He was a travelling
salesman--used to drop in now and then because I and the town were on
his route. I lived in that place where people came and went--some of
them decent enough--pale, dragged, gossipy women with fat, bloated men
or fat, big-breasted, lazy, powdery women, and their men. They were not
too attractive nor too delicate in their talk--these respectable ones.
And there were others too--not decent and not caring to be. I heard
things--saw things. I was well instructed in dirtiness young. And I
couldn’t stand it. I broke away and went to work in a woman’s kitchen
when I was fourteen. I washed dishes and cooked and made beds for
domestic decency. So it was called and rated. I learned how cheap and
dishonest a thing decency is. I was with that woman for two years. I
helped her when her fourth child was born. And the sordidness--the
hideousness of that unwelcomed birth ground some facts about modern
decency into me. They rowed over that baby--talked about ‘blame’. The
fears--the backbiting--the lack of love or even respect! I used to
wonder what those people started on--and then and there I vowed never to
marry.

“Well, I saved enough to go to High School. I had been through grammar
school. I started High School when I was sixteen years old and I got
through in three years. Meantime I was a ‘mother’s helper’. The irony of
that phrase! I helped that mother by washing clothes and dishes and
slaving way into the night sometimes. It was a hard little town. I
wanted to go to college so I moved--with my package--it was a small
package--of clothes to the University town--got some work, earned enough
to start on and to buy some clothes and then went to the Dean to ask
about working my way through. The Dean was the first woman I had ever
met who seemed to care what happened to me. It was a queer experience.
Funny, wasn’t it, the reputation I made in college. By the time you came
on the scene I was quite a celebrity, going home for vacations with
girls who were met at the stations by limousines and weaving a hazy
fiction about my dead parents and good connections. Then--after
college--jobs were easy.

“But I wanted other things by this time. I found myself wanting things I
never had. Love--men----” Horatia, watching her now, saw her standing
still, looking back at her own life with angry, thwarted eyes.

“I didn’t want marriage. I had no illusions about that. Marriage was
quite the ugliest thing I had seen. But I did want a lover. And I found
I could love--I can love! I’ve had three lovers in five years, and I
believe in marriage less than ever. The men have all wanted me to marry
them. But I won’t. People use marriage and then it uses them. It is
meaningless. More and more people cheat it and pretend to hang on when
they are sick of each other. When my lovers and I are through--we’re
through. I tell you that that man who was here last night hates the
sight of his wife. She must know it. Yet she rides in his car and takes
his money and eats at his table. Isn’t that degradation?”

Horatia did not answer and Grace stopped talking too, for a while. They
were aware of the awkwardness of the pared potatoes and the interrupted
preparations for supper, which seemed to insist on a continued intimacy.

“Will you have supper?” asked Grace, with bitter casualness.

“I’ll help get it,” answered Horatia gently and turned her attention to
details, striving, striving all the time to understand and help. They
set the informal table and faced each other over it.

“Don’t you want to stay here? I’ll go,” offered Grace brusquely later.

“No--no----” Horatia protested. “I’m the one to go. I really ought to go
to stay with Maud’s children for a while anyhow. She and her husband
want to go to New York for six weeks and they have been asking me to
stay at their house while they are away. I didn’t promise but I will
go.”

“Tonight?”

Horatia hesitated.

“No,” she answered bravely, “tomorrow.”

Suddenly Grace burst into tears.

It was the first time that reality had closely touched Horatia and for
the first time she realized that in dealing with personal realities,
theories have little value unless they have been tested by experience.
She had never been one of those who sought after modern ideas for their
own sake but she had accepted easily and as a matter of course all the
talk which went with her time--talk which was lavish in its use of
phrases about the rights of the individual, freedom of thought, antique
conventionality and the new everything. She believed in no church and
she laughed at Maud’s rigors as to what was and what wasn’t proper. In
college she had often expressed an opinion strongly indignant that women
should be required or expected to be more chaste than men and held the
double standard in abhorrence. And yet she was horrified to discover
that the man in this case did not excite her really. He was condemned
but it was a passionless condemnation that she gave him. But with Grace
her horror at finding that Grace had made use of this little apartment
for a furtive love affair turned her sick and yet miserable lest her
fastidiousness might be only cheapness. The saddest point in the little
tragedy was that Horatia could not know that she was learning one of the
deepest truths which she would ever learn--that through all intensive
modernism and intensive conservatism runs a thread of instinct that is
stronger than either--a fundamental morality which drives the most
hidebound conservatives into most radical actions and the most dangerous
radicals into the most conservative actions. The thread may be tangled,
and never untangled by some people in either group but, unbroken, it
runs through life and always will, through Bolshevism and monarchism.
Always irrefutable the fact confronts us that life is bigger than
politics or economic conditions or theories about either.

When Grace and Horatia said a restrained good night and went to their
bedrooms Horatia threw off her clothes and jumped into bed.

“If this affair was a block away it wouldn’t bother me at all,” she said
to herself determinedly. “I’ve decided to leave. Now I must go to
sleep.”

It was easy to say and impossible to do--easy to whip her actions into
conformity but not so easy to control her thought. She was shivering
with unpleasant contacts and she found herself standing on the floor in
the darkness, longing to dress and run away again. She tried to laugh,
to be “sensible,” assuring herself that all she needed was sleep and
rest. But there was no such thing as sleep. The darkness was not soft
and quiet. It was full of thoughts and pictures which did not soothe but
tortured her. She had always let her last thought be of her lover. Now
she wanted to forget about all men--even Jim. Grace had said--and so her
mind raced on through the darkness and morning came again.

To be sure that there could be no more discussion she telephoned her
sister at once and Maud’s flat definite tones coming over the wire,
expressing pleasure at the news and plunging at once into a world of
detail, reassured her. It was reassurance just to realize that Maud was
getting up from her breakfast table and that her mind was anxiously
turning on the problem of buying a new wardrobe trunk or making her old
one “do.” There was something cheering in the impression that much of
life was made up of just such innocent trivialities.

But at the office Jim saw the ravages of the day before increased and
she seemed unnatural to him, as if she was trying overhard to be
natural. He asked her to come into his office and shut the door on her
entrance.

But at the touch of his arms she looked so pathetic that his worry
deepened.

“You’re not yourself, darling.”

She shook her head weakly.

“I’m quite all right.”

“No--circles and shadows under your eyes--troubles in them--pale
cheeks--what is it about?”

Horatia tried to smile and failed miserably.

“Tell me, dear.”

He was so easy, so unpassionate because of some wise instinct that she
turned to him and the story came out. Grace had played her game silently
and well, for Jim had not suspected the situation.

“You must leave her, of course,” he said with quick masculine
intolerance for this business which affronted a woman dear and pure to
him.

“Pull my skirts aside--I suppose so,” she said drearily, “that’s what
hurts. My own reactions.”

“But you can’t help her by living there--and she had no right to expose
you to such a situation. It’s damnable.”

She had never seen him so excited or so very angry. He strode up and
down, his mouth set, eyes smouldering. She found that she was feebly
arguing for Grace but there was reassurance in the way he swept her
arguments aside. He wasn’t interested in Grace. He didn’t want to
discuss Grace. What she did was her own business. Let it go at that. But
to involve Horatia in a living arrangement and not explain her own
method of life--that was outrageous.

Suddenly he stopped and held up her face in his hands.

“And you have been thinking that all men----”

Her eyes wavered and his filled with tenderest pity.

“No, darling,” he said, quietly, “it’s not true.”

Confidence swept Horatia’s soul like a clean wind. She lifted her eyes
to her lover again.




CHAPTER XII


Maud departed for New York, radiant in new clothes and expectations of
others. She set her house in order and gave Horatia a detailed list of
instructions as to what to do on every usual occasion and in every
emergency. And Horatia found a surprising pleasure in what she was to
undertake. The Williams were to be gone two months and she would have
full charge of everything. It would be interesting and stimulating to
run a house and supervise the care of children. She liked Maud’s
children and she liked the housemaid and the cook. It would be very easy
and to Maud’s anxious worries she turned a laughing face and a competent
spirit. She stood, with Jackie held by one hand and the baby in her
arms, waving good-bye to their parents, and when the car was out of
sight took her charges to the nursery with a delightful new feeling of
personal responsibility.

After the flat, Maud’s house gave her a sense of expansion. To have her
breakfast served daintily at a dining-room table was refreshing after
months of getting up hurriedly and getting the milk and orange marmalade
and rolls together herself. To come back at night to a comfortable house
where there were two or three rooms into which she might wander instead
of the small living-room of the flat was restful and to go up to the
nursery was the most fun of all. The children were often in bed or just
being put to bed by the housemaid and their smiles and chuckles at the
sight of Horatia if she arrived in time to give them the finishing
touches and tuck them in was one of the nicest happenings of the day.
Their helplessness, their recognitions, their constantly growing
intelligence, all fascinated her. Mingled with her natural love for them
was wonder too and constant speculation. It was not unlikely that in a
few years she might have children too, children for whom the
responsibility would be always hers. She began to respect Maud, Maud
being absent and non-irritant, for this achievement of two children. Two
children brought into the world and preserved in perfect health. It was
no slight thing. It was a big thing--a big success.

There was further speculation in her mind when she paid her sister’s
bills. Dimly she had known that Harvey and Maud spent a great deal of
money but she had not guessed how much. Their home was simple and it was
not until she had checked over a great sheaf of bills which came in at
the end of Maud’s first week of absence that Horatia found that the
simplicity was the expensive result of many hands, many shops, many
materials all blended smoothly together into a domestic interior. The
total of the bills appalled her. She had laughed at Harvey’s insistence
on leaving her a sum in the bank, which she declared “would last a
year.” At this rate of expenditure she saw that it would possibly last
the two months of her sister’s absence. The most unexpected things cost
so much--in the kitchen and in the nursery. And a new speculation
bordering on worry came to take the place of those first rapturous
thoughts about her own children. She and Jim had figured on living on a
sum which did not represent a tenth of what her sister was spending.
Granted that she could save this and that and cut out this and that
expense, could she even then---- She decided that she must ask Jim.

Jim came every evening when she did not go to the office. He was
especially tender these days as if he were trying to completely and
surely eradicate the scar which Grace had left on Horatia’s mind. They
were beautiful, peaceful evenings with the house quiet and full of the
spirit of the sleeping children, and sometimes they imagined that it was
their house, that they were at home at last.

“Have you any idea how much this costs, Jim,” asked Horatia, “this peace
and order and well-keptness?”

“I can only guess at it in horror.”

She told him and he whistled.

“Worse than your guess?”

“Yes.”

“I wish I had some money of my own,” said Horatia, regretfully. “We’ll
have to devise ways of making _The Journal_ pay better.”

“If I left _The Journal_ I could get a fairly big salary on some other
paper, perhaps.”

“And have your policy dictated by a lot of rotters! No indeed. We’ll
stick to _The Journal_. It brought us all our luck. Something will
happen. And of course I could live on lots less than Maud can. But I
want my house even if it’s only a flat to have dignity too--not to be
messy and frumpy. You want that too.”

“I don’t think that I want anything in the world except you and to give
you everything I can.”

So they buried the difficulty in words and secretly Langley puzzled over
his account books and secretly Horatia made budgets, strange and
startling budgets, of household expenses with estimates of the cost of
things reduced to minimums which would have shocked Maud or made her
laugh. But even then----

The money part did not bother Horatia seriously. It was fun to puzzle
and to plan. And for three weeks things ran smoothly. Then the housemaid
was sent to the hospital one day for an operation for acute
appendicitis, and for a few hours confusion reigned. Horatia, to whom
the cook telephoned, left her work to Bob Brotherton and came home in
haste. She encouraged the terrified housemaid and got her safely into
the ambulance and engaged a nurse for her at the hospital. Then the cook
went shakily back to her own work and Horatia started to put the
children to bed. She had often done it before, but always before Ellen
had laid things out for her and the nursery had been in order and the
children fed. She found tonight a nursery in the wildest confusion, two
cross children and no supper ready for them. She consulted Anna, the
cook. Anna was but temperately helpful. She told Horatia what they had
for supper and how to prepare the baby’s food but she did not suggest
helping her. Horatia struggled with a maze of dishes, formulas and
prohibitions and finally bore the tray up to the nursery. It was an hour
and a half before she came down, but then the room was in order and the
children in bed and quiet. Anna, who had kept dinner waiting for half an
hour, did not seem especially coöperative. Now that the shock of Ellen’s
illness was over and a call from the hospital reported her as resting
easily, Anna seemed inclined to worry lest she be imposed upon. She told
Horatia that Ellen always dressed the children at half-past seven and
that she could not both get breakfast and dress them. Also she wondered
if she could care for them during the day when Horatia was at the
office. Horatia soothed her fears. Maud had left no instructions as to
what to do in case one of the servants had appendicitis but Horatia
guessed that the best thing was to engage a temporary housemaid. In the
morning she promised Anna that should be done.

She was up early to dress and feed the children--but in spite of her
early rising she found that she had to eat her own breakfast very
hurriedly and then was late at the office because she had to go to three
employment agencies. Rather discouraging places, the employment
agencies. They showed her long waiting lists of their patrons but
promised to do what they could. Horatia had no choice but to be content
and so she went to the office and plunging into an exciting day forgot
Maud’s household for a while.

But returning that night she was forced into the thick of domestic
difficulty again. Anna was distinctly cross. The children were cross.
There were many loose ends for Horatia to tie--many duties to perform
which seemed especially wearying after her long day at the office.

“Domesticity needs a lot of oiling,” she told Jim.

He made things easy for her in the office but even with a great many
things done for her there Horatia found both the office and the domestic
burdens heavy. Savagely she spurned a little thought which crawled into
her mind at times. “Of course I can manage my house and my work, when I
am attacking my own problems. It’s only because this is something I am
not used to, something that I have to carry out according to the plans
which other people have made for me.” But none the less the thought
crawled back again, suggesting that Maud had money and everything to
make things easy for her and that even then the care of two children and
a household was a heavy task when it was coupled with even eight hours
of office work. She did not take that problem to Jim. It was hard to
phrase and there seemed no very obvious way to solve it except by her
own efforts. They wanted children and a home and she must work. She was
doubly sure that she would want to work, especially when Anna’s
complaints and the children’s restlessness were forgotten in the busy
routine of the office--and yet there were times when just to get up in
the morning and go to the office seemed too hard a strain. Suppose that
after her marriage she should feel it too hard?

They could not find a new housemaid. The employment agencies seemed
futile and advertisements, even in _The Journal_, brought such
dilapidated creatures in answer that Horatia could not bear to entrust
the children to them. For a few days they tried a trained nurse with
whom Anna quarreled bitterly and who finally left because Anna insisted
that she should make beds and do the dusting. Anna was continually on
the defensive. After a visit to Ellen she felt it rather unfair that she
should not have had an attack of appendicitis and have been sent to a
pleasant hospital where her meals were brought to her on a tray and she
was watched over by nurses. Ellen continued to get better. That was the
bright spot. In a few weeks she would be as well as ever and in the
meantime, if Anna would only stay, Horatia felt that she could manage.
She refused to write Maud that she was having difficulties. Maud had
counted on this trip and after all there was nothing very wrong.

“Nothing except that you are wearing out under my eyes,” complained Jim.

But a worse complication came and after it had come, Horatia felt that
all had been easy before. Jackie, with the astonishing suddenness of
children, had been well when she started for her office in the morning
and when she came home at night he was sick and feverish and refused to
eat his supper. She put him to bed and consulting Maud’s lists found the
name of the baby doctor and summoned him. He was a gentle-voiced,
pleasant young man who after one look at the boy developed a frightening
air of seriousness and told Horatia to send for a nurse. She asked him
if she should telegraph Maud but he shook his head.

“It’s not much use. He’s poisoned somehow--eaten something or some
things that he shouldn’t have eaten. The chances are that he will come
out all right by tomorrow, but if he doesn’t she couldn’t get here
anyhow. You can wait until morning. He will probably be all right. But
it will mean prompt work now. Try to get a nurse from the children’s
hospital.”

A tangled night. Horatia remembered the coming of the nurse and her own
quick confidence that the uniform would help somehow in bringing Jackie
through. So much skill surely---- She remembered Jim’s coming and her
amazement that his arms could not comfort her--that nothing could help
her except the assurances that the poor, tossing, wailing little boy
would probably be all right. She heard him cry as they did things to his
little body which hurt before they relieved it. She had constant
pictures of the way he had looked two days before and she could hear his
jolly little laugh. She had an agonized sense of the terrible waste of
life there must be when children died. And once she turned to Jim with a
frightened cry:

“I can’t bear it, Jim! I tell you I can’t bear it. And what if it were
my child? Could it be worse? Dare we risk all that?”

She had a memory of Jim’s great strength and of all the things he
did--and how the doctor turned to him and asked things and of Jim’s
calmness and readiness, and of one moment when he took a wailing Anna by
the shoulders and sent her out of the room. Horatia did not wail. But
her face was so white and so full of suffering that Jim kept close
beside her ready for a collapse if it should come.

A fight for life is always terrible, but with a child, when the odds are
so unequal, it is especially terrible. The doctor and nurse, quiet and
coöperative, worked steadily together--hours passed--the cries from the
tortured little body became fewer and at last the doctor, coming out
into the upper hallway where Jim and Horatia sat together, said those
words which have brought such floods of happiness to so many watchers,
“He’ll get through all right. In a week he’ll be as fit as ever. Great
bit of luck that we caught it in time. In half an hour more he would
have had convulsions and it’s hard to get a baby well under those
conditions.”

Horatia was weeping silently.

“You’ve had a big strain, Miss Grant. Better get to bed. The nurse will
be here all night and tomorrow I’ll send someone to relieve her. In a
day or two he won’t need any watching; but while he is so weak it is
just as well to give him expert nursing.”

He was gone.

“Will you go to bed, now?”

“I don’t need to go to bed now,” she answered, smiling through her
tears. “I’ve strength enough for a lifetime.”

“You’re to go to bed at once,” said Jim. “If you don’t, you will lose
your job on _The Journal_. Come, you can lock me out and then go to
bed.”

They told Anna about the boy’s safety and Anna characteristically
relapsed into a quick account of what she herself had gone through since
he had begun to be sick. She admitted that she had given him a piece of
mince pie and that he had liked it so well that she had let him have
“another sliver.”

“He was pestering me for it.”

Horatia was past reproaches. She turned and went away, around the house
with Jim, locking the windows and doors and turning off the lights.
Coupled with her relief and happiness was a happiness in doing these
domestic things with Jim and a new closeness because they had been
through suffering together. At the front door, he took her in his arms.

“I couldn’t have borne it without you, Jim.”

“We can bear anything--together.”

Again that feeling that this might be repeated in their own life
together--their own children might go down to the edge of
death--suffering might come--but they would have each other. Life could
not frighten them.

Then, as if everything had become as hard as possible to test her, and
finding her brave under the test, was becoming kinder, the household
burdens lightened. Jackie was well--so amazingly well that it was hard
to believe that he ever had been sick--Ellen was better and came back to
her work and the house slid into order and ease again. And more and more
accustomed did Horatia become to the ways of a household and more and
more normal did it seem to imagine herself in a household. She absorbed
the touch of dogmatism natural to the competent woman who must dogmatize
about her household. That was one of the unfortunate results of her
adaptability and one bound to have grave consequences. All the things
around her were real and true. They were made graver and deeper by the
reflection of the things she had learned in the last six months but
their truth was not altered. Children were beautiful, homes were
beautiful, and love was the most beautiful and basic fact of all. The
episode of Grace had become a dulled tragedy and she rarely thought of
her previous life in their flat lest she resurrect what had been such an
ugly climax to it.




CHAPTER XIII


“Please, Jim,” begged Rose Hubbell, “you will come with me today?”

She was proposing a walk in the country and Jim was demurring. It was
Sunday in May and a beautiful day of golden greens which he had longed
to share with Horatia. But Horatia had gone to a family dinner party at
Aunt Caroline’s and refused to include him, because it was such a very
family party “with antique aunts and uncles who’d watch us and speculate
with the most indecent curiosity.” He was bored but disinclined to see
Rose Hubbell. If he could not be with Horatia, he could get pleasure out
of the thought of her anyway. But Mrs. Hubbell insisted.

“Please, Jim, don’t leave me alone today. It’s a bad anniversary for me.
Let’s go for a long country walk and get all this sunshine. Will you?”

He remembered with a shock that it must be a bad anniversary for her.
Just three years ago on just such a day, Jack Hubbell had shot the
bottom out of his world. And hers too--and Jim’s own, for a while. The
bitter reminiscence awakened a keen pity in him for her. Yes, he would
go. He promised, and half an hour later was on his way to meet her at
the station. They were to ride to the country and then start walking
along the lake shore.

She was dressed simply and suitably in a short skirt and jacket and he
saw at a glance that she had been weeping. Jim’s gallantry was always
greater than his cynicism, and though he had had ample proof that Rose
had not let her husband’s suicide blight her life, still this evidence
of feeling on her part touched him and made him sorry for her and very
kind. They rode along silently--she thoughtful and unwontedly sweet. He
saw again in her the mood that had seemed such sweet spirituality and
that had seemed to him to be her dominating mood when he had first known
her. She was frail and her profile, turned to the light, was very
wistful and drooped a little as it contemplated her past sorrows.

“Dear Jim,” she said softly, “I was a wretch to make you share my
depression today. But when this time comes around all the gayety with
which I can surround myself at other times falls flat. I have all I can
do to keep from----” her voice trailed into silence and she stretched
her hands forward on her lap, clasping them tightly. Jim said nothing.
He had had previous dealings with hysterical women and had learned not
to add either the fuel of comfort or of contradiction to their
self-musings. And she said nothing more.

They dismounted at their little station. It was only a station house
with a country road leading away into light woods, and the road was one
which they knew led to a high bluff overlooking miles on miles of lake.
Jim had often thought that he would like to bring Horatia here, but the
place was too overclouded by certain memories.

“Do you remember the last time we were here?” she asked.

“Look here, Rose, I don’t think this is a wise place to come today.
Let’s go back to town and go to supper some place. Or to a concert. This
will only work you all up.”

She refused by a gesture and then, seeming to realize a misstep, quickly
changed her mood or at least her manner. She was gay. She saw all sorts
of interesting things along the path. Her feet almost danced along and
when they came into full sight of the lake, she stepped and flung out
her arms with a gesture of joyous abandon, which even in its slight
theatricalness was lovely to see. Langley adapted himself to her mood.
They sat on a rock and flung stones into the water, and, being entirely
human, Langley found himself appreciative of the way the wind could
rumple her soft yellow hair without making it ugly or disorderly. An
hour passed. It had been late afternoon when they reached the lake and
the water was no longer dancing in the sunlight but grey and moving as
if turned to severer purposes. Rose lay stretched on a rock, a slim
delicate figure, exaggerated against its bareness.

“Are you in love with Horatia Grant?” she asked suddenly.

The question came unpleasantly to Jim. He hesitated, unwilling to drag
Horatia’s name into a tête-à-tête with Rose and then answered,
briefly--almost brusquely,

“Yes.”

“Is she going to marry you?”

Mrs. Hubbell did not seem to be aware of his hesitation. She put the
second question as directly as the first.

“Yes--we are going to be married. Come, Rose, it is late.”

“She is lovely looking,” contributed Mrs. Hubbell, contemplatively.

“I don’t want to discuss her, Rose. It’s--impossible.”

She continued to lie there very quietly, non-resistant.

“Of course you don’t want to discuss her. But you see it matters so much
to me that I couldn’t help asking.”

How could one tread upon such meekness?

“Oh, nonsense, Rose. There’s no reason on earth why you should feel that
way. We decided long ago that there was no possible--emotion--between
us. We continue to be good friends just as we always have been.”

“I wish we could, Jim.”

“Why can’t we?”

“Because Horatia probably wouldn’t want it.”

“Of course Horatia would. Of course she would.” But he repeated it as if
not quite sure of himself.

And still Rose lay there, immobile, her delicate arms outstretched, a
perfect picture of resignation.

“The last link is snapping which binds me to the things which I loved. A
wasted life--and yet not altogether my fault, was it? Just because we
were friends--you and I--before that horrible thing happened. And
then--you go--and I am alone--with nothing at all except a future that
is as empty as--that hand.” She lifted her lovely open hand to the wind.

“Don’t be morbid, Rose.”

“Oh, I’m not--not a bit,” she assured him. “Of course I’ve always known
you’d marry some time. I perhaps might have wished--indelicacies.”

Langley was pacing up and down with embarrassment and his face showed
mingled pity and anger, but she did not seem to see him.

“But you don’t love me. There was a day when you thought you did. Do you
remember that day when you had tea with me--a winter afternoon and the
snow was coming down outside and it was so warm in the little yellow
living-room--do you remember my little yellow living-room?--and you
leaned down over me at the tea-table and kissed me--because you said you
couldn’t help it--just once?”

“Oh, damn it all, Rose--what’s the sense in this? That nonsense was long
ago. It was so damned foolish.”

“It was nonsense,” she answered quietly, “nonsense, I suppose, to you.
Just a whim to you--just as Jack’s suicide was an impulse to him--and
so for whims and impulses, I’ve wasted all my life.”

He was suddenly kinder. Perhaps the appeal of that inert figure made him
sorry for her just as anger on her part would have aroused every inch of
him to masculine resentment. He sat down beside her.

“You mustn’t talk like that, Rose. You’re young, lovely. Of course you
had a rotten deal, but you’ve everything in the world ahead of you yet
and if you’re brave you’ll have it all coming to you.”

“With a woman when love is gone or has become hopeless, everything is
gone.”

Subtle playing on the chords of man’s vanity! Rose Hubbell had not
developed her technique for nothing. Langley’s softening and his
discomfort showed in every line of his restless figure. And Rose sat up,
to advantage, a little more tense.

“Jim, I want you to be happy above everything. And Horatia is wonderful
and beautiful. Only don’t let her absorb you. She is so strong--so much
stronger than most women or men that she tends to absorb people. I feel
myself shrinking into nothing beside her. I am only warning you as an
old friend and a wise woman. A woman’s greatest attraction to a man is a
man’s strength and she likes to be dominated--not to dominate.”

Strange that Jim, who had avowed to Horatia that Mrs. Hubbell was
possibly dangerous and who had himself so few illusions, should have
been listening to her so seriously and so intently. She did not press
the point but began to talk of Horatia--of her beauty, her grace, her
mind, and Langley drank it all in. And the lake grew a darker grey as he
bathed in the thoughts of the woman he loved and the woman who watched
him saw that he was so far away from her that she grew heedless about
her own expressions and let them grow a little more hard and bitter and
angry. At last she jumped to her feet.

“Getting dark, Jimmy. We must go.”

Jim rose. He had been having a delightful time for that last half hour
and was ready to go--go back to Horatia.

“I’m glad you like her so much, Rose,” he said gratefully and awkwardly.

“I admire her more than I can tell you,” said Rose, “and if she would
let me love her I would be happy indeed.”

Langley did not answer that. He gave her his hand to help her over the
rocks and they went down the deserted country road. In the last stretch
before they came in sight of the station he felt her hand suddenly hot
in his and as he turned she put her hands on his shoulders.

“Let me kiss you once, Jimmy boy,” she asked, “just for good luck.”

The name woke a host of memories in him which he would not have
willingly called forth. He bent his head a little to her swift caress
and then they went on, his mind back, uncontrollably back, in the past.
He walked in reverie, and she helped him a little in it. What they
talked of now was those early days of her married life when Jim and Jack
Hubbell had spent long evenings with her, the three of them in ardent
conversation--or so it had seemed then to them. Skillfully Mrs. Hubbell
recreated those past days, playing now on chords of sentiment, now on
humorous notes, and Jim slid back into the past with her. On the train
and on the way to her home she held up the conversation constantly,
always maintaining the effect that she wanted of reviving a happy memory
about to be relegated to the past forever. It was at her own door, when,
after vainly urging him to come in, she gave him her hand in farewell
and said:

“I wonder if I dare ask you something.”

It may have been because he was so pleased at the happy turn she had
given her melancholy, but in any case his smile was friendly and
promising.

“I should almost think so.”

“Don’t just drop me cold, Jim. Let me see you sometimes. I don’t think
you have ever guessed how I need you. There’s a black mood comes over me
sometimes and you are the only person who can dispel it. I don’t want to
meddle--to interfere--to be anything--but don’t hurt me by just dropping
me cold. Come to see me now and then--once in a long while--only when
Horatia doesn’t want you--promise.”

“Why--of course I will--of course, Rose--don’t be so silly. You know
that without a promise.”

“No--promise--it will make me feel so much happier just to have the
words to comfort me when I feel awfully outside and alone.”

He hesitated, being a man and naturally reluctant to bind himself too
tightly, and then, being a gentleman, he laughed and promised. She asked
nothing more and took no advantage of his feeling but bent to open her
door and then, waving to him from the dark threshold, was gone.

At his rooms, Jim found a note under his door. It was a little note
written on a page out of a familiar notebook. “Where do you run to when
I can not find you? I have disposed of the stupidest party in the world
because I can not bear my Sunday without the sight of you. I have
brazenly rung your door-bell and there came no answer. If you get back,
call me at Maud’s to say good night and if it is early enough, come to
see me and say it properly.”

He looked at his watch. It was eleven o’clock--too late for a call. He
sat down at his telephone and almost lovingly called the number of
Maud’s house.

“What were you doing?” asked Horatia. “All this heavenly afternoon?”

Langley did not make any attempt to evade the question.

“Oh, I went out in the country with Rose Hubbell. She was a bit down and
needed to be cheered up, she thought.”

“Oh.”

A kind of blankness checked the warmth in Horatia’s voice.

“Well, you must have had a nice time,” she said. “It must have been
lovely in the country. But I thought Rose didn’t care for that sort of
thing.”

“Oh, once in a while she seems to. I’m sorry you had a dull dinner. And
so awfully sorry that I missed you when you called. If I had dreamed
that there was a chance that you might come in I wouldn’t have stirred
from the place.”

“Oh, I’m glad you did,” answered Horatia, resolutely trying to hide her
hurt that he had been happy without her when she had longed so for him.

“Please talk to me a while, dear. You don’t have to go to bed just yet.”

“What did you do in the country?”

“Why, just walked and talked and longed for you.”

“You’re flattering me.”

“Please don’t say that, darling.”

“I’m glad you missed me and I’m sorry I missed you. I’m so silly, Jim. I
want you to have a good time and yet I want it to be had with me. Isn’t
that silly and disgustingly feminine?”

“It’s most beautiful.”

“Good night, Jim, dear.”

The telephone clicked on the hook. Horatia turned to go up the
stairs--but the smile on her lips did not match the look in her eyes,
that was not quite one of satisfaction.




CHAPTER XIV


Still Horatia stayed with her sister. It was not what she had planned to
do after Maud’s return, but there seemed no easy way of immediate escape
and she shrank from the thought of taking another flat. Harvey and Maud
were cordially insistent in urging her to stay with them. They told her
that they needed her--that the children had become so used to her that
they would be miserable without her. And Jim seemed inclined to think it
better for her there during the heat of the summer. In the autumn, after
they were married, they would have a place of their own. Until
then--Maud’s house offered all the comforts which would make the summer
easy.

Work slackened a little. The office force took their vacations in due
order but Horatia kept postponing hers, hating to leave Jim for even two
weeks. And yet there was the faintest little cloud between her and Jim.
Since the Sunday which he had spent with Mrs. Hubbell she had not felt
quite so free with him as she had before--not quite so intimate. She did
not want to discuss Rose Hubbell with him but she wanted to talk things
out with him which concerned Rose. She felt the first peace of her
engagement marred and was resolute in her determination to mar it no
further. He had never referred to that Sunday and she was shocked to
find that her mind reverted to it fairly often. She found that she
wanted to know every incident of every hour and that she was jealous of
every minute that he had spent with Rose--that she wanted to share every
mood and every hour with him. It made her slightly inquisitive as to
what he did with his time. Jim never resented--never seemed to notice
her questionings, but Horatia noticed herself sometimes--with a fierce
sense of shame--prying into his movements.

“It is disgusting,” she told herself, “but of course it isn’t as though
I was just plain jealous. It’s really because I don’t think Rose Hubbell
is good for him. Even Kathleen Boyce insisted on telling me that.”

She herself saw nothing much of Rose. Once they met by accident downtown
and Horatia had to lunch with her and twice she declined invitations
which included her and Jim. But Rose had little opportunity to get near
Horatia when Horatia was intrenched behind the life at Maud’s. When
Horatia had free time, Maud had a way of absorbing it and Maud sometimes
had a good deal to offer in the way of entertainment. She had somehow
managed the acquaintanceship of Marjorie Clapp, who seemed pleasantly
interested in Maud’s entire household now that Horatia was living there.
The Clapps week-ended at the cottage to which Horatia had gone once with
Anthony, and Horatia spent a happy Saturday and Sunday there with Mrs.
Clapp. Anthony was not in evidence. His sister told Horatia that he had
decided to go in with his father and that his father had sent him West
for six weeks to get acquainted with the branches of the business.

It was as if a background were being given Horatia against which she
must paint her life with Jim. The more she saw of these orderly people,
the more impossible it seemed not to conform in part to their standards.
One’s mind, of course, would remain more free than Maud’s and run deeper
in its current than did Marjorie Clapp’s. But there were surely
unescapable necessities in any plan of life which she might arrange.
Three meals a day and a servant and a certain amount of intercourse with
pleasant people. She knew that there were people who did without the
servant and took the three meals “out of the house,” but she could never
vision herself living as those people lived--without dignity and
eternally in disorder. “More of Aunt Caroline is coming out in me every
day,” she complained to Jim. “As I plan for the fall my mind almost
begins to run to West Park and a house with a stone dog.”

Maud had a deft way of talking trousseau too. Whether she was trying to
show Horatia certain impossibilities in life with Langley or whether her
sister’s availability for marriage brought out all the woman in her,
Horatia could not decide. But Maud had a way of showing her trousseau
linen and discussing ways of furnishing, and though Horatia laughed her
to scorn and said she would buy a dozen pequot sheets, half a dozen
pillow cases and two table cloths and let it go at that, none the less
the shimmer of damask and the alluring silks of window draperies
insinuated themselves into her consciousness and made her yearn just a
little sometimes for a little more ability to expand her own plans.

Not when she was with Jim. Then everything faded except the vast depths
of life with him. She told Mrs. Clapp something about Jim--subtly enough
as far as words go, if her eyes and the cadences of her voice had not
been absolutely revealing. They talked about love.

“There’s love--and love--and love,” said Marjorie, “and each of us loves
his or her own kind of love. I’ve known people who found greatest
delight in giving up things for the people they care about. I’ve known
others whose joy was in possession of the person loved--and there are
people who love by sharing and having children and people who think that
they are enough to one another in themselves and that children would be
an interference and a hindrance. Some people want one thing and some
another and some people want enduring things and some want the fun of
transitory things. I’ve never been one of the people who like roses just
because they are perishable. I’m all for things that last, myself. But
I’m willing to admit the other kind of people.

“Peter and I,” went on Marjorie, “just looked at each other and saw
babies--as the old women say--in each other’s eyes. I don’t mean that we
married to have babies, you know. Not as crude as that. But that was the
end of our love. We wanted to see each other in little new bodies and we
wanted to make a home for the babies and to give them everything good
and lovely. Because we loved each other. If we hadn’t happened to meet
each other we might have gone on forever without finding the right
thing. I think there is a right thing, you know, a thing for everyone.
Some people are born to be perpetually esthetic and some to keep the
great tide of emotion flowing strong through the world--and some are
meant to see babies and some to be good mental companions. The point is
to find out what you are suited for and to carry out your own job with
the right person. I was lucky.”

“Yes. And I’m going to be.”

“It would be an outrage if you weren’t,” said the older woman
admiringly.

She asked Jim out for the Sunday afternoon while Horatia was there, and
he came, but curiously, the visit seemed to bring out a vein of cynicism
in him that Horatia thought was permanently overlaid. He was brilliant
in his talk and gayer than Horatia had ever seen him in anyone’s
company, but in spite of his gayety she felt in him criticism of
everything he saw about him. He rallied Marjorie on having spread the
“flesh-pots of Egypt” before him, but he said it with a kind of laughing
scorn that angered Horatia though it made no apparent impression on
Marjorie. And Horatia found herself a little hurt and chilled that he
did not seem to appreciate the things which had been charming her so
much.

“Poor Jim,” said Marjorie astutely, to her husband, after their guests
had left and they sat together on the dusky terrace, “so terribly in
love with that girl and so awfully afraid that he won’t be able to give
her what she wants.”

“Are you playing a game for Anthony?” asked her husband.

“No--I’m not playing for Anthony. I’m playing for that girl. I’m not
sure where she belongs. And it’s tremendously important to get in the
right niche these days. Maybe it is Jim--but it would be tragic if it
weren’t. And Anthony cares such a lot. He has never cared before and
this is all in the right way. It’s so hard to see----”

Meanwhile Horatia was probing Jim.

“They live--beautifully--and it all makes a wonderful harmony.”

“So did nuns in cloisters.”

“But they aren’t cloistered.”

“In a way. They are removed from all earthly trials and they go on the
assumption that a thousand perfect individuals will be able to leaven
the world. They won’t. Nor ten thousand. The only thing that will leaven
the world is the effort of millions of imperfect people.”

“That’s true,” said Horatia, gravely.

He turned to her swiftly.

“Of course it’s true, but it’s not my criticism of them. My criticism
of them is bred in jealousy. Because they have all the things actual and
spiritual that lend to beauty. I want them for you and because I can’t
give them to you, I swagger around on my little dust heap and belittle
their mountain.”




CHAPTER XV


Rose Hubbell was spending the hottest of the hot weeks at Christmas
Lake. Christmas Lake was a summer resort--a hotel and its satellites,
plunged in a forest of pines and then made extremely accessible to
motorists by assiduous care of the roads. It was beautiful and
gay--entirely protected from any rough contacts with weather, and an
excellent golf course and tennis courts gave those who wanted exercise
opportunity, while no stigma fell upon those who preferred to dress for
tennis or golf without running any risk of soiling their clothes. A
great many unattached, wealthy people moved lazily about the lawns,
eating, drinking, watching, talking and finding the place entirely to
their liking. So did Rose Hubbell. Just enough of her story was known to
make her interesting and her prettiness and clever clothes added to the
interest in her. She was skillful enough to be docile before the elder
women and wise enough not to attempt to compete with the very young
ones. And by choosing her rôle carefully she drew around her both young
and old, the old pitying her and the younger ones admiring romance, as
she incarnated it for them.

She kept up, as always, her desultory correspondence with Langley. Her
letters to him were idle, half-caressing, half-mocking, and with an
occasional plaintive note. In late July she became rather unusually
plaintive. Why didn’t Jim come and rest a week at the Lake? She was
bored and alone. He must be tired. She had a motor at her disposal and
he knew what lovely drives there were around Christmas Lake. She wrote
on, saying that if he wanted to come and bring Horatia or if Horatia
wanted to come alone, she would play duenna gladly. And urged Horatia’s
coming further.

Jim usually pigeonholed Rose’s letters until she had written three or
four demanding an answer. Then he wrote very briefly. But he re-read
this letter and laid it down beside him, and several times in the day he
referred to it and sat thinking. Late in the afternoon he began an
answer.

“Dear Rose--It would be very pleasant to bring Horatia to Christmas Lake
and you have a way of making the place sound very cool and alluring. She
undoubtedly needs a rest and there are some shadows under those pines
that induce rest.” He stopped and from his smile he must have been
visioning Horatia in those blue shadows--with him, away from all her
relatives and friends and the subtle hostilities to her lover---- He did
no more work, but early in the evening went up the steps of the Williams
house looking young and jubilant.

There were guests and it was half an hour before he could get Horatia by
herself. They went out through Maud’s tiny formal garden to a deep
hammock and sat there. A million stars swung above them.

“I have a plan,” said Jim. “Will you let me kidnap you for a couple of
weeks? Bob can run the office for a little while and we could vacation
together.”

“You have only to throw me on your horse,” said Horatia. “I’ll be the
most willing lady you ever kidnapped. But where shall we go?”

“Just to a very large, conventional resort--do you see? But one that all
the money and nonsense and stupidity in the world hasn’t spoiled--where
there are lovely places to tell you how much I love you. To Christmas
Lake.”

“I’ve never been there. Everyone says that it’s heavenly. But, Jim,
isn’t that where Rose Hubbell is?”

“That’s one of the advantages,” said Jim, eagerly, and yet there was a
little damper on his eagerness even as he spoke. “She would be a sort of
chaperon--only we wouldn’t have to bother about her too much.”

“I see--did she suggest it?”

Jim began to fumble a little.

“She sort of--gave me the idea.”

Horatia was silent for a minute. She felt on dangerous ground and full
of a kind of protective pity for this lover of hers who seemed so oddly
unable to see the ridiculousness of what he proposed.

“Jim, do you remember telling me once that Rose Hubbell was dangerous?”

“I remember that I did, but I don’t feel quite that way about it now.
Rose likes you very much, you see--and she knows how I feel.”

This time there was real hurt in Horatia’s tone.

“You told her--that?”

He tried to recoup. “Only as much as your sister knows and your aunt.”

Horatia remained cruelly silent. When she spoke again her words reverted
to the subject in hand, but her tone was far more distant than they
justified.

“I don’t think Christmas Lake is quite practicable.”

Jim showed his hurt as his plans crashed to the ground.

“Just as you say, dear. I only suggested it because I was silly enough
to think we might play around together there a lot and have a real
rest.”

“But surely you don’t expect me to go under Rose Hubbell’s chaperonage,
Jim. Why, think, Jim--dozens of people know her whole history and----
Think how impossible it would be for me.”

“I didn’t count on seeing much of her, you see,” said poor Jim, trying
to defend not Rose Hubbell, but his own care and protection of Horatia.
“And she would have been just a nominal chaperon. But I see that I was a
fool. Just consider the suggestion cancelled, will you, darling? Put it
out of your head absolutely.”

He drew her close to him and may have been simple enough to fancy his
request had been granted. But thoughts were spinning madly around in
Horatia’s head. This outrageously silly plan of Jim’s seemed to clinch
the whole matter of Rose Hubbell. If Rose could make him believe that
such an arrangement was all right--that it was all right to take the
girl he was going to marry away under the chaperonage of a woman about
whom he had been the co-respondent in a divorce suit, she could make him
believe black was white. She felt older than Jim for once--responsible
for him. With an instinctive feminine reaction she refused to blame the
man. It was a matter between her and Mrs. Hubbell.

“Jim,” she said softly, “don’t you think the time has come for you to
give up Rose Hubbell?”

Jim started. “How on earth could I give her up? She’s nothing to me,
Horatia. Child, you surely don’t dream----”

The word “child” offended Horatia.

“No--of course I don’t think you are in love with her--or anything like
that. But I think she thinks she has a hold on you and that she intends
to play it for what it’s worth. She has a little proprietary air--and I
think she has an influence over you which you don’t realize and that for
your good you shouldn’t see her any more at all.”

The youth of Horatia, hurling such statements at any man and worst of
all at the man who wished to be especially fine and strong in her eyes!
She went on, a little flurried and feeling her way.

“Truly, I’m not jealous. I know you love me and I know that you’re not
flirting. But I don’t like to see that woman hang around you because she
has absolutely nothing to give you. From your own admission you see her
because you feel you have a duty towards her and that is no reason at
all. She is well able to look out for herself.”

“So am I, sweetheart.” That was the man in him.

Horatia did not agree.

“Let’s not quarrel about Rose Hubbell, please, darling,” he went on. “I
don’t give a copper what becomes of her. But she is an old acquaintance
and a perfectly harmless one. If you don’t like her you’ll never have to
see her again.”

“And would you go on seeing her?”

“Why, no, darling--not unless I couldn’t help it. I can’t go around the
block to avoid her--or cut her on the street.”

The slight impatience in his tone found immediate reflection in
Horatia’s answer.

“Don’t be silly, Jim. I’m not unreasonable or going to be unreasonable.
But I want to know where you stand with her and then we will drop it.”
She was pressing the point now partly because her pride wouldn’t let her
admit that she was being unreasonable or foolish and partly from sheer
womanly desire to break down the resistance in her lover. And because
she felt very near to tears her voice was hard and her figure tightened.
Jim took it as a repulse, but he became more serious.

“What is it you want, Horatia?”

“I want you to drop Rose Hubbell. Not go to see her. Tell her if
necessary that you are dropping her. It wouldn’t hurt her very much. Of
course I don’t mean that you’re not to speak to her, but don’t ask her
to dance when you are out places--don’t let her write to you. I want you
to promise me.”

The tears showed in her voice now and who knows what Jim would not have
been ready to promise if the word had not called out the memory of a
promise given just a few weeks before to Rose. She had pleaded just not
to be dropped. He had a clear memory of the whole conversation with her.

“Will you?” asked Horatia. “Truly it’s awfully hard to ask you. Won’t
you promise just that?”

She felt like a child begging for a favor and like a woman to whom
refusal would be outrage.

“Will it satisfy you, dear, if I promise to bear all this in mind and
never to offend you again?”

The reservation puzzled Horatia and piqued her.

“Why won’t you promise outright?”

“Frankly, dear, I can’t. I can’t give a promise like that. It might be
impossible to keep it without wounding Rose terribly.”

Horatia felt that she was wounded terribly. She turned her head away.

“Please,” begged Langley, “this is dreadful, Horatia. Can’t you trust
my love for you and forget it?”

Horatia was weeping frankly now. He tried to take her in his arms but
she drew away.

“Go away, Jim. Go home now. I want to think.”

“Let me sit here quietly while you think.”

“Please go--please.”

He took her hands and buried his face in them for a moment, his lips
against the soft palms. Then he went down the path and through the
garden gate.




CHAPTER XVI


To Horatia the affair was immensely serious, but, Langley’s attitude in
_The Journal_ office the next morning, though anxious, was not yet
gravely troubled. According to reason he should have been right, what
had jarred between him and Horatia was nothing after all, but in fact it
was Horatia who gauged the dangers of the situation correctly. What she
herself did not realize was that the episode about Mrs. Hubbell was one
which only added another fear and another doubt to the fears and doubts
which already had invaded her mind, unacknowledged. And these fears and
doubts were in the air of her generation. Her discovery about Grace had
perhaps begun the uncertainty. Tricked once into belief in a person and
deceived, she herself had learned to feel suspicion and fear. She had
learned that the men about her were not necessarily faithful to their
wives and try as she would to put the thought out of her mind it crept
back sometimes while she was talking to this man or that. Langley had
reassured her--had made her smile again--events had driven the memory of
Grace out of her mind--but the stain remained, corroding the faith and
beauty of her feeling for Jim more than she guessed. There had been the
doubts created by her fears about money matters and as to whether she
and Jim would be able to keep themselves orderly and happy on their
income. There had been the fear of the pain of marriage as she hovered
at the door of the little sick child in her sister’s house. These things
once accepted as the lot of woman became a problem now that they were a
choice and not a lot. Subtly too, the temptations of the luxury of the
life of the married women whom she met around Mrs. Clapp had dulled the
edge of her own desire to work after she married. And Horatia had found
no anchor philosophical or sociological. She was one of those who
drifted with people rather than with causes and it was a hard age into
which she had come to maturity. She could not like so many contemporary
women fling herself into a cause and put the cause (or pretend to put
it) before all personal life, and yet she could not, like her
grandmother, fling herself into the institution of matrimony and expect
the institution to solve her problems. Her faith in marriage with Jim
was a structure subtly undermined by the conditions surrounding her and
upheld only by one great and mighty prop--the prop of faith in Jim. Jim
would adjust the problem of how they should live--Jim would keep them
from stupidity and shabbiness--against the furtiveness of the married
scoundrel who sought illicit relations, Jim stood, magnificent in his
love for her. Everywhere he supported her, held her up, made her strong.
And then this had come, this little thing which had curiously grown into
a big thing. It was not that she feared Rose Hubbell as a rival. In
that she was quite honest. But she feared Jim. She feared herself if Jim
should seem weak, if he should appear to be the tool of a woman, if he
could be the prey of a conscienceless woman. What sort of weakness was
it to which she was looking for strength? The more she thought about it
the more reasonable her position seemed to her. There that dangerous
touch of feminine dogmatism absorbed at Maud’s came into play. She was
asking him to give up a meaningless relationship, to trust in her
judgment, to fulfill her desire. If he would not sacrifice a thing which
was worthless, if he would not trust her judgment, if he would not
fulfill her desire, either he had not been honest in telling of the
whole relationship between him and Rose Hubbell or he was a lover whose
love was only skin deep. To such a preposterous pitch of unconscious
arrogance had her feelings brought her. Those were sad days for Horatia.
She struggled for a week, while it grew steadily more hot in the city.
Frantically her mind circled on itself, seeking rest and peace. There
were times when it seemed that to turn to Jim and bury her head on his
shoulder would solve everything. But when she did that, as she sometimes
did, she found that it solved nothing--that she always began again on
her endless round of argument.

There came a day when she and Jim, sitting opposite each other in his
office after the rest had gone home, faced decision.

“You’ll wear out, Horatia. I can’t bear this. Won’t you please let the
matter drop?”

“It doesn’t drop me,” said poor Horatia. “It goes on to mount up to the
big question of whether you love me at all when you can let me suffer
so.”

“It’s bigger than this affair,” said Jim, “you’re right. If it were a
question of that promise only, perhaps I could find a way to make it
even if it involved abandoning a trust. But the thing is bigger. You ask
me to promise you something for which you’d despise me if I agreed.” She
began to protest, but he shook his head. “Not now, but ultimately. You
ask me to promise because you don’t trust me. If I gave that promise I’d
be less a man and you less a woman for forcing it. You see, dear, I
don’t quite satisfy you or make you confident. This promise would help
things for a bit. Then you’d find another difficulty in my
nature--another flaw to make you doubt and perhaps you’d want to bind
that too with promises. Rose Hubbell is no more to me than that blotter.
But I am something to myself in my relation to Rose Hubbell as well as
to the newsboy on the corner. And I must decide those relationships
myself because I am a man. If you want this promise it’s because you
fear the strength of my manhood--and that’s basic.”

He was so much older, so much wiser than the Horatia who, tired and
pale, hardly heeded his talk.

“Oh, I’m frightened,” she cried, “all this arguing! If this happened
afterwards----”

“I’d become a brute or you a shrew,” said Langley.

But what she had wanted was his denial that it would ever happen again.

“I’m afraid of you. You are hard and unyielding. You don’t bring me----”

“I don’t bring you rest or comfort,” he said bitterly. “But, my God, how
I long to, Horatia. Only I love you too much to bring you false rest or
comfort or to drug you with words. I too have come to fear myself. What
have I to give you----”

They sat drearily fatigued, the paper-strewn table between them.

Horatia made no protest; she was or thought she was full of questioning
herself. Yet what came next brought about in three breaths a vast
surprise; one moment what Langley was saying sounded like a natural
sequence, and the next all the values of life shifted, and they faced
each other in a new, strange, graceless world.

“I want you to go away for a rest,” said Jim. “Go away and forget all
this. Then if you never want to come back to me, it’s all right. But if
you should, Horatia, I’ll be here--I’ll always be here--always waiting,
always thankful for what you’ve done for me--what you’ve given me, and
always knowing that it was far, far more than I deserved.”

It was youth, inexperienced girlhood that disregarded the magnificence
of that appeal. Horatia was primitive, green enough to want to be
overcome--to want to be forced into surrender. That he did not force her
but left her path open seemed weakness--and something like coldness. An
older woman would have known that it was strength and rare devotion.

She was silent and in a turmoil within.

“Then you’ll give me up?” she asked at last, evenly enough.

“I’ll never give you up, but I’ll never imprison you.”

“It all is the same.” Horatia spoke out of a weary effort to keep
dignity, not to break down before the indifference of her lover.

The languor that was all he could have heard in her voice was hard on
him. Langley put his head on his hands and hid the agony in his face.

“I told you once that you loved the romance you found in me,” he said
without resentment. “Well, I’ve destroyed the romance. I’m just
ordinary, cheap, uninspiring. But I’m not going to make you ordinary or
cheap. There’s so much romance left for you to find.”

She stood up and struck her hands together angrily.

“Don’t mock at me.”

“For God’s sake, Horatia, I wasn’t mocking.”

“Let me go--I will go now. I’ll go--on my vacation.”

“Your vacation?”

“We’ll call it that. I’ll go for a month--two months. And if I can come
back, I’ll come. But I’m afraid.”

“My darling--my darling--if you can’t, you are to find happiness more
worthily.”

He took her in his arms hungrily, sacrificially. That should have told
her. But she was hungering for prohibitions, for demands upon her. There
was no warmth in her, and he let her go.

At the door she lingered.

“Can you get someone to fill my place?”

“Yes--don’t worry about that. Just rest.”

“I’ve been happy here.”

“You’ve brought life with you.”

The door closed after her. She went down the staircase slowly,
miserably.

Langley’s face was grey and old.




CHAPTER XVII


The blue of the lake had faded into grey--a grey that looked thick and
heavy and that lay impassive under the blasting sunlight. Its coolness
was gone and its vigor. Above, in _The Journal_ office, where the shades
were drawn down to keep out the heat, the vigor seemed gone too. The
machinery went on smoothly enough. At Horatia’s desk a young woman,
fresh from a New York school of journalism, was typing an excellent
article on what suffrage had done in the recent campaign. At the
surrounding desks the reporters struck off brief histories of automobile
accidents, police raids, city happenings. In Langley’s room, the pale
little stenographer took dictation as he walked up and down and worked
out his editorials. There were editorials on the street car franchise,
that hardy perennial in city problems, on the new appointment of the
city planning commission, on the latest foreign tangle, on the eternal
disentangling of the knot of political complications at Washington.
Clearcut and well-phrased, his words came on each subject, so that the
stenographer hurried to keep up with the flow of his thought, and yet
something intangible had gone out of his thinking as out of the office
atmosphere. The office was no longer a place of romance--an
adventure--a laboratory in which to solve world problems--a crusade
against corruption as it had been for the past six months. It was a
work-shop, a clean, orderly work-shop--and that was all. They all missed
Horatia. During the first week of her absence Bob Brotherton had a
maddening way of calling constant attention to it and bewailing it. He
needed her for this and for that and he said facetiously that there was
no use in sprucing himself up any more. No one cared for him and he
would wear old clothes until she came back.

Jim had not realized how much Horatia meant to the staff. His own
devotion to her had been so absorbing that he had not noticed the
relations of the others. Now a stream of comments about her seemed to be
floating about the office all day long. To excuse her outrageously long
and indefinite vacation he had been compelled to say that she was not
well and the staff felt a shadow over them. They were forever finding
things in the day’s work which would have amused Horatia, forever
recalling this or that incident which had amused her, forever wishing
she were back. Langley alone did not comment on her, but Bob would say
wisely when a particularly caustic comment came out of the inner office,
“He’s not himself. He misses the young lady. He’s a different man when
she’s around.”

With a great deal of wisdom he did not make that remark openly to
Langley.

_The Journal_ was prospering more and more. It was no longer a paper to
apologize for or worry about. It was getting a very substantial
circulation and more and more advertisers. Jim realized that this
success was due not only to the paper itself, but also to the fact that
there was coming to be a place for a clean paper in the city--that more
and more people liked their news straight and unadulterated and wanted
to read comment on the news with which they did not necessarily a priori
agree. He was stopped more and more often by old friends and urged to
come to the “house”; more and more often he found himself deferred to in
political discussions at the club as the judgment of last appeal. He
liked it all and he improved under it. He kept up scrupulously after
Horatia had gone as if to show her that he would not let her work be
wasted. Yet there was a change in him and in the quality of his vigor.
He was a man working for a principle and not an object, whereas before
he had been working for a principle and Horatia. The eagerness had gone
out of his eyes. Sometimes after the office was empty he would go into
the outer office and sitting at Horatia’s desk write her
letters--letters which left him sometimes pale and exhausted and
sometimes set and stern. But he had one invariable habit. He tore the
completed ink-written papers into tiny pieces and stuffed them into the
wastebasket before he left the office and went home. There was also
often a curious look on his face as he looked over his mail, and
sometimes he would lay an envelope carefully aside until everything
else had been attended to and then fall upon it as if he were famished.
The envelopes were rather more frequently present at first than later
after Horatia had left town.

In the hurt anger of her vacation’s first twelve hours she had quite
decided not to write to him at all. During the second twenty-four hours
she wrote ten letters and mailed one brief little note saying that she
was sorry if she had hurt him and that she wanted above all things not
to hurt his work or affect _The Journal_, stated where several of her
copy sheets had been left and urged him to take a vacation himself and
get a genuine rest. She ended by saying that Maud wanted her to go with
them to a country place near Lake Habitat and that she thought she
probably would go. Jim looked a little grim at that because Lake Habitat
was where the Wentworth cottage was and he knew Maud. But he read on to
her conclusion, a conclusion so honest, so sweet and so suffering that
the tears came into his eyes.

“It’s so hard, Jim. I feel empty and faint and I try to move about but I
seem like waxwork. Everything seems awfully mixed up in me. Nothing in
the world matters except you and yet we mustn’t fling ourselves blindly
into sentimental fervors if we really don’t belong together in every
way. I can’t write. Good-night--and God bless you.”

That was the last letter of such a kind that Jim received. The next one
was merely a note telling him that she was surely going with her sister
and giving her address in case her successor on _The Journal_ or Jim,
himself, should need her. It was a much more controlled note and of
course Jim did not know that it, like its predecessor, had been written
after much vain effort and tearing up of letter paper. There had been a
day when Horatia, who had been shopping in town alone, had almost gone
to _The Journal_ office. She hesitated and trying to gather resolution
went into a tea room and ordered some iced drink. The room was crowded
and another woman coming in sat down opposite her before they looked at
each other. It was Grace Walsh. With no change of color Grace rose, but
Horatia put out a detaining hand.

“Don’t move--please.”

“I’d like to stay if you don’t mind,” said Grace sincerely. “There are
one or two things I didn’t write you. My new companion in the flat is
quite anxious to stay on there. I suggested that you’d be undoubtedly
willing to sublet.”

“Gladly.”

“Are you still with your sister?”

“Yes--I’m going to the country with her tomorrow.”

“It’s your vacation, I suppose?”

It was very hard to dissemble before those calm, disillusioning, serious
eyes of Grace.

“A kind of vacation,” said Horatia, a little heavily.

A strange look came over Grace’s face--a look of anger, the look which a
mother has when her child is ill-treated.

“You’ve been suffering.” Without any ado of conscious readjustments they
passed from an attitude of armed neutrality to a disarmed, a benevolent
neutrality.

“Yes.”

“Some man--some damned man--no, don’t tell me--poor little
Horatia--won’t you believe me when I tell you none of them is worth it?
I wish to heaven that women would stop letting themselves suffer.
They’ve borne the emotional burdens long enough. Why shouldn’t we take
men as they take us--as part of the day’s work? Look here, Horatia,
you’re worth any ten men I ever saw. Don’t let them wear you down.”

“I’m not.”

“You look frazzled.”

“I thought you liked men,” said Horatia, irrelevantly, “and disliked
women.”

“I like men and I like women when they are individuals--but women in
relation to men are usually unspeakable--and men in relation to women
are vile. We need to stand alone, Horatia--to shake things off. To
feel--and to know when to stop feeling.”

“To stop feeling,” repeated Horatia.

Grace leaned over and put her hand on the other girl’s.

“It’s hard--but it can be done,” she said and there was almost a
mesmeric quality in her sure, slow voice.

“I think we do need to learn that,” agreed Horatia.

She rose to go.

“Some time when I’m a lot bigger and better and more controlled and not
so cheap, I want to talk with you, Grace,” she said; “I know you’re
right in lots of things but the addition of your ideas is wrong. The
grand total of your philosophy is wrong. It’s got to be wrong. I won’t
have it right. But we do need to learn to stop feeling.”

Grace’s look followed her with a queer yearning in it--her eyes seemed
to say that she had not finished all she wanted to say.

Horatia went out to the street. The incoherent conversation had checked
her desire to see Langley. It had given her a cue. She would stop
feeling. Instead of to _The Journal_ office she went to a large shop and
tried on hats before a many-sided mirror and was surprised to find
herself succeeding in her deliberate mental effort to get her mind away
from its pain. The hats interested her. Each one appeared to change her
character and she began to speculate on how she would like to change her
type during the summer with Maud and the Clapps and Wentworths. The
saleswoman brought her the kind of hats she usually ordered--large
sailors--plain wing-trimmed shapes, but Horatia laid them aside.

“That is the girl I am escaping from,” she said to herself, removing a
straight-brimmed gray sailor, and she pointed to one on a model. It was
of plain soft yellow chiffon and drooped a little about her face. Under
it she looked provocative, as if deliberately intending to charm.

She had never tried on such a hat before and she lingered before her
image in the mirror while the saleswoman poured out tributes.

“I’ll take it,” she said, and proceeded with unparalleled extravagance
to choose two more, one of black with soft waving feathers and one of
rose felt that crushed itself into different shapes on her head. Then,
urged by the saleswoman, who was gathering momentum, she bought a rose
sweater to wear with the rose hat, drew a check that half appalled and
half amused her and went home to Maud. Maud, receiving three hat boxes
next morning, was amazed and delighted. Evidently Horatia intended to
play the game. She pressed a yellow frock on Horatia which she insisted
was necessary to the well being of the yellow hat and mourned because
she herself could not wear yellow. Horatia was very gay. She pirouetted
in her hats before Harvey and to her amazement found that she was
shaking off her worries and her unhappiness. She wanted to go to the
country place and be still more happy. She insisted that unless they
made it decently gay there she wasn’t going to stay. And while Harvey
chuckled and Maud opened her eyes she danced upstairs to her room,
closed the door, flung the yellow hat in the corner and wept into Maud’s
Madeira counterpane, suddenly intolerably homesick for nothing in the
world so much as her typewriter in _The Journal_ office, the twinkle of
the lake under her window and the sound of Jim’s voice in the next room,
giving orders, telephoning, dictating.




CHAPTER XVIII


Anthony’s sister stood in her cool country living room, arranging her
flowers. There were a mass of them that she had brought in from the
rough-and-tumble garden by the cottage wall--hollyhocks, tall and pink
and already in their place in a green vase against the wall--cerise
cinnamon phlox, filling the air with their vivid fragrance, a riot of
nasturtiums of all colors, sweet peas whose pastel lavenders and pinks
were spoiled until Marjorie put them in a glass basket before a little
mirror, poppies, and deep orange African marigolds. Marjorie separated
them from each other and then reassembled them, mixing in now bachelors’
buttons with marigolds, and baby’s breath with poppies. She was quite
absorbed and her brother, lying on a cushion-piled settle, watched her
admiringly and for a few moments silently. When he spoke he seemed to be
taking up an interrupted conversation.

“You’re sure she is coming then?”

“Mrs. Williams told me so in town yesterday.”

“And you think that the skillful Maud was trying to hint that it was off
between Horatia and Jim Langley?”

“She had a saddened and romantic air about Horatia. I don’t know
exactly what she was trying to imply. But from a rather steady stream of
inquiries as to your whereabouts I was inclined to have vulgar
suspicions that she was really interested in you and your movements. And
then she said, ‘I suppose you know how it is, Mrs. Clapp, when these
young things turn to you with their romantic difficulties.’ And then she
giggled. How that remarkable young woman can giggle!” finished Marjorie.

Anthony sat puzzling.

“Of course Horatia doesn’t tell her a thing,” he said, “but that sort of
woman is astute as the devil in some ways. Well, if she comes down here,
Langley or no Langley, I’m going to go after her. If she wanted to marry
Langley badly enough she has had time enough to make sure by this time.
But it’s ridiculous to think of her wasting her time on one of these
awfully complicated intellectual emotional affairs if it’s not going to
come to anything. If she doesn’t want me she can tell me
again--stronger--to get to hell out--and I’ll get. But I’m going to get
the thing settled. I thought maybe I’d get over it when I got West. I
didn’t see a girl while I was out there who seemed real at all. And I’d
catch myself mooning. It’s unhealthy. It’s got to be stopped.”

“You want to remember,” said Marjorie, “that Horatia has had a hard
summer and that she will be tired. Don’t rush her too hard or she’ll go
to pieces or send you packing from sheer weariness.”

“I don’t mean to tire her. I want to rest her.” There was a strange
mixture of protectiveness and sullenness in Anthony’s tone.

“It’s all nonsense anyway,” he went on, “to think of her wearing herself
out in that miserable office. Girls oughtn’t to be allowed to knock
themselves to pieces that way. Where it’s necessary it’s bad enough but
when a girl----”

“Has only to sit back and let you support her,” laughed Marjorie.

“When a girl is like Horatia she’s altogether too valuable to throw
herself away for some fetish like earning a living. You know exactly
what I mean and you agree with me too, Marge.”

“It all depends on how much you can make her care for you.”

“I could make her care from sheer force of imitation if I could get this
Langley stuff out of her head.”

“Granted. But if she does happen to be in love with Langley?”

“He’s no person for her to marry.”

“You can’t do it by dogma, my dear.”

Anthony shook himself like an impatient puppy.

“Well, I’ll be damned if I don’t find some way to do it.”

“Love is queer,” reflected Marjorie, “in its effect on people. Now you
show it principally by a marked increase in profanity.”

Anthony grinned and left her.

The cottage stood well back from a road which wound itself around a
series of lakes and up steep hills into a district which was almost
mountainous. Anthony knew every foot of the country and loved it as well
as his cottage which had been the scene of so many pleasant parties,
both his own and Marjorie’s. It was the place above all which he would
have chosen for this biggest adventure of his life. The place which Maud
had taken was a few miles farther up the road but within easy distance.
There was every reason for Anthony’s contemplative smile as he swung
down the wooded road.

The Williams party arrived a few days later with some bustle. It was
Maud’s first venture into country residences and though it was on a
small scale it appealed to her immensely. Only her sudden acquaintance
with Marjorie Clapp had given her courage for the move, for the district
in the hills was a refuge for a society somewhat older and better
acquainted than Maud’s town crowd. She and Harvey had taken the children
away for the summer once before, but going to a summer hotel was a
different and incomparably insignificant thing beside the pride of
belonging to a genuine summer colony. She had asked Mrs. Clapp a little
diffidently about places in the hills and Mrs. Clapp had been
unexpectedly helpful--even giving her the name of a special cottage
which could probably be rented. An unpretentious little cottage enough
but pleasant to Maud because the Hilltons, the Straights, the Clapps and
the Morrises wore their ginghams and sun hats within a radius of ten
miles, pleasant to Jackie because he had been promised a rabbit,
pleasant to Harvey on account of a neighboring trout stream, and
pleasant to Horatia because the woods around it offered refuges and
solace.

Harvey took them up in the new stream line touring car which was the
outward sign of his increasing prosperity, and while Maud watched a road
map to be sure that Harvey would not miss the road which went by the
Country Club which the summer-people had built, Horatia sat with her arm
around a weary little Jack, breathing in the freshness of the woods with
their summer scents and thinking. She felt very old and disappointed and
disillusioned, and she thought with envy of the first time she had
driven over this road with Anthony in the winter, feeling so happy and
full of love for Jim. Maud poured out a steady stream of comment and
conjecture--and Horatia hardly listened, knowing that expression and not
attention was what Maud sought. She had never liked her sister so well
as she had during these past days. Maud had let her alone and asked no
questions. She seemed to be waking into a kind of appreciation of
Horatia’s feelings and Horatia was very grateful, entirely ignorant as
she was of Maud’s unrelinquished plans about Anthony. Horatia had just
thought of Anthony for the first time in weeks. She had thought of him
as the man who had driven the car when she had gone through these places
thinking of Jim, and first rejoicing in the happiness of love.

They reached their cottage and Maud was soon unpacking and opening the
house while the cook, imported lest life in the country become too
strenuous, began to prepare dinner. Horatia, bravely attired in her rose
sweater and hat, started out for a walk. She wanted to adjust her
thoughts and get perfectly calm, for she meant to be a gay companion and
not a doleful one.

Little leaf-covered paths wandered into the woods here and there. She
turned at random into them and went along, anxious to lose her
loneliness in the greater loneliness and friendliness of the forest. And
here, for the first time, she succeeded. The trees were motionless in
the still afternoon. Their branches curved and interlocked and made
great, cool, dark green shadows. The ferns stirred as she passed and she
heard the lazy chirping of some birds. It was deep and still and calm
and sure, so that in the midst of it Horatia became calm and sure for a
moment. She felt her ache for Jim’s presence pass, and for the first
time since she had gone from him there came a feeling that she was back
where she belonged. For the first time she felt awakened pleasure and
she stood very still, almost afraid to stir lest the peace that was
filling her should change to misery again. After a little she went on.
She did not want to go back to the cottage yet. Later she would be ready
for them but as yet she was ready only for herself.

And so Anthony came upon her--a bright bit of color in the midst of the
woods with her eyes shining with peace. At the sight of her he felt the
flush of his own face. It was all very well to be full of bravado before
Marjorie but in the presence of Horatia his confidence waned. Yet she
was clearly glad to see him.

“I heard you were West.”

“I came back last week and heard that your sister had taken the Warner
cottage. I was hoping you’d come out with her. Every month seems the
best out here but this one is especially nice. And there are wonderful
places to walk and ride. We have a swimming place and a very poor tennis
court----”

“I don’t think I shall like the tennis court half as well as just this.
I like your woods.”

“So do I,” answered Anthony with happy sympathy. “Let me show you a
finer place than this though. Deeper in.”

They went on until they came to a little clearing like a great room with
the trees interlocked above it. Along one side ran a tiny clear stream.

“But this is too perfect. This isn’t natural.”

“This is my room. I made it myself and furnished it by opening up the
stream. The bed was there for it but the water had been choked by a dam
of leaves. I cleared it out and now you see I have running water in my
room. That’s all I need.”

“It’s the most beautiful interior decoration I ever saw.”

“You shall have a key for that.”

He did not keep her. But he walked towards his sister’s cottage and
they came out in her garden. Horatia went into the house to see Marjorie
and the children. She felt curiously at home there, and Marjorie was so
very glad to see her that Horatia felt even more happy. She thought
suddenly that she could tell Marjorie a little about Jim, and that
Marjorie was the only person in the world to whom she could tell even a
little. But there was little time to think. Everyone wanted to plan
things to do and to arrange for many things. Then Anthony insisted that
he had walked her unconscionably far and to save her stiffness he must
take her home. She got into the car with delightful familiarity. Anthony
said never a personal word and if he thought them, Horatia did not
guess. She found him very handsome in his country khaki and even more
wholesome than ever. She was in a mood to yearn for wholesomeness.

Maud would have Anthony stay for dinner. Horatia found herself urging
him too and to her greater surprise found herself thoroughly
anticipating dinner. She had not been hungry for some time but
tonight----

“I’ve never seen Horatia eat so much,” said Anthony, “except on a
memorable evening at the Redtop Hotel.”

Banter and nonsense--healthy nonsense. How restful they were after
introspection and worry. How friendly and cheerful everyone was, and how
quiet and peaceful it was about them. Maud watched Anthony as she
crocheted a sweater for herself--Anthony watched Horatia--Harvey with a
secret amusement watched his wife and his sister-in-law, but Horatia
watched no one. She was revelling in peace. Jim was in her mind but no
longer torturing her. She thought of him as loving her and of herself as
loving him. No solutions of her difficulty came to her and she did not
look for any. She was content to be in the midst of life. It no longer
frightened her.

“Good-night,” said Anthony. “I’ll be over often. Look for me on the
doorstep every morning.”




CHAPTER XIX


Perhaps the modern substitute for the coquetry of the old-fashioned
woman before marriage is the introduction of “problems” into her
love-making. The man still courts--a little more discreetly than he used
to but much after the same plan--but whereas the woman of a generation
ago was supposed to lead him a whimsical chase, now giving, now
withdrawing her favor, refusing to admit her feelings, the typical woman
of today is apt to admit her feelings readily enough, but she preludes
her submission to them by the introduction of a host of “problems.”

Sometimes it is the problem of whether she wants to have children or
not--sometimes the question of giving up a separate, wage-earning
existence, sometimes a theory against the inequality of marital
concessions, sometimes this, sometimes that. But questions of this sort
have become such common experience that one wonders sometimes if the
whole thing is not a development of the old feminine practice of playing
with a man from behind a feather-fringed fan. Not that these women of
today consciously concoct their problems to trouble their lovers or
excite further ardor in them--far be it from the thoughts of most of
them to so illegitimately fan a man’s flame, and perhaps the whole
suggestion is unworthy and unfair. Still, so many girls have these
preliminary problems before they marry--so many courtships are painful,
harassed affairs these days--so many moonlit nights are spent in putting
questions which do not read, “Will you love me always?” but “Will I be
able to maintain my individuality?” or in the bewildering phrase of poor
Lady Harmon, “my autonomy,” that this dwelling upon mating problems
among women surely looks like a modern group movement. And no reflection
either on the honesty or fervor of contemporary women. The same doubts
stirring in their minds have always stirred in the minds of courted
women--doubts as to whether such happiness, such devoted love as comes
in the first fragrant period of love-making can endure and what will
happen if it does not endure? Formerly women teased their lovers for
assurances of perpetual love. The woman now, more wise, more honest,
more skeptical too, about perpetual love, puts a different face on her
questions. She asks--“And if this love does not turn out well, what
then? Shall I be wrecked? Can I maintain enough of my independence, of
my beauty and strength, to play the game through? Will this man be
grasping and demanding? Is love an exhilaration worthy of the submission
of my body and spirit?”

The woman of today is not miserly. She has no idea--not nearly so much
as her old-fashioned sister of doling out her love. She is a marvelous
spender. But she is not a spendthrift and she has had enough teaching in
the economics of life to demand value received. If love is worth while
she is capable of giving everything magnificently. If it is not, she
grudges giving, having put permanently behind her the theory that
woman’s lot is pitiful and one of resignation. And yet sometimes she
does give everything, knowing it is a gamble, just as the girl of the
old game gave everything often enough, even when her lover’s “love you
always” rang false in her ears.

Horatia’s problem, of course, might have been one of a dozen. The
incident of Mrs. Hubbell was analyzed rightly enough by Jim as being
merely illustrative of a lack of faith in him. She had neither complete
faith in him nor complete faith in marriage and her lack of faith was
entirely in consonance with her time. Mrs. Hubbell loomed large in her
mind while she was in the midst of her argument with Jim. But she was
not in the country for a week before she thought of her problem in terms
which almost eliminated Rose.

In the first flush of her love for Jim she had yielded to her
temperamental love for romance and to emotional wonder at finding
herself beloved and suddenly more important than ever before. But with
the approach of the great question of marriage she had found that her
mind began to question many things. She soon saw that what she was
facing was not a minor point of whether Jim was to see Rose Hubbell or
not, but whether her need of Jim and his of her was great enough to
supersede all doubts, all fears, all worries about marriage. Little by
little she postponed a final consideration of these questions. Life in
the country was easy enough but none the less full of events. There was
a great deal of lazy intercourse with people, a great deal of exercise,
motoring--and Horatia found that she was able to give herself up quite
happily to the enjoyment of natural beauty--fresh morning air, sunsets
on the little lake and green afternoons in the woods. She was not
ashamed of that. The sensations of beauty and the elevation of spirit
that came with it were so far from trivial that they justified her for
feeling happy so soon after her break with Jim. She withdrew a little
from the memories of his love into contemplation of the fact of it.

At this distance it was peaceful to think of his love and in this calmer
mood she did not question the depth of feeling of either of them. The
questions of outcomes she laid aside for the present and she moved
through this setting of natural beauty with heart and head held high.
Some time she would move to a solution--not yet. Of course she did not
realize how dangerous to her love for Jim all these distractions were
nor how dangerous her friends meant them to be. She never thought of
Anthony as a lover. A false step from him or Maud would have driven her
away in those first days, but Anthony’s attitude was perfect. He was the
admirable friend and companion just as Horatia had wished and just as
she had asked him to be. He established her confidence in him again.
They walked and rode and swam together. No excursion was complete
without Anthony.

And they grew very close to one another. There was one silver night when
they rode for endless hours under the moonlight--a white road stretching
forward over the hill-tops and luring them always farther. The lights
went out in the little villages and they became black and mysteriously
still.

“Dead little houses,” said Anthony, “why are people so silly as to sleep
inside them?”

He was full of life that night. Horatia was close to
him--still--happy--his machine quivered and sped under his touch and he
had all that he loved most in the world around him. Horatia’s own youth
woke in answer to this appetite for life which showed in the man’s firm,
vigorous handling of his wheel and the joyous lift of his head.

“Are you happy, Horatia?”

“Quite happy.” She was sincere. There were no problems or worries in her
head, the moment was enough.

“We get along pretty well,” said Anthony happily.

“Don’t we.”

Horatia never thought that Anthony might be making love to her. Love to
her was already couched in different terms. She liked his phrasing and
she liked him. He was such a human companion and they were alone before
such vastnesses that she found herself responding to the touch of his
shoulder. They were leaning back in the roadster, shoulders touching
lightly.

“Life’s queer, Anthony. When we expect to be happy we aren’t and when
you don’t expect it, it comes.”

“We don’t know when to expect it,” answered Anthony sagely.

He talked well that night and from that night on as she thought of her
future Horatia began to compare and contrast Anthony’s plan of life. On
this ride he left out most of his vehement, laughable sociology, and
talked of business. He had been fascinated, startled by the vast
machinery of moving grain across the world. The great scale on which it
was done thrilled him. “Feeding the world,” he said, with no great
humanitarian feeling but as if the magnificence of the act had gripped
his imagination. He was going to take charge of part of the business
after he had seen the eastern end of it.

“I thought you wanted to travel before you began work.”

“I’ve changed my mind. I want to be a man--a mature man soon--and a
mature man must have a job.”

Self-absorbed Horatia, who did not guess from those words of what else
he was thinking! But she did not trouble about Anthony much. She
generalized Anthony.

“Yes--we--all men and women must work.”

“Not women always and not as hard as men.”

Horatia waived the point. It was a nice gallantry, she thought. She was
not ready to work anyway, just yet.

They passed a strange light half hidden in the bushes just then, and
whatever else Anthony had meant to say was quite forgotten for the
moment. He was suddenly alert. Without a word he went into reverse and
backed up to the roadside.

“Stay where you are, Horatia,” he said briefly and decisively.

She leaned forward. He was beside the light and suddenly she saw what
Anthony had seen at once. It was an overturned roadster--its tail light
gleaming in the marshy grass. She saw Anthony peering around, then
bending. With a leap she was beside him and he gave her a quick,
appraising glance.

“When I lift,--pull.”

Amazingly she was pulling, pulling and brushing aside obstacles that
felt like the overturned paraphernalia of the car. She was pulling a
woman--a girl awkwardly thrown prostrate and still. And then they found
the man. Anthony seemed to know exactly what to do. He was almost
professional.

“We’ll leave him--it’s no use,” he said. “And carry her. Hold her in
your lap and I’ll drive. We can’t waste a minute.”

The inert body of the girl hung heavily over the side of the car and
Horatia’s lap.

“How far must we go?”

“Five or six miles. I saw the man’s letters--he seems to come from
there--Winchester.”

At the Winchester hospital they found after an anxious hour that the
girl was only stunned and bruised. She would be all right. She was
easily identified--a girl about town.

The young man seemed to be a person of prominence. An odd stiffness of
local scandal hung over the necessary inquiries. Evidently the
association of the man and girl was not discussible. The police notified
the man’s father and a party set out for the wreck with Anthony as
guide.

Horatia had a glimpse of a white, stricken, elderly man bending over the
body and heard him groan in horrified pain. There was nothing left for
them to do. They turned towards home.

“Poor devil,” said Anthony, “he’s gone and there’s an awful gap
somewhere. Because he wanted to be a bounder. Nice-looking fellow he
was, too.”

“Let’s get home quickly,” begged Horatia.

Anthony turned to look at her.

“Sorry it happened,” he said briefly, “but you were game, Horatia. Lord,
but you were game.”

She tried to smile and only succeeded in turning very faint.

“I never saw a dead person before except my mother, and I can’t remember
that.”

“You never----” Anthony stopped the car and put a quick arm about her
shoulders. “What a damned shame! Just rest--just forget it.”

From that night they were closer comrades than ever before. And it was
during the weeks that followed that Horatia found herself writing less
and less to Jim. It was very hard to write. She couldn’t put all she
wanted to say in one letter and she didn’t know whether he would
understand all the things she was thinking unless she wrote him very
fully. That could all come later, she told herself--now she wanted
strength and calmness. Nothing, according to Marjorie Clapp, was so
worth while as strength and health. And more and more she found Marjorie
and Anthony establishing standards by which she measured life.

They were so sure, and yet not sure as Maud was sure--with
aggressiveness and assertiveness. They did not try to decide everything
for everyone and they were slow of condemnation in most respects and
rather open to new beliefs.

“Have you no imperfections?” wailed Horatia to Marjorie.

Marjorie stared at her. “What have I been assuming?” she asked in
horror. “What sort of prig----”

“It’s because you don’t assume. Because you are modern without bragging
of it and conservative when it is for the safety of things. Because you
are actually getting somewhere.”

“Well,” said Marjorie, “one of my imperfections is that I fairly soak in
such talk about myself. I’ve been through the mill, Horatia. I’ve
wondered and puzzled and hated being called a reactionary. There was a
time when bobbing my hair and taking a lover instead of a husband seemed
the brave thing to do. And then I decided that it wasn’t, after all.
That it was my fear of being called stupid and not my conviction of what
was progress that was holding me back from the commonplaces of being a
wife and mother. Inwardly I approved of lots of things and outwardly I
was afraid to give in to them for fear of being ordinary. But I’m sure
now. I’ve burned my bridges. I want to give my children the best of the
old régime. The new régime will unavoidably make advances to them and
they may accept a lot of them. That’s all right too--the old and the new
make a fine blend. And I try to keep in touch with things so nothing
will shock or frighten me. Why are you so worried?”

“I’m not really, just now. I’m as content as a cat. But I suppose I
ought to know where I stand and as a matter of fact I don’t. I ought to
know what people I want to run with. I’ve seen a lot of kinds. And I
don’t really fit in anywhere. Someone told me that I was only fit to do
lip service to modernism, the other day. That bothered me. I had taken
it for granted that I was a modern. It seemed indecent not to be.”

“But you are. Anyone who sees you knows that you are carrying on into
the future.”

“This person didn’t think so.” And for the second time, omitting her
personal connection, Horatia told Grace’s story.

“Poor Grace,” said Marjorie.

“That’s just it. I didn’t feel ‘poor Grace.’ I felt
‘plague-stricken--unclean Grace.’ And it began in me a lot of
uncertainties. If she was like that--if marriage was as wretched and
unreliable as she claimed--where can I turn for faith? You help restore
faith but what if you are a shining exception?”

Anthony came in and stood against the door looking tall and immensely
confident. Perhaps Marjorie felt he was the answer to Horatia’s appeal.
Anyway she went away and sent them iced tea and sandwiches.




CHAPTER XX


At just what point Horatia realized that Anthony still loved her and
that his love could be called by no other name was quite cloudy in her
own mind. Perhaps her first intimation of it came that very afternoon
when he stood looking at her silently after Marjorie slipped away. It
was a very revealing look and Horatia would have been stupid indeed not
to have felt its quality. She pulled herself alert from the relaxed
position she had been indulging in on the cushioned settee and put her
hands laughingly to her disheveled hair.

“Please don’t embarrass me, Anthony. I know I’m tousled.”

“I love to look at you tousled. I love to look at you anyway and at any
time. It’s all----” he stopped and pulled her to her feet, retrieving
himself gaily. “Don’t bewitch me, young woman. Didn’t I get my orders
not to be in love with you?”

But there was a tense look in his eyes that set Horatia wondering.

Five months ago she had been filled with humiliation and actual distaste
by his declaration of love for her. Two months before, when she had
first come to the country, she would have been revolted and frightened
away. But the situation was changed. Anthony had grown to be a part of
her life. And he was more skilful than he had been in the spring. He was
very slow in his love-making, careful not to outrage her feelings,
careful not to ask for anything. By words sometimes, but more often by
the devotion of actions, by the constant protective care with which he
surrounded her, Horatia was brought into consciousness of his love. It
was easy for her because he asked for nothing. She could like him as
much as she pleased and take comfort in the hundred intangible
expressions of his love without feeling that she was involved in a love
affair. And Jim was not there and his letters were few and repressed in
tone. He was her lover--and she was his, thought Horatia, whether she
was disappointed or not. That was her promise, but it seemed one which
her mind insisted on rather than a conviction springing from the depth
of her heart.

Accepting the love-making of two men is often possible, even to a fine,
high-minded virtuous woman, if only fastidious ways save her from any
sense of promiscuity. Anthony’s first attack coming in the spring, when
Horatia was surrounded by the very present sense of Jim’s love, when she
was fresh from his arms, had made her feel indecent. But now, removed
from Jim, cooled and drawn little by little into a new atmosphere,
Anthony’s love filled her at first with a gentle regret and then little
by little, accepting his attentions and never finding the moment when
she was both able and willing to tell him that she did not want him to
care for her, there came to be a question about Anthony in her mind. It
was, for instance, difficult to say to him when he was folding a wrap
about her shoulders, “You must not be so considerate of me if your
consideration means that you love me.” Yet, accepting publicly a hundred
special attentions and thoughtfulnesses, seeing in Maud’s glances and in
Marjorie’s what they hoped and expected, the thing lost its repugnant
aspect. She could hardly feel that this devotion of Anthony’s which
everyone approved of and which was so gentle a thing, could be shameful,
especially when she was not reinforced by the expression of Jim’s love.
Sometimes an unpleasant thought rose in her mind, contrasting this
steady devotion, unreturned and unwelcomed, with the love of Jim which
circumstances seemed to have so easily defeated. Yet it was significant
that Anthony did not find a chance to make love to her openly and
fervently and that she kept him from any declaration. One thing she knew
very clearly--that she would hate to put Anthony definitely out of her
life and that the moment of doing so could be postponed. Her sister did
not plan to return until October. There was still a month before she
need face issues. If she dabbled sometimes in the thought of Anthony’s
life, that was only natural for he spread his plans before her. It would
be an orderly, progressive life, fine, easeful and not selfish so much
as concentrated on self-development.

“But Anthony, where does your duty to society come in?”

“In being a decent, useful citizen myself. Not in trying to pauperize
other people--or humiliate them. In voting right and standing right on
things--sounds awfully priggish, but really I suppose it’s summed up in
being an example as far as a very imperfect person can be, and in doing
my own job.”

“But somebody has to pioneer for the weak ones.” She was thinking of
Langley to whom it could never have occurred to be an example to society
but who worked unremittingly on the chance that he might reduce the
hypocrisy and selfishness and viciousness around him. It came to her
that Anthony’s method was infallible as far as it went and Jim’s
dangerously fallible and uncomfortable. Anthony would never have
anything to reproach himself with--Jim might have much. He was
answering.

“There wouldn’t be so many weak ones if everyone did his job and did it
right. The weak ones are the result of bad living and the ones who go
out to reform all this weakness--who are they?--old maids--unhealthy and
unhappy--freak men, abnormal in their living. I tell you the country
needs steadying, Horatia, and steadying by example, not by
speech-making.”

“And that method is self-preservation for you, of course--and comfort,”
said Horatia, a little caustically.

“Yes--of course. I think it should be. I think--I think it’s much more
sensible to preserve yourself, for you and all women to establish homes
and families and keep healthy instead of running around city streets and
city slums.”

Horatia chuckled. “You’re a divine advocate of woman’s place in the
home. You make it seem so tempting.”

The feeling in his face leapt into flame.

“Can I make it tempting enough?”

She drew away a little nervously.

“Oh, personally, I’ll always prefer the streets. I’m a natural born
gutter-pup.”

“You’re naturally the most wonderful woman in the world and you’re meant
for the truest and best things.”

“Don’t praise me, please, Anthony. I hate it.”

“Then don’t say such silly things.”

He walked up and down and then returned to her, still trying to plead
impersonally.

“I’m not a bully or a reactionary--I don’t want to run anybody’s life. I
don’t believe in this male superiority stuff either. And I’ve been with
you and Marjorie enough to have an enormous respect for women. She’s not
tied down. She’s the freest woman I know.”

“Yes, because she is doing what she wants to do.”

Gradually in this way a choice was placed before Horatia, a choice of
lives. She evaded the main issue, the issue which would ultimately make
choice for her--that must be which man drew her most. She compared lives
as if it were a problem in sociology she had before her. Anthony had
respected her desire to have him keep from definite questions but she
knew that he was laying his life before her. And she reviewed it. She
saw that she and Anthony together and others like them, mental
aristocrats, secure in material things, could take their places in a
society of flux and uncertainty, and be beacon lights of strength and
security, she as a woman, raising woman’s functions to fine dignity,
strong in love and content and purpose. She saw herself taking up the
burdens which other cheaper women laid down, dignifying a home and
wifehood and maternity.

And on the other side stretched life with Jim, a life of puzzles,
inquiries, unsolved problems, a life among the problems of the world,
solving them not by keeping unsullied but by enduring with them, by
growing weary and impatient and often arriving at no solution. And the
domestic side of life with Jim would be a life without great regularity
or great certainty of ease--how could she fit Jim into domestic routine
and how could she fit in these strange friends of Jim’s whom he refused
to give up, into a life of dignity and order? Even against his protests,
the work would call her back to it and she would have to adjust her
wifehood and child-bearing to all this--and there would never be enough
money so that they could live in the careless ease which took money for
granted. Jim’s side seemed to suffer in comparison with the other life
and yet why was it that she did not make a decision against it and put
it out of her mind?

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, “you must 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 easy familiar
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 on _The
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 the newspaper 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.”




CHAPTER XXI


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 to
_The Journal_ office 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 queerly for
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 many
questions. 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 is hard 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 found them. 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. But the 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 going to 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.




CHAPTER XXII


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 a disagreeable 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 her apartment 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 might have 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.




CHAPTER XXIII


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 he was 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 vivaciousness and 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 her like 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 yearning in 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. She was
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 to _The Journal_ if 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.




CHAPTER XXIV


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 to _The Journal_
office 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--how stupidly 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 cunning thing 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. Indirectly it’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 the buildings 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.”




CHAPTER XXV


Below _The Journal_ office the lake was engaged on its evening’s
business. Great freighters, with lighted ends throwing their vast
lengths into black relief, moved in dignity across the harbor, past the
red, revolving lights into the lake. Excursion steamers, brightly lit
from top to bottom, looking like moving palaces in the distance, sailed
out with their load of pleasure seekers, and little tugs steamed out
cheerily to welcome the great boats which would return to harbor that
night. Jim watched it as he had watched it so many nights when he was
alone. He would rather be here where there was a sense of Horatia’s
presence than go home to the lonely rooms which held the things which he
had hoped to share with her. He stood quietly before the window, his
face saddened as it had looked since the day he read Jack Hubbell’s
letter and his eyes were fixed on the moving lake before him as if he
drew from it some comfort or strength. He did not hear the steps on the
stairs, but another listener would have noticed how eager they were and
wondered at the pause before the door. It opened quietly but Jim did not
turn. Then he became conscious that someone was looking at him from the
door of his room. He turned and saw Horatia. She stood with her eyes
upon him as if she were asking something. And for a moment each was
stilled by the rush of emotions that the other roused. Then Jim knew
what her question was and with his answer came into his own at last. No
longer hesitant, no longer fearful, he seemed to know that she had come
back to him, needing him as he needed her, seeking his embrace. He held
her close, strong and jealous, and she was content. The resignation in
his face had turned to a burning hunger.

“You came back to me!”

“I came back to see if you’d have me.”

But he would have no such humility. He did not want humility.

“I’ll never let you go again. You’ve had your chance. It’s been hell,
Horatia. I’ll never let you go.”

She settled into his arms, gently, happily.

“And I was all wrong,” he went on; “I treated you badly. Rose Hubbell is
a criminal--she’s bad. When I found out I wanted to come to tell you but
I wasn’t sure you’d want me. I’ll never see her again of course.”

“Hush--no promises. I know better than that now. We don’t need to hold
each other by promises. We have love. It holds us.”

“We have love.”

He was strong, sure as she had never seen him in his love-making.

“We’ll be married tomorrow--tomorrow. I can’t wait any longer, darling,”
he whispered and bent to kiss her.

“Tomorrow,” she breathed exultantly, with a welcome of tomorrow alight
in her eyes.


Typographical errors corrected by the etext transcriber:

repuation any=> reputation any {pg 37}

you young Wentwoth=> you young Wentworth {pg 71}

curious apparation=> curious apparition {pg 74}

suggestd going=> suggested going {pg 92}

never wantd=> never wanted {pg 128}

fiat definite tones=> flat definite tones {pg 162}

In the afternon=> In the afternoon {pg 261}






        
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