Part 8

"I would that you were all to me. You that are just so much, no more, Nor yours, nor mine, not slave nor free! Where does the fault lie? What the core O' the wound, since wound must be." --_Browning_.

"I love studios," announced Mrs. Hadwell with effusion, "and I love artists. Not you, only, Mr. Amherst, but all artists. They're so interesting."

"Don't, please don't, Mrs. Hadwell," implored Amherst, laughing. "I have always hoped that my habit of keeping my head closely cropped and my face carefully shaved would save me from being thought 'interesting.' You have no idea what visions that word 'interesting' conjures up in the mind of the average man. Dinky velvet coats, unkempt beards, dirty hands, soulful eyes--don't, whatever else you do, call me 'interesting.' You might as well call a spoilt beauty a 'nice, sensible girl.'"

"That is something that no one ever called me," said Mrs. Hadwell thoughtfully, tugging at her gloves. "You needn't look at me, Mr. Amherst; I feel like staying here a while and I'm going to stay, no matter how busy you are--there, don't apologize or waste time in saying you'll be glad to see me and have me stay. Of course you will--a sensible man like you! What were we saying when you interrupted me--I mean, when I interrupted myself? Oh, yes! I was saying that no one had ever called me a 'nice, sensible girl.'"

"The reason is obvious," declared Amherst, laughing.

"Why--oh, I see! Thank you. You mean that I don't look sensible. No, I should hope I didn't. I should hate to!"

"I don't know whether I look sensible," said Lynn, wheeling suddenly round from the contemplation of a picture, "but people must think I do, for I so often hear myself referred to as 'that nice, sensible girl.' Is it an insult? I never thought of it in that light."

"Not an insult, dear," said Mrs. Hadwell, composedly, "but an undoubted lie. Of all people who lack the first elements of sense you certainly head the list. Doesn't she, Mr. Amherst? But no, of course, you wouldn't think so, naturally. You're a man, and anyway, you don't know her."

"I should have said I knew Miss Thayer pretty well," said Amherst, looking surprised, "and I should certainly have thought that she was very sensible. I don't see what you mean."

"Of course you don't. As I previously remarked, you're a man. You think she's sensible and I have little doubt but that, in your heart of hearts, you think I'm a foolish little thing. Yet there's more sense in my little finger than there is in all of Lynn's tall body. _I_ know."

"What you call sense I call lying and cheating," returned Lynn, composedly.

Amherst burst out laughing.

"You and Miss Thayer are certainly the most candid pair I have ever run across," he cried. "Do you always give and return these insults in perfect good faith? or does one or the other sometimes get annoyed?"

"Never," replied Lynn. "I can't imagine anything happening to make Del and me quarrel. In fact, I don't believe we could quarrel. I don't know what other people fight about, anyway. Do you, Del?"

"Why, yes," said Mrs. Hadwell. "They fight because one has a better hat than the other or because one likes red and the other likes blue, but, generally, because they both want the same man. Isn't that so, Mr. Amherst? But, you see, in this case, Lynn and I never like the same man, so we don't clash."

"But even if we did," said Lynn, emphatically, "I can't imagine either of us doing anything so vulgar as to quarrel, Del. I'm sure if the man preferred you, you could have him; and, if he preferred me, I'd give him up to you without a moment's hesitation."

"I wonder!" said her friend, teasingly. "Suppose I had taken a fancy to that absurd boy with the black eyes and the unpronounceable Italian name--would you have given him up to me, Lynn? I doubt it. Do you remember him, Mr. Amherst? Wasn't it funny, the way our dear sensible Lynn bowed down before him? I think it must have been her attentions that drove him to drink, don't you? he probably thought that he was in imminent danger of being dragged to the altar."

Lynn smiled a little but stirred restlessly and did not make any comment on this.

"What has become of that boy?" cried Mrs. Hadwell, suddenly. "There, now! I'm so glad I thought to ask you. You ought to know if anyone would; you were quite pals, weren't you, Mr. Amherst? Is the boy dead?"

"Unfortunately, no," returned Amherst, dryly.

"Then what's become of him?"

"Are you, too, interested in his fate, Miss Thayer?" asked Amherst, turning to where she stood looking intently at him, as though something hung on his answer. "You used to be very good to him, as Mrs. Hadwell says. Would you like to know where he is, now?"

"Yes--no--yes, I should like to very much," said Lynn in a low voice.

"Well, he is within a few minutes' walk of this place."

"You don't say so! And what is he doing?" asked Mrs. Hadwell with much excitement.

"Going to the devil as fast as he possibly can."

"How? Why? Wherefore? Lynn, I shall shake you in another minute if you don't show a little more interest. This is positively the most exciting thing. Think of it! Ricossia!--going to the Devil with a big D!--within a few minutes' walk of this place. What's his address, Mr. Amherst?"

"I--I don't feel at liberty to tell you that," responded Amherst, after a slight hesitation. "I don't think he would like to have it known."

"Oh, he must be a terribly shady character," said Mrs. Hadwell with a delighted chuckle. "I think all this is thrilling. Do tell me his address. I won't hurt him. I only want to see for myself what he is doing and how he is. I'll--I'd like to take him a glass of jelly and some grapes. What's the matter, Mr. Amherst?"

"Excuse me. The idea of Ricossia in conjunction with the glass of jelly and the grapes upset me for the moment, that is all."

"I'd take him some champagne if Lynn wasn't with me. In my most abandoned moments I never forget that I am a chaperon so I'm afraid the champagne will have to be left behind. But I will go and see him--Mr. Amherst, do tell me."

Amherst smilingly shook his head.

"He wouldn't like it, I know."

"You're quite right," said Lynn, regarding the speaker, gratefully. "I'm sure he wouldn't like it. I wouldn't, in his place. Do--do you ever see him, Mr. Amherst?"

"Often. I frequently run over and just have an eye to him. I always expect to find him frozen or burnt to death or something of that sort. But Providence always looks after people of that kind. He'll die in his bed, no fear--the little brute!"

Lynn started and flushed.

"I thought you liked him," she said with involuntary reproach in her tone.

"Well--fact is, I don't. What's more, I don't know anyone who does. The boy's unfit to live and about equally unfit to die--poor little chap! It's wonderful, though, the way he lasts. He's a living example of a theory I've always held, namely, that consumption doesn't really kill, no matter what the hardships may be, until the consumptive loses interest in life and living. Then, he goes very quickly."

"You may be right," said Lynn, tonelessly.

"Now, while Mrs. Hadwell is absorbed in the bald man with the red nose who is hanging at the other end of the room," said Amherst, hastily, "I want to ask you something. How is it that I never see you, now? It must be a month since I last had a real talk with you. What's the matter?"

"The matter? Why, nothing."

"You're not offended with me about anything?"

"Why, no."

"In the last few weeks I must have rung you up a dozen times, but you have always been out or engaged. You must lead a busy life."

"I do," said Lynn, smiling faintly. "But I am sorry you thought I didn't want to see you. It wasn't that."

"Wasn't it?"

Amherst's voice changed.

"Do you know that you have avoided me ever since that night at the Burns'?"

"I--I hadn't thought about it."

"Is that the truth?"

Lynn was silent: then--

"Not exactly," she said with a faint effort.

"I tried to say something to you that evening--you remember?"

"Yes."

"Why wouldn't you let me say it?"

"I thought you had better not," said Lynn in a low voice.

"Don't say that; not unless you mean me to understand that"--

"Mr. Amherst," broke in Mrs. Hadwell, imperatively, "you are a horrid man! First you refuse to give me Ricossia's address, next you stand and talk to Miss Thayer in a low voice without giving me a chance to show her my portrait. She's dying to see it, aren't you, Lynn? and it's getting so dark. Can't you drive back with me and take dinner? then you can talk to Lynn as much as ever you want and Mr. Hadwell and I will sit by like deaf-mutes and play propriety. Won't you?"

"Awfully sorry!" said Amherst with genuine regret in his voice. "I have an engagement of long standing, so it's impossible. But if you'll only repeat the invitation, I'd love to come. Will you?"

"I will," responded Mrs. Hadwell. "I'll look up my engagement book and see if we can find an evening when we shall all be free. In the meantime, let me ask you what this means, this little wrinkle in my brow? I've puzzled over it for at least ten minutes and I demand to have it explained. If it is copied from life, you must simply paint it out, that's all!"

*CHAPTER XII*

*THE VIEWS OF TWO WOMEN*

"Is it your moral of Life? Such a web, simple and subtle, Weave we on earth here in impotent strife, Backward and forward each throwing his shuttle, Death ending all with a knife." --_Browning_.

"The time has come, the Walrus said, to talk of many things," quoted Mrs. Hadwell, settling back in her easy-chair with intense satisfaction. If, as the poet asserts, "a sorrow's crown of sorrow is remembering happier things" certainly a joy's crown of joy may be remembering unhappier things. One principal reason for Mrs. Hadwell's calm and unlimited enjoyment of her life lay in the fact that her youth had been spent in other people's easy-chairs. It is noteworthy that it had been spent in easychairs; women of her type always do spend their lives in easy-chairs, metaphorical and literal; but an easy-chair bestowed upon one by a doting husband, and an easy-chair occupied by sufferance in other people's homes are, as will readily be perceived, two very different pieces of furniture.

"What do you want to talk about in particular?" Lynn asked, regarding her hostess lazily. Dinner was over; Mr. Hadwell had betaken himself to his club; and the two sat at their ease in a softly shaded luxurious library, filled with unread books in half-calf. Polished mahogany, heavy damask curtains, thick, soft carpets, scent of mignonette and roses, all added to its comfort.

"I want to talk about all sorts of things," returned Estelle, in answer to her friend's question. "Interesting things--things that matter--yourself for instance! I wonder why it is that so few people talk interestingly about ordinary things! I believe it must be because they simply will not tell the truth about them; they stick to platitudes for fear of blundering on some thought they feel they oughtn't to have. Don't you think that is it? Now we always look things right in the face and say just what we think about them; and that is why we're so queer--and so nice--and so interesting to one another. And this is such a good opportunity for a talk. We've had such a lovely dinner--wasn't that soup delicious? and, as for that muscatel! Don't you simply dote on things to eat? I do. I never agree with that man--Solomon, wasn't it?--who said that he would rather have a dinner of herbs and peace than a stalled ox and strife therewith. Let him have the herbs! and give me the stalled ox every time. If it were nicely served and properly cooked I wouldn't care if there were seven bad-tempered married couples and sixteen cross cats and twenty squalling parrots all rowing together at my elbow. That's what it is to be practical. Give me things to eat and a good appetite and I don't care much what happens. There's something about a dinner which appeals to me in a way that sunsets and sonatas don't. And yet some one described me the other day as being 'spirituelle.' Fancy!"

"Some one who didn't know you very well, evidently."

"Some one who has called me 'Estelle' all his life except the four years of it when I wasn't born; but, as you say, some one who doesn't know me very well because he happens to be a man and a man who used to be in love with me. Poor thing! And yet he's happy in his way and I'm happy in mine. He has his ideals and I have my dinners. The only really happy people are the people who have the sense to prefer dinners to ideals and who steadily set to work to get them."

"I suppose you are happy. If dinners could make anyone happy you ought to be. But, tell me, Del, do you never want anything else?"

"Oh, yes. I want silk dresses and diamond brooches and the feeling that every snob in town will kow-tow as soon as my snub nose appears. And I've got them all--thank goodness! I very easily might not have, you know. There are so many others looking out for just the opportunity I seized. And every one said that Henry wasn't a marrying man. Ridiculous! As if every one wasn't a marrying man as soon as the right woman came along; the woman who made love to him unremittingly and tactfully without letting him see that she was doing it. It was an awful bore, sometimes, to make love to Henry. It had to be done so carefully. O dear, he was so surly and snubby and so scared of being hooked. But it didn't do any good: _I intended to marry him and I married him_--and so could you if you had any gumption!" she exclaimed, veering around and fixing Lynn with a look of intense determination.

"What? Marry Henry?"

"Not my Henry, no; but some other Henry. There are plenty of them and if you don't take them somebody else will. They all like to be admired and courted. And oh, lucky girl! Fate has dropped an ideal Henry right in your lap."

"Don't, Del! My poor lap! And as for 'ideal,' why, he has green teeth and goggly eyes."

"I am sure you are not so good-looking, yourself."

"Now, Del! Have I goggly eyes and green teeth? Let us be accurate before we are aggravating. Besides, it was horrid of me to speak of his appearance. Only his appearance is so exactly like him that it grates on me, some way."

"He is a great deal too good for you," said her friend, indignantly.

"So every one has already told me. Anything is too good for an old, ugly school-teacher, I dare say; but I don't want him, even if he is too good for me."

"Now, Lynn, we'll talk this over. I want to have the whole thing out with you."

"As you please."

"Very well, then. We will assume that you are quite determined not to marry Lighton. Two other courses are open to you; the first, to go on teaching all your life; the second, to marry some one else. We will examine these two alternatives--with your permission."

"Or without it!"

"Or, as you say, without it. Let us begin then. We will suppose that you stay as you are and go on teaching. You are not at all young, now--you needn't grin. I know I am two years older, but that has nothing to do with it; I'm married. You are not, I repeat, young. Every year you become a little older and a little older."

"The truth of your remarks is only equalled by their unpleasantness."

"I don't care. You go on getting older and older. Your aunt, who has been good to you and of whom you are fond, will be very much disappointed in you. She feels that it is disgraceful not to marry and criminal not to marry Lighton, and I am strongly inclined to agree with her. So, as the years go by and you get older and plainer and less desirable your aunt will grow less and less fond of you. You are not a great favourite with your uncle; to be sure, he has only one supreme favourite in the universe and I needn't say who that is!--and your aunt will probably die in time. What a happy home you will have, then! Suppose on the other hand, that he should die. You wouldn't have money enough to live in that big house and you would have to be cooped up in a flat and come home, after teaching all day, to listen to your aunt's lamentations about the nice establishment you might have had"--

"Thank fortune there are always the poison and the dagger."

"There are; but they're the refuge of the coward, and ordinary respectable people don't commit suicide, however much they want to. Now, having fully disposed of that alternative, let us turn to the other--that you marry some one else. Who else is there? You are a general favourite and lots of men like to talk to you; but who, besides Lighton, is in love with you? I mean of course, that is in a position to marry. We will suppose, though, that you have several other proposals in the next few years--what then? Whom would you rather marry?"

Lynn said nothing and turned her head away.

"The fact is that there is no one you would rather marry and there are very few who could offer you what he does. The trouble with you is that you don't face things. You know that, if you don't marry him, you have nothing in life to look forward to; yet, because it isn't an ideal arrangement, you refuse to consider it. Surely you have outgrown the silly, pretty, childish idea of marrying for love? Look at the people who do marry for love! How many of them are as happy as I am? I, who deliberately angled to catch the richest man of my acquaintance and did it. You could not have managed matters for yourself in the way that I did; and then, Fate, instead of punishing you for being stupid, offers you a prize--and you throw it away. Why?"

"It is a little hard to explain why, Del," returned her friend, slowly. "I don't know whether I could make you understand."

"I don't know that I have much heart, Lynn, but I have a mind. Try me."

"Long ago, then, I 'faced things' as you call it. I looked right at them hard and baldly and I saw that Life is very hard on woman. Life, Society--even Nature--all seem to be leagued against her. Her one chance of happiness is to make a happy marriage; and in order to make a happy marriage how many things are needed--and how few are forthcoming! Even then she must make up her mind to face certain torture and possible death; and when, after bearing two or three children, she loses her youth, her strength, her good looks, she has the satisfaction of knowing that her husband is as attractive as he was the day she married him. So, practically, in the majority of cases, she has nothing but her children. I am not thinking of you, you monkey; you are a great exception. Of course the children must be worth a great deal to her, but, apart from them, the average woman has precious little. Her husband is usually fond of her--I am speaking, now, of happy marriages--but all the idealism and the romance die very quickly. If, on the other hand, she does as so many do and marries some one who is in love with her but for whom she cares little--what then? All the usual hindrances and no compensations. There is left only spinsterhood. Putting aside the lucky few who have some art, some profession, which means everything to them, unmarried women are, as you have said, simply incumbrances and not happy incumbrances at that. The one happy thing for a woman is to fall in love when she is young, marry some one who adores her, and become so absorbed in her children that she won't mind the rest. Of course there are a few ideal marriages here and there; cases where people fall in love and stay in love and have satisfactory children and enjoy life; but you know as well as I do how many of these there are. Four altogether; and I have sometimes doubted the fourth."

"Well, of all the cynics"--

"Not a bit of it; I don't cherish useless illusions in the face of facts, that's all. Well, as I began to say, long ago I 'faced things' and saw them as they were. The best thing to do was to fall in love and make a happy marriage; that I couldn't do. The next was to marry some one I didn't want, or to do something that would support me, and remain unmarried. Of the two, the last seemed the only possible thing. I can get along for the present just as I am and I do not look into the future. As far as I can see, it is bound to be a wretched one, anyway; but I may die--a thousand things may happen. In the meantime I do not worry because of realizing that life is a tragic thing; and I take things very coolly and don't make a fuss about anything that can't be helped. When I feel down in the mouth I always console myself with the reflection, first, that it can't last forever; and, secondly, that however industriously Fate may knock me, she can't compel me to squeal about it."

"What a truly cheerful and comforting reflection."

"Well, do you know anyone more cheerful than I?"

"No, I can't say that I do; but appearances are certainly deceptive. Then you really prefer unmarried unhappiness to married unhappiness--that is your final choice?"

"That is my final choice."

"It is an extraordinary one, that is all I can say, when one thinks of all the money that is thrown in with the married unhappiness."

"Money can't buy happiness."

"No, but it can buy some mighty good substitutes for it, my dear. And as far as I can see, you are not going to get anything at all with the unmarried unhappiness."

"Nothing at all? Freedom, a peaceful mind and an independent income. I'd rather have my liberty than all the houses in Christendom and all the men. Of course I am human; I should prefer to make a happy marriage; but how many people do, and why should I be picked out for a happy fate when so many kinder and better people than I have nothing but trouble from beginning to end of their lives? No; I complain of nothing."

"Don't you think you will be sorry for this, some day?"

"If I am, no one will ever know it."

"If you think all this about your future, why do you want to live?"

"I don't want to live. Do you? Does any mature person? But I must live and so must you. There is probably some reason for the world and for Nature and for Sin and for all the other queer works of God and of the Devil. Perhaps we shall find it all out some day and then again perhaps we shall sleep so soundly that we shall not care to find out anything at all. That would be nice. It would be still nicer, though, to find out that everything was for the best, really, and that everything about the world was necessary. 'God's in his heaven, all's right with the world,' you know, and all that sort of thing. That phrase about the 'best of all possible worlds,' when applied to this, is such rubbish and such inhuman rubbish at that; such an insult to the intelligence and humanity of mankind; yet one can't help hoping that there will be a 'best of all possible worlds' and the mere fact that we want it and look forward to it so instinctively shows that there must be one, somewhere, I think. What do you think?"