Chapter 7

The room was nearly as bare as the hall: in place of the deep carpets of the Feldts' the floor, of dark uneven oak boards, was merely waxed and covered by a rough-looking oval rug. The walls were paneled in white, with white ruffled curtains at small windows; and the furniture, the dull mahogany ranged against the immaculate paint, the rocking-chairs of high slatted walnut and rush bottoms, the slender formality of tables with fluted legs, was dignified but austere. There were some portraits in heavy old gilt--men with florid faces and tied hair, and the delicate replicas of high-breasted women in brocades.

There was, plainly, an air of the exceptional in Amelia Lowrie's conduction of Linda to her room. She waited at the door while the other moved forward to the center of a chamber empty of all the luxury Linda had grown to demand. There was a bed with tall graceful posts supporting a canopy like a frosting of sugar, a solemn set of drawers with a diminutive framed mirror in which she could barely see her shoulders, a small unenclosed brass clock with long exposed weights, and two uninviting painted wooden chairs. This was not, although very nearly, all. Linda's attention was attracted by a framed and long-faded photograph of a young man, bareheaded, with a loosely knotted scarf, a striped blazer and white flannels. His face was thin and sensitive, his lips level, and his eyes gazed with a steady questioning at the observer.

“That was Bartram,” Amelia Lowrie told her; “your father. This was his room.”

She went down almost immediately and left Linda, in a maze of dim emotions, seated on one of the uncomfortable painted chairs. Her father! This was his room; nothing, she realized, had been disturbed. The mirror had held the vaguely unsteady reflection of his face; he had slept under the arched canopy of the bed. She rose and went to a window from which he, too, had looked.

Below her was the garden shut in on its front by the high fence. There was a magnolia-tree, now covered with thick smooth white flowers, and, at the back, low-massed rhododendron with fragile lavender blossoms on a dark glossy foliage. But the space was mainly green and shadowed in tone; while beyond were other gardens, other emerald lawns and magnolia-trees, an ordered succession of tranquillity with separate brick or stone or white dwellings in the lengthening afternoon shadows of vivid maples.

It was as different as possible from all that Linda had known, from the elaborate hotels and gigantic apartment houses, the tropical interiors, of her New York life. She unpacked her bag, putting her gold toilet things on the chest of drawers, precisely arranging in a shallow closet what clothes she had brought, and then, changing, went down to the Lowries.

They surveyed her with eminent approval at a dinner-table lighted only with candles, beside long windows open on a dusk with a glimmer of fireflies. Suddenly Linda felt amazingly at ease; it seemed to her that she had sat here before, with the night flowing gently in over the candle-flames. The conversation, she discovered, never strayed far from the concerns and importance of the Lowrie blood. “My grandmother, Natalie Vigné,” Elouise informed her, “came with her father to Philadelphia from France, in eighteen hundred and one, at the invitation of Stephen Girard, who was French as well. She married Hallet Lowrie whose mother was a Bartram.

“That, my dear, explains our black hair and good figgers. There never was a lumpy Lowrie. Well, Hallet built this house, or rather enlarged it, for his wife; and it has never been out of the family. Our nephew, Arnaud Hallet--Arnaud was old Vigné's name--owns it now. Isaac Hallet, you may recall, was suspected of being a Tory; at any rate his brother's descendants, Fanny Rodwell is the only one left, won't speak.”

The placid conversation ran on unchanged throughout dinner and the evening. Linda was relieved by the absence of any questioning; indeed nothing contemporary, she realized, was held to be significant. “I thought Arnaud would be in to-night,” Elouise Lowrie said; “he knew Linda was expected.” No one, however, appeared; and Linda went up early to her room. There, too, were only candles, a pale wavering illumination in which the past, her father, were extraordinarily nearby. A sense of pride was communicated to her by so much that time had been unable to shake. The bed was steeped in the magic of serene traditions.

XX

Arnaud Hallet appeared for dinner the evening after Linda's arrival; a quiet man with his youth lost, slightly stooped shoulders, crumpled shoes and a green cloth bag. But he had a memorable voice and an easy distinction of manner; in addition to these she discovered, at the table, a lighter amusing sense of the absurd. She watched him--as he poured the sherry from a decanter with a silver label hung on a chain--with a feeling of mild approbation. On the whole he was nice but uninteresting. What a different man from Pleydon!

The days passed in a pleasant deliberation, with Arnaud Hallet constantly about the house or garden, while Linda's thoughts continually returned to the sculptor. He was clearer than the actuality of her mother and the Feldts or the recreated image of her father. At times she was thrilled by the familiar obscure sense of music, of longing slowly translated into happiness. Then more actual problems would envelop her in doubt. Mostly she was confused--in her cool material necessity for understanding--by the temper of her feeling for Dodge Pleydon. Linda wondered if this were love. Perhaps, when she saw him again, she'd be able to decide. Then she remembered promising to let him know if she changed her address. It was possible that already he had called at the Feldts', or written, and that her mother had refused to inform him where she had gone.

Linda had been at the Lowries' two weeks now, but they were acutely distressed when she suggested that her visit was unreasonably prolonged. “My dear,” they protested together, “we hoped you'd stay the summer. Bartram's girl! Unless, of course, it is dull with us. Something brighter must be arranged. No doubt we have only thought of our own pleasure in having you.”

Linda replied honestly that she enjoyed being with them extremely. Her mother's dislike, the heavy luxury of the Feldt apartment, held little attraction for her. Then, too, losing the sense of the bareness of the house Hallet Lowrie had built for his French wife, she began to find it surprisingly appealing.

Her mind returned to her promise to Pleydon. She told herself that probably he had forgotten her existence, but she had a strong unreasoning conviction that this was not so. It seemed the most natural thing in the world to write him and, almost before she was aware of the intention, she had put “Dear Mr. Pleydon” at the head of a sheet of note-paper.

I promised to let you know in the spring when you came back from South America where I was. I did not think I would have to do it, but here I am in Philadelphia with my father's sisters. I do not know just how long for, but a month, anyhow. It is very quiet, but charming. I have the room that was my father's when he was young, and look out of the window like he must have. If you should come to Philadelphia my aunts ask me to say that they would be glad to have you for dinner. This is how you get here....

Very sincerely,

LINDA CONDON.

She walked to a street crossing, where she dropped the envelope into a letter-box on a lamppost, and returned to find Arnaud Hallet waiting for her. He said:

“Everyone agrees I'm serious, but actually you are worse than the Assembly.” They went through the dining-room to the garden, and sat on the stone step of a deep window. It was quite late, perhaps eleven o'clock, and the fireflies, slowly rising into the night, had vanished. Linda was cool and remote and grave, silently repeating and weighing the phrases of her letter to Pleydon.

She realized that Arnaud Hallet was coming to like her a very great deal; but she gave this only the slightest attention. She liked him, really, and that dismissed him from serious consideration. Anyhow, in spite of the perfection of his manner, Arnaud's careless dress displeased her: his shoes and the shoulders of his coat were perpetually dusty, and his hair, growing scant, was always ruffled. Linda understood that he was highly intellectual, and frequently contributed historical and genealogical papers to societies and bulletins, but compared with Dodge Pleydon's brilliant personality and reputation, Pleydon surrounded by the Susanna Nodas of life, Arnaud was as dingy as his shoes.

She wondered idly when the latter would actually try to love her. He was holding her hand and it might well be to-night. Linda decided that he would do it delicately; and when, almost immediately, he kissed her, she was undisturbed. No, surprisingly, it had been quite pleasant. He hadn't mussed her ribbons, nor her spirit, a particle. In addition he did not at once become impossible and urgently sentimental; there was even a shade of amusement on his heavy face.

“You appear to take a lot for granted,” he complained.

“I'd been wondering when it would happen,” she admitted coolly.

“It always does, then?”

“Usually I stop it,” she continued. “I don't believe I'll ever like being kissed. Can you tell me why? No one ever has; they all think they can bring me around to it.”

“And to them,” he added.

“But they end by being furious at me. I've been sworn at and called dreadful names. Sometimes they're only silly. One cried; I hated that the most.”

“Do you mean that you were sorry for him?”

“Oh, dear, no. Why should I be? He looked so odious all smeared with tears.”

Arnaud Hallet returned promptly: “Linda, you're a little beast.” To counteract his rude speech he kissed her again. “This,” he said with less security, “threatens to become a habit. I thought, at forty-five, that I was safely by the island of sirens, but I'll be on the rocks before I know it.”

She laughed with the cool remoteness of running water.

“I wonder you haven't been murdered,” he proceeded, “in a moonless garden by an elderly lawyer. Do you ever think of the lyric day when, preceded by a flock of bridesmaids and other flowery pagan truck, you'll meet justice?”

“Marriage?” she asked. “But of course. I have everything perfectly planned--”

“Then, my dear Linda, describe him.”

“Very straight,” she said, “with beautiful polished shoes and brushed hair.”

“You ought to have no trouble finding that. Any number of my friends have one--to open the door and take your things. I might arrange a very satisfactory introduction for everybody concerned--a steady man well on his way to preside over the pantry and table.”

“You're not as funny as usual,” Linda decided critically. “That, too, disturbs me,” he replied. “It looks even more unpromising for the near future.”

XXI

In her room Linda thought, momentarily, of Arnaud Hallet; whatever might have been serious in her attitude toward him dissolved by the lightness of his speech. Dodge Pleydon appealed irresistibly to her deepest feelings. Now her mental confusion was at least clear in that she knew what troubled her. It was not new, it extended even to times before Pleydon had entered her life--the difficulties presented by the term “love.”

In her mind it was divided into two or three widely different aspects, phases which she was unable to reconcile. Her mother, in the beginning, had informed her that love was a nuisance. To be happy, a man must love you without any corresponding return; this was necessary to his complete management, the securing of the greatest possible amount of new clothes. It was as far as love should be allowed to enter marriage. But that reality, with a complete expression in shopping, was distant from the immaterial and delicate emotions that in her responded to Pleydon.

Linda had been familiar with the materials, the processes, of what, she had been assured, was veritable love since early childhood. Her mother's dressing, the irritable hours of fittings and at her mirror, the paint she put on her cheeks, the crimping of her hair were for the favor of men. These struggles had absorbed the elder, all the women Linda had encountered, to the exclusion of everything else. This, it seemed, must, from its overwhelming predominance, be the greatest thing in life.

There was nothing mysterious about it. You did certain things intelligently, if you had the figure to do them with, for a practical end. The latter, carefully controlled, like an essence of which a drop was delightful and more positively stifling, was as real as the methods of approach. Oatmeal or scented soap! The force of example and association combined to bathe such developments in the sanest light possible, and Linda had every intention of the successful grasping of an easy and necessary luxury. She had, until--vaguely--now, been entirely willing to accept the unescapable conditions of love used as a means or the element of pleasure at parties. Now, however, the unexpected element of Dodge Pleydon disturbed her philosophy.

Suddenly all the lacing and painting and crimping, the pretense and lies and carefully planned accidental effects, filled her with revolt. The insinuations of women, the bareness of their revelations, her mother returning unsteady and mussed from a dinner, were unutterably disgusting. Even to think of them hurt her fundamentally: so much of what she was, of what she had determined, had been destroyed by an emotion apparently as slight as echoed music.

Here was the real mystery and for which nothing in her experience had prepared her. She began to see why it was called a nuisance--if this were love--and wondered if she had better not suppress it at once. It wouldn't be suppressed. Her thoughts continually came back to Pleydon, and the warmth, the disturbing thrill, always resulted. It led her away from herself, from Linda Condon; a sufficiently strange accomplishment. A concern for Dodge Pleydon, little schemes for his happiness and well-being, put aside her clothes and complexion and her future.

Until the present her acts had been the result of deliberation. She had been impressed by the necessity for planning with care; but, in the cool gloom of the covered bed, a sharp joy held her at the possibility of flinging caution away. Yet she couldn't quite, no matter how much she desired it, lose herself. Linda was glad that Pleydon was rich; and there were, she remembered, moments for surrender.

As usual these problems, multiplying toward night, were fewer in the bright flood of morning. She laughed at the memory of Arnaud Hallet's humor; and then, it was late afternoon, the maid told her that Pleydon was in the drawing room. Her appearance satisfactory she was able to see him at once. To her great pleasure neither Pleydon nor his clothes had changed. He was dressed in light-gray flannels; a big easy man with a crushing palm, large features and an expression of intolerance.

“Linda,” he said, “what a splendid place to find you. So much better than Markue's.” He was, she realized, very glad to see her, and dropped at once, as if they had been uninterruptedly together, into intimate talk. “My work has been going badly,” he proceeded; “or rather not at all. I made a rather decent fountain at Newport; but--remember what Susanna said?--it's not in the first rank. A happy balance and strong enough conception; yet it is like a Cellini ewer done in granite. The truth is, too much interests me; an artist ought to be the victim of a monomania. I'm a normal animal.” He studied her contentedly:

“How lovely you are. I came over--in an automobile at last--because I was certain you couldn't exist as I remembered you. But you could and do. Lovely Linda! And what a gem of a letter. It might have been copied from 'The Perfect Correspondent for Young Females.' You're not going to lose me again. When I was a little boy I had a passion for sherbets.”

She smiled at him with half-closed eyes and the conviction that, with Pleydon, she could easily be different. He leaned forward and his voice startled her with the impression that he had read her mind:

“If you could care for any one a lifetime would be short to get you. Look, you have never been out of my thoughts--or within my reach. It seems a myth that I kissed you; impossible ... Linda.”

“But you did,” she told him, gaining happiness from the mere assurance. They were alone in the drawing-room, and he rose, sweeping her up into his arms. Yet the expected joy evaded her desire and the sudden determination to lose utterly her reserve. It was evident that he as well was conscious of this, for he released her and stood frowning, his protruding lower lip uglier than ever.

“A lifetime would be nothing,” he said again; “or it might be everything wasted. Which are you--all soul and spirit, or none?”

“I don't know,” she replied, in her bitter disappointment, her heart pinched by the sharpest pain she remembered. There was the stir of skirts at the door; Linda turned with a sense of relief to Amelia Lowrie. However, dinner progressed very well indeed. “Then your aunt,” Elouise said to Pleydon, “was Carrie Dodge. I recall her perfectly.” That established, the Lowrie women talked with a gracious freedom, exploring the furthermost infiltrations of blood and marriages.

Linda was again serene. She watched Pleydon with an extraordinary formless conviction--each of them was a part of the other's life; while in some way marriage and love were now hopelessly confused. It was beyond effort or planning. That was all she could grasp, but she was contented. Sometimes when he talked he made the familiar descriptive gesture with his hand, as if he were shaping the form of his speech: a sculptor's gesture, Linda realized.

Later they wandered into the garden, a dark enclosure with the long ivy-covered façade of the house broken by the lighted spaces of windows. Beyond the fence at regular intervals an electric car passed with an increasing and diminishing clangor. The white petals of the magnolia-tree had fallen and been wheeled away; the blossoms of the rhododendron were dead on their stems. It was, Linda felt, a very old garden that had known many momentary emotions and lives.

Dodge Pleydon, standing before her, put his hands on her shoulders. “Would I have any success?” he asked. “Do you think you'd care for me?”

She smiled confidently up at his intent face. “Oh, yes.” Yet she hoped that he would not kiss her--just then. The delicacy of her longing and need were far removed from material expressions. This, of course, meant marriage; but marriage was money, comfort, the cold thing her mother had impressed on her. Love, her love, was a mistake here. But in a little it would all come straight and she would understand. She no longer had confidence in her mother's wisdom.

In spite of her shrinking, of a half articulate appeal, he crushed her against his face. Whatever that had filled her with hope, she thought, was being torn from her. A sickening aversion over which she had no control made her stark in his arms. The memories of the painted coarse satiety of women and the sly hard men for which they schemed, the loose discussions of calculated advances and sordid surrenders, flooded her with a loathing for what she passionately needed to be beautiful.

Yet deep within her, surprising in its vitality, a fragile ardor persisted. If she could explain, not only might he understand, but be able to make her own longing clear and secure. But all she managed to say was, “If you kiss me again I think it will kill me.” Even that failed to stop him. “You were never alive,” he asserted. “I'll put some feeling into you. It has been done before with marble.”

Linda, unresponsive, suffered inordinately.

Again on her feet she saw that Pleydon was angry, his face grim. He seemed changed, threatening and unfamiliar; it was exactly as if, in place of Dodge Pleydon, a secretive impersonal ugliness stood disclosed before her. He said harshly:

“When will you marry me?”

It was what, above all else, she had wanted; and Linda realized that to marry him was still the crown of whatever happiness she could imagine. But her horror of the past recreated by his beating down of her gossamer-like aspiration, the vision of him flushed and ruthless, an image of indiscriminate nameless man, made it impossible for her to reply. An abandon of shrinking fear numbed her heart and lips.

“You won't get rid of me as you do the others about you,” he continued. “This time you made a mistake. I haven't any pride that you can insult; but I have all that you--with your character--require. I have more money even than you can want.” She cried despairingly:

“It isn't that now! I had forgotten everything to do with money and depended on you to take me away from it always.”

“When will you marry me?”

In a flash of blinding perception, leaving her as dazed as though it had been a physical actuality, she realized that marrying him had become an impossibility. At the barest thought of it the dread again closed about her like ice. She tried, with all the force of old valuations, with even an effort to summon back the vanquished thrill, to give herself to him. But a quality overpowering and instinctive, the response of her incalculable injury, made any contact with him hateful. It was utterly beyond her power to explain. A greater mystery still partly unfolded--whatever she had hoped from Pleydon belonged to the special emotion that had possessed her since earliest childhood.

In the immediate tragedy of her helplessness, with Dodge Pleydon impatient for an assurance, she paused involuntarily to wonder about that hidden imperative sense. There was a broken mental fantasy of--of a leopard bearing a woman in shining hair. This was succeeded by a bright thrust of happiness and, all about her, a surging like the imagined beat of the wings of the Victory in Markue's room. Almost Pleydon had explained everything, almost he was everything; and then the other, putting him aside, had swept her back into the misery of doubt and loneliness.

“I can't marry you,” she said in a flat and dragged voice. He demanded abruptly:

“Why not?”

“I don't know.” She recognized his utter right to the temper that mastered him. For a moment Linda thought Pleydon would shake her. “You feel that way now,” he declared; “and perhaps next month; but you will change; in the end I'll have you.”

“No,” she told him, with a certainty from a source outside her consciousness. “It has been spoiled.”

He replied, “Time will discover which of us is right. I'm almost willing to stay away till you send for me. But that would only make you more stubborn. What a strong little devil you are, Linda. I have no doubt I'd do better to marry a human being. Then I think we both forget how young you are--you can't pretend to be definite yet.”

He captured her hands; too exhausted for any resentment or feeling she made no effort to evade him. “I'll never say good-bye to you.”

His voice had the absolute quality of her own conviction. To her amazement her cheeks were suddenly wet with tears. “I want to go now,” she said unsteadily; “and--and thank you.”

His old easy formality returned as he made his departure. In reply to Pleydon's demand she told him listlessly that she would be here for, perhaps, a week longer. Then he'd see her, he continued, in New York, at the Feldts'.