White Ashes Part 5

"Is there anything in particular that you are so tired of?" she insinuatingly asked.

"Yes, Miss Portia, there is. And furthermore you know as well as I do what that something is."

"I would hesitate to mention it," said Miss Hurd, with a smile.

"Well, I wouldn't. On the contrary I freely and unqualifiedly announce that I am excessively tired of a thousand things, most of which begin with P. I am tired of portraits and portrait painters; I am tired of posing and of poseurs; I am tired of palettes and paint; I am tired of--" she stopped, breaking off a little suddenly.

"Well, complete it. You are tired of Pelgram, I suppose," said Isabel, composedly.

"Pelgram, then. Yes, I am," the other girl admitted.

Her friend raised her eyebrows, and glanced at her somewhat curiously.

"You don't have to marry him, you know," she remarked in a matter-of-fact tone.

"Of course I don't," Helen replied quickly. "But I have to sit to him four times a week until that unspeakable portrait is finished. And it's my belief that it never will be finished. He won't even let me look at it now. It's my opinion that he's doing like Penelope, and destroying every night what he has accomplished during the day. I would never have promised to have it done if I had suspected what I was in for. And if it were for any one else but old Aunt Mary Wardrop, I'd back out now."

Isabel regarded her sympathetically. A portrait was bad enough without the added embarra.s.sment of an amatory artist.

"Is he really as difficult as that?" she asked.

"Even more difficult. He's more difficult than anything conceivable--except a.n.a.lytical trig," she added reflectively.

"Don't mix art, psychology, and mathematics, or you will certainly get into trouble," said her friend. "And really, if I were you, I would try to forget that I had been 'higher' educated. It's enough to give one the creeps to hear a perfectly normal girl talk of a.n.a.lytical trig--whatever that may be--if there is such a thing."

Helen laughed.

"I'm not actually sure, myself, that there is. For, as I remember it now, it deals almost exclusively with imaginary or worse than imaginary quant.i.ties. I remember distinctly that _i_ with the acute accent meant the square root of minus one--and stood for 'imaginary' on the face of it. That was right at the start, and the farther you went the farther from reality you found yourself. But I don't remember anything of the subject--only the name--I wouldn't dream of being so Bostonian as that."

"Well, it's almost as bad merely to refer to it," said Miss Hurd.

"Especially when you know that I never could pa.s.s beginner's algebra."

The two girls laughed together. It was perfectly true that Isabel, who was keen almost to the point of brilliance in the application of mathematics to such practical matters as finance and real life, had never academically been anything but a hopeless dunce, while Helen, who had penetrated so far into the upper occult that the mind shuddered to follow, was notoriously incapable of making her personal accounts balance within fifty per cent. It was an understood situation that always amused them both.

They had been friends all their lives, these two, or so nearly all their lives that the residue was hardly worth consideration. As each was now nearing the middle twenties, it must have been almost a full generation since they had been presented to one another. It was at the respective ages of six and five that little Miss Maitland and little Miss Hurd had been discreetly conveyed to the decorous Back Bay Kindergarten which was known to all Bostonians of a certain cla.s.s as the "Child's Cultural Inst.i.tute" of Miss Dorcas Kingsbury. It was there they met, under the watchful eye and the eagle espionage of Miss Dorcas. That good lady was not distinguished for her social graces, but her introduction of these two small maids was an instant success.

It has subsequently been established, by hesper light so to speak, that the bond which first united the two was their chastened and wide-eyed mutual marveling at six long black c.o.c.kscrew curls which marked--for only by a figure of speech could they have been said to adorn--the lateral aspects of Miss Dorcas's chignon. Forth they jutted, these remarkable structures, from cul-de-lampes above the lady's ears, and thence they descended, three toward the right shoulder, three toward the left. But their most astonishing quality was their buoyancy, their resiliency, which made them vital and active things, and not mere soulless parts of an ordered design.

At all events the two little newcomers, cowering somewhat under the glittering gaze of their preceptress, drew for protection close to one another, small hand found small hand, and a friendship was cemented which the swirling years had proved unable to break.

Their later experiences at this fountain of learning served only to draw them closer still. Many a time, in later years, would they smile together, remembering incidents that had happened in the square old red brick house with the green blinds, and the orderly terrible courtyard with the straight narrow seats set bolt upright against a speechless wall, and the little green pump that only grown-up persons were permitted to touch; remembering, too, the long low-backed benches in the schoolroom, row after row to the end of the low-ceiled room, and the tiny gray blackboard, and the painful corner behind the stove where recalcitrant pupils were stood, awaiting the approach of tardy contrition or increased mental attainments; remembering, above all, the grave, kind face of the teacher herself, Miss Dorcas Kingsbury--of _the_ Kingsburys--reduced in her middle age to conducting a "cultural inst.i.tute," but as undeviating and inflexible in her idea of duty as was the very line of her uncompromising brow. Not bad training for small girls, that of Miss Dorcas; Helen and Isabel would not have changed it, in their memories at least, for the fairest lane of learning in the world.

Time went on and gradually carried them beyond the pale of Miss Dorcas's influence and over the horizon beyond the sight of her curious curls. But the school-girl lovers had become friends--which was of much more consequence. They stayed together as they grew, although in intellectual concerns Helen soon left Isabel behind. A year the elder, she was also the more dominant, and had always taken the lead in their mutual affairs. Isabel, who had a will of her own, did not always follow; but there was never any struggle for precedence, and Helen's unselfishness prevented her from ever a.s.suming an unpleasant autocracy.

It would have been difficult, at any rate, to a.s.sociate anything unpleasant with Miss Maitland. She was tall, well over the middle height, and her hair was of that uncompromising blackness that made one think of things Amazonian--or would have done so had not her deep violet eyes softened the effect in a peculiarly attractive manner. It was no wonder that poor Pelgram fluttered about so compelling a flame, and Isabel, as she looked at her friend, thought for the thousandth time that if she were a man--well, it was a little hard to say what she would do in that remote contingency, but she felt certain, at all events, that she would adore Helen.

As a matter of fact no young lady in all Boston seemed less likely to become a man in the next or any subsequent incarnation. There are Bostonian persons of the female kind who could with readiness be conceived as turning into men without any sea-change or especially startling biological trans.m.u.tation. But Isabel was not one of them.

Small and dainty, she was of the gold-and-white, essentially feminine type. She lived alone with her parents in the solid old-fashioned house on the north side of the Common, almost under the shadow of the State House dome. It made very little difference to Isabel where she lived, and since her father would never consider moving to any other locality nor rebuilding the rather patriarchal homestead which he had occupied for twenty-five years, it was just as well that the daughter was so complaisant. She, moreover, was the only person who looked upon John M. Hurd with a clear understanding of his habits of thought. She could herself accomplish things with him, when her way did not conflict too directly with his own, but she gained her points first by concentrating her attack on the matters really of import to her, and second by taking her way whenever she saw an avenue open, notifying her somewhat surprised parent afterward that she had done so.

"Father once told me a story," Isabel had said, "of a man who went to a railroad president about a culvert he wanted to build under the railroad track, and the president told him that he should have built his culvert first and asked permission afterwards. And I invariably say now, if father protests against any of my performances, that he never should have told me that story. And he usually gives a kind of growl which I have always interpreted to mean that all is well."

Isabel had a little money of her own, but she never used the income.

Instead, she put it in the bank and lived on her allowance. She was not John M. Hurd's daughter for nothing. Her mother, a stiff, lean, gray woman with a tremendous capacity for being both busy and uncomfortable and making every one around her share the latter feeling, had little or nothing to do with Isabel or her friends. She was the typical Puritan, the salt of a somewhat dour earth, and how Isabel ever came into her household would be difficult to say. The mother had much undemonstrative affection for her daughter, but no understanding and less sympathy. She could never accustom herself to the girl's habit of facing every problem when it had to be faced but not before; she herself was used to spying trouble afar off, rushing forth with a sort of fanatical desperation, and falling upon its breast. John M. Hurd had selected her for her sterling and saving qualities, and he had always found her all he could have wished. From her daughter's viewpoint she left much to be desired, at least in the capacity of a confidante, and this prerogative had long since been a.s.sumed by Miss Maitland.

That young lady, more reserved than Isabel, usually preferred to receive rather than to bestow confidences. Only in unusual cases, such as the one now under contemplation, was Helen moved to such downright speech. But in this instance she acknowledged the presence of an irritation alien to her customary serenity, and unconsciously she hit on conversation as a soothing influence. Thus it chanced that the talk was still on Pelgram when the doorbell rang and the butler announced that Mr. Wilkinson was calling.

"I believe I could write a manual of artistic courtship," concluded Miss Maitland, "with a glossary embracing every shade of every color of an artist's mood. Charlie Wilkinson was absurd, of course, the other day, with his 'nuances,' but he was amazingly near the truth at the same time, for all that. Isabel, I'm sick and tired of nuances--I confess it freely."

"Well," said her friend, soothingly, "here is Charlie now. He ought to be a fine antidote, for Heaven knows he hasn't a nuance in his entire anatomy."

Mr. Wilkinson entered.

"My dear Isabel," he said reproachfully, as he shook hands, "I couldn't help hearing most of what you were just saying about me, and I a.s.sure you that I feel deeply flattered, but at the same time a little hurt.

I dislike to be denied the possession of anything, even an abstract quality, whether I want it or have any use for it or not. Miss Maitland, I bid you an exceedingly good day, and venture to express the hope that you will concede that latent in my anatomy I may have a liberal share of that something--the name of which I failed to catch--although I may perhaps have up to now given no evidence of its possession."

"You would do much better, Charlie," said his hostess, with a laugh, "if you announced with all the emphasis at your command that you had none of this particular quality concealed about your person. Whatever it was, Helen just said that she never wanted to see or hear of such a thing again."

"Miss Maitland," said the visitor with due solemnity, "I a.s.sure you that whatever else I may be, I am as free from the taint of this unmentionable attribute as a babe unborn. Isabel, you will bear me out in this?"

"I feel sure of it," Helen replied smilingly. "In fact, I should have exonerated you even without inside information of any sort. Really, I'm awfully glad you've come. Here we are, two lone dull girls, hungry to be amused. Be as chivalrous as you can in our distressing state."

"You two lone girls lonely!" retorted Mr. Wilkinson. "Ridiculous!

That is certainly a fine ground on which to seek sympathy from me! I forget who it is has the proverb, 'Never pity a woman weeping or a cat in the dark.' And I am reminded of it when I look at you two. You and my fair cousin, when you have one another to talk to, are just about as much in need of sympathy as a tiger is of tea . . . Speaking of tea--"

he turned to Isabel with bland inquiry in his face, after a hasty glance about the room to make sure that no ulterior preparations had been made. "I am anxious," he explained, "to see what progress has been made since last I inculcated my theories as to edibles--and detrimentals."

Isabel rose with a sigh.

"I see that I shall have to go and superintend the matter personally,"

she said, "for the customs of years are too strong to be utterly overcome all at once. I can only dimly conjecture Peter's dismay if he were asked to pa.s.s the Hamburger steak to Mr. Wilkinson, yet that is the shadowy future awaiting him."

With a laugh she vanished through the doorway, and the visitor seated himself solemnly across from Miss Maitland, whom he then proceeded to regard with a gloomy eye.

"It is a fearful strain on one's comic spirit to have it suddenly cooled," he said. "It makes it liable to crack, and then when you beat on it you get nothing but a dull stodgy sound. I feel that there are times when my ebullience, my wealth of genteel diablerie, my flow of _jeux d'esprit_ astonish even myself, but those times are never the ones when my hostess says, in effect: 'Charlie, you can be such an awful idiot when you want to that I wish you'd be one now--go on, there's a dear!'--which was substantially what you said to me. I don't mind telling you that it's very upsetting."

"Oh, I'm awfully sorry," Miss Maitland replied. "I didn't mean to. I should be simply heart-broken if your spring of divertiss.e.m.e.nt should ever run dry--especially if you held me in any way responsible.

Charlie serious! Good heavens! And yet, on second thought, would it not have a certain piquant lure, gained from its utter strangeness, which would be simply overwhelming? Try it and see. No audience was ever more expectant."

Wilkinson's gloom melted in meditation.

"Do you know," he said thoughtfully, "that there has never been in your att.i.tude toward me the regard and genuine respect--I may almost say the reverence--that I could wish to see there. If it were not such a perfectly horrible thing to say, I should say that you do not understand me. As it chances--though you would be surprised to learn it--there is at this moment a mighty problem working out, or trying to work out, its solution in my brain. You tell me to be serious, and since I want the advice of every one, including those whose advice is of problematic value, I will be. And who knows but when you see me engaged, or about to engage, in practical, cosmic matters, swinging them with a gigantic intellectual force, your veneration for me may develop with remarkable rapidity?"

"Who knows, indeed? Go ahead--you have my curiosity beautifully sharpened, at any rate, before a word is said."

Wilkinson cleared his throat and bent forward with an air of concentration, meant to indicate that he was marshaling his ideas.

Then he said in a hushed and confidential tone: "What do you know of trolley systems?"

Miss Maitland looked at him in surprise.

"Goodness, Charlie!" she said; "I know there are such things--the term is perfectly familiar. I have always supposed that trolley cars were part of trolley systems, but I should hesitate to go very far beyond that statement."