Part 9

“But my dear, I’m afraid that is just what it isn’t. I----”

“Yes, really! It’s only that I--I’ve always been a little over-balanced, you know, if such a state were possible. And it is,” tensely, “outside of mathematics.”

Mrs. Loring--whose intimacy with mathematics was fleeting--looked at her daughter anxiously. “Just what do you mean, Lucy? There, my dear--throw your coat off. And your hat--so! Jacqueline will unpack you while we have our tea. Tell me what you mean--over-balanced?” She inclined her well-dressed head vaguely.

“I mean,” said Lucia, pressing back against a nest of cushions, “just that. All my life I’ve seen things evenly, mother: in parallel rows, that always tallied. When you sent me to finishing-school, I hated it; but I put up with the two years’ boredom without complaint, because I realized it was making valuable friends for me. When I took up drawing, later, I did it because I knew that on the other side of the hard work and cruel discouragement in getting started, would lie a hobby--and a profitable one--in which I might bury myself at any time, and with absorbing interest. And when I married----”

“Yes?” Mrs. Loring sat forward a little.

“You thought I never would marry, didn’t you, mother darling?” with a brief laugh. “I was afraid of marriage, rather. But when John came, and I thought I cared enough and--well, it seemed to me that if I went into the thing with no illusions, I couldn’t lose any. That if I got married, just because I wanted to,--if I expected nothing, at least I couldn’t get less.”

“Lucy,” put in her mother uncomfortably, “you think too much. You always did. Cream, my dear?”

“Please. I said, when I came in, I’d come for a very long visit.”

“Isn’t John Gwynne a good husband?” demanded Mrs. Loring. “Is there anything----?”

“Oh, nothing--nothing. Our life is as even as the lines in my account-book. That,” said Lucia in a low voice, “is what I simply can’t stand; what I had to get away from.”

“But--but, my dear, it doesn’t sound very serious. Really, you know, it doesn’t!”

“I know it doesn’t--perhaps it isn’t. Only to me”--Lucia’s fingers closed dangerously over the fragile cup-handle--“it was growing unbearable! I had to get away.”

“Yes, yes, dear. And you were right to come to me. I was delighted when your wire arrived--quite delighted,” said Mrs. Loring quickly. “But what about Tommy?”

“Tommy’s away at school,” said his mother, sipping her tea with a pretense of tranquillity. “We decided to send him to military school this year, you know, as he’s nine. He left yesterday. That gave me my opportunity to come to you. Oh, mother, I snatched at it!”

“Yes, dear--yes,” Mrs. Loring leaned over to pat her hand. She had certainly not known Lucy was so nervous! “And I’ll let the Granvilles and Ada Barker and the Temple girls know you’re here, and we’ll have a gay little visit,” she added cheerfully. “The longer the better, Lucy!”

“Dear mother!” murmured Lucia. “Though I would rather not do a lot of social things--I really would, mother. I’m--I believe I’m rather tired. And John said”--she checked herself swiftly.

“Yes? What did John say?”

“A stupid married woman’s habit I’ve fallen into! What he said was ‘do get rested.’ What he should have said----”

“Lucia,” interrupted her mother, “I was married to your father only four years, but ‘what he should have said’ never happened. I wouldn’t let it happen.”

“He should have said ‘I shall miss you,’” murmured Lucia stubbornly. “That’s one of the things, mother: I’m taken--and let go--so for granted!”

Mrs. Loring looked at her judiciously. “You’re a very pretty woman,” said she. “Even excepting your hair, you’d be striking. And” (running her left hand through its ripples) “it seems to me your hair’s blacker than ever. Doesn’t John think so?”

“John--is occupied more with Consolidated Iron than he is with my hair. Nonsense, mother! Why be tragic about it? John is kind, I’m contented. Why” (lightly) “should I go into heroics because our romance is not so gossamer but that I can pull it to pieces and put it together again? I’m thirty-two. Yet”--she added, laying down her cup--“I seem as greedy for romance as a débutante in the first season. I,” reminiscently, “was rather a nice débutante, eh, mummy?”

“You were delicious!” said Mrs. Loring with enthusiasm. “Ambrose Fayerweather was saying only yesterday”----

“Does Mr. Fayerweather still call here?”

Mrs. Loring’s smooth cheeks flushed. “He is a very old friend,” said she, busy with the cream jug. “And he says the girls these last few years can’t”----

“Hold a candle to those a dozen years ago,” finished Lucia.

“Why, yes! How did you know?”

“He’s said it to me--and other old _galants_--every time I’ve seen him in the last decade. Well, mummy! I’m going up to lie down for a little. I hope,” wistfully, “I haven’t blued you up, dear? I’m afraid I’m rather”----

“You’re in need of rest!” replied Mrs. Loring briskly. “Run along and get it, my dear. John said the right thing, after all!”

She smiled brightly at her daughter; but when Lucia had reached the landing, stood gazing after her. “She thinks too much,” said her mother with a sigh; “it’s a bad habit for a woman.”

Lucia, upstairs, on a couch luxurious with pillows, was still thinking; that is, always the same thing. Why would the figures always balance each other, she wondered wearily? Life was one long sum in algebra--or subtraction: the signs changed, the quantities cancelled, and--X was zero. Everything seemed to be _known_; so distinct and matter-of-fact. When she married John Gwynne, she had loved him--passionately; but also reasoningly. She had taken into consideration that the passion would dim, but that a certain comfortable comradeship would take its place. The passion had dimmed; the comradeship had taken its place. And the illusions which Lucia had not possessed had remained unattacked. What was there then to quarrel with? Her house, from which she had anticipated as much satisfaction as care, had given her the two in equal proportion. Her child, who she had known would thrill and agonize her alike, had done both, with impartial intensity. Her art, which she had been willing to abandon in exchange for certain other delights, had been indeed compensated for by those delights; it had been a fair exchange and no more. No more, for that would have been to spoil the law; to dig unevennesses in the groove--which, for Lucia, seemed eternally straight.

“Oh!” She sat up and flung off the soft blanket that covered her. Was there any way, was there any trick or painful art, with which to break the relentlessness of pleasure paid for? Of happiness counter-checked? Perhaps her mother was right--if she didn’t think so much----. But she had to think. It was all the expression she had of a nature that had never been able to escape from itself, for an unconscious minute. Heavens! Lucia beat the pillows and sank down again. “If this keeps on, I’ll go quite mad.” She had the wit to know she was half mad, anyhow--and always had been. It was perhaps the one thing that kept her sane. Analysts are harassed creatures. John Gwynne, who ate meat and potatoes three times a day, and loved a good vaudeville show, did not know of their existence.

John Gwynne was at that moment in a shop, leaving an order for new decorations for Lucia’s rooms.

“You’ll have to push it through in a hurry,” he said anxiously. “Mrs. Gwynne said she didn’t know when she’d be back, and that means any time. I want something in lilac. Lilac’s her color.”

The attentive clerk showed two samples in pale mauve. “We have the chintz to match these, Mr. Gwynne. If I might suggest, I should think the unconventional design----”

“Sure, the unconventional’s the thing for Mrs. Gwynne! You’ve served her for ten years, Eh, Gregg?”

“Yes, sir--” the suave clerk’s face broke into an almost natural smile--“I was here when you brought her in to select her bridal furnishings, ten years ago.”

“Sure!” said John Gwynne again, more slowly. “Ten years ago! George, but time goes by, don’t it, Gregg?” He was staring out the window at the motors tearing up and down outside.

“Well!” with a start, “the unconventional it is,--paper, hangings, and the whole business--and look here, Gregg, rush this for me, will you? Push it right along.”

“We certainly will, Mr. Gwynne,” the clerkly manner was not quite restored again. Heartiness struggled with it; and--“excuse me, sir,” said Gregg hurriedly, “but do you know I think this is the very design Mrs. Gwynne chose when you were married--wistaria, with the pale pink rosebuds in the border--I’m almost positive it is. It’s a piece we didn’t carry for a number of years, and then”----

“Why, sure--sure!” said Gwynne, gazing at it. “The very thing! And then my sister, two years later, went and put on blue--to surprise Mrs. Gwynne--while we were in Europe. And I think it did surprise her some!” he remembered grimly.

The clerk gave a feeble smile. “Yes, sir--blue with a silver stripe--I remember, sir!”

“I should think you would! I told her to come down and have it changed, but Tommy--our little boy--had the measles just then, and afterward I got hurt in that hunting accident, and then we went to the country--and blessed if there’s ever been a time since when she’s had so much as a chance to think about it! That’s why now--well, see you push it through, Gregg.”

“Indeed yes, Mr. Gwynne! Good-day, Mr. Gwynne.”

“Good-day.”

“Beats me,” added Gwynne to himself outside, “why these clerk-fellows can’t say things as they come: ‘indeed yes’--why the Dickens should a thing be turned hind-side to, when you can say it straight out?”

It was a point he and Lucia had not infrequently discussed--in other denominations. Gwynne, going home to an empty house, felt he would willingly have dropped his side, if Lucia had been there to carry hers.

“She looked tired,” he thought, sitting alone by the library fire after dinner. “I hope her mother makes her rest. She looked regularly fagged.”

He spent the rest of the evening writing her a letter; and Tommy. In the morning he sent Mrs. Loring a telegram. “How’s Lucia?” it said. Lucia had been gone twenty-four hours.

“And you say you’re taken for granted!” triumphed her mother. “You think he’s more interested in Consolidated Iron? Stuff, my dear! John Gwynne’s forty. For a man of forty to follow his wife up with telegrams, the very day after----”

“He might have sent it to me,” said Lucia, ungraciously.

“Oh, well!” Mrs. Loring tossed her handsome head. “If you’re determined to be _difficile_----!”

Lucia, who was pretending to eat a strip of bacon, asked, “Did my drawing-ink come? I ordered some sent down from town, before I left--and a lot of Bristol-board.”

“It came,” said Mrs. Loring, looking at her uneasily. “Lucia, whatever are you----”

“I am going to draw,” said Lucia, with a deep breath. “Ever since I was married, I’ve never had time: first there was Tommy, and then the trip abroad, and then Tommy’s measles, and then John’s accident, and then the new house in the country, and--I’m going to draw, mother! For days and days, and blissful weeks--I’m going to draw!”

Her cheeks were vivid, her eyes afire.

“Oh!” gasped Mrs. Loring, looking at her. “You--you’re going to draw. For--weeks!”

“Yes, mother! And you can tell Ada Barker, and the Temple girls, and whoever else comes, that their fascinations are nothing compared with black-and-white. And if John sends telegrams asking ‘How’s Lucia?’ tell him ‘She’s drawing!’ Do you hear? Tell him ‘She’s drawing!’”

And snatching up her precious parcel that a servant had brought, with an excited little laugh, Lucia fairly flew upstairs. Her mother, left with John Gwynne’s telegram, shook her head, perplexedly.

At luncheon, Lucia appeared, less gay, though still flushed and ardent with intention. “It’s wonderful,” she said, “to have one uninterrupted morning--to know there’s no ordering to be done, and that John won’t come tearing home for early lunch. I really believe I shall accomplish something--if I work,” she added, a little pucker coming between her eyes.

After lunch, she went back to it. Mrs. Loring wished she would lie down and rest her eyes; but she knew Lucia fairly well: she did not suggest it. That night when Ambrose Fayerweather came to dinner, he said warmly, “Well, well! And so the mother tells me you’re at work again, drawing! What energy you youngsters have, to be sure!”

Lucia, who was genuinely fond of him, did not answer that she was as old as her own grandmother, but said with a kind of enthusiasm, “Yes, isn’t it nice! I feel as though I should really get something done. Though--it’s rather hard, of course, starting in again, after so many years.”

“Of mere wife-hood, eh?” Mr. Fayerweather looked at her a bit wistfully from under his iron-grey brows. “By the way, I saw that husband of yours the other day. They tell me he’s a man to reckon with, now. I tell them--but you always get cross with me when I tell the truth about yourself.”

Lucia smiled at him. And he remembered she had always been a confoundedly pretty girl. “Dear Mr. Fayerweather, I’m never cross with you. I’m only unconvinced.”

“Oh! very well then” (they were waiting for her mother and dinner), “I’ll tell you: when people say to me what a splendid fellow Gwynne is, and how successful, I say yes, but who’s backing him? _Mrs. Gwynne!_”

“Backing him?” repeated Lucia slowly.

“Why, yes. Haven’t you always furnished the brains of the combination--the spark? My dear Lucia, we all know that delightful head of yours works in twenty directions a minute!”

Lucia looked at him curiously. “No. It works in only two.” And they kill each other, she started to add; but changed it to “I’m afraid neither has ever helped John.”

“Nonsense--non--sense! Why, Gwynne was nowhere until he got married; and since then--he’s simply soared! There’s no holding him down. Believe me, Lucia, I hear it from men who----”

“Oh, of course he’s done well. I--I’m tremendously proud of John’s success. But it’s his own success, Mr. Fayerweather,” Lucia said passionately. “I haven’t contributed to the length of an idea!” The suddenness with which it struck her, almost overwhelmed Lucia Gwynne.

“My dear,” said Ambrose, looking at her, “you--none of you--can tell what you contribute. You’re women, aren’t you?” He glanced through the door, at the stairs where her mother was coming down. “That’s one thing you can’t help or evade. And--you don’t know what you contribute.”

Lucia, during dinner, thought about it. It was a new kind of thinking for her: what she didn’t know; what she could not possibly determine; what didn’t balance with anything else. In it, she forgot the somewhat disheartening disclosures of the day’s work--that her technique was laborious rather than a joy--that it was hard, impossible almost, to get back at the end of the years; and remembered to write to Tommy. She wondered if he had put his boots away, and if he was homesick. Funny little freckle-faced Tommy! Two stubborn tears, like those that had worked their way out of his brave brown eyes when he parted from her, rose suddenly to Lucia’s. How weak she was! she told herself, the next minute, impatiently.

But she wrote to Tommy that night, before she went to bed. And at the end she said--instead of the caution about colds he hated so--“Mother wishes she could kiss you good-night--really, truly good-night, little son!” When she had sent the letter, she was inclined to be scornful of that last bit. The foolish third person--it was only an advanced baby-talk, that in her training of Tommy she had rigorously excluded.

Next day she worked harder than ever, and when John’s telegram came, she did not even know it. She was upstairs, putting her eyes out drawing a bit of lace on the gown of a gorgeous Wenzell lady. Come right, it would not. All afternoon she toiled; got a smudge on her nose that stayed there when Ada Barker came to tea, and a general irritability that caused that young woman to say later, “Well, I didn’t know Lucia Gwynne had gone off so! She’s positively untidy, and so sharp!”

That, Lucia’s mother had reason to echo during those twenty-four hours. But mothers don’t echo, somehow. They exonerate. Mrs. Loring was kept busy exonerating, while that bit of lace tied itself up in knots, and haughtily refused unravelling. When in the evening John Gwynne wired “why doesn’t Lucia write to me?” Lucia’s mother replied, “She’s drawing a piece of lace.” When, an hour later, he demanded, “What in thunder ails her?” Mrs. Loring wired back, “Why don’t you come and see for yourself?”

He came.

Three days after Lucia had arrived, throwing herself down on the little sofa, her husband followed suit. He looked extraordinarily big there.

“Where’s Lucia?” he asked instantly.

“Drawing lace,” said Mrs. Loring--about whose pretty mouth were little lines.

“Is she mad?” demanded her husband.

“She has been--very near it.” Mrs. Loring looked intently into Gwynne’s face. “Lucia thinks too much. You don’t give her enough to do.”

“Thinks too much--not enough to do? Why, isn’t she my wife? What should she do, except give orders to the servants and enjoy herself? I don’t want her to do anything!”

“Then you mustn’t be surprised,” said her mother, “if she comes off to me and draws lace.”

“What? If she--what?”

“If she finds something to do for herself.”

“But she’s always busy--rushing about, with a thousand things to--! That’s one reason why I was glad to have her get away: the only reason. She looked fagged to death. And you say she hasn’t anything to do!”

“Nothing with her head. Only her arms and legs--and nerves. For Lucia that’s not enough. If her head isn’t busied, it gets away from her, and----”

“You tell her to come down here,” broke in John Gwynne suddenly. “_Please!_ Tell her to come down here, and----”

Lucia appeared in the door. There were two smudges on her nose. “I simply can’t get that wretched”--she began: then, with a gasp, “Oh! _John!_ Why--why----”

“Hello, little girl!” John caught her, smudges and all, half way across the room. Mrs. Loring vanished. “Are you--glad to see me?”

Lucia’s lips were buried somewhere about his ear. “But--I--I--yes,” she murmured with difficulty. “I--was trying to draw lace.”

“Well,” said John Gwynne, “you’re going to draw a good deal bigger things than that.” John Gwynne could act quickly in matters of importance. “I’ve a million-dollar combine up for dicker this week--Fayerweather and Lodge and some of the fellows are in it with me--and it’s to do with an art collection of a regent prince who’s gone bankrupt and who’s got to sell to pay his debts. We’re thinking of buying; and I want your--why, Lucia, honey, what’s the matter? Sit down. Why----”

For Lucia was crying. First, softly, then tempestuously; as though her heart would break. John drew her down by him on the sofa, and patted her hand. “It’s all right, honey,” he said steadily, “it’s all right. I know--I took you by surprise, and you were tired to death, and--well, maybe you’d better come home, Lucy.”

“Oh, John--John,” she tried to control herself, “you don’t understand. It’s not that--it’s--John, don’t you see, I’ve tried all along to _keep tab_ on things! I’ve put down so much on your side, and so much on mine; and then added them up. What you gave out I gave--and they always tallied. And at last--oh, don’t you see how dreary it got? How worthless? But _I couldn’t stop doing it_. I was like a wound-up clock. And so----”

“And so now you are going to begin a new column called _our_ side,” put in John Gwynne, covering her hands. “And, Lucia! It’ll be so mixed up, and in such big figures, you can never count ’em--my dear! And, anyhow, we’ll be too busy. I’m going to send for Tommy--after you and I----” with swift tenderness, he kissed her.

While Gwynne, next day, was standing with Lucia in the room hung with the wistaria and pale rosebuds of ten years ago, Ambrose Fayerweather was saying to Mrs. Loring, “but I thought she came to make a _long_ visit?”

“Well,” said Mrs. Loring defensively, “she stayed three days!”

X

ROGER--PLAINLY AN IDLER

“Eh bien, Marcel! and how does it go?” I asked.

“Oh, it goes, m’sieu--it goes, always. But----”

“Yes? ‘But’----?”

“Well, m’sieu” (pulling my chair out, uneasily), “it is the season of the Americans, and--but pardon, m’sieu!”

“Don’t mind me,” I said, pouncing on the carte du jour of the Café aux Oranges. “In Paris I am equally content as you to forget it--that I am American. _Alors_, Marcel!--it will be hors d’œuvres variés, and then an omelette fines herbes, and then, I think, an assiette anglaise with a bit of salad, eh? and a Camembert, to finish.”

Marcel regarded me solemnly--consideringly--from over the wide block rims of his glasses. “But yes, m’sieu,” he said at last, grudgingly, “I suppose that it can go, as a breakfast. And monsieur drinks----?”

“Beer,” I was suddenly occupied with an extraordinarily pretty girl in the orangier opposite, “demibrune, Marcel.”

“Pardon, m’sieu, demiblonde--er--I--a thousand pardons, m’sieu!” Confused, the old fellow brought his eyes back from the same direction; made a violent effort to blush, and hurried off, murmuring, “demibrune, m’sieu, it is understood!”

I looked again at the girl. Even for the Café aux Oranges, where in spring, like this, there are as many pretty girls as blossoms on the chestnut trees above the little tables,--she was extraordinarily pretty. And she was American. One knew that by the upholstered shoulders of the young man and the shopping-bag of the lady, who were with her. The lady was frowning over the menu.

“I will not come here again!” she was heard to say, in a voice with as many corners as her shopping bag. “The second time this week--no roast beef! I’ll not come again. It’s a cheap place.”

“But, mamma” (by straining one’s ears, one could just get the low response of the pretty girl) “it’s a very nice place, really! And don’t you know it is one of the very few old cafés of the Quarter--the old French cafés--Roger told us?”

“Roger!” exploded the lady (there was no difficulty in hearing her). “If Roger knew less about cafés, it would be a great deal better for----”

Marcel returned with the hors d’œuvres. But not before I had seen a thin smile overtake the features of the heavy-shouldered young man.

“Who are they?” I asked Marcel, carelessly enough.

With a thump he set down the radishes. “They, m’sieu?” Scornfully, “they are Americans who are come since m’sieu went away. While m’sieu was in Italy they came to live in the Rue Vavin, near by. They are friends of Monsieur Roger Elmont--_ce beau garçon!_ But mademoiselle is an angel--but of a goodness! Only last Sunday she gave me two francs ten, and always when she takes coffee here in the evening--but she is very good for me.”

“And the others? The mother and brother?”

“Pah! what would you? _Canaille!_--tourists--but it is not her brother, m’sieu. It is the _futur_ of mademoiselle, _saints dieux_!”

“Not possible! But are you sure, Marcel? How do you know?”

“Listen, m’sieu”--he lowered his voice--“m’sieu eats his crevettes, and I shall recount to him: listen. A month ago, before one began to take the repasts outside at Café aux Oranges, there came one evening these three and Monsieur Roger. They are gay--but of a gaiety! They order dinner and--_mais si!_ champagne _and_ champagne--first Monsieur Roger, then this young man, Stuart, he calls himself, I think. This Monsieur Stuart, of champagne he himself orders two bottles. But they are friendly, he and Monsieur Roger; they are like brothers.