Part 15

"While my husband lived I tried to do my duty to him," said Doris firmly. "I gave my whole life to it, and my reward is that he tries to reach out of the grave and prevent my having the normal freedom that any woman of my age ought to have."

Williams had only to look into her set little face to see that it was hopeless to argue with her, but he had hopes of Hale. He had formed a favorable opinion of the young man and simply did not believe he was a party to any such plan.

"I should like to have a talk with Hale," he said.

"He's gone out of town," answered Doris. "He won't be back until a day or two before we sail."

Antonia gave a sound between a bleat and a whinny.

"You're sailing on the same steamer?"

"Of course--with my secretary."

She left the room.

In the course of the next few minutes Williams was surprised to discover the words included in the vocabulary of so majestic a woman as Antonia. There was nothing she did not call her sister-in-law, although she ended each sentence with an assertion that she wouldn't really do it.

"I wouldn't count on that," said Williams. "Most people are restrained by the opinion of their social group; but, as Mrs. Southgate says, she doesn't seem to have any group."

"Do you forget there is such a thing as a moral sense?" asked Antonia.

"If you had listened attentively," he replied, "you would have gathered as I did that there is nothing contrary to morals in this plan of your sister-in-law's--a lack of convention, yes."

"We will not allow it," said Antonia.

It was Williams' duty to point out that persuasion was the only method open to them. His sympathies were with the lovers, but he felt it his duty to mention to Miss Southgate his conviction that the best way to stop the whole thing was to send for Dominic Hale.

"This is not Hale's plan," he said. "I am sure he would not stand for it. If you send for him and have a talk you will find that he believes they are going to be married before they sail."

But Miss Southgate was too angry to listen to him. She tossed the suggestion aside with the utmost contempt.

"How can you be so innocent?" she exclaimed. "The whole plan is his. Doris would never have the imagination to think of such a thing. She has simply fallen into the hands of a designing man. She has no will of her own. You are utterly mistaken."

Well, perhaps he was; but he wanted to find Hale and have a talk with him; but as he could find no trace of the young man, he was obliged to content himself with an interview with Doris. He wanted to point out to her that she was ruining Hale irretrievably. It was the sort of thing a man could never live down. It would be said that he preferred to live on the dead husband's money rather than to make the widow his wife. He put it as badly as he could, but Doris was unshaken. She nodded her head.

"Yes, I know," she said. "No one will understand. He sacrifices his reputation too--not any more than I do, Mr. Williams, though perhaps not any less. We must learn to live without the world, but we can--we shall have each other."

Williams thumped his hand on his knee.

"I can't believe it of him," he said. "Such a disgusting rôle! So unmanly!"

Doris smiled at him sadly.

"Does it seem unmanly to you?" she said meditatively. "It seems to me it wouldn't be manly to say no to a woman who loves him and has been as unhappy as I have been."

Yes, Williams could see that point of view too. Hale might say to himself that a girl who had lived those years of self-abnegation had a right to his love and Southgate's money, if she wanted them both; that it wasn't his part to take a noble stand for which she must pay. There was a certain nobility in not caring what the world said of him.

And yet--

He tried one last argument.

"Well, then for yourself; can't you see that it's contemptible to cling so to a fortune? What's poverty, after all? You're young. Marry the young man."

She stared at him.

"But, Mr. Williams," she said, "that's exactly what I promised Antonia I wouldn't do."

"Break your promise."

She looked really shocked.

"What a funny thing for you to say--a lawyer!" She shook her head. "I never broke my word in all my life. Besides, Antonia says that Alexander particularly disliked the idea of my remarriage."

Williams thought this was too trifling.

"You can hardly suppose," he said stiffly, "that you will be fulfilling the wishes of your husband by going to Spain with a man to whom you are not married."

She raised her shoulders as if beset by inconsistencies.

"What can I do?"

"You can give up the whole thing."

"Give up Dominic? No! I gave him up once because I thought it was better for him. I don't think I'd do it again, even for that--certainly not for anything else. I love him, Mr. Williams, and I'm of rather a persistent sort of nature."

Williams reported his failure to Antonia. He began to feel sorry for Antonia. Her age, her previous power and, above all, her mere bulk made it seem somehow humiliating that she could make no impression on this calm, steely chit of a girl. He was struck, too, by the depth and sincerity of her emotion.

"Don't care so much, my dear Miss Southgate," he said. "You've done your best to protect your brother's memory. Wash your hands of it all and go back to California. Forget there ever was such a person."

And then he saw what perhaps he had been stupid not to see before, that under all Miss Southgate's anger and family pride was a more creditable feeling--a love of Doris Helen, an almost maternal desire to protect her. As soon as Williams understood this--and he did not understand for some weeks--he advised compromise.

"Offer her half the income and let her marry the fellow."

Antonia's eyes flashed.

"Let myself be blackmailed?" she said. "You admit they are trying to blackmail me?"

"I admit they are in the stronger position," said Williams, as if in the experience of a lawyer it was pretty much the same thing.

"I shall not yield--for her own sake," answered Antonia.

In spite of the bitter issue between them the two women continued to live in the same house, and to discuss with interest and sometimes with affection all those endless daily details which two people who live in the same house must discuss. It was the preparations for the trip that finally drove Antonia to the wall: Doris' passport, her letter of credit from Southgate's bank, and the trunks all marked with the name of Southgate--"in red, with a bright-red band," Antonia explained to Williams, "so that no one can fail to notice them."

The final item was a dozen black-bordered pocket handkerchiefs. Williams, coming in late one afternoon, at the time when the shops are making their last delivery, found Antonia sobbing on the sofa and the little widow erect and pale, with the small, flat, square box open between them.

He looked questioningly at Doris, and she answered, pointing to the handkerchiefs, "It seems as if she did not want me to wear mourning. But I can hardly go into colors when Alexander has been dead such a short time."

Antonia sobbed out without raising her head, "Can she go careering about Europe in widow's mourning with that dreadful young man in bright colours?"

"Dominic's clothes are not bright," said Doris gently.

"They're not black like yours," returned Antonia.

The widow looked up at Williams.

"I don't think it's necessary for Dominic to wear black for my husband," she said, as one open to reason. "One puts one's footman in black, but not one's secretary."

At that terrible word "secretary" Antonia gave way.

"I can't let her do it!" she wailed. "In crape and he in colors--at hotels! Oh, Doris, it's horrible--what you're doing, but I must save you from utter ruin! I will make proper legal arrangements to give you half the income from the estate, and you can marry this--this person."

She covered her large statuesque face with her large white hands. Doris patted the heaving shoulder, but she did not leap at the offer. For an instant Williams thought she was going to bargain. She was, but not for money.

"Antonia, it's very kind of you," she said; "but I don't see how I could take your money--money which at least legally would have become yours--to do something that you hated."

"You can't expect me to approve of your marriage."

"If you don't, I won't do it," said Doris. "I'll just go--the way I said."

And on this she obstinately took her stand. Nor would she be content with Antonia's cry that she disapproved less of marriage than of this other horrible immoral plan.

"There was nothing immoral in my plan," answered Doris proudly, "and I cannot let you say so."

She insisted on being approved, and at length Antonia approved of her--or said she did. And so the papers were drawn up and signed, and the arrangements for the wedding went forward, and at last Hale returned.

Williams had been waiting eagerly for this. He was more curious than he had ever been in his life. His whole estimate of his own judgment of men was at stake. Did Hale know, or didn't he? Five minutes alone with the young artist would tell him, but those five minutes were hard to get; Doris Helen was always there. Even when Williams made an appointment with Hale at his office, the young widow was with him.

They were married early one morning, and their vessel was to sail at noon. Then at last, while Doris was changing her clothes, Hale was left alone in the front drawing-room with Antonia and the lawyer. Antonia, who still clung to her belief that her sister-in-law was an innocent instrument in the hands of a wicked man, would not speak to Hale, but sat erect, with her eyes fixed on her brother's portrait. It was Hale who opened the conversation.

"Miss Southgate," he said, with his engaging energy, "I can understand you don't like me much for taking Doris away, but I do hope you'll let me tell you how nobly I think you have behaved."

Antonia stared at him as if in her emptied safe she had discovered a bread-and-butter letter from the burglar. Then without an articulated word she rose and swept out of the room. Hale sighed.

"I do wish she didn't hate me so," he said. "Doris tells me she says she approves of our marriage, but she doesn't behave as if she did."

"At least," said Williams, "she made it possible."

Hale took him up quickly.

"Not a bit of it. It was settled quite irrespective of her--that day when you saw me kiss Doris in the hall. It was all arranged then; only, of course, we thought we were going to be hard up. I shall never forget that, Mr. Williams--that Doris was willing to give up that enormous income for me."

"Was she?" said Williams. And as Hale nodded to himself he went on, "Why did you go away like that for a month?"

"Doris wanted me to," he answered. "She thought it was only fair to Miss Southgate. I felt perfectly safe. I had her promise, and she thought she might bring Miss Southgate round to approving of the marriage. I never thought she'd succeed; but, you see, she did. She's a very remarkable woman, is Doris."

"She is, indeed," said Williams cordially.

Presently she came downstairs--the very remarkable woman--hand in hand with Antonia, and she and Hale drove away to the steamer.

Williams found himself holding Antonia's large, heavy, white hand.

"I think you've been wonderful, Miss Southgate," he said.

She wiped her eyes.

"I did not want to make it impossible for her to come back," she said, "when she finds that man out."

The lawyer did not answer, for it was his opinion that if there was to be any finding out it would be done by Hale.

WHOSE PETARD WAS IT?

Aunt Georgy Hadley was rather unpopular with her own generation because she did not think the younger one so terrible. "I can't see," she insisted, "that they are so different from what we were." For an unmarried lady of forty to admit that she had ever had anything in common with the young people of the present day shocked her contemporaries.

Aunt Georgy was a pale, plain, brilliant-eyed woman, who liked to talk, to listen to other people talk, and to read. She simply hated to do anything else. As a girl she had always said that the dream of her life was to be bedridden; and so when, after she had ceased to be young, she had broken her hip so badly as to make walking difficult many people regarded it as a judgment from heaven. Georgy herself said it was a triumph of mind over matter; she was now freed from all active obligations, while it became the duty of her friends and relations to come and sit beside her sofa and tell her the news, of which, since she lived in a small town, there was always a great deal.

Her two sisters, married and mothers both, differed with her most violently about the younger generation. Her sister Fanny, who had produced three robust, handsome members of the gang under discussion, asked passionately, "Did we carry flasks to parties?"

"How silly it would have been if we had, when it was always there waiting for us," answered Georgy.

Her sister Evelyn, who had produced one perfect flower--little Evie--demanded, "Did we motor thirty miles at midnight to dance in disreputable road houses?"

"No," said Georgina, "because in our day we did not have motors; but we did pretty well with the environment at our disposal. I remember that Evelyn was once becalmed on the Sound all night in a catboat with a young man, and Fanny was caught just stepping off to a masked ball in the Garden, only--"

"I was not," said Fanny, as one who slams the door in the face of an unwelcome guest.

"Imagine Georgy's mind being just a sink for all those old scandals!" said Evelyn pleasantly, but without taking up the question of the truth or falsity of the facts stated.

Although Georgy was the youngest of the three Hadley sisters she, being unmarried, had inherited the red-brick house in Maple Street. It had a small grass plot in front--at least, it would have been a grass plot if the roots of the two maple trees which stood in it had not long ago come through the soil. There was, however, a nice old-fashioned garden at the back of the house; and the sitting room looked out on this. Here Aunt Georgy's sofa stood, beside the fire in winter and beside the window in summer. The room was rather crowded with books and light blue satin furniture, and steel engravings of Raphael Madonnas and the Death of Saint Jerome; and over the mantelpiece hung a portrait by Sully of Aunt Georgy's grandmother, looking, everyone said, exactly as little Evie looked today.

It was to the circle round the blue satin sofa that people came, bearing news--from nieces and nephews fresh from some new atrocity, to the mayor of the town, worried over the gift of a too costly museum. Jefferson was the sort of town that bred news. In the first place, it was old--Washington had stopped there on his way to or from Philadelphia once--so it had magnificent old-fashioned ideals and traditions to be violated, as they constantly were. In the second place, it was near New York; most of the population commuted daily, thus keeping in close touch with all the more dangerous features of metropolitan life. And last, everyone had known everyone else since the cradle, and most of them were related to one another.

There was never any dearth of news, and everyone came to recount, not to consult. Aunt Georgy did not like to be consulted. One presented life to her as a narrative, not as a problem. There was no use in asking her for advice, because she simply would not give it.

"No," she would say, holding up a thin, rather bony hand, "I can't advise you. I lose all the wonderful surge and excitement of your story if I know I shall have to do something useful about it at the end. It's like reading a book for review--quite destroys my pleasure, my sense of drama."

That was exactly what she conveyed to those who talked to her--a sense of the drama, not of her life but of their own. The smallest incident--the sort that most of one's friends don't even hear when it is told to them--became so significant, so amusing when recounted to Aunt Georgy that you went on and on--and told her things.

Even her sisters, shocked as they constantly were by something they described as "Georgy's disloyalty to the way we were all brought up," told her everything. Step by step, the progress, or the decadence, by which the customs of one generation change into the customs of the next one was fought out by the three ladies, _née_ Hadley, at the side of that blue satin sofa.

It began with cigarettes for girls and the new dances for both sexes. At that remote epoch none of the nieces and nephews were old enough either to smoke or dance; so, although the line of the battle had been the same--Fanny and Evelyn anti and Georgy pro--the battle itself had not been so bitter and personal as it afterward became.

The first time that Fanny's life was permanently blighted was when Norma, her eldest child, was called out and publicly rebuked in dancing school for shimmying. She wept--Fanny of course, not Norma, who didn't mind at all--and said that she could never hold up her head again. But she must have lifted it, for it was bowed every few months for many years subsequently. Aunt Georgy at once sent for her niece and insisted on having a private performance of the offensive dance, over which she laughed heartily. It looked to her, she said, so much like the old horse trying to shake off a horsefly.

The next time that the social fabric in Jefferson tottered and Fanny's head was again bowed was at the discovery that the younger set was not wearing corsets. Fanny tiptoed over and shut the sitting-room door before she breathed this bad news into her sister's ear.

"None of them," she said.

"But you wouldn't want the boys to, would you?" answered Georgy.

Fanny explained that she meant the girls didn't.

"Mercy!" exclaimed her sister. "We were all scolded because we did. Elderly gentlemen used to write embarrassing articles about how we were sacrificing the health of the next generation to our vanity, and how the Venus de Milo was the ideal feminine figure; and now these girls are just as much scolded--"

"The worst of it is," said Fanny, rolling her eyes and not listening, "that they take them off and leave them in the dressing room. They say that at the Brownes' the other evening there was a pile that high."

Still, in spite of her disapproval, Fanny's head was not so permanently bowed this time, because every mother in Jefferson was in the same situation. But craps struck Fanny a shrewder blow, because her child, Norma, was a conspicuous offender here, whereas little Evie, her sister's child, didn't care for craps. She said it wasn't amusing.

In order to decide the point Aunt Georgy asked Norma to teach her the game, and they were thus engaged when Mr. Gordon, the hollow-cheeked young clergyman, came to pay his first parochial visit. He said he wasn't at all shocked, and turned to Evie, who was sitting demurely behind the tea table eager to give him a cup of Aunt Georgy's excellent tea.

There was something a little mid-Victorian about Evie, and the only blot on Aunt Georgy's perfect liberalism was that in her heart she preferred her to the more modern nieces. Evie parted her thick light-brown hair in the middle and had a little pointed chin, like a picture in an old annual or a flattered likeness of Queen Victoria as a girl. She was small and decidedly pretty, though not a beauty like her large, rollicking, black-haired cousin Norma.

Norma's love affairs--if they were love affairs, and whether they were or not was a topic often discussed about the blue satin sofa--were carried on with the utmost candor. Suddenly one day it would become evident that Norma was dancing, golfing, motoring with a new young man. Everybody would report to Aunt Gregory the number of hours a day that he and Norma spent together, and Aunt Gregory would say to Norma, "Are you in love with him, Norma?" and Norma would answer "Yes" or "No" or "I'm trying to find out."

"There's no mystery about this generation," Fanny would say.

"Why should there be?" Norma would say, and would stamp out again, and would be heard hailing the young man of the minute, "We're considered minus on romance, Bill"; and ten of them would get into a car intended for four and drive away, looking like a basketful of puppies.

But about little Evie's love affairs there was some mystery. Aunt Georgy did not know that Evie had ever spoken to the mayor--a middle-aged banker of great wealth--and yet one day when he came to tell Miss Hadley about the museum he told her instead about how Evie had refused to marry him, and how unhappy he was. The nice young clergyman, too, who preached so interestingly and pleased the parish in every detail, was thinking of getting himself transferred to a city in California because the sight of an attentive but unattainable Evie in the front pew every Sunday almost broke his heart.

Aunt Georgy exonerated Evie from blame as far as the mayor was concerned, but she wasn't so sure about the Reverend Mr. Gordon.

"Evie," she said, "did you try to enmesh that nice-looking man of God?"

Evie shook her head.

"I don't get anywhere if I try, Aunt Georgy," she answered. "It has to come of itself or not at all. If Norma sees a man she fancies she swims out after him like a Newfoundland dog. But I have to sit on the shore until the tide washes something up at my feet. I don't always like what it washes up either."

The simile amused Aunt Georgy, but the more she reflected the more she doubted its accuracy. Those tides that washed things up--Evie had some mysterious control of them, whether she knew it or not. Evie's method and Norma's differed enormously in technic, but wasn't the elemental aggression about the same?

Life in Jefferson was never more interesting to Aunt Georgy than when psychoanalysis swept over them. Of course, they had all known about it, and read Freud, or articles about Freud; but the whole subject was revived and made personal by the arrival of Lisburn. Lisburn was not a doctor of medicine but of philosophy. He was an assistant professor of psychology in a New York college. He had written his dissertation on The Unconscious as Portrayed in Poetic Images. With an astonishing erudition he brought all poetry from Homer to Edna St. Vincent Millay into line with the new psychology. Besides this, he was an exceedingly handsome young man--tall, dark, decided, and a trifle offhand and contemptuous in his manner. What girl could ask more? Norma did not ask a bit more. The moment she saw him she--in Evie's language--swam out after him. She met him at dinner one evening, and the next day her conversation was all about dreams and fixations and inhibitions. Mothers began to assemble rapidly about the blue satin sofa. Craps had been vulgar, the shimmy immoral, but this was the worst of all.

"Georgy," said Fanny solemnly, "they go and sit on that young man's piazza, and they talk about things--things which you and I did not know existed, and if we did know they existed we did not know words for them; and if we did know words for them we did not take the slightest interest in them."

"Then there can't be any harm in them," said Georgy, "because I'm sure when we were girls we took an interest in everything there was any harm in. But it sounds to me just like a new way of holding hands--like palmistry in our day. You remember when you took up palmistry, Evelyn. It made me so jealous to see you holding my young men's hands!"

"It's not at all the same thing," answered Evelyn. "There was nothing in palmistry that wasn't perfectly nice."

"Oh, yes, there was," said Georgy. "There was that line, you know, round the base of the two middle fingers. We all felt a little shocked if we had it and a little disappointed if we hadn't."