Linda Condon Part 13

Linda was unable to shake off the conviction that it was like a play in which she had no more than a spectator's part.

This was her old disability, the result of her habit of sitting, as a child, apart from the concerns and stir of living. She made every possible effort to overcome it, to surrender to her new conditions; but, if nothing else, an instinctive shyness prevented. It went back further, even, she thought, than her own experience, and she recalled all she had heard and reconstructed of her father--a man shut in on himself who had, one day, without a word walked out of the door and left his wife, never to return. These realizations, however, did little to clarify her vision; she was continually trying to adjust her being to circ.u.mstances that persistently remained a little distant and blurred.

In appearance, anyhow, Linda told herself with a measure of rea.s.surance, she was practically unchanged. She still, with the support of Arnaud, disregarding current fashion, wore her hair in a straight bang across her brow and blue gaze. She was as slender as formerly, but more gracefully round, in spite of the faint characteristic stiffness that was the result of her mental hesitation. Her clothes, too, had hardly varied--she wore, whenever possible, white lawns ruffled about the throat and hem, with broad soft black sashes, while her more formal dresses were sheaths of dull unornamented satin extravagant in the perfection of their simplicity.

XXIV

Arnaud Hallet stirred, sharply closing his book. He had changed--except for a palpable settling down of grayness--as little as Linda. For a while she had tried to bring about an improvement in his appearance, and he had met her expressed wish whenever he remembered it; but this was not often. In the morning a servant polished his shoes, brushed and ironed his suits; yet by evening, somehow, he managed to look as though he hadn't been attended to for days. She would have liked him to change for dinner; other men of his connection did, it was a part of his inheritance. Arnaud, however, in his slight scoffing disparagement, declined individually to annoy himself. He was, she learned, enormously absorbed in his historical studies and papers.

"Did you enjoy it?" she asked politely of his reading. "Extremely," he replied. "The American Impressions of Tyrone Power, the English actor, through eighteen thirty-three and four. His account of a European packet with its handbells and Saratoga water and breakfast of spitch-c.o.c.k is inimitable. I'd like to have sat at Cato's then, with a julep or hail-storm, and watched the trotting races."

Elouise Lowrie rose unsteadily, confused with dozing; but almost immediately she gathered herself into a relentless propriety and a formal goodnight.

"What has been running through that mysterious mind of yours?"

"I had a letter from Dodge," she told him simply; "and I was thinking a little about the past." He exhibited the nice unstrained interest of his admirable personality. "Is he still in France?" he queried. "Pleydon should be a strong man; I am sure we are both conscious of a little disappointment in him." She said: "I'll read you his letter, it's on the table.

"'You will see, my dear Linda, that I have not moved from the Rue de Penthievre, although I have given up the place at Etretat, and I am not going to renew the lease here. Rodin insists, and I coming to agree with him, that I ought to be in America. But the serious att.i.tude here toward art, how impossible that word has been made, is charming. And you will be glad to know that I have had some success in the French good opinion.

A marble, Cotton Mather, that I cut from the stone, has been bought for the Luxembourg.

"'I can hear you both exclaim at the subject, but it is very representative of me now. I am tired of mythological naiads in a constant state of pursuit. Get Hallet to tell you something about Mather. What a somber flame! I have a part Puritan ancestry, as any Lowrie will inform you. Well, I shall be back in a few months, very serious, and a politician--a sculptor has to be that if he means to land any public monuments in America.

"'I hope to see you.'"

The letter ended abruptly, with the signature, "Pleydon."

"Are you happy, Linda?" Arnaud Hallet asked unexpectedly after a short silence. So abruptly interrogated she was unable to respond. "What I mean is," he explained, "do you think you would have been happier married to him? I knew, certainly, that it was the closest possible thing between us." Now, however, she was able to satisfy him:

"I couldn't marry Dodge."

"Is it possible to tell me why?"

"He hurt me very much once. I tried to marry him, I tried to forget it, but it was useless. I was dreadfully unhappy, in a great many ways--"

"So you sent for me," he put in as she paused reflectively. "I didn't hurt you, at any rate." It seemed to her that his tone was shadowed.

"You have never hurt me, Arnaud," she a.s.sured him, conscious of the inadequacy of her words. "You were everything I wanted."

"Except for my hats," he said in a brief flash of his saving humor. "It would be better for me, perhaps, if I could hurt you. That ability comes dangerously close to a constant of love. You mustn't think I am complaining. I haven't the slightest reason in the face of your devastating honesty. I didn't distress you and I had the necessary minimum--the fifty thousand." His manner was so even, so devoid of sting, that she could smile at the expression of her material ambitions.

"I realize exactly your feeling for myself, but what puzzles me is your att.i.tude toward the children."

"I don't understand it either," she admitted, "except that I am quite afraid of them. They are so different from all my own childhood; often they are too much for me. Then I dread the time when they will discover how stupid and uneducated I am at bottom. I'm sure you already ask questions before them to amuse yourself at my doubt. What shall I do, Arnaud, when they are really at school and bring home their books?"

"Retreat behind your dignity as a parent," he advised. "They are certain to display their knowledge and ask you to bound things or name the capital of Louisiana." She cried, "Oh, but I know that, it's New Orleans!" She saw at once, from his entertained expression, that she was wrong again, and became conscious of a faint flush of annoyance. "It will be even worse," she continued, "when Vigne looks to me for advice; I mean when she is older and has lovers."

"She won't seriously; they never do. She'll tell you when it's all over.

Lowrie will depend more on you. I may have my fun about the capital of Louisiana, Linda, but I have the greatest confidence in your wisdom. G.o.d knows what an unhappy experience your childhood was, but it has given you a superb worldly balance."

"I suppose you're saying that I am cold," she told him. "It must be true, because it is repeated by every one. Yet, at times, I used to be very different--you'd never imagine what a romantic thrill or strange ideas were inside of me. Like a memory of a deep woods, and--and the loveliest adventure. Often I would hear music as clearly as possible, and it made me want I don't know what terrifically."

"An early experience," he replied. Suddenly she saw that he was tired, his face was lined and dejected. "You read too much," Linda declared.

He said: "But only out of the printed book." She wondered vainly what he meant. As he stood before the glimmering coals, in the room saturated in repose, she wished that she might give him more; she wanted to spend herself in a riot of feeling on Arnaud and their children. What a detestable character she had! Her desire, her efforts, were wasted.

He went about putting up the windows and closing the outside shutters, a confirmed habit. Linda rose with her invariable sense of separation, the feeling that, bound on a journey with a hidden destination, she was only temporarily in a place of little importance. It was like being always in her hat and jacket. Arnaud shook down the grate; then he gazed over the room; it was all, she was sure, as it had been a century ago, as it should be--all except herself.

XXV

Yet her marriage had realized in almost every particular what she had--so much younger--planned. The early suggestion, becoming through constant reiteration a part of her knowledge, had been followed and accomplished; and, as well, her later needs were served. Linda told herself that, in a world where a very great deal was muddled, she had been unusually fortunate. And this made her angry at her pervading lack of interest in whatever she had obtained.

Other women, she observed, obviously less fortunate than she, were volubly and warmly absorbed in any number of engagements and pleasures; she continually heard them, Arnaud's connections--the whole superior society, eternally and vigorously discussing servants and bridge, family and cotillions, indiscretions and charities. These seemed enough for them; their lives were filled, satisfied, extraordinarily busy. Linda, for the most part, had but little to do. Her servants, managed with remote exactness, gave no trouble; she had an excellent woman for the children; her dress presented no new points of anxiety nor departure ...

she was, in short, Arnaud admitted, perfectly efficient. She disposed of such details mechanically, almost impatiently, and was contemptuous, no envious, of the women whose demands they contented.

At the dinners, the b.a.l.l.s, to which Arnaud's sense of obligation both to family and her took them against his inclination, it was the same--everyone, it appeared to Linda, was flushed with an intentness she could not share. Men, she found, some of them extremely pleasant, still made adroit and rea.s.suring efforts for her favor; the air here, she discovered, was even freer than the bravado of her earlier surroundings.

This love-making didn't disturb her--it was, ultimately, the men who were fretted--indeed, she had rather hoped that it would bring her the relief she lacked.

But again the observations and speculation of her mature childhood, what she had heard revealed in the most skillful feminine dissections, had cleared her understanding to a point that made the advances of hopeful men quite entertainingly obvious. Their method was appallingly similar and monotonous. She liked, rather than not, the younger ones, whose confidence that their pa.s.sion was something new on earth at times refreshed her; but the navigated materialism of greater experience finally became distasteful. She discussed this sharply with Arnaud:

"You simply can't help believing that most women are complete idiots."

"You haven't said much more for men."

"The whole thing is too silly! Why is it, Arnaud? It ought to be impressive and sweep you off your feet, up--"

"Instead of merely behind some rented palms," he added. "But I must say, Linda, that you are not a very highly qualified judge of sentiment."

He p.r.o.nounced this equably, but she was conscious of the presence of an injury in his voice. She was a little weary at being eternally condemned for what she couldn't help. Any failure was as much Arnaud Hallet's as hers; he had had his opportunity, all that for which he had implored her. Her thoughts returned to Dodge Pleydon. April was well advanced, and he had written that he'd be back and see them in the spring. Linda listened to her heart but it was unhastened by a beat. She would be very glad to have him at hand, in her life again, of course.

Then the direction of her mind veered--what did he still think of her?

Probably he had altogether recovered from his love for her. It had been a warm day, and Arnaud had opened a window; but now she was aware of a cold air on her shoulder and she asked him abruptly to lower the sash.

Linda remembered, with a lingering sense of triumph, the Susanna Noda whom Dodge had left at a party for her. There had been a great many Susannas in his life; the reason for this was the absence of any overwhelming single influence. It might be that now--he had written of the change in the subjects of his work--such a guide had come into his existence. She hoped she had. Yet, in view of the announced silliness of women, she didn't want him to be cheaply deluded.

He was an extremely human man.

But she, Linda, it seemed, was an inhuman woman. The days ran into weeks that added another month to spring; a June advanced sultry with heat; and, suddenly as usual, a maid at the door of her room announced Pleydon. It was five o'clock in the afternoon, she had to dress, and she sent him a message that he mustn't expect her in a hurry. She paused in her deliberate preparations for a long thoughtful gaze into a mirror; there was not yet a shadow on her face, the trace of a line at her eyes.

The sharp smooth turning and absolute whiteness of her bare shoulders were flawless.

At first it appeared to Linda that he, too, had not changed. They were in the library opening into the dining-room, a s.p.a.ce shut against the sun by the Venetian blinds, and faintly scented by a bowl of early tea roses. He appeared the same--large and informally clad in gray flannels, with aggressive features and sensitive strong hands. He was quiet but plainly happy to be with her again and sat leaning forward on his knees, watching her intently as she chose a seat.

Then it slowly dawned on her that he had changed, yes--tragically.

Pleydon, in every way, was years older. His voice, less arbitrary, had new depths of questioning, his mouth was more repressed, his face notably sparer of flesh. He was immediately aware of the result of her scrutiny. "I have been working like a fool," he explained. "A breath of sickness, too, four years ago in Soochow. One of the d.a.m.nable Asiatic fevers that a European is supposed to be immune from. You are a miracle, Linda. How long has it been--nearly eight years; you have two children and Arnaud Hallet and yet you are the girl I met at Markue's. I wanted to see you different, just a little, a trace of something that should have happened to you. It hasn't. You're the most remarkable mother alive."

"If I am," she returned, "it is not as a success, or at least for me.

Lowrie and Vigne are healthy, and happy enough; but I can't lose myself in them, Dodge; I can't lose myself at all."