The Second Generation Part 29

"If only it don't rain!" said Harry Legendre.

"It won't," replied Theresa with conviction--and her look of command toward the heavens made the courtiers exchange winks and smiles behind her back. They were courtiers to wealth, not to Theresa, just as their European prototypes are awed before a "king's most excellent Majesty,"

not before his swollen body and shrunken brain.

And it did not rain. Ross arrived in the red sunset of the wedding eve, Tom Glenning, his best man, coming with him. They were put, with the ushers, in rooms at the pavilion where were the squash courts and winter tennis courts and the swimming baths. Theresa and Ross stood on the front porch alone in the moonlight, looking out over the enchantment-like scene into which the florists and decorators had transformed the terraces and gardens. She was a little alarmed by his white face and sunken eyes; but she accepted his rea.s.surances without question--she would have disbelieved anything which did not fit in with her plans. And now, as they gazed out upon that beauty under the soft shimmer of the moonlight, her heart suddenly expanded in tenderness. "I am _so_ happy," she murmured, slipping an arm through his.

Her act called for a return pressure. He gave it, much as a woman's salutation would have made him unconsciously move to lift his hat.

"While Adele was dressing me for dinner--" she began.

At that name, he moved so that her arm dropped from his; but she did not connect her maid with her former bosom friend.

"I got to thinking about those who are not so well off as we," she went on; "about the poor. And so, I've asked papa to give all his employees and the servants nice presents, and I've sent five thousand dollars to be divided among the churches in the town, down there--for the poor. Do you think I did wrong? I'm always afraid of encouraging those kind of people to expect too much of us."

She had asked that he might echo the eulogies she had been bestowing upon herself. But he disappointed her. "Oh, I guess it was well enough," he replied. "I must go down to the pavilion. I'm f.a.gged, and you must be, too."

The suggestion that he might not be looking his best on the morrow was enough to change the current of her thoughts. "Yes, _do_, dear!" she urged. "And don't let Tom and Harry and the rest keep you up."

They did not even see him. He sat in the shed at the end of the boat-landing, staring out over the lake until the moon set. Then he went to the pavilion. It was all dark; he stole in, and to bed, but not to sleep. Before his closed but seeing eyes floated a vision of two women--Adelaide as he had last seen her, Theresa as she looked in the mornings, as she had looked that afternoon.

He was haggard next day. But it was becoming to him, gave the finishing touch to his customary bored, distinguished air; and he was dressed in a way that made every man there envy him. As Theresa, on insignificant-looking little Bill Howland's arm, advanced to meet him at the altar erected under a canopy of silk and flowers in the bower of lilies and roses into which the big drawing-room had been transformed, she thrilled with pride. _There_ was a man one could look at with delight, as one said, "My husband!"

It was a perfect day--perfect weather, everything going forward without hitch, everybody looking his and her best, and "Mama" providentially compelled by one of her "spells" to keep to her room. Those absences of hers were so frequent and so much the matter of course that no one gave them a second thought. Theresa had studied up the customs at fashionable English and French weddings, and had combined the most aristocratic features of both. Perhaps the most successful feature was when she and Ross, dressed for the going away, walked, she leaning upon his arm, across the lawns to the silk marquee where the wedding breakfast was served. Before them, walking backward, were a dozen little girls from the village school, all in white, strewing roses from beribboned baskets, and singing, "Behold! The bride in beauty comes!"

"Well, I'm glad it's all over," said Theresa as she settled back in a chair in the private car that was to take them to Wilderness Lodge, in northern Wisconsin for the honeymoon.

"So am I," Ross disappointed her by saying. "I've felt like a d.a.m.n fool ever since I began to face that gaping gang."

"But you must admit it was beautiful," objected Theresa pouting.

Ross shut his teeth together to keep back a rude reply. He was understanding how men can be brutal to women. To look at her was to have an all but uncontrollable impulse to rise up and in a series of noisy and profane explosions reveal to her the truth that was poisoning him. After a while, a sound from her direction made him glance at her. She was sobbing. He did not then know that, to her, tears were simply the means to getting what she wanted; so his heart softened. While she was thinking that she was looking particularly well and femininely attractive, he was pitying her as a forlorn creature, who could never inspire love and ought to be treated with consideration, much as one tries to hide by an effusive show of courtesy the repulsion deformity inspires.

"Don't cry, Theresa," he said gently, trying to make up his mind to touch her. But he groaned to himself, "I can't! I must wait until I can't see her." And he ordered the porter to bring him whisky and soda.

"Won't you join me?" he said.

"You know, I never touch anything to drink," she replied. "Papa and Dr.

Ma.s.sey both made me promise not to."

Ross's hand, reaching out for the bottle of whisky, drew slowly back. He averted his face that she might not see. He knew about her mother--and knew Theresa did not. It had never entered his head that the weakness of the mother might be transmitted to the daughter. Now--Just before they left, Dr. Ma.s.sey had taken him aside and, in a manner that would have impressed him instantly but for his mood, had said: "Mr. Whitney, I want you never to forget that Theresa must not be depressed. You must take the greatest care of her. We must talk about it again--when you return."

And _this_ was what he meant!

He almost leaped to his feet at Theresa's softly interrupting voice, "Are you ill, dear?"

"A little--the strain--I'll be all right--" And leaving the whisky untouched, he went into his own compartment. As he was closing the door, he gave a gasp of dismay. "She might begin now!" he muttered. He rang for the porter. "Bring that bottle," he said. Then, as an afterthought of "appearances," "And the soda and a gla.s.s."

"I can get you another, sir," said the porter.

"No--that one," ordered Ross.

Behind the returning porter came Theresa. "Can't I do something for you, dear? Rub your head, or fix the pillows?"

Ross did not look at her. "Do, please--fix the pillows," he said. "Then if I can sleep a little, I'll be all right, and will soon rejoin you."

"Can't I fix your drink for you?" she asked, putting her hand on the bottle.

Ross restrained an impulse to s.n.a.t.c.h it away from her. "Thanks, no--dear," he answered. "I've decided to swear off--with you. Is it a go?"

She laughed. "Silly!" she murmured, bending and kissing him. "If you wish."

"That settles it," said Ross, with a forced, pained smile. "We'll neither of us touch it. I was getting into the habit of taking too much--not really too much--but--Oh, you understand."

"That's the way father feels about it," said Theresa, laughing. "We never drink at home--except mother when she has a spell, and has to be kept up on brandy."

Ross threw his arm up to hide his face. "Let me sleep, do," he said gently.

CHAPTER XVIII

LOVE, THE BLUNDERER

As Dory had several months' work before him at Paris, he and Del took a furnished apartment in the Rue de Rivoli, high up, attractive within, before its balconied windows the stately trees, the fountains, the bright flower beds, the thronged playgrounds of the Tuileries. But they were not long left to themselves; in their second week, the _concierge's_ little girl late one afternoon brought Janet's card up to Adelaide. As Janet entered, Del regretted having yielded to impulse and admitted her. For, the granddaughter of "blue-jeans Jones," the tavern keeper, was looking the elegant and idle aristocrat from the tip of the tall, graceful plume in her most Parisian of hats to the buckles of shoes which matched her dress, parasol, and jewels. A lovely Janet, a marvelous Janet; a toilette it must have taken her two hours to make, and spiritual hazel eyes that forbade the idea of her giving so much as a moment's thought to any material thing, even to dress. Adelaide had spent with the dressmakers a good part of the letter of credit her mother slipped into her traveling bag at the parting; she herself was in a negligee which had as much style as Janet's costume and, in addition, individual taste, whereof Janet had but little; and besides, while her beauty had the same American delicateness, as of the finest, least florid Sevres or Dresden, it also had a look of durability which Janet's beauty lacked--for Janet's beauty depended upon those fragilities, coloring and contour. Adelaide was not notably vain, had a clear sense of her defects, tended to exaggerate them, rather than her many and decisive good points. It was not Janet's appearance that unsettled Del; she brought into the room the atmosphere Del had breathed during all those important years of girlhood, and had not yet lost her fondness for. It depressed her at once about herself to note how this vision of the life that had been but would never be again affected her.

"You are sad, dear," said Janet, as she kissed her on both cheeks with a diffusing of perfume that gave her a sense of a bouquet of priceless exotics waving before her face.

"You are sad, dear," she repeated, with that air of tenderest sympathy which can be the safest cover for subtle malice.

Adelaide shrank.

"I'm so glad I've come when I may be able to do some good."

Adelaide winced.

"How cozy these rooms are--"

At "cozy" Adelaide shuddered. No one ever used, except apologetically, that word, which is the desperate last resort of compliment.

"And what a beautiful view from the windows--so much better than ours at the pompous old Bristol, looking out on that bare square!"

Adelaide laughed. Not by chance, she knew, did Miss Janet, with her softly sheathed but swift and sharp cat claws, drag in the delicate hint that while Adelaide was "cozy" in an unaristocratic _maison meublee_, she herself was ensconced in the haunts of royalty; and it suddenly came back to Del how essentially cheap was "aristocracy."

"But I mustn't look at those adorable gardens," continued Janet. "They fill me with longing for the country, for the pure, simple things. I am so sick of the life mamma and I lead. And you are married to dear Dory--how romantic! And I hear that Arthur is to marry Margaret Schultz--or whatever her name was--that splendid creature! She was a _dear_ friend of the trained nurse I had last spring, and what the nurse told me about her made me positively love her. Such character! And getting ready to lead _such_ a useful life." This without the least suggestion of struggle with a difficult subject. "Arthur is a n.o.ble fellow, too. If we had been in spiritual accord, I'd have loved to go and lead his life with him."

Adelaide was in high good humor now--Janet was too preposterous to be taken seriously. "What do you want me to do for you, Jen?" said she.