The Adventures of a Widow Part 19

"Oh, I know that very well," answered Pauline. "I have had very good reason to know that we are not the same. We are extremely different. By the way, she is not here to-night."

"Not here?" he repeated interrogatively, but with a suggestion of drolly helpless duplicity.

Pauline raised one finger, shaking it at him for an instant and no more.

The gesture, transient as it was, seemed to convey a world of significance. No doubt Kindelon tacitly admitted this, though his face preserved both its ordinary color and composure.

"You are well aware that she is not here," Pauline said.

"Why do you say that?" he asked.

"I think so."

"But perhaps you may be mistaken. Perhaps you have merely fancied that I have noticed Miss Cora's non-appearance."

"Perhaps," Pauline repeated. She seemed to be saying the word to her own thoughts. But suddenly her manner became far less absent. "Mrs. Dares told me that Miss Cora had a headache to-night," she said, with brisk activity. "We can all have headaches, you know," she went on, "when we choose."

Kindelon nodded slowly. "I have heard that it is an accommodating malady," he said, in tones that were singularly lifeless and neutral.

Pauline put forth her hand, and let it rest on his broad, strong arm for a second or two.

"Did Miss Cora have a headache?" she asked.

He threw back his head, and shook it with a sudden sound of his breath which resembled a sigh of irritation, and yet was not quite that.

"Upon my word, I don't know!" he cried softly.

Just then Pauline found herself confronted by Mr. Howe, the novelist.

His stoop was very apparent; it seemed even more consumptive than usual; his slim hand was incessantly touching and retouching his blue spectacles, which gleamed opaque and with a goblin suggestion from the smooth-shaven, scholarly pallor of his visage.

"Excuse me, Mrs. Varick," he began, "but I--I wish to speak a word with you."

Pauline smiled and a.s.sumed an affable demeanor. It cost her an effort to do so, for certain acute reasons; but she nevertheless achieved good results.

"A great many words, Mr. Howe," she answered, "if you wish."

Mr. Howe gave a sickly smile. "Oh, I don't ask a great many," he faltered; and it at once became evident that he was for some reason ill at ease, disconsolate, abysmally depressed.

"You are annoyed," said Pauline, chiefly because she found nothing else, as a would-be courteous hostess, to say.

"Annoyed?" came the hesitant reply, while Mr. Howe rearranged his blue spectacles with a hand that seemed to a.s.sume a new momentary decisiveness. "I am grieved, Mrs. Varick. I am grieved because a friend of mine has received a slight from you, and I hope that it is an unintentional slight. I--I want to ask you whether it cannot be corrected. I allude to Mr. Bedlowe."

"Mr. Bedlowe!" repeated Pauline amazedly. She turned to Kindelon as she spoke.

"Oh, yes," came Kindelon's ready answer; "you remember Bedlowe, of course."

"I remember Mr. Bedlowe," said Pauline, sedately.

"Ah! you seem to have forgotten him!" exclaimed Mr. Howe, with a great deal of gentlemanly distress. He had discontinued all manual connection with his blue gla.s.ses; he had even pressed both hands together, in a rotatory, nervous way, while he went on speaking. "I hope you did not mean to leave poor Bedlowe out," he proceeded, with quite a funereal pathos. "The poor fellow feels it dreadfully. I promised him I would say nothing about the matter, and yet (as you see) I have broken my promise."

"I think Mrs. Varick is sorry to see that you have broken your promise,"

said Kindelon, shortly and tepidly.

Mr. Howe glanced at Kindelon through his gla.s.ses. He was obliged to raise his head as he did so, on account of their differing statures.

"Kindelon!" he cried, in reproach, "I thought you were one of my friends."

"So I am," came Kindelon's reply, "and that is why I don't like the pietistic novelist, Bedlowe, who wrote 'The Christian Knight in Armor'

and the 'Doubtful Soul Satisfied.'"

If there could be the ghost of a cough, Mr. Howe gave it. He again lifted his wan, lank hand toward his spectacles.

"Oh, Kindelon," he remonstrated, "you must not be as uncharitable as that. Bedlowe does the best he can--and really, between ourselves, his best is remarkably good. Think of his great popularity. Think of the way he appeals to the large ma.s.ses. Think"--

But here Pauline broke in, with the merriest laugh that had left her lips that night.

"My dear Mr. Howe!" she exclaimed, "you forget that I heard a bitter wrangle between you and Mr. Bedlowe only a few days ago. You had a great many hard things to say of him then. I hope you have not so easily altered your convictions."

"I--I haven't altered my convictions at all," stammered Mr. Howe, quite miserably. "But between Bedlowe as a literary man, and--and Bedlowe as a social companion--I draw a very marked line."

Kindelon here put his big hand on Mr. Howe's slight shoulder, jovially and amicably, while he said,--

"Come, now, my dear Howe, you mean that the a.n.a.lytical and agnostic novelist wants the romantic and pietistic novelist, only for the purpose of breaking a lance with him. You want him for that reason and no other."

Mr. Howe removed his spectacles, and while he performed this act it was evident that he was extremely agitated. The removal of his spectacles revealed two very red-rimmed eyes, whose color escaped all note because of their smallness.

"I--I want Mr. Bedlowe for no such reason," he a.s.serted. "But I--I do not want to attend a--so-called _salon_ at which mere fashionable fancy takes the place of solid hospitality."

"You forget," said Pauline, with rapid coolness, "that you are speaking in the presence of your hostess."

"He remembers only," came the fleet words of Kindelon, "that he speaks at the prompting of Barrowe."

Pauline tossed her head; she was angry again. "I don't care anything about Mr. Barrowe," she a.s.serted, with a very positive glance at the unspectacled Mr. Howe. "I should prefer to believe that Mr. Howe expresses his own opinions. Even if they are very rude ones, I should prefer having them original."

"They are original," said Mr. Howe feebly, but somehow with the manner of a man who possesses a reserve of strength which he is unable to readily command. "I do not borrow my opinions. I--I think nearly all people must know this."

"I know it," said Pauline very tranquilly, and with an accent suave yet sincere. "I have read your novels, Mr. Howe, and I have liked them very much. I don't say that this is the reason why I have asked you here to-night, and I don't say that my dislike of Mr. Bedlowe's novels is the reason why I have not asked Mr. Bedlowe here to-night. But I hope you will let my admiration of your talent cover all delinquencies, and permit me to be the judge of whom I shall choose and whom I shall not choose for my guests."

Mr. Howe put on his spectacles. While he was putting them on, he said in a voice that had a choked and also mournfully reproachful sound,--

"I have no social gifts, Mrs. Varick. I can't measure swords with you. I can only measure pens. That is the trouble with so many of us writers.

We can only write; we can't talk. I--I think it grows worse with us, in these days when one has to write with the most careful selection of words, so as to escape what is now called commonplace diction. We get into the habit of striving after novelty of expression--we have to use our 'Thesaurus,' and search for synonyms--we have to smoke excessively (a good many of us) in order to keep our nerves at the proper literary pitch--we have to take stimulants (a good many of us--though I don't understand that, for I never touch wine) in order to drag up the words and ideas from an underlying stagnancy. Frankly, for myself, I talk quite ill. But I don't want to have you think that I am talking in another voice than my own. I don't want, in spite of my failure as a man of words, that you should suppose"--

"I suppose nothing, Mr. Howe," broke in Pauline, while she caught the speaker's hand in hers, gloved modishly up to the elbow with soft, tawny kid. "I insist upon supposing nothing except that you are glad to come here and will be glad to come again. I know three or four of your novels very well, and I know them so well that I love them, and have read them twice or thrice, which is a great deal to say of a novel, as even you, a novelist, will admit. But I don't like Mr. Bedlowe's novels any more than you do; and if Mr. Barrowe has tried to set you on fire with his incendiary feelings, I shall be excessively sorry. You have written lovely and brilliant things; you know the human soul, and you have shown that you know it. You may not have sold seventy thousand copies, as the commercial phrase goes, but I don't care whether you have sold seventy thousand or only a plain seventy; you are a true artist, all the same.... And now I am going to leave you, for my other guests claim me.

But I hope you will not care for anything severe and bitter which that dyspeptic Mr. Barrowe may say; for, depend upon it, he only wins your adherence because he is a clever man on paper, and not because he is even tolerable in the stern operations of real life. Frankly, between ourselves, I am sure that he makes a very bad husband, though he is always talking of being handicapped by autograph-bores and interviewers who keep him away from Mrs. Barrowe. I suspect that Mrs. Barrowe must be a very unhappy lady. And I'm sure, on the other hand, that Mrs. Howe is very happy--for I know there is a Mrs. Howe, or you couldn't describe the American women as ably as you do...." Pauline pa.s.sed onward as she ended her final sentence. Kindelon, still at her side, soon said to her,--

"What a clever farewell you made: you have won Howe. You flattered him very adroitly. It's an open secret that his wife helps him in those exquisite novels of his. She is his one type of woman. I think that is why Howe will never be great; he will always be exquisite instead. He adores his wife, who hates society and always stays at home. If Howe had once committed a genuine fault it might have served posterity as a crystallized masterpiece."

Pauline shook her head with negative emphasis. "I like him just as he is," she murmured. She was silent for a moment, and then added, almost plaintively: "My entertainment looks pleasant enough, but I fear that it is all a disastrous failure."