Together Part 45

CHAPTER x.x.xV

Cornelia Woodyard's expression was not pleasant when she was deliberating or in perplexity. Her broad brow wrinkled, and her mouth drew down at the corners, adding a number of years to her face. She did not allow this condition of perplexity to appear in public, reserving her "heavy thinking," as Tom Cairy called these moments, for the early morning hours of privacy. This languid spring day while Conny turned over her mail that lay strewn in disorder on her bed, she apparently had one of her worst fits of dubitation. She poked about in the ma.s.s of letters, bills, and newspapers until she found the sheet she was looking for,--it was in her husband's handwriting,--reread it, the scowl deepening, pushed it back thoughtfully into its envelope, and rang for the maid that looked after her personally as well as performed other offices in the well-organized household. When Conny emerged at the end of the hour in street costume, the frown had disappeared, but her fair face wore a preoccupied air.

"h.e.l.lo, Tom!" she said wanly to Cairy, who was dawdling over the paper in the library. "How is it out?"

"Warm,--a perfect day!" Cairy replied, smiling at her and jumping to his feet.

"Is the cab there?"

"Yes,--shall we start?"

"I can't go to-day, Tom,--something has turned up."

"Something has turned up?" he queried. He was an expert in Conny's moods, but he had seen little of this mood lately.

"Business," Conny explained shortly. "Leave the cab, please. I may want it.... No," she added as Cairy came towards her with a question on his lips. "I can't bother to explain,--but it's important. We must give up our day."

She turned to her desk, and then remarked as if she felt Cairy's disappointment: "You can come in after dinner if you like, Tom! We can have the evening, perhaps."

He looked at her questioningly, as if he would insist on an explanation.

But Conny was not one of whom even a lover would demand explanations when she was in this mood.

"We can't always play, Tommy!" she sighed.

But after he had left the room she called him back.

"You didn't kiss me," she said sweetly. "You may if you like, just once....

There!" she raised her head and smiled at Cairy, with that satisfaction which emotional moments brought to her. "You had better get to work, too.

You can't have been of much use to Gossom lately." And she settled herself at her desk with the telephone book. As she called the hotel where Senator Thomas usually stayed when he was in the city, the scowl returned to her brow. Her mind had already begun to grapple with the problems suggested by Percy's letter of the morning. But by the time she had succeeded in getting the Senator, her voice was gentle and sweet....

... "Yes, at luncheon,--that will be very nice!" And she hung up the receiver with an air of swift accomplishment.

It is not necessary to go into what had pa.s.sed between Cornelia Woodyard and Cairy in the weeks that had elapsed since that day when Conny had been so anxious to get back to New York from the Poles'. It would gratify merely a vulgar curiosity. Suffice it to say that never before had Conny been so pleased with life or her own competent handling of her affairs in it. Up to this morning she felt that she had admirably fulfilled all claims upon her as well as satisfied herself. Things had seemed "to come her way" during this period. The troublesome matter before the Commission that had roused her husband's conscience and fighting blood had gone over for the time. The Commission had reserved its decision, and the newspapers had gone off on a number of other scents of wrong-doing that seemed more odorously promising.

Percy's conscience had returned to its normal unsuspecting state, and he had been absorbed to an unwonted degree in private business of one sort or another.

Meantime the Senator and Cornelia had had a number of little talks. The Senator had advised her about the reinvestment of her money, and all her small fortune was now placed in certain stocks and bonds of a paper company that "had great prospects in the near future," as the Senator conservatively phrased it. Percy, naturally, had known about this, and though he was slightly troubled by the growing intimacy with the Senator, he was also flattered and trusted his wife's judgment. "A shrewd business head," the Senator said of Conny, and the Senator ought to know. "It is as easy to do business with her as with a man." Which did not mean that Cornelia Woodyard had sold her husband to the Senator,--nothing as crude as that, but merely that she "knew the values" of this life.

The Senator and Conny often talked of Percy, the promise he had shown, his ability and popularity among all kinds of men. "If he steers right now,"

the Senator had said to his wife, "there is a great future ahead of Woodyard, and"--with a pleasant glance at Conny--"I have no doubt he will avoid false steps." The Senator thought that Congress would be a mistake.

So did Conny. "It takes luck or genius to survive the lower house," the Senator said. They had talked of something in diplomacy, and now that the stocks and bonds of the paper-mill were to be so profitable, they could afford to consider diplomacy. Moreover, the amiable Senator, who knew how to "keep in" with an aggressively moral administration at Washington without altogether giving up the pleasing habit of "good things," promised to have Woodyard in mind "for the proper place."

So Conny had dreamed her little dream, which among many other things included the splendor of a career in some European capital, where Conny had no doubt that she could properly shine, and she felt proud that she could do so much for Percy. The world, this one at any rate, was for the able,--those who knew what to take from the table and how to take it. She was of those who had the instinct and the power. Then Percy's letter:--

... "Princhard came up to see me yesterday. From the facts he gave me I have no doubt at all what is the inner meaning of the Water Power bill. I shall get after Dillon [the chairman of the Commission] and find out what he means by delaying matters as he has.... It looks also as though the Senator had some connection with this steal.... I am sorrier than I can say that we have been so intimate with him, and that you followed his advice about your money. I may be down Sunday, and we will talk it over. Perhaps it is not too late to withdraw from that investment. It will make no difference, however, in my action here." ...

Simply according to Conny's crisp version, "Percy has flown the track again!"

After a pleasant little luncheon with the Senator, Conny sent a telegram to her husband that she would meet him at the station on the arrival of a certain train from Albany that evening, adding the one word, "urgent,"

which was a code word between them. Then she telephoned the office of _The People's_, but Cairy was not there, and he had not returned when later in the afternoon she telephoned again.

"Well," she mused, a troubled expression on her face, "perhaps it is just as well,--Tom might not be easy to manage. He's more exacting than Percy about some things." So while the cab was waiting to take her to the station, she sat down at her desk and wrote a note,--a brief little note:--

"DEAR TOM: I am just starting for the station to meet Percy. Something very important has come up, which for the present must change things for us all.... You know that we agreed the one thing we could not do would be to let our feelings interfere with our duties--to any one.... I don't know when I can see you. But I will let you know soon. Good-by. C."

"Give this to Mr. Cairy when he calls and tell him not to wait," she said to the maid who opened the door for her. Conny did not believe in "writing foolish things to men," and her letter of farewell had the brevity of telegraphic despatch. Nevertheless she sank into the corner of the cab wearily and closed her eyes on the brilliant street, which usually amused her as it would divert a child. "He'll know sometime!" she said to herself.

"He'll understand or have to get along without understanding!" and her lips drew together. It was a different world to-night from that of the day before; but unhappy as she was she had a subtle satisfaction in her willingness and her ability to meet it whatever side it turned towards her.

The train was a halfhour late, and as she paced the court slowly, she realized that Cairy had come to the house,--he was always prompt these days,--had received the note, and was walking away, reading it,--thinking what of her? Her lips tightened a trifle, as she glanced at the clock. "He will go to Isabella's," she said to herself. "He likes Isabelle." She knew Cairy well enough to feel that the Southerner could not long endure a lonely world. And Conny had a tolerant nature; she did not despise him for going where he could find amus.e.m.e.nt and comfort; nor did she think his love less worth having. But she bit her lip as she repeated, "He will go to Isabelle." If Percy wanted to know the extent of his wife's devotion to their married life, their common interests, he should have seen her at this moment. As the train drew in, she had already thought, "But he will come back--when it is possible."

She met her husband with a frank smile.

"You'll have to take me somewhere to dinner," she drawled. "There isn't any at home,--besides I want to talk at once. Glad to see me?"

When they were finally by themselves in a small private room of a restaurant where Conny loved to go with her husband,--"because it seems so naughty,"--she said in answer to his look of inquiry: "Percy, I want you to take me away--to Europe, just for a few weeks!"

Woodyard's face reflected surprise and concern.

"But, Con!" he stammered.

"Please, Percy!" She put her hand softly on his arm. "No matter what is in the way,--only for a few weeks!" and her eyes filled with tears, quite genuine tears, which dropped slowly to her pale face. "Percy," she murmured, "don't you love me any longer?"...

CHAPTER x.x.xVI

It was perfectly true, as Conny surmised, that Cairy went to Isabelle. But not that evening--the blow was too hard and too little expected--nor on the whole more frequently than he had been in the habit of going during the winter. Isabelle interested him,--"her problem," as he called it; that is, given her husband and her circ.u.mstances, how she would settle herself into New York,--how far she might go there. It flattered him also to serve as intellectual and aesthetic mentor to an attractive, untrained woman, who frankly liked him and bowed to his opinion. It was Cairy, through Isabelle, much more than Lane, who decided on the house in that up-town cross street, on the "right" side of the Park, which the Lanes finally bought. It was in an excellent neighborhood, "just around the corner" from a number of houses where well-known people lived. In the same block the Gossoms had established themselves, on the profits of _The People's_, and only two doors away, on the same side of the street, a successful novelist had housed himself behind what looked like a Venetian facade. Close by were the Rogerses,--he was a fashionable physician; the Hillary Peytons; the Dentons,--all people, according to Cairy, "one might know."

When Isabelle came to look more closely into this matter of settling herself in the city, she regretted the Colonel's illiberal will. They might easily have had a house nearer "the Avenue," instead of belonging to the polite poor-rich cla.s.s two blocks east. Nevertheless, she tried to comfort herself by the thought that even with the Colonel's millions at their disposal they would have been "little people" in the New York scale of means. And the other thing, the "interesting," "right" society was much better worth while. "You make your own life,--it isn't made for you," Cairy said.

Isabelle was very busy these days. Thanks to the Potts regime, she was feeling almost well generally, and when she "went down," Dr. Potts was always there with the right drug to pull her up to the level. So she plunged into the question of altering the house, furnishing it, and getting it ready for the autumn. Her mother and John could not understand her perplexity about furnishing. What with the contents of two houses on hand, it seemed incomprehensible that the new home should demand a clean sweep.

But Isabelle realized the solid atrocity of the Torso establishment and of the St. Louis one as well. She was determined that this time she should be right. With Cairy for guide and adviser she took to visiting the old furniture shops, selecting piece by piece what was to go into the new house. She was planning, also, to make that deferred trip to Europe to see her brother, and she should complete her selection over there, although Cairy warned her that everything she was likely to buy in Europe these days would be "fake." Once launched on the sea of household art, she found herself in a torturing maze. What was "right" seemed to alter with marvellous rapidity; the subject, she soon realized, demanded a culture, an experience that she had never suspected. Then there was the matter of the Farm at Grafton, which must be altered. The architect, who was making over the New York house, had visited Grafton and had ideas as to what could be done with the rambling old house without removing it bodily. "Tear down the barn--throw out a beautiful room here--terrace it--a formal garden there,"

etc. In the blue prints the old place was marvellously transformed.

"Aren't you doing too much, all at once?" Lane remonstrated in the mild way of husbands who have experienced nervous prostration with their wives.

"Oh, no; it interests me so! Dr. Potts thinks I should keep occupied reasonably, with things that really interest me.... Besides I am only directing it all, you know."

And glad to see her once more satisfied, eager, he went his way to his work, which demanded quite all his large energy. After all, women had to do just about so much, and find their limit themselves.

Isabelle had learned to "look after herself," as she phrased it, by which she meant exercise, baths, ma.s.sage, days off when she ran down to Lakewood, electricity,--all the physical devices for keeping a nervous people in condition. It is a science, and it takes time,--but it is a duty, as Isabelle reflected. Then there was the little girl. She was four now, and though the child was almost never on her hands, thanks to the excellent Miss b.u.t.ts, Molly, as they called her, had her place in her mother's busy thoughts: what was the best regimen, whether she ought to have a French or a German governess next year, how she should dress, and in the distance the right school to be selected. Isabelle meant to do her best for the little girl, and looked back on her own bringing up--even the St. Mary's part of it--as distressingly haphazard, and limiting. Her daughter should be fitted "to make the most of life," which was what Isabelle felt that she herself was now beginning to do.