"Don't you think you'd better wait till Dory gets back?"
"No," said Adelaide firmly, a look in her eyes which made her mother say to herself: "There's the Ranger in her."
They drove in silence awhile; then Del, with an effort which brought a bright color to her cheeks, began: "I want to tell you, mother, that I went to Judge Torrey this morning, and made over to you the income father left me."
"Whatever did you do that for?" cried Ellen, turning in the seat to stare at her daughter through her glasses.
"I promised Dory I would. I've spent some of the money—about fifteen hundred dollars—You see, the house was more expensive than I thought. But everything's paid up now."
"I don't need it, and don't want it," said Ellen. "And I won't take it!"
"I promised Dory I would—before we were married. He thinks I've done it. I've let him think so. And—lately—I've been having a sort of house cleaning—straightening things up—and I straightened that up, too."
Ellen Ranger understood. A long pause, during which she looked lovingly at her daughter's beautiful face. At last she said: "No, there don't seem to be no other way out of it." Then, anxiously, "You ain't written Dory what you've done?"
"No," replied Del. "Not yet."
"Not never!" exclaimed her mother. "That's one of the things a body mustn't ever tell anyone. You did wrong; you've done right—and it's all settled and over. He'd probably understand if you told him. But he'd never quite trust you the same again—that's human nature."
"But you'd trust me," objected Del.
"I'm older'n Dory," replied her mother; "and, besides, I ain't your husband. There's no end of husbands and wives that get into hot water through telling, where it don't do any earthly good and makes the other one uneasy and unhappy."
Adelaide reflected. "It is better not to tell him," she concluded.
Ellen was relieved. "That's common sense," said she. "And you can't use too much common sense in marriage. The woman's got to have it, for the men never do where women are concerned." She reflected a few minutes, then, after a keen glance at her daughter and away, she said with an appearance of impersonality that evidenced diplomatic skill of no mean order: "And there's this habit the women are getting nowadays of always peeping into their heads and hearts to see what's going on. How can they expect the cake to bake right if they're first at the fire door, then at the oven door, openin' and shuttin' 'em, peepin' and pokin' and tastin'—that's what I'd like to know."
Adelaide looked at her mother's apparently unconscious face in surprise and admiration. "What a sensible, wonderful woman you are, Ellen Ranger!" she exclaimed, giving her mother the sisterly name she always gave her when she felt a particular delight in the bond between them. And half to herself, yet so that her mother heard, she added: "And what a fool your daughter has been!"
"Nobody's born wise," said Ellen, "and mighty few takes the trouble to learn."
At Point Helen the mourning livery of the lodge keeper and of the hall servants prepared Ellen and her daughter for the correct and elegant habiliments of woe in which Matilda and her son and daughter were garbed. If Whitney had died before he began to lose his fortune, and while his family were in a good humor with him because of his careless generosity, or, rather, indifference to extravagance, he would have been mourned as sincerely as it is possible for human beings to mourn one by whose death they are to profit enormously in title to the material possessions they have been trained to esteem above all else in the world. As it was, those last few months of anxiety—Mrs. Whitney worrying lest her luxury and social leadership should be passing, Ross exasperated by the daily struggle to dissuade his father from fatuous enterprises—had changed Whitney's death from a grief to a relief. However, "appearances" constrained Ross to a decent show of sorrow, compelled Mrs. Whitney to a still stronger exhibit. Janet, who in far-away France had not been touched by the financial anxieties, felt a genuine grief that gave her an admirable stimulus to her efflorescent oversoul. She had "prepared for the worst," had brought from Paris a marvelous mourning wardrobe—dresses and hats and jewelry that set off her delicate loveliness as it had never been set off before. She made of herself an embodiment, an apotheosis, rather, of poetic woe—and so, roused to emulation her mother's passion for pose. Ross had refused to gratify them even to the extent of taking a spectator's part in their refined theatricals. The coming of Mrs. Ranger and Adelaide gave them an audience other than servile; they proceeded to strive to rise to the opportunity. The result of this struggle between mother and daughter was a spectacle so painful that even Ellen, determined to see only sincerity, found it impossible not to suspect a grief that could find so much and such language in which to vent itself. She fancied she appreciated why Ross eyed his mother and sister with unconcealed hostility and spoke almost harshly when they compelled him to break his silence.
Adelaide hardly gave the two women a thought. She was surprised to find that she was looking at Ross and thinking of him quite calmly and most critically. His face seemed to her trivial, with a selfishness that more than suggested meanness, the eyes looking out from a mind which habitually entertained ideas not worth a real man's while. What was the matter with him—"or with me?" What is he thinking about? Why is he looking so mean and petty? Why had he no longer the least physical attraction for her? Why did her intense emotions of a few brief weeks ago seem as vague as an unimportant occurrence of many years ago? What had broken the spell? She could not answer her own puzzled questions; she simply knew that it was so, that any idea that she did, or ever could, love Ross Whitney was gone, and gone forever. "It's so," she thought. "What's the difference why? Shall I never learn to let the stove doors alone?"
As soon as lunch was over Matilda took Ellen to her boudoir and Ross went away, leaving Janet and Adelaide to walk up and down the shaded west terrace with its vast outlook upon the sinuous river and the hills. To draw Janet from the painful theatricals, she took advantage of a casual question about the lynching, and went into the details of that red evening as she had not with anyone. It was now almost two months into the past; but all Saint X was still feverish from it, and she herself had only begun again to have unhaunted and unbroken sleep. While she was relating Janet forgot herself; but when the story was told—all of it except Adelaide's own part; that she entirely omitted—Janet went back to her personal point of view. "A beautiful love story!" she exclaimed. "And right here in prosaic Saint X!"
"Is it Saint X that is prosaic," said Adelaide, "or is it we, in failing to see the truth about familiar things?"
"Perhaps," replied Janet, in the tone that means "not at all." To her a thrill of emotion or a throb of pain felt by a titled person differed from the same sensation in an untitled person as a bar of supernal or infernal music differs from the whistling of a farm boy on his way to gather the eggs; if the title was royal—Janet wept when an empress died of a cancer and talked of her "heroism" for weeks.
"Of course," she went on musingly, to Adelaide, "it was very beautiful for Lorry and Estelle to love each other. Still, I can't help feeling that—At least, I can understand Arden Wilmot's rage. After all, Estelle stepped out of her class; didn't she, Del?"
"Yes," said Del, not recognizing the remark as one she herself might have made not many months before. "Both she and Lorry stepped out of their classes, and into the class where there is no class, but only just men and women, hearts and hands and brains." She checked herself just in time to refrain from adding, "the class our fathers and mothers belonged in."
Janet did not inquire into the mystery of this. "And Estelle has gone to live with poor Lorry's mother!" said she. "How noble and touching! Such beautiful self-sacrifice!"
"Why self-sacrifice?" asked Del, irritated. "She couldn't possibly go home, could she? And she is fond of Lorry's mother."
"Yes, of course. No doubt she's a dear, lovely old woman. But—a washerwoman, and constant, daily contact—and not as lady and servant, but on what must be, after all, a sort of equality—" Janet finished her sentence with a ladylike look.
Adelaide burned with the resentment of the new convert. "A woman who brought into the world and brought up such a son as Lorry was," said she, "needn't yield to anybody." Then the silliness of arguing such a matter with Madame la Marquise de Saint Berthè came over her. "You and I don't look at life from the same standpoint, Janet," she added, smiling. "You see, you're a lady, and I'm not—any more."
"Oh, yes, you are," Janet, the devoid of the sense of humor, hastened to assure her earnestly. "You know we in France don't feel as they do in America, that one gets or loses caste when one gets or loses money. Besides, Dory is in a profession that is quite aristocratic, and those lectures he delivered at Göttingen are really talked about everywhere on the other side."
But Adelaide refused to be consoled. "No, I'm not a lady—not what you'd call a lady, even as a Frenchwoman."
"Oh, but I'm a good American!" Janet protested, suddenly prudent and rushing into the pretenses our transplanted and acclimatized sisters are careful to make when talking with us of the land whence comes their sole claim to foreign aristocratic consideration—their income. "I'm really quite famous for my Americanism. I've done a great deal toward establishing our ambassador at Paris in the best society. Coming from a republic and to a republic that isn't recognized by our set in France, he was having a hard time, though he and his wife are all right at home. Now that there are more gentlemen in authority at Washington, our diplomats are of a much better class than they used to be. Everyone over there says so. Of course, you—that is we, are gradually becoming civilized and building up an aristocracy."
"Yes, I suppose so," said Adelaide, feeling that she must change the subject or show her exasperation, yet unable to find any subject which Janet would not adorn with refined and cultured views. "Isn't Ross, there, looking for you?"
He had just rushed from the house, his face, his manner violently agitated. As he saw Adelaide looking at him, he folded and put in his pocket a letter which seemed to be the cause of his agitation. When the two young women came to where he was standing, he joined them and walked up and down with them, his sister, between him and Del, doing all the talking. Out of the corner of her eye Del saw that his gaze was bent savagely upon the ground and that his struggle for self-control was still on. At the first opportunity she said: "I must get mother. We'll have to be going."
"Oh, no, not yet," urged Janet, sincerity strong in her affected accents. Del felt that the sister, for some reason, as strongly wished not to be left alone with the brother as the brother wished to be left alone with the sister. In confirmation of this, Janet went on to say: "Anyhow, Ross will tell your mother."
Ross scowled at his sister, made a hesitating, reluctant movement toward the steps; just then Matilda and Ellen appeared. Adelaide saw that her mother had succeeded in getting through Matilda's crust of sham and in touch with her heart. At sight of her son Mrs. Whitney's softened countenance changed—hardened, Adelaide thought—and she said to him eagerly: "Any news, any letters?"
"This," answered Ross explosively. He jerked the letter from his pocket, gave it to his mother.
"You'll excuse me—Ellen—Adelaide," said Matilda, as she unfolded the paper with ringers that trembled. "This is very important." Silence, as she read, her eager glance leaping along the lines. Her expression became terrible; she burst out in a voice that was both anger and despair: "No will! He wasn't just trying to torment me when he said he hadn't made one. No will! Nothing but the draft of a scheme to leave everything to Tecumseh—there's your Hiram's work, Ellen!"
Adelaide's gentle pressure on her mother's arm was unnecessary; it was too evident that Matilda, beside herself, could not be held responsible for anything she said. There was no pretense, no "oversoul" in her emotion now. She was as different from the Matilda of the luncheon table as the swollen and guttered face of woe in real life is different from the graceful tragedy of the stage.
"No will; what of it?" said Ellen gently. "It won't make the least difference. There's just you and the children."
Adelaide, with clearer knowledge of certain dark phases of human nature and of the Whitney family, hastily interposed. "Yes, we must go," said she. "Good-by, Mrs. Whitney," and she put out her hand.
Mrs. Whitney neither saw nor heard. "Ellen!" she cried, her voice like her wild and haggard face. "What do you think of such a daughter as mine here? Her father—"
Janet, with eyes that dilated and contracted strangely, interrupted with a sweet, deprecating, "Good-by, Adelaide dear. As I told you, I am leaving to-night—"
There Ross laid his hand heavily on Janet's shoulder. "You are going to stay, young lady," he said between his teeth, "and hear what your mother has to say about you." His voice made Adelaide shudder, even before she saw the black hate his eyes were hurling at his sister.
"Yes, we want you, Ellen, and you, Del, to know her as she is," Mrs. Whitney now raged on. "When she married, her father gave her a dowry, bought that title for her—paid as much as his whole fortune now amounts to. He did it solely because I begged him to. She knows the fight I had to win him over. And now that he's gone, without making a will, she says she'll have her legal rights! Her legal rights! She'll take one-third of what he left. She'll rob her brother and her mother!"
Janet was plainly reminding herself that she must not forget that she was a lady and a marchioness. In a manner in which quiet dignity was mingled with a delicate soul's shrinking from such brawling vulgarity as this that was being forced upon her, she said, looking at Adelaide: "Papa never intended that my dowry should be taken out of my share. It was a present." She looked calmly at her mother. "Just like your jewels, mamma." She turned her clear, luminous eyes upon Ross. "Just like the opportunities he gave you to get your independent fortune."
Mrs. Whitney, trembling so that she could scarcely articulate, retorted: "At the time he said, and I told you, it was to come out of your share. And how you thanked me and kissed me and—" She stretched toward Ellen her shaking old woman's hands, made repellent by the contrasting splendor of magnificent black pearl rings. "O Ellen, Ellen!" she quavered. "I think my heart will burst!"
"You did say he said so," replied Janet softly, "but he never told me."
"You—you—" stuttered Ross, flinging out his arms at her in a paroxysm of fury.
"I refuse to discuss this any further," said Janet, drawing herself up in the full majesty of her black-robed figure and turning her long shapely back on Ross. "Mrs. Ranger, I'm sure you and Del realize that mother and Ross are terribly upset, and not—"
"They'll realize that you are a cheat, a vulture in the guise of woman!" cried Mrs. Whitney. "Ellen, tell her what she is!"
Mrs. Ranger, her eyes down and her face expressing her agonized embarrassment, contrived to say: "You mustn't bring me in, Mattie. Adelaide and I must go."
"No, you shall hear!" shrieked Mrs. Whitney, barring the way. "All the world shall hear how this treacherous, ingrate daughter of mine—oh, the sting of that!—how she purposes to steal, yes, steal four times as much of her father's estate as Ross or I get. Four times as much! I can't believe the law allows it! But whether it does or not, Janet Whitney, God won't allow it! God will hear my cry, my curse on you."
"My conscience is clear," said Janet, and her gaze, spiritual, exalted, patient, showed that she spoke the truth, that her mother's looks and words left her quite unscathed.
Ross vented a vicious, jeering laugh. His mother, overcome with the sense of helplessness, collapsed from rage to grief and tears. She turned to Mrs. Ranger. "Your Hiram was right," she wailed, "and my Charles said so just before he went. Look at my daughter, Ellen. Look at my son—for he, too, is robbing me. He has his own fortune that his dead father made for him; yet he, too, talks about his legal rights. He demands his full third!"
Adelaide did not look at Ross; yet she was seeing him inside and out, the inside through the outside.
"My heartless children!" sobbed Matilda. "I can't believe that they are the same I brought into the world and watched over and saw that they had everything. God forgive them—and me. Your Hiram was right. Money has done it. Money has made monsters of them. And I—oh, how I am punished!"
All this time Ellen and Adelaide had been gradually retreating, the Whitneys following them. When Mrs. Whitney at last opened wide the casket of her woe and revealed Ross there, too, he wheeled on Adelaide with a protesting, appealing look. He was confident that he was in the right, that his case was different from Janet's; confident also that Adelaide would feel that in defending his rights he was also defending hers that were to be. But before Del there had risen the scene after the reading of her own father's will. She recalled her rebellious thoughts, saw again Arthur's fine face distorted by evil passions, heard again her mother's terrible, just words: "Don't trample on your father's grave, Arthur Ranger! I'll put you both out of the house! Go to the Whitneys, where you belong!" And then she saw Arthur as he now was, and herself the wife of Dory Hargrave. And she for the first time realized, as we realize things only when they have become an accepted and unshakable basic part of our lives, what her father had done, what her father was. Hiram had won his daughter.
"We are going now," said Ellen, coming from the stupor of shame and horror into which this volcanic disgorging of the secret minds and hearts of the Whitneys had plunged her. And the expression she fixed first upon Janet, then upon Ross, then upon Matilda, killed any disposition they might have had to try to detain her. As she and Adelaide went toward her carriage, Ross followed. Walking beside Adelaide, he began to protest in a low tone and with passionate appeal against the verdict he could not but read in her face. "It isn't fair, it isn't just!" he pleaded. "Adelaide, hear me! Don't misjudge me. You know what your—your good opinion means to me."
She took her mother's arm, and so drew farther away from him.
"Forgive me," he begged. "Janet put me out of my mind. It drove me mad to have her rob—us."
At that "us" Adelaide fixed her gaze on his for an instant. And what he saw in her eyes silenced him—silenced him on one subject forever.
He left for Chicago without seeing either his sister or his mother again. His impulse was to renounce to his mother his share of his father's estate. But one does not act hastily upon an impulse to give up nearly a million dollars. On reflection he decided against such expensive and futile generosity. If it would gain him Adelaide—then, yes. But when it would gain him nothing but the applause of people who in the same circumstances would not have had even the impulse to forego a million—"Mother's proper share will give her as much of an income as a woman needs at her age and alone," reasoned he. "Besides, she may marry again. And I must not forget that but for her Janet would never have got that dowry. She brought this upon herself. Her folly has cost me dearly enough. If I go away to live abroad or in New York—anywhere to be free of the Howlands—why I'll need all I've got properly to establish myself."
Janet and her baby left on a later train for the East. Before going she tried to see her mother. Her mother had wronged her in thought, had slandered her in word; but Janet forgave her and nobly wished her to have the consolation of knowing it. Mrs. Whitney, however, prevented the execution of this exalted purpose by refusing to answer the gentle persistent knocking and gentle appealing calls of "Mother, mother dear!" at her locked boudoir door.
CHAPTER XXVII
THE DOOR AJAR
Judge Torrey succeeded Whitney as chairman of the overseers of Tecumseh and in the vacant trusteeship of the Ranger bequest. Soon Dr. Hargrave, insisting that he was too old for the labors of the presidency of such a huge and varied institution as the university had become, was made honorary president, and his son, still in Europe, was elected chairman of the faculty. Toward the middle of a fine afternoon in early September Dr. Hargrave and his daughter-in-law drove to the railway station in the ancient and roomy phaeton which was to Saint X as much part of his personality as the aureole of glistening white hair that framed his majestic head, or as the great plaid shawl that had draped his big shoulders with their student stoop every winter day since anyone could remember. Despite his long exposure to the temptation to sink into the emasculate life of unapplied intellect, mere talker and writer, and to adopt that life's flabby ideals, he had remained the man of ideas, the man of action. His learning was all but universal, yet he had the rugged, direct vigor of the man of affairs. His was not the knowledge that enfeebles, but the knowledge that empowers. As his son, the new executive of the university—with the figure of a Greek athlete, with positive character, will as well as intellect, stamped upon his young face—appeared in the crowd, the onlookers had the sense that a "somebody" had arrived. Dory's always was the air an active mind never fails to give; as Judge Torrey once said: "You've only got to look at him to see he's the kind that does things, not the kind that tells how they used to be done or how they oughtn't to be done." Now there was in his face and bearing the subtly but surely distinguishing quality that comes only with the strength a man gets when his fellows acknowledge his leadership, when he has seen the creations of his brain materialize in work accomplished. Every successful man has this look, and shows it according to his nature—the arrogant arrogantly; the well-balanced with tranquil unconsciousness.
As he moved toward his father and Adelaide, her heart swelled with pride in him, with pride in her share in him. Ever since the sending of the cablegram to recall him, she had been wondering what she would feel at sight of him. Now she forgot all about her once-beloved self-analysis. She was simply proud of him, enormously proud; other men seemed trivial beside this personage. Also she was a little afraid; for, as their eyes met, it seemed to her that his look of recognition and greeting was not so ardent as she was accustomed to associate with his features when turned toward her. But before she could be daunted by her misgiving it vanished; for he impetuously caught her in his arms and, utterly forgetting the onlookers, kissed her until every nerve in her body was tingling in the sweeping flame of that passion which his parting caress had stirred to vague but troublesome restlessness. And she, too, forgot the crowd, and shyly, proudly gave as well as received; so there began to vibrate between them the spark that clears brains and hearts of the fogs and vapors and keeps them clear. And it was not a problem in psychology that was revealed to those admiring and envying spectators in the brilliant September sunshine, but a man and a woman in love in the way that has been "the way of a man with a maid" from the beginning; in love, and each looking worthy of the other's love—he handsome in his blue serge, she beautiful in a light-brown fall dress with pale-gold facings, and the fluffy, feathery boa close round her fair young face. Civilization has changed methods, but not essentials; it is still not what goes on in the minds of a man and woman that counts, but what goes on in their hearts and nerves.
The old doctor did not in the least mind the momentary neglect of himself. He had always assumed that his son and Del loved each other, there being every reason why they should and no reason why they shouldn't; he saw only the natural and the expected in this outburst which astonished and somewhat embarrassed them with the partial return of the self-consciousness that had been their curse. He beamed on them from eyes undimmed by half a century of toil, as bright under his shaggy white brows as the first spring flowers among the snows. As soon as he had Dory's hand and his apparent attention, he said: "I hope you've been getting your address ready on the train, as I suggested in my telegram."
"I've got it in my bag," replied Dory.
In the phaeton Del sat between them and drove. Dory forgot the honors he had come home to receive; he had eyes and thoughts only for her, was impatient to be alone with her, to reassure himself of the meaning of the blushes that tinted her smooth white skin and the shy glances that stole toward him from the violet eyes under those long lashes of hers. Dr. Hargrave resumed the subject that was to him paramount. "You see, Theodore, your steamer's being nearly two days late brings you home just a day before the installation. You'll be delivering, your address at eleven to-morrow morning."
"So I shall," said Dory absently.
"You say it's ready. Hadn't you better let me get it type-written for you?"
Dory opened the bag at his feet, gave his father a roll of paper. "Please look it over, and make any changes you like."
Dr. Hargrave began the reading then and there. He had not finished the first paragraph when Dory interrupted with, "Why, Del, you're passing our turning."
Del grew crimson. The doctor, without looking up or taking his mind off the address, said: "Adelaide gave up Mrs. Dorsey's house several weeks ago. You are living with us."
Dory glanced at her quickly and away. She said nothing. "He'll understand," thought she—and she was right.
Only those who have had experience of the older generation out West would have suspected the pride, the affection, the delight hiding behind Martha Skeffington's prim and formal welcome, or that it was not indifference but the unfailing instinct of a tender heart that made her say, after a very few minutes: "Adelaide, don't you think Dory'd like to look at the rooms?"
Del led the way, Dory several feet behind her—deliberately, lest he should take that long, slender form of hers in his arms that he might again feel her bosom swelling and fluttering against him, and her fine, thick, luminous hair caressing his temple and his cheek. Miss Skeffington had given them the three large rooms on the second floor—the two Dory used to have and one more for Del. As he followed Del into the sitting room he saw that there had been changes, but he could not note them. She was not looking at him; she seemed to be in a dream, or walking with the slow deliberate steps one takes in an unfamiliar and perilous path.
"That is still your bedroom," said she, indicating one of the doors. "A stationary stand has been put in. Perhaps you'd like to freshen up a bit."
"A stationary stand," he repeated, as if somewhat dazed before this practical detail. "Yes—I think so."
She hesitated, went into her room, not quite closing the door behind her. He stared at it with a baffled look. "And," he was thinking, "I imagined I had trained myself to indifference." An object near the window caught his eye—a table at which he could work standing. He recalled that he had seen its like in a big furniture display at Paris when they were there together, and that he had said he would get one for himself some day. This hint that there might be more than mere matter in those surroundings set his eyes to roving. That revolving bookcase by the desk, the circular kind he had always wanted, and in it the books he liked to have at hand—Montaigne and Don Quixote, Shakespeare and Shelley and Swinburne, the Encyclopedia, the statistical yearbooks; on top, his favorites among the magazines. And the desk itself—a huge spread of cleared surface—an enormous blotting pad, an ink well that was indeed a well—all just what he had so often longed for as he sat cramped at little desks where an attempt to work meant overflow and chaos of books and papers. And that big inlaid box—it was full of his favorite cigarettes; and the drop-light, and the green shade for the eyes, and the row of pencils sharpened as he liked them—
He knocked at her door. "Won't you come out here a moment?" cried he, putting it in that form because he had never adventured her intimate threshold.
No answer, though the door was ajar and she must have heard.
"Please come out here," he repeated.
A pause; then, in her voice, shy but resolute, the single word, "Come!"
CHAPTER XXVIII
THE DEAD THAT LIVE
On the green oval within and opposite the entrance to the main campus of the great university there is the colossal statue of a master workman. The sculptor has done well. He does not merely show you the physical man—the mass, the strength, of bone and sinew and muscle; he reveals the man within—the big, courageous soul. Strangers often think this statue a personation of the force which in a few brief generations has erected from a wilderness our vast and splendid America. And it is that; but to Arthur and Adelaide, standing before it in a June twilight, long after the events above chronicled, it is their father—Hiram.
"How alive he seems," says his daughter.
And his son answers: "How alive he is!"
End of Project Gutenberg's The Second Generation, by David Graham Phillips