Part 14

"Yes--writing to people that I am engaged, you know. That is the invariable custom. You must announce your intended matrimonial step in due form."

He looked at her with a pitying smile which she thought became him most charmingly. "And you have procrastinated from sheer dread, my poor Pauline!" he murmured, lifting her hand to his lips and letting it rest against them. "Dread of an explosion--of a distressing nervous ordeal. How I read your adroit little deceits!"

She withdrew her hand, momentarily counterfeiting annoyance. "You absurd would-be seer!" she exclaimed. "No, I'll call you a raven. But you can't depress me by your ominous wing-flapping! I thought Aunt Cynthia would drop in yesterday; I thought most _certainly_ that she would drop in to-day. That is my reason for not making our engagement transpire through letter."

"I see," said Kindelon, with a comic, quizzical sombreness. "You didn't want to open your guns on the enemy; you were waiting for at least a show of offensive attack...."

But, as it chanced, Mrs. Poughkeepsie did drop in upon Pauline at about two o'clock the next day. She came unattended by Sallie, but she had important and indeed momentous news to impart concerning Sallie. As regarded Pauline's engagement, she was, of course, in total ignorance of it. But she chose to deliver her own supreme tidings with no suggestion of impulsive haste.

"You are looking very well," she said to Pauline, as they sat on a yielding cachemire lounge together, in the little daintily-decked lower reception-room. "And, my dear niece," she continued, "you must let me tell you that I am full of congratulations at your not being made ill by what happened here the other evening. Sallie and I felt for you deeply. It was so apparent to us that you would never have done it if you had known how dreadfully it would turn out.... But there is no use of raking up old by-gones. You have seen the folly of the whole thing, of course. My dear, it has naturally got abroad. The Hackensacks know it, and the Tremaines, and those irrepressible gossips, the Desbrosses girls. But Sallie and I have silenced all stupid scandals as best we could, and merely represented the affair as a capricious little pleasantry on your part. You haven't lost caste a particle by it--don't fancy that you have. You were a Van Corlear, and you're now Mrs. Varick, with a great fortune; and such a whim is to be pardoned accordingly."

Pauline was biting her lips, now. "I don't want it to be pardoned, Aunt Cynthia," she said, "and I don't hold it either as a capricious pleasantry or a whim. It was very serious with me. I told you that before."

"Truly you did, my dear," said Mrs. Poughkeepsie. She laughed a mellow laugh of amusement, and laid one gloved hand upon Pauline's arm. "But you saw those horrible people in your drawing-rooms, and I am sure that this must have satisfied you that the whole project was impossible ... _en l'air_, my dear, as it unquestionably was. Why, I assure you that Sallie and I laughed together for a whole hour after we got home. They were nearly all such droll creatures! It was like a fancy-ball without the mask, you know. Upon my word, I enjoyed it after a fashion, Pauline; so did Sallie. One woman always addressed me as 'ma'am.' Another asked me if I '_resided_ on _the_ Fifth Avenue.' Still another ... (no, by the way, that wasn't a woman; it was a man) ... inquired of Sallie whether she danced the Lancers much in fashionable circles.... Oh, how funny it all was! And they didn't talk of books in the least. I supposed that we were to be pelted with quotations from living and dead authors, and asked all kinds of radical questions as to what we had read. But they simply talked to us of the most ordinary matters, and in a _very_ extraordinary way.... However, let us not concern ourselves with them any more, my dear. They were horrid, and you know they were horrid, and it goes without saying that you will have no more to do with them."

"I thought some of them horrid," said Pauline, with an ambiguous coolness, "though perhaps I found them so in a different way from yourself."

Mrs. Poughkeepsie repeated her mellow laugh, and majestically nodded once or twice as she did so.

"Well, well, my dear," she recommenced, "let us dismiss them and forget them.... I hope you are going out again. You have only to signify a wish, you know. There will not be the slightest feeling in society--not the slightest."

"Really?" said Pauline, with an involuntary sarcasm which she could not repress.

But her aunt received the sarcasm in impervious good faith. "Oh, not the slightest feeling," she repeated. "And I do hope, Pauline," she went on, with a certain distinct yet unexplained alteration of manner, "that you will make your _rentree_, as it were, at a little dinner I shall give Sallie next Thursday. It celebrates an event." Here Mrs. Poughkeepsie paused and looked full at her niece. "I mean Sallie's engagement."

"Sallie's engagement?" quickly murmured Pauline. The latter word had carried an instant personal force of reminder.

"Yes--to Lord Glenartney. You met him once or twice, I believe."

"Lord Glenartney!" softly iterated Pauline. She was thinking what a gulf of difference lay, for the august social intelligence of her aunt, between the separate bits of tidings which she and Mrs. Poughkeepsie had been waiting to impart, each to each.

"Yes, Glenartney has proposed to dear Sallie," began the lady, waxing promptly and magnificently confidential. "Of course it is a great match, even for Sallie. There can be no doubt of that. I don't deny it; I don't for an instant shut my eyes to it; I consider that it would justly subject me to ridicule if I did. Lord Glenartney was not expected to marry in this country; there was no reason why he should do so. He is immensely rich; he has three seats, in England and Scotland. He is twice a Baron, besides being once an Earl, and is first cousin to the Duke of Devergoil. Sallie has done well; I wish everybody to clearly understand, my dear Pauline, that I _think_ Sallie has done brilliantly and wonderfully well. A mother always has ambitious dreams for her child ... can a mother's heart help having them? But in my very wildest dreams I never calculated upon such a marriage for my darling child as this!"

Pauline sat silent before her aunt's final outburst of maternal fervor. She was thinking of the silly caricature upon all manly worthiness that the Scotch peer just named had seemed to her. She was thinking of her own doleful, mundane marriage in the past. She was wondering what malign power had so crooked and twisted human wisdom and human sense of fitness, that a woman endowed with brains, education, knowledge of right and wrong, should thus exult (and in the sacred name of maternity as well!) over a union of this wofully sordid nature.

"I--I hope Sallie will be happy," she said, feeling that any real doubt on the point might strike her aunt as a piece of personal envy. "Curiously enough," she continued, "_I_, also have to tell you of an engagement, Aunt Cynthia."

Mrs. Poughkeepsie raised her brows in surprise. "Oh, you mean poor dear Lily Schenectady. I've heard of it. It has come at last, my dear, and he is only a clerk on about two thousand a year, besides not being of the _direct_ line of the Auchinclosses, as one might say, but merely a sort of obscure relation. Still, it is said that he has fair expectations; and then you know that poor dear Lily's freckles _are_ a drawback, and that she has been called a _spotted_ lily by some witty persons, and that it has really become a nickname in society, and"--

"I did not refer to Lily Schenectady," here interrupted Pauline. "I spoke of myself."

The mine had been exploded. Pauline and Mrs. Poughkeepsie looked at each other.

"Pauline!" presently came the faltered answer.

"Yes, Aunt Cynthia, I spoke of myself. I am engaged to Mr. Kindelon."

"Mr. Kindelon!"

"Yes. I am sure you know who he is."

"Oh, I know who he is." Mrs. Poughkeepsie spoke these words with a ruminative yet astonished drawl.

"Well, I am engaged to him," said Pauline, stoutly but not over-assertively. She had never looked more composed, more simply womanly than now.

Mrs. Poughkeepsie rose. It always meant something when this lady rose. It meant a flutter of raiment, a deliberation of readjustment, a kind of superb, massive dislocation.

"I am horrified!" exclaimed the mother of the future Countess Glenartney.

Pauline rose, then, with a dry, chill gleam in her eyes. "I think that there is nothing to horrify you," she said.

Mrs. Poughkeepsie gave a kind of sigh that in equine phrase we might call a snort. Her large body visibly trembled. She rapidly drew forth a handkerchief from some receptacle in her ample-flowing costume, and placed it at her lips. Pauline steadily watched her, with hands crossed a little below the waist.

"I do so hope that you are not going to faint, Aunt Cynthia," she said, with a satire that partook of strong belligerence.

Mrs. Poughkeepsie, with her applied handkerchief, did not look at all like fainting as she glanced above the snowy cambric folds toward her niece.

"I--I never faint, Pauline ... it is not my way. I--I know how to bear calamities. But this is quite horrible ... it agitates me accordingly. I--I have nothing to say and yet I--I have a great deal to say."

"Then don't say it!" now sharply rang Pauline's retort.

"Ah! you lose your temper? It is just what I might have thought--under the circumstances!"

Pauline clenched her teeth together for a short space, to keep from any futile disclosure of anger. And presently she said, with a shrill yet even directness,--

"What, pray, _are_ the circumstances? I tell you that I am to marry the man whom I choose to marry. You advised me--you nearly _forced_ me, once--to marry the man whom it was an outrage to make my husband!"

"Pauline!"

"What I tell you is true! He whom I select is not of your world! And, by the way, what is your world? A little throng of mannerists, snobs, and triflers! I care nothing for such a world! I want a larger and a better. You say that I have failed in my effort to break down this barrier of conservatism which hedged me about from my birth.... Well, allow that I _have_ failed in that! I have not failed in finding some true gold from all that you sneer at as tawdry dross!... Tawdry! I did well to chance upon the word! What was that gentlemanly bit of vice whom you were so willing I should marry a few years ago? You've just aired your tenets to me; I'll air a few of mine to you now. We live in New York, you and I. Do you know what New York means? It means what America means--or what America _ought_ to mean, from Canada to the Gulf! And that is--exemption from the hateful bonds of self-glorifying snobbery which have disgraced Europe for centuries! You call yourself an aristocrat. How dare you do so? You dwell in a land which was washed with the blood, less than a century ago, of men who died to kill just what you boast of and exalt! Look more to your breeding and your brains, and less to your so-called caste! I come of your own race, and can speak with right about it. What was it, less than four generations ago? You call it Dutch, and with a grand air. It flowed in the veins of immigrant Dutchmen, who would have opened their eyes with wonder to see the mansion you dwell in, the silver forks you eat with! _They_ dwelt in wooden shanties and ate with pewter forks.... Your objection to my marriage with Ralph Kindelon is horrible--that and nothing more! He towers above the idiot whom you are glad to have Sallie marry! What do I care for the little 'lord'? You bow before it; I despise it. You call my project, my dream, my desire, a failure ... I grant that it is. But it is immeasurably above that petty worship of the Golden Calf, which _you_ name respectability and which _I_ denounce as only a pitiful sham! The world is growing older, but you don't grow old with it. You close your eyes to all progress. You get a modish milliner, you keep your pew in Grace Church, you drop a big coin into the plate when a millionaire hands it to you, and you are content. Your contentment is a pitiful fraud. Your purse could do untold good, and yet you keep it clasped--or, if you loose the clasp, you do it with a flourish, a vogue, an _eclat_.... Mrs. Amsterdam has done the same for this or that asylum or hospital, and so you, with fashionable acquiescence, do likewise. And you--you, Cynthia Poughkeepsie, who tried to wreck my girlish life and almost succeeded--you, who read nothing of what great modern minds in their grandly helpful impulse toward humanity are trying to make humanity hear--you, who think the fit set of a patrician's gown above the big struggle of men and women to live--you, who immerse yourself in idle vanities and talk of everyone outside your paltry pale as you would talk of dogs--_you_ dare to upbraid me because I announce to you that I will marry a man whom power of mind makes your superior, and whom natural gifts of courtesy make far more than your equal!"

As Pauline hotly finished she saw her aunt recede many steps from her.

"Oh, this--this is frightful!" gasped Mrs. Poughkeepsie. "It--it is the _theatre_! You will go on the stage, I suppose. It seems to me you have done everything but go on the stage, already! That would be the crowning insult to yourself--to your family!"

"I shan't go on the stage," shot Pauline, "because I have no talent for it. If I had talent, perhaps I would go. I think it a far better life for an American woman than to prate triumphantly about marrying her daughter to a titled English fool!"

Mrs. Poughkeepsie uttered a cry, at this point. She passed from the room, and Pauline, overcome with the excess of her disclaimer, soon afterward sank upon a chair....

An almost hysterical fit of weeping at once followed.... It must have been a half-hour later when she felt Kindelon's face lowered to her own. He had nearly always come, since their engagement, at more or less unexpected hours.

"Some hateful thing has happened," he said very tenderly; "whom have you seen? Why do you sob so, Pauline? Have you seen _her_? Has Cora Dares been here?"

Pauline almost sprang from her chair, facing him. "Cora Dares," she cried, plaintively and with passion. "Why do you mention her name now?"

Kindelon folded her in his strong arms. "Pauline," he expostulated, "be quiet! I merely thought of what you yourself had told me, and of what I myself had told _you_? What is it, then, since it is not she? Tell me, and I will listen as best I can."

She soon began to tell him, leaning her head upon his broad breast, falteringly and with occasional severe effort.

"I--I was wrong," she at length finished. "I should not have spoken so rashly, so madly.... But it was all because of you, Ralph--because of my love for you!"

He pressed her more closely within the arms that held her.

"I don't blame you!" he exclaimed. "You were wrong, as you admit that you were wrong ... but I don't blame you!"

XIII.

That night was an almost sleepless one for Pauline, and during the next morning she was in straits of keen contrition. Theoretically she despised her aunt, but in reality she despised far more her own loss of control. Her self-humiliation was so pungent, indeed, that when, at twelve o'clock on this same day, Courtlandt's card was handed to her, she felt a strong desire to escape seeing him, through the facile little falsehood of a "not at home." But she concluded, presently, that it would be best to face the situation at once, since avoidance would be simply postponement. Courtlandt was as inevitable as death; he must be met sooner or later.

She met him. She did not expect that he would offer her his hand, and she made no sign of offering her own. He was standing near a small table, as she entered, and his attention seemed much occupied with some exquisitely lovely roses in a vase of aerial porcelain. He somehow contrived not wholly to disregard the roses while he regarded Pauline. It was very cleverly done, and with that unconscious quiet which stamped all his clever doings.

"These are very nice," he said, referring to the roses. He had a pair of tawny gloves grasped in one hand, and he made an indolent, whipping gesture toward the vase while Pauline seated herself. But he still remained standing.

"Yes," she replied, as we speak words automatically. "They are rare here, but I know that kind of rose in Paris."

"Did your future husband send them?" asked Courtlandt. His composure was superb. He did not look at Pauline, but with apparent carelessness at the flowers.

"Yes," she said; and then, after a slight pause, she added: "Mr. Kindelon sent them."

Courtlandt fixed his eyes upon her face, here. "Wasn't it rather sudden?" he questioned.

"My engagement?"

"Your engagement."

"Sudden? Well, I suppose so."

"I didn't expect it quite yet."

She gave a little laugh which sounded thin and paltry to her own ears. "That means you were prepared for it, then?"

"Oh, I saw it coming."

"And Aunt Cynthia has told you, no doubt."

"Yes. Aunt Cynthia has told me. I felt that I ought to drop in with my congratulations."

Pauline rose now; her lips were trembling, and her voice likewise, as she said:--

"I do hope that you give them sincerely, Court."

"Oh, if you put it in that way, I don't give them at all."

"Then you came here to mock me?"

"I don't know why I came here. I think it would have been best for me not to come. I thought so when I decided to come. Probably you do not understand this. I can't help you, in that case, for I don't understand it myself."

"I choose to draw my own conclusions, and they are kindly and friendly ones. Never mind how or what I understand. You are here, and you have said nothing rude yet. I hope you are not going to say anything rude, for I haven't the heart to pick a quarrel with you--one of our old, funny, soon-healed quarrels, you know. I am too happy, in one way, and too repentant in another."

"Repentant?"

"Yes. I said frightful things yesterday to Aunt Cynthia. I dare say she has repeated them."

"Oh, yes, she repeated every one of them."

"And no doubt with a good deal of wrathful embellishment!" here exclaimed Pauline, bristling.

"Do you think they would bear decoration? Wouldn't it be like putting a cupola on the apex of the Trinity Church steeple?"

"Not at all!" cried Pauline. "I might have said a great deal worse! Oceans and continents lie between Aunt Cynthia and myself! And I told her so!"

"Really? I thought you were at pretty _close_ quarters with each other, judging from her account of the row."

"There was no _row_!" declared Pauline, drawing herself up very finely. "What did she accuse me of saying, please?"

"Oh, I forget. She said you abused her like a pickpocket for not liking the man you're engaged to."

Pauline shrugged her shoulders, in the manner of one who thinks better of the angry mood, and handsomely abjures it. "Positively, Courtlandt," she said, "I begin to think you had no purpose whatever in coming here to-day."

His sombre brown eyes began to sparkle, though quite faintly, as he now fixed them upon her. "I certainly had one purpose," he said. She saw that his right hand had thrust itself into the breast of his coat, as though it searched there for something. "I wanted to show you this, as I imagined that you don't see the horrid little sheet called 'The Morning Monitor,'" he proceeded.

"'The Morning Monitor'!" faltered Pauline, with a sudden grievous premonition, as she watched her cousin draw forth a folded newspaper. "No, I never heard of it."

"It has evidently heard of you," he answered. "I never read the vilely personal little affair. But a kind friend showed me this issue of to-day. Just glance at the second column on the second page--the one which is headed 'The Adventures of a Widow'--and tell me what you think of it."

Pauline took the newspaper with unsteady hand. She sank into her chair again, and began to read the column indicated. The journal which she now held was one of recent origin in New York, and it marked the lowest ebb of scandalous newspaper license. It had secured an enormous circulation; it was already threatening to make its editor a Croesus. It traded, in the most unblushing way, upon the curiosity of its subscribers for a knowledge of the peccadilloes, imprudences, and general private histories of prominent or wealthy citizens. It was a ferret that prowled, prodded, bored, insinuated. It was utterly lawless, utterly libellous. It left not even Launcelot brave nor Galahad pure. It was one of those detestable opportunities which this nineteenth century, notwithstanding a thousand evidences of progress, thrusts into the hands of cynics and pessimists to rail against the human nature of which they themselves are the most melancholy product. It had had suits brought against it, but the noble sale of its copies rendered its heroic continuation possible. Truth, crushed to earth, may rise again, but scurrilous slander, in the shape of "The Morning Monitor," remained capably erect. It fed and throve on its own dire poison.

Pauline soon found herself reading, with misty eyes and indignant heart-beats, a kind of baleful biography of herself, in which her career, from her rash early marriage until her recent entertainment of certain guests, was mercilessly parodied, ridiculed, vilified. These pages will not chronicle in any unsavory details what she read. It was an article of luridly intemperate style, dissolute grammar, and gaudy rhetoric. It bit as a brute bites, and stung as a wasp stings, without other reason that that of low, dull spleen. It mentioned no other name than Kindelon's, but it shot from that one name a hundred petty shafts of malign innuendo.

"Oh, this is horrible!" at length moaned Pauline. She flung the paper down; the tears had begun to stream from her eyes. "What shall I do against so hideous an attack?"

Courtlandt was at her side in an instant. He caught her hand, and the heat of his own was like that of fever.