The collected stories of Elisabeth Sanxay Holding from Munsey's Magazine, 1920-1928

Vanity

MADELINE HOLLAND HAS A TRYING HOUR WHEN SHE SEES HER MIDDLE-AGED HUSBAND ATTRACTED BY A YOUNGER AND PRETTIER RIVAL

They looked at each other, and Joyce’s lip quivered, but Mrs. Holland still smiled.[Pg 409]

“I must bear this,” she told herself. “I must, and I can.”

She pulled the table close to the bedside, poured out a cup of coffee, and put cream and sugar into it, just as Joyce always liked it. Then she lifted the silver cover from the toast.

“Poor Hilda was so disappointed!” she said. “She wanted to bring the tray herself. Come now, my pet! There, there!”

Joyce’s eyes were still fixed upon her mother’s face.

“This won’t do!” said Mrs. Holland, and then, with that gracious gayety which so few were ever permitted to see in her, she tied a napkin about the girl’s neck and began to feed her—a spoonful of coffee, a bit of toast, a spoonful of coffee.

“Spoiled little thing!” she scolded. “Naughty little thing, when there’s so much to be done to-day!”

“I know it!” cried Joyce, sitting up straight. “Mother, what shall we do about old Mrs. Marriott’s candlesticks? When she comes and doesn’t see them with the other presents, she’ll be so frightfully hurt!”

“I found them last night in a hat box,” replied Mrs. Holland, laughing.

“And, mother, suppose the jeweler hasn’t got that new clasp ready?”

“Your father’s going there as soon as he has had breakfast. He told me to tell you that if that clasp isn’t ready, he’ll buy you another necklace.”

“But I want the one that daddy picked out! I—oh, mother!”

The girl stretched out her arms, with tears raining down her face; but for an instant Mrs. Holland did not respond. She stood motionless, with an odd, stony look, as if beyond measure affronted by those tears.

“Oh, no, no!” she cried in her heart. “How can I stand this?”

“Mother!”

She sat down on the edge of the bed, took her child in her arms, and stroked the ruffled head that lay against her breast.

“Don’t, my darling,” she said gently. “It’s not right. It’s not kind to Nick.”

“I c-can’t help it,” Joyce answered in a stifled voice. “You and daddy—my own darling people—”

“You must help it, my sweetheart. You’ve eaten nothing at all. I’m going to run your bath, now, and afterward Hilda will bring you some hot coffee and toast.”

She disengaged the clinging arms from about her neck, and took both the girl’s hands in her own. She looked steadfastly into her child’s face, and still smiled.

“Don’t be so naughty!” she said. “There! Sit up and read your letters until the bath’s run.”

The tiled bathroom was dazzling in the sunlight. The nickel fittings flashed like silver, and the water filling the tub was a wonderful translucent green.

“Mother!” Joyce called out. “Uncle Thomas has sent a check and an awfully sweet letter!”

Mrs. Holland pretended not to hear. She could not speak just then. She sat on the edge of the tub, staring down into the shimmering, greenish water, and even her child’s voice sounded very far away. The last moment was almost here. In a few hours Joyce would be gone.

“I must not spoil her day,” she thought. “I’ve got to be brave, just until she goes; and then—then I don’t care.”

The water had risen high enough. She turned off the tap and went back into the bedroom.

“All ready!” she said cheerfully. “Don’t dawdle, sweetheart.”

“I won’t, mother,” Joyce promised.

She had dried her tears, now. She was very grave, but quite composed.

“That’s exactly how she looked when she went to apologize to grandma for losing the family photographs,” thought Mrs. Holland. “She was a tiny girl, then, and she was wearing that funny little plaid dress. She doesn’t look any older now. She’s so young—so young!”

She crossed the room briskly, opened the door, smiled back over her shoulder, and stepped out into the dim, silent hall. It seemed to her that the house had grown terribly old, a pompous, dull old house. She went down the stairs slowly, for she was old, too. Her life was finished. Joyce was going away.

II

Hilda was serving breakfast in the basement dining room this morning, leaving the upper floor to the caterer’s men. That basement room had not been used since Joyce was a small girl and Mrs. Holland a young and very anxious mother. She had had no one to help her then except Hilda, and Hilda couldn’t be expected to go up and down stairs with the dishes.[Pg 410]

How different it had all been in those days—such a busy, eager sort of life, with herself and Hilda always doing something for the baby! She remembered other sunny mornings like this, and both of them in the kitchen, Hilda ironing little white dresses, while she prepared barley water for the precious bottles. Now there was a cook in the kitchen; a competent woman, but a trifle forbidding—a stranger, not a friend like Hilda. Everything was changed.

Frank was sitting at the table, a newspaper propped up before him.

“Oh, hello, Madeline!” he said with a vague sort of amiability. “How’s everything going, eh?”

“All right, thank you, Frank,” she replied, quietly.

As she sat down, he put aside the newspaper; but, after all, he found nothing to say. All he could think of this morning was Joyce, and he was afraid to mention her.

“Might upset Madeline,” he thought.

To be sure, it was a good many years since he had seen his wife at all upset. A quiet and dignified woman, she was, never at a loss; but this morning there was something about her that disquieted him.

“I remember how it used to be,” he thought, “when Joyce was a baby. That time when there was a blizzard, and the milkman didn’t come—Lord, she was almost wild! I had to go out in the storm to see what I could do. Couldn’t get milk anywhere, and I didn’t dare to go home and tell her so.”

He smiled a little at the memory of that very good-natured young husband, struggling through the blizzard in a vain search for milk. In the end he had gone to their family doctor. The doctor had laughed at him and told him to use condensed milk, and had written down directions on a piece of paper. Then Frank had gone home to find them all crying—Madeline and Hilda and the baby.

Mrs. Holland saw her husband’s smile, and it did not please her. It was so easy for Frank to smile, so easy for his nimble mind to turn away from anything disagreeable and go off upon another tack! She knew very well that his heart ached at the thought of losing Joyce. He had suffered and would suffer from that; but he could forget for a time, and she could not.

He had always been like that. There was gray in his hair, and he had grown much stouter—a big man, a handsome, jovial sort of Porthos, in place of the slender and romantic young fellow he had been; but he was changed in no other way. As he smiled, he had raised his hand to his mustache in a gesture that was familiar to her. It meant that something had amused him. He was not thinking about Joyce, because that would disturb him, and he did not like to be disturbed.

“Oh, life’s too short to worry!” he was fond of saying.

Sometimes the anxious young mother had found consolation in that debonair phrase, but to-day it seemed heartless and false. Life too short? It was the monstrous length of life that appalled her now. Twenty years more to her allotted span—twenty years, and they might be all empty, all useless.

Her divinely appointed work in the world had been to bear and to rear her child, and now it was done. Joyce was going away to a new life of her own in a distant city, and she no longer needed her mother. Nobody needed Madeline Holland any more—certainly not Frank. He loved her, but he was a remarkably independent creature, quite sufficient unto himself in his own cheerful fashion.

She looked across the table at him. He was a little downcast for the moment, but as he caught her eye he smiled. He had finished his breakfast. He rose, came round the table to her, and laid his hand on her shoulder.

“Well, old girl!” he said. “Here we are, eh? Day’s come at last! Thing is, she’s got a good man—fine fellow. She’ll be happy, eh?”

“Yes,” replied Mrs. Holland.

But her own words and her husband’s words had no meaning at all this morning. She had always hoped that Joyce would marry. Nick was a dear boy, and Joyce would be happy with him. If Joyce were happy, she, too, ought to be happy.

“Only—oh, I’m a selfish woman!” she thought. “A selfish, selfish woman! For I can’t be happy—not without my child, my baby, my one child. I don’t want to live without my child!”

Frank was speaking. She did not hear his words, for his voice sounded faint and far off, but she was grateful to him for his kindliness, and she looked up into his face with a smile.

He patted her shoulder.

“I know, old girl, I know,” he said.[Pg 411] “I’m sorry! Well, I’ll be off, now—some things to see about.”

She heard him go out of the room, and heard his heavy tread on the stairs. Halfway up the flight he stopped, and struck a match, and the scent of tobacco smoke drifted down to her. He had “things to see about”—he had his business, his many friends, his club. His life would go on as usual, but hers was ended. Her work was done.

She got up and crossed the room to the battered old high chair that had been Joyce’s. For a moment she thought she would sink on her knees before it, press her lips against the rung where scuffling little feet had worn away the paint, close her eyes, and let the black and bitter tide of pain close over her head; but the hour had not come yet. Joyce still needed her for a few hours more.

III

There was the strangeness of a dream about it. Madeline Holland stood there and smiled and chatted with her guests, and nobody looked at her curiously, nobody suspected her anguish. It was incredible, inhuman, unreal.

There was a slight confusion in the hall. Looking across the crowded room, she saw the chauffeur and another young fellow bringing down Joyce’s trunks to the car that waited outside. It was over. Joyce was married—only it didn’t seem real yet.

Even in the church it hadn’t seemed real. Madeline had been preoccupied, distrait, her mind filled with the stupidest little thoughts. The caterer’s men had been a little late. No one had remembered to thank old Mrs. Marriott for her candlesticks, and she looked affronted. Would Hilda be sure to stitch the collar and cuffs on that jersey dress before she packed it?

There was Frank standing before the altar; and he and Joyce and Nick all looked so strange, so pale, so grave, so unfamiliar. Joyce’s veil was a little too long. It was the veil that Madeline had worn at her own wedding, but the fashion had changed so!

No, the whole thing hadn’t been real. It was a dream, like all these last days, when she had gone shopping with Joyce, when people had always been coming and going in the house, and presents arriving, with such a queer, excited sort of gayety in the air, and so much to be done. There had been no time to think.

She wasn’t really thinking now—only waiting, in a daze, for that last moment which she knew she could not endure. The perfume of the roses made her feel a little faint. There were roses everywhere, the breeze from the open windows made a soft stir among them, and the petals floated down silently upon the carpet.

The big dining room had lost its look of solemn formality. It was thronged with people, and filled with the sound of gay, light voices and little muffled clinkings of silver on china. When a lull came in the talk, Mrs. Holland could hear the familiar noises of the city streets, of daily life going on out there in the heat and dust of the June day. Unreal, all of it!

She remembered a children’s party, here in this very room, years and years ago, yet a hundred times more real than this. It was a dreadful failure, for Joyce had been the worst of young hostesses—such an absurd, impulsive little thing! She had devoted herself entirely to a rather obnoxious little girl with blond pigtails and a smug face. She had neglected all her other guests, even quarreling with them in defense of this idolized creature; and afterward she had been so sorry. She had knelt in her mother’s lap, with tears running down her flushed face into Mrs. Holland’s neck, and their arms clasped tight about each other.

“It’s so—so awful hard to be polite!” Joyce had sobbed.

But really it wasn’t. Mrs. Holland found it easy enough to be polite, even cheerful, with that last moment drawing nearer and nearer. Mrs. Marriott was giving her an account of her grandson’s wedding in California.

“In a bower of roses!” concluded the old lady, with a triumphant glance at Mrs. Holland’s mere bowls and jars.

“That must have been very pretty,” said Mrs. Holland.

“It was beautiful!” the old lady corrected her, rather severely.

She went on talking, but Mrs. Holland no longer heard her, for some one had touched the piano in the drawing-room—a little chain of arpeggios like a sweet and drawling voice. It hurt her to hear it, for she did not want any one else to touch that piano. She remembered Joyce, so straight and correct, her long braid hanging down her back, playing her new pieces for her mother and father. Such funny, sprightly[Pg 412] pieces they were—“The Bullfrogs’ Carnival,” “The Elfin Schottische,” “Romping in the Barn”; and so earnestly, so heavily, so determinedly were they played by the blunt little fingers!

No, that surely was not Joyce’s touch. Madeline wanted to know who it could be, sitting there in Joyce’s place.

Skillfully she maneuvered the talkative old lady to the center of the room, where she could look through the open doorway into the drawing-room, and there she saw her—a little blond creature with the fragile figure of a child. She was a pretty girl, very young, and a little pitiful in her flimsy silk dress, sleeveless and short-skirted; but Mrs. Holland saw no pathos in her at that minute, for Frank Holland was standing beside her, looking down at her with an air of bland indulgence.

The blond girl touched the keys again, and then she raised her eyes to Frank’s face with a languishing smile. She spoke, and he raised his hand to his mustache with that familiar gesture.

“He’s flattered!” thought Mrs. Holland.

She forgot all about Mrs. Marriott, and stood staring over the old lady’s head at the pitiful scene—Frank so pleased and flattered by that silly, vulgar little thing.

“Madeline,” said old Mrs. Marriott, “who’s that young woman talking to Frank? I never set eyes on her before.”

“She’s poor Stella’s daughter,” replied Mrs. Holland. “I thought I ought to ask them.”

“Humph!” said the old lady thoughtfully. “Stella here?”

“No—only the girl.”

“Humph!” said the old lady again, and was silent.

She remembered Stella very well—a cousin of Madeline’s, a pale, silent girl, mulishly obstinate, who had taken a fancy to a man against whom all her family and her friends had warned her. She had been bent upon marrying him, had married him, and had vanished into a forlorn limbo.

“And that’s her child,” observed old Mrs. Marriott. “A saucy chit, I should call her!”

“Mother!” said a voice beside Madeline, and she looked up to see Joyce’s husband.

It was the first time he had ever called her that, and in her heart she winced at the word on his lips. It was hard for him to say it—she could see that. His honest young face had flushed, and his voice was not very steady. He was a little in awe of the grave and quiet Mrs. Holland, and yet he was doggedly determined to say what he wanted to say.

“I’ll—I’ll do my best,” he said. “She’s so fond of you, and she’s always been so happy with you, but I—I’ll try to make her happy. I’ll—”

Mrs. Holland held out her hand, and he seized it in a nervous grasp.

“There’s no reason in the world why you shouldn’t both be very happy, dear boy,” she said earnestly. “You’re both—”

She stopped, because Joyce had come. The last minute was here. She looked at her daughter, but that beloved and wonderful face swam in a haze before her.

“Mother!” cried Joyce. “Oh, mother!”

She threw her arms about her mother, and for a moment they clung to each other, forgetting everything else in the world. Mrs. Holland felt her child’s tears warm on her cheek, felt the poor, eager young heart beat against her own. This was the last moment—and she could endure it. Shaken by a tenderness that was anguish, she could think quite clearly, could tell herself that her feeling was wrong, could detach herself from those clinging arms.

“This will never do!” she cried. “We mustn’t be so silly, must we?”

Her steady, smiling eyes were fixed upon her child. There was not the faintest shadow on her face, not the least tremor in her voice. There was nothing in her heart but the one passionate wish that Joyce should go away untroubled and happy, to begin her new life.

For a moment Joyce wavered, ready to fly once more into those faithful arms. Then, with a laugh that was half a sob, she gave her mother one more kiss—and was gone.

Mrs. Holland went out with the others and stood on the top step in a cheerful, excited group. As Joyce leaned out of the car, her mother had a last glimpse of her face, her eyes soft with tears, a trembling smile on her lips. Then the car started. Everything was over. Joyce was gone.

IV

The front door had closed after the last of the guests. Mrs. Holland stood in the hall for a long moment, staring blankly at the closed door, and turned toward the stairs. The caterer’s men were busy in the dining room. She stopped to look at them,[Pg 413] glad that they were here, glad of any bustle or stir that postponed the hour when ordinary daily life should begin. After all, Joyce’s going away was not the intolerable moment. That would come when she would have to take up her life without Joyce.

At the foot of the stairs she met Hilda.

“Go up in the sewing room, ma’am,” said Hilda in a stern, almost threatening voice. “I’ll bring you up a nice hot cup of tea. You never ate a mouthful of all that fancy stuff, and you need something.”

“I really should like a cup of tea,” Mrs. Holland replied gratefully.

She climbed the stairs slowly, not because she was weary, but because there was so much time before her. The door of the sewing room was open, and Hilda had drawn up a chair to the folding table. It looked comfortable there in the ugly, familiar little room, with the sun pouring in across the faded carpet. As she went in, she saw a pin on the floor, glinting silvery bright in the sun’s path, and she stooped to pick it up.

“See a pin and pick it up, and all the day you’ll have good luck”—that was what Miss Brown, the dressmaker, used to say to Joyce, and Joyce, as a tiny girl, used to trot about the room, her head bent, her hair falling over her eyes, earnestly looking for pins.

Mrs. Holland smiled, remembering a shocking episode. She had promised the child five cents a dozen for all the pins she picked up, and so many, many dozens had been recovered from the floor that day—an abnormal quantity. Before she went to sleep that night, Joyce had confessed her crime. She had secretly emptied Miss Brown’s papers of pins upon the floor. Poor, contrite little Joyce!

Over in the corner stood a dress form—a pompous thing with a marvelously rounded figure. “Aunt Sarah,” Joyce used to call it, very disrespectfully. Only yesterday a skirt of Joyce’s had hung on it. No Joyce now, no more of her laughter, no more of her dear voice!

A heavy and deliberate tread was coming along the hall. It was Frank. Madeline did not want to talk to him, or to any one, just then, but of course he would come. Whenever he was at home in the daytime, away from his beloved office, he was always a little forlorn, inclined to follow her about from room to room.

“Hello!” he said from the doorway. “So here you are, eh? Resting?”

“Come in, Frank,” she invited. “Hilda’s going to bring up tea.”

“Tea!” he repeated, with his big, hearty laugh. “Why, my dear girl, I’m full of pâté de foie gras, and lobster salad, and café parfait, and all the rest of it! Caterer did pretty well, don’t you think?”

He came in and sat down in a queer, old-fashioned rocking-chair, with an antimacassar tied to its back with faded ribbons. Such an incongruous figure he was in a sewing room, this big, handsome man in his morning coat, with spats, and a white gardenia in his buttonhole! He was smoking a cigar, and was enjoying it. He crossed his legs and leaned back, and Mrs. Holland smiled at the sight of the scarlet ribbons of the antimacassar peeping coyly over his broad shoulder.

He was glad to see her smile.

“That’s the idea!” he said. “Thing is, not to mope. First day or two—pretty hard, without the little girl. Thing is, to distract your mind. It’s early. Plenty of time for a matinée. I’ll telephone for a couple of seats at the Palace. You drink your tea and then get your hat on. That’s right, Hilda! Tea—that’s what Mrs. Holland needs!”

But Hilda was not responsive to his good humor just now. Her eyes and nose were red, and her blunt face wore an expression of angry defiance. She poured out a cup of tea and set it before Mrs. Holland in stony silence. She was suffering, this faithful heart, and it was her own grief that she defied. She had loved Joyce so, and she missed her so greatly!

Holland watched his wife in silence for a time.

“By the way,” he said, “that Johnson girl, you know—”

Mrs. Holland glanced up, in nowise deceived by his casual tone.

“Who? Stella’s daughter?”

“Yes. Er—pathetic case, don’t you think?”

“I don’t know much about her,” replied Mrs. Holland dryly.

“Well, it seems to me—I was talking to her—as far as I can see, a very pathetic case.”

He paused, and Mrs. Holland regarded him with a faint smile. His manner was apologetic, but he was pleased with himself. His hand was raised to his mustache,[Pg 414] and he was looking down at the floor with a modest air.

“Thing is,” he went on, “she wants to be a musician. She’s studied, but—present circumstances—family had to sell their piano last month. That’s pretty hard, isn’t it, my dear?”

“Oh, very,” murmured Mrs. Holland.

“She said that when she saw the piano here, she couldn’t keep her hands off it. That’s hard luck, isn’t it?”

“I suppose so.”

Again he paused for some time.

“I’m afraid,” he said, “that I—well, that perhaps you won’t approve—”

“Why? What did you do?”

“On the spur of the moment, my dear—”

“What was it, Frank?” Madeline demanded, with a trace of impatience.

“Well,” he said, “I told her—said she could come here and practice—arrange with you—when it wouldn’t bother you.”

“What?” she cried. “You—”

Then she stopped short, because of the look she saw on his face—a little guilty, but pleased.

“I was afraid you wouldn’t like it,” he said.

If she said she didn’t like it, he would be still more pleased. He would think she was jealous.

“I don’t mind at all, Frank,” she told him pleasantly.

“Oh!” said he, somewhat taken aback. “Very good of you, my dear!” He rose and went toward the door. “As long as we’re going out this afternoon,” he added, “why not—well, why not let her begin to-day, eh?”

Mrs. Holland had also risen.

“I suppose you told her she could come this afternoon?”

Frank was not very happy now.

“Simply mentioned that we’d be out, and that—well, I didn’t think her practicing would bother any one, you see.”

“Yes—I see!” said Mrs. Holland.

He lingered in the doorway, as if there were something else he wanted to say; but whatever it may have been, he decided against voicing it.

“Then you’ll get on your bonnet and shawl, eh?” he suggested.

She smiled affably, and off he went.

Mrs. Holland sat very still, listening to his footsteps going down the hall. Her heart was filled with anger.

“On his own daughter’s wedding day!” she thought. “A girl younger than Joyce—a silly, artful little thing like that! Of course, she’s laughing at him. Very well—let her! I shan’t try to stop him. He can make himself just as ridiculous as he likes!”

She poured herself another cup of tea, and ate the toast that Hilda had brought with her. Anger had given her an appetite and a sort of energy. Mope? Not she!

As she went to dress, she passed the closed door of Joyce’s room, with only a strange little qualm that was like the warning of a neuralgic pain. Later would come the moment for the full realization of her loss. Just now she had an important task to perform. She had to dress so that she would look her best. She had to appear before Frank in the most nonchalant and pleasant humor. She had to show him that she wasn’t at all angry, and didn’t care in the least how absurd he was about poor Stella’s daughter.

She succeeded. That is, she was so very, very polite and casual that Frank was somewhat dismayed. His intention had been to cheer her up, and she gave him no chance for that. She never mentioned Joyce, she never once looked downcast, but kept her eyes fixed upon the stage, showing a lively interest even in the trained poodles.

He was in nowise deluded by all this. He knew that she was angry, and she could tell that he knew it by his anxious sidelong glances.

V

“See here, old girl!” he said, as they drew near the house. “Suppose we stay out for dinner? Eh?”

“I’d rather go home, thank you, Frank.”

He sighed.

“Well,” he said, “we’ve got to go some time, of course; but it’s—Madeline!” There was a note in his voice that she had never heard before—an almost panic-stricken appeal. “Madeline!” he repeated. “I hate the thought of going back. She—I can’t realize it. She seemed such a child to me—such a—” He turned away his head. “Only hope the boy’ll turn out well,” he added gruffly.

They walked on in silence. When at last he spoke again, it was in his usual vague, good-humored way. He had recovered himself; yet Mrs. Holland was not glad. There was a strange little ache of regret in her heart, as if she had missed[Pg 415] some irrecoverable opportunity. She wanted to speak, but the moment had passed. He did not need comfort from her now, that was evident.

Hilda opened the door for them, and her face was not pleasant.

“There’s a young lady here, ma’am,” she said, “playin’ the pianner.”

That hardly needed saying, for all the house seemed filled with it—with the austere beauty of a Bach fugue, played with a noble and honest simplicity. It was music like a benediction upon a home. The hall was dim, but through the window on the landing came the glow of sunset. A pool of light lay upon the wine-red carpet; and that glow and color, and the music, were strangely and gravely exalting. The old house had found a voice for its loss—not sorrowful, not weary, but proclaiming a strong, sure hope.

Madeline Holland moved quietly to the doorway, and looked into the drawing-room. No sunset light was there. The long room was shadowy and without color, the roses set about were ghostly white, and their perfume was like a haunting thing. The little figure at the piano was only a shadow, too, with her head thrown back, her profile clear, pale, expressionless.

Mrs. Holland was strangely stirred. She turned toward her husband. The light was too dim for her to see his face clearly, but in the merciful dusk his features had their old romantic quality. He was staring straight before him, motionless as a statue. She stretched out her hand to touch his arm, to recall him from his distant world to herself, when just at that moment he moved abruptly, pressed the switch, and filled the room with light from the chandelier in the ceiling.

The spell was broken. The girl spun around on the stool, sprang up, and came toward Madeline.

“Oh, Mrs. Hol-land!” she cried in her drawling little voice. “I’m afraid I bothered you!”

Yes, the spell was broken now. There was no music in the big, bright room. The rapt young St. Cecilia was only Stella’s daughter, vain, insincere, coquettish.

“Not at all,” said Madeline.

Her tone might have warned the most impervious, but Stella’s daughter was not in the habit of noticing warnings. Instead, she looked at Frank, smiling up into his face; and Mrs. Holland saw his hand go up to his mustache.

“Ask Miss Johnson to play something else for you, Frank,” she suggested.

He did, and she consented archly. She went back to the piano, and he sat down near her.

“Fine technique!” he observed gravely.

Frank talking about “technique!” Frank sitting there, quite unable to conceal his satisfaction in this flattering attention! The girl glanced at him sidelong, dropped her eyes, and bent her head.

“What would you like, Mr. Hol-land?” she asked, timidly.

“Oh—er—anything—anything,” he replied. “Er—what about something operatic? Wagner, eh?”

“Oh, how can he be so idiotic?” thought Madeline. “She’s laughing at him!”

As the girl began to play again, Mrs. Holland went out of the room. It was Rubinstein’s “Melody in F,” but Frank wouldn’t know the difference. He would recognize it as something familiar and “classical,” and would be impressed; but the girl would know. She was laughing at Frank!

For the first time in many years Mrs. Holland felt a desire to bang doors. It would be a positive satisfaction to slam the drawing-room door, and then to go upstairs and slam her own door and lock it. She had done that once, long, long ago. Frank had come running up after her, and had stood outside in the hall, angry himself, but very miserable, and secretly frightened by her obstinate silence. They had “made it up” soon enough in a silly, beautiful, generous young way, each of them insisting on taking all the blame; but of course she wasn’t a foolish, headstrong young thing like that any more. If Frank liked to make himself ridiculous, he was quite at liberty to do so.

At the foot of the stairs she paused, and decided that before going to her room she would see the cook. For the last two mornings the oatmeal had been much too thin, and a tactful remonstrance was needed. She turned back. As she did so, the music stopped, and she could hear their voices in the drawing-room. She could not help hearing.

“Oh, Mr. Hol-land! You look so tired!”

“Well—”

“I’m so sorry for you! It must be awfully sad for you, your daughter getting married, and all![Pg 416]”

“Well—” said Frank again, in the same indulgent tone.

Mrs. Holland went on down the stairs to the basement, so angry that her knees trembled. Frank was delighted with that silly girl’s impertinent pretense of sympathy, charmed by her sidelong glances and her self-conscious smiles!

“It’s his vanity,” she thought. “He’s always been like that. Any one could flatter him.”

There was no denying that Frank liked flattery. In his younger days he used to come home and tell her, in the most artless way, of the various compliments he had received. He didn’t do that now, for he was older and wiser; but that didn’t mean that he got no more compliments, or that he had ceased to relish them. He was a remarkably likable fellow. If this girl so brazenly pursued him the first time she met him, there were probably others—

This was so arresting a thought that Madeline stopped halfway down the stairs. After all, how little she knew of Frank’s life outside his home! They were old-fashioned people. He seldom mentioned business affairs to his wife. That was his province, and the home was hers. There was a wall between them—a high wall.

It hadn’t been like that at first. She could remember very well the time when Frank used to talk to her about his business, when she had known the names of all his most important customers and had taken an anxious interest in all his “big deals,” even reading the market reports. Of course, when Joyce was born, everything had changed. She had been absorbed in her baby. That was natural and right, wasn’t it?

But perhaps Frank hadn’t changed when Madeline did. She began to remember more and more of him in those early days. Here, up and down these very stairs, he used to tramp, carrying the tiny Joyce on his shoulders, both of them filling the house with their laughter. In that basement dining room how many makeshift meals he had eaten, so cheerfully, because she and Hilda were both busy with the baby! He had always been so good-tempered about being put aside, so glad and willing to help, so interested in every detail about the marvelous baby!

She had depended upon Frank very much in those days. Then, as she grew older and more competent, she had needed him less and less, and he had been shut out of such domestic concerns. That was right, wasn’t it? A man ought not to be bothered by household matters. He had his work, and she had hers.

“But Joyce belonged to both of us,” she thought. “He always loved her so! He misses her, too.”

A great fear seized her. Frank missed Joyce. He was lonely, and in the moment of his loneliness this pretty young creature had appeared, to flatter and interest him. He was middle-aged and lonely, and Stella’s daughter was so pretty! Suppose this wasn’t a ridiculous and exasperating episode, but a serious thing? Suppose she lost Frank?

“I won’t!” she cried. “I’ll send that girl away! I’ll never let her come here again!”

That was stupid. She couldn’t keep Frank in a glass case. Even if this girl were gone, there were plenty of others in the world, pretty, cajoling, flattering young creatures.

“I’m not young any more,” she thought. “I’m old—old and selfish and dull—a hundred years older in heart than Frank. He’s still a boy. He always will be. If he likes to be flattered, it’s because he’s young enough to believe in people.”

Mechanically, moved by a blind impulse to hurry to Frank, she had mounted the stairs again, and had come to the door of the drawing-room.

“You’re so understanding!” Stella’s daughter was saying.

Mrs. Holland stopped in the dimly lit hall and looked into the room. The girl was sitting on the piano stool, her hands clasped in her lap, her pretty head bent. Frank stood beside her.

“Must be pretty hard for you,” he said gravely.

The girl looked up at him, and her eyes were filled with tears.

“You’re just the k-kindest man!” she murmured uncertainly.

Flattery? Why need it be that? Wasn’t it possible that she really liked Frank, and that he liked her? Oh, how young she was, and how pretty!

All through this long, long day Mrs. Holland had borne herself gallantly, with pride and with fortitude; but they both failed her now. She leaned against the wall and covered her eyes with her hand, shaken by a dreadful weakness and pain.[Pg 417]

“I’m old,” she thought. “I’m old and selfish. I’ve shut Frank out. I haven’t appreciated him—and now I’ve lost him. It’s my own fault!”

A door opened in the basement, and she heard Hilda’s tread on the stairs. Hilda mustn’t see her like this! She was about to go upstairs to her own room when it occurred to her that Hilda might think that was “queer,” so she went into the drawing-room instead.

Frank came a few steps toward her, with his vague smile, but the girl did not rise. She looked at Mrs. Holland with a sort of defiance.

“She’s old!” thought Stella’s child. “There’s gray in her hair, and there are lines around her eyes. She never laughs; and he’s so jolly—much too nice for her!”

“She’s young,” thought Mrs. Holland. “So young, so pretty—and her music is magic!”

They looked and looked at each other, these two.

“Well, old girl!” said Frank.

Mrs. Holland turned, startled by his tone; and the sight of his face filled her with an intolerable emotion. All the old tenderness there, all the old kindliness and loyalty, not changed, not lost.

“Frank!” she cried.

“Tired, eh?” said he. “Well, sit down, my dear—sit down! Hard day, eh?”

“No,” she said; “a beautiful, a very wonderful day!”

“That’s the way to look at it,” he replied approvingly. “That’s the spirit, eh?”

Stella’s daughter had risen now, and was looking at Holland with angry eyes and a trembling lip. He had forgotten all about her, just because Mrs. Holland had come in! The way he looked at his wife, as if he didn’t even know that there were lines around her eyes and gray in her hair! The way she looked at him, as if she were so proudly and gratefully sure of him and of herself!

“I’m going home!” the girl announced vehemently.

They both turned toward her, a little surprised, so that she felt like an ill mannered child; and indeed she was a child, with only a child’s crude weapons—a poor, ignorant, reckless child.

“My dear,” said Madeline gently, “tell your mother I’ll come to see her to-morrow, and we’ll talk things over—about your music, and so on.”

The girl gave one last glance at Holland, but she knew it was useless. When Mrs. Holland was there, she simply didn’t count with him.

“Good night!” she said in a sulky, unsteady voice.

“Good night!” their kind, grown-up voices answered in unison.

The front door closed vigorously behind her. Madeline sat still, and Frank stood beside her, his hand on her shoulder. The house was very quiet, but it was not empty. Life was still going on in it. Life never stopped, while the heart beat.

“Frank,” she said, “I think we’d better go out to dinner, after all.”

“If you feel up to it, my dear.”

“We’ll have to go out more together, Frank. Now that Joyce has gone—”

She stopped, and for a moment he was afraid that she would break down; but when he bent and looked into her face, he saw that she was smiling a very lovely smile.

“Joyce has gone,” she said, “but you’re here, Frank!”

He patted her shoulder, and, glancing up, she saw his hand raised to his mustache. In all simplicity, he was pleased, because she had remembered that.[Pg 418]

MUNSEY’S
MAGAZINE

JULY, 1926
Vol. LXXXVIII NUMBER 2

[Pg 419]

The Compromising Letter

A ROMANTIC AFTERMATH OF THE RARE OLD DAYS WHEN CHARMING LADIES WIELDED A FACILE QUILL

In that branch of the family, Ronald Phillips was supreme. Not only was he rich, but he was rich in the correct way—mysteriously. Everybody knew exactly how much he had inherited from his father,[Pg 420] but nobody knew how much he had now, or how much he spent—or how he intended to leave his fortune. Cousin Ronald’s money was one of the best and brightest topics in the family.

Also he was literary. He was rich, he was literary, and he had great natural distinction. He disapproved of more things than any one else in the family. He was tall, and handsome, in a distinguished way; he had gray hair parted in the middle, a gray goatee, and a fine voice. Cousin Winnie admired him profoundly.

Her child, though, the young Lucy, belonged to a more critical generation. She saw certain flaws. But she said nothing. She came with her mother to the historic cottage, prepared to do her best.

She had studied domestic science; she was energetic and healthy, and she thought that she and her mother could make Cousin Ronald very comfortable. She wished to do so; that was her nature. She was a kind little thing.

She was a pretty little thing, too. Cousin Ronald admitted it. Not in the Mme. Van Der Dokjen style, but she was young yet. The years might bring her more of the dignity, the calm of that matchless woman.

And, as it was, she had her good points; she had clear, steady blue eyes, and very satisfactory light hair, and she had a pleasing sort of gayety about her. She sang while she was working. It was agreeable to hear her.

She had faults, undoubtedly, but they were, Cousin Ronald thought, more the faults of her deplorable generation than anything inherent. He thought they might be cured. He interpreted Mme. Van Der Dokjen to her, also the significance of home life.

“Yes,” she said. “Yes, Cousin Ronald, I know it’s lovely. But, you see, I don’t have much time during the day, and in the evening I do like to read or write letters.”

“Mme. Van Der Dokjen wrote letters,” he pointed out. “An astounding quantity of letters, when one considers her unflagging devotion to her domestic duties, and her truly brilliant social life. There is no doubt but that many of these letters—models of the epistolary art—were written by the light of candles, Lucy.”

“Yes, I know!” Lucy agreed. “But she was different.”

“I concede the point,” said Cousin Ronald, with a trace of severity. “Where, I ask, in the modern world, can one find a woman who is not different—deplorably different? But I should like to point out to you, Lucy, that this habit of continually saying—‘I know!’—gives a quite false impression of your character. I do not believe you to be one of these intolerable modern young women who fancy they ‘know’ everything.”

“Yes, I know!” said Lucy. “I mean—I know that what you say is right, Cousin Ronald. Only, I thought that just one oil lamp—”

He told her that even one oil lamp would utterly destroy the “atmosphere” of the historic cottage.

“All right!” Lucy replied.

He remembered how Mme. Van Der Dokjen was wont to reply to the requests or commands of her elders. “You must be assured, Hon’d Sir, of my pleasure in conforming to y’r lightest wish.” “All right!” That was the modern way. He sighed.

“And now your dinner’s ready,” Lucy announced. “Something awfully nice, too.”

He sighed no more. These meals which Cousin Winnie and her child prepared for him were charming; he had never enjoyed anything more. They had the real old-fashioned homeliness; plain food, but beautifully cooked, and plenty of it. Cousin Ronald had spent his life in modest hotels; and this was his first experience, since childhood, of home life.

“You have been here one month to-day, Cousin Winnie,” he remarked, as he finished his fried chicken. “I must thank you. It has been—for me, that is—a most delightful month.”

“I’m sure, Cousin Ronald, it has been a pleasure,” said Cousin Winnie. Tears came into her eyes. It was so touching to see Cousin Ronald grateful.

By common consent they omitted Lucy from the compliments. Like most persons of middle-age, they knew that it is not wise to praise the young; they remember what you say, and use it against you later on. Cousin Ronald knew this by instinct, but Cousin Winnie knew from experience.

She was a thin, worn little lady, with a gentle and pretty face. It was the general opinion in the family that she had been the helpless victim of a cruel fate, and certainly she had had many undeserved misfortunes. But she had survived them. She[Pg 421] had kept upon the surface of the stormy sea, like a cork. She could stand a good deal.

This was a good thing, for fresh trials were approaching.

II

It was a superb September morning, warm and still. The windows of the dining room were open as they sat at breakfast, and Cousin Winnie saw white butterflies out in the neat little garden. Most lovely perfumes drifted in, fresh-cut grass and pine needles, and the very last roses; and from the kitchen came another current, warmer, like a Gulf Stream, and less romantic, but beautiful, made of the aromas of pancakes, maple sirup, bacon, and coffee.

The sun shone in; everything was good, and right, and Cousin Winnie was happy. Her mail, too, was satisfactory. She had a letter from a jealous and spiteful cousin in California, who insinuated that Cousin Ronald was growing old, and falling prey to certain unscrupulous relatives.

The injustice of this really flattered Cousin Winnie. Nobody could have been less designing than she. The arrangement was entirely of Cousin Ronald’s making; he had sought them out, in their cozy little flat in New York, where they had managed well enough with the aid of Lucy’s salary as an assistant librarian.

They had been glad to come, but it was nothing like so dazzling a situation as the spiteful cousin in California imagined. The financial compensation was very modest. Very! Cousin Ronald was no spendthrift.

And there was a great deal of work to be done in this cottage which was so charmingly old fashioned. Still, Cousin Winnie was glad she had come, because, for all Cousin Ronald’s distinction, his literary attainments, she thought he was pathetic. She glanced up from the spiteful cousin’s letter, to enjoy the heart-warming spectacle of the poor man eating buckwheat cakes.

But he was not eating at all. He was staring before him with unseeing eyes.

“Is anything the matter, Cousin Ronald?” she asked, anxiously.

“Er—no, no,” he answered. “That is—nothing wrong with this most excellent breakfast, my dear Winnie. But—er—but—er—”

“Did you say ‘butter,’ Ronald?”

“No, no, thank you. I have received a letter. I fear I must ask you to excuse me, Winnie.” He arose. “I—I am perturbed!” he added. “I must be alone for a time.”

He gathered together his letters, most of which he had not yet opened, and went out of the dining room, into his study. He locked the door, and sat down before his desk.

“Merciful Powers!” he murmured.

The blow had fallen. Mme. Van Der Dokjen was most hideously threatened.

Again he read the fatal letter.