The Second Generation Part 45

He drowsed off. She sat watching him--the great beak, the bulging forehead, the thin, cruel lips; and everywhere in the garden of artificial flowers which formed the surface of her nature, hiding its reality even from herself, there appeared the poisonous snakes of hateful thoughts to shoot their fangs and hiss at him. She shrank and shuddered; yet--"It's altogether his own fault that I feel this way toward him as he lies dying," she said to herself, resorting to human nature's unfailing, universally sought comforter in all trying circ.u.mstances--self-excuse.

"He always was cold and hard. He has become a monster. And even in his best days he wasn't worthy to have such a woman as I am. And now he is thinking of cheating me--and will do it--unless G.o.d prevents him."

He drowsed on, more asleep than awake, not even rousing when they put him to bed. He did not go to Saint X that day. But he did go later--went to lie in state in the corridor of the splendid hall he had given Tec.u.mseh; to be gaped at by thousands who could not see that they were viewing a few pounds of molded clay, so busy were their imaginations with the vast fortune it was supposed he left; to be preached over, the sermon by Dr.

Hargrave, who believed in him--and so, in estimating the man as distinguished from what the system he lived under had made of him, perhaps came nearer the truth than those who talked only of the facts of his public career--his piracy, his bushwhacking, his gambling with the marked cards and loaded dice of "high finance"; to be buried in the old Cedar Grove Cemetery, with an imposing monument presently over him, before it fresh flowers every day for a year--the Marchioness of St.

Berthe contracted with a florist to attend to that.

Four days after the funeral Janet sent a servant down to Adelaide and to Mrs. Ranger with notes begging them to come to Point Helen for lunch.

"We are lonely and _so_ dreary," she wrote Adelaide. "We want you--need you." Only one answer was possible, and at half-past twelve they set out in Mrs. Ranger's carriage. As they drove away from the Villa d'Orsay Mrs.

Ranger said: "When does Mrs. Dorsey allow to come home?"

"Not for two years more," replied Del.

Ellen's expression suggested that she was debating whether or not to speak some thought which she feared Del might regard as meddlesome. "When you finally do have to get out," she said presently, "it'll be like giving up your own home, won't it?"

"No," said Del. "I hate the place!" A pause, then: "I wrote Mrs. Dorsey yesterday that we wouldn't stay but three months longer--not in any circ.u.mstances."

The old woman's face brightened. "I'm mighty glad of that," she said heartily. "Then, you'll have a home of your own at last."

"Not exactly," was Del's reply, in a curious tone. "The fact is, I'm going to live with Dr. Hargrave."

Ellen showed her astonishment. "And old Martha Skeffington!"

"She's not so difficult, once you get to know her," replied Del. "I find that everything depends on the point of view you take in looking at people. I've been getting better acquainted with Dory's aunt the last few weeks. I think she has begun to like me. We'll get along."

"Don't you think you'd better wait till Dory gets back?"

"No," said Adelaide firmly, a look in her eyes which made her mother say to herself: "There's the Ranger in her."

They drove in silence awhile; then Del, with an effort which brought a bright color to her cheeks, began: "I want to tell you, mother, that I went to Judge Torrey this morning, and made over to you the income father left me."

"Whatever did you do _that_ for?" cried Ellen, turning in the seat to stare at her daughter through her gla.s.ses.

"I promised Dory I would. I've spent some of the money--about fifteen hundred dollars--You see, the house was more expensive than I thought.

But everything's paid up now."

"I don't need it, and don't want it," said Ellen. "And I won't take it!"

"I promised Dory I would--before we were married. He thinks I've done it.

I've let him think so. And--lately--I've been having a sort of house cleaning--straightening things up--and I straightened that up, too."

Ellen Ranger understood. A long pause, during which she looked lovingly at her daughter's beautiful face. At last she said: "No, there don't seem to be no other way out of it." Then, anxiously, "You ain't written Dory what you've done?"

"No," replied Del. "Not yet."

"Not never!" exclaimed her mother. "That's one of the things a body mustn't ever tell anyone. You did wrong; you've done right--and it's all settled and over. He'd probably understand if you told him. But he'd never quite trust you the same again--that's human nature."

"But _you'd_ trust me," objected Del.

"I'm older'n Dory," replied her mother; "and, besides, I ain't your husband. There's no end of husbands and wives that get into hot water through telling, where it don't do any earthly good and makes the other one uneasy and unhappy."

Adelaide reflected. "It _is_ better not to tell him," she concluded.

Ellen was relieved. "That's common sense," said she. "And you can't use too much common sense in marriage. The woman's got to have it, for the men never do where women are concerned." She reflected a few minutes, then, after a keen glance at her daughter and away, she said with an appearance of impersonality that evidenced diplomatic skill of no mean order: "And there's this habit the women are getting nowadays of always peeping into their heads and hearts to see what's going on. How can they expect the cake to bake right if they're first at the fire door, then at the oven door, openin' and shuttin' 'em, peepin' and pokin' and tastin'--that's what _I'd_ like to know."

Adelaide looked at her mother's apparently unconscious face in surprise and admiration. "What a sensible, wonderful woman you are, Ellen Ranger!"

she exclaimed, giving her mother the sisterly name she always gave her when she felt a particular delight in the bond between them. And half to herself, yet so that her mother heard, she added: "And what a fool your daughter has been!"

"n.o.body's born wise," said Ellen, "and mighty few takes the trouble to learn."

At Point Helen the mourning livery of the lodge keeper and of the hall servants prepared Ellen and her daughter for the correct and elegant habiliments of woe in which Matilda and her son and daughter were garbed.

If Whitney had died before he began to lose his fortune, and while his family were in a good humor with him because of his careless generosity, or, rather, indifference to extravagance, he would have been mourned as sincerely as it is possible for human beings to mourn one by whose death they are to profit enormously in t.i.tle to the material possessions they have been trained to esteem above all else in the world. As it was, those last few months of anxiety--Mrs. Whitney worrying lest her luxury and social leadership should be pa.s.sing, Ross exasperated by the daily struggle to dissuade his father from fatuous enterprises--had changed Whitney's death from a grief to a relief. However, "appearances"

constrained Ross to a decent show of sorrow, compelled Mrs. Whitney to a still stronger exhibit. Janet, who in far-away France had not been touched by the financial anxieties, felt a genuine grief that gave her an admirable stimulus to her efflorescent oversoul. She had "prepared for the worst," had brought from Paris a marvelous mourning wardrobe--dresses and hats and jewelry that set off her delicate loveliness as it had never been set off before. She made of herself an embodiment, an apotheosis, rather, of poetic woe--and so, roused to emulation her mother's pa.s.sion for pose. Ross had refused to gratify them even to the extent of taking a spectator's part in their refined theatricals. The coming of Mrs. Ranger and Adelaide gave them an audience other than servile; they proceeded to strive to rise to the opportunity. The result of this struggle between mother and daughter was a spectacle so painful that even Ellen, determined to see only sincerity, found it impossible not to suspect a grief that could find so much and such language in which to vent itself.

She fancied she appreciated why Ross eyed his mother and sister with unconcealed hostility and spoke almost harshly when they compelled him to break his silence.

Adelaide hardly gave the two women a thought. She was surprised to find that she was looking at Ross and thinking of him quite calmly and most critically. His face seemed to her trivial, with a selfishness that more than suggested meanness, the eyes looking out from a mind which habitually entertained ideas not worth a real man's while. What was the matter with him--"or with me?" What is he thinking about? Why is he looking so mean and petty? Why had he no longer the least physical attraction for her? Why did her intense emotions of a few brief weeks ago seem as vague as an unimportant occurrence of many years ago? What had broken the spell? She could not answer her own puzzled questions; she simply knew that it was so, that any idea that she did, or ever could, love Ross Whitney was gone, and gone forever. "It's so," she thought. "What's the difference why? Shall I never learn to let the stove doors alone?"

As soon as lunch was over Matilda took Ellen to her boudoir and Ross went away, leaving Janet and Adelaide to walk up and down the shaded west terrace with its vast outlook upon the sinuous river and the hills. To draw Janet from the painful theatricals, she took advantage of a casual question about the lynching, and went into the details of that red evening as she had not with anyone. It was now almost two months into the past; but all Saint X was still feverish from it, and she herself had only begun again to have unhaunted and unbroken sleep. While she was relating Janet forgot herself; but when the story was told--all of it except Adelaide's own part; that she entirely omitted--Janet went back to her personal point of view. "A beautiful love story!" she exclaimed. "And right here in prosaic Saint X!"

"Is it Saint X that is prosaic," said Adelaide, "or is it we, in failing to see the truth about familiar things?"

"Perhaps," replied Janet, in the tone that means "not at all." To her a thrill of emotion or a throb of pain felt by a t.i.tled person differed from the same sensation in an unt.i.tled person as a bar of supernal or infernal music differs from the whistling of a farm boy on his way to gather the eggs; if the t.i.tle was royal--Janet wept when an empress died of a cancer and talked of her "heroism" for weeks.

"Of course," she went on musingly, to Adelaide, "it was very beautiful for Lorry and Estelle to love each other. Still, I can't help feeling that--At least, I can understand Arden Wilmot's rage. After all, Estelle stepped out of her cla.s.s; didn't she, Del?"

"Yes," said Del, not recognizing the remark as one she herself might have made not many months before. "Both she and Lorry stepped out of their cla.s.ses, and into the cla.s.s where there is no cla.s.s, but only just men and women, hearts and hands and brains." She checked herself just in time to refrain from adding, "the cla.s.s our fathers and mothers belonged in."

Janet did not inquire into the mystery of this. "And Estelle has gone to live with poor Lorry's mother!" said she. "How n.o.ble and touching! Such beautiful self-sacrifice!"

"Why self-sacrifice?" asked Del, irritated. "She couldn't possibly go home, could she? And she is fond of Lorry's mother."

"Yes, of course. No doubt she's a dear, lovely old woman. But--a washerwoman, and constant, daily contact--and not as lady and servant, but on what must be, after all, a sort of equality--" Janet finished her sentence with a ladylike look.

Adelaide burned with the resentment of the new convert. "A woman who brought into the world and brought up such a son as Lorry was," said she, "needn't yield to anybody." Then the silliness of arguing such a matter with Madame la Marquise de Saint Berthe came over her. "You and I don't look at life from the same standpoint, Janet," she added, smiling. "You see, you're a lady, and I'm not--any more."

"Oh, yes, you are," Janet, the devoid of the sense of humor, hastened to a.s.sure her earnestly. "You know we in France don't feel as they do in America, that one gets or loses caste when one gets or loses money.

Besides, Dory is in a profession that is quite aristocratic, and those lectures he delivered at Gottingen are really talked about everywhere on the other side."

But Adelaide refused to be consoled. "No, I'm not a lady--not what you'd call a lady, even as a Frenchwoman."

"Oh, but _I_'m a good American!" Janet protested, suddenly prudent and rushing into the pretenses our transplanted and acclimatized sisters are careful to make when talking with us of the land whence comes their sole claim to foreign aristocratic consideration--their income. "I'm really quite famous for my Americanism. I've done a great deal toward establishing our amba.s.sador at Paris in the best society. Coming from a republic and to a republic that isn't recognized by our set in France, he was having a hard time, though he and his wife are all right at home. Now that there are more gentlemen in authority at Washington, our diplomats are of a much better cla.s.s than they used to be. Everyone over there says so. Of course, you--that is we, are gradually becoming civilized and building up an aristocracy."

"Yes, I suppose so," said Adelaide, feeling that she must change the subject or show her exasperation, yet unable to find any subject which Janet would not adorn with refined and cultured views. "Isn't Ross, there, looking for you?"

He had just rushed from the house, his face, his manner violently agitated. As he saw Adelaide looking at him, he folded and put in his pocket a letter which seemed to be the cause of his agitation. When the two young women came to where he was standing, he joined them and walked up and down with them, his sister, between him and Del, doing all the talking. Out of the corner of her eye Del saw that his gaze was bent savagely upon the ground and that his struggle for self-control was still on. At the first opportunity she said: "I must get mother. We'll have to be going."

"Oh, no, not yet," urged Janet, sincerity strong in her affected accents.

Del felt that the sister, for some reason, as strongly wished not to be left alone with the brother as the brother wished to be left alone with the sister. In confirmation of this, Janet went on to say: "Anyhow, Ross will tell your mother."