Chapter 31

A “COMEDY.”

When the season began again, Miss De Voe seriously undertook her self-imposed work of introducing Peter. He was twice invited to dinner and was twice taken with opera parties to sit in her box, besides receiving a number of less important attentions. Peter accepted dutifully all that she offered him. Even ordered a new dress-suit of a tailor recommended by Lispenard. He was asked by some of the people he met to call, probably on Miss De Voe’s suggestion, and he dutifully called. Yet at the end of three months Miss De Voe shook her head.

“He is absolutely a gentleman, and people seem to like him. Yet somehow—I don’t understand it.”

“Exactly,” laughed Lispenard. “You can’t make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear.”

“Lispenard,” angrily said Miss De Voe, “Mr. Stirling is as much better than—”

“That’s it,” said Lispenard. “Don’t think I’m depreciating Peter. The trouble is that he is much too good a chap to make into a society or a lady’s man.”

“I believe you are right. I don’t think he cares for it at all.”

“No,” said Lispenard. “Barkis is not willin’. I think he likes you, and simply goes to please you.”

“Do you really think that’s it?”

Lispenard laughed at the earnestness with which the question was asked. “No,” he replied. “I was joking. Peter cultivates you, because he wants to know your swell friends.”

Either this conversation or Miss De Voe’s own thoughts, led to a change in her course. Invitations to formal dinners and to the opera suddenly ceased, and instead, little family dinners, afternoons in galleries, and evenings at concerts took their place. Sometimes Lispenard went with them, sometimes one of the Ogden girls, sometimes they went alone. It was an unusual week when Peter’s mail did not now bring at least one little note giving him a chance to see Miss De Voe if he chose.

In February came a request for him to call. “I want to talk with you about something,” it said. That same evening he was shown into her drawing-rooms. She thanked him with warmth for coming so quickly, and Peter saw that only the other visitors prevented her from showing some strong feeling. He had stumbled in on her evening—for at that time people still had evenings—but knowing her wishes, he stayed till they were left alone together.

“Come into the library,” she said. As they passed across the hall she told Morden, “I shall not receive any more to-night.”

The moment they were in the smaller and cosier room, without waiting to sit even, she began: “Mr. Stirling, I dined at the Manfreys yesterday.” She spoke in a voice evidently endeavoring not to break. Peter looked puzzled.

“Mr. Lapham, the bank president, was there.”

Peter still looked puzzled.

“And he told the table about a young lawyer who had very little money, yet who put five hundred dollars—his first fee—into his bank, and had used it to help—” Miss De Voe broke down, and, leaning against the mantel, buried her face in her handkerchief.

“It’s curious you should have heard of it,” said Peter.

“He—he didn’t mention names, b-bu-but I knew, of course.”

“I didn’t like to speak of it because—well—I’ve wanted to tell you the good it’s done. Suppose you sit down.” Peter brought a chair, and Miss De Voe took it.

“You must think I’m very foolish,” she said, wiping her eyes.

“It’s nothing to cry about.” And Peter began telling her of some of the things which he had been able to do:—of the surgical brace it had bought; of the lessons in wood-engraving it had given; of the sewing-machine it had helped to pay for; of the arrears in rent it had settled. “You see,” he explained, “these people are too self-respecting to go to the big charities, or to rich people. But their troubles are talked over in the saloons and on the doorsteps, so I hear of them, and can learn whether they really deserve help. They’ll take it from me, because they feel that I’m one of them.”

Miss De Voe was too much shaken by her tears to talk that evening. Miss De Voe’s life and surroundings were not exactly weepy ones, and when tears came they meant much. She said little, till Peter rose to go, and then only:

“I shall want to talk with you, to see what I can do to help you in your work. Please come again soon. I ought not to have brought you here this evening, only to see me cry like a baby. But—I had done you such injustice in my mind about that seven dollars, and then to find that—Oh!” Miss De Voe showed signs of a recurring break-down, but mastered herself. “Good-evening.”

Peter gone, Miss De Voe had another “good” cry—which is a feminine phrase, quite incomprehensible to men—and, going to her room, bathed her eyes. Then she sat before her boudoir fire, thinking. Finally she rose. In leaving the fire, she remarked aloud to it:

“Yes. He shall have Dorothy, if I can do it.”

So Dorothy became a pretty regular addition to the informal meals, exhibitions and concerts. Peter was once more taken to the opera, but Dorothy and Miss De Voe formed with him the party in the box on such nights. Miss De Voe took him to call on Mrs. Odgen, and sang his praises to both parents. She even went so far as to say frankly to them what was in her mind.

Mr. Ogden said, “Those who know him speak very well of him. I heard ‘Van’ Pell praise him highly at Newport last summer. Said all the politicians thought of him as a rising man.”

“He seems a nice steady fellow,” said the mamma. “I don’t suppose he has much practice?”

“Oh, don’t think of the money,” said Miss De Voe. “What is that compared to getting a really fine man whom one can truly love?”

“Still, money is an essential,” said the papa.

“Yes. But you both know what I intend to do for Dorothy and Minna. They need not think of money. If he and Dorothy only will care for each other!”

Peter and Dorothy did like each other. Dorothy was very pretty, and had all the qualities which make a girl a strong magnet to men. Peter could not help liking her. As for Dorothy, she was like other women. She enjoyed the talking, joking, “good-time” men in society, and chatted and danced with them with relish. But like other women, when she thought of marriage, she did not find these gingerbread ornamentations so attractive. The average woman loves a man, aside from his love for her, for his physical strength, and his stiff truth-telling. The first is attractive to her because she has it not. Far be it from man to say why the second attracts. So Dorothy liked Peter. She admired many qualities in him which she would not have tolerated in other men. It is true that she laughed at him, too, for many things, but it was the laughter of that peculiar nature which implies admiration and approval, rather than the lower feelings. When the spring separation came, Miss De Voe was really quite hopeful.

“I think things have gone very well. Now, Mr. Stirling has promised to spend a week with me at Newport. I shall have Dorothy there at the same time,” she told Mrs. Ogden.

Lispenard, who was present, laughed as usual. “So you are tired of your new plaything already?”

“What do you mean?”

“Arn’t you marrying him so as to get rid of his calls and his escortage?”

“Of course not. We shall go on just the same.”

“Bully for you, Ma. Does Dr. Brown know it?”

Miss De Voe flushed angrily, and put an end to her call.

“What a foolish fellow Lispenard is!” she remarked unconsciously to Wellington at the carriage door.

“Beg pardon, mum?” said Wellington, blank wonderment filling his face.

“Home, Wellington,” said Miss De Voe crossly.

Peter took his week at Newport on his way back from his regular August visit to his mother. Miss De Voe had told him casually that Dorothy would be there, and Dorothy was there. Yet he saw wonderfully little of her. It is true that he could have seen more if he had tried, but Peter was not used to practice finesse to win minutes and hours with a girl, and did not feel called upon, bluntly, to take such opportunities. His stay was not so pleasant as he had expected. He had thought a week in the same house with Miss De Voe, Dorothy and Lispenard, without much regard to other possible guests, could not but be a continual pleasure. But he was conscious that something was amiss with his three friends. Nor was Peter the only one who felt it. Dorothy said to her family when she went home:

“I can’t imagine what is the matter with Cousin Anneke. All last spring she was nicer to me than she has ever been before, but from the moment I arrived at Newport, and before I could possibly have said or done anything to offend her, she treated me in the snippiest way. After two days I asked her what the matter was, but she insisted there was nothing, and really lost her temper at my suggesting the idea. There was something, I know, for when I said I was coming home sooner than I had at first intended, she didn’t try to make me stay.”

“Perhaps,” said Mrs. Ogden, “she was disappointed in something, and so vented her feeling on you.”

“But she wasn’t cross—except when I asked her what the matter was. She was just—just snippy.”

“Was Mr. Stirling there?”

“Yes. And a lot of other people. I don’t think anybody had a good time, unless it was Cousin Lispenard. And he wasn’t a bit nice. He had some joke to himself, and kept making remarks that nobody could understand, and chuckling over them. I told him once that he was rude, but he said that ‘when people went to a play they should laugh at the right points.’ That’s the nice thing about Mr. Stirling. You know that what he says is the real truth.”

“Lispenard’s always trying to be clever.”

“Yes. What do you suppose he said to me as I came away!”

“What?”

“He shook my hand, laughing, and said, ‘Exit villain. It is to be a comedy, not a tragedy.’ What could he mean?”

Lispenard stayed on to see the “comedy,” and seemed to enjoy it, if the amused expression on his face when he occasionally gave himself up to meditation was any criterion. Peter had been pressed to stay beyond the original week, and had so far yielded as to add three days to his visit. These last three days were much pleasanter than those which had gone before, although Dorothy had departed and Peter liked Dorothy. But he saw much more of Miss De Voe, and Miss De Voe was in a much pleasanter mood. They took long drives and walks together, and had long hours of talk in and about the pleasant house and grounds. Miss De Voe had cut down her social duties for the ten days Peter was there, giving far more time for them to kill than usually fell to Newporters even in those comparitively simple days.

In one of these talks, Miss De Voe spoke of Dorothy.

“She is such a nice, sweet girl,” she said. “We all hope she’ll marry Lispenard.”

“Do you think cousins ought to marry?”

Miss De Voe had looked at Peter when she made her remark. Peter had replied quietly, but his question, as Miss De Voe understood it, was purely scientific, not personal. Miss De Voe replied:

“I suppose it is not right, but it is so much better than what may happen, that it really seems best. It is so hard for a girl in Dorothy’s position to marry as we should altogether wish.”

“Why?” asked Peter, who did not see that a girl with prospective wealth, fine social position, and personal charm, was not necessarily well situated to get the right kind of a husband.

“It is hard to make it clear—but—I’ll tell you my own story, so that you can understand. Since you don’t ask questions, I will take the initiative. That is, unless your not asking them means you are not interested?” Miss De Voe laughed in the last part of this speech.

“I should like to hear it.”

People, no matter what Peter stated, never said “Really?” “You are in earnest?” or “You really mean it?” So Miss De Voe took him at his word.

“Both my father and mother were rich before they married, and the rise in New York real estate made them in time, much richer. They both belonged to old families. I was the only child—Lispenard says old families are so proud of themselves that they don’t dare to have large families for fear of making the name common. Of course they lavished all their thought, devotion and anxiety on me. I was not spoiled; but I was watched and tended as if I were the most precious thing the world contained. When I grew up, and went into society, I question if I ever was a half-hour out of the sight of one or the other of my parents. I had plenty of society, of course, but it was restricted entirely to our set. None other was good enough for me! My father never had any business, so brought no new element into our household. It was old families, year in and year out! From the moment I entered society I was sought for. I had many suitors. I had been brought up to fear fortune-hunting, and suspected the motives of many men. Others did not seem my equals—for I had been taught pride in my birth. Those who were fit as regarded family were, many of them, unfit in brains or morals—qualities not conspicuous in old families. Perhaps I might have found one to love—if it had not been for the others. I was surrounded wherever I went and if by chance I found a pleasant man to talk to, _téte-à-téte,_ we were interrupted by other men coming up. Only a few even of the men whom I met could gain an _entrée_ to our house.—They weren’t thought good enough. If a working, serious man had ever been able to see enough of me to love me, he probably would have had very little opportunity to press his suit. But the few men I might have cared for were frightened off by my money, or discouraged by my popularity and exclusiveness. They did not even try. Of course I did not understand it then. I gloried in my success and did not see the wrong it was doing me. I was absolutely happy at home, and really had not the slightest inducement to marry—especially among the men I saw the most. I led this life for six years. Then my mother’s death put me in mourning. When I went back into society, an almost entirely new set of men had appeared. Those whom I had known were many of them married—others were gone. Society had lost its first charm to me. So my father and I travelled three years. We had barely returned when he died. I did not take up my social duties again till I was thirty-two. Then it was as the spinster aunt, as you have known me. Now do you understand how hard it is for such a girl as Dorothy to marry rightly?”

“Yes. Unless the man is in love. Let a man care enough for a woman, and money or position will not frighten him off.”

“Such men are rare. Or perhaps it is because I did not attract them. I did not understand men as well then as I do now. Of some whom I thought unlovable or dull at that time, I have learned to think better. A woman does not marry to be entertained—or should not.”

“I think,” said Peter, “that one marries for love and sympathy.”

“Yes. And if they are given, it does not matter about the rest. Even now, thirty-seven though I am, if I could find a true man who could love me as I wish to be loved, I could love him with my whole heart. It would be my happiness not merely to give him social position and wealth, but to make his every hope and wish mine also.”

All this had been said in the same natural manner in which they both usually spoke. Miss De Voe had talked without apparent emotion. But when she began the last remark, she had stopped looking at Peter, and had gazed off through the window at the green lawn, merely showing him her profile. As a consequence she did not see how pale he suddenly became, nor the look of great suffering that came into his face. She did not see this look pass and his face, and especially his mouth, settle into a rigid determination, even while the eyes remained sad.

Miss De Voe ended the pause by beginning, “Don’t you”—but Peter interrupted her there, by saying:

“It is a very sad story to me—because I—I once craved love and sympathy.”

Miss De Voe turned and looked at him quickly. She saw the look of suffering on his face, but read it amiss. “You mean?” she questioned.

“There was a girl I loved,” said Peter softly, “who did not love me.”

“And you love her still?”

“I have no right to.”

“She is married?”

“Yes.”

“Will you tell me about it?”

“I—I would rather not.”

Miss De Voe sat quietly for a moment, and then rose. “Dear friend,” she said, laying her hand on Peter’s shoulder, “we have both missed the great prize in life. Your lot is harder than the one I have told you about. It is very,”—Miss De Voe paused a moment,—“it is very sad to love—without being loved.”

And so ended Lispenard’s comedy.