The Whirligig of Time Part 46

"Do take off your gloves and things, dear, and make yourself comfortable! Such a day! New York in June is frightful--eighty-eight yesterday, and Heaven knows what it will be to-day. You'll stay to lunch, won't you?"

"Thanks, perhaps I will," replied Beatrice listlessly.

"I never have stayed in town so late in June," ran on Aunt Cecilia, "but I thought I wouldn't open the Tarrytown house this spring--it's only for six weeks and it is so much extra trouble.... I shall take the yacht and the boys directly on up to Bar Harbor afterward; we should love to have you come with us, if you feel like leaving James--you're looking so f.a.gged. You must both come and pay us a long visit later on, though I suppose with Harry and Madge in the Berkshires you'll be running up there quite often for week-ends...."

Beatrice stirred a little. "Thanks, Aunt Cecilia, but I don't mind the heat especially. If James can bear it, I can, I suppose. I expect to stay here most of the summer."

She was perfectly courteous, and yet it suddenly occurred to Aunt Cecilia that perhaps she wouldn't be quite so free in showering invitations on Beatrice and James for a while. There was that about her, as she sat there.... Languid, that was the word; there had been a certain languor, not due to hot weather, in Beatrice's reception of most of her favors, now that she came to think of it. There had been that wedding trip in the _Halcyone_, to begin with. Both she and James had shown a due amount of grat.i.tude, but neither, when you came right down to it, had given any particular evidence of having enjoyed it.

Everything was as it should be, no doubt, but--one didn't lend yachts without expecting to have them enjoyed!

"That trip cost me over five thousand dollars," she had remarked to her husband shortly after the return of the bridal pair. "Of course I don't grudge it, but five thousand dollars is a good deal of money, and I'd rather have subscribed it to the Organized Charities than feel I was spending it to give those two something they didn't want!"

Aunt Cecilia gazed anxiously at Beatrice for a moment, memories of this sort floating vaguely through her mind. She scented trouble, somewhere.

The next minute she thought she had diagnosed it.

"You're bored, dear, that's the long and the short of it, and I think I know what's the matter. I'm not sure that I didn't feel a little that way myself, at the very first. But I soon got over it. My dear, there's nothing in the world like a baby to drive away boredom...."

Beatrice tapped with the end of her parasol on what in winter would have been a pink and gray texture from Aubusson's storied looms but was now simply a parquet flooring. But she did not blush, not in the slightest degree.

"Yes," she answered, a trifle wearily, "I daresay you're right.

Sometimes I think I would like to have a baby. It doesn't seem to come, though.... After all, it's rather early to bother, isn't it?"

"Oh, I don't want you to _bother_--! Only--" She was just a little taken aback. This barren agreement, this lack of natural shyness, of blushes!

It was unprecedented in her experience.

"Only what, Aunt Cecilia?"

"Only--it's a sure cure for being bored. But Beatrice, there must be others, while you're waiting. What about your studies, your work? You haven't done much of that since you came home from abroad, have you?

It's too late to begin anything this summer, of course, but next autumn I should think you'd like to take it up again, especially as you don't care so much for society, and I'm sure I don't blame you for that...."

She beamed momentarily on her niece, who this time smiled back ever so slightly in return. "After all, it's nice to be of some use in the world, isn't it?"

Why not have left it there, on that secure impregnable pinnacle? Why weaken her position by giving voice to that silly unprovoked fancy that had hung about the back of her mind since the beginning of the interview, or very near it? We can't explain, unless the sudden suspicion that Beatrice had smiled less with than at her, and the sight of her sitting there so beautiful and aloof, so well-bredly acquiescent and so emotionally intangible, exercised an ign.o.ble influence over her.

There is a sort of silent acquiescence that is very irritating.... And after all, was the impulse so ign.o.ble? A word of warning of the most affectionate kind, prompted by the keenest sympathy--surely it was wholly Beatrice's fault if anything went wrong!

"More than that, my dear, there's a certain danger in being too idle--a danger I'm sure you're as free from as any one could be, but you know what the psalm says!" (Or was it original with Isaac Watts? However!) "Of course marriage isn't so easy, especially in the first year, and especially if there are no children--what with the husband away at work all day and tired to death and like as not cross as a bear when he comes home in the evening--I know!--a young wife can't be blamed for feeling a little out of sorts sometimes. And then along comes another man...."

Here Beatrice, to use a sporting expression, froze. From that moment it ceased to be question of two women talking together and became a matter of Aunt Cecilia apostrophizing a statue; a modern conception, say, of Artemis. Marble itself could not be more unresponsive than Beatrice when people tried to "get at her." It was not rudeness, it was not coldness, it was not even primarily self-consciousness; it was the natural inability to speak of matters deeply concerning oneself which people of Aunt Cecilia's temperament can never fully understand.

"Of course other men have things to offer that husbands have not, especially if they are free in the daytime and are nice and good-natured and sympathetic, and often a young wife may be deceived into valuing these things more than the love of her husband. They are all at their best on the surface, while her husband's best is all below it. And that, I think, is the way most married unhappinesses begin; not in unfaithfulness or in jealousy or in loss of love, but merely in idleness. I've seen it happen so often, dear, that you must be able to understand why I never like to see a young wife with too little to do...."

For Aunt Cecilia was personal, you see, to a degree. Did she imagine she was making things any easier, Beatrice asked herself with a little burst of humorous contempt, by her generalities and her third persons and her "young wives"? If she had been perfectly frank, if she had come out and said, "Beatrice, if you don't look out you'll be falling in love with Tommy Clairloch," there was a possibility that Beatrice could have answered her, even confided in her; at least put things on a conversational footing. But as for talking about her own case in this degrading disguise, dramatizing herself as a "young wife"--!

She remained silent long enough to make it obvious that her silence was her real reply. Then she said "Yes, indeed, perfectly," and Aunt Cecilia rather tardily became aware of her niece's metamorphosis into the modern Artemis. She made a flurried attempt to give her own remarks, retrospectively, something of the Artemis quality; to place a pedestal, as it were, on which to take her own stand as a modern conception of Pallas Athene.

"I hope, my dear, you don't think I mean anything...."

"Not at all," said Beatrice kindly but firmly. "And now if you don't mind, Aunt Cecilia, I think I'll go up and get ready for luncheon."

But Aunt Cecilia was afraid she had gone too far.

A week later came the gathering of the clans at New London for the Yale-Harvard boat-race. Aunt Cecilia had not been to a race in years.

Races, you see, were not in a cla.s.s with graduations; they were optional, works of supererogation. But this year, in addition to one of the largest yachts extant and money that fairly groaned to be put into circulation, she had two boys in college, and altogether it seemed worth while "making an effort." And the effort once made there was a certain pleasure in doing the thing really well, in taking one's place as one of the great Yale families of the country. So on the afternoon before the race the _Halcyone_ was anch.o.r.ed in a conspicuous place in the harbor, where she loomed large and majestic among the smaller craft, and a tremendous blue flag with a white Y on it was hoisted between two of the masts. People from the sh.o.r.e looked for her name with field gla.s.ses and pointed her out to each other as "the Wimbourne yacht" with a note of awe in their voices.

"It's like being on the _Victory_ at Trafalgar, as far as conspicuousness goes," said Harry on his arrival. "Or rather," he added magnificently, "like being on Cleopatra's galley at Actium."

"Absit omen," remarked Uncle James, and the others laughed, but his wife paid no attention to him. She was not above a little thrill of pride and pleasure herself.

m.u.f.fins and Jack and their friends were much in evidence; the party was primarily for the "young people." They kept mostly to themselves, dancing and singing and making personal remarks together, always detaching themselves with a polite attentive quirk of the head when an older person addressed them. Nice children, all of them. m.u.f.fins and Jack were of the right sort, emphatically, and their friends were obviously--not too obviously, but just obviously enough--chosen with nice discriminating taste. Jack especially gave one the impression of having a fine appreciation of people and things; that of m.u.f.fins was based on rather broad athletic lines. m.u.f.fins played football. Ruth, the brains of the family, was not present; we forget whether she was running a summer camp for cash girls or exploring the headwaters of the Yukon; it was something modern and expensive. Ruth was not extensively missed by her brothers.

They all dined hilariously together on the yacht and repaired to the Griswold afterward to dance and revel through the evening. All, that is, except Beatrice and James; they did not arrive till well on in the evening, James having been unable to leave town till his day's work was over. The launch with Uncle James in it went to the station to meet them and brought them directly back to the yacht to get settled and tidied up; they could go on over to the Griswold for a bit, if they weren't too tired.

"How about it?" inquired James as he stood peering at his watch in the dim light on deck.

"Oh, just as you like," said Beatrice.

"Well, I don't care. Say something."

Beatrice was rather tired.... Well, perhaps it was better that way; they would have another chance to see all they wanted to-morrow night. This from Uncle James, who thought he would drop over there and relieve Aunt Cecilia, who had been chaperoning since dinner.

His head disappeared over the ship's side. James walked silently off to unpack. Beatrice sank into a wicker armchair and dropped her head on her hands....

It seemed as if scarcely a moment had pa.s.sed when she became aware of the launch again coming up alongside and voices floating up from it--Aunt Cecilia and Lord Clairloch. Salutations ensued, avuncular and friendly. Aunt Cecilia was tired, but very cheerful. She buzzed off presently to see about something and Lord Clairloch dropped down by Beatrice.

Tommy was very cheerful also, apparently much impressed by what he had seen at the Griswold. "I say, a jolly bean-feast, that! Never saw such dancin' or drinkin' in my life, and I've lived a bit! They keep 'em apart, too--that's the best of it; no trouble about takin' a gell, provided she don't go to the bar, which ain't likely.... Jove, we've got nothing like it in England! Rippin' looking lot of gells, rippin'

fellahs, rippin' good songs, too. All seem to enjoy 'emselves so much!--I say, these Yankees can teach us a thing or two about havin' a good time--wot?"

Beatrice listened with a growing sense of amus.e.m.e.nt. Tommy always refreshed her when he was in a mood like this; he kept his youth so wonderfully, in spite of all his super-sophistication; he was such a boy still. Tommy never seemed to mind being hot or tired; Tommy was always ready for anything; Tommy was not the sort that came home at six o'clock and sank into the evening paper without a word--She stopped that line of thought and asked a question.

"Why did you leave it all, Tommy, if it amused you so?"

"Oh, had enough of it--been there since dinner. Beside, I heard you'd come. Thought I'd buzz over and see how you were gettin' on. Have a horrid journey?"

Beatrice nodded.

"Hot?"

"No, not especially." They were silent a moment. Tommy opened his mouth to ask a question and shut it again. And then, walking like a ghost across their silence, appeared the figure of James, stalking aimlessly down the deck. He nodded briefly to Tommy and walked off again.

The effect, in view of the turn of their conversation, of Tommy's unasked question, was almost that of a spectral apparition. The half-light of the deck, James' silence and the noiseless tread of his rubber-soled shoes had in themselves an uncanny quality. Presently Tommy whistled softly, as though to break the spell.

"Whew! I say, is he often like that?"

Beatrice laughed. Tommy _was_ refreshing! "Lately, yes. Do you know,"

she added, "he only spoke twice on the way up here--once to ask me if I was ready to have dinner, and once what I wanted for dinner?" Her tone was one of suppressed amus.e.m.e.nt, caught from Tommy; but before her remark was fairly finished something rather like a note of alarm rang through her. Why had she said that? It wasn't so frightfully amusing, come to think of it. Her pleasure, she saw in a flash, came not from the remark itself but from her antic.i.p.ation of seeing Tommy respond to it....

That was rather serious, wasn't it? Just how serious, she wondered? Joy in seeing another man respond to a disparaging remark about her husband--that was what it came to! For the first time in her life she had the sensation of reveling in a stolen joy. For of course Tommy did respond, beautifully--too beautifully. "Oh, I say! Really, now! That _is_ a trifle strong, wot?" and so on. He was doing exactly what she had meant him to, and there was a separate pleasure in that--a zest of power!