Part 16

I didn't think it necessary to remind Vio that the strife of tongues could go on even if we didn't hear it. Nothing else was possible when Wolf's fatuity blew the trumpet and beat the drum if the clamor showed signs of dying down. It wasn't that he told the truth, but that he told lies so easy of detection. Alice Mountney did tell the truth as far as she knew it; but where she didn't know it she supplied the deficiency by invention. That those so near us should be in conflict naturally called for comment, especially when Vio refused to let me speak.

For the first few weeks I was too busily occupied to think of what any one was saying, seeing that the details I had to arrange were so unusual. Of the steps taken to become a living citizen again, and get back my property from my heirs, I give no account further than to say that they absorbed my attention. My standing in the community I was thus unable to compute till we were into the new year.

By this time I had taken part in a number of family events on which I shall touch briefly. At Christmas we had gone to Washington to spend the festival with Minna and Tom Cantley. There we had met Ernestine, in one of the intervals of her flag-raising, and on the way back to Boston my brother Dan's ship had unexpectedly arrived in New York. A series of domestic gatherings had therefore taken place, at all of which Vio had worked heroically. As she had generally hitherto ignored my family's existence this graciousness was not without its effect. Where she did so much for my rehabilitation, those close to me in blood could hardly do less than follow her example.

They followed it almost to the letter. That is to say, none of them asked me any questions, presumably wishing to spare both themselves and me embarrassment. Once or twice, when I attempted to speak of my experiences, the readiest plunged in with some topic that would lead us away from dangerous ground. If I yielded to this it was because speaking of myself at all was the deliberate exposure of nerves still raw and quivering. I could do it, but I couldn't do it willingly.

Between Minna and myself there had never been much sympathy, largely because I was of the dreamy temperament and she of the sharp and practical. That I should make beauty a career in life, and take advantage of the fact that our father had left me a modest sufficiency to give my services to a museum of fine arts, shocked her to the heart. A man should do a man's work, she said, not that of an old Miss Nancy. When I pointed out that many of the manufacturers in New England, whose work had to do with textiles, came to me for advice, she replied that she didn't believe it. Her attitude now was that I had done no worse than she had always foretold and any one might have expected.

Ernestine, to do her justice, was as tolerant of me as she was of any one who wasn't a flag. The Flag having become her idol and she its high-priestess, she could talk of nothing else. The nation had apparently gone to war in order that the cult of the Flag should be the more firmly established; and all other matters passed outside the circle of her consideration. She knew I had been dead and had somehow become alive again; but as the detail didn't call for the raising of a flag she couldn't give her mind to it. As she could give her mind in no greater measure to Minna's canteen-work or Vio's clothes, I profited by the generous nature of her exclusions.

For Dan, when I met him, I hardly existed, but that might have been so in any case, as we had never been really intimate. Recently he had been working with English naval officers and had taken on their manners and form of speech.

"Hello, old dear. Top-hole to see you looking so fit. I say, where can I find a barber? Got a mane on me like a lion."

That was our greeting, and the extent to which our confidences went. He sailed for Hampton Roads without a word as to my adventures.

This he did, I am sure, in a spirit of kindness. They were all moved by the spirit of kindness, and the axiom of the less said the better. I confess that I was mystified by this forbearance, and a little hurt. Though I had been a fool, I had not been a traitor; yet every one treated me as one. I should never have spoken of my two years of aberration of my own accord; yet when all avoided the subject, as if it opened the cupboard of the family dishonor, I resented the implication.

It was Tom Cantley with whom I was most at ease, perhaps because he was not a blood relation. A big, genial, boresome fellow, he found me useful as a listener. His rambling accounts of the doings and shortcomings of the War Trade Board, and what he would have accomplished there if given a free hand, I pretended to follow, because it left me free to pursue my own thoughts. As he never asked for comments on my part, being content when he could dribble out his own, the plan worked well.

And yet it was Tom who awakened me to the true meaning of my situation. That was on the day we left Washington, in the station, as Vio and I were about to take our train. Vio was ahead with Minna, when Tom suddenly clutched me by the arm.

"Say, old sport; what about clubs? Boston clubs I mean. I suppose you're a member of the Shawmut and the Beacon Hill just as before you went away. No action has ever been taken in the matter as far as I've heard. But I wouldn't press the point, if I were you, not for a while yet. Later ... when everything blows over ... we can ... we can see."

I nodded speechlessly. It was the most significant thing that had been said to me yet.

"Yes," I assented, weakly. "When everything blows over we can see."

What I saw at the minute was that if I attempted to resume my membership in either of my clubs there would be opposition. My case was as grave as that; though why it should be I hadn't an adequate idea. Annoyed hitherto, I became deeply troubled and perplexed.

Nevertheless, when we arrived in Boston again it was to experience nothing but the same widespread kindness. True, it was largely from relatives or from friends of Vio's as admired her pluck. The tragedy of her life being plain, those who appreciated it were eager to stand by her; and to stand by her meant courtesy to me. I could be invited to a dinner to which I went under my wife's banner; but I couldn't be admitted to a club where I should stand on my merit as a man. The distinction was galling.

Equally so I found my position with regard to Colonel Stroud. He made himself our social protector, filling in what might be considered unoccupied ground and defending anything open to attack. He did this even in our house. Without usurping my place as host, he fulfilled those duties which a companion performs for an invalid lady, passing the cigars and cigarettes after dinner, and seeing that our guests had their favorite liqueurs. Though our friends came nominally to lunch or dine with Vio and me, it seemed in effect to be with Vio and him. Every one knew, apparently, that he and she had been on the eve of a romantic act, which my coming back had frustrated. Something was due them, therefore, in the way of compensation; and considering what I had done they had the public sympathy.

That my mind was chiefly on this situation, however, I cannot truthfully say. I thought of it more than incidentally, and yet not so much as to make it a sole preoccupation. More engrossing than anything personal to myself was the plight of the world and the future immediately before us. With the gathering of the Conference round the table of the Quai d'Orsay, the new world, of which one of the phases had been war, was entering on still another phase even more momentous. To the mere onlooker, supposing oneself to be an onlooker and no more, it would be an exhibition of the grandeur and impotence of man on a scale of spectacular magnificence. The January of the armistice will be remembered as a month of dramatic occurrences illustrating the yearnings, passions, and fatalities of the human race with an almost theatrical vividness. In its very first days the old era sighed itself out in the death of Theodore Roosevelt, while on the soil over which the Caesars had ridden in their Triumphs, a New World citizen and President was hailed as the herald of an epoch altogether new. Almost at the same moment, blood was flowing in the streets of Berlin, working up about the middle of the month to the assassination of Liebknecht and Rosa Luxembourg. The Americans in Paris, having secured on one day the right of way for their League of Nations, the antiphon of opposition burst forth from Washington on the next.

Events like these, and they were many, were as geysers springing from a caldron in which the passions and ideals of mankind were seething incoherently. The geysers naturally caught the eye, but if there had been no boiling sea they would not have spouted up. More than the geysers I watched the boiling sea, and that I saw all around me.

That others didn't see it, or saw it as less ebullient, made no difference to me, for the reason that I had been in its depths. Vio didn't see it; Wolf didn't see it; Stroud didn't see it. Of my family, only Tom Cantley had vague apprehensions of what he called "labor unrest"; but this he regarded as no more than a whirlpool in an ocean relatively smooth. In Boston generally, as probably throughout the Union, the issue was definite and concrete, expressing itself in the question as to whether America would back a league of nations or would not. That was the burning topic of debate; but to me it seemed like concentrating on the relative merits of a raft or a lifeboat when the ship is drifting on the rocks. That our whole system of labor, pleasure, religion, finance, and government was in process of transformation I had many reasons for believing; but I couldn't speak of that without being scouted as a Bolshevist, or laughed down as pessimistic.

I mention these circumstances in order that you may see that nothing personal could be wholly absorbing. His exact social status means little to a man on the deck of a ship that any minute may go down. His chief concern is to save himself and his fellow-passengers, with natural speculation as to the haven they will find when the rescued have scrambled to the shore.

Thus, during that month of January, I saw myself as the victim of circumstances that mattered less than they might have done had we not been on the eve of well-nigh universal change. The life I was leading with Vio was not satisfactory, but even that was not permanent. The thread of flame, I was convinced, had not led thus far without meaning to lead me farther still, and I counted on that to show me the way. I counted on that not merely in my own affairs, but in those of our disintegrating world. We should not be impelled to pull down our present house till the materials were at hand for building up a better one. Vio, Wolf, Stroud, and the bulk of the American people were right in not fearing disaster, though wrong in not anticipating a radical shifting of bases. Their desperate clinging to worn-out phases of existence might be futile; but the futility would become apparent in the ripeness of time. It was not an aspect of the case that troubled me.

What did trouble me was Vio's relation to Stroud. It troubled me the more for the reason that in proportion as the vapors cleared from my intelligence I saw myself with my old rights as her husband. The old passion was back with me, with the old longings and claims, even though she disregarded them. According to the judgment I was beginning to form, she disregarded them the more for seeing that her efforts to re-establish me in Boston hadn't been successful. As far as she could positively carry me, I went; but I could cover no ground by myself. The minute I was alone, I was let alone, simply, courteously, but unanimously dropped. It was the sort of general action it is useless to reason with or fight against; and Vio saw it. There came a day when I drew the conclusion that she was giving up the struggle, and that the offer I had meant to make on the first afternoon of my return would be accepted if renewed. I was not sure; she was not communicative, and the signs were all too obscure to give me more than a vacillating sense of guidance. My general impression was that she didn't know the way she was taking, while Stroud was sure of it. As an adroit player of a game of which she didn't know the elementary principles, he was leading her on to a point at which she would have to acknowledge herself beaten.

This, in the main, I could only stand by and watch, because I was under a cloud. It was a cloud that settled on me heavier and blacker as January passed and February came in. The world-seething had its counterpart in the seething within myself. There were days when my inner anguish was not less frenzied than that of Germany or Russia, in spite of my outward calm. I was still following Vio from house to house, with Stroud as our guide or showman; but the conviction was growing that I must soon have done with it. Not a day nor an hour but seared my consciousness with the fact that he was the man whom Vio loved.

"This is not a life," I began to tell myself, bitterly. It became my favorite comment. I made it when I got up in the morning, and when I went to bed at night. I made it when Vio and I engaged in polite conversation, and when she informed me of our engagements for the day. I made it when I entered other people's drawing-rooms, and when other people entered ours. A life was a reality; a life was work; a life involved above all what Mildred Averill called production. When one didn't produce there was no place for one. There was no place for me here. With Pelly, Bridget, and the Finn I had touched the genuine, the foundational; in lugging carpets I had done work of which the usefulness was in no wise diminished by the fact that any other man could have done it just as well. In my room with the fungi, on my eighteen dollars a week, I had slept soundly and lived complacently, in harmony with whatever was basic and elemental. It began to dawn in me as a hope that perhaps the windings of the thread of flame would lead me back to what was a life, with a new appreciation of its value.

And then one day, when I was on the stairs of our own house, coming down from the third to the second story, I saw Lydia Blair standing on the landing, outside of Vio's door. Boosey was beside her, and she was taking a parcel from his hands.

"Hello, kid," she said, nodding in my direction. "Thought I should see you round here some day. Wonder I didn't do it before." She addressed Boosey, with another nod toward me. "He and me were at school together. Weren't we?" she continued, with her enchanting smile, as I reached the lowest step.

"Yes," I managed to gasp, "the school of adversity."

"And a mighty good school, too, for a sport. Do you know it?"

"But, Lydia," I began, "what in the name of--?"

"Sh-h! Don't swear," was all she said, as taking Boosey's parcel she opened Vio's door. Going in softly she closed it behind her.

Once more Boosey's expression dramatized my situation. That the master of the house in which he exercised his functions--even such a master as I--should be called "kid" by a girl like Lydia created a social topsyturvydom defying all his principles. For perceptible seconds he stared in an astonishment mingled with disdain, after which he turned on his heel to tell the news in the kitchen.

But I was too puzzled by Lydia's reappearance to tear myself away. What had she to do with Vio? How did she get the right to go in and out of Vio's room with this matter-of-course authority?

In a corner of the hall, beside the window looking over the Common, was an armchair in which Vio often sat when taking her breakfast up-stairs and glancing over her correspondence. I sank into it now, and waited. Sooner or later Lydia must come out again.

This she did, some twenty minutes later, dainty and nonchalant.

"Lydia," I cried, springing to my feet, "what in the name of Heaven are you doing here?"

"You see."

The parcel she had taken from Boosey was now undone, revealing some three or four pairs of corsets. Laying the bundle on the table Vio used for her breakfast-tray the girl began to roll the corsets neatly.

There were so many questions I wanted to ask that I hardly knew where to begin.

"How long have you been coming to--to see my wife?"

"Oh, not so very long, a month perhaps."

"Did you know I was here?"

"Why, sure."

"Is that what brought you?"

She glanced up sidewise from her work, with one of those glances she alone could fling.

"Well, you _have_ got a nerve. Suppose I said yes?"

"Who--who told you where to find me?"

"Who do you think?"

"Miss Averill?"

"No; it wasn't Miss Averill. As far as I can make out little old Milly doesn't give you a second thought, now that she knows you're in the bosom of your family."

"Is that true?"

"Why, of course it's true. Did you want to think she was pining away?"

"Well, who did tell you?"

"Why should I want any one to tell me? Ever since I've been with Clotilde I'm always on the lookout for new customers. I get a commission on every pair."

"But it wasn't for the commission you came to see Mrs. Harrowby."

"Well, what was it for then?"

"That's what I want you to tell me."

"How much did you tell me when you disappeared from the Barcelona over two years ago?"

"I told you as much as I could tell any one."

"You didn't tell me your name was Harrowby."

"I didn't know it."

She swung round from her work with the parcel. "You didn't--what?"

I tapped my forehead. "Shell-shock. I'd--I'd forgotten who I was."

A flip of her slender hand dismissed this explanation, as she resumed her task.

"Ah, go on!" And yet she veered back again, with a dash of tears in her blue eyes. "Say, kid, I know all about it. You needn't try to put anything over on me. I know all about it, and I'm sorry for you. That's what I want to say. Do you remember how I used to tell you I was your friend, and that Harry Drinkwater was your friend, too? Well, we are--even now. There's something about you we both--we both kind o' took to. I don't know what it is, but it's there. It was there when I thought you might be a swell crook; and if I didn't mind that I don't mind--this. The only thing I'm thinking is that you're up against it awful thick; and so I told Dick Stroud that whoever shook you the sad hand of farewell I'd be on the spot as the ministering angel."

There were so many points here that I could only seize the one lying, as it were, on top.

"So you--you know Dick Stroud?"

She had gone on with her work again.

"_Know_ him? Well, I should say!"

"Have you known him long?"

"Known him ever since ... Say, I'll tell you when it was. It was after we all came back on that ship together, and I was still doing the stenog act for Boydie Averill, before I got Harry back on the job again. Well, one day _that_ guy floated in, towed by little Lulu. He sure is her style for fair, or he used to be before he went to France."

"Did--did Mrs. Averill introduce him to you?"

"He didn't wait for that. He introduced himself with a look. I didn't need a second one before I'd read him like a headline. When I started to go home that evening he was waiting at the corner to take me in a taxi."

"Did you let him?"

"Sure I let him. It was a ride. When he asked me to dinner at the Blitz I let him do that, too. You saw us. Don't you remember that nut? that's what you called him afterward."

It came to me, that sleek mass of silver, distinguished and sinister at once.

"So that was he!"

"That was Dick, sure thing!"

"You call him Dick?"

"What else would I call him when he wants me to? But that's giving him away."

"Giving whom away?"

Vio had come out of her room without our having heard her. In a tea-gown of black and gold she stood before us in an almost terrifying dignity.

That is, it was almost terrifying to me, though Lydia was equal to the situation.

"Oh, madam, I didn't know you heard. Mr. Harrowby was just kidding me about Colonel Stroud."

"Indeed!" Moving forward with the air of an astonished queen, Vio seated herself in the armchair. "But why should Mr. Harrowby be--what was the word?--kidding you about anything?"

"Oh, we're old friends. Ain't we?" She turned to me for corroboration.

"Very good old friends," I said, with some warmth.

"Really! And you never told me."

"Madam never asked me. She never asked me if I knew Colonel Stroud, either. How could I tell that she wanted to know?"

"Oh, but I don't want to know. I'm only interested--" she looked toward me--"that you and--and this young lady should be so--so intimate."

"I hope madam doesn't mind."

"Let me see," Vio began to calculate. "It's about four or five weeks since Mrs. Mountney sent you to me."

"And Mrs. Averill had sent me to her. You see, madam, I get a commission on every pair, and so--"

"And so it was a good opportunity to--"

"To improve myself. Yes, madam."

Vio's brows came together in a frown. "To ... what? I don't understand you."

"You see, madam, it's this way. I've only taken this corset job to--to get an insight. I'm not really a saleswoman at all. I'm an adventuress."

It was the only moment at which I ever saw Vio nonplussed.

"Oh, you are!" was all she could find to say.

"Well, not exactly yet; but I'm going to be. Only, if you're an adventuress you've got to be a swell adventuress. There's only one kind, and it's that. But you see, madam, I've never had enough to do with ladies to be the real thing; and so when Clotilde put me on to this corset stunt, I thought it 'd give me a chance to study them."

"To study--ladies?"

"Yes, madam. An adventuress has got to be that much of a lady that she can put it over on a duchess or she might just as well stay out of the business. Any boob in the movie line would tell you that."

"You interest me," Vio said, almost beneath her breath.

"I generally interest people, madam, when I get a-going. Colonel Stroud says that if I was to go in for--"

"That's not what I want to hear. Tell me if--if your studies have taught you what you wanted to know."

Having completed her package, Lydia stood in the attitude of a neat French maid in a play.

"It's the model, madam. That's where the trouble is. An adventuress has got to be ... well, just so. Did madam ever see Agnes Dunham as the Russian Countess in 'The Scarlet Sin'? Well, she's it, only she's too old. She must be thirty-five if she's a day. I don't know how many times I didn't go see her; but I couldn't be that old, and then she talked with a French accent, so that settled it. Colonel Stroud said that if I was ever going to do the thing there was only one woman in the world--"

"He took a professional interest in you, then?"

"Oh, my, yes; professional and every other way. Still does. Awful kind he can be when he likes; but when he doesn't like! My!"

I was sorry for Vio. With bloodless lips and strained eyes she sat grasping the arms of her chair in the effort to keep her self-mastery. Had I loved her less I could have been glad of this minute, because it was giving me what might be called my revenge. But I loved her too much. It was clear to me, too, that I loved her more than I ever did. My return had been a shock to her, and she had made a strenuous effort to be game. She _was_ game. She had not fallen short of the most sporting standard, except in matters over which she had no control.

"Stroud is always like that," I endeavored to smile, "giving every one a helping hand. He mayn't be the wisest old dog in the world, but no one can say that he isn't kind and faithful."