Part 14

Williams smiled encouragingly in answer, assuming that anything so small must be timid; but little Mrs. Southgate betrayed no symptom of alarm. She bent her slender throat and sat down on the sofa beside Antonia, with her hands, palms up, in her lap. She did it with a certain crispness, like a good child doing what it has been taught as exactly the right thing to do. She sat perfectly still; whereas Antonia kept up a slow, magnificent undulation of shoulders and hips, as Williams took the will out of his pocket.

"You are familiar with the terms of the will?" he asked, scrupulously including both ladies in the question.

"Yes," said Antonia, "my brother discussed the will with me in great detail before he made it, and I told Doris what you had said to me yesterday after the funeral. I think she understands. You do understand, my dear, don't you, that my brother left you the income of his estate during your life?"

Mrs. Southgate nodded, without the least change of expression.

"During her life or until her remarriage," said Williams, giving the word full weight.

"I shall not remarry," said Mrs. Southgate in a quick, sweet, whispering voice--the sort of voice which made everyone lean forward, although it was perfectly audible.

Antonia looked down at her sister-in-law and smiled, and Williams recognized with surprise that she was obviously attached to the little creature. He was surprised, because he knew that Miss Southgate had disapproved of the marriage; and even if the marriage had been less open to hostile criticism than it was, no one would expect a sister, who had for many years been at the head of her brother's house and a partner in his business, to welcome the intrusion of a young blond-headed wife. It really spoke well for both women, he thought, that they had managed to get on.

He began to go over the will, paragraph by paragraph. In the sixteenth clause it was stated that the jewels now in possession of Mrs. Southgate, in especial a string of pearls and pigeon's-blood rubies, were not to be regarded as gifts, but as part of the estate. He glanced at the widow.

"I suppose that was your understanding," he said.

"I never thought about it," she answered. "If Alexander says so, of course he knew what he meant."

At this moment the door softly opened and Nichols appeared with a visiting card on a salver, which he presented to Antonia. Miss Southgate began feeling for her lorgnette.

"We can see no one," she said reprovingly to Nichols; then as she found her glasses and read the card, she added, "I never heard of such a person. Is it for me?"

"No, madam," said Nichols; "the gentleman asked for Mrs. Southgate."

"Explain to him that we can see no one," said Antonia; and then, as Nichols left the room, she decided as an afterthought to give the card to her sister-in-law--merely for information, however, for the door had already shut behind Nichols.

As the little widow read the card she looked up with large, startled eyes, which from having been light blue suddenly turned without any warning at all to a deep, shiny black, and she colored until not only her face and neck but even her tiny wrists were pink. It was really, Williams thought, very interesting to watch; all the more because Antonia, who was talking about a legacy to an old servant, was utterly unaware of what was going on at her elbow. Mrs. Southgate had made no muscular movement at all, except to turn her palms over, so that her two hands were now domed above the visiting card. She sat quite still, gazing into vacancy and obviously not hearing a single word that was said.

But half an hour later, when Williams stood up to go, she came back to life, and said to him without the least preamble, "You did not tell me what would happen if I did remarry."

Antonia turned the full front of her majesty upon her sister-in-law, and said, "You would lose the name of Southgate."

"I am glad you asked that question," said Williams. "You ought to understand exactly what your situation is. In the event of your remarriage, you would have an income from another small fund--amounting to about forty-five hundred dollars a year, I should think."

She nodded thoughtfully; and Antonia, laying her hand on her shoulder, said gently: "Now I have still a few family matters to discuss with Mr. Williams; but you need not wait, if you want to finish your letters, although we shall be very glad to have you with us if you wish to stay."

It was clear to Williams that she did not wish to stay. She held out her hand to him--thin and narrow, but as strong as steel--gave him a smile and left the room. She always had a little difficulty, like a child, with the handle of a door.

Williams and Miss Southgate smiled at each other, and he expressed a common thought as he said, "If I met Mrs. Southgate unexpectedly in the woods, I shouldn't need any photographs to make me believe in fairies."

"She's a dear little thing," said Antonia as she seated herself again, rather heavily. "Very intelligent in some ways, but in business matters--almost a case of arrested development. My brother never even gave her the trouble of signing a check."

"He just paid her bills?"

"She had very few. She has never been extravagant. She seems to have no wishes at all. I often hope that she will learn to assert herself more as she grows older."

Williams doubted if Miss Southgate would enjoy the realization of this hope, but he only said, "An income of fifty thousand is apt to increase human assertiveness."

"I sincerely hope so," said Miss Southgate. "It's a great care, Mr. Williams, and no special pleasure to find yourself obliged to direct every action, almost every thought, of another person's life. What I wanted to say to you was that I think you had better consult me about all the business details. You see how little grasp she has of them. My brother never discussed anything of the kind with her. He was more like a father than a husband--thirty-five years' difference in age--"

Miss Southgate shook her head.

"And yet," said Williams, "the marriage turned out well, wouldn't you say?"

Antonia's fine arched black brows went up in doubt.

"It hadn't the disadvantages you ordinarily expect from such marriages," she answered. "She did not run about flirting with young men or spending my brother's money foolishly. On the other hand, she did not introduce any of that gayety and youth into his daily life, any of that humor and high spirits-- She is a curious little person, good as gold, but not vital, not alive."

Williams went away wondering. Corpses don't blush like that, he thought. The wind had died down as the sun set; and now, with a red sky over the Palisades, the Riverside was not a bad place for a walk. He strolled southward, trying to remember, now that he had seen Doris Helen Southgate in the flesh, all that he had heard about her in the days when she was only a name--the folly of an otherwise shrewd client.

He thought he remembered that she was some relation to the clergyman of the Southgates' church--an orphan trying to support herself by one of those extremely ill-paid occupations which are considered ladylike. He thought she had come to the Southgate house to read to Antonia during a temporary affliction of the eyes. Before he had seen her he had thought of her as a serpent, insinuating herself into the household and then coiling herself so firmly that she could never be driven out; but now it seemed to him more as if a kitten had strayed into that great mausoleum and had been shut up there for life.

He remembered a frequent phrase of Southgate's, which he had never noticed much at the time: "Yes, I read it with great interest--at least my wife read it to me." He had been fond of being read aloud to, especially at night, when he couldn't sleep. Williams wondered whether Doris Helen had spent six years reading aloud--above the rustling of the avenue of palms at Pasadena, above the rattle of the private car as they went back and forth and across the continent. Mercy, it was no wonder she wasn't much alive. And Southgate had never given her the trouble of signing a check, hadn't he? Well, that was one way to put it. No, of course, he said to himself, he did not want to see the little widow break loose--to hear that she was gambling at Monte Carlo or being robbed of her jewels at some café on the Left Bank; but he would have been glad to see her acting on the emotion that had turned her eyes so black that afternoon.

Although he went to the house several times again in the course of the next few days, he did not see Mrs. Southgate. She was always engaged with the correspondence which had resulted from her husband's death.

"She writes a very nice letter, if I give her a general idea of what ought to be said," Antonia had explained to Williams.

One afternoon about a month after Southgate's death, as Williams was leaving his office in Nassau Street, a card was brought to him. He did not know the name, and he sent word that he was just going home. If the gentleman could give him some idea--

Word came back that the gentleman was an old friend of Mrs. Southgate. Then Williams knew that he was holding in his hand the mate of the card that Doris Helen had pressed down upon her lap so tenderly that afternoon. The name was Dominic Hale.

Even Antonia could not have complained of lack of vitality in the young man who presently walked into Williams' private office. There was something vigorous about the way he was built, the way he moved, the way his thick brown hair grew, like a close dark cap on his head. He spoke at once.

"I wanted to see you, Mr. Williams, as a friend of Mrs. Southgate's. You are a friend, aren't you?"

"Yes," said Williams, speaking as a man; and then added as a lawyer, "Though I must confess I have seen her only once in my life."

"My goodness!" said Hale, with a shake of his head, "I never knew of such a thing! I can't find that anyone has seen her more than once or twice in the course of the last five years. Wasn't she allowed friends?"

"Perhaps she did not want any."

Hale gave what in a tiger would have been a growl, but which in a man was merely a sound expressing complete disagreement.

"A girl of twenty-five--" he said; and added without pause, "Mr. Williams, I want to marry Mrs. Southgate."

The exclamation "Good!" which rose to Williams' lips was suppressed in favor of "I see." Then he went on, "And does she want to marry you?"

"She says not."

"But does not convince you of her sincerity?"

"Well, she said not in just the same tone seven years ago, when we became engaged."

"Oh, you and she were engaged before her marriage?"

"Yes, we called it that. We had no possible prospect of ever getting married. Then just before I went abroad to study--"

"And may I ask what it was you went abroad to study, Mr. Hale?"

The young man looked at him a moment in surprise before he answered, "Painting. I'm Dominic Hale."

Williams shook his head.

"Ought I to know?"

Hale laughed.

"You perfectly well might," he said. "Doris broke our engagement before I went. We did not part in a very friendly spirit."

"I see. She had already decided--"

"Oh, no! This was months before she went to the Southgates. She thought it was wrong for us to be tangled up with each other so hopelessly. It made me furious. She was so firm and clear about-- She has a will of iron, that girl."

This last statement interested Williams almost more than anything Hale had said, for he suddenly appreciated the fact that he himself had had the same impression of the widow.

"Miss Southgate finds her almost too pliable and docile," he said.

"Then," answered Hale, "Miss Southgate has never tried to make her do something she did not want to. Oh, she's not petty--Doris! She'll drift quietly along with the stream, until something which makes a difference to her comes along, and then--"

He wagged his head, compressing his lips in thought.

"I don't see exactly how I can help you in the matter--if she thinks she does not want to marry you, and she has an iron will."

"I don't want help; I want advice," said Hale. "I think she cares about me, but how much? If she really loves me, losing the fortune makes no difference. But if she doesn't--if she's just fond of me as an old friend--can I urge her to give up a million for the fun of being poor with me?"

"Does it occur to you," asked Williams--"I don't want to say anything painful, but we must face facts--that she might love you a great deal and yet hesitate to give up the income from a million?"

"Of course it has occurred to me," answered Hale, "and if I thought it was true I'd kidnap her."

"Well, of course, you can't do that," said the lawyer; but his tone seemed to admit it wouldn't be a bad thing to do.

He was surprised after his visitor had left to find how sincerely he hoped that Hale would succeed in marrying the little widow. He owned that he himself would not give up a million for any romance in the world; but then he was a middle-aged man who had lived his life, not a pretty young woman who had spent five years of her youth almost as an upper servant.

She ought, he thought, to be unafraid of the adventure of poverty; though he was obliged to confess that there was an element of adventure, too, in spending a large income; an adventure which would appeal more strongly to most people. Only, he thought, there wouldn't be much joy in riches if one remained forever under the iron rule of Antonia.

Soon after this, that first day of spring arrived which always comes to deceive New Yorkers sometime in March; that day when the air is warm and the sky a pale even blue, and the north side of the street is dry and clear and the south side still runs in slush and rivulets. Then almost everyone does something foolish--from wearing thin clothes and letting the furnace go out to mistakes of a more devastating sort.

Williams, who was prudent by nature, did nothing worse than, in returning from arguing a case in Jersey City, to take the ferry instead of the tube. As he stood watching the boat for which he was waiting bumping its way into its slip, his attention was attracted by two people seated on the upper deck, with their elbows hooked over the rail and their bent heads close together, evidently at that delightful stage of intimacy when it is possible to talk--or rather whisper--simultaneously without either one losing a single word of what the other is saying. They showed no disposition to get off, no realization even that the boat had reached the shore, though the process of winding up the dock and letting down the drawbridges and opening the gates is not a quiet one. They were simply going to and fro on the river, for when the deck hand came to collect their fare it was obviously a repeated performance.

Williams had recognized Hale first, but the next second he had seen that the diminutive figure in black could be no other than Doris Helen. He did not disturb them, but from the window of the upper cabin he watched them--rather wistfully. Now and then they seemed to be saying something of the most serious importance, and, looking at each other in the middle of a sentence, they would forget to complete it. At other times they were evidently extremely frivolous, speaking with a manner common to those a little drunk and those deeply in love, a manner as if only they themselves could appreciate how deliciously ridiculous they were.

Williams was not much surprised the very next day to be called on the telephone by Miss Southgate, who wished to see him at once. She said she would come to his office, where they could talk without interruption.

She came. Her handsome alabaster mask was never allowed to express emotion, but she undulated her vast shoulders more than usual. A young man by the name of Hale--a painter--was coming every day to the house, and that morning Doris had admitted that he wanted to marry her.

"And my brother hardly a month in his grave!" said Miss Southgate, with all the concentrated bitterness of Hamlet's first soliloquy.

She was so deeply outraged by the idea that Williams did not dare point out to her that she would profit by the marriage. There was something noble about her utter indifference to this aspect of it, but there was something bitter and egotistical in her anger against her sister-in-law for daring to suggest the control of her own destiny. Williams remembered having seen Antonia show the same ruthless, pitiless bitterness toward a servant who had left her voluntarily. She regarded it as an insult from an inferior. Yet in her emotion there was also the wish to protect her brother's memory.

"It will make my brother ridiculous--an old man's widow," she said. "It was bad enough when he married her, but he and I together managed to keep the marriage on a dignified plane. No one could have found anything to laugh at during his life; and now he is dead, after all his kindness and generosity to her, she shall not insult his memory."

"But has she any idea of doing it?" asked Williams. "There is a pretty heavy weight on the other side of the scale."

Miss Southgate clenched her hands.

"I don't know," she said, as if that were extraordinary enough. "I can't read her mind. She says not, and yet she sees him every day."

Williams shook his head.

"She won't do it," he said, and fortunately Miss Southgate did not catch the note of regret in his voice.

He promised to come and dine alone with the two women that evening. He found the little widow more alive than before, more prone to smile and talk, but no less docile in her attitude toward Antonia. There was nothing of the rebel about her, no hint that she was preparing to defy the lightning. And Williams admitted, as he saw the violence of Antonia's determination that the marriage should not take place, that a great deal of courage would be required. As he walked away from the house that evening he said to himself that if he were Hale he would kidnap her and take his chances of happiness.

A day or so later, a jubilant though black-bordered note from Miss Southgate announced that the decision had been made.

"Doris has promised me that she will not marry this man, or any other, without my consent. She is to see him this afternoon at four. I should like you to be with me then, in case he makes a scene at his final dismissal."

Well, Williams said to himself, he was a lawyer; he had seen a good deal of life; he had always known that that was the way the thing would end. But how pitiful and how stupid! He thought of the ferryboat plying unnoticed from one bank of the Hudson to the other. Did Doris Helen suppose she would duplicate that afternoon for a million dollars?

He went punctually at four, and was ushered into the back drawing-room. The terrible room across the front of the house was already occupied by the parting lovers, where presumably the portrait of Alexander Southgate was dominating their farewells.

Antonia received him with a manner of calm triumph, unshadowed by the least doubt that her sister-in-law would keep her word. But after about an hour a silence fell upon her, and Williams became aware that she was listening with increasing eagerness for the sound of the opening of the front drawing-room door. At last she rose to her feet.

"This is unbearable," she said.

"An hour isn't so very long," he returned, "for two people who love each other to take an eternal good-by."

"It's over two hours," said Antonia. "And she had nothing to say to him but no."

A suspicion suddenly came to Williams that perhaps the other room was empty, that perhaps Hale had been driven to the alternative of carrying her off. He sprang to his feet.

"Just wait here," he said to Antonia.

The hallway between the two rooms was in shadow. As he stepped into it, the door of the front room opened and Doris and Hale came out of it together. They did not see Williams, for they both turned at once toward the staircase, Hale in order to descend it and Doris leaning on the balustrade, raising her shoulders and almost taking her feet off the ground. Their manner was not that of people who have parted forever.

"There isn't another woman in the world would make such a sacrifice for a fellow like me," Hale said. Williams could not see the smile she gave him, but it must have been potent. He took her in his arms, wrenched himself away, walked down about three steps, turned and walked up them again, kissed her a second time--a good satisfactory hug, and then exclaiming, "I can't bear to go," bounded down the stairs and was gone. The front door banged behind him, and Doris Helen lifted her hands from the balustrade. She hardly noticed Williams as he opened the door.

Antonia was still standing.

"Well, Doris," she said as the younger woman entered, and the tone of her voice was deep and bell-like.

Doris sat down on the edge of the sofa--she always sat on the edge of her chair so that her feet could touch the ground. Her hands, folded as usual in her lap, were perfectly quiet, yet something in the way her eyes darted from point to point made Williams feel that she was nervous.

"Well," he said briskly, "what did you decide?"

She looked at him wonderingly.

"I promised Antonia I would not marry without her consent. I shall keep my word, of course."

Her sister-in-law held out a hand to her, and with the other covered her eyes.

"Thank God!" she said.

Williams looked at the widow. Obviously she was deceiving either Hale or Antonia. That was no rejected lover who had just left the house. He speculated how the drama was going to unfold. There was no special purpose in deceiving Antonia. If there was to be a marriage, she would necessarily know it.

Perhaps Doris Helen was one of those people who couldn't say disagreeable things, but could write them.

Miss Southgate removed her hand from her eyes.

"And now," she said, "that nightmare is over, let us go back to Pasadena and begin our work editing my brother's memoirs."

Williams was aware of a certain bitter satisfaction in the thought that such a life was about all the little creature deserved, but the little creature was calmly shaking her head.

"No," she was saying gently; "no, I'm not going back to Pasadena, Antonia. I'm going to Spain."

Her sister-in-law stared at her.

"To Spain? But I don't want to go to Spain, Doris, and you can hardly go alone."

"I'm not going alone," answered Doris. "Mr. Hale is going with me."

Thirty years of training at the bar barely saved Williams from laughing aloud; the solution was so simple and so complete. The recollection flashed through his mind of the daughter of a friend of his, who when discovered in the act of smoking a cigar explained that she had promised her mother never to smoke a cigarette. He took himself in hand. The thing was serious and must be stopped. Evidently the word "sacrifice" had applied not to the loss of an income of fifty thousand dollars but to the resignation of the less tangible asset--reputation. Miss Southgate was already rolling out a magnificent invective. Doris Helen did not attempt to interrupt her. She sat still, with her eyes raised with interested surprise to Antonia's angry face. Only once she spoke.

She said quietly, "No, not as my lover, Antonia--as my secretary."

"And what difference does it make--what you call it?"

"Antonia!" Mrs. Southgate's tone protested. "It makes a great deal of difference what it is."

Her sister-in-law felt the reproach.

"I mean, no one will believe it, no one will care--the scandal will be the same."

Doris made gesture with her thin hands as if one couldn't go changing all one's plans for every shred of gossip that drifted across the horizon.

"One only cares what one's friends say," she explained, "and I haven't any friends--except you, Antonia."

"Are you utterly indifferent to the name of an honorable man who was your husband?"