When she awoke it was daylight and the telephone was ringing in the distance. She heard the maid answer, heard Dick take the call on his extension. He was home then. He must have come in after half past two. The murmur of his voice was indistinct. She lay there feeling as if she had been beaten; physically tired from the strain of the night before. The children were being dressed in the nursery. She wondered what the inefficient woman in the kitchen was doing, but the routine did not stir her to action as it usually did.
She heard Dick still telephoning. A sick feeling at the thought of meeting him came over her. Would he come in or would he appear at breakfast,—cold, condemning, unjust?
He came in. She braced herself a little, but there was no need. He came swiftly over to her and stood looking down at her, his face troubled, pale. She had not guessed that he would feel like that.
“Cecily, I’ve got to tell you something dreadful. Are you going to be game—brave, darling?”
He was in love with Fliss; he was going to go away from her. She sat up, her hand against her throat to keep back the scream which she felt might come.
Dick sat down beside her and went straight through it.
“Last night Walter found me at the Club. He had a garbled telegram and we spent hours trying to get at the facts. When I came in you were asleep and I wanted you to get the sleep so that you could bear this better.”
“This—this?”
“Darling, your father wired that your mother died of pneumonia at seven o’clock last night.”
CHAPTER XX
MRS. WALTER WARNER, in the most elaborate of mourning clothes, ordered from New York, still held sway in her mother-in-law’s house. It seemed probable that she always would be there now. Since his wife’s death, Mr. Warner had come to “depend” on Walter, and if depending on Walter meant inoculating himself to the elaborate black and white (mostly white) of Walter’s wife’s costumes and enduring Della at his table, apparently he was able to put up with that too. Della was nice to him. She said to her friends that she meant to be “nice to poor old Mr. Warner,” and proceeded to take charge of his house, enlarge his bills and with the immense insolence that was hers also began to take to herself considerable credit for doing so.
It was two months since her mother’s death and for the first time Cecily felt able to begin the task of looking over her mother’s personal possessions. Mr. Warner had given few directions, expressed few wishes, but on that point he had been explicit.
He had closed and locked his wife’s room and said to Cecily, in giving her the key to the room and to the little safe in it—“I have taken the few things from it that I wish to have remind me of her. I have not opened the safe. The things there and the other things are yours and Dorothea’s. And, of course, Cecily, you are no less my daughter. You and the boys are to share equally in my estate, which was also your mother’s.”
“Not now—please,” answered Cecily. “I’ll go over the things when I can.”
As Della said to Walter, it wasn’t as if Cecily could possibly wear all that jewelry herself. It seemed a kind of waste. Walter gave her one of the looks which he had learned how to give her when he was disgusted, and she tossed her head and reserved her comments for her more intimate woman friends.
So on this bright May morning Cecily sat in her mother’s room on the little hassock by her mother’s chaise longue and looked about her at the objects that had become freighted with memory, wondering just what her mother’s inward life had been, where it had hurt her most, what she had loved most.
The lovely gowns in their chintz wrappers each brought a pang of pain. She could see her mother in them—lovely, gracious, charming, every one—and now they could no longer be given life. They were empty, meaningless decorations. The softest satins—the dresses which “looked like her mother”—she laid away in a deep mahogany chest. They were to be for Dorothea some day to carry her the spirit of a past. The dressing table fittings she would take, too, and the little objects around the room that her mother had loved to look at. She would hang that head of the Madonna, which her mother had found in Italy, at the foot of her own bed. It was a long, sad task for Cecily, but with flashes of comfort. She had the sense of being close to her mother again.
At last she opened the little wall safe which her mother had had constructed. The red jewel case of velvet was there with all but the few jewels which Mrs. Warner had worn in California and which already had been given to Cecily, to Della’s disgust. There was her mother’s pearl necklace which Mr. Warner had given her; the diamonds which had been the gifts of birthdays and anniversaries; the odd, exquisite things which Mrs. Warner had brought for beauty’s sake; other jewels, too, which Cecily had never seen; that other wedding ring, engraved with name and date. It gave her a stir at her heart. That wedding ring had meant her—Cecily.
A cabinet photograph of her father—handsome, queerly out of fashion. She pondered the photograph. There was a look of her little Leslie, named after Mr. Warner. Strange to have Mr. Warner’s name carried on through this child who looked so much like Allgate Moore.
Envelopes with baby pictures of herself, that brought the tears to her eyes. Letters. Letters which must have been written from her father to her mother. Yes. She had kept those, then. She had wanted to preserve, even through the pain, these letters which must have been letters of love from her father. Even through the disappointment and the infidelities. It did not occur to Cecily to read them. She took them to her mother’s little fireplace and burned them there. They had no meaning now to any one alive.
There were other pictures; a funny antiquated kodak picture of herself held by her father and with her mother smiling at them. They looked so happy! It hadn’t been all tragedy. She picked up a ring which she knew her father had given her mother. She could remember that her mother had worn it when she was a child and that she had loved to twist it on her mother’s finger. It was a deep sapphire in a low odd setting of dull gold. Cecily slipped it on her own finger.
“In memory of the happiness you gave my mother,” she said to the handsome, smiling picture of Allgate Moore.
There was a knock on the closed door and Della entered forthwith.
“Nearly time for lunch, Cecily. How are you coming on? Is there anything I can do to help you?” She spoke as if Cecily were packing a trunk.
“No, thank you, Della.”
“Can I see?”
There was no proper reason for refusal, but it was hard to let her see. Hastily selecting those souvenirs of the first marriage of her mother, Cecily pushed the collection of other jewelry over to Della. Della gasped.
“What a lot! Are those real pearls? And you get everything! Of course you’re awfully sad, Cecily, but you certainly are a lucky girl to get all these lovely things.”
Cecily did not answer.
“It’s funny your mother didn’t make a will. She was awfully nice to me always. I guess she was glad to have me take Walter in hand and get him out of any wild ways. Mrs. Allenby was saying the other day——”
“Was saying something about my mother?”
“Oh, I forgot you don’t like her very well. I guess she’s hardly your type. She’s so gay. But she’s awfully well liked and even if her family doesn’t amount to much she always admits it. I was so surprised the night you told everybody that her cousin was your cook. Ellen’s back with you, isn’t she? Fliss isn’t hiding it, anyway. She tells it in such a funny way.”
Cecily could imagine that. She could guess how Fliss’s sharp tongue could make ridicule of Cecily out of the fact that Cecily had tried to ridicule her.
“Walter and I were at her house the other night——”
“Surely, Della, you aren’t going out yet; you’re in mourning!”
“I can’t absolutely stop seeing every one, can I?” said Della petulantly. “Of course you have to remember that I was cheated out of a lot of things; and I was a bride and all and just beginning to be entertained for.”
“Doesn’t father——”
“He never says a word. No, I think he’s glad to see Walter and me having a little fun. I just told Walter that I felt that his first duty was to me.” She stopped and bridled. “Of course, it’s your own business, Cecily, but I think you’re making a mistake.”
The lift of irony was in Cecily’s voice. “I am?”
“Well, a man likes a good time and I should think Dick would get awfully tired sitting around so much. Fliss says that when she first knew him——”
“I can’t see any point to this kind of talk,” said Cecily, rising. “Did you say that lunch was ready?”
She looked a little dowdy—felt a little dowdy beside the blond completeness of Della. A disgust of all fashionable dress for mourning had made her rather deliberately choose clothes that were not only not in fashion, but which were somewhat clumsy. And she had cried a great deal and her eyes were heavy and sad. Beautiful as she was, she excited no envy in Della, except in so far as she possessed those jewels. Della knew what to envy.
Cecily’s house was becoming a refuge for her. She felt it that afternoon as she went back to it. The two eldest children were out in the garden with their nurse, where the lilacs were beginning to bloom and the early green of spring was so exciting and alluring. It cheered even Cecily’s rather dark mood. Spring and healthy children and a home with Dick; what was it she lacked—why was it that she and Dick lacked anything? It ought to be right—it ought to be perfect; and it wasn’t right and it wasn’t perfect. Was Dick cheap, or she deficient in charm? Was the clamor of light living and noise eternally to make their home discordant? She would make it right. With her and the children, with a gayety that was not tawdry; yes, for Dick she would lighten her period of mourning. She looked back on her one talk with her mother about herself and Dick and felt that her mother would want her to make a concession to him. He had been so wonderfully kind during those first weeks. It was only lately that he had seemed restless again and surely it must be possible to swing back again to the beauty of those first years together.
She found no opening.
Dick had gone to Matthew’s house for dinner, so he telephoned. “We didn’t get through in time at the office,” he explained, “and I thought I’d drop off here and finish what I wanted to take up with him. Children all right?”
“Quite.” She hung up the receiver. It would have been just as easy to come home, but he didn’t want to come especially. He wanted to go to Matthew’s house. She sat through her dinner, which seemed perfectly tasteless.
That night she waited up for Dick, conscious that it was not what he would wish. He came in humming a little. She tried to look casual and succeeded in looking tragic—so tragic that the blithe smile on his face faded quickly into an annoyed concern.
“What’s up?”
“Nothing. I just thought I’d read a while.”
“You should be in bed. It’s nearly midnight.”
“I know.”
“Sure nothing’s wrong?”
“No.”
He turned to go up the staircase, but she caught him back with a little cry.
“Dick, why aren’t we like we used to be?”
He looked at her almost with dislike. “Isn’t it late for psychological discussion? What do you mean?”
She faced him with the question which was clamoring in her mind, tugging at her heart all the time.
“Dick—do you love me?”
It jarred on him unspeakably—this forcing of emotion.
“Isn’t that rather an unnecessary question?”
“I’m afraid it isn’t.”
“I wish you wouldn’t be so high strung all the time, Cecily. I realize you’ve had a bad time lately; in fact, it seems to me you’ve had a bad time ever since we were married. But it does wear on me—this atmosphere of tragedy.”
“Then why must we have it? It wasn’t like that when we were first married.”
He took an impatient turn up and down the room.
“No. But you can’t maintain a honeymoon attitude all your life, my dear. I don’t suppose we feel the same way towards each other as we did then.”
That hurt. “But why don’t we?”
“Why, we’re older; people’s emotions cool naturally.”
“But they shouldn’t if they love one another.”
“There you go, you see. You want to have everything your way. You want to force things. You don’t let life be natural, Cecily. You’re too romantic.”
The tears in her eyes only irritated him. He went on, thinking that it might be as well to have it out with her.
“I don’t want to be unkind, but you have the most artificial view of things sometimes. You can’t tolerate any thing or person that isn’t on a pedestal.”
“No, it isn’t that, Dick. I just hate to see things slip into cheapness.”
“But almost everything normal to you is cheap.”
“No! All I want is to have you love me and the children—be content with us.”
“You’re quite absurd, Cecily. I love the children as much as any man could. If it’s hard to love you it’s because you scare me off by frowning upon every harmless diversion—by wanting to shut us up together. That isn’t the way people live nowadays. Marriage isn’t prison. The trouble with us is that we aren’t congenial in our pursuits. You like one kind of thing. I like another. And you won’t admit my kind of thing at all.”
“I don’t want marriage to be prison, but if marriage is anything surely it’s the concentration of two people on making a home and bringing up their children.” She couldn’t add love.
“It’s a lot more than that nowadays, Cecily. I suppose that used to be all that was expected of a woman—having her children and keeping her house clean. Now things have broadened. Men need more, ask more; so do most women.”
“I suppose,” said Cecily, coldly, “what you mean is that men want a lot of noise and dissipation and promiscuous flirtations, and that they expect their wives to tolerate and join them in such things.”
The scorn in her voice drove Dick on. “Well, perhaps the woman who is willing to do that gets away with marriage better than the woman who clings to an outworn domesticity. I know your scorn of Della—and of girls like Della and Fliss. We aren’t any happier than Fliss and Matthew, or Della and Walter.”
Cecily became purely instinctive. She burst into tears and tried to talk through them.
“Then the fact that I have three children and they have none doesn’t make any difference to you?”
“The children are beside the point. I’m glad we have them; so are you. But you can’t justify everything, excuse all unhappiness, swallow yourself up, even in children. For God’s sake be reasonable, Cecily. Stick to the point at issue.”
But she couldn’t. She lost her case, sadly undeveloped as it was, by her rapidly mounting hysteria. It ended by her being put to bed, being soothed by Dick, assured of things which he didn’t mean in his heart and which she knew he didn’t mean—by the sleep of exhaustion and day of shamed apology which followed for both of them.
CHAPTER XXI
IT could not last too long after that, but they ran the whole gamut of possible moods. There were times when the antagonism between them seemed to one or the other so intangible, so imaginary as to be ludicrous; days when the air seemed cleared of dissension and unhappiness; any incident could alter the whole shape of things for them. Some new delight in the progress of the children, some anniversary which it seemed too cruel to let pass in anger, would make them both happy. But they never quite relaxed, never quite felt faith in each other. And the most trivial thing could upset their balance—a fancied slight, a casual statement which was translated into a criticism. On their guard constantly, neither of them felt peace.
The days were absorbing for Dick just at this time, too. In July Matthew had unexpectedly yielded to the pressure upon him to become a candidate for United States Senator to fill the unexpired term of the incumbent who had just died. He had refused many political honors and opportunities before, but this time the political situation looked so black that he could not justify refusal. He knew his usefulness well in a state where blind conservatism and dangerous dissatisfaction were in constant ferment; and his acquaintance and high standing among all kinds of men made his nomination fairly certain. But his decision left Dick alone and depressed. It was not that he did not approve of Matthew’s action, but that they had come to depend upon each other more and more in business. They had worked out the development of the mines together lately. With Matthew away for even a part of the year, responsibility would fall very heavily on Dick, and things were far from satisfactory. A spreading sense of loneliness encompassed Dick. He tried to satisfy himself in the children, but an hour’s play with them, refreshing and delightful as it was, did not give him all he sought or all he needed. Gradually there came silent moods in which he spent most of his hours of relaxation and which were only broken by a plunge into business or into the midst of some noisy party at which Cecily might or might not join him. It did not matter whether she did or not. He was tied to the sense of her instinctive criticism of many of the things he liked and she to her sense of failure.
They were both much interested in Matthew’s campaign. That gave them something to talk about and something to focus a mutual interest upon. But Cecily was suffering even more from a fear of Matthew’s departure than was Dick. Since her mother had died, she, like Dick, had been lonely, but that did not help them to find refuge in each other. Matthew and, curiously enough, Ellen, were the only people in whom Cecily felt there was comprehension of her and approval. She had one conversation with Mother Fénelon when she and Dick reached the breaking point.
“There’s no reason for this,” said Mother Fénelon. “You are a good woman and your husband is a good man. You have duties to each other.”
“Virtue and duties are the least part of marriage to-day, Mother Fénelon. You can’t manage with just those things. You have to use the modern methods. It’s a science to-day to have a husband.”
“Marriage is what it always has been.”
“I’m afraid not. It’s altered with the jazz band and the servant problem and the ‘keep young’ crusade.”
There was more, but to no purpose. The break came immediately after Matthew’s election. Reaction helped perhaps, as did the fact that little by little every one had come to guess that the young Harrisons were unhappy and Della and Madeline and others had come to give Cecily advice.
“You’ve humiliated me beyond all decency,” Cecily told Dick bitterly. “There’s no dignity, no privacy left between us.”
“Then I’d better go,” answered Dick.
She weakened then, but it was all useless and in her mind she knew that Dick must go, that they could not keep on this rending life, which was exhausting them both. Dick went to his club. He wanted to leave the city, but with Matthew’s departure imminent he couldn’t. And with Dick’s definite action bruited about, the young Harrisons became the favorite topic for discussion—discussion which carried its probing back to tales of the first unhappy marriage of Mrs. Warner and made strange and foolish deductions.
Mr. Warner, after listening for an hour to Della, who brought the news home and philosophized extempore on just what Cecily’s mistake had been, took his hat and proceeded to Cecily’s house. It was the day on which the few personal effects which Dick needed had left the house. She met her stepfather in the living-room, rising from a dusky corner where she was sitting with her hands in her lap, strangely idle. The soft white silk of her dress was hardly whiter than her face.
Mr. Warner put his hat and cane down slowly and went towards her, taking both her hands.
“My poor Cecily.”
She did not show any sign of collapse or tears. It seemed to him that she was broken, but the impression did not come from her appearance or her voice.
“Dick thought he’d better go.”
He sat down and tapped on the arms of his chair, an old man habit that had come over him lately.
“Do you want a divorce from Dick, Cecily?”
“Not now. Neither of us wants that now. We’re too—raw.” She shuddered.
“And you’re going to live here alone?”
“Here, with the children.”
“How is Dick going to do without the children?”
“I think he can. He can’t bear living with me for the sake of them and I must have them.”
“Ah, Cecily, this won’t last. You and Dick are a pair of naughty children. I’ve a notion to go down to the club and bring him home by the ear.”
Cecily stiffened. “Promise me you won’t do anything like that! Don’t make it begin all over again now. We’ve tried and tried, and we can’t.”
“But what is it? Is this nonsense Della talks about Dick’s wanting to go out more and your refusing the actual reason you’ve dared to break up your home?”
“That’s what people will say,” answered Cecily, “but of course that’s just a symptom of what’s the matter with us. The trouble is that we don’t think marriage means the same thing; we don’t mean the same thing by it. And every outward expression of my idea jars on him—and his on me. We’ve become angry and furtive and quarrelsome and condemning.”
“And yet I’ll bet you will be reconciled within a month. Perhaps sooner. It may be that this little separation is just what you both need to straighten out all this trouble.”
“Reconciled! Reconciled!” repeated Cecily. “We’ve been reconciled a dozen times in the past year. No, father, that won’t do it.”
He sat silent for a while and she watched from the window in a strange, still way.
“It’s not right nor necessary. I wish your mother were here.”
“I wouldn’t like her to see me a failure,” said Cecily with that note of complete depression.
“Don’t be foolish. You’re not a failure. How could any one with three fine, husky children be a failure?”
“It’s not enough to make success.”
She rose after a little and offered him a cigar.
“Some Dick left.”
“He’ll be back after them,” said Mr. Warner.
She smiled, but it was a tragic little smile.
“You’ll have to smile better than that for the children.”
“I will—for them.”
“Then why not for Dick?”
“Dick doesn’t care for me.”
“Dick does.”
She gave the dreariest little gesture of negation.
“You and your mother are curiously alike, Cecily.”
“No.”
“I have often wondered,” he went on ruminatively after a moment, “if there wasn’t something of a case for Allgate Moore. Of course he treated your mother badly. She never even told me about it, but we all knew. After I married your mother—and I was an older man with somewhat cool judgments, my share of discretion and years of experience—I wondered about him sometimes. Because I had a hard time understanding your mother and a hard time being good to her.”
“But you were good to her.”
“After I had learned how; after I had studied and planned how, so that I might not shock her or frighten her or disgust her or hurt her. You are like her—fastidious, delicate minded, not delicate only in mood, but delicate always. You like fine things and beautiful things. So do most men, but most men like other things too. Your mother could not tolerate in any one what was unbeautiful or coarse—many human things.”
“But she could, for she told me to be tolerant.”
Mr. Warner moved a little in the shadow which had fallen on his chair.
“That’s what I taught her,—what I tried to teach her so that contacts would not be too hard for her.”
“What if contacts are hard? Isn’t it better to preserve truth, to live according to beauty—not to be cheap? I know how silly, how common it all sounds, will sound; the things they will say about Dick and me. But it isn’t true that trivialities have made the trouble. It’s big things, basic things. I don’t want to compromise with an age that seems all wrong in its standards. I can’t bear to form myself on people like Della and Fliss.”
“It wouldn’t do you any good to try that,” said Mr. Warner with a chuckle, “but I wish, my dear, that your humor was a little nearer the surface and that it could come to your assistance when you are unhappy as well as when you are happy.”
“It’s queer about that. I can only see things black and white—happy or sad. It’s a great drawback. Sometimes I try to pretend, but it’s always so easy to see through my pretense.”
Mr. Warner was pursuing his previous line of thought.
“You and your mother are such women as foster the ideals men have about women—if they have any—making ideals for the home which every man treasures or respects. But it’s hard for men to live by their ideals alone and you demand that.”
“I don’t understand it at all,” said Cecily, wearily, “why an effort to keep things close to the ideal men promise you before they marry you should end in failure.”
“If it is failure; but I don’t believe it is. I don’t think you’ve hit the real reason for it. Cecily, is there any third person involved in this?”
“Woman, you mean?”
He nodded.
“Not in the way you mean. We disagree awfully over one woman whom Dick admires,—Fliss Allenby.”
“He’s not in love with her.”
“No. That makes it all the worse. If he were you could understand his taking up her defense every time a criticism of her is made. But as a matter of fact he prefers even her—for whom he doesn’t care and whom I can remember his scorning when I first took her up after we were married—to me. He prefers almost anything to me.”
“Don’t get bitter, Cecily.”
“I didn’t know what that word meant except abstractly seven years ago. Now it seems to express me.”
“Nonsense. Turn on the lights, my dear. We’re too gloomy.”
The conversation became more practical.
“Have you made any money arrangement with Dick?”
“I don’t want any money from Dick. If he’s not living with me, I don’t want his money. I couldn’t bear to touch it.”
“That’s quixotic, my dear, but if you won’t take his, you must let me help.”
“I’ve a little of my own, you know,” said Cecily.
“As I remember, very little.”
“Three thousand a year. Lots of people live on that.”
“How much have you and Dick been spending?”
“About twenty-five thousand. But that was with cars and all sorts of luxuries. We’ll just do without those and I won’t need new clothes for a long time, nor will the children.”
“Well, we’ll have to do without them. Or maybe I could earn some money. Anyway I will not touch Dick’s money and I won’t take yours either, father, please. I couldn’t let you support me—and Della.”
“Cecily!”
“That was horrid, wasn’t it? Well, please let me get along as best I can. Let me be honest with myself.”
“You are making it so hard for Dick.”
“Yes. He seemed to take that part much harder than any other. It was the only thing that really seemed to worry him—not to be able to salve things over with money. If he sends me money, I shall send it back.”
Mr. Warner rose.
“I’m going now, my dear. I can’t tell you how sorry I am about this or how convinced I am that it won’t last. I want you to let me help you. I want to come and talk to you now and then.”
“Yes, please do that. I shall be lonely once in a while,” she said bravely.
“You don’t mind all the silly talk?”
Cecily shrugged. “I shan’t hear it. No, I don’t think I do, except for Dick a little.”
“Would you like to go away for the rest of the year?”
“I thought of that, but it doesn’t seem wise to take the children away just now. And that, too, would be expensive.”
Mr. Warner went down the street slowly, tapping the darkened pavement with his cane.
“I don’t care to discuss it, Fliss. It’s none of our business.”
“I hope not,” said Fliss.
Matthew frowned at her and she laughed at him.
“You should see the frantic interest of people whose business it most certainly is not.”
“That’s easy to imagine,” he answered. “But I don’t care to be in their class.”
She went on, “Cecily, you know, who has been really not of paramount interest to any one lately, is now the real center of thought. Why she did and why he didn’t and what was the matter and how long it has been going on and if Dick’s stenographer is really involved or if it’s Cecily’s iceman——”
“Spare me that stuff, Fliss.”
“I haven’t been spared. I’ve had it all day. But seriously, Matthew, what is the matter with that fool girl? Why doesn’t she appreciate what she’s got?”
“Does he appreciate what he’s got?”
“United States Senator judicial temperament bound to see both sides. Well, why doesn’t some one open both the kittens’ eyes if they can’t appreciate each other?”
He turned to look at her. “You’re pleased about all this, aren’t you?”
“Well, perhaps just a little satisfied in my heart. Cecily made me the butt of the town for weeks with that Ellen stuff. Do you blame me for a little human nature?”
“I don’t blame you for anything, Fliss. I accept you.”
“And Cecily?”
“I said that was none of our business.”
“Then why spend so long composing notes to her last night?”
He looked at her accusingly.
“In the wastebasket, my dear. I don’t always go over it, but I was so interested. Evidently you hadn’t gone very far with any of the notes.”
“Once in a while I think that nothing but a spanking, Fliss——”
“Wife-beater!”
“I’ll write my notes downtown after this, you know.”
“I suppose so. I’ll have to bribe the janitor to save me the wastebaskets. Well, if you won’t talk about Cecily, let’s talk about Washington. I get a little weak in the knees when I think of all I’ll have to learn. I don’t mean to get too many clothes, either. But the ones I do get——”
“I was wondering if I hadn’t better go on alone at first. I could get a bit adjusted and I can’t see how you can leave your mother.”
Her face clouded. “I know, Matthew. I seem a heartless brute, but there’s nothing I can do; and she gets so irritated at me now; and whenever I go there and try to do anything she and Mrs. Ellis are hobnobbing over horrors in that dreadful way and everything is so awful. Matthew, don’t leave me with them!”
“Why, no, you’d have your own house. It would only be for a little while. But I’ll take you if you want to go so badly. I do get a little sorry for your father. He’s——”
“But I tell you there’s nothing I can do for him. I have tried! But I can’t sit through endless hours of moving pictures and silence.”
“Well, dear, you can’t help if you feel like that. It is probably true you could do nothing.”
“Where are you going to-night?”
“Going to work unless you need me.”
“No, I told Polly Angell that I thought you couldn’t come to dinner and she asked me to come anyway. She found an extra man.”
“Ames?”
Fliss nodded.
“You ought to leave him alone. What do you get out of it?”
But she parried his question with a laugh. “Well, you told me that you wouldn’t make love to me. I have to have some one.”
“Run along—and behave yourself.”
She left his room and going down to the library, picked up the Washington evening papers, turning to the page which gave the social news. Over that she bent a puckered brow, studying names.
BOOK THREE
CHAPTER XXII
THERE was no doubt that at the start the break meant peace to Cecily. That was what surprised her so much. She had tortured herself in advance with the thought of those nervous stresses which she imagined would follow Dick’s leaving. But they did not materialize. There were a few very bad nights at first. Then came a sleep of exhaustion and after that a night when to her surprise she slept naturally and although, when she woke, the sick feeling of impending trouble and past trouble was still upon her, she was rested. There were hours of choking hysteria when it took more courage than she had ever guessed she had to keep from seeking Dick out, begging him to come back—on any terms—only to relieve the terrible loneliness without him. Days when she felt strangely light and queer and at the end of things as if the emptiness of her soul were swallowing her up; days when the sight of her own strange, strainedly sad eyes and thin face horrified her. The physical pain and exhaustion which went with the mental struggle seemed sometimes unbearable. The children looked strange and seemed remote at times. And yet, little by little, usage, duties, routine began to pull her back to normal. Her emotions wore themselves out battering against her resistance and she commenced to live again.
Half life, she told herself, without sparkle, with no joy, but none the less ordered. She commenced to read a little and the ability to focus her mind on an impersonal situation came back. Reading was almost her only diversion. The few people whom she saw at her own home were her only companions and the only two of those who gave her real companionship were her stepfather and Agatha Ward, whose literary modernism had a kind of solace in it because it grouped her case with so many others. Not that she talked about her trouble to Agatha, but Agatha talked of life and of strange, new, shifting points of view to her. If Agatha had a point of approach to all the currents of life other than that of analysis she never showed it. Under her touch Cecily was able now and then to depersonalize herself, see herself as a “case”—as a situation created by the turmoil of modern things—and it invariably gave her some comfort. The moments of intellectual broadening did not last, but they helped.
Matthew she had not seen. He had written her a note which was brief and careful, asking her if there was anything that he could do for her and she had replied briefly:
“Nothing, thank you, Matthew. There is nothing for any one to do except be sorry for the fact that we are not always brave and wise. Come to see me when you can. Talking to you always helps me. Faithfully yours, Cecily Harrison.”
Matthew read that note again and again and then, not putting it into his pocket, perhaps for fear of the mocking eye of Fliss, he tore it across and dropped it thoughtfully into the wastebasket. He did not go to see her at once.
So with the routine, the care of the house and the increasingly interesting children, a month wore on. At the end of the month a letter from Dick came, enclosing a check for her usual allowance. She sent it back with a note which she tried to make not too curt, reiterating that she must live on her own money and that she had plenty. Then she went into her own room and there, with her check book and a pencil, made various budgets to figure out just how she could manage to cut her expenses to a fourth of their usual amount. That, it appeared, must be done—or if not she would have to take money from Dick or her stepfather. She wouldn’t do that, she was resolved. The decision not to take Dick’s money helped her self-respect enormously. If he was not to live with her she was not going to be supported by him. Dick’s incensed, insulted arguments on that point—that he had a right to support his children and that she had no right to prevent him—made no impression on the fixity of her decision.
“I couldn’t do it, Dick,” she told him, as they were trying to have a “calm” discussion a few days before he went. “Don’t you see that it would be shameful? You’re getting nothing from me—nothing from the children and there’s something in taking money from a man with whom you aren’t living that puts you in a sordid class.”
“But I did get so much—I did get everything——”
“You don’t owe anything for that; please don’t drag money into it, Dick. I couldn’t—I couldn’t ever take it. Love is a gift; children are a gift; you can’t settle for them in——”
“I’m not trying to,” cried Dick, “but don’t you see that for you and for them to get along without things that they have a right to have is ridiculous!”
But she was stubborn. She sent back his first check without an instant’s thought of changing her position, although expenses already were beginning to trouble her. That strength which her mother had known was in her had already begun to bolster up her actions and her resolves.
“Do you think that if I did the upstairs work and took all the care of the children we could get along with just you and a laundress? Now that the family is smaller and since we shall be very quiet we might be able to manage it, don’t you think so?”
“I’d be glad,” said Ellen. “There’s not so much work as there used to be and now that you are taking so much care of the babies those nurses have time heavy on their hands.”
So the nurse and the housemaid problem was solved for Cecily by her getting along without them and the extra activity which was necessary for her helped her to fill many hours which might have been terribly disconsolate. That saved a hundred dollars a month for her.
She scraped her budget closer and closer. Cards from exclusive shops showing children’s clothes or gowns for herself went into the wastebasket. She went to the public library instead of to the booksellers for her books. Yet, in spite of all she tried to do and all she actually did accomplish she could not cut far enough to make her little income cover expenses. She was running behind at the end of the first month. Recalculations made her do a little better for a week after that. Then the baby had a week’s illness of no particular seriousness, but Cecily found herself confronting a presumable bill from the child specialist which would throw her budget into chaos again. She used the thousand dollars her father had given her for Christmas to bring her checking account up to normal and that exhausted her cash reserves.
There was a certain interest and pleasure in working it out, however. Work was almost her only refuge and it was one which she sought with redoubled interest and comfort constantly.
The mind which had been latent for so long began to develop as it was trained upon real problems and as she made herself independent, her own protector and her own refuge.
The moments when she was panic-stricken for want of a refuge—when she needed Dick or her mother to solve things, to smooth life over—became fewer and fewer. It amazed her to find how dependent she had been, to see how many things Dick had taken off her hands. That he still wanted to do them she knew, for there were rather pathetic attempts to pay garage bills; a watchdog was presented to her by her father, but she somehow guessed from the phrasing of the note that came with it that it had been Dick’s thought and that her father wanted her to know it. Such things hurt. It wasn’t that it made her feel more hopeful about herself and Dick. But she usually wanted to feel that Dick was happy and benefited by leaving her, and such things made her wonder. Then in the bitter, contradictory hours when she did not want him to be happy and when the resentment at the wreck of her own happiness scourged her, she was angry that he should attempt even anonymous courtesies.
After a little the moods grew less bitter. But one bitterness never grew less. The sight of such frivolities as had wrecked Dick and herself, the mention of them, the sight of the people involved in them—could always bring back a rush of poison through her mind. That had cut her off completely from Della. Her mother’s house had changed. It was no longer the spacious, comfortable, somewhat quiet house of Mrs. Warner’s planning, at least not to Cecily, though a casual observer would have noticed few changes. Della had pervaded the house with herself. At first Cecily made a protest here and there, but her protests were against trifles and it was impossible to explain to her stepfather or to Walter why little things like irregular hours for meals, like the careless and indiscriminate use of linens (Della could not waste her time over a lot of sheets and pillow-cases, she said), were a violation of her mother’s spirit. Cecily felt that the men thought her trivial and she soon came seldom to the house now ruled by Della, except to bring the children to see Mr. Warner. Walter and she were rather definitely estranged. She came in one morning at eleven o’clock to find Walter eating breakfast in a bathrobe, weary, red-eyed and unshaven. He explained crossly and with an aggressive note of defense that they had been up until all hours. Cecily was silent and her glance as she looked at him and the disordered breakfast room was only discouraged, but it must have shamed Walter into bravado.
She was standing there when Della came in. Della was wearing an extravagant negligee and looking untidy, but delightfully pretty. At sight of Cecily she threw up her hands.
“Good Heavens, Cecily, this is no morning for you to drop in and catch us at our worst. We’ll shock her, Walter. Now don’t you scold him, Cecily. He was tired and I let him sleep.”
She settled down on the arm of Walter’s chair and he pushed back from the table, pulling her down into his arms. Disheveled and laughingly protesting, Della let him hold her. Cecily turned away, trying to be light.
“Too domestic a party for me. I only wanted to see if I could find the second volume of a novel father lent me. I’ll hunt for it?”
“Go ahead. Try his room if it isn’t in the library.”
Cecily left them and with the closing of the door, Della settled herself more comfortably.
“I think we really shocked her, dearie.”
“Nonsense,” said Walter, looking down at the bundle of lace and ribbons which should have been so alluring. “Nonsense.” He passed a hand over his chin and kissed her without much interest. “Get up, honey; I’ve got to get dressed.”
It was such little things which isolated Cecily. She did not go to her father’s house again for weeks. She was apologetic for being a drawback and yet she could not enter into so many of the things the others made their habits. The knowledge, too, that Della felt that Cecily had made a mess of things and that all her sympathies were with Dick kept her away. The thought of Della as her critic was intolerable to her pride.
Shut off from her own family, she was equally shut off from Dick’s mother. Mrs. Harrison had been away at the time of the actual break and she was humiliated by it all. Most seriously of all was she hurt by the fact that Dick had gone to his club and not home to her. When he did come to her he absolutely refused to discuss the situation. So Mrs. Harrison went to Cecily and found it equally hard to get information from her.
“You’re the talk of the town—you and Dick—and both of you mute. What is the trouble? Has Dick been misbehaving himself?”
“No,” answered Cecily. “No, indeed, Mrs. Harrison. It is just that we don’t seem very happy and I thought—we hoped it would be better for us if we separated.”
“But without a reason!”
“We don’t agree about marriage. It’s so impossible to explain.”
“Is this stuff I hear about your refusing to go into society true? Or is it true that Dick is enamored of this Mrs. Allenby?”
That struck fire. “It is quite true that Dick and I did not agree about the kind of society we cared to enter. What there is in any feeling for Mrs. Allenby is really for Dick to say, Mrs. Harrison.”
“It’s ridiculous. He’s not in love with that young woman.”
“He prefers her type of woman to what he calls the domestic type,” answered Cecily coldly. There was nothing in this little woman, so annoyed about scandal, to excite any pity or kindly feeling in her at all.
Mrs. Harrison rose, tapping her fingers nervously on her bag.
“It’s an extremely unfortunate situation. I would be prepared to give you every support, Cecily, if I believed that Dick had misbehaved himself at all. But if you have thrown him over, broken up his home for the sake of a—a theory, it is one of the most cruel and unnecessary things I have ever heard of. Men are men. They demand a little amusement. If you refuse to allow him that you must expect——”
“Please, Mrs. Harrison. There’s nothing to be gained by all this, surely.”
The little woman drove off, her angry, alert little head looking straight ahead through the window of her limousine.
“Didn’t Grandmother Harrison bring me anything?” asked Dorothea, running in a little too late to speak to her grandmother.
“Not to-day, dear. She was in a hurry.”
“She nearly always does,” said Dorothea, with some disappointment.
Cecily regarded her daughter with some worry as she climbed up to see if she could catch a glimpse of the departing car from the window. She often wondered how she was going to explain all this to the children. Would they understand or would they, like Della, blame her, or, like Mrs. Harrison and her father, think she was foolish?
“But I didn’t do it,” she protested to herself. “It was Dick who insisted. I couldn’t keep him from going. Unless I was willing to throw everything in life which seems worth while to me into the discard. Everything that is worth while to anybody. The standards of life that must be maintained.” She thought of Della, a mass of provocative lingerie. She did not want this sturdy little figure in blue linen to grow up to be like that. If one had to give up everything to prevent Dorothea’s becoming like that, it was worth it. The extravagance of her conclusions did not strike her as false just then. She topped her sacrifice with some self-glorification, and taking Dorothea out into the garden, played with her until dinner time.
But in the empty evening she found the self-glory fading. She was alone. She had failed.
CHAPTER XXIII
MRS. HORTON’S death came just before the time when Matthew had planned to leave for Washington. A succession of complications had hastened it. Three days before it came, Fliss knew that it was imminent and she spent those days sitting beside her mother for long periods, her face white and drawn, but her courage sustained as it always was in a crisis.
Death seemed on no great errand here in this shabby little flat, breaking no heart, effecting no terrible cleavage. Yet the solemnity of the struggle was not altered by the fact that it was only a commonplace, middle-aged woman who was fighting for the chance to keep on going to the moving pictures, gossiping, living in trivialities. Death, disregarding human gradations of importance, was choosing this soul gravely, solemnly. And Fliss, shivering a little by her mother’s bed, watched and learned, and perhaps in her quick, practical way got a firmer grip on life from this first intimacy with death.
She would have nothing to do with the funeral arrangements. Until the end she had stayed by her mother, but after it was over and her mother was gone, Ellen and Mrs. Ellis managed the details of burial. Mr. Horton remained unobtrusive. Vaguely encouraging his wife, he had also stayed beside her and she had turned to him rather than to Fliss. Later he went out and bought a box of red carnations, giving them to Ellen to arrange near his wife.
“She always liked carnations,” he said.
Fliss was very gentle to him and very anxious to make him comfortable, but it was soon clear to every one that the boarding house where Mrs. Ellis lived and where a remnant of friends of his early married life still stayed was the best solution. He obviously preferred it so and Mrs. Ellis had him under her charge. In two weeks there was nothing left of the Horton household in the flat, and Fliss, her spirits rising in their characteristic way, made her plans for Washington and prepared to close her own house. She did not see much of Matthew now, for he was absorbed in work that kept him busy night and day. Much of it she knew was with Dick, but Dick did not come to her house. They had met once or twice in Matthew’s office when she had gone in to see her husband, but that was all. Dick had been carefully casual in his manner, and Fliss flippant as usual. To see the three of them together for those few moments would never have been to guess at the clashes and attractions which were between them.
If Fliss wondered whether Matthew had seen Cecily and deliberately kept herself from inquiring, she was rewarded by his asking her one night a week before their departure, “Shall we go to see Cecily for a moment to-night?”
Knowing what he wanted and expected, she answered as he would wish.
“Can’t. I have a caller. But you go.”
He said nothing more. After dinner, though she tried to detain him in spite of her permission, he went out early. Fliss frowned a little and then prepared to receive her caller.
Matthew went along swiftly like a man overcoming irresolution. He was walking instead of driving and the night air, full of the chill of early autumn, seemed to invigorate him. At Cecily’s house Ellen took his hat and told him that Mrs. Harrison was in. He had last seen Ellen at Mrs. Horton’s bedside.
“You fit in well here, Ellen,” he said, looking about at the quiet, spacious house which seemed too quiet. “I hope you’re planning to stay, now.”
“Yes, I am going to stay,” she answered. “Mrs. Harrison needs me.”
She turned to go, but on impulse he called her back.
“Ellen, if Mrs. Harrison ever needs me, if she ever needs a man and you know it, will you send me word? Mrs. Allenby and I are off to Washington next week.”
“Yes. That’s what Mr. Harrison asked me, too.”
She might have said more, but Cecily herself came down the staircase, a little surprised at the sight of her visitor. She held out both hands and drew him into the long living-room before the fire.
“I hoped you wouldn’t go away without coming to see me.”
“Of course not. How are you?”
All was casual. But they could not keep it up. After a little there was silence and as the silence ripened, they knew they could speak of anything.
“Things have changed since we first sat in this room, Matthew. When Dick used to sit over in that chair and we all used to talk about everything in the world. And since then have come wars and babies and now Dick’s gone. How is he, Matthew?”
“Pretty fit. A little thinner. Working hard.”
She paused for a moment, and then went on with a little laugh:
“I have so much to say that I can’t afford to be reflective. So much to ask. What is the matter with us all, Matthew?”
“I’ve tried to figure it out myself. You mean about you and Dick?”
“Why I failed.” He could see her hands pressing themselves together. “Why Dick stopped caring for me.”
“I don’t think he did.”
“Oh, yes. He didn’t care when he left. We had nothing left at all except memories. We jarred on each other all the time.”
“And has this been peace since you parted?”
“It has not been happiness or even satisfaction. I keep on expecting happiness right around the corner. Then I turn the corner and find loneliness.”
“If you and Dick could only get at the root of all this and dig it out.”
“We tried, but we couldn’t. There was no single root. It was just basic difference in ideals. He wasn’t with me in demanding greater dignity from life—does that sound foolish? And I was jealous of Fliss.”
“Not really, Cecily. That would be nonsense.”
“I didn’t suspect Dick of a love affair with Fliss, of course. But I couldn’t bear his admiration of her and of Della. I couldn’t bear to have him even tolerate them. It sounds small, Matthew, but I wanted him with me—with me completely. I couldn’t go on with him at all if we weren’t together. Yet now it isn’t peace; it’s quiet, that’s all. And I shall go on into middle age. I’m middle-aged now and I’m only twenty-six.”
Matthew leaned forward and took one of her hands gently, naturally.
“Do you know that Fliss is jealous of you?” he asked.
“Of me! Not any more!”
“Always will be. Because she knows that you have a part of men’s souls that she can never reach. I wouldn’t tell you this if I didn’t think you needed it. But when I asked Fliss to marry me she said I was in love with you. I wanted her to marry me. I wanted all her sparkle and charm and gayety. I needed it. So I told her. And she said I was in love with you; that she had read it in my face every time I looked at you. So finally I said that even admitting that and refusing to discuss it, I wanted her to marry me. And we have had a very good time together. But she knows that I always have carried about with me——”
“Don’t, Matthew.”
“I must, just once. I’m going away. I know that it isn’t going to hurt you or do me any good. But if you thought that there was the faintest chance that I could do you any good—help you at all with my love—I’d carry you off to-morrow.”
Then all the invisible little bonds which had grown between them in six years tightened suddenly and all Matthew’s repressions and evasions crumbled. For one moment bigger than all reason, he held her against his heart and as he bent his head to hers Cecily looked up at the man who understood her and thought with her and for her and she trusted herself to the comfort of his arms, while he said foolish, shaken things and broke off to press his lips into the soft hollow of her neck.
Then she drew away, but very, very gently.
“It’s a terrible confusion, isn’t it? There’s nothing for us; little for you and Fliss; and nothing for Dick and me. All our lives are tangled up together and we can’t straighten it out.”
The dream had not quite gone from Matthew’s eyes as he looked down at her soft, flushed cheeks and the waves of dark hair.
“You think we couldn’t, you and I, for each other?”
“I’ve three children, Matthew. I couldn’t start over.”
“I’d love the children. It would all be arranged so easily—so quickly. You’d not need to have the slightest embarrassment or pain. And to bring you happiness, Cecily—to keep you in the midst of the happiness you deserve and need—might be what only I could do. I’d try, dear.”
Cecily sat silent, her hands pressed against her face. Whether it was pity or hesitation or horror that she felt he could not tell. But to-night Matthew was not a philosopher, but a man with intense desires and hopes. He pressed his advantage.
“After it was settled we’d be able to go away—away to places you’ve never seen—we’d learn about the world together.”
He wanted to take her in his arms again, but she gave him no opportunity.
“It wouldn’t do,” she said swiftly. “I’m sure it wouldn’t do. Just for a moment, Matthew, you thought it would. But you and I couldn’t do that sort of thing and you know it as well as I do. We’re not the kind of persons who can build happiness out of wrongs.”
“But what are the wrongs?”
“Wrongs to Fliss and to Dick—even if we don’t think they’d care much. I’m sure, Matthew. There was a moment when I was doubtful about it, but I’m not doubtful any more. There are times, I suppose, when that sort of thing is justified—if a woman loves a man enough. But——”
He did not let her finish. “Don’t say it, Cecily. I know. But I’d rather not have you say it. Forget it all. For a moment while you were doubtful I sailed among the clouds. It was my big personal moment. Now I’m back on the earth and there I’ll stay. I’ll go to Washington and fumble around among the tangles of the country’s affairs and if I’m lucky perhaps I’ll untie some little knot in the great tangle. And I’ll be glad all the time that you are alive and that the world is enriched by you.”
“It will be so lonely without you. Even when I don’t see much of you, just to know that you are here is a comfort.”
“I’ll always be ready to come on demand, you know, Cecily. What I hope is that you can fight your way through this. You mustn’t expect things to clear perfectly and absolutely. The best any one of us gets is a ray of hope and enlightenment now and then. You may have to compromise—even if it hurts you. But you won’t have to compromise your ideals, Cecily—just the manner of putting them over.”
She had fallen back into her chair and sat there looking at the fire.
“I’m going now.”
Cecily made a bewildered gesture of protest. He turned to the door, but she sprang up, hurrying after him.
“It will be so terrible alone—again. Don’t go.”
Her hands were stretched out towards him in appeal and they faced each other trembling. Then Matthew’s voice came—unnatural, shaken:
“I can’t stay now, Cecily. It would only make you more wretched.”
She heard the door close and was alone in the warm, softly lit room, helplessly sobbing.
Matthew hurried along as if trying to escape from the thoughts or suggestions that pursued him. Through the darkened streets, choosing side streets for his progress, almost stumbling in his absorption, he walked for miles, apparently seeing nothing, all the keenness of observation that was usual with him obscured in his face. It was midnight when he reached his home, and entering softly, went upstairs. The light from Fliss’s room shone bright into the hallway. He was passing when she called him back.
“Late, aren’t you, Matthew?”
He stood silhouetted in her doorway, looking unkempt and worn. Fliss was at her dressing table brushing the luxuriant hair of which she was so proud. She looked at him curiously.
“Where on earth have you been to look like that?”
“Like what? I took a walk and it’s damp outside.”
“You certainly must have walked,” commented Fliss. “Sit down here and rest and talk to me.”
“I’m tired. I think I’ll go along to bed.”
“How’s Cecily?”
“Very fine.”
“Glad to see you.”
“She’s always cordial.”
“Not very expansive are you, darling? Well, sit down anyway. I want to tell you about my evening. I’ve had an exciting one.”
“Who was here?”
“Gordon.”
“That must have passed the time.”
“Gordon was very trying to-night. Excitable.”
He looked at her curiously as she brushed out the black, shining lengths. For the first time since he came in he seemed to see her as something other than an obstacle.
“What was he excitable about?”
“Me. He wanted me—to make love to me.”
“Oh, my God!” said Matthew, laughing as if the thing that amused him was not at all funny.
“Amused?”
“I was laughing at the foolishness of men, Fliss.”
“Not so foolish,” said Fliss, drily. “He was very much in earnest. And as it happens that he cares a lot I was almost tempted to pack my bag. What would you have done?”
“Gone after you.”
She looked around at him skeptically. “Well, anyway I didn’t run. I called that whole business off. Told him there was nothing doing at all. He won’t be back.”
“Why did you lead him such a dance, Fliss? He’s such a nice young fellow.”
“Well, you see”—Fliss contemplated her image in the glass—“I was doing my best to make you jealous. But you wouldn’t fall for it, old thing. Now tell me what you were doing. Trying to get Cecily to run off with you?”
At that random shot Matthew stiffened angrily. “Good-night.”
“So you won’t tell me about your escapades even if I tell you about mine?” said Fliss, imperturbably. But he had gone. She saw the face in her mirror lose its lightness and get hard and a little bitter. Then she brushed on. It was good for the hair.
Later he came in and kissed her and patted her head thoughtfully.
“I’ve been thinking, Fliss,” he said to her, “that since you are to be in Washington you need a few more things. Most of the women must have a lot more jewels than you have. How about coming down to-morrow and treating yourself?”