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Title: Mrs. Parkington
Author: Bromfield, Louis (1896-1956)
Date of first publication: 1943
Edition used as base for this ebook:
   New York and London: Harper & Brothers, undated
   ["Peoples Book Club Edition"; undated, but its mention
   of "Government regulations for saving paper" suggests
   that it was published during or shortly after the
   Second World War. The page count (330) matches that
   of the 1943 first edition, of which it is presumably
   a reprint.]
Date first posted: 25 May 2015
Date last updated: 25 May 2015
Project Gutenberg Canada ebook #1251

This ebook was produced by
Mardi Desjardins, Mary Meehan, Mark Akrigg
& the Online Distributed Proofreading Canada Team
at http://www.pgdpcanada.net


PUBLISHER'S NOTE

Italics in the original printed edition are indicated _thus_.

As part of the conversion of the book to its new digital
format, we have made certain minor adjustments in its layout.






                            MRS. PARKINGTON

                                   by

                            Louis Bromfield





                                   I


Outside the snow was falling, thickly in great wet flakes, so that the
sound of the traffic on Park Avenue coming through the drawn curtains
was muted and distant. Mrs. Parkington, seated before her mirror with a
half-pint of champagne by her side, thought how nice it was to have a
Christmas this year which seemed like Christmas. True, tomorrow the snow
would be turned to slush, discolored by soot, and those great machines
bought by the personable and bumptious mayor would be scooping it up and
hauling it off to the North River; but snow--the mere idea of snow--was
pleasant. Just the sight of it drifting down in soft white flakes
through the bright auras of the street lights made you feel happy and
content. And it summoned memories, very long memories, of the days when
snow was not a nuisance in New York but brought out sleds and sleighs
and there was racing in the park, and the sound of sleigh bells was
heard everywhere in the city. Gus had loved the cutter racing; it suited
his flamboyant nature. When one was eighty-four and in good health and
spirits and had a half-pint of Lanson every evening just before dinner,
one had a long memory. Long memories were perhaps common among widowed
old ladies but memories so crammed with romance and excitement as that
of Mrs. Parkington were rare.

She was doing her own hair, setting the waves exactly as they should be.
She had always done her own hair and now at eighty-four she had no
intention of giving it up. Ten years ago she had had it cut, not so much
as a concession to fashion, as because it was simpler to do and less
trouble to keep in order. She could not abide untidy women. Hair hanging
down in strings at the nape of the neck implied some obscure weakness of
character or an untidiness of mind.

She finished the last of the half-pint and suddenly called, "Mattie!
Mattie!"

At the sound of her voice there appeared out of the adjoining bedroom
the stout figure of a woman in her late sixties. She had a curious
figure, almost round like the figures of those toys which return to an
upright position no matter how often they are pushed over. In fact
Mattie resembled such a toy in a great many ways. Her face was plump and
round and with a snub nose. Her gray hair was done severely in a knot at
the nape of her neck. She was dressed neatly in a gray dress with
buttons down the front and a very full skirt. She was a Swede by birth
and she was altogether a remarkable woman. She was masseuse,
hair-dresser, secretary and friend, and she knew with a devastating and
intimate knowledge everything that had happened to Mrs. Parkington
during the forty-one years of close association.

"Yes, Mrs. Parkington," said Mattie.

"Tell Taylor to bring up another half-pint."

Mattie looked at her silently for a moment. Then she said, "Do you think
it wise, Mrs. Parkington? If you're having wine with dinner your acidity
will be awful tomorrow. You'll be like a vinegar bottle."

Mrs. Parkington laughed, "I won't have wine for dinner. Do as I say!"

"Very well, Mrs. Parkington, only don't complain to me tomorrow. You
know how you always feel after Christmas."

The old woman did not answer her and Mattie went out and in a little
while Mrs. Parkington rose from the dressing table and went into her own
small sitting-room. She had a spare figure, very straight with very
pretty hands and feet. She wore a black evening dress with a great deal
of black lace to hide the thinness of her throat and shoulders and
blue-veined wrists. Her eyes were remarkable, blue and very bright, like
the surface of a mountain lake glittering in the sun.

The sitting-room was small and cluttered by a great deal of furniture,
many books and photographs and _bibelots_ on little tables. All of the
articles were obviously expensive and a great many of them were ugly but
she was fond of each one of them. When she moved out of the great house
on Fifth Avenue to make way for progress and a seventy-story skyscraper,
she had collected for what Mattie described as the "boodwar," the things
which she wished to keep about her because of the happy or sentimental
associations they had for her. This room was the result, cozy and
cluttered but warm. There were objects out of the "cosy corner" of the
eighties and nineties, objects picked up during yachting expeditions in
the Mediterranean and the Far East, two atrocious gilt chairs sold to
her at a huge price as authentic sixty years ago before she learned
about such things, a great many books, mostly obscure or forgotten
novels in French and English, chosen not for their literary qualities
but because they had attracted her by some character or incident; a
chaise longue, a long "pier glass" with an ornate frame, and countless
photographs of yachting parties and picnics at Newport, and shooting
parties in Scotland and Austria. Nearly all of them were group
photographs, as if all her life had been spent among crowds. Scattered
among them were a few portrait photographs--one of "Major" Parkington,
her deceased husband, one each of her two dead sons, William and
Herbert, one of her daughter, the Duchess, a signed portrait of Edward
VII as the Prince of Wales, and one of the Princess, a daguerreotype,
very yellowed and dimmed by age, of a sturdy-faced man standing with his
hand on the shoulder of a small pretty woman clad in a severe black
dress with a collar of white lace. The daguerreotype stood on her desk,
framed like a valuable miniature, in a frame of onyx and diamonds. It
bore in a faded gold script across the bottom the legend, Forsythe and
Wicks, portraits, Leaping Rock, Nevada. And there was a small
old-fashioned photograph, which in its own onyx and diamond frame seemed
to have a special importance, of a rather ugly but very chic woman
sitting up very straight. Across the face of it written in fading ink
was the inscription--_ Ma Chre Amie Susie--Aspasie_.

Her granddaughter Madeleine--the one who chose a cowboy as her third
husband, said the sitting-room looked like the nest of a pack rat, but
Mrs. Parkington only laughed because very few people ever saw it, and in
any case it had been a very long time since mockery or disapproval had
had any power to touch her. Her sitting-room was her own where she went
when she wanted to be alone, in those moments when she felt impelled to
withdraw from all the crumbling world about her and retire into the
warmth of memories of the days when everything was pleasant and there
seemed to be no trouble in the world.

As she came into the room she went straight to the old pier glass and
faced it to look at herself. The glass had long ago begun to show
streaks and splotches from age but she had never troubled to have it
resilvered. Now there was scarcely any reason to go to the trouble; it
would last out her time and afterward no one would want it. It wasn't
the sort of mirror which gained value with age; it was merely ugly and
no one would ever buy it save as a freak, the way people now bought ugly
Victorian things because they were becoming smart.

It was an odd thing about fashion. She had lived to see countless
fashions in furniture, in architecture, in dress. Some of the changes
she regretted but on the whole it seemed to her that the taste of
Americans had improved immensely and that the present fashions were not
only beautiful but simple and practical as well.

She stood for a moment looking at herself in the streaked mirror,
thinking: You are old and withered, but you've stood time better than
the mirror. Both of you have seen a good deal. And that is something for
which both of you should be thankful.

The face was indeed immensely wrinkled, with many fine lines which had
come of living, sometimes recklessly, sometimes sensibly, always
extravagantly; but the extravagance, she thought, was not her fault.
There had always been money, so much of it that it had ceased to have
any value. She had always had whatever she wanted simply for the asking.
Nowadays they said this person or that one was rich but they no longer
knew what it was to be rich in the sense the Major had been rich. It had
been an immense, almost incalculable wealth, with no income taxes to
devour it before it ever reached you, and no reason to calculate here
and there how you were to pay taxes and still have what you wanted.

She was still a very rich old woman, and as she had grown older she had
wanted less and less of luxury and show, and so in a way she was still
as rich as she had always been. In some ways it was good to have less
money; for one thing it gave her an excuse to get rid of that vast
absurd chteau, set among shops and skyscrapers on Fifth Avenue without
trees or parks or even a blade of grass near it. The Major had wanted
her to live there until she died and the children after her death, but
he himself died before he knew what was happening to the world. He
didn't live long enough to see this new America with laws which would
have put him in jail for life for the very acts which in his day had
been called, "developing the resources of the country." She had no
illusions about her husband. He had built up a vast fortune, but at
heart he had always been a bandit. She did even concede that perhaps in
his day, when there were so many of his kind in America, it had never
occurred to him that he was a thief, a swindler and a super-confidence
man.

There was a knock at the door and Mattie came in. In and out of her
skirts, like animated bundles of silken feathers, ran Bijou and Mignon,
the Pekingese, yapping and barking. Directly behind her came Taylor
carrying on a silver tray another half-pint of champagne and a glass. He
looked as he always did, dignified to the point of grimness. He too had
been with her for a long time, so long that his grimness and dignity
sometimes filled her with a wild desire to laugh at him, considering how
well they knew each other and how long they had been together. But she
never did laugh because she knew that it would hurt him far more than
any rebuke or sarcasm she might utter. Taylor had a frame and it was
possible for him to live only so long as he kept within it. He was
English but even in England frames were beginning at last to be smashed.

He put down the tray on the table beside the chaise longue and she said,
"Thank you, Taylor."

He stood very stiffly as if he, like Mattie, disapproved of the second
small bottle. "Is that all, madame?"

"That's all. No one has come yet?"

"No, madame."

"I'll be down directly to look at the flowers."

"I think they look very well, madame."

"I'm sure they do, but the florists' men always make them too stiff and
perfect."

"Very well, madame."

It was an old story--this business of the flowers. The florist, like
Taylor, had a frame and he always wanted to stay within it. And his
flowers looked that way. You knew by the way he arranged them that he
was a vulgar man. He had no feeling for flowers. He liked a "rich
effect." Taylor was the same way. Taylor had never become reconciled to
giving up the pomp and importance of the big house. Vulgarity, Mrs.
Parkington reflected, was a strange thing, at once very simple and very
complex. A few people were born with it. A great many learned by
experience what it was and lost it. But most people were born vulgar and
remained so to the end of their lives. And again there were so many
varieties of vulgarity, not only ostentation, but hypocrisy and false
simplicity, and pretentiousness ... well, she would think about all that
another time. Commonness she liked. People who were common never
suffered from the unforgivable sin of pretentiousness.

They would begin arriving for dinner soon and she wanted to be there to
receive them. All her life she had been punctual, standing before the
fire to welcome them as they came in. It was very important to have good
manners and to be punctual; that was one of the things she had learned.
If you had great beauty or genius you could afford to be slack, but
there was really no other excuse. And even that excuse was not a very
good one.

She seated herself by the tray where Mattie was pouring out the
champagne, skillfully as a waiter at the Paris Ritz. Mattie was really a
remarkable woman. She knew how to do everything.

The two Pekingese jumped into Mrs. Parkington's lap and licked her hands
and she caressed them for a second, her wrinkled face softening with
affection. A great many people didn't like Pekingese, especially men,
but that was because they did not understand them ... that their courage
and dignity and self-importance was too great for their small bodies and
so they, like little men suffering the same lack of proportion,
sometimes appeared to be merely boisterous and annoying.

She looked up at Mattie and said, "You take that glass, Mattie, and
fetch me my own out of the dressing room."

Mattie looked at her directly out of her blue, ageless Swedish eyes, a
look of reproof.

"You know I never drink champagne, madame."

The old woman laughed, "Well, tonight you're going to drink it. It's
Christmas night. We're going to drink as old friends and I want no
nonsense."

Mattie did not answer her but went quietly to fetch the other glass.
Probably, thought Mrs. Parkington, she thinks I'm growing childish, and
perhaps I am. But no matter. She could accept that too as she had
accepted many things.

When Mattie returned they raised their glasses and Mrs. Parkington said,
"Merry Christmas and Happy New Year." And as she drank she thought: I
may not be here next year--without fear or regret. She was no more
alarmed at the thought of death than she was now of the tragedies she
had encountered in her long life. She had had more than her share of
them, so many tragedies and such violent ones that people sometimes said
that she must be a woman with no heart to have endured and survived
them. That was only because they did not understand; they did not know
that through sorrow she had acquired peace and wisdom. Tonight on
Christmas night she was quite ready to die but she had a curious feeling
that she must go on living because there was some new tragedy impending.
It was not a new feeling--this sense of foreboding. She had had it
before, many times, since that first occasion long ago when she knew
that there was no use in searching for her father and mother because
they were already dead. The feeling of presentiment was very nearly
infallible.

She put down her glass quickly and said, "Well, there we are, Mattie.
Another Christmas nearly over." She crossed to the table and opened the
jewel case and took out her diamond necklace. "Here, Mattie, fasten it,"
she said, "it will make me feel brighter tonight."

She needed the necklace just as she needed the extra glass of champagne.
The prospect of meeting all the family wearied her. She could endure
them separately but together they appalled her, all save her
great-granddaughter Jane. The rest were dull, dull, dull. Oh, God, they
were dull. Her granddaughter, Madeleine, it was true, sometimes made her
laugh; Madeleine with all her husbands and now her cowboy, was common
and sexy, as if the Major had been born again in woman's clothing.

Now she would have to face them all again at the annual Christmas party
which had been going on for thirty years. She was tired of her offspring
and their offspring and their offspring's offspring. She had felt very
detached from them for a long time now, as if they were connected to her
only by a slender thread which might be snipped off at any time, leaving
her free.

When Mattie had fastened the diamond necklace she said, "Keep the dogs
up here, Mattie. They make the Duchess nervous."

Mattie said, "Very good, madame." And then suddenly, "How is the
Duchess, madame? It's been a long time since I've seen her."

"Not much changed."

It was odd how, although her daughter Alice had been married twice since
her divorce from the Duke, she and Mattie and the whole family still
called her the Duchess ... probably because Alice, even when she had had
too much to drink, had dignity ... a kind of blank and meaningless
tragic dignity. She was a period piece out of the nineties when rich
American girls had married impecunious peers.

With a sigh Mrs. Parkington went through the door Mattie held open for
her. The servant did not close the door at once but stood in the open
doorway watching until her mistress reached the lift and went inside
closing the door behind her. She still remained standing there, in an
attitude of intense listening until she heard the elevator stop two
floors below and heard Taylor open the door. Then she went inside the
door of the boudoir to turn down the bed and put the dressing table in
order. Once during her work, she paused and stood looking at the
photographs in the "boodwar" and at last she picked up a small
photograph of Mrs. Parkington's two sons as boys. Eddie must have been
about seventeen at the time and Herbert about nineteen. They stood in
front of the stables at Newport each holding the bridle of a saddle
horse, dressed in the funny old-fashioned clothes of the opening of the
century.

After a long time Mattie put down the photograph, sighed and, turning,
said, "Come Mignon! Come Bijou! We'll go and have some supper." But
clearly she wasn't thinking of the dogs. Her round, well-polished face
wore a look of pity and abstraction, as if she had lost herself in the
maze of the long distant past.

                 *        *        *        *        *

In the small drawing-room, Mrs. Parkington went from vase to vase of
flowers, setting them right, giving each great luxurious bouquet a touch
or pat, just enough to disarrange the florist's rigid pattern and
restore to the blossoms their right to existence as flowers. She loved
flowers, not only as things of beauty but as symbols of the country and
the open air and nature itself, from which she had been shut away all
too much by the very circumstances of her life.

This room was quite different from the "pack rat's nest" abovestairs. It
was a beautiful room, and she knew it was beautiful and secretly was
proud of it as a kind of symbol of her own achievement--that she had
begun life in a boardinghouse in Leaping Rock, Nevada, passed through
period after period of monstrous taste and finally emerged with an
extraordinary knowledge of periods and architecture and the history of
painting and decoration. She had never had any education at all beyond
learning to read and write and do sums, but all her life she had been
clever and God had endowed her with a memory which never forgot
anything, and now, at eighty-four, she spoke French and German and
English and was an authority on many subjects. It was not schools which
educated people: it was something inside themselves.

And it was not money alone which had made the beauty of this room, but
knowledge and taste, things which could not, despite the Major's ideas
to the contrary, be bought.

When she had finished with the flowers she went to the fireplace and
stood beneath the Romney with her back to it enjoying the gentle warmth
of the fire. The room before her seemed to her to have a kind of glow
about it, of mahogany and jade and crystal and flowers.

Standing there she wondered who would be the first to arrive. She hoped
it would not be "the Duchess." She felt ill at ease with her own
daughter as if the girl who was herself now over sixty, were a stranger.
And the sight of her was always distressing because Alice was a kind of
symbol of a something which, even now after forty-five years, still had
the power of making her blush and feel ashamed.

She was disappointed for in a moment Taylor opened the tall mahogany
door and in his English statesman's voice, faintly deformed by the echo
of a cockney youth, announced, "Mrs. Sanderson!" If Taylor had had his
way, Mrs. Parkington knew, he would have ignored Alice's other no less
unfortunate marriages, and announced "The Duchess de Brants," but she
had put an end to that snobbery long ago. Mrs. Parkington thought it
silly to announce the guests at a family dinner but she had not the
heart to deny Taylor a second pleasure and satisfaction.

Her daughter came in dressed in a gown which the old woman thought after
the first glance, was much too young for her. Alice had never had any
sense of choosing the proper clothes and she had stubbornly refused to
allow anyone else to choose for her. She was wearing in her hair above
her sallow face an absurd ornament of artificial flowers, sequins and
tulle. Only a young and beautiful woman could have carried it off and
Alice was neither. She looked like the Major's side of the house, big
and touched by what the old lady felt must be a congenital and inherited
blowziness. Her drinking contributed nothing toward greater neatness or
chic. Her maid might send her out looking almost chic but very early in
the course of the evening, sometimes even before she arrived at dinner,
she began to go to pieces. Her hair grew untidy, her corsets slipped up,
her stockings wrinkled. Lately she had taken to spilling things at
table. It wasn't only Alice's congenital untidiness, Mrs. Parkington
knew; drink made it much worse. Only last week Alice had fallen off her
chair during the music after dinner at the Desmonds.

Now, as her daughter crossed the room toward her, she watched for the
signs. There were none. Alice seemed to be quite, as her father put it
in the old days, "on an even keel," but you could never tell how much
she had had to drink in the bathroom out of the Listerine bottle. She
was like her father that way, too, but the Major had had a prodigious
head. Mrs. Parkington had seen him drink four times as much as the men
around him who grew tipsy, without even showing any signs. It was an
accomplishment he had used in business deals to make for him millions of
dollars.

Alice was quite near now. She embraced her mother, kissing her on the
wrinkled cheek and saying, "Merry Christmas, Mother." And although she
turned away her head, it was no good. There was a smell of spices on her
breath.

"Merry Christmas," said Mrs. Parkington, "and thank you for the lovely
silver box."

"It's old," said Alice abruptly, "Dutch, I should think. Is everyone
coming tonight?"

"Everyone. It's the first time in years the whole family has been in New
York at Christmas."

Alice said, "I want to see Madeleine's cowboy. She is certainly
insatiable."

"She's merely healthy and a little spoiled."

"I hope he'll stand up under the strain better than the others.
Madeleine's trouble is that she's congenitally moral. If she were more
promiscuous and married less she wouldn't be in the papers so often."

"Alice!" said Mrs. Parkington.

"I only mean it in a kindly way. I hope he's good and strong for
Madeleine's sake."

Talk of this sort always made Mrs. Parkington uneasy. It was "modern"
she supposed but she had never grown quite used to it, and she did not
like cattiness in women. But she knew that Alice had some right to talk
thus; she remembered Madeleine's own epithets "the disappointed Duchess"
and the "bathroom drinker." However Mrs. Parkington decided to veer away
from the subject.

The Duchess sat down, wearily. You knew by the way she sat down that she
was not only tired but she was bored, desperately bored. There was
boredom in the weary eyelids, in the sagging throat. She had come to
dinner because it was a ceremony, and because it was better than staying
home alone. Her mother, watching her, reflected even while they talked
how extraordinary it was that a woman who had had so much wealth and so
many opportunities in life, should have so few resources. Alice did not
even enjoy reading and she had no hobbies and was really interested in
nothing whatever. It was extraordinary that she should seem older than
her own mother.

There had never been much open sympathy or understanding between them.
Mrs. Parkington could never find any means of keeping up a sustained
conversation with her daughter. Their talk was always no more than a
series of false starts which led nowhere. Now, in desperation, she said,
"What have you been doing lately?"

"Nothing much. I went to the opera Friday in the Geraghty box."

"Odd people. There was never as much ermine in the world as Mrs.
Geraghty wears."

"I suppose she needs to assert herself in some way. Oceans of ermine is
as good as any other way. At least you can buy ermine if you have enough
money."

Mrs. Parkington made no reply. She had seen a great many Mrs. Benjamin
Franklin Geraghtys come and go in her time. She wasn't even bored by
them any longer, because for a long time she had been quietly
eliminating from her existence people who had to buy ermine in order to
assert themselves. Of course you couldn't eliminate your own family
entirely, no matter how much they bored you.

The Duchess opened her evening bag and brought out an enameled box from
which she took a small pellet, swallowing it quickly. Her mother saw the
action without seeing it, out of the corner of her eye, wondering what
it was Alice was taking--drugs or breath scent or one of those
newfangled things like Benzedrine. Then she heard Taylor's voice
announcing Mr. and Mrs. Swann, and all her senses quickened at the
prospect of seeing her granddaughter Madeleine's latest husband.

She scarcely noticed Madeleine herself, coming toward her in that
enthusiastic way she had of being a whole herd of steers about to
trample you. Some day, the old lady felt, Madeleine in one of her rashes
would be unable to stop short and the results would be disastrous for
someone. Her granddaughter was a big, coarse woman, of thirty-nine with
bumptious good health and the appearance and manners of an aggressive
cook.

The old lady's eyes were all for the husband and when she saw him, she
thought: Anyway, he's better than the Argentine or the other two. He's a
man and he's hard and maybe that's what Madeleine needs. They say little
tough fellows like that are pretty good.

Madeleine did manage to pull up in time and gave her a heavy, rather wet
and very enthusiastic kiss on the cheek. Mrs. Parkington was rather
finicky and could not control a grimace of displeasure which Madeleine
failed to notice as she said, with enthusiasm, "This, Grandmother, is my
husband Al."

Al took her hand and said, "How d'you do, ma'am?" And the old lady
thought: Hear! A professional cowboy! A dude rancher! But his big hand,
common and outsized for his small stature, a workingman's hand, was
horny, and she noticed that even his dinner jacket did not conceal that
faintly protruding abdomen which cowboys no matter how young or thin,
acquired from long slouching in a Mexican saddle.

Her first reaction was that he was common--incredibly common, but
Madeleine with her concentration of purpose, would not of course, mind
his commonness: on the contrary, with her strong tastes, she would
doubtless find it an asset. He was spare, with a hatchet face, lined and
leathery, but he had very nice eyes, very alive and blue, and a sensual
but controlled mouth. The eyes and mouth made her like him.

"I'm very glad to know you," she said, meaning it.

Then Madeleine presented him to the Duchess, who had been watching all
the while with a faint glint of humor in the tired, heavy-lidded
over-made-up eyes.

Then Amory Stilham came in with his wife and son--the old lady's
granddaughter and great-grandson. They came directly to her, and in her
heart now she wanted nothing of them. With an effort she altered her
features into a smile of welcome.

Helen, her granddaughter was not at all like her sister Madeleine. She
was a thin, spare, nervous woman, with a mouth which sagged bitterly at
the corners, as if she held a grudge against life because it had denied
her something she wanted more than all the things which had been given
her. You would have said that she had everything. She was married to one
of the Stilhams, a big, handsome if stupid man, and she had wealth and a
house in town and one in Westbury. She had horses and a yacht and two
children, a boy and a girl. None the less, the thin mouth turned down at
the corners. At times it turned down savagely.

Helen, it was true, was the only one in the family with brains--the kind
of brains which could create or accomplish things, but she never seemed
to accomplish anything more than to serve in a bored way on countless
committees. There was no way of really communicating with Helen--Mrs.
Parkington had discovered that long ago. Helen gave the impression of
living inside a shell, one of those shells which required a knife and
biceps to open. Her hand-clasp was flabby.

Then in the place of Helen's hand, the old lady felt in her hand, the
big hand of Helen's husband Amory--St. Judes, Harvard, the Carnelian
Club, descendant of the Stilham who had founded Barchester,
Massachusetts. Mrs. Parkington had one strong reaction to her
grandson-in-law and she had experienced it at once on the day long ago
when he and Helen came into the immense drawing room of the old house on
Fifth Avenue to tell her they were engaged to be married. "He is vulgar"
she thought then, "incredibly vulgar." It always astonished her that
Amory thought there was something distinguished about being a
stockbroker. He was big and floridly handsome, but vulgar--far more
vulgar than the Major had ever been, even in the flashy days when he
liked wearing big diamonds. The Major had been common, with dash and
color and personality, but Amory was just plain vulgar. It was odd, too,
when all his background and training were popularly supposed to produce
only distinction and taste.

He said, "Well, Grandma, you're a wonder. I never saw you looking
younger. Why even the Duchess and your grandchildren look older than
you!"

Mrs. Parkington's skin was suddenly covered by goose-pimples, but she
managed to say quietly, "I'll be eighty-five next month but I'm still in
my right mind, Amory."

Then Amory's son made a little bow and took her hand, "Merry Christmas,
Grandma," he said.

"Merry Christmas, Jack."

He was handsome in a decadent fashion. He looked, Mrs. Parkington
thought, as if he should have more common sense than he had, always
being photographed in night clubs and at Palm Beach with glamour girls.
Apparently he had no sense. He was much more a Blair than a
Parkington--a Blair crossed with a Stilham. What could you expect?

Quickly she said to Helen, "Where's Janie? She's coming, I hope."

"Oh, yes, she's coming. She was going some place for a cocktail on the
way. I couldn't make out where. She's very mysterious lately." And as
soon as she had finished speaking the mouth drooped again. She spoke,
sententiously, as if there were worlds of mystery and disapproval behind
her words.

Even while she spoke, Mrs. Parkington was astonished by the anxiety in
her own voice. It was remarkable that at her age it should matter to her
so much that an eighteen-year-old girl should not miss the Christmas
party. In her heart she knew the reason. Janie meant more to her than
all the others put together.

And almost at once Janie and Mrs. Parkington's old beau, Harry Van
Diver, came in together. Harry always came to the Christmas parties as
if he were a member of the family.

They were late and hurried across the room. Mrs. Parkington thought what
an absurd contrast they made--the one so young and pretty, the other so
old, so faded, out of another century, another world. Even at
seventy-eight Harry still preserved his manner of being an old-fashioned
Union Club cavalier.

A light came into the eyes of the old lady at sight of her great
granddaughter and when the girl kissed her there was warmth in the
embrace.

"I'm sorry, Grandmother, but it's snowing and I couldn't find a taxi."

"It's all right, my dear, there's no hurry. I always have dinner half an
hour after people are asked."

She liked good food, Mrs. Parkington, and she had an excellent cook she
did not wish to lose because people who thought more of cocktails than
food were late.

"Well, Harry," she said, "What is your excuse?"

"The same as Janie's. You look wonderfully well, Susie."

"I've put on more rouge than usual."

Taylor approached them with the cocktails, his friend Albert, the
footman, who came in to "help out," close behind him with the big silver
tray of hors d'oeuvres. When she and Harry had each had a champagne
cocktail and the servants had passed, she said, "I always like to look
my best at the Christmas dinner. It annoys Amory." Then in a lowered
voice, "I suspect he thinks I'm going to live forever."

Harry Van Diver chuckled. He liked Amory no more than old Mrs.
Parkington liked him. Amory was of a generation when he-men were
professional ... a bad generation, Harry always said, the men who were
now between forty and sixty-five. They learned nothing in college. They
were always attending class reunions. Their talk was entirely of the
stock market or how much they had drunk the night before. They were all,
like Amory, perpetual adolescents who, if they did not die of drink or
overwork by sixty, found themselves deserted and dreary. Harry himself
was old enough to belong to a generation which went to Europe and
collected pictures and lived preciously on their incomes and wore out
their lives sitting in the back of opera boxes. Also, because he was a
snob, he felt that Amory had betrayed his club and his class.

He glanced at Amory who was talking to the Duchess, thinking with
satisfaction how it must annoy Amory to see Mrs. Parkington going on and
on, healthy and energetic and strong, standing always between him and
his share of the vast Parkington fortune. Harry Van Diver, thin,
shriveled, elegant and fastidious, was a he-bitch. That was why Mrs.
Parkington liked him, why she had kept him about for more than twenty
years since the time she had given up forever all thoughts of vanity or
love. Harry's bitter feminine tongue amused her, and he was safe. He had
admired her for over forty years. There had never been any danger of
Harry's growing "sexy."

As he watched Amory and the Duchess with his nearsighted malicious black
eyes, so squinted that he looked monstrously like an elderly and clever
monkey, Mrs. Parkington thought how long time was, how many things you
could discover and learn in eighty-four years ... and how many things
some people never learned though they lived forever.

Then Taylor's pompous voice said, "Dinner is served, madame," and
addressing all of them, rather with the air of a hen mothering a flock
of foolish chicks, she said, "Come along! Come along!" and led the way
on Harry's arm.

                 *        *        *        *        *

In the center of the great mahogany table stood a Christmas tree,
lighted, with gifts for each member of the family and for Harry Van
Diver, each one selected by Mrs. Parkington and Mattie during long days
of earnest shopping.

Mrs. Parkington put Madeleine's cowboy husband on her right and Harry
Van Diver on her left. She did this in a half-conscious desire to annoy
Amory. Beside the cowboy she placed Janie so that she might have the
girl as near her as possible, then Amory, then Madeleine. (There was
faint malice in this too because Amory with his St. Judes-Harvard
mentality looked upon Madeleine and her amorous recklessness as a family
disgrace.) Then came her great-grandson and then the Duchess and next to
Harry Van Diver, Helen, with her bitter mouth and complaining eyes. It
was not a good arrangement, she knew, but considering the material, as
good as any other. At eighty-four, after a well-conducted life spent in
entertaining, she had at last earned the right to the most entertaining
company which, among the men, was certainly Harry and the cowboy.

She decided that she liked the cowboy. Now and then she forgot his name
completely. Until Madeleine had had enough of him and divorced him, he
would always be simply "the cowboy" to her as Madeleine's first husband
had been "the Argentine," her second "that Racquet Club boy," the third,
"the horse trainer." It was much simpler that way.

He sat there beside her eating and answering her questions with a polite
"yes, ma'am" or "no, ma'am," eating such food as he had never tasted
before, with the little finger of his big bony hand crooked a little in
spite of anything he could do about it. Mrs. Parkington knew that
Madeleine had spoken to him about crooking his finger because every now
and then he would remember and bring it down again alongside his other
fingers. But almost at once it would fly up again into a crooked
position. She supposed he had acquired the cocked finger trick out of an
effort to make himself feel an equal of the divorces he had met in
Reno.

What a world! she thought, when a decent fellow like that has his
natural good manners corrupted for the sake of a lot of concupiscent
sluts who don't know their own minds.

She had no use for what she referred to as legal and dishonest adultery.

Once or twice Harry Van Diver on her left attempted to claim her
attention and force her to "shift" the table but she said sharply,
"Leave me in peace, Harry. I'm enjoying myself. This is a family party."

There were many things she would have liked to discover about the
cowboy--whether he had lived with other women like Madeleine, what he
thought of this queer family gathering. There was nothing lascivious in
this curiosity; she only wanted to know for the most profound and human
of reasons. Her interest was almost coldly scientific. She was curious
because she liked him, because she felt sorry for him sitting here in
this big elegant room, his face red with the effort of wearing a dinner
jacket and trying to behave as he thought people should behave in such a
house, with Madeleine's eyes fastened on him, devouring him. She wanted
to say to him, "Don't worry about any of this. It's all claptrap and
most of these people, my descendants, are vulgar and pretentious and
they are vulgar and pretentious because they're afraid and they're
afraid because in their hearts they are aware they are inferior and that
not even money can alter that. Don't worry and fuss. It's all right!"
But she was also wise enough to know that he would not understand a word
of what she was saying and that such a speech would only confuse him
further. They could never find each other through all the clutter of
rubbish which complicated all the human relationships here in this
room--Amory's stupidity and pretentiousness, the Duchess's despair and
weariness, Helen's discontent and fear, Madeleine's air of being a
thwarted Venus Genetrix and all the vague hampering things which came of
their all being too rich. Janie, she thought, glancing fondly at the
girl, was different. It was still possible to save her.

And Mrs. Parkington knew suddenly through the conversation she was
making why she was bored. These people all around her save for Janie and
perhaps the cowboy with his big hands and his way of addressing her as
"ma'am" were all dead. They were deader than she would be when she lay
in her coffin. Nothing had ever happened to them, not even to the
Duchess with her air of being a tired tragedienne, not even to Madeleine
to whom love was a matter of mechanics, like one of those machines which
kept swallowing up things. To Harry, on her left, nothing whatever had
ever happened. His whole life had been spent collecting pictures or
sitting in the back of a box at the opera. He was, she thought, the best
"box-sitter" in the world, the best "filler-in," the best gossip. People
had sometimes whispered about his indeterminate sex, but Mrs. Parkington
was shrewd about things like that. Harry had never had any sex at all.
That was why he suggested marriage to her only when he knew that it was
perfectly safe.

No, none of them would be sitting at her table if they had not been
related to her, most of them the very fruit of her womb. They were
"living dead" like the strange people who inhabited places like Pasadena
and Santa Barbara.

She kept listening to two or three conversations at once, catching
fragments of this one or that one, hoping that some phrase or remark
might strike fire, like steel striking against flint, to illuminate and
annihilate that sensation of suffocation she felt stealing over her as
she listened to Harry's small talk.

And suddenly she was rewarded. It was something the Duchess said. Amory
had been holding forth against Mr. Roosevelt and all Democrats. It was a
familiar harangue into which he would plunge at the slightest
invitation.

He was saying, "And look at Wall Street now! It used to be a barometer
of the state of the country's prosperity. As a barometer it is
destroyed. You can't tell anything about prosperity any more from a
stock market report."

And then the Duchess began to be bored. The alcohol or the drugs or
whatever it was which brought her spasmodic life, had ceased to
function, and the massive weight of Amory's dullness began to be
unendurable. She struck then, like an asp. She said, looking at him
under her dull, heavy-lidded eyes, "I've been thinking, Amory, that it
would be a good idea for your club to have its reunion this year in
Sing-Sing. It might be kinder to all the boys who won't be able to get
out."

Then Mrs. Parkington saw Amory's face turn first white and then red, a
fierce apoplectic red which made Mrs. Parkington know that that was how
he would die one day if he were not mercifully run over by an automobile
or crashed in a plane before then. He stammered for a second and then
said, "That was a rude and mannerless thing to say, Alice. You know as
well as I do that neither Bill Jennings nor Percy Harris are guilty of
any crime. They've been persecuted. That's all, and you know it."

But the stimulus which was driving the Duchess still operated and she
said, "I've sometimes thought that my father--the gentleman from whom
all our money comes--would have spent all his life in jail by the laws
which exist nowadays--along with all the big shots of his time. They
were all crooks and ruthless, every one of them."

It was Amory's wife who took up the battle for him. She said, "That was
a shocking thing to say, Alice, about your own father."

But the Duchess only said, "Do you really _know_ anything about my
father--except what you've read in that apotheosis of hogwash written by
a hack writer who needed money to pay his rent?"

Then Mrs. Parkington by an effort of will spiritually absented herself
from the conversation. If they chose to brawl among themselves, that was
their privilege. She had no intention of interfering. At least something
was happening.

She turned to Madeleine's cowboy husband and said suddenly, "I was born
in Leaping Rock, Nevada. It was quite a town in those days. Lola Montez
came there." And as she spoke she heard the music beginning in the hall,
soft music which had very little to do with the quality of the party
(What could Viennese music mean to a man like Amory or his droop-mouthed
wife or the cowboy?)

Each year for more than ten years now, she had had in musicians to play
at the Christmas party, music like this, soft and romantic which coming
from the distant hall could not annoy the others, but which helped to
soothe her own nerves and dissipate a little her own boredom. She heard
it now, groping in her mind to place the name of the waltz, while it
carried one part of her back, back into the remote, and glittering past
out of which there emerged, even while she talked of Leaping Rock to the
cowboy, romantic and glittering images, like figures out of a mist.

When she spoke the word "Leaping Rock" she struck fire. The cowboy said,
"Do I know Leaping Rock, ma'am?... like the back of my own hand. I was
born in the hills not ten miles from there. When I was just a kid we
used to dare each other to go alone into the Opera House. People said it
was haunted."

"It probably was," said Mrs. Parkington. "Is it still there?"

"No, ma'am, the roof fell in five years ago."

Then suddenly while the cowboy was talking about Leaping Rock and the
color of the dolomite peaks to the west of it in the early dawn when the
sun came up beyond the range of mountains on the other side of the
valley, she remembered the name of the waltz they were now playing; it
was "The Music of the Spheres" and suddenly she forgot Leaping Rock and
was in a baroque ballroom in Vienna. It was all peach pink and pale blue
and gilt and someone was saying, "... _prsenter le Comte Eric
Wallstein_." At the same time she was aware that the cowboy had come to
life. Quite suddenly he was flesh and blood--very much flesh and blood,
and no longer an automaton responding to strings held by Madeleine.

Then she heard Madeleine saying above the cowboy's talk about Nevada,
"Grandmother, don't you think we could leave the table now?"

"Yes, my dear," said Mrs. Parkington, taking the napkin from her lap and
rising. She hated to break off the talk with the cowboy. He was enjoying
himself for the first time--perhaps for the first time since Madeleine
had snatched him up and brought him east. His extraordinarily clear blue
eyes were shining. The shyness was gone. He called her "ma'am" quite
naturally now, and not like a Hollywood actor playing the role of a
cowboy.

"You must come to see me while you're here," she said as she rose from
the table, "Come in to tea and we'll talk our fill about Nevada."

                 *        *        *        *        *

The rest of the evening passed for Mrs. Parkington in a cloud of
weariness, save for two moments, one which happened as they left the
dining-room when Amory came up to her side and said, "Could I speak to
you privately, Grandmother?"

She looked up at him suddenly wondering what it was he wanted of her,
and was struck again by the stupidity of his big, floridly handsome
face. He had been told that he was a shrewd operator in the market, and
he believed, she knew, that he was a shrewd operator. She thought: He is
a fool beside the Major. There aren't any longer men of the Major's
stature. He was the real thing.

She said, "Of course, Amory. Let's go into the small sitting-room."

He followed her into the room, closing the door behind him. It was a
small room, intimate and feminine in its softness and elegance. Rather
slyly she watched him and even by the dim light she saw that with the
closing of the door his manner had changed. The air of confidence and
conceit which approached arrogance, seemed to melt away. She knew that
he was at his best with a crowd of men when he was acting the role of a
"big shot." When he was left alone with her he grew uneasy and almost
timid, and she wondered whether he behaved in the same fashion when he
was alone with another man. She had never been taken in by him. All his
defenses, concocted of family, of clubs, of snobbery and complacency, of
wealth were down when he faced her, because she had no proper respect
for any of these things when they were used as he used them.

Now as he closed the door and faced her, she had the impression that not
only was he uneasy but frightened. He stood there for a single
unbearable moment facing her in silence, until she sat down and said,
"What is it, Amory?"

He too sat down and lighted a cigar, "It's about money, Grandmother."

There was something absurd about his addressing her as "Grandmother." He
was himself over fifty and his pompousness made him seem older. In any
case she disliked the habit of married relatives addressing in-laws as
"Grandmother" and "Mother."

"What's wrong?" she asked, "I thought you'd weathered the storm.
Everyone says you were remarkably clever during the crash."

He hesitated for a moment. "It isn't that. We weathered that all right.
It's only that a loan for a few weeks--six months at the most--would be
a great help just now."

She did not answer him but sat waiting, with half-deliberate cruelty,
putting the burden of the whole thing upon him. After a moment he said,
"I'm a little short just now. I got in rather deeply on some utilities
business which didn't turn out very well. The government has ruined the
utilities market like everything else."

"I thought the government had put an end to that sort of gambling."

"It wasn't gambling," he said dully, and she was aware suddenly that he
was not only afraid but tired. At the same time she remembered how he
had snubbed the shy, nervous cowboy with the clear blue eyes.

"How much?" she asked bluntly.

He did not answer her at once. When he did answer he said, looking away
from her, "About seven hundred thousand."

"That's a great deal of money."

Still looking away from her, he said, "I thought that ... until it's
paid, you could charge it up against my share of the inheritance."

The answer not only shocked her, but made it impossible for her to
answer immediately.

After a moment she said, "I'm not in the grave yet, Amory."

"I didn't mean that."

"In any case, it is your wife's inheritance, Amory. The Major left
everything to me to dispose of as I saw fit."

"I'm sorry. I didn't mean to be untactful."

"Never mind," she sighed, "But seven hundred thousand is a great deal of
money. When everything is washed up after I'm dead, Helen's share might
not amount to that much."

He looked at her in surprise and alarm, and she added, "There are quite
a number of heirs and a lot of inheritance taxes." She smiled, "Money
isn't what it once was, you know."

"Who should know better than a stockbroker?"

She kept hearing the waltz played by the orchestra in the hall. She
wanted to be done with Amory, to escape from him and everyone and
everything like him, so she said, "In any case I couldn't lend even a
much smaller amount without knowing the details."

She remembered that he had thrust out his lower lip. It gave him a
sullen, almost evil expression--one which his wife must have seen many
times. It occurred to her that perhaps that was one reason why Helen's
mouth sagged at the corners. It was the expression of a spoiled willful
boy who has been crossed. He had been born into a world with every
possible advantage and taught that there was some special quality about
all Stilhams and at fifty he still resented any doubt regarding himself
or his ability or his remarkable gifts.

He said, "I can't tell you the details now."

"Can't you raise the money among your partners?"

"They haven't that much liquid cash."

"I have the others to consider. In a sense it's their money I should be
lending you. Would you want me to go to them for their permission?"

"No. They wouldn't give it ... certainly not Madeleine or 'the Duchess.'
They've always disliked me for reasons I've never been able to
understand."

She moved as if to rise, and said, "In any case I couldn't lend all that
money without knowing everything about your financial circumstances.
That's what bankers ask, isn't it?"

"Yes."

"Well, when you choose to tell me, Amory, we can consider its
possibilities."

He was silent then and his silence made the old woman's restlessness and
desire to escape being shut in with him almost unbearable.

He said, "If I find it's necessary I'll tell you everything. The
circumstances may be desperate."

"Even if you failed, I should always see to it that Helen and the
children are taken care of."

"Fail?" he echoed. "Me fail?"

She was aware of a gratifying sense of power and of a satisfaction in
using it almost cruelly. But the man was a fool to think all he needed
do was to ask for seven hundred thousand dollars and receive it. In any
case the interview was getting nowhere. She stood up, impatient to
return to the music.

"I'm sorry, Amory, to refuse you. You must have friends who can raise
that amount of money--surely out of Wall Street and all the banks, and
all your friends in Harvard."

"It isn't the way it used to be when the Major was alive. Money men
aren't allowed to stand together nowadays. It's even against their
God-damned New Deal laws for a friend to stand by a friend." He flushed
and said, "Forgive me for swearing. I forgot myself."

She laughed. "I lived for forty years with the Major." Then she moved
toward the door. "Well, if worst comes to worst and you see fit to
explain everything to me, come back again."

He held the door open for her and she went out. Out of the small room
she felt free again and relieved. The little band was playing the
"Skater's Waltz" now. That music too was filled with memories, of
another, a gayer, less strained and tormented world. She kept seeing the
baroque ballroom in Vienna and the station platform in Salzburg.

                 *        *        *        *        *

She wasn't allowed to finish her conversation with the cowboy because
Madeleine whisked him away a little while after she entered the room.

"We're taking a plane, Grandmother, for Nassau in the morning. I hope
you'll forgive us."

"Of course, my dear."

The cowboy said, "Good night, ma'am, and thank you for a fine evening
and a fine supper."

As his blue eyes met hers there was a twinkle in them which made her
feel suddenly very young. It reminded her that the two of them shared a
secret from all the others.

They knew the color of the peak on the far side of Leaping Rock when the
sun came up over the range to the east. She must have been, she thought,
at least fifty years old when the cowboy was born and she had not seen
Leaping Rock in more than sixty years, but it did not matter. The peak
would still be there when both of them were long dead and there would be
others not yet conceived who would share their secret and feel about the
great peak as they felt. It was very odd, she thought, that this cowboy
born and brought up in Nevada, should, like "The Music of the Spheres,"
make her think of Eric.

She said, "Remember you promised to come to tea one day," ... and softly
with the coquetry of a young woman she added, "alone." Quickly she
turned to Madeleine, "It's only because we wanted to talk about Leaping
Rock and the old days."

"Sure, I understand," said Madeleine. "He's crazy about it out there. He
doesn't even want to go to Nassau."

The other moment came at the end of the evening when as they all rose to
leave, Janie said, "Granny, can I talk to you a minute after the others
have gone?"

"Of course, my child."

"You aren't too tired?"

"Not in the least tired."

A moment before she had been desperately tired but when Janie spoke, the
weariness vanished. The child would scarcely understand that a woman of
eighty-four could be flattered by so simple a thing as the request of a
child of eighteen to talk to her.

Janie was not obviously pretty; she was at once something more and
something less than that, with her fair hair and blue eyes and perfect
skin. The mouth was too wide, the forehead too high, the nose too tilted
for the accepted standard of banal American prettiness. It was the play
of expression which made her extraordinarily attractive, the mobility of
the intelligent wedge-shaped small face which at one moment could be
dark and sullen and the next brilliant as the morning sun. She had the
sort of looks which would make her a beauty at thirty-five when other
women were just beginning to fade. She had, even at eighteen, what none
of the others had ever had--the elements of distinction.

The girl asked her brother to wait for her in the hall below, and when
they had all gone, she said, "Granny, I'm in love."

The old woman smiled, "In love ... with whom?"

"You've never heard of him."

"Do your father and mother like that?"

"No, that's the trouble."

"Who is he?"

"Well, he works for the government. He is twenty-seven years old and he
was born in South Bend, Indiana."

Mrs. Parkington smiled again, "Now I understand why your father
objects."

"Mama is just as bad."

"How did you meet him?"

"That's it. I met him through Father. Father invited him to the country
for a weekend on business. The funny thing is that Father seemed to like
him very much at first and told me to be nice to him and give him a good
time. So I did my best and then later on when I went out with him in New
York they were both angry."

"What did they say?" asked Mrs. Parkington.

"They said he was a nobody. That he had no money and no future, and that
I wasn't to see him because it might grow serious and at my age I wasn't
capable of judging about things like that ... all the kind of talk I've
heard in movies and novels."

Mrs. Parkington's face grew serious. "Of course they may be right. What
is he like?"

Janie looked away from her toward the fireplace as if she were trying to
summon up a clear picture of the young man. Her great-grandmother
watched her, thinking, "How young she is! How odd that this thing should
have skipped two generations only to appear again in the child of Helen
and Amory! How very unlikely!"

The girl was talking, saying, "Well, he's tall. He has big hands but
they're beautiful. He has very nice white teeth. He has black, rather
wavy hair ... plenty of it, and he's dark but not the sallow kind of
darkness. It's the healthy kind." She laughed, "He has rosy cheeks and a
nice voice." For a moment she felt about as if searching for something
and then said, "And he's clean. He's so nice and clean."

Mrs. Parkington chuckled, "I didn't ask for a portrait in techni-color
or a certificate of sanitation. I only meant why do you think you're in
love?"

Now the girl looked at her and smiled. There was something about Janie's
smile which could melt granite. When she smiled the big mouth curled up
at the corners.

Now she said, smiling, "I don't know, Granny. That's a tough one. I love
to be with him and I feel sure inside me that if I waited for fifty
years I'd never find anyone I'd like better." Shyly she looked down at
her hands, "I've even thought about the children I'm going to have, and
I'd like to have him for the father."

Mrs. Parkington's face was serious as she watched the girl. "Well," she
said, "Those are very sound reasons and very modern. Is he serious?"

"Oh, he's very serious about some things, but he has a sense of humor, a
wonderful sense of humor."

"Where did he go to school?"

"To Wisconsin State and after that to law school at Columbia."

"I see. He belongs to the future rather than to the past."

Suddenly an extraordinary light came into the face of the girl. "That's
it, Granny! That's what I feel, only I never was able to put it into
words. It's very clever of you to understand."

"Maybe it's because of my age."

"He's not like any of the boys I know. I don't mean anything against
them ... the kind of boys Father and Mama would like to have me marry
... only they always seem so ... I don't know. They don't seem to want
to go anywhere. There doesn't seem to be any place for them to go. They
seem empty ... and dead. I don't want that kind of life. I want it to be
exciting. He makes everything ... the present and the future seem
exciting."

Mrs. Parkington sighed, "Yes, I know. I said that once, a long time ago.
And it was exciting too. That's why you're here, my dear."

"You _do_ know what I mean, Granny."

"Yes, I think I do." She rose and said, "It's very late, my dear. I'll
tell you what you do. You bring him to tea with me, some afternoon ...
soon."

"Oh, could I, Granny? That's sweet of you."

"Shall we say Thursday?"

"I'll ask him. He's awfully busy, but I'm sure he could get away early."

The old woman kissed her and then stood by the fire looking after the
girl as she left the room and went down the stairway to join her
brother. When she had gone, Mrs. Parkington touched the bell and while
she waited for Taylor to appear, she thought how like Janie she must
have been more than half a century ago in Leaping Rock--how
extraordinary it was that she herself had come out of a mining camp and
Janie out of this decadent world which had surrounded her tonight, a
world as different from Leaping Rock as day from night. She had asked
Janie to bring her young man to tea rather than to dinner because tea
did not involve a whole evening. Janie might be wrong; he might be
terrible. Mrs. Parkington knew a great deal about love and what it could
do to you.

Then Taylor appeared and she said, "It's very late, Taylor. I shouldn't
bother about clearing away tonight. I shall be out for lunch tomorrow
and you'll have the whole day."

"Thank you, madame."

"Did you have a good Christmas?"

"Yes, madame. You're not tired?"

"No, Taylor." She started toward the door and he followed her. "There's
no need," she said, "I'll walk up. I think I'd like to."

"Very good, madame."

She didn't know why she chose to climb the stairs, save that it suited
her mood. She went slowly, thoughtfully, as if at each step she were
climbing into another world, the world of memory, as if each step took
her deeper and deeper into the past.




                                   II


Each morning she stood by the window packing lunches as the sun came up
behind the mountains. The spectacle began with the rosy light striking
the great peak on the far side of the flat green valley long before the
sun, hidden by the mountains, was itself visible. A river of clear water
ran down the center of the valley, shallow and clean, wandering this way
and that lazily in the sunshine of the dry season. Willows and
cottonwoods and sedge grass, haunted by wild birds, grew along its
flanks, and all the year round, even when there was no rain, the trees
stayed green and brilliant against the yellow burnt grass of the valley
and the red of the mountains across the wide valley from the
boardinghouse.

For it was really a boardinghouse and not a hotel for all its
high-sounding name, and it stood opposite the Wilder Gap Saloon on the
long single street of Leaping Rock with its back turned toward the peak
so that Susie, working in the kitchen, could look across the valley. At
seventeen she did not understand why the view from the kitchen window
made her heart sing. It was vast and free and open, so vast that the
invasion of man could never alter nor wholly subdue its beauty, so
filled with splendor that there were moments when it seemed to her a
valley out of paradise. And as the day wore on, and the sun swung
through the arc of heaven, it remained not one valley; it became many
valleys, changing as the light altered, quivering at noon in an
iridescent mirage of heat, deepening into cool rich purple as the night
fell.

There was the early morning when all the gaudy, rough street of Leaping
Rock, lined with brothels and saloons and gambling establishments, lay
in a cool blue shadow while the rest of the valley warmed slowly to the
pink glow of the sunrise. Then there was noon when all the valley was
flooded with hot, clear, light which made the feathery leaves of the
pepper trees in the dirty yard outside the window hang limply and the
pale willows and the shining cottonwoods lining the river bed danced and
swayed in the heat. And there was the afternoon, just before sunset,
when the blue shadow of the great mountain crept across the flat land
slowly, gently, inevitably, bathing the whole landscape in a blue dusk
which at last engulfed Leaping Rock itself as the miners returned and
the oil lights began to glow in the brothels and saloons and overhead
the sky turned from red to flamingo pink to the blue of azure and at
last to the deep blue of velvet and the stars came out like diamonds.
The nights were best of all--the clear, dry cool nights when the air was
like the champagne sold in the Opera House bar and the great vastness of
the mountains melted away into darkness and there was only space and
emptiness and a sense of freedom and an ecstasy of the spirit.

Susie always saw the sunrise because she and her mother got out of bed
in the darkness to prepare the lunches for the men going off to the
mines. While the pink light increased and the mountain walls emerged
again from the darkness like a transparency at the Opera House, Susie
and her mother packed the sandwiches and poured the coffee into
containers. Her mother Was a spare and active woman rather like a
beautiful whippet with small blue eyes and a dimpled mouth and a
twinkle. She was one of those women who worked hard through some fierce
inner compulsion. Life without physical action, without hard work would
have been intolerable to her, and in Susie's spare trim figure there was
something of the same passionate restlessness and desperate need for
activity. But in Susie these things were tempered by a romantic feeling
which at moments seemed to hypnotize her into a kind of dreaming peace.

The Grand Hotel was the best establishment of its kind in the whole
bawdy town. Its rooms and linen, kept by Chinese servants, were clean
and fresh and cool. Its food was plain but good, and about the parlor
and even the little drinking and smoking room there was an air of home,
born out of the spirit of Susie's mother, who would, if it had been
possible, have mothered the whole world.

From her mother Susie got her fineness of bone and the fineness of
feature and the elusive look of race, and from her too Susie got the
shrewdness and that curious objectivity which protected and carried her
through all the shocks and tragedies of her life. It gave her the power
to stand aside watching herself in the very midst of calamity, as if at
times she were two persons, one herself and the other a kind of narrator
in a Greek tragedy. People said sometimes that she was hardhearted and
unfeeling, and toward the end of her life they sometimes said that only
a hardhearted woman could have survived the tragedies which happened to
her. But it was only that people did not understand. It was this
quality, inherited from her mother and the product of her mother's stern
training, which stood by her on the morning the whole life of Leaping
Rock and the valley was shattered by catastrophe.

From her father, Susie reflected long afterward, she had gained nothing
save perhaps the good humor and calmness of disposition which her mother
had never known. Her mother fidgeted and worried and because of this the
Grand Hotel was the best establishment in Leaping Rock. Her father never
worried at all, and so everyone loved him although he never amounted to
much and his family would have had hard going indeed but for his wife.
Susie loved her father and she only respected her mother.

The knowledge of this curious fact troubled and sometimes distressed her
as she stood at the window of the kitchen looking across the enchanted
valley. It troubled her again and again through her long life--that so
many people she respected she could not love at all and so many people
she loved were not worth her respect.

That was one of the things which made her think a great deal about
Augustus Parkington. She respected him and in a way she loved him, not
the way of course in which she loved her father. At seventeen she was
beginning to find out the different ways in which you could love people.
Certainly they were not all alike. Her father she loved because he was
gentle and humorous and never worried. Sometimes she thought she loved
him because he was so utterly different from her mother who did
everything well and thoroughly, who worried all day long and was never
still from the time she rose as the dawn came up over the valley until
the lights began to go out in the saloons and gambling houses along
Nevada Street. Her father worked. He had a kind of job checking the men
in and out of the mines; but he did not allow it to trouble him. He had
no desire to become superintendent of the works or to go out prospecting
in the hope of making a sudden great fortune like Augustus Parkington.
He was simply content to sit in his little cage, smiling and swapping
stories with the men as they went in and out, just as he liked sitting
on the front porch of the Grand Hotel entertaining the guests. They,
like Susie herself, always felt better at the sight of him, a big,
rather soft man, with a twinkle in his gray eyes when he returned from
the mines in the evening.

Augustus Parkington was very different. In the first place he came from
the East, from New York, and he was what Susie's mother called "a flashy
dresser." Even when he went up to the mines he wore his best clothes
with shoes carefully polished by Sam Young, the Chinese boy, wearing the
finest silk shirt with a purple cravat fastened with a diamond pin and a
heavy gold watch chain across his checkered waistcoat. He wore a big
diamond on the little finger. The only man Susie had ever seen who
dressed nearly so richly was Aristides Vedder, the gambler, who made the
circuit of Leadville, Virginia City and Leaping Rock over and over again
many times a year. But of course the fine clothes worn by Aristides
Vedder did not make the same effect as when worn by Augustus.

When Susie wasn't careful she found herself thinking of him as
"Augustus" although she had no right to any such familiarity. He was,
after all, a middle-aged man, thirty-three on his next birthday, and he
was important. He owned half of the great Juno Mine which kept on and on
pouring silver down the side of the great mountain on the opposite side
of the valley. And people said he owned railroads in the East and was a
big stock operator. They said he was a millionaire and that he didn't
know how rich he was and didn't care, that he wasn't interested in money
but in the making of it.

Susie didn't know much about the East so the stories about him had no
very great reality. To her all the stories had a little the fantastic
quality of the _Thousand and One Nights_. She had never been east of
Denver and the East seemed a foreign country and New York a place filled
with big restaurants and bright lights and beautiful women and rich men.
While she worked about the kitchen with her mother, she thought a great
deal about it and how she must some day go there, for Susie inside her
small, trim body had bursting ambition. That was what made her resemble
her mother rather than her father. Sometimes at night she couldn't sleep
because the ambitions kept churning and rumbling about inside her, as if
she had bad indigestion.

And the beauty of the rich valley didn't help her to stifle the
yearnings. It was grand and splendrous, she was aware, but she also knew
that it was barren. Leaping Rock held no future for herself. As she grew
older she began to understand what it was that made her mother so
restless and miserable and busy, so that all day long until late at
night she hurried from one thing to another, making work for herself
where before there had been none. All day, all night, until she fell
asleep her mother was running away from something, and presently Susie
understood what it was.

The discovery came to her one day in the very middle of the morning.
Surprisingly, in the very middle of their work while they were dusting
the parlor, her mother sat down abruptly and said, "Susie, there's
something I must say to you."

And Susie was frightened, because her mother had never before done
anything like this. She lived perpetually shut in, behind a kind of wall
which came between herself and Susie. And now Susie was aware with the
sharp and puzzled instinct of an adolescent girl that the wall was down,
that for the first time her mother meant to talk of what went on deep
inside her behind that wall. She sat down on the edge of the horsehair
sofa, her toes pointing in, filled with shyness. At first she thought
her mother was going to tell her that she had some fatal malady and was
about to die.

But it wasn't that. Her mother clasped her thin, hard hands together and
said abruptly, "When you're eighteen, Susie, I'm going to send you
away."

As if it cost her a great effort she said nothing more until Susie
murmured, "Yes, Ma. Where?"

"To the East, Susie ... to your Great Aunt Sapphira in Vermont."

And again Susie was frightened. She had never seen her Great Aunt
Sapphira but she knew that her father always spoke of Sapphira as the
family witch. Susie didn't even know then whether she wanted to go to
Vermont. It was the East but not the East she had dreamed of. And she
loved the valley. It was the valley and the great mountain she knew she
would miss most of all ... more even than her father.

But her mother was going on. "I want you to have things in life which
I've never had, Susie. I wanted a great many things--power and
satisfaction and money and diamonds...." Her eyes flashed suddenly and
she spoke with firmness, almost with shame, "Yes, diamonds and power.
When I was your age I wanted to be somebody in the world, I thought it
was going to be like that when I married your father, but it wasn't."
She sighed and said, "Your father is a good man. He's never caused me
any trouble or any unhappiness, but it just wasn't in him, I guess. He
didn't want the things I wanted. They didn't signify. He didn't value
them. I could have got them in my own way once--a woman's way--but I
didn't and I don't regret it now ... only sometimes. I want you to have
all those things, Susie, that I didn't have. I want you to live nice and
in a civilized world, not a place like Leaping Rock. There's nothing
here for you. You're mighty pretty and it would be a shame if you were
just to settle down and work and get hands like mine."

She watched Susie sitting on the edge of the sofa. When she had finished
Susie didn't say anything and her mother said, "Don't you want those
things, Susie?"

After a moment the girl said, "Yes, maybe. I don't know. Only I don't
like leaving you and Pa ... and the valley."

She was only fourteen then and the things her mother talked about didn't
mean much to her. Suddenly her mother stood up and resumed her dusting
now, furiously as if she hated the prim shabby sofas and chairs. Then
she said, "We'll never speak of it again."

                 *        *        *        *        *

They never did speak of it again, but as Susie grew older she began to
understand about the things her mother talked of. The understanding came
slowly, out of books and because the germs of the same ambition which
tortured her defeated mother were there inside her own breast. But most
of all, it was Augustus Parkington who made her understand. When he
talked to her about the East and the great world outside the valley, in
the purple evenings after the sun had disappeared behind the great
mountain, the fabulous world of the East became alive and real, perhaps
because he loved it so much or perhaps because his own immense vitality
and enthusiasm swept you with him, as flood-water rushing down El Dorado
Canyon in the spring carried everything before it. In Topeka and Chicago
they said Augustus Parkington could sell a whore-house to a Baptist
preacher.

He would sit there on the front porch of the Grand Hotel, big and
handsome in his fine clothes and jewelry, talking in his rich deep
voice--a voice which embraced and seduced you, man or woman, young or
old--and presently you were completely under his spell and fearful that
he would stop talking and go away, because after he had gone the world
about you for a long time afterward seemed a tired and empty place.

He liked Susie and he nearly always treated her like a little girl, even
when she had turned seventeen and her figure filled out the calico
dresses her mother made for her. But there were moments when Susie knew
that something different had come into the relationship between them. It
was something she did not understand and so it alarmed and at the same
time excited her. Because she was intensely feminine she became aware as
she grew older of the maleness of Major Parkington. His mere presence,
on those yearly visits, made the whole hotel seem a more exciting place.
She had, once or twice, overheard conversations in which people talked
about Major Parkington and the way he had with women, but this did not
mean much to her. She knew nothing about love at all and even less about
sex, and the idea of marrying a man as old as Augustus Parkington was
preposterous. A girl of seventeen marrying an old man of thirty-three!
She only hoped that somehow, somewhere, some time she would meet a
suitor her own age who was half as fine as the Major. Sometimes she
wondered how he could be interested in talking to anyone so young and
insignificant as herself.

It was only long afterward that she came to understand what he was doing
on those evenings. She understood after she came to know him and his way
with women. He had spent those hours talking to her because he could not
help himself, because always in the big handsome body and mind was the
urge to woo and seduce this young girl who was so simple and
straightforward and lacking in feminine tricks. Her very lack of
coquetry, her very simplicity at once defeated him and enticed him. And
always at the back of his character was that disconcerting charm and
niceness which kept him from carrying through so base a desire as the
seduction of a nice girl and the daughter of so respectable and worthy a
woman as the proprietress of the Grand Hotel. He was always like that,
during all his life; at the very moment when you were prepared and
reconciled forever to dismissing him as an unmitigated scoundrel he did
something utterly disarming and generous and nice which confounded you
and you found yourself in the position of beginning all over again.

Long afterward she understood what he was doing when he "wasted" his
time talking to her. He was wooing her, making love to her, caressing
her without once speaking of love or even touching her. He did it with
his voice, his clear blue eyes, his manner. It was as if there were an
aura about him which reached out and enveloped you, filling you with
strange half-realized thoughts and desires.

A dozen times during the evening the face of her mother would appear in
the window behind them and then disappear again like a ghost. And again
it was only long afterward, years after her mother's death, that Susie
understood what was in her mother's mind. She was thinking: If he wants
her he must marry her. He could give her everything and Susie is smart
enough to profit by what he can give her. But he will never marry her.
She would be of help to him in what he wants from the world, but he
isn't clever enough to understand that.

And so her mother kept watch, returning again and again to the window.
Major Parkington was her mother's best boarder. If Susie could keep him
at the Grand Hotel on his visits to Leaping Rock, it was all right so
long as there was no monkey business. But he must never so much as touch
her....

                 *        *        *        *        *

It might never have happened but for the explosion. Long afterward Susie
learned that many great things, many sweeping currents changing the
whole of one's life came of isolated, sometimes small happenings,
apparently unrelated to the events surrounding them.

On the morning of the explosion she was alone in the big kitchen peeling
potatoes and watching the wide valley. Now and then a wagon or a man on
horseback appeared on the thin ribbon of a road which ran from the town
of Leaping Rock straight across to the great mountain where the mines
were. It was a hot morning and at moments the waves of heat rising from
the sandy floor of the valley would appear to lift the lone horseman or
wagon from the road high into the air and turn him upside down. Then a
sudden gust of wind would flatten the glittering tongues of heat and the
horseman would appear again right side up on the road, moving toward the
thread of river bordered by cottonwood trees. Presently the purple which
veiled the bottom of the great mountain at sunrise was gone and with it
the deep rose light that painted the very top, and then the whole
mountain stood suddenly revealed in the blistering heat of midday, naked
and bare and ugly, a terrifying mass of rock streaked with copper and
silver. Up there on the face of the mountain, in the small cleft which
looked as if it had been made by the tomahawk of some great Indian god,
was the mine. Up there among the myriads of ants who were the Chinese
and Irish who worked the mine, were her father sitting in his cage,
telling stories, and her mother who had crossed the valley in the
buckboard a little after sunrise to take food to her father and Major
Augustus Parkington. They had stayed the night rather than cross the
wide valley after dark.

Susie had finished the potatoes and was emptying the peelings into the
slop bucket for the pigs when it occurred. As she straightened her body
to close the door she saw, high up in the cleft, a sudden vast flower of
smoke. At first it was like a ball of the cotton which they were trying
to grow in the wide flat valley. Then slowly in the hot air it began to
spread and at the same time the sound of the explosion entered the town.
The windows rattled with the impact and Susie felt herself thrown
against the door and then from along the single street bordered by
brothels and gambling houses and stores there came the confused sound of
many frightened people. There were screams and shouts and the firing of
guns and the brayings of donkeys and the neighing of horses all mingled
together.

She thought dully: They are up there, Ma and Pa and the Major. They've
all been killed. For it seemed to her as the smoke rose and spread like
the opening of a gigantic flower, that no one in that narrow cleft could
be alive.

And almost at once in the narrow straight road there appeared a hurrying
procession of figures, some on horses, some on donkeys, some in
buckboards and still others on foot, running. They were coming out from
the town, crossing the valley toward the great mountain.

For a moment, standing there by the door, she felt a wild impulse to
join the mob, and then a quiet voice deep inside her, the voice which
was to speak to her again and again during her long life, said, "There
is no use in your going. There is nothing you can do. You will be more
useful here if you are calm and go about your work. They will be coming
back after a time. They will want bandages and hot water and beds and
food."

And so she went back again into the house and set to work preparing all
the things which might be needed. She thought: Perhaps Ma and Pa and the
Major are dead or maybe they are only hurt. All I can do now is to pray
for them and work.

And as she worked she fought back both tears and terror. Her hands shook
so that it was difficult for her to tear the old sheets into strips for
bandages, and presently two of the harlots from Mrs. LaVerne's
establishment came in, lost and terrified. They helped with the work and
after that she felt better.

Presently from the cleft in the mountain on the opposite side of the
valley, figures small as ants began to trickle down toward the valley
and late in the afternoon, the first of the wounded and dying began to
cross the hot valley, some walking, some on donkey back and some in
carts. But still there was no message or any news.

As she worked, Susie and the harlots sometimes talked and sometimes were
silent but never did they speak of the mine or the disaster except to
say now and then, "Some one will be coming soon."

And Susie who had never spoken to such women before, divined that they
were human. She learned that one of them was called Belle Slocomb and
was born in Providence, Rhode Island. The other was a German girl called
Minnie Oberland who came from Cincinnati. She was a little frightened at
the prospect of her mother's returning to find the two girls in the
hotel. Probably her mother would call them evil names and send them out
of the house--that is, if she were not already dead.... But Susie on her
own felt no special horror or strangeness about the two girls. They
seemed a little loud and the color in their cheeks a little violent and
Minnie Oberland's gold teeth a little strange and unnatural, but
otherwise they were not much different from all the women she knew. They
were not at all what she had expected women like them to be; smoke did
not pour from their nostrils and they did not have tails. Minnie cried a
good deal; it seemed that she was in love with one of the men who worked
up there in the cleft of the great mountain. The one called Belle
Slocomb did not cry, although her eyes at times seemed to glisten with
an unnatural brightness. She said she had been in love once and that was
enough and that she was finished with everything of that sort.

Then at the hour when the mountain, falling into the shadow cast by the
setting sun seemed to sink down into a haze of blue shadow, Susie heard,
during one of the silences that fell upon them, the sound of footsteps
on the porch--a heavy man's foot-step which in a moment she recognized.
It was Major Parkington. It was odd that her heart should tell her who
it was before his own big figure appeared in the doorway.

He had his arm in a sling and his wavy black hair was clotted with blood
and his handsome face was streaked with dust. At sight of him one of the
harlots--Belle Slocomb--said, "Just what happened, Gus?" She seemed,
Susie thought, to know him very well.

He sat down heavily on the sofa as if he no longer had the strength to
walk or to stand and the two harlots bent over him. Susie stood very
still watching him. She wanted to do what the harlots had done. She
wanted to touch him, to push the curly black hair back from his eyes;
but it was as if she were paralyzed and could not move. He looked at her
and when his blue eyes met hers she knew that her father and mother were
dead.

He said to the harlots, "Go away, girls. I want to speak to Susie
alone."

As if they understood what had happened, Belle said, "All right, Gus."
Then she looked at Susie and crossed the room and putting her arms about
her, kissed her. She didn't say anything, but turning away she put her
arm about the shoulder of the German girl from Cincinnati and led her
out of the room.

Then the Major looked again at Susie and Susie said, "Both?"

"Both."

Susie did not cry. No tears would come now, perhaps because she had
known somehow from the moment of the explosion what he was telling her
now. She had had moments like that before, moments of curious
clairvoyance, and she was to have many more of them again and again at
odd moments of crisis in her life.

She felt suddenly faint and would have fallen but for the Major's arm
which slipped quickly around her small waist. It was a strong arm; they
said in Leaping Rock that he was stronger than any of the miners.

                 *        *        *        *        *

When she opened her eyes she was lying on the sofa. The Major was
sitting beside her and the two harlots, their faces soft now with
sympathy, were near, the one holding a basin of water and the other an
empty brandy glass.

The blonde one asked, "Are you all right now, honey?"

"I'm all right," Susie managed to say.

Then the Major said again, "Go away, girls. If I want you I'll call you.
You might help downstairs, there'll be a lot of work to do down there."

They went away and when the door closed, the Major took her hand and
said, "I'm going to take care of you now. You're going away with me,
back to New York."

She didn't answer him but only lay with her eyes closed, pressing the
palms of her hands against the eyeballs and trying to understand what
had happened to her and what was to come next.

When she did not answer, he said again, "That's right, isn't it? You're
going to let me take care of you?"

She made a great effort to pull herself back out of the fog which she
felt gathering about her. She made a great effort to remember the good
manners her mother had taught her and give him a polite answer.

"I'll take care of everything," he said, "You won't need to worry about
anything."

She understood that he was trying to be kind, but also it seemed to her
odd that he should be in such haste to settle everything. In spite of
the harsh realities of Leaping Rock, there was about her a kind of
innocence which remained with her to the end of her life, even at the
Christmas dinner when she watched granddaughter Madeleine and the
cowboy, knowing perfectly well what lay at the bottom of the
relationship between them. As an old woman although there was no
knowledge beyond her, she still kept the same purifying innocence of
spirit.

Now without looking up at him she asked, "Do you mean ... will I marry
you?" And she heard him say, "Yes ... why, yes ... of course," followed
by a cough as if he were astonished and embarrassed.

For a second, even in the midst of shock and sorrow, she found herself
thinking: That would mean I could escape. Now Ma and Pa are dead there
is nothing to keep me in Leaping Rock. I could see the world ... I could
do everything.... All the things she had dreamed of as she peeled
potatoes and washed dishes looking out across the hot valley at the
great pink and purple mountain. She had seen herself glittering with
diamonds descending a great stairway. She had seen herself driving out
in a carriage with wonderful black horses and a coachman and footman ...
sitting at the head of a table where there were ambassadors and
millionaires ... speaking French, buying her clothes in Paris ... going
to London and Washington.

In a flashing, glittering second all the silly dreams darted, like
fireflies, through her brain.

He was patting her hand gently now and the gesture irritated her. It was
as if she were a pet dog he was consoling. Even in the heat she was
aware of warmth in his hand. She said, "I don't know. Don't ask me now."
And then the tears came flooding into her eyes so that she could not
speak.

He stayed there with her until at last the sobbing ceased and, relaxed,
she fell asleep. Then he went out and called the two harlots and told
them to let her lie there until she wakened and go down to the kitchen
and see that the supper was prepared for the boarders who had not been
killed or injured in the disaster. Himself, he washed up and returned to
the mine.




                                  III


There were times when Mrs. Parkington grew bored and moments when she
grew a little weary of the sloppy winter weather in New York. She was
fastidious and hated slush and liquid soot under foot. But she preferred
New York even in the depths of winter to going off to Florida or
California. In the old days she occasionally went to Paris or London in
winter, out of season. She liked cities out of season because they had
for her an air of reality, not being overrun by strangers who did not
belong there, who did not have jobs and roots and families. The Major
had loved resorts, possibly because he was a gambler, and in the last
years of his life she had had plenty of experience with
resorts--surrounded always by what the Duchess called "international
white trash." She had loved the Pyrenees and the blue Mediterranean and
the damp rich fertility of the Norman countryside beyond the channel
coast, but circumstances had never permitted her to develop any contact
with them. She was always, wherever she went, Mrs. Parkington or Madame
Parkington or Signora Parkington, the wife of the incredibly rich and
handsome old Major Parkington who had come in on his yacht and was
staying at the Splendide or the Carlton or the Hermitage, a robust old
gentleman who ordered only the best food and champagne and rooms and
lost fortunes at roulette and _chemin de fer_. Now and then she had
managed to establish incognito some sort of contact with the people who
lived in or near the great resorts--the small shopkeepers, the market
gardeners, the farmers--but always very quickly they discovered her
identity and then everything changed and neither the small people nor
herself any longer had any reality. It was as if the money, all the
great Parkington fortune, exerted a kind of evil enchantment, forcing
her always back into the society of people who had at first amused her
but whom she had come after a time to detest as frivolous and stupid and
above all boring in their monotony. The Major, in his insensibility, had
never seemed to be annoyed by them. He had gone on and on drinking and
gambling and eating, carrying on business by cablegram, until the day at
Cannes when he fell down dead as a turnip under extremely peculiar
circumstances and set her free to live as she pleased. From that day on
she avoided resorts and saw only the people for whom she felt affection
or whose brains or talent she held in respect. It was a rule which she
broke only once a year when she entertained her own family at Christmas
dinner.

And so she stayed on in New York right through the winter in her own
pleasant, luxurious house, the house which she had planned and furnished
as a comfortable nest in which to die.

On Thursday after Christmas she came down for tea early, with
impatience, because Janie was bringing her young man to call. She had
made it a special occasion, with fresh flowers and shortbread and
scones, and put on her new black dress from Bendel's and the new hat,
the one with a stiff chic bow on the side, which sat pertly and with a
youthful air on her white hair. She wanted to make a good impression
upon Janie's young man. As she stood in her dressing-room regarding
herself in the old cheval glass, she suddenly caught a glimpse of Mattie
watching her with a curious smile on her broad Swedish face. As their
eyes met, Mrs. Parkington turned and said, "What are you laughing at,
Mattie?"

Mattie's face grew slowly red, and she replied, "Nothing, madame. I was
only thinking how smart you looked and how young."

"I'll live to bury them all," said Mrs. Parkington.

That was an old joke but sometimes she half-believed in the truth of it.
As she picked up the handkerchief Mattie had put out for her, she knew
there was much more behind that smile than Mattie had confessed. Mattie
had a long memory. She was thinking of a time when her mistress had
studied herself in the mirror for a half hour at a time before going out
because she had wanted to please someone, more than she wanted anything
else in all her life. It was odd that for more than forty years Mattie
had known perfectly well that her mistress was an adulteress and had
never betrayed even the faintest sign of the knowledge.

"That, I suppose," thought Mrs. Parkington, "is what is called being a
perfect servant. But it's also being a perfect friend." But on second
thought Mattie was in theory at least a wicked woman because she had
connived at the adultery, giving silent approval and even encouraging
it.

"Would you mind, madame," Mattie was saying, "If I peeked when Miss
Janie's young man comes in?"

"No, Mattie. Take a good look. You could pretend to be doing something
in the hall and I'll introduce you."

But Mattie, it seemed, did not think this was the proper procedure. She
said, "No, madame. Not so soon. I might do it on the second or third
time he comes."

"Very well. Suit yourself, Mattie."

She moved toward the door and again heard Mattie speaking. "Miss Janie's
got to be a very pretty girl. I never thought she would be when she was
little."

"She was too fat then and straightening her teeth made a great
difference." She opened the door and then said, "I'll take the dogs with
me ... Come Bijou ... come Mignon!"

The two Pekingese leapt from the sofa and, yapping with excitement, ran
past her into the hall and down the curved stairway into the shadows of
the hall as Taylor came forward with his false guardsman's walk to
answer the bell which sounded distantly in the servant's hall.

At the top of the stairs Mrs. Parkington stopped for a moment to look at
her watch. It wasn't five yet and Janie had said her young man could not
leave his office until five. It couldn't be Janie yet.

As the door opened, the old lady leaned out over the rail in order to
get a view of the hallway. For a moment the back of Taylor obscured her
view. Then as he stood aside, she saw that the caller was the cowboy who
she thought was in Nassau with Madeleine.

She heard Taylor saying, "I'll see if Mrs. Parkington is in." And before
he could ask the cowboy to sit down, she started down the stairway,
calling out impatiently, "It's all right, Taylor. Tell Mr. Swann to come
in."

She was astonished at seeing him, but very pleased. It was to be a
pleasant late afternoon in the small sitting-room where she had had the
brief unpleasant interview with Amory on Christmas night. She and the
cowboy and Janie and her young man could shut the door and close out the
rest of the world, all the unpleasant dull people and the slush and soot
and dirt. The anticipation of pleasure made her feet light as she
descended the stairs.

The cowboy had lost none of his shy awkwardness. He came up the three
steps leading from the vestibule into the hall and then stood there
shyly, his big hands clasped as if he did not know what to do with them,
his face a little flushed, awed again by the elegance of the house. His
blue eyes turned toward her; he waited as if uncertain what to do.

She came toward him, fluttering a little, even at the age of
eighty-four. She was aware of this and a trifle ashamed that any man
should still rouse in her heart a desire to please and attract. Yet she
experienced too a flutter of pleasure. This man, so out of place here in
the big hall, had a hard core of masculinity. It was like steel, unlike
anything she had encountered in many years. It was easy to see why
Madeleine had made a fool of herself.

Her tiny blue-veined be-diamonded hand disappeared in his. A sudden
smile broke out on his face--"broke out" she thought was exactly right,
like the sun coming out from behind a cloud.

She said, "This is good luck. Where is Madeleine?"

He said, a little sheepishly, "She is still at the dressmaker's. I
didn't like it much there."

"Come along in here," she said, leading him by the hand into the small
sitting room.

The curtains were drawn and in the yellow marble fireplace there was a
small wood fire. Beside it Taylor had placed the great Sheffield tray
with all the heavy silver. As she rang a bell and then said, "Sit down
here," one of the dogs leapt into her lap as she sat down and the other,
the black one, curled on the rug with its nose against the fender, just
below the Dresden china shepherdess.

Taylor appeared in the doorway and she said to the cowboy, "Would you
like tea?"

He said, "Yes, ma'am," but shyly without enthusiasm, and she asked
"Perhaps you'd prefer whisky."

His face brightened, "Yes, ma'am. Bourbon, if you have it ... straight,
with water on the side."

"Have we any Bourbon, Taylor?"

"Yes, madame."

"And tea for me."

She divined that Madeleine had not been allowing him Bourbon. Madeleine
probably thought it a vulgar drink.

When Taylor had gone, she said, "I didn't know you were still in town. I
thought you'd gone to Nassau."

"No. Madeleine's clothes weren't ready." The grin broadened on his face.
It was not exactly a handsome face, she thought, watching it slyly. It
was a simple face--with a wide mouth, a straight nose, blue eyes
surrounded by the tiny wrinkles which come of living always out of
doors. The eyebrows were a little too heavy, and the hair a little too
slicked. She guessed that he was ashamed of the natural wave for which
most of the women she knew would give a couple of years of their lives.

He took out a gold and platinum cigarette case and asked, "May I smoke,
ma'am?"

(The cigarette case would, of course, be a gift from Madeleine. He
handled it with awe as if he were afraid of it.)

"Of course."

She fussed with the tea things while he lighted a cigarette, wanting to
fill in the silence and make him feel at ease. She was aware that there
was no barrier between him and her; he was simple and she had learned
long ago that simplicity and directness were a great power and vastly
important to the richness of life. It was "things" which got between
them--this room, with its marble fireplace and the heavy silver and the
naked Boucher drawings and the luxurious little dogs. Except that she
had chosen all of them, they had very little to do with her. She would
not care very much if they all vanished overnight.

"Are you enjoying New York?"

"Yes. It's quite a place for sight-seeing."

"Will you be sorry to leave?"

"No. It's all right, but it's not my kind of thing. A lot of the time I
don't know what to do with myself." He grinned, "and I don't get enough
sleep here."

She was not getting very far. There were so many things she wanted to
know--how he had met Madeleine, how they had ever come close enough even
to discuss marriage, which one had done the wooing, what he really
thought of her granddaughter, how on earth he had ever come to marry
her. But she knew that this afternoon at least, she would discover the
answer to none of these things. This was a simple man and he had a
simple code of decency and honor. It would take a long time for her to
break down these barriers. The sight of him took her back a long way
into the past, to Leaping Rock and the shadows of the great mountain.
There she had once known men like this. In all the years in between she
had met only one or two like him. The sort of life she had led had not
brought men of this sort into the vortex of her existence. She regretted
it now, but there was nothing to be done about it.

Suddenly she said, "Do you have a ranch of your own?"

"Yes, ma'am. Not a very big one. Only ten thousand acres but it's good
grazing ground. It'll take care of a thousand head of Herefords in a
good season. I'm hoping to spread out a bit."

She thought, "Maybe he married Madeleine for money." But almost at once
dismissed the idea. A man with a face like this wouldn't marry for
money. You could tell by people's faces ... so much ... everything. To
understand people's faces required years of experience and a fine
sensitive instinct. She had a sudden idiotic impulse to say, "I'll buy
you another hundred thousand acres, two hundred thousand acres, a
million--whatever you want. I'll make it a wedding gift." But
immediately she knew this was silly and that he would not accept. He
would be frightened or think her mildly insane.

"How old are you?" she asked abruptly.

"Thirty-four."

(Then he was five years younger than Madeleine.)

"There's plenty of time to spread out. Does Madeleine like it out
there?"

"Yes. For a while she's crazy about it but after a little she seems to
get kind of bored."

"That's in her blood ... both things," said Mrs. Parkington. And after a
moment she added, "That's like her grandfather--Major Parkington."

Then Taylor came in followed by the footman with the tea and sandwiches
and the Bourbon and at the same time the doorbell sounded and Mrs.
Parkington, bending over the tea tray, carefully, so as not to disturb
the Pekingese, said, "That's probably Miss Janie and her young man.
Bring them right in here, Taylor."

But it wasn't Janie. When the door opened, the Duchess came in. She was
dressed badly again, Mrs. Parkington thought, in a violet walking suit
trimmed with sable and a turban of mink which made her bored, weary,
sallow face look rather like that of an impotent pasha.

She said, "Hello, Mother." And then as her nearsighted eyes discovered
another figure in the room, she said, "Oh, I thought you were alone."

The cowboy stood up, uncertain as to whether or not to shake hands. The
Duchess peered at him and then said, "Oh, it's you ... Madeleine's
husband," as if he weren't there at all, and then as if moved by an
afterthought, "Glad to see you."

She sat down and said, "Could I have some of the Bourbon?"

"Of course," said Mrs. Parkington. She had long ago given up trying to
persuade Alice to drink less. She rang the bell and asked "How is your
rheumatism?"

"Neither better nor worse," said the Duchess. "Sometimes I think it's
neuralgia ... sometimes acidity."

"I think it's acidity," said Mrs. Parkington, firmly and with
significance.

The Duchess took out a cigarette and lighted it. She did it languidly as
she did everything, as if long ago she had lost all interest in whatever
she did and was only marking time until with utter indifference, she
died. Mrs. Parkington saw that the clear blue eyes of Al Swann were
watching her daughter and it occurred to her that he must find the whole
assortment of his wife's relatives odd in the extreme.

Taylor arrived with another glass and the Duchess took her Bourbon
straight, like Al, and Mrs. Parkington, with an odd desire to chuckle,
saw that the cowboy watched the performance with respect. Then Alice
said, "If you're alone for dinner, Mother, I thought I might stay."

Mrs. Parkington did not want this. All the time in her heart she was
hoping that Janie and her young man might not have an engagement and
could be lured into staying for dinner or perhaps into going to the
theater ... that is, if the young man was really what Janie said he was.
She wanted young people tonight, not someone tired like Alice to feed
off her vitality. She pulled herself together and said, "If you have
nothing better to do, stay by all means."

A sudden gleam came into her daughter's eye, a curious gleam of life as
if an oyster had suddenly become animated. Alice said, "There is
something important to discuss. I'd like to talk with you alone."

"Janie is coming," said Mrs. Parkington quickly, "She's bringing her
young man. They may stay to dinner."

The gleam in the eye of the Duchess seemed to grow a little brighter.
"That's luck. I've wanted to meet him. Janie never said anything about
him to me. I only heard in a roundabout way."

Her voice trailed away drearily and Mrs. Parkington thought, "She must
not begin to whine. It's better that she drinks than to go about
complaining all the while like Helen." And quickly she said, "Janie
hasn't told anyone but me."

The Duchess rose quietly and with a curious dignity that was almost like
a burlesque of dignity, walked three or four steps to the decanter which
contained the Bourbon. Quietly, ignoring the eyes of Mrs. Parkington and
Al Swann, she poured herself another measure of whisky.

Mrs. Parkington thought, "Now she is going to spoil everything. I won't
get a chance to get any nearer to Al and it's going to be difficult with
Janie's young man."

She could not ask Alice not to take another drink. A kind of pride
prevented her. She never had discussed the subject of drinking with
Alice. Somehow she had never been able to do it. It was weak of her, she
knew, but she was aware that to break someone of the habit of drinking,
you had to offer him something. Alice drank out of despair; at
sixty-five there was nothing which could be offered her to compensate
for the solace of alcohol ... nothing at all.

She was sitting down again, with the same unsteady travesty of dignity,
as if she were balancing a coronet on the top of her head. Mrs.
Parkington thought: With a train she would be like Beatrice Lillie doing
a duchess at the coronation. But behind this reflection, there was a
pang, for Mrs. Parkington suddenly remembered Alice, sitting there in
the absurd violet walking costume, as she had been as a little girl,
before anything had happened to her.

Quickly, abruptly, she said, "Mr. Swann ... Al, I mean ... was born in
Leaping Rock, where I was born." And she saw that for a moment the name
"Leaping Rock" meant nothing to her daughter. It lay too far back,
before she was born, in a world of which she knew nothing at all save
the stories her mother had told her as a child. And now Alice was
sixty-five and between her and these stories there was a veil, a thick
veil with a pattern confused and ugly, which obscured much.

"Oh, yes," she said and smiled the ordered practiced inane smile of one
pretending interest from an eminence shrouded in fog. And Mrs.
Parkington thought, "It's awful now. Her dropping in has spoiled
everything."

Then the bell sounded again and she said, aware that Al was uneasy.
"That's Janie, I suppose," and in her excitement she stood up, taking
the sleepy, indignant Pekingese from her lap and slipping it under her
arm. She started toward the door leading into the hallway and then
checked herself and moved toward the fireplace, standing with her back
to the gentle flame as if she had meant to warm herself. A curious smile
came over the face of the Duchess. It was difficult sometimes for Mrs.
Parkington to discover how much her daughter observed, how much of what
happened beneath the surface of things ever penetrated the haze in which
she seemed to exist. Alice was secret as a turtle, yet at times as
acutely sensitive as a gazelle.

Then something came into the room. It was as if the air had changed, as
if the light had become more brilliant. It came in the door with Janie
and her young man, and Mrs. Parkington knew at once that it was going to
be all right. Janie was right. She must keep this young man.

He was tall, possibly over six feet, and good-looking, not handsome so
much as healthy, with his dark hair and high color and blue eyes. He
moved nicely as if he felt confidence in himself, not at all as if he
were shy at meeting a formidable old lady who was very nearly legendary.
Yet there was nothing arrogant or conceited or brazen in his manner.
Mrs. Parkington thought: Oh, blessed young man who was born simple and
direct. He must have been born so for he could not have learned the
magic secret in so few years.

He was happy, it was clear, and Janie was happy. It was the happiness
that came of being with each other. It was as simple as that.

Janie brought him straight over to her and as her great-granddaughter
came nearer to her, Mrs. Parkington felt warmth stealing over her old
body. Janie's face was flushed, her eyes brilliant.

She said, "This is Ned, Great-Grandmama. Ned Talbot."

He said quite simply, "I'm so glad to meet you, Mrs. Parkington."

He took her hand and she said, "I wanted to meet you too." Then she
said, "This is my daughter, Mrs. Sanderson, and Mr. Swann ... Al Swann
who married my granddaughter Madeleine." She smiled, "There are a lot of
us--quite a lot. Sometimes it seems very complicated."

The boy had nice manners. He shook hands with both the Duchess and Al
and the Duchess took out a _lorgnon_ to reinforce her weak eyes. She
looked at him with frank concentration for a long time as if making a
study of a wax figure at Madame Tussaud's.

The conversation was not good. It could not have been because the
mixture of the people in the room was too preposterous. Al and his
ranch, the Duchess with her dreary manner of splendor, and the two young
people, so obviously in love. It was talk about the weather, about
theaters, about books, about Washington, about everything in general and
nothing in particular. Mrs. Parkington did not trouble to give it much
of her attention, only enough to keep it going. She was watching the
boy, discovering many things which experience had taught her could be
discovered.

She noticed with pleasure the line of his square jaw. Janie, who had her
share of the family instability, would have need of the firmness it
indicated. She liked the full, rather sensual mouth and the large and
beautiful hands. Janie was young and warm--the whole family had been
like that, even the Duchess, long ago--and she would need a lover as
well as a husband to bring her happiness. Big men should not have small
tight mouths and small hands. That was Amory's trouble; that was one of
the things which made his wife's mouth turn down so bitterly at the
corners.

And she liked the large vigorous ears with their well-defined lobes and
the line from the chin which was clear and straight, and the rather
large feet and the square set of the shoulders. At fifty he would be
heavier but never fat; there was too much energy in him, too much life
in the eyes and the way the lips curled at the corners. He had humor
too. There were fine lines about the eyes, not the deep creases that
fringed the cowboy's eyes, but lines which came of good humor and
health. Al was simple and direct; this boy was different. He was not
simple, although he understood somehow the power of simplicity. He was
complex--complicated. At times he would be tortured by his own variety
of mood and intelligence. He might even be unfaithful to Janie, but he
would, Mrs. Parkington thought, never allow her to discover it, and he
would never be carried into disaster by the sweep of his own emotions.

Suddenly Mrs. Parkington laughed quietly, so quietly that the others did
not even notice it. She had thought, "I am looking him over as if he
were a horse I was buying for Janie, as if I were telling his fortune."

He was talking now and she liked the sound of his voice. He was arguing
with the Duchess some point of British politics, bewildering her heavy
mind by the quickness of his own. He talked very rapidly as if his
tongue could not keep pace with his mind.

When he had finished and made his point, the Duchess agreed, won over
more by his masculinity and vitality and charm than by his arguments
which could scarcely make much impression on her tired befogged mind.
She was displaying an extraordinary interest in him, looking at him
directly now and then through the _lorgnon_. Once she even reached up
and set her hat straight and took out a lipstick and made up her lips.

Janie obviously was very proud of him. She had clearly wanted to show
him off. But the nice thing was that he was not showing off. His
excitement over an idea was genuine. It even moved Al, who sitting
forward a little in his chair, listening, could not have had the
faintest idea of what they were talking about.

When Ned had finished, Al looked at his watch (from Cartier, thought
Mrs. Parkington. Another gift from Madeleine) and said, "I must go.
Madeleine's waiting for me at the hotel. I'm late already."

"Madeleine doesn't like to be kept waiting," said the Duchess with a
perfectly blank expression. You did not know whether or not she spoke
with malice, implying that Madeleine always bought her husbands and
expected them to be punctual. Al looked at her sharply and Mrs.
Parkington thought the color appeared for a second in his weathered
face. She herself did not know whether or not Alice had been malicious.
She had never been able, even after sixty-five years, to discover when
Alice was being malicious and when she was simply being stupid and
tactless. Perhaps it had something to do with the myopia of her
hyperthyroid eyes. Nearsighted people very often had a curious blank
expression which came of the effort to focus objects which were
perpetually hazy.

Shyly, Al said good night and went out. Mrs. Parkington went with him as
far as the hall, for she wanted to ask him to come back another time
when they could have a good talk about Nevada. If she asked him in front
of the others, she knew it would mean nothing and he might not return.

In the doorway, she asked him to come back.

"I'd like to, ma'am," he said.

"Telephone me and I'll fix it so that we can be alone and have a good
talk."

"Yes. I'd like that."

He started to move away but she laid her hand on his arm. Suddenly she
found herself saying, "Is it all right with Madeleine?"

For a second he was silent. Then the tanned face turned a mahogany red
and the blue eyes looked past her. "Yes, Mrs. Parkington. It's all
right."

She patted his arm and said, "I'm glad." And he went away quickly as she
thought, "So, it's like that!"

What a fool Madeleine was! But that was not her fault. It was a tragedy.
Otherwise, Madeleine was the best of the family, save for Janie. She was
big, healthy, pleasant and good-natured, but this thing was a disease.

As she re-entered the room, closing the door behind her, a sigh rose
from deep inside her, taking utter possession of the trim, straight old
body.

Consciously she thrust back the sigh and brightened herself in time to
hear Alice saying, "I must say our new relative doesn't have much to say
for himself."

"He hadn't much chance," said Mrs. Parkington.

But Alice had not finished. She said, "He does seem to be bearing up
better than the others. Cowboys must have something."

Then suddenly, sharply, Mrs. Parkington made use of her dignity. It was
a terrifying dignity which could chill and awe even her own descendants.
It was as if she turned suddenly to ice, as if she became a sword of
judgment, tempered with contempt.

She simply said, "Alice! That's enough of that!"

The dignity had invested her partly because she had grown fond of Al and
did not mean to have him treated as a fool, and partly because the
things implied by her daughter's remark had nothing to do with the two
young people here in the room with them. Alice had been insensitive and
vulgar, smirching somehow the brightness which Janie and Ned had brought
into the room.

Purposely the old woman crossed near to the Duchess, saying fiercely as
she passed, "Sometimes you are a bloody fool!" But Alice, cowering
spiritually, merely stared at her in astonishment, wondering that her
mother, who had no scruples at discussing anything on earth, should
suddenly have turned prude.

But already her mother was saying brightly, too brightly, too eagerly,
"Could you and Ned have dinner with me?" And before they could answer
she said, "We're having pheasant your great-uncle Henry sent down from
Rhinebeck."

Janie came over quickly and put her arm about great-grandmother. "We
can't, darling. We're dining with Ned's sister. She's here from South
Bend for two days with her husband."

Something in Janie's voice took away the chill of disappointment. Mrs.
Parkington thought, "Janie knows. She knows how much I want them." That
was what Janie had that none of her other descendants had ever had save
her son Herbert and Herbert was dead, these fifty years, so long ago
that lately the memory of him had come to seem nearer to her than the
physical reality of the people about her. Janie _knew_, with that
curious extra sense which she herself had.

She wanted suddenly to say, "Bring them too." But she did not, partly
because she would have seemed too eager and partly out of worldly
experience. The sister and her husband might turn out to be frightful
and spoil everything.

"It's all right, my dear. Another time."

Ned said, "I'm very sorry, Mrs. Parkington. I should have liked staying.
I'd put them off but I want Janie to meet my sister and it's the only
time we could meet."

Then Janie kissed her and whispered, "Come into the hall, Granny. I want
to ask you something."

So Mrs. Parkington went into the hall with them and Janie said to her
young man, "Go along, get your hat, Ned. I want to speak to Granny."

She stood watching him go away and then she turned to Mrs. Parkington
and said, "Isn't he nice, darling? Isn't he what you would like?"

Mrs. Parkington laughed, "It's a little late for that. But he is what I
would have liked at your age." Then she kissed Janie and said, "Run
along now."

She watched them go out the door and as she turned to re-enter the small
sitting-room she felt suddenly tired and depressed and old. The feeling
was like a cloud of mist enveloping her, dimming everything--the lights,
the outlines of the familiar furniture, the figure of the Duchess in the
absurd violet costume.

"I am old," she thought, "After all I am old." But at the same time she
was aware that the weariness was born not so much of her body as of the
weight of all that happened to her since she had gone out joyously to
meet what life held for her. Oddly the weariness seemed to center about
the figure of the Duchess. The violet walking costume lay at the very
midst of the cloud.

With a great effort of will she straightened her body and smiled at
Alice.

"He's a nice boy," she said, "And I should think, a clever one."

"Helen and Amory are not very pleased." She chuckled wickedly, "South
Bend! They probably think South Bend is full of Indians and cowboys."

Mrs. Parkington was about to say, "If ever a family needed new blood,
ours does." But Alice said it for her. So she rang for Taylor to clear
away and said, "At least we're trying. Janie and her young man,
Madeleine and her cowboy." Then she noticed the gleam again in the
olive-colored eyes of the Duchess, and was certain now that her daughter
had some tremendous piece of news which would make no one but herself
happy.

Taylor came and Mrs. Parkington said, "Mrs. Sanderson and I will dine
here by the fire." It would be better that way. She could not dine at
the great table alone with Alice. Then she added, "Mrs. Sanderson would
probably like a cocktail. What do you want, Alice?"

"A martini."

Taylor's face betrayed no emotion whatever. "Very good. Shall I bring it
when I bring your champagne?"

"Yes. We'll be ready in half an hour. I'm going to freshen up."

She had hoped to escape Alice for a little while, but there was no
escape. Alice rose and said, "I'll come up with you." And Mrs.
Parkington resigned herself out of weariness.

In the boudoir abovestairs Alice lost herself among the objects--the
chairs, photographs, sofas--that once had been a part of the monstrous
house on Fifth Avenue. While Mrs. Parkington primped, thinking how gray
her face looked, her daughter went about looking at the faded
photographs, making comments, remembering things long forgotten. For a
long time she held the photographs of her dead brothers, the two
brothers who had always been so much more beautiful and brilliant than
herself, peering at them in a nearsighted way, as if seeking to
recapture something which perhaps was not happiness but something better
than the grayness of her present existence.

Suddenly she turned and said, "How odd of Uncle Henry to send you
pheasants. Do you ever hear from him?"

"He drops in now and then and sometimes sends eggs or capons or
pheasants or something."

"I haven't seen him for years. What is he like now?"

"About the same--older ... but not much changed ..." she smiled, "Still
a ripsnorter."

Then the conversation died away, leaving the shadow of Uncle Henry, the
Major's younger brother, there in the room with them--Uncle Henry, the
family black sheep whom they all looked upon as mad because he did what
he pleased in life, married the daughter of one of his farm tenants and
lived like a farm laborer. He hadn't been too mad, because he was a very
rich man and had won several very profitable lawsuits against railroad
companies and the estate of his own brother, the Major.

Presently Mrs. Parkington finished with her primping and said, "We'd
better go down. Pheasant should not sit around waiting."

                 *        *        *        *        *

The revelation came about the middle of dinner when they were just
finishing Uncle Henry's pheasant. Mrs. Parkington, to raise her spirits,
had had two half-pints of champagne and the Duchess had had three
martinis followed by a half-pint of Burgundy with the bird. But the wine
had not raised Mrs. Parkington's spirits.

As Taylor took away the pheasant, the Duchess, the gleam returning to
her eyes, said, "I heard something alarming about Amory last night."

Mrs. Parkington looked at her and said, "What? I knew there was
something on your mind."

"He's in trouble."

"What about?"

"Money. There's something shady about it. I must say I was
surprised--about Amory of all people."

Mrs. Parkington did not answer. The memory of the conversation with
Amory concerning a loan returned to her. At the same time she thought:
How stupid Alice is to say "Amory of all people." Why Amory was just the
sort ... a vestryman of St. Bart's, a pompous ass and a stupid man
cursed with the smugness which believes itself all-knowing.

"For heaven's sake," she asked, "What is it?"

But the Duchess took her time, seeming to relish the story. "It seems,"
she said, "that he has lost a great deal of money in the last ten
years."

"I know that," said Mrs. Parkington.

"And lately he's been trying to gamble and get it back."

"Yes."

"But not with his own money ... with the money and securities of other
people ... some of it belonging to his firm and some to his clients."

Mrs. Parkington frowned. She didn't want to hear the story tonight. She
was too weary and depressed. But she had to hear, knowing that in some
strange way she was looked upon as the head of the family and that in
the end it would all come back upon her. There was never any escape.
They all depended on her, even Amory. And in this case there was no
stopping Alice.

Mrs. Parkington asked, "Where did you hear this?"

"Judge Everett told me. He came in for tea yesterday."

"I never thought of Judge Everett as a gossip."

"He didn't tell it as gossip. He thought perhaps you ought to know about
it."

Tartly Mrs. Parkington asked, "Why didn't he come to me directly?"

"He said he didn't because he was not sure about details." Alice smiled
suddenly. "And he was afraid to tell you without having the facts at
hand. He was afraid that you'd tell him he was a fool."

"It may be that he is. It all sounds like gossip to me." But she knew it
wasn't gossip. She sincerely wished it was. "In any case I wouldn't
repeat it to anyone."

"Of course not, Mother. It isn't the sort of thing to go about telling
about your niece's husband." When Mrs. Parkington, lost in thought, said
nothing, her daughter asked, "What are you going to do about it?"

"Nothing! There's nothing I can do. It's up to Amory to get himself out
of this. In any case, there may be nothing in it."

Alice was smiling now, a blank, slightly tipsy smile. She was pleased
because she hated Amory and was none too fond of his wife with the
drooping mouth. Mrs. Parkington wasn't thinking of either of them. She
was thinking of their daughter, Janie, and the radiance she had taken
with her out of the house. Nothing must happen to spoil Janie's
happiness. She kept telling herself that such things did not happen to
people like Amory--why, Amory had always been a monument of
respectability--St. Bart School, Harvard, the best clubs, vestryman.
Things like that didn't happen to people like Amory. But a quiet voice
kept saying, "But they do happen. They've happened to people you've
known well. A crook is a crook and times have changed. Big crooks get
caught nowadays. They don't get away with it as they used to."

She saw that Alice would not mind the notoriety; she could no longer be
touched by it. Once perhaps, long ago, the pictures in the papers, the
raucous headlines had shocked and hurt her, but for a long time, perhaps
twenty years, these things had no longer had any power to astonish or
hurt her. There had been too many family headlines since the day
Augustus Parkington brought back to New York a bride from Leaping Rock,
Nevada. Only on extraordinary occasions did the Duchess ever emerge from
the misty world in which she existed to read a newspaper. She would
certainly not mind the notoriety. She would be unaware of it.

Then as she sat there, thinking, she became aware that the daughter
opposite her had collapsed. Quite suddenly she seemed to have become
weary and shattered. The eyes were closed, the head fallen a little on
one side. For a second Mrs. Parkington thought: She is dead! For she had
all the appearance of a dead person.

"Alice!" she said, and then in a stronger voice, "Alice! Alice!"

Then the tired head stirred, the dull eyes opened and peered at her.
"Are you ill?"

"No, but I think I'll go home if you'll call a taxi."

When the taxi came, Taylor and Mrs. Parkington helped her to the door
and Mrs. Parkington said, "I think you'd better go with her, Taylor."

The Duchess made a great effort at pulling herself together and said,
"He doesn't need to come. I'm all right."

"Don't be a fool!" said Mrs. Parkington.

Taylor fetched his hat and supported her to the taxi while Mrs.
Parkington stood in the doorway watching. It had begun to snow again and
the flakes came down thinly, melting as they struck the sidewalk. When
the taxi drove off Mrs. Parkington closed the door and, followed by the
two Pekingese, climbed the three shallow steps, and crossed the hall to
the lift.

Upstairs she found Mattie waiting for her with the nightgown and
peignoir laid out, her face expressionless. She was like Taylor, a good
servant, a kind friend. She gave no sign of knowing that anything
unusual had gone on belowstairs.

Mrs. Parkington said, "You can go to bed Mattie. I'll read for a little
while."

"Very good, madame."

She helped the old lady out of her clothes and then went away and Mrs.
Parkington settled herself on the chaise longue with a French novel. It
was an old novel by "Gyp" and she hoped that the memories it raised
would dissipate the sense of depression and worry which had taken
possession of her.

Old books, familiar scents, stray pieces of music took her, more and
more frequently, into the remote past. For some time now she had fallen
into the habit of tricking herself into slipping away from the present.
It was a process of anesthesia, and made sleep possible on the nights
when her mind, alive, awake and glittering, flitted like a firefly from
one anxiety to another.

But the old novel by "Gyp" failed as a means of escape. Suddenly she
could not even keep her mind on it. She would read a whole page without
being aware of what she was reading because the story the Duchess had
told her kept returning, gnawing like a weasel at her consciousness. She
kept thinking: The fool! Why did he do it? Whatever happened, it must be
hushed up. Alone now she no longer pretended to doubt the truth of the
rumor.

And suddenly she was grateful for one of the few times in her life that
she was a very rich woman. If this were true about Amory--if he really
was in trouble--she could pay off what he had stolen, she could even
give him money to bribe his way out of everything. She hated bribery as
she hated all corruption, all dishonesty, but she would stoop to it now,
at eighty-four, if there was no other way, but not for Amory's sake, not
to save Amory. For him she had little sympathy. If there must be
dishonesty, if she had to accept it, she preferred the cynical, gangster
dishonesty of her dead husband. In that, at least, there had been a kind
of evil grandeur and romance. She hated Amory's hypocrisy. No, she would
not lift a finger to help Amory himself, but there was Janie to think of
and Janie's young man and what lay before them. All that money could be
of use, if only to buy a clear way to happiness and decency for Janie.
She would use it somehow to buy an escape for Janie from the blight
which had touched the rest of the family.

But Amory must come to her and ask for help. She would not offer it, not
to Amory who behaved when he married her granddaughter Helen as if he
were conferring an honor upon the Parkington family. Amory must come on
his knees to ask her.

In the old woman there had never been any strong instinct for vengeance.
The humiliation of Amory would only be a payment, a kind of fine for the
humbuggery of himself and all his background of privilege and snobbery.

The novel by "Gyp" slipped forgotten from her lap, startling Mignon, the
Pekingese, into an outburst of yapping. When she had quieted the dog she
rose and turning out the light went into her bedroom, hoping that she
would be able to sleep. But sleep did not come. In the darkness she lay
watching the snow falling thicker and thicker through the windows of
light made by the street lamp. And presently the sight of the softly
falling snow seemed to hypnotize her and after a time she slipped into a
strange, blurred borderland between sleep and consciousness, and the
snow seemed to be falling all about her in the room itself and through
the snowstorm she drifted back and back through world after world to a
winter night long ago and she was descending from a cab, helped by Major
Augustus Parkington, into the falling snow through which the yellow
gaslight was shining softly. A match seller came out of the snow and Gus
gave her a coin, and then with a chuckle, lifted Mrs. Parkington, his
bride, off her feet and holding her against his great barrel chest,
carried her across the sloppy sidewalk and up the steps into the
Brevoort Hotel from which the sound of music was coming.




                                   IV


It was odd, Mrs. Parkington sometimes reflected, how small were the
things which fixed themselves in the memory of the remote past. The two
images which remained visually the most alive out of all that period of
her life were the red curtains and the gold _baldaquins_ in the parlor
of the suite in the Brevoort where Gus took her, and Mademoiselle
Conti's green gloves. There was too the music of the waltz from _La
Grande Duchesse de Gerolstein_ which the little band was playing in the
dining-room as they arrived. It remained forever fixed in her mind
together with the moment she stood in the hallway while the concierge in
broken English congratulated Major Augustus Parkington on his marriage
and complimented the bride. Always for the rest of her life when she
heard Offenbach she was back again to the snowy evening when she and Gus
had arrived at the Brevoort straight from Nevada.

On that night Gus had seemed happy and excited, filled to overflowing
with that enormous vitality which made him different from other men. It
was the vitality, that great animal good health, which made her love
him, the same vitality which he did not hesitate to use without scruple,
against anyone, to gain what he wanted. When all else had fallen away,
when there were no longer any illusions, the vitality still had the
power to warm and hold her.

And now, on this snowy night, he led the way up the stairs, accompanied
by the concierge and three or four attendants. Major Parkington was rich
and important and a great spender and no amount of attention was too
much for him. It was the way Susie had hoped, during the hours she had
sat by the window looking across the great valley, it would be. There
was gas light and music and gayety and people running after her rich and
important husband.

And then the concierge stopped at a door at the far end of the hallway
and unlocking it, stood aside for her and her husband to go in. Then it
was she saw the red curtains and the gold _baldaquins_.

It was a big room with a red carpet and lots of frivolous gilt furniture
in the flamboyant style of the Second Empire and there were roses
everywhere in vases, white roses ordered by the Major, and on the table,
champagne in a silver cooler. But something about the heavy gold
_baldaquins_ and the red curtains fascinated and delighted her. They
were rich and full and expensive like something out of a fairy story,
exactly as they should have been.

Then the porters brought up the baggage and Gus tipped them, three times
as much as most people would have given, and told the concierge that he
did not wish to be disturbed until he rang.

When they had gone Gus went to the door and locked it and then smiling
at her, came across and kissed her and said, "Happy, sparrow?"

"Yes," she answered shyly.

"You _are_ a little sparrow ... all gray and soft in your funny
old-fashioned clothes, but tomorrow you will be a bird of paradise."

Then he opened the champagne while she watched him, puzzled a little and
bewildered but excited. She had never seen him like this. On the train
during the long journey he had been quiet and respectful and kind,
almost as if she were a child whom he had to protect. But now there was
something boisterous and excited in his manner. He no longer seemed much
older than herself. He was no age at all.

When he had opened the champagne he took off his coat and sat down and
drew her down on his lap and kissed her throat and then, giving her a
glass, he raised his own glass and said, "Come, my sparrow. Here's to
the future. It's ours forever. We'll conquer the whole world. We'll have
everything."

She drank the champagne and then he refilled her glass and kissed her
again on the throat, let his head rest against her breast for a long
time. And shyly her free hand stole up and her fingers, as if of their
own accord, stole through the dark vigorous curls and caressed the back
of the strong neck. His head pressed more tightly against her and she
fancied that she heard him sob. Then suddenly he looked up at her again
and the blue eyes were misty. She felt herself pressed against the great
muscles of his strong thighs and heard him say, "Oh, sparrow! I'm happy!
I was nobody and you're nobody but one day we'll be somebody."

They had another glass of champagne and for a long time he was silent,
pressing his head against her while her fingers ran through his hair.
She felt strangely excited and yet detached as if she were watching
herself and him. This was different from what had happened before. From
the moment the justice of the peace had spoken the last words of the
marriage service, he had been quiet and respectful and kind. She herself
had been frightened and shy and quiet, wondering at what had happened to
her. And now suddenly all the fear and shyness were swept away. This man
was new and different and she felt rising inside her a curious sense of
abandon and ecstasy. It was as if, voluptuously, all these things which
had held her back, which had made her nervous and tense and
unresponsive, were dissolving into a warm mist. The scent of the white
roses was very strong now. She could see the flowers, lovely half-opened
buds, against the great red curtains. From belowstairs faintly came the
sound of the music made by the little orchestra.

She thought: This is our wedding night. All that went before was nothing
... nothing at all. This is the way I meant it to be even without ever
knowing it.

And then she felt his fingers loosening one by one the tiny buttons of
her basque and she heard his deep, warm voice saying, "I love you,
sparrow. Oh, my Susie, I love you."

The champagne glass slipped out of her hand to the floor and he picked
her up and carried her into the next room. For a moment she felt that
she would faint, but the feel of his full lips on her throat brought
back that strange feeling of ecstasy which swept everything before it.
She thought, "I love him. I did not know before what love was. I know
now. I love him."

The big muscular hands were gentle with a gentleness beyond her belief.
Their touch filled her whole body with fire. She was like a blossom
opening at the warmth of the sun and he became beautiful to her in a new
way, with a profound, direct primitive beauty that was like the godlike
splendor of the great valley.

Afterward they had supper served by the matre d'htel himself--_merlan
frits_, pressed duck and Burgundy, salad and _pt de foie gras_. She
always remembered the supper, a little because it was the first lesson
he gave her in how to eat well, more because of the sense of happiness
and fulfillment.

He said, "We'll not go downstairs until tomorrow, sparrow. Not until you
can appear as a bird of paradise." He looked at her smiling, with that
frank healthy look which made him irresistible. "Anyway, it's nicer to
be alone now, isn't it?"

"It's very nice to be alone," she answered and then shyly, "I love you,
Gus. I know it now." It was the first time she had spoken the word
"love."

"Have I made you happy?" he asked with a curious air of valor and pride.

"Very happy, Gus."

Beneath the table he pressed her knee between his, "We'll go on being
happy, always."

Twice more that night he made love to her. Long afterward she understood
that he had treated her not as a wife, but as a mistress. She was
grateful to him always, even after she came to understand that for him
women, even his wife, would always be mistresses because with his great
vitality he loved women rather than any one woman.

The next day was the day of the green gloves, a day of which they seemed
as much a symbol, as the red curtains and _baldaquins_ and champagne had
been a symbol of the warm voluptuous night.

                 *        *        *        *        *

Gus held open the door and the woman came in. She came in magnificently,
walking very erect but gracefully, smiling as the light from between the
red curtains struck her ugly face. That was what Susie thought of her on
first sight, that she was ugly. She had a large mouth and a rather too
large nose with a pronounced arch at the bridge, and her eyes were set a
trifle too near to each other. She was dark and about middle height,
taller than Susie herself. It was impossible to judge her age. Her
entrance was accompanied by the rustling of much taffeta. The effect was
that of many muted violins accompanying a sonorous solo passage by the
French horn.

Then Major Parkington closed the door and said, "Susie, this is
Mademoiselle Conti." And to Mademoiselle Conti he said, "This is my
wife." He spoke with curious pride as if he were proud to present
Mademoiselle Conti to his wife and his wife to Mademoiselle Conti.

The stranger came across to shake Susie's hand and then she noticed for
the first time the green gloves. They were of poison green velvet with
long cuffs, pushed down carelessly about the wrists. Susie felt confused
and shy and very nearly tripped over the rug which lay before the gilt
commode with the marble top. The white roses had opened during the night
and their heavy fragrance filled the room to suffocation.

Mademoiselle Conti said, "It is a pleasure to meet the wife of my very
good friend Major Parkington."

She spoke formally in a deep warm voice and with an accent, slight but
strong enough to add piquancy to her speech.

Susie said that it was a pleasure too to meet Mademoiselle Conti and
Parkington said, "We are going to lunch here and after lunch
Mademoiselle Conti is going with you to Madame de Thbes to buy some
clothes. She knows all about such things."

He need not have added the final sentence for Susie had remarked almost
at once that Mademoiselle Conti knew all about clothes. Although it was
the first time Susie had ever seen an example of real _chic_, she knew
it when she saw it. It was there in the cut of the black frock, in the
way Mademoiselle Conti wore the frock and carried herself. It was there
in the tiny hat with three pert black ostrich feathers worn a little
forward on her head. It was there in the cut of the basque and the jut
of the bustle and the slight curve of the back. But most of all it was
there in the green velvet gloves.

Mademoiselle Conti was a work of art.

The art was not confined to the costume; it was in the woman's manner as
well. While Susie's husband sent for a waiter and ordered lunch
Mademoiselle Conti threw off her fur jacket, laid aside her muff and
settled down to chat with Susie.

All the morning, from the moment Gus had said he was bringing
Mademoiselle Conti to lunch, Susie had been miserable and shy, troubled
over how she was to behave and what she would find to talk about with a
strange Frenchwoman out of this glittering world of New York.

And now it was perfectly simple. Mademoiselle Conti had no airs and she
had immense vitality. It was like the vitality of a steel spring. She
took command of the conversation and saw to it that there was no awkward
pause. But she saw to it as well that there was no shyness or
awkwardness on the part of the new bride. As if it were a physical
thing, utterly under her control, she turned on warmth and friendliness.

She was interested in the long trip from the West, in the mines, in
Leaping Rock. She was full of plans for Susie's clothes, for the
theater, for a thousand things.

Then the lunch came--terrapin amontillado with artichoke and salad and
biscuit Tortoni. Susie's shyness was gone now. She was fascinated and
tongue-tied. She had expected a strange and different world but not one
like this in which Gus seemed to be a great man, knowing everything. Her
heart sang for so many reasons--because of Gus, so big and handsome and
full-blooded sitting opposite her, because of the memories of the night
before, because of Mademoiselle Conti and the way she sat so upright in
the gilt chair chattering and making Gus and herself laugh. And because
she was aware of a kind of beauty, a civilized beauty, a visual beauty,
which she had never before encountered--the beauty of ugly Mademoiselle
Conti in the black frock, with the green gloves beside her, against the
heavy red curtains with the gold _baldaquins_. She was happy in a way
she had never been before. It was as if the air were filled with music.

                 *        *        *        *        *

Madame de Thbes' establishment occupied a whole house in Sixteenth
Street just off Fifth Avenue. Madame herself was a squat Frenchwoman who
looked rather like a frog, with a hairy mole on her chin, but she went
to Paris once a year and the most fashionable women of New York--those
who lived in the great houses on Fifth Avenue, on Murray Hill, in
Washington Square, as well as those who lived apart in their own world
of Delmonico's and the French opera--bought their clothes there. On the
outside of the red brick house near the door there was a discreet plaque
which read simply _Madame de Thbes. Couturire to the Empress Eugenie._

Here Mademoiselle Conti brought Susie after the lunch at the Brevoort.
The moment the colored boy opened the door it was clear that
Mademoiselle Conti was also _someone_. Two saleswomen came forward and
greeted her and when they had been seated in the _petit salon_ reserved
for favored customers, Madame de Thbes herself came in. She and
Mademoiselle Conti greeted each other with birdlike little cries, kissed
each other and chattered in French of which Susie understood not a word.
She gathered only that Mademoiselle Conti's Christian name was Aspasie
and that Madame de Thbes was known as Hortense. She sat there, suddenly
miserable again, aware that her wool walking suit, bought in Denver, had
nothing of that quality of the green gloves, none of that quality which
even Madame de Thbes, short and dumpy in her black alpaca dress, seemed
to have.

Then the chatter was finished and Mademoiselle Conti said in English,
"This is my friend Mrs. Parkington--the Major's wife. I have brought her
to fit her out--practically everything."

"_Plaisir_," murmured Madame de Thbes, and even as she spoke, Susie was
aware that she was already being measured and fitted. The black eyes of
the dressmaker glittered and she turned to Mademoiselle Conti and said
something, quite a long speech in rapid French, which made Susie feel
that she was less human than an inanimate object undergoing the process
of appraisal.

What Madame de Thbes said, partly in words, partly in thought was
this--"She is a pretty little thing with a nice figure and she has
lovely eyes and hair and complexion. We can do a great deal with her.
She will be a fine advertisement. She will be seen about. She will go
everywhere because the Major means to go everywhere and have everything
in life."

For Madame de Thbes knew the Major and was willing to speculate on his
future. He was clever. He was rich. He was good-looking. He had paid for
the clothes of many women. He was an _arriviste_. And above all he was
ruthless.

And so Madame de Thbes and Mademoiselle Conti set to work to dress
Susie for New York.

It went on till long after the lamplighter had made his round of
Sixteenth Street in the softly falling snow. Madame de Thbes showed her
dresses, some on the backs of proud young women, some on lay figures or
simply thrown over the backs of sofas and chairs. Once when Susie leaned
over and whispered to Mademoiselle Conti "What about prices?"
Mademoiselle only shrugged her shoulders and said, "Leave that to me.
Your husband has given me carte blanche." And once when Susie suggested
that an evening frock showed too much of the bosom of the young woman
who displayed it, Mademoiselle said, "Do not trouble yourself about
that. You have a wonderful _poitrine_. A _belle poitrine_ is nothing to
be ashamed of."

It was nearly seven o'clock when Mademoiselle Conti pulled on the green
gloves to show that the business had finally come to an end. Three ball
gowns had been ordered and four frocks and two walking suits, as well as
tippets and _pelisses_ and muffs and an over-all wrap of a dark soft fur
with a hood attached. Madame de Thbes would send round a ball gown and
two frocks which Madame Parkington could wear until her own things were
ready.

And that was not all, said Mademoiselle Conti. It was only the
beginning. By the time they entered a cab to drive home, Susie felt
weary and a little bewildered, but she felt also that Mademoiselle Conti
and even Madame de Thbes were already in some mysterious fashion, old
friends. As they entered the Brevoort they met Major Parkington coming
out of the bar and he would not let Mademoiselle Conti go until they had
shared a bottle of champagne in the sitting room with the red curtains.

When she had gone he turned to Susie, kissed her, and said, "Well, my
sparrow, did you buy a lot of pretty clothes?"

"Yes. Lovely clothes."

"Tired?"

"Yes."

"The champagne will make you feel better. Come, sit down."

He took her on his knee and kissed her again and then asked, "And
Mademoiselle Conti? Do you like her?"

"Yes. Very much. She is very kind."

He laughed. "She is very clever. You listen to her and you'll be all
right and you'll have nothing to be afraid of."

She wanted to ask him who Mademoiselle Conti was and how he had come to
know her, a Frenchwoman, so well, but she was tired and she felt
suddenly shy.

He said, "She is going to teach you to speak French and a lot of other
things which are worth knowing. We are going a long way together,
sparrow--as far as it's possible to go."

There was a knock at the door and when he opened it, there was Madame de
Thbes' colored doorman with two big boxes. When the boy had been tipped
and sent away, the Major cut the strings on the boxes with a gold
penknife and took off the lid. Inside was a cape of dark fur and a pale
yellow ball gown and when they lifted them out of the boxes, they
discovered a tiny white dove, wrapped in paper.

"What is that for?" she asked.

"To wear in your hair, sparrow. That was smart of Madame de Thbes to
think of you as a dove." Then he grinned at her and said, "Now I must
see you in it. Tonight we will go down to dinner and perhaps afterward
to Delmonico's."

He drew her down again on his knee and began unfastening the tiny
buttons of her basque. Then he pressed his head against her breast and
said, "I love you very much, sparrow. I love you very much ... more than
I ever thought I would love you or anyone."

Afterward she dressed in the ball dress of pale yellow and placed the
dove in her hair, well forward on one side as Mademoiselle Conti had
worn her little hat with the three plumes. He watched her dress and
watched her regard herself in the mirror. He watched her attempt to pull
the bodice higher without success. Then as she studied herself in the
long gold-framed glass, she saw suddenly his reflection behind her. She
saw his arm rise and place about her throat a necklace of pearls, two
strands of them. When he fastened them, they lay low below her throat
almost to the line which marked the division between her breasts. She
saw his reflection smile at her and suddenly she began, tired and
bewildered, to cry.

                 *        *        *        *        *

The next day they rose late. The Major did not go to his office on lower
Broadway, but stayed with her, dawdling for a long time over breakfast.
Already she had discovered that when he wakened, it was completely, with
all his senses and intelligence alive. A little while after he wakened
he would be singing and whistling and making rather bad affectionate
jokes. Now he read his newspaper and talked to her at the same time. He
had a remarkable capacity for doing several things at once; it was as if
his mind were divided into compartments, each tightly sealed. He could
open and close one compartment after another without confusion or
leakage from one to the other. This, together with the health and
vitality of a bull, made it possible for him to do the work of three or
four men.

Now he sat across the breakfast table from her, watching her as he
talked, his eyes bright with pride and love and amusement.

He said, "Did you like it last night, sparrow?"

"It was wonderful."

She was still a little bewildered, but out of her confusion she knew,
without any doubts, that what had happened to her since they came up the
steps through the snowstorm, was wonderful beyond anything she had
dreamed of.

"It was wonderful," she repeated, "But don't make it happen too fast,
Gus. Give me a little time." And almost immediately she was aware that
the voice which spoke was not hers at all but her mother's, the voice of
her mother's common sense. The Major, she was beginning to discover,
never did anything by halves and he wanted to do everything at once. But
the spell of the evening before was still on her, as if she were still
enchanted by the French opera and the great table at Delmonico's heaped
with food and wine. The supper of the night before had been her wedding
breakfast, alone at a table with Gus, in a big restaurant filled with
people who kept coming up to the table to be introduced to her. That
would be all the wedding breakfast she would ever have. And their love
... she knew now that she was in love and it was something she had never
even imagined.

Across the table from her the Major lighted a cigar (He knew already
that she did not mind his smoking in her presence). Then he smiled at
her with that curious look in the blue eyes which seemed to envelop and
protect her, and said, "Miss Livingstone is coming to lunch with us. I
think I had better explain to you about Miss Livingstone."

He cleared his throat and seemed to reflect for a moment and said
abruptly as if it cost him a great effort, "I am a very rich man,
sparrow."

"I guessed you were rich, Gus."

"And I mean to be richer still." He paused again, looking at the tip of
his cigar. Then he said, "But wealth isn't everything. I want a lot more
than that. The world is filled with things and I guess I want
everything. Money can buy much but not everything."

She did not answer him because she was a little frightened.

"I can take care of myself. A man can do it. But I want you to have
everything too." His brow wrinkled and she thought that color came into
his face. Then he said, "This is a tough place ... New York. We'll have
to fight for what we want. I've always had to fight. I don't mind for
myself but I want to make it easy for you." He looked at her sharply,
all the softness gone out of his eyes. "Do you understand what I am
driving at?"

"Yes, Gus. I think I do."

"You'll have to help. I can't do it alone."

"I'll do anything you want, Gus." He was everything to her, everything
now.

Then he seemed to relax again. "And that brings us to Miss Livingstone."
He looked at her and smiled, the sensuous lips curling a little at the
corners in mockery. "Miss Livingstone," he said, "is what is known as a
'lady in reduced circumstances.' She is a poor relation of everyone in
New York who is what the papers call 'important.'"

Again he hesitated, as if it were difficult for him to find the words
necessary for him to continue. He turned the cigar round and round in
his strong fingers, and presently he said, "She is a dreary woman, I am
afraid, but there is a great deal she can teach you ... and me, too ...
that we will need to know."

"I don't know anything really, Gus. I was scared to death most of the
time last night."

He laughed, "You were wonderful. You were exactly right. They wanted to
see what I had brought out of the West. They found I had brought a dove
... a lovely white innocent dove. Still, there are things to learn ...
how to behave and who are the right people and a lot of other things."
Suddenly he leaned across the table and took her hands in his. "We're
going on an adventure, sparrow. We're going to have a fight. If we stick
together it will be all right because we're smart ... a lot smarter than
98 per cent of the people in this town. We're going to have everything.
Augustus Parkington and little Susie Graham are going to end up on the
top of the heap. Understand?"

"Yes. I think so." But her voice was soft and trembled a little. She did
not understand but she meant to learn.

                 *        *        *        *        *

Miss Livingstone turned out to be a dreary little woman. She dressed in
gray with a shabby bonnet and a cape with a high collar which she
appeared to use as a protection, as if she believed that when she ducked
her head so that only her eyes were showing, she had managed to conceal
the whole of herself. She was actually thirty-three, but resigned long
ago to maiden-hood, she made no effort and appeared ten years older than
her age. She had a slight lisp and lived with her father in a small flat
in Twelfth Street. Her eyes were brown and her complexion mole-flecked
and rather muddy.

As they sat at lunch that day--the Major and Susie and Miss
Livingstone--Susie felt sorry for her, why she did not know exactly,
except that she seemed frightened and ashamed of herself, especially
after she had taken off the cape and had no collar behind which to hide
herself. Apparently she knew a good many of the people having lunch in
the same dining room, but each time she bowed to one, dark color spread
over her sallow face. To Susie it seemed that all her body must be only
a mass of exposed nerve ends. It seemed to her too that the Major was
aware of Miss Livingstone's uneasiness. He paid great attention to her,
gently urging upon her one delicacy after another and asking after the
health of her father. What Susie did not know was that this was the
first time Miss Livingstone had even eaten in public in a "public
house." And she did not know until long afterward that the blush which
came over the sallow face of Miss Livingstone was occasioned not only by
the consciousness of being seen in a public house but by being seen at
the same table with the flamboyant Major Augustus Parkington.

Afterward the Major went away leaving the two women together. For a
little while after they had gone back to the parlor of the apartment,
there was an awkward sense of strain. For a moment they stood looking at
each other and Susie thought: He has hired friends for me. I must make
real friends of them. With Mademoiselle Conti, in spite of her being a
foreigner, this was easy enough. Gray, shy Miss Livingstone was
something else. Susie felt sorry for Miss Livingstone. It would be
impossible for anyone to feel sorry for Mademoiselle Conti. But at the
moment the problem was to ease the agonized shyness of Miss Livingstone
and so Susie said, "What would you like to do?" And Miss Livingstone
said quickly, "It's what you like, Mrs. Parkington. Major Parkington
suggested that we go to see some of the shops. He said there were many
things you might want."

So all that afternoon they went from shop to shop, staring and feeling
and buying. Miss Livingstone was not like Mademoiselle Conti; she did
not buy things wholesale with a lavish hand. It was Susie who had to
take the lead. The most Miss Livingstone ever said was, "I think it
would be nice for you to have these handkerchiefs" or "That is a pretty
pair of slippers. Why not buy them?" There seemed to be no check placed
upon money. Most of the shopkeepers and their assistants seemed to know
Miss Livingstone or to have heard of her. And the Major's name appeared
to be as magical as it had been at Madame de Thbes'. And at each place
Susie bought a small gift or two for Miss Livingstone, because she felt
sorry for her. Miss Livingstone's clothes all seemed shabby. The ostrich
feather on her hat had obviously been transferred from bonnet to bonnet
for a period of years. The gray of the high-collared cape was not a
fresh gray; Susie suspected that earlier it had seen service as a
durable dress.

Miss Livingstone protested at first, but the pleasure the small gifts
gave her showed itself in an unsuspected light in her eyes and the
heightened color of her face. Susie said, "Please take them. It gives me
so much pleasure."

When they came in after darkness had fallen, Miss Livingstone seemed
almost happy. Susie asked her to the apartment for a cup of tea, but
Miss Livingstone said she must return to her father who always expected
her to have tea with him. What she did not say was that her father did
not know where she had been all the afternoon, or that she had been
shopping with the wife of that vulgar adventurer Augustus Parkington.
Miss Livingstone had told him a white lie--that she was spending the
afternoon with the Ladies Guild of St. John's Church--because she needed
the money paid her as companion to Augustus Parkington's bride, not only
for herself but to make her father's life more comfortable.

So Miss Livingstone left her and went like a gray bird, quickly, softly
away into the yellow light of the street lamps. She was carrying a
little parcel containing a special French sachet Mrs. Parkington had
bought her.

When she had gone, Susie went up the stairs of the Brevoort past the
bowing servants to the parlor with the red curtains. As she moved along
the corridor she heard presently the sound of voices which as she came
nearer, became clearly those of Mademoiselle Conti and the Major. They
were arguing about something. The voice of the Major was scarcely
audible but that of Mademoiselle Conti was excited and strongly
accented. For a moment Susie waited at the door, hesitating. They both
seemed so much older than herself, possessed of so much more authority.
She heard Mademoiselle Conti say, "It was only because you wanted to
show her off. Delmonico's was the last place you should have taken her.
It was a bad beginning. A woman like me ... yes ... but not a young
bride. _On ne fait pas a._"

Then Susie was filled with shame at the idea of eavesdropping and pushed
open the door. Mademoiselle Conti was standing by the red curtains drawn
up even more erectly than usual in a wine colored dress and a bold hat
with flaunting plumes. Her black eyes were flashing. Certainly she was
not ugly now; there was something magnificent about her that sent a
faint chill of admiration down Susie's spine.

The Major's face was serious and astonished as Susie came in. He rose
from his chair and came toward her, smiling suddenly.

Whatever the reason for the quarrel had been, it faded quickly.
Champagne was ordered and in a little while Mademoiselle Conti, after
arranging for a second visit to Madame de Thbes, went away, making a
magnificent exit, standing for a moment in the doorway leaning against
the door to wish them a Happy New Year.

Her manner with the Major was quite different from that of Miss
Livingstone. It was almost as if she dominated him.

                 *        *        *        *        *

Day after day, week after week, faded one into another in a kind of
fireworks display of amusement and luxury, spending and furs and
jewelry. There were times when Susie did not know whether she was happy
or not, times in the night when she wakened in the great French bed with
the Major lying beside her, when she was frightened, by what she did not
know. The money frightened her because there seemed to be so much of it;
he never asked her to spend less but only whether there was not
something she did not have which she wanted. It seemed to her absurd and
preposterous and somehow wrong that her mother had worked so hard in the
Grand Hotel in Leaping Rock to save in a year what she spent in a few
hours. It seemed odd and wrong that poor Miss Livingstone had so little.
Neither of them was less intelligent than Gus; in some ways both were
more intelligent. But Gus seemed to have ways of turning everything to
gold, ways she did not understand or attempt to understand.

And she was frightened by the size of the city and its confusion, and
the feeling she had of having no place in it but of being whirled about
in a kind of maelstrom of luxury and gaiety. She thought: Some day
perhaps, I shall have friends and a home. I must speak to Gus about it.

But never was she quite able to bring herself to the point of speaking
to him.

And she was frightened by the slow discovery that there was a part of
her husband which she did not know at all and which he was determined
she should not know. Of what happened to him, what he was like, what he
did from the time he left in the morning until he returned in the
evening, she knew nothing at all. Twice in a newspaper she had
discovered articles which abused him and called him all names short of
that of thief; and then she noticed that that particular newspaper never
again appeared in their rooms. In other papers she frequently saw his
name, always in the part of the paper dealing with business which bored
her. She read what was written about him; it had always to do with
railroads and mines but she understood very little of what was written
about Major Augustus Parkington.

She knew only that she loved him for his strength and the curious
tenderness which accompanied it, for his vitality and his boisterous
good humor, for the charm which could melt a bronze statue if he chose
to use it. She knew, even then, that she had been fortunate in the love
circumstance had given her. But even the love and the knowledge had no
power to stifle the dread she sometimes felt in the night.

And then one day, timidly, she said, "Gus, can we have a house of our
own some day?"

"Sure, sparrow."

"And I'd like to meet people ... the kind of people who become friends."

"Sure, sparrow, you will." Then he put his arms about her and said,
"That's coming. We must do one thing at a time. I had a surprise for
you, but I'll tell you now. You're going to have a house ... a fine big
beautiful house on Thirty-fourth Street just off Fifth Avenue. It's
bought and it's being redecorated."

"But can't I help with it, Gus?"

"It's nearly finished now."

She wanted suddenly to cry but she controlled herself.

"You mustn't feel badly. It's a beautiful house. There isn't a finer
house in the whole of New York. It's so near finished now, it would be a
pity to spoil the surprise by showing it to you. You can wait, can't
you?"

"Yes. I guess so."

And the next Sunday he said abruptly while they were having breakfast,
"We're going to church this morning."

They went to St. John's Church on Fifth Avenue a little way from the
hotel and as they went in, a little while before the service began,
Susie was aware that their entrance created excitement in the
congregation. A man whom the Major seemed to know took them down the
long central aisle to a pew three rows from the front, and as they
advanced, the Major even taller and straighter than ever, a little wave
of excitement and whispering followed them.

It was a big church, famous for its music and Susie sat quietly with her
eyes straight before her, aware in every nerve that for some reason she
and the big man beside her were the center of all interest. It was as if
the glances of the people behind her bored through Madame de Thbes'
rich furs and frock. From time to time waves of color swept over her
face and her whole body seemed painfully warm.

When the service was finished they walked slowly down the aisle again,
but most of the congregation seemed already to have gone or to be
entering the carriages drawn up outside at the curb. The man who had
showed them their pew was waiting, hat in hand, and the Major introduced
him as Mr. Agnew. The rector was also there and a few other people who
bowed from a distance. Mr. Agnew was a small, thin, frail man, with
rather weaselly eyes.

"Mr. Agnew and I," explained the Major, "are in business together."

"It's a pleasure to meet you, ma'am," said Mr. Agnew. "The Major has
been telling me about you."

Then the rector interrupted saying, "I presume this is Mrs. Parkington."
He was a handsome man, too handsome, Susie thought, with a high color,
dark eyelashes and wavy black hair. He had scarcely any lips at all, and
there were deep sharp lines at the corners of the mouth. "Reverend Mr.
Burchard," the Major murmured.

He pressed Susie's hand warmly and said, "We are indeed glad to welcome
you among us. I am delighted to meet Major Parkington's wife. I hope you
will think of St. John's as your home."

He held Susie's hand a little too long and pressed it a trifle too
warmly. Something about him made her feel a little unclean. He was, she
felt, paying her special attention, not because she was a woman, young
and pretty, but for other reasons. What they were she was unable to
divine.

"Mrs. Burchard," he continued, "was saying only the other day that she
wanted to call on Major Parkington's wife."

By the time they had finished chatting the rest of the congregation,
save Mr. Agnew, had gone. He waited to accompany them through the small
churchyard to the street where, standing with his head bare, he said
good-by.

As they walked toward the hotel, Susie said, "You never told me you had
a partner called Mr. Agnew."

The Major laughed, "He's not a partner. I just helped him out of a hole
and made some money for him." He chuckled again, "He's just a squirt.
Did you like the service?"

"It was too long and the church was cold."

"It won't be much longer," said the Major, "I've just bought a new
heating plant for it. And the rector, Mr. Burchard--did you like him?"

"No."

"Why?"

"I don't know. I had a feeling about him. He's not my idea of a
minister."

Again the Major chuckled. "I think he'll go a long way. He's certain to
become a bishop. There's no stopping him. He knows what he wants and he
knows all the tricks."

                 *        *        *        *        *

Presently out of the first confusion and impact of lights and people and
clothes and rich food and money, one thing at least became clear to
Susie: it was the knowledge that her husband meant what he had said when
half mockingly, as if he were a little ashamed, he had declared that he
meant for both of them to have everything life could give him. She began
to understand why he had brought Mademoiselle Conti and Miss Livingstone
into her existence. She began to understand their value to her, and she
was grateful to the Major for the delicacy with which, in the beginning,
he had managed to introduce the two women into her daily life. He might
have said, "You are young and awkward and provincial. Before you can go
about and take a place in the life of New York you will need to learn
many things--among them, simply how to dress and behave." But he did not
do this. Quietly he had allowed her to understand and adapt herself to
them.

They became slowly not alone her only friends but very close friends
indeed. Wisely, by instinct, she kept them apart. Almost from the
beginning she understood that they were different elements which no
power on earth could bring together, and after a time, although she
sometimes spoke of Miss Livingstone to Mademoiselle Conti, she never
mentioned Mademoiselle Conti in the presence of Miss Livingstone.

Mademoiselle Conti, always with tact and brilliance, taught her many
things--how to walk erectly and with an air of dominating those about
her, how to put on a hat or a frock, how to make conversation about
nothing whatever, how to make the best feminine use of a fan or a muff,
how to destroy the slight nasal quality in her voice. There were too the
French lessons which went remarkably well and the books which
Mademoiselle Conti gave her to read, sometimes in French. She taught her
things about music and opera and took her to concerts where they
attracted much notice--the ugly, smart Frenchwoman and the small,
pretty, smartly dressed American one.

Long afterward it seemed to her that the source of most of her education
came neither from books nor precepts but from the fortunate fact that
both Mademoiselle Conti and Miss Livingstone, in their very different
ways, were inveterate gossips. People, their doings, their scandals,
their tragedies, their defeats and triumphs, were of the most passionate
interest to both women. It was true that their gossip was of worlds
widely apart and unconnected in any way, at least on the surface, but it
was also true that between them they covered very nearly the whole of
the world in which the Major had decided Susie was to move.

Mademoiselle Conti seemed to know everything which went on in the world
of artists and singers, dancers and actresses and politicians and rich
men. It was a world which fascinated Susie and she could never have
enough of Mademoiselle Conti's stories, not only of New York but of
London and Paris as well. Sometimes at Madame de Thbes' or in a
restaurant Mademoiselle Conti pointed out to her people she read about
in the papers or about whom Mademoiselle Conti had told her
stories--actresses and concubines, people like Jim Fiske and Josie
Mansfield and La Belle Otero.

Miss Livingstone knew none of these people and until she became Susie's
companion, she never frequented even the fringes of the world in which
they moved. Miss Livingstone came out of a world which did not live in
public, which was rarely seen and whose women lived a seraglio-like
existence behind closed doors in great houses which stood in Washington
Square and lower Fifth Avenue, on Murray Hill and in a cluster about the
region of Thirty-fourth Street. One great marble house, belonging to an
eccentric called Mrs. Morton Ogden, stood far north of the others in the
area above the reservoir occupied largely by squatters. Mrs. Ogden, Miss
Livingstone said, occupied a curious position in New York society. Her
father, immensely rich but a vulgar self-made man, had married a Van
Cortlandt out of a house on Washington Square, so Mrs. Morton Ogden had
the advantages both of blue blood and enormous wealth. The invitations
she sent out for her first reception in the huge marble house were
written in red ink and since then Mrs. Morton Ogden had been known in
New York society as "Bloody Mary."

Susie discovered before long that Miss Livingstone was indeed what was
called "a poor relation." It was true that she knew the women who lived
behind the closed doors of the great houses; she was related to many of
them. The drab gray costume with the high-collared cape had come down to
her from Mrs. Morton Ogden's aunt on the Van Cortlandt side. Until the
Major came along and engaged her as companion, she and her father had
existed in a three-room flat upon an allowance from a cousin.

Miss Livingstone talked a great deal about her father. He seemed to
dominate her whole existence. She had to be home at five to make his
tea. On days when he did not feel as well as usual she sent messages to
say that she must stay at home. Bit by bit, out of Miss Livingstone's
incessant small references to her invalid parent, he began to have a
reality for Susie, and as slowly he emerged, it became clear to her that
"dear Father" was a kind of monster who had destroyed, carefully and
deliberately, all possibility of Miss Livingstone's having a normal
existence.

One day Miss Livingstone confessed that she had given up her one chance
of marrying because her father needed her. She told the story navely
with tears in her pale eyes, tears partly of pity for herself and partly
for "dear Papa." The admirer had been, Susie gathered, neither young nor
very desirable, but Miss Livingstone had been fond of him. When she
could not bring herself to say that she would leave her father and marry
him, he had gone away.

Susie asked, "Have you ever heard from him, my dear?"

"Yes. Sometimes at Christmas I have a card from him. Once I saw him on
the street. He didn't see me."

She began to cry and Susie put an arm about her shoulder and found
herself crying suddenly. "Do you mind if I call you Harriette? It seems
silly to go on calling you Miss Livingstone."

For a little time Miss Livingstone could not answer for sobbing, but at
last she managed to say, "Yes ... please do ... it would make me very
happy."

And so after that they were Harriette and Susie to each other and
something seemed to happen to Miss Livingstone. With the money the Major
paid her--and he paid her richly because he too felt sorry for her in
his big-handed generous way--she began to buy herself small gewgaws and
clothes that were no longer a dusty gray or an ugly brown. Even the
Major noticed the difference. One night he asked, "What has come over
Miss Livingstone? She's beginning to look like a fast woman."

"Don't make fun of her, Gus."

"I'm not making fun of her. It must be something you've done to her." He
kissed her suddenly, one of those deep embraces which seemed to take
utter possession of her. "You're a nice girl, sparrow, and I'm beginning
to think you're a clever one."

She did not think herself clever ... it was only that she liked people.
She liked people and there was no spitefulness in her nature. What he
meant by the remark, she did not understand until much later, and the
Major, clever in his own way, did not trouble to explain. What he meant
was that she had won the fanatic loyalty not only of Miss Livingstone
but of Mademoiselle Conti as well, something infinitely more difficult
to achieve. Even then he knew, far better than Susie herself, how
profound and enduring was the devotion of Aspasie Conti.

He knew too that from Miss Livingstone Susie was learning exactly what
he had meant her to learn. Without any special effort or consciousness,
she was beginning to know very nearly everything about all those
families, the powerful families living in the big ugly houses, who were
connected with Miss Livingstone by blood and tradition. They were Miss
Livingstone's whole world and she had very few other subjects of
conversation. It was inevitable that Susie should acquire the knowledge
of them which he meant her to acquire; later on she would have need of
that knowledge. Those families were very important in the plans of Major
Parkington, the adventurer, who had determined to become respectable and
solid and even distinguished.

There were, of course, other people who touched her life, mostly men,
but never more than superficially, occasional business acquaintances
whom the Major brought to dine, one or two actors. And there were women
who bowed from across the room to the Major but did not come to their
table. Once, when he saw a hurt look in her eyes, he said, "My dear,
they do not come to the table because I am with my wife. They aren't the
sort a man introduces to his wife."

"Oh," she said.

"You understand?"

"Yes. Yes." But it did seem odd that he knew so many of these women.
Among them were many of the women Mademoiselle Conti pointed out to her
from time to time. It seemed that Mademoiselle Conti also knew most of
them.

Then one afternoon after Miss Livingstone had left her to go home to tea
with her father, Susie walked into the hotel to find the wife of
Reverend Mr. Burchard inquiring if Mrs. Parkington was in.

The wife of the rector of St. John's was a tall, rather raw-boned woman,
with a face like a Percheron mare, the daughter of a bishop. The
concierge pointed out Susie as she came in and Mrs. Burchard, with an
iron professional smile on her face, came quickly toward her, too
quickly so that Susie felt suddenly frightened as if this were a female
sheriff bearing down upon her.

"My dear Mrs. Parkington," she said, "I'm Mrs. Burchard, the rector's
wife."

Susie asked her to the parlor of the suite for a cup of tea, and
upstairs in the room with the scarlet curtains, they sat opposite each
other and chatted. "Chatted" was the proper word, Susie thought
afterward, for there was a brittle insincerity about everything they
said. Mrs. Burchard said she had been meaning to call for ever so long,
but that the duties of a rector's wife with five children were such that
she was forever behind schedule. Susie, watching Mrs. Burchard, with a
detachment and objectivity natural to her but also considerably
developed by contact with Mademoiselle Conti, found herself startled by
the word children. It scarcely seemed possible that this woman could be
a mother, and when there rose in her memory the grim, hard-lipped face
of the Reverend Burchard, the possibility of children seemed even more
startling. And suddenly she felt a wild hysterical desire to laugh
because all unwanted, all undesired, there came into her imagination the
picture of these two people in the act of making love. It seemed
scarcely credible. She could not keep herself from thinking that the act
must have required a considerable amount of grim concentration on the
part of both of them. She wondered how the rector could have married
this mare-faced woman, and then saw again his face with the lipless
mouth and the hard lines on either side of it, and thought, "It is the
face of a man who would marry a monstrosity if it would help him in his
career."

The thought rather astonished her. She was beginning to understand many
things about life she did not understand a year ago.

But Mrs. Burchard was talking on and on. "Poor Harriette Livingstone,"
she was saying, "How nice it must be for her to have you as a friend!
She has had a dreary life ... always so selfless, caring for her poor
invalid father."

Susie wanted to say, "The old devil!" but did not.

Mrs. Burchard said, "She must be a great help too on her side ... with
you coming as a stranger to New York and Major Parkington not knowing
many people ... practically a stranger here himself."

Even while Susie sat there she was learning a lesson--that in the world
you must not always say what first came into your head. There might come
a day when she could say it, but not yet. So she only said, with false
primness, "I am very fond of Harriette. Sometimes I think it would be a
good thing if her father would die. He can't have much pleasure in life
and if he died Harriette could be free. She's not too old yet to enjoy
life."

"Harriette must be thirty-three. The best part of her life is over. I'm
sure God will reward her for her devotion."

This time Susie answered her rather tartly, "I'm sure the Lord owes her
a big debt. He'll have a lot to make up for."

But before Mrs. Burchard had time to pretend shock, the door opened and
the Major came in. He greeted Mrs. Burchard warmly, so warmly and with
such _empressement_ that for a moment the horse-faced woman softened and
even trembled a little as if she were a seductive woman. Again Susie
felt a wild desire to laugh and again she controlled herself.

To the Major Mrs. Burchard said, "Dear me, I had no idea it was so late.
Your wife and I were having such a pleasant chat the time must have
flown. I must go now. The rector and I always hear the children's
prayers before they go to bed."

The Major urged her not to hurry off, but without any very great
sincerity, and she went away saying that she expected Mrs. Parkington
without fail at the gathering of the sewing circle on Wednesday.

The Major held open the door for her and when she had gone, he closed it
and looked at Susie and said, "Well?"

There was a wonderful humorous look in his blue eyes, a look which made
her love him with a sudden rush of love.

"She is an awful woman!" said Susie.

"Kiss me first and then we'll talk about her."

He kissed her and she asked, "Why did she call on me?"

The Major chuckled, "The church has a heavy debt. It's been buying real
estate really on speculation, and the others are not so generous as
Augustus Parkington."

"Oh, Gus, I think that's awful ... for a church to be run like that."

He said, "St. John's my dear, is a fashionable church. It would rather
surprise Jesus Himself."

He looked at her again with that humorous look of utter understanding
that was like a caress from his great strong hands. "You're learning a
lot of things, aren't you, sparrow? Are you going to the sewing circle?"

"I don't want to."

He put his arm about her waist. "You'd better go. It may not be
pleasant. It may even be frightening, but it will be good experience.
You'd better go."

"Do I have to?"

The look in his eyes suddenly became grave, "I think you'd better." Then
he kissed her again. "You mustn't mind. Remember, honey, the future
belongs to us ... everything. Nobody has as much as we have."

"All right, Gus." She looked up at him. "I think I'd do anything you
ask."

"That's my sparrow. Take Miss Livingstone with you. She'll know all the
women there."

Then at dinner he said suddenly, "Tomorrow you can see the surprise. The
house is finished. We'll be moving on Monday."

"Oh Gus!" A sudden wave of pleasure and excitement swept over her,
making her feel a little dizzy.

"I'll come home early and we can go to see it at teatime. I'll carry you
over the doorstep."

                 *        *        *        *        *

But it didn't turn out quite as he planned. The next afternoon
Mademoiselle Conti went with her to Madame de Thbes. She looked gray
and tired despite the rouge which she used, artificially and
decoratively, as a Frenchwoman. Under the great black eyes there were
dark circles. For two or three days she had looked badly and something
was gone of the old dashing erectness of her carriage. For the first
time Susie suspected that she was perhaps older than she appeared to be.
When Susie had asked if Mademoiselle Conti did not feel well, she only
said, "Eet is nothing. You understand."

All the way from Madame de Thbes to the hotel, Mademoiselle Conti,
always so vivacious, was silent, and when they arrived at the door, she
said, "May I come up for a cup of tea? I must speak to you of
something."

Once they were inside the door of the scarlet curtained parlor,
Mademoiselle Conti said, "Don't order tea until I have talked to you. We
must not be interrupted."

Susie took off her cape and bonnet and said, "Take off your jacket,
mademoiselle."

But Mademoiselle Conti in her deep voice said, "No, I shall be going at
once."

She had not seated herself, but stood beside the gilt and marble-topped
commode, looking pale and tragic, very erect again like a great actress.
She wore the green gloves and one hand with the green fingers
outstretched was pressed against the cold white marble. The pose
remained forever in Susie's memory and years afterward she saw it again
in Sargent's portrait of "Madame X" and recognized it at once.

"But you must have a cup of tea," said Susie.

"No. I must go away quickly and I am not coming back. It is not _au
revoir_ ... it is good-by."

"But why? Have I done anything?" She was aware, desperately, that she
did not want Mademoiselle Conti to go away.

"It is nothing you have done. It is something I did long ago. I do not
want to go away. It is the last thing I wish."

"Then why must you go?"

"I cannot tell you that?"

Although her voice had not changed its tragic quality, tears glittered
in the great black eyes. Watching her, a curious thing happened to
Susie. She became aware that Mademoiselle Conti, whether consciously or
not, was giving a great performance, and as if hypnotized, she felt a
sudden necessity deep within herself to give a performance on her side
worthy of that of Mademoiselle Conti.

She moved nearer to the tragic invincible figure and put her arm about
Mademoiselle Conti's waist. "But you can't do that. We are friends. It
may be something which makes no difference. It may be something of no
importance whatever."

"I have been fighting against it for three days and now I must go away
because of the evil of someone ... a woman who has threatened me."

"What has that to do with us?" asked Susie.

Suddenly the hand in the poison green glove moved from the marble-topped
commode to wrench Susie's hand from her waist.

"It has everything to do with us. You must not embrace me. You must not
touch me!" She started toward the door but Susie reached it before her
and stood against it.

"No Aspasie! You must not ... You see, I called you Aspasie without
thinking. Tell me! Then if you must go, you must go."

Mademoiselle Conti suddenly covered her face with the green gloves. For
a long time she was silent, and then with her eyes still covered, she
said in a curious dead voice.

"Veree well. I will tell you then."

She was silent for a moment and then, dropping her hands from her face
but turning so that she did not look at Susie, she said, "It is this. I
was once your husband's mistress. Another woman ... another actress who
hates me ... has been saying she would tell you if I did not pay her
money. It is all over. It was all over long ago between him and me. We
are good friends. We respect each other--that is all."

She looked suddenly, quickly at Susie and then looked away again, her
black eyes filled with tears.

Susie had really heard only the words, "I was once your husband's
mistress." The rest came to her dimly over the monstrous shock of those
six words. She heard Mademoiselle Conti saying, "I will go now," and
herself saying, "No. Not yet. I must think. I must think!"

She felt suddenly faint and slipped to the arm of the chair beside her.
One thought after another went quickly through her brain churning each
other round and round. She was aware that Mademoiselle Conti had not
gone away but was still standing by the commode. The thoughts kept
saying: Of course he has had many mistresses. He is not in love with her
now. He cannot be. She is old. I like her. She is a friend. Of course he
has had mistresses before ... a man like him ... it couldn't be
otherwise ... that is why he knows how to make love so well ... No doubt
she is the one who taught him ... A fire of jealousy scorched her brain
and quickly burned itself out. "That is silly. There is nothing to be
jealous of. He loves only you. You are young and pretty. He no longer
loves her. No, I don't want her to go away. I don't want her to go away.
I like her. If she goes away everything will be different for you.
You'll be alone. You need her. You love her. You will never again find
anyone quite like her. Don't be a silly sentimental fool!"

Then she found herself looking at Mademoiselle Conti and saying, "You
mustn't go away, Aspasie. We shall never speak of it again. It will be
as if it hadn't happened. I believe you when you say that it is
finished. It doesn't matter. Only you mustn't go away. I promise we will
never speak of it again. It will be as if it had not happened."

She found herself holding both the green-gloved hands. Then Mademoiselle
Conti was crying and they were embracing each other, Mademoiselle Conti
kissing her French fashion, on both cheeks. She was saying, "Susie, you
are a wonderful woman ... a wise woman ... a _femme du monde_." And
suddenly she understood that Mademoiselle Conti was paying her a great
compliment and that it filled her with extraordinary pride to be called
_une femme du monde_. It meant that she was wise and logical and human
and mature and clever. It meant too that she was beginning to learn the
things Gus meant her to learn.

That was how she and Mademoiselle Conti came to call each other Aspasie
and Susie.

"And now," said Mademoiselle Conti with sudden briskness, "I think I
need some champagne."

So when the Major returned he found his wife and Aspasie Conti sharing a
bottle of champagne. They seemed gay. Susie had a third glass for him.

She said, "Aspasie and I are drinking to the new house." The word
"Aspasie" gave him a shock; that was apparent even in a face trained to
conceal emotion. He took the glass of champagne Susie poured for him and
murmured, "To the new house." The three of them raised their glasses and
then Susie said, "I've invited Aspasie to go with us. She's dying of
curiosity."

It was clear that he found himself at a loss for words. The shadow of
disappointment came into his eyes, but after a moment he said, "I think
that's a wonderful idea. She gave me a great many suggestions and some
good advice. She'll like to see how they were carried out."

There was a shade of mockery in his voice but Susie chose to ignore it
and if Mademoiselle Conti noticed it, she gave no sign. Something very
curious had happened suddenly. It was as if the two women were in
alliance against him. With his immense sexual awareness, he divined it
and suddenly grinned. Something, he was aware, had happened which
altered the relationship among the three of them, but of what it was he
had no idea.

When they had finished the champagne he said quickly, "Come along! I'm
trying out a new pair of horses and they're not good at waiting."

So in the end he did not carry Susie over the doorstep. The butler was
expecting them and flung open the great mahogany doors as the three of
them got down from the carriage and came up the stoop. As they crossed
the threshold, Susie's arm was linked in Aspasie's and there was a very
grim look on the Major's face. Each of the women was having her small
revenge for something. He still did not know what it was. When women
came together as a sex against a man, a man had no chance. That was an
old rule which he knew from a wide experience.

In the center of the great hall there was an immense gas-lit crystal
chandelier, blazing and glittering. Beyond it Susie saw a huge stairway
with a marble balustrade. The floor too was of marble and in the corners
of the hall stood four huge porcelain vases and numbers of potted palms.
She felt a sudden sharp pang of disappointment. This was not the house,
the "home" she had dreamed of. It was more like a hotel.

She managed to say, as he watched, "Oh, Gus, it's wonderful!" She even
managed to look as if she meant the words she spoke. Mademoiselle Conti
herself could scarcely have given a better performance.




                                   V


Mrs. Parkington herself went out to get the flowers. She felt remarkably
young again because Harry was coming and Harry belonged to that part of
her life which had brilliant memories, when for a long period, save for
the ugly business of Norah Ebbsworth and the tragedy of "the terrible
summer," her life had been untroubled, when every day had seemed bright
and each morning filled with expectancy of things to come. He belonged
to that part of her life in which nothing had seemed to matter but
enjoyment. The Duchess was eighteen and unmarried and the boys were at
school and she had learned not to be hurt by the Major's infidelities
and that a flirtation could be entertaining and that one would not go to
hell afterward. Harry was thirty-five then and younger than herself and
a friend of the Prince and a gambler and very attractive. He had wanted
more than she was willing to give him but he did not hold that against
her. He simply remained hopeful. He had been hopeful for a great many
years. His hope revived each time she returned to England until she was
middle-aged and he had a wife and five children of his own, and even
after that he always gallantly pretended that she was still the most
desirable woman he had ever met and also the coldest.

Looking back now as she drove to the flower shop she knew that she had
refused him, not because she was cold but because she didn't like things
that way, on such a casual basis. Even now she could not altogether
understand or forgive the promiscuity she sometimes encountered in
fashionable English country houses. And after the thing had happened in
Bad Gastein she knew that she was right. If she hadn't felt as she did,
she would never have had that happiness. Nevertheless there were moments
when, even as an old lady, she felt a faint regret over Harry. And she
would be grateful to him always and forever, for what he had done in the
business of Norah Ebbsworth.

And now here he was in New York, sent over in charge of documents and
special treasures which had been shipped to America for safekeeping
against the possible danger of capture by the Germans. It was very
difficult to believe in the reality of such a situation--that the
English should ever be in danger of defeat, that London itself should be
threatened. She sighed, thinking how much she had seen in her lifetime,
and thought: It was Harry and people like him who brought England to the
danger she faces today. It was all very gay in the past and a few people
had everything and a great many were miserable and hungry, standing
toothless and undernourished to cheer every time royalty or a procession
of peers passed by on the street. She thought: Now they are paying for
it.

Then the car stopped in front of the florist's and Hicks, the driver,
was holding the door open for her.

"A lovely day, madame," he was saying, "Like the first day of spring."

The snow was gone and the sidewalks were dripping. The flowers in the
window looked brighter, as if they felt the sun and stood up a little
straighter.

Inside, the proprietor greeted her, saying, "You look very well, Mrs.
Parkington. I thought you'd have gone south long before now."

Tiresome, she thought, He treats me as if I were an aged broken-down
invalid. Aloud she said, "No, I preferred to stay here. There is so much
going on, nowadays. Florida can be very chilly and very dull." She moved
toward a great vase of the first mimosa of the year, drawn by the beauty
of its powdery gold and all the memories which the sight of it aroused.
"I'll have some of that--about a dozen sprays." It made her think again
of Harry and the villa at Monte Carlo and the parties Gus was always
giving on the yacht.

Then very carefully she selected some blue Siberian iris and a lot of
jonquils and two great bunches of Freesia for the perfume, and two
bunches of violets which made her think suddenly of the Princess of
Wales. Alexandra--the one who would always be the only Princess of
Wales.

"I'll take them with me," she said, "I want them for this afternoon."

While the florist and his assistant wrapped them in sheafs of waxed
paper, she went from one great bunch of flowers to another, smelling
them, touching them as if she could somehow reach their very essence by
a closer contact. The greenhouse was the only thing she missed about the
house at Newport. When she still had the place there, flowers were sent
down three times a week to the great house on Fifth Avenue. The flowers
had taken the curse off the ugly house, destroying its vast pompous
ornateness. Now she had to buy flowers and she no longer had a great
plot of jonquils and tulips and other spring flowers laid out each year
at the Flower Show by Ferguson and his assistants.

The flowers were ready and Hicks came in to help carry them to the car
where he and the florists piled them about her on the seat and on the
floor. I feel laid out like a corpse, she thought, but did not say it
for fear of embarrassing Hicks and the florist.

As the florist closed the door, she called out, "Thanks, Mr. Wilks," and
then Hicks drove off up Madison Avenue toward the house.

Once inside the door she had Taylor take the flowers to the pantry and
then rang for Mattie to help. In a little while Mattie came down in the
lift looking sleepy and a little disgruntled and Mrs. Parkington
thought: Mattie is getting old. That was what came of letting yourself
get too heavy. She only hoped that Mattie outlasted her. It was much
easier to put up with Mattie's sly disapproval and complaints than to
get adjusted to someone new. And losing Mattie would be like losing her
closest friend.

She knew why Mattie was disgruntled. Helping with the flowers was really
Taylor's job, but Taylor was stupid about flowers. He had a way of
turning the gayest bouquet into a set-piece funereal offering.

"It's a lovely day, Mattie," she said with exaggerated brightness,
hoping that a little of her own mood might brush off like the pollen of
the Golden Mimosa onto Mattie.

"Yes, madame," said Mattie firmly.

"I've brought back quite a lot of flowers--the first mimosa. I'll need
some help with them."

"Of course, madame." She took Mrs. Parkington's hat and coat. "Mimosa,"
she said priggishly, "Always seems a waste. It dries up right away."

"But it's gay while it lasts. I wanted the house to look nice for Lord
Haxton."

Mattie did not answer her. She only sniffed and Mrs. Parkington knew
that Mattie was being disapproving. She thought it was silly to be
excited by the visit of an old man, an old man whom Mattie had never
approved of even forty years earlier. Forty years ago she had thought
him fast and disreputable and her opinion had never changed although by
now Harry was certainly old and harmless.

Mrs. Parkington began to hum to show that she was taking no notice of
Mattie's mood.

Then Taylor appeared and said, "Mr. Stilham called, madame. He said it
was important and he would come in after dinner unless he heard from
you."

"It's all right, Taylor. Just call back and say I'll expect him about
eight o'clock."

She stopped humming and frowned a little. It was tiresome the way they
all came to her when they were in trouble, as if none of them had any
common sense. All the fun and excitement suddenly drained out of her,
leaving her feeling old and worried. Mattie was laying out the flowers
on newspapers spread on a table in the dressing room by the main door,
but their colors seemed dim now and their glory vanished, all because a
long time ago her granddaughter had chosen to marry a prig and a fool
who was in trouble now.

                 *        *        *        *        *

On the night before when Janie and Ned left Mrs. Parkington's house,
they walked to Fifth Avenue and found a taxi. Ned said to the driver,
"The Waldorf-Astoria," and when they were inside he took her hand and
she asked, "What did you think of my great-grandmother?"

He was a sober young man and he was thoughtful for a moment. Then he
answered, "She is a remarkable old lady ... very charming and very
bright. She didn't seem to be any age at all. And she was very kind to
me."

"I wanted you to like her. I love her very much." She almost said, "Much
more than I love my mother, much more than I love anyone in the family,"
but she kept silent for fear of shocking him. She was in love and love
frightened her. She had never thought about falling in love and
everything about the experience astonished her--that anyone should
become very dear to her quite suddenly, that it should make her happy to
sit with her hand in the hand of a young man of whose very existence she
had been unaware only six months ago, that when she was with him, the
world should seem so changed, the sun brighter, the stars more
brilliant. But most of all she found it astonishing that one could be
made so happy by the mere presence or the mere thought of another
person.

There was no ignorance in her but she had innocence; she would very
likely have it until she died. Great-grandmother Parkington was like
that. Despite all she had known and experienced in a long rich life, she
was at eighty-four, still innocent. She still anticipated with pleasure
any new experience. She still liked the adventure of new people; each
one was for her a new world opening and blossoming like a flower. It was
innocence that kept her so young and so gay; it was the kind of
innocence with which, out of all the family, Janie alone was blessed.

Now in the darkness the girl found that she was smiling as she said, "My
great-grandmother has had an extraordinary life. Now and then she has
told me bits of it. She is fascinating when you can get her to talk.
She's been very lucky. She's lived through so many different worlds.
We'll never have that chance."

In the darkness Ned chuckled, "I wouldn't say that. The world doesn't
change as much as that, honey."

"But our world will always be more or less the same. We never knew what
Europe was like before the first war and we never knew it between that
war and this one, and if this one is ever finished, it will never be the
same."

"I wouldn't worry too much about that. There'll be plenty to keep us
busy just putting the pieces together again."

"I was only thinking how much she has seen. She told me the other day
that she was seven years old when the Civil War was finished. Think of
that!"

"Yes. That's something!"

They were silent for a moment and then she said, "You're really not
listening. You're thinking of something else."

Very quickly he answered, "That's true. I was listening but I was also
thinking about my sister and her husband and hoping you'd like them.
They aren't brilliant but they're very nice."

"Wouldn't it be wonderful if people like us didn't have to think at all
about relations and friends and things like that? Wouldn't it be
wonderful if we could just be alone in the world, the two of us, until
afterward when we were married and settled and everything." She pressed
his hand, "I don't mean anything about your sister and her husband. I'm
sure they couldn't be nicer ... I only mean that you're worrying about
what I'll think of them and I'm worrying about what you really think of
all my relatives. Some of mine are pretty awful."

She was thinking of the Duchess with her dull, slightly bewildered
appraising eye and Aunt Madeleine and her divorces and even her brother
Jack.

Ned answered, "I'm not marrying your relatives, honey."

But he had lied to her when he said he was thinking about his sister; he
had really been thinking about her father and what he had heard only a
few hours earlier, but he couldn't tell her anything about that. He kept
hoping that he might never have to tell her, that what seemed certain
now would in the end never happen. She had already asked him if he liked
her father and he had lied, saying that he liked him very much which was
not at all the truth. Even in his few years of experience, he had met
too many men like Amory Stilham, and not one of them he knew was to be
trusted. His work had brought him into contact with them, the kind of
men who believed astonishingly that privilege placed them above the
moral laws of the average citizen. They were, he had decided, a special
product of a special era in American life; they were born of a period
undistinguished by morals and distinguished principally by an undue
respect for success, no matter how it was achieved. But they were, too,
types that were eternal. The knowledge he had picked up during the
afternoon kept gnawing at his brain like a worm ... Amory Stilham would
be tried and very likely go to jail and Amory Stilham was Janie's
father. It was a horrible thing because it would hurt her.

The taxicab stopped at the doorway of the hotel. Everything seemed
suddenly false and hideous to him, the bright lights of the canopy, the
wide carpeted stairs, the people in the huge lobby. The monstrous size
of the hotel--the last tribute to an age which believed there could be
virtue or beauty merely in size or ostentation.

Then from among the crowd emerged the figures of his sister and
brother-in-law. There was something real and solid about them which
brought him comfort.

Janie liked them at once. His sister was called Mary and she was older
than himself ... thirty-five, Ned told her, but the difference in age
had not made any great difference. They were very close to each other
because their mother had died when he was seven years old and Mary had
been partly mother to him as well as sister. She was very proud of his
record at the University of Wisconsin and the way he had gotten on since
then. She was a big handsome woman dressed smartly in a mink coat and a
small black hat with stiff green feathers. There was warmth about her,
not the continual fiery warmth which Janie felt in Ned himself,
something reserved and set aside for those toward whom he felt
tenderness, but a big enveloping warmth. She was a woman who clearly
loved her husband and two children, who kept her house well and enjoyed
an occasional Rabelaisian joke because she was healthy and liked people.
Even disappointments and disillusionments would not change her.

Her husband, whose name was Charlie Evans, was a good-looking successful
fellow. You could tell he was successful by the brightness of the
steel-rimmed spectacles he wore, by his extraordinary appearance of
neatness and the twinkle in his brown eyes and the curl of his lips.
Everything had gone well for Charlie Evans since the day he was born. He
had wanted a wife he loved, children, prosperity and he had all of them.

As they came toward her Janie liked them, but more than liking and far
more profound was the feeling that they were warm and frank and
friendly, that they meant to take her into their lives without
reservations because Ned had chosen her and they loved Ned and would be
loyal to him no matter what he did. It was a curious sensation, like the
comfort of a warm bath after being chilled. It was something she had
never met before in her world, except with Great-Grandmother Parkington,
and there it was scarcely impressive since it was so familiar.

She and Mary had two cocktails and the men had three and then they went
to dinner at "21." In the taxicab gaiety joined them and Ned's air of
preoccupation seemed to fade away. He asked questions about Charlie's
factory and the children and people called Hutchinson and Hoffman in
South Bend who were old friends and then Mary said, suddenly, "That's
enough, Ned. This is Janie's evening too."

Janie was grateful to her although she had neither felt bored nor
excluded from their conversation. On the contrary all their talk made
her feel pleasant and intimate and in a curious way it made her feel
that through Ned she belonged to something, that somehow she had already
acquired solidity and roots, simply by being in love with him.

At "21" Janie bowed to Foxworthy the playwright and two actresses and a
girl who had been at boarding school with her. Ned bowed across the room
to a thin man with gray hair who he said was a man from the department
in Washington.

This world was Janie's territory. She had invaded it to escape from the
world into which she was born as the child of Amory and Helen Stilham, a
fact which had bred in her a sense both of futility and inferiority, for
all the things which an earlier generation had regarded as the greatest
of advantages, appeared to Janie only as handicaps. As a child of
fifteen she had become aware that she was imprisoned by
circumstances--by being rich and the great-granddaughter of Mrs.
Parkington, by being the daughter of Amory Stilham, by the very schools
where she had received a not too sketchy education, by the certainty
that wherever she went men with cameras seemed to appear magically out
of walls to photograph her. And the knowledge had produced in her a kind
of sadness, as if there were a curse upon her, as if some spell placed
on her by a wicked fairy had made it impossible ever to exist as
herself, to live as her great-grandmother had been able, despite
everything, to live the whole of her long life. Because she was a
thoughtful child she was aware too that there were whole worlds,
unknown, unexplained, which were barred to her, shut away from her by
all her "advantages."

That was why Ned had seemed wonderful to her--because he came from a
world outside her own, and that was why tonight the presence of Mary and
Charlie made her happy. This very restaurant, which to her was a
commonplace affair, was to them exciting. Ned had suggested dining here
because there would be people, famous or notorious, whom Mary and
Charlie would find "interesting." That was what she liked about Mary and
Charlie--they would be excited and gay tonight and tomorrow they would
forget all the people they had seen because they had a life of their own
which was perfectly satisfactory and pleasant. They were amused by the
people she pointed out to them as they would be amused by animals in a
zoo, and they would be honestly and simply impressed and then afterward
in their own very real world they would forget all about them.

A world like that in which Mary and Charlie lived was a world Janie had
never known but it seemed to her the most wonderful thing in the world.
There were times when her own world seemed out of scale, dwarfing her,
filling her with a sense of insignificance and futility. There were
times when it seemed to her that she was only a ghost moving in shadows.

But Ned was real. Watching him across the table, she knew how real he
was. There were times when she felt much older and wiser than he and
times when she felt like a child beside him, a child for whom he felt
great solicitude and tenderness. It seemed to her that the wisdom and
knowledge which gave her the feeling of maturity were wisdom and
knowledge that were destructive because they were tired and old and came
out of a weary world. Sometimes it seemed to her that it was a world in
which there was no faith in anything, but only a kind of deadness which
oppressed her own spirit, so that nothing she did appeared to be worth
doing and whatever lay ahead seemed only monotonous and dull.

Ned, she knew, trying not to look at him with too much adoration, had
changed all that. His mere presence made whatever happened take on an
exciting quality. When he was with her the whole world acquired a kind
of brilliant coloration. When he was gone it turned drab again, infected
by a dull and embalmed quality of monotonous security. And this, her sad
adolescent wisdom told her, was not simply because she was in love.
There was a quiet, hidden animal vitality in him that manifested itself
in odd sporadic ways, in abrupt chuckles, in sudden violent enthusiasms,
in the very way he carried himself. But above all he had faith; he
believed in what he was doing; he wanted ardently to make the world in
which he lived a better, richer, more exciting place--not for himself
alone but for all people--the common ones, the dull ones, the stupid
ones, the underprivileged ones. That was something she had never
encountered in a world upholstered in wealth and security and
stagnation. It was something she could not hope to explain to her own
mother and father. Only Great-Grandmother Parkington might understand,
but in the presence of Granny she never felt able to speak of such
things lest before the old woman's vast wisdom and experience, she
should seem shy and childish.

Across the table from her, Ned watched her, conscious of her happiness,
and pleased because it was clear that she liked his sister and
brother-in-law and that they liked her. In some ways she was, he knew,
older than any of them, but in others she was a baby. That, more than
anything else, was what made him love her; her sad precocious wisdom
fascinated him and her childishness filled him with a desire to cherish
and protect her.

He was an ardent young man, but less simple than he seemed, and he had
been endowed by God and nature with a kind of creative imagination. It
was inclined to take hold of a situation and then build it toward a
dramatic conclusion. This imagination helped to give him brilliance as a
lawyer and to make his mind attractive to other people, but it also made
him the victim of worry and the anticipation of tragedies and disasters
which rarely achieved reality. It made of him a worrier, and that was
what he was doing now--worrying madly, almost insanely over Janie and
the future. Even the champagne did nothing to dull the leaping, vaulting
imagination.

The knowledge about her father which he shared with none of the others,
kept gnawing at his happiness, keeping him outside the gaiety of the
others. The figure of Janie's father, the embezzler, the swindler, the
sanctimonious crook, cast its shadow over the whole evening, while one
part of his mind kept working, active as flame, creating a future of
suffering which might never become reality. There was no possibility of
doubt any longer regarding the guilt of Amory Stilham. He knew, perhaps
better than anyone, because he had collected much of the evidence which
had closed the trap.

Watching Janie, gay and happy, free from the melancholy which so often
obscured her from him, he turned the doomed future over and over again
in his mind, speculating whether he should prepare her for the horror
that was to come or to let someone else tell her. For a wild moment it
occurred to him that she might refuse to marry him because he had played
a part in the investigation or because she felt, fantastically, that she
could not bring upon him the disgrace of marrying the daughter of a
swindler.

It was all a nasty, complicated business of which he and Janie were
victims. There had been, he knew well enough, a moment just after he had
gone to spend the week end at Amory Stilham's house in the country, when
he could have turned back, when he could have forced himself not to see
Janie again. And he knew too that such a course would have been much
wiser. It would have been easier for him, it would have been better for
his own future. But he was aware too that he was not like that; he
understood that the very health and vigor which made his brain a
brilliant, successful instrument, made him fall in love, recklessly,
with all the violence of a lusty nature. He knew that by all the rules,
Janie was not the right person for him. There was her name and her
wealth and the unwelcome and snobbish attention of newspapers and
public, and there was the curious background of enchanted stability
which had surrounded her since she was born. There were so many things
she did not know, about people, about the world, about how things worked
in life, because her own life had never had any relation to the reality
of people but only to the reality of a world, coddled and protected,
wrapped in cotton wool, a world which was utterly doomed. Even her faint
childish efforts to escape had only brought her into the borders of a
world that was equally false, a world of writers and actors and idlers
which fed upon itself, continually devouring its own entrails and
consuming its own vitality. She was wrong, by all the dictates of his
very clever reason, but this reason was bereft of authority because he
loved her and felt a passionate need to rescue her, for he was still
young enough to believe in St. George and the Dragon. Wisdom had not yet
dulled ardor nor had experience made him crafty. He was young and he was
in love and as with Janie herself, there was a part of him that was very
wise and a part of him that was very young. There was, for neither of
them, any escaping their own muddled generation.

His sister, knowing him so well, was aware throughout the evening that
he was troubled and suffering, but knowing him well, she also knew that
there was nothing she could do to help him. Whatever the trouble was he
would have to fight his way out of it, for he was like that. He had
always been since he was a stubborn little boy.

After dinner they went to see a musical play of Cole Porter's and then
to Monte Carlo and El Morocco and the Stork where people knew Janie and
a few knew Ned and none of them knew his sister and her husband. It was
a conventional evening, the most conventional in the world, and in a way
the emptiest and deadliest in the world, but Ned's sister and her
husband loved it and in South Bend they would talk of it for a little
time after they returned. It was for them the evening had been arranged
and they had enjoyed themselves, making Janie happy although to her it
was old stuff and tiresome. Before the evening was over their enjoyment
had dulled even the edge of Ned's private misery.

                 *        *        *        *        *

When they had left Ned's sister and brother-in-law at the Waldorf, they
drove in a taxicab to Janie's house in Sixty-eighth Street. On the way
Ned took her hand again. "They are nice, aren't they?" he asked, a
little strained and nervous, because to him it made so great a
difference.

"I think they're lovely. I think they're the nicest people I ever met."

"You needn't say that."

"But I mean it, honey."

They were silent then for a little while and happy with the simple
happiness of being together. And presently he said, "You wouldn't let
anything come between us, would you?" And he was aware of the banality
and the inadequacy of his words.

"No, honey. Why do you ask that?"

"For no reason at all ... only because I'm afraid sometimes."

"You know I wouldn't."

"Would you marry me tomorrow? Would you run away?"

"I would if it was necessary ... if it really had to be done. But I'd
rather wait. You see, my mother would like a wedding and my
great-grandmother too. There's been so much in our family that was
irregular, my mother makes a fetish of what is regular. She'd want
everything done right." She laughed suddenly. "And I'd rather like it
myself. I hope I'm only going to be married once."

At the door he said "Good night" and kissed her, but there was no
satisfaction, no pleasure in it, because the shadow of his worry came
between them. She said suddenly, "What is it, darling? There's something
wrong?"

He laughed, "No, nothing. I'm tired. I'm not used to staying out all
night."

"Call me tomorrow before noon."

"Yes."

She went inside and closed the door and as she did so depression settled
over her. It came down like a veil dimming the world all about her--the
big hallway, the great stairway, the shadowy spaces of the overelegant
drawing room. She was aware as she started up the stairway of the sound
of music, very faint and muffled, and thought: Mother must be awake.

Often in the night she wakened to hear the same sound and always it
meant that her mother was suffering from insomnia and was lying awake on
the sofa in the little sitting-room beside the bedroom she still shared
with her husband. It happened more and more frequently of late ... the
faint sound of music joined with the coming of gray winter dawn.

On the second floor she walked along the hall to the sitting-room and
knocked. Her mother's fretful voice said, "Come in," and as she opened
the door Janie saw her lying on the chaise longue in a peignoir, a
Shetland shawl about her shoulders. As Janie entered she put down her
book, took off her horn-rimmed reading glasses and said, "Oh, it's you,
dear. You're very late."

"It's only about four o'clock."

"It doesn't matter," said her mother, "Who did you go out with tonight?"

"Ned."

She divined that her mother probably knew all along that she had spent
the evening with Ned. Both of them had avoided speaking his name for a
long time now. She went on, "His sister was here from South Bend with
her husband."

"What were they like?" The mother spoke as if she expected her to say
they were something out of a zoo.

"They were very nice," Janie said, "I liked them very much." Then
irritably she heard herself saying, "I wish you'd get up to date,
Mother. Nearly all your friends are. Granny is much more up-to-date than
you."

"I know," said Mrs. Stilham, "Your great-grandmother is always
perfection."

"Why don't you take something to make you sleep?"

"No, thank you. We've enough trouble with that in the family." And Janie
knew that her mother meant the Duchess. She went on. "I think I'm going
to make this into a bedroom. I might sleep better if I could be alone.
Your father is restless and snores."

"I think it would be more civilized," said Janie. Then she wished
quickly that she had not spoken, for her mother, looking at her sharply,
said, "What do you mean by that?"

"I don't know. Nothing at all." But she did mean something. She meant
that it seemed evil for two people who hated each other to go on sharing
a room. For she knew that her mother and father had hated each other for
a long time in the most dreadful way, pretending that they did not hate
each other, even sharing a room as if painfully to convince themselves
that the truth was not true. It was a curious fetish, Janie sometimes
thought, this worship of the idea of marital fidelity and happiness in a
day when it no longer really mattered very much to anyone but the
persons themselves. It must be awful to wake in the night and find
yourself alone in the same room with someone you hated ... night after
night, on and on, forever, until you died.

Moved by a sudden pity for the tired woman with the drooping mouth, she
said, "Is there anything I can get you, Mother? A glass of warm milk or
something?"

"No. Nothing."

"Then I'll go to bed."

She started toward the door but her mother said, "Wait a moment, Janie.
There's something I want to ask you."

"Yes, Mother."

"Sit down, please."

"Yes," said Janie, and sat down on the edge of a Louis Quinze armchair.

"It's about this Ned. I should like to know what is going on. You see a
great deal of him. You seem to have dropped everybody ... everything
else."

"Yes."

"Are you in love with him?"

Quietly Janie said, "Yes."

"Seriously?"

"Yes."

A curious look came into her mother's face. "Nothing else has been going
on?"

Janie felt suddenly angry, not at the suspicion but at the look in her
mother's eye and the tone of her voice. "No. Why do you ask that?"

"Young people are so very odd nowadays."

"You talk as if you were a hundred years old."

"Sometimes I feel as if I were."

Janie was thinking: It might as well be now. I'll tell her now and get
it over with. So aloud she said, "I'm going to marry him."

Her mother took the news with apparent indifference. She was silent for
a moment and then asked, "You're sure about it? It's not just an idea?"

"No."

Again her mother was thoughtful. Then she said, "I hope you understand
how great a disappointment this will be to your father?"

"I don't see why it should be."

"You know perfectly well. Your father wanted you to marry someone he
knew, someone out of your own world. I feel the same way although that's
probably of no importance either to him or you."

"I'm sorry if he feels like that."

She was aware that her mother was behaving as she knew she would behave.
She would never say, "You must not do this. I forbid it." She did not
even grow angry. But she would work against it for the rest of her life,
quietly, unscrupulously, insidiously, spreading doubts, tearing down
confidence and happiness. Suddenly Janie felt very tired, as if the long
slow discontent and unhappiness of this rich house had become an
unbearable burden. Her mother was still talking, "I hope you realize
what this means ... that you'll have to give up all your friends, that
you'll probably have to live in some outlandish place, with outlandish
people. It won't be at all the way you think it will be."

"I've thought how it will be," said Janie, "And it's exactly what I
want."

"You're a child, Janie. You don't know how it will be. You've been given
all the things most people want most in the world and now you want to
throw them all away."

Janie did not answer at once. When she spoke, she asked, "Were you in
love with father when you married him?"

"Yes, of course I was."

"It wasn't just the suitable thing to do?"

"I was very lucky. Your father was also considered an excellent match
... and rightly."

"An excellent match," Janie repeated quietly, as if speaking to herself.

"That's what I said," repeated her mother. "And don't deceive yourself.
In the long run that means something." Janie didn't answer her. Her
mother said, "I only ask one thing. Don't hurry into this. It seems to
me that Ned might have told your father and me."

"He didn't," said Janie, "because I asked him not to."

She was suddenly angry now, for the sake of Ned and the fashion in which
her mother spoke of him. She said, "I wanted to spare him an idiotic
conversation."

"And what, pray, do you mean by that rude remark?"

"I mean that neither of you could possibly understand about Ned or what
he is."

"I think that I understand very well ... only too well. He is a Red, a
Communist. He's working for all the things which aim to tear down what
has taken your father and men like him their lifetimes to build up."

Janie stood up. "You see, Mother, it's quite useless trying to talk
about it."

"Of course," said her mother, "If you are determined to go through with
it we'll back you up and have a wedding and put the best face possible
on the whole thing."

And now Janie was really angry. "You needn't bother about the wedding.
You needn't trouble yourself to put any face on at all." She stood up
and walked toward the door, "I don't give a damn what you feel about it.
I only know I've got to get out of this God-damned bedeviled house."

She went out the door, aware that her mother was rising to follow her.
When she was halfway up the stairs, to her own room, she heard her
mother's voice calling plaintively, "Janie, Janie!" But she paid no heed
and presently she heard the door of her mother's sitting-room close
again, and going into her own room she threw herself on her bed in the
darkness and began to cry. She cried out of weariness, out of anger and
partly out of pity for the tired, discontented woman with the drooping
mouth belowstairs who could not sleep.

When she stopped crying and began to take off her clothes, the light of
morning was already coming through the windows. The distant faint music
from the radio belowstairs went on and on.

                 *        *        *        *        *

When Ned called in the morning she did not tell him anything of the
conversation with her mother. He had, he said, to go to Washington by
the one o'clock train. How long he would be there he did not know but he
would send her a wire as soon as he discovered. His sister and
brother-in-law were leaving at noon. They sent her their love. They had
enjoyed the party the night before. They wanted her to pay them a visit
in South Bend. His voice was deep and alive and the sound of it drove
away the sense of gray depression.

He said, "I don't like to speak of it for fear it won't come true but
they may have sent for me to give me a promotion."

"Oh Ned! How wonderful!"

"It might mean that I'd have to leave New York and go to San Francisco
or Chicago. Would you mind that?"

"How do you mean--would I mind it?"

"Would you mind going to one of those places with me?"

"Mind it, Ned? It would be wonderful."

"If that's what it is, I'll wire you. It would probably mean that I
would have to go right away. You'd have to give up the idea of a big
wedding."

"That would be all right too."

"Well, take good care of yourself."

"And you, honey."

"Good-by."

"Good-by."

But when his voice was cut off the loneliness and sense of depression
returned. The whole house, even her own room, had acquired a kind of
hatefulness, as houses do in which there exists long, persistent, dull
unhappiness. Lying there in the bed, it seemed to her that she had first
become aware of its hatefulness when she was twelve years old after she
had gone to visit a school friend who lived in the country in Maryland.
She and the friend had long since drifted apart so that the very
appearance and personality of the friend had become something vague and
hazy, but the memory of the house remained clear and bright--a roomy,
rambling house full of soiled and faded chintz where there were very
many dogs, a house with a hodgepodge of nondescript but friendly
furniture with geraniums growing in pots in the windows. It was a house
in which there was happiness and it had seemed bright and filled with
sunlight even in the wet muddy days of January.

After that visit when she returned to the house in Sixty-eighth Street,
it became forever a gloomy and depressing place, dark and filled with
shadows, even when there was brilliant sunlight in the streets outside.
It was a stuffy house, a luxurious house filled with expensive pictures
and furniture which never seemed possessed either of life or of order.
The effect was that of an extravagant confusion, like that of a
luxurious antique shop, as if between them, her parents had sought to
buy or achieve by force something they neither possessed nor understood
and which somehow would forever elude them.

Lying there in her bed, she permitted her mind to examine lazily the
subject of houses and almost at once she thought of her
great-grandmother's house. The things with which it was furnished were
quite as expensive as the things in this great dreary house where people
went in and out day after day, living, eating, sleeping sometimes
without ever seeing each other. Yet the effect of Mrs. Parkington's
house was quite different. It was a cosy, happy place like the dark warm
nest of a weaver bird or an oriole. In it one had not only a sense of
happiness but of warmth and utter security. Inside its walls women, even
the Duchess, took on a new beauty and brilliance and seemed more
attractive. One did not think on looking at a chair: What a priceless
piece of furniture; one thought: What a beautiful and friendly and
inviting chair. Even the flowers had a different appearance and aura,
not only because Mrs. Parkington had taste and sensitivity where flowers
were concerned but because the flowers in her house seemed happy, as if
they belonged there.

And again as had happened many times before, Janie felt a wild and
passionate desire to live and grow old as her great-grandmother had
done. To be like Mrs. Parkington seemed to her the greatest achievement
one could desire. And suddenly her day became clear. She would have some
lunch and go out quietly while her mother was still asleep to the
British War Relief headquarters to do what there was to do there. And
afterward she would go to Mrs. Parkington's for tea and perhaps Granny
would ask her to stay for dinner.

She was dressing when there was a knock at the door and her brother's
voice said, "May I come in?"

When she saw him she thought: What a good-looking boy he is and how ill
he looks!

He had the kind of lean overbred look that one finds sometimes in the
portraits of El Greco, a lean face with soft beautiful eyes,
contradicted by the narrowness and cruelty of the mouth. He was not at
all a Parkington. His looks, his great-grandmother said, came from the
Blair blood whence, she added, very likely came his recklessness and
taste for dissipation. It was nearly forty years since Mrs. Parkington's
son had married a Blair against her wishes. One could marry the daughter
of a healthy truck driver, she had said, but not into a family where
eccentricity constantly hovered on the borders of insanity. And now
forty years after the marriage a Blair and not a Parkington came into
Janie's bedroom.

Girls usually liked him, for the way he wore his clothes, for his glib
conversation, for his reckless approach, for the beauty of his hands and
hair and eyelashes. Janie saw his points but there were times when in
the depths of her heart she knew he was perverse and defeated nearly to
the point of insanity. Lately she had begun to feel that she was
immensely older than he and to treat him like a child.

He flung himself down in a chair and said, "Did you have a good time
last night?"

"Yes. Wonderful."

"Who were the fresh looking couple?"

"Ned's sister and brother-in-law."

"From the Corn Belt too?"

"Yes."

"I saw you in the Champagne Room."

"Why didn't you join us?"

He grinned, "I didn't think Maisie would mix too well."

Janie sat in front of her dressing-table and began arranging her hair.
In the mirror she could see the reflection of his face. Suddenly she
asked, "Are you keeping Maisie?"

He grinned again, "No, I don't have to keep her."

"You cad," said Janie, with indifference.

"Why not let someone else do the paying?"

"I must say that's not a very nice point of view."

"Not nice but convenient and practical."

"Is she a nice girl ... you know what I mean?"

The question seemed to puzzle him for a moment, "Yes," he said after a
while, "We understand each other."

"Does she bore you?"

"Sometimes but when she gets boring I run away. What made you think of
that?"

Janie laughed, "I don't know. I've always thought that would be the
trouble in a situation of that kind ... the long stretches of boredom in
between."

He laughed, "It is ... but then it must be true of married life too.
Look at Mother and Father."

"It needn't be," said Janie, "If you marry the right person."

"Are you going to marry this Ned what's-his-name?"

"His name is Ned Talbot and you might as well start remembering it as
he's going to be your brother-in-law."

He sat up in the chair, looking at her sharply.

"What are you looking at?" she asked.

"You sounded exactly like Granny Parkington and with your hair that way
you look exactly like her in the picture that's in the library."

"Thanks. You couldn't pay me a greater compliment." She crossed the room
to take a fur jacket out of the cupboard. "How's the work getting on?"
she asked over her shoulder.

"All right."

"You don't seem to get to the office very early."

"There's no use going to the office. Your friend Ned and his boy friends
have killed all the business in Wall Street."

Janie put on her jacket and took down a hat. "I guess it would have died
anyway. But I should think Father would like to have you show up at
least."

"He doesn't notice. The old bastard seems awfully busy nowadays ... I
don't know what about."

She turned toward him, the hat still in her hand, "I don't think that's
funny!"

"Hoity Toity," said Jack.

"It's just vulgar and bad manners and fresh."

Jack yawned and stood up, "Well, he _is_ an old bastard. If I didn't
have my own trust fund money, he'd let me starve. He hates me and is
ashamed of me." After a second he added, "And vice versa."

"You might go to work." She put on her hat, looked at herself in the
glass and then took up her gloves, "I certainly don't envy you the end
you're headed for."

"Don't worry, honey, I'll pull myself together before it's too late." He
kissed her suddenly, "You're mighty pretty. This Ned guy is lucky."

"He's not half as lucky as I am."

"That's the way to talk."

She felt a sudden swift anger, at what she really did not know. Perhaps
it was nerves as much as anything. But she said, "I'm lucky to get out
of here--out of this bloody house."

"You bet you are," he said, "I'd get out too but the address is good and
it saves me from paying rent. Maybe I'll scram anyway if it gets much
worse."

At the door she said, "Really, Jack, you stink!"

"Thanks."

"And don't think that I'm kidding."

"It's despair, honey ... cosmic despair. What's there to do but enjoy
yourself nowadays ... nothing to do, nothing to interest you."

"Nothing! Nothing! Nothing!" said Janie. "That's it. That's what's the
matter with this bloody house."

As she went out the door she heard him saying, "You're right. A
nihilist! That's what I am! A nihilist! I learned about that last year
in Harvard. That's about all I ever learned there."

She ran down the stairs and out into the street as if she were followed
by something unseen, like a child in a dark hallway.

Outside it was better. The clouds were gone and there was the warm
sunshine of false spring which can turn New York suddenly in the midst
of January into a summer city. Yet Janie, walking rapidly toward
Fifty-seventh Street, was unaware of the sunshine and the balminess of
the air. The thing no longer followed her, but its presence had left her
spirits dulled and troubled.

It was the thought of Jack which disturbed her, for she was fond of him
and sometimes he made her laugh and he was nearer to her than either of
her parents perhaps because he understood as well as herself the gray
emptiness of their existence. But at the moment she was angry at him.

It was as if he had dragged something sordid into the peace of her own
room and left it there. It would be there when she returned; it might
always be there. It was as if he had spoiled for her the one room in all
the house which was endurable. It had upset her that he had referred to
their father as "the old bastard," not so much because of the cheap
irreverence of the epithet--she was aware that her father had no special
right to reverence--but because life in that house, disagreeable as it
was, would become unbearable if some sort of faade were not preserved.
You had sometimes to pretend if life were to be endured; you had
sometimes to be respectable if you were to have any self-respect, and
without self-respect the days became intolerable.

The spectacle of the hatred between her father and brother was always
painful. It was as if they were no relation to each other, as if Jack
were the result of some affair her mother had had with another man, an
affair which, knowing her mother so well, she knew was not only
improbable but impossible. Perhaps, she thought suddenly, it would have
been better for her and for all of us. Perhaps it would have made her
happier. Jack would have been somebody else ... not a Blair, mixed up
with the Stilhams blighted from birth by indolence and lack of all
balance. Again she thought that perhaps Jack was mad; certainly he was
unbalanced with the kind of irresponsible quality which was only a shade
off madness.

As she walked she speculated about Maisie. The knowledge that Jack was
living with Maisie did not disturb her profoundly; it was the quality of
Maisie which disturbed her--that Maisie was everything that her mother
and father openly detested, everything that was abhorrent to them. Her
father, she thought, might have a mistress--indeed there were times when
she was certain of it--but no one would ever know about it. He would
return every night and share a room with his wife who bored him; he
would keep up the farce of devotion to her in public. No one would ever
find out about it. There was something ugly and evil about Jack and
Maisie as if the boy had taken up with her out of hatred for his own
father and the whole world he had been trained to respect. They had
never liked each other. From the time the boy had been old enough to
walk and talk, her father had treated him with contempt, because there
was in him the Blair liking for music and books and pictures and the
theater. (The Blairs might be crazy, she admitted to herself, but they
were also gifted and civilized.) And as Jack grew older, the distaste of
father and son grew stronger, but the real hatred came into full bloom
when Jack failed to make his father's club at Harvard, "the" club which
always seemed so idiotically important to her father, more important
than love or honesty or achievement. When Jack came home for the Easter
holidays, her father would scarcely speak to him. It was as if he had
been guilty of some unnamable crime for which he was disowned.

She thought: If Jack had a stronger character he would have run away
from home. It would have made a man of him. But he was not strong and he
had not run away. He had compromised until he was twenty-one when he
came into the money from the Blair trust fund and became modestly
independent. He had gone on living in the gloomy house simply to annoy
his father. Indeed every act of Jack's seemed designed as part of the
wild, half-mad revolt ... even Maisie. He certainly did not love Maisie.
During the unpleasant interim in Janie's room he had said that she bored
him.

There wasn't, she knew, anything very terrible about Maisie. She was
simply incorrigible and uncivilized and amoral with a talent for getting
into night club brawls and appearing in gossip columns. Maisie wasn't
revolting against anything; she was just a very pretty manifestation of
nature who called herself Maisie Bernard and had somehow got from a
backwoods town in North Carolina to New York. She wouldn't have minded
Maisie at all except that she sometimes got Jack into gossip columns and
headlines by her escapades.

No, it was all very difficult and complicated. It was like being weighed
down perpetually by a boredom that was too heavy, which you couldn't
escape. But she was going to escape.

She was opposite the statue of General Sherman when a dreadful thought
came to her: What if something happened between Ned and me? What if
something happened to me? So that I couldn't escape. Then I might revolt
too. Then I might get to be like Jack. For she felt somehow that she was
not strong enough to escape alone. There were too many things--the bad
Blair blood, the dreariness of the great house, the dislike for her
father and mother, the awful sense of fatality and despair which
sometimes annihilated all her strength.

In the midst of the traffic at Fifty-ninth Street, she found herself
praying: Oh, God! Don't let anything happen. Don't! Please God!

At the British War Relief office there were things to do and other women
to talk to, some of them, like herself, come there to escape from
themselves. She gossiped and sold wool and poured tea and had a scotch
and soda and listened on the radio to the progress of the campaign in
Libya, upset and tense, as if she sought by her own will to change the
news of the retreat toward Egypt. And once she thought again: This is a
cursed world, in which to be young, for it seemed to her that it was a
world in the process of going to pieces, disintegrating all about her
before her very eyes. The world which she had been brought up to believe
was made for her and would exist forever was already smashed and gone.
All that remained of it were small broken pieces integrated and held
together by illusion and hatred of all that was superseding it. The big
gloomy house was like that and her father's firm and Wall Street itself.
One found the shattered pieces of that broken world in clubs, on Long
Island, in dinner parties at big houses like her own--a world saturated
and corroded with hatred and defeat. Without knowing quite what she did,
she avoided these broken fragments because they were depressing and
stupid and to her young mind they were frightening because they were
already dead. They whined without fighting at all. And she searched with
equal blindness for the new world which was to take the place of the old
one without ever finding it, perhaps because the new world was not yet
integrated, perhaps because her own education had been so bad and so
stupid that she had not the vision that was necessary to discover it.

Ned, she knew, was a part of that new world. He talked to her about
it--a new world which would be a great step forward in civilization and
the development of democracy. But it was not yet here; there was nothing
even which she might grasp and touch and feel, savoring it as she
savored the remnants of the broken world, nothing which had reality, to
which she could attach herself.

She did not talk of these things to the other women for she had
discovered long ago that most of them either understood nothing or were
untroubled by their lack of understanding or simply grew angry and
called her a Red. It was not in this background, she knew, that one
would find the beginnings of the new world.

And so she talked of trivial things and gossiped until five-thirty, when
she took down her coat and said good afternoon and went in search of her
great-grandmother. She had great need of the old lady and her tremendous
sense of peace and security. There were times, it seemed to her, when
Mrs. Parkington seemed utterly indestructible, through some force that
came not of her great wealth but from inside herself.

                 *        *        *        *        *

She had not called earlier to say that she was coming because Mrs.
Parkington was always at home at teatime. As she stepped out of the
taxi, she was troubled to discover at the curb a battered old station
wagon with the words _Dutch Harbor Farm_ painted on the side. That meant
Great-Uncle Henry would be there and the thought of Uncle Henry made her
feel uncomfortable as drunken or mad people made her feel. It was worse
because the time had been so long since she had seen him.

For a moment she debated the question of going away again and finally
thought: Perhaps he will be leaving soon and Granny will ask me to stay
to dinner with her.

Taylor opened the door and when she asked, "Is Mrs. Parkington alone?"
he said, "No, Miss Janie, Mr. Henry Parkington is there and Lord
Haxton."

Again the desire to run away swept over her, and she said, "Perhaps I'd
better go away and come back tomorrow."

"No, Miss Janie. I wouldn't. I'm sure Mrs. Parkington would feel very
hurt and I'm sure she'd like you to meet Lord Haxton." Then he added
with the faintest glint of humor, "Mr. Henry is very quiet today."

"You'd better announce me. She wasn't expecting me."

He went away and while she was making up her face to look her best for
Mrs. Parkington's friends, Mrs. Parkington herself came out of the small
sitting-room followed by Taylor. The old lady came toward her and kissed
her and suddenly Janie felt warm and secure again.

"Well, my dear, I'm very glad you came," she said. "I telephoned your
house but they didn't know where to find you. There's a very old friend
of mine here I wanted you to meet." Then as they walked along the hall,
Mrs. Parkington said, "It's Lord Haxton. He's over here on some sort of
mission that has to do with the war."

In the small sitting-room Uncle Henry was standing before the fire with
his back to it, a big, heavy, bearded vigorous old man of nearly eighty.
He was dressed in rough farmers' clothes, corduroy trousers, plaid
flannel shirt and a nondescript woolen jacket. With the heat from the
fire, he gave off the faint, clean odor of stables. The flames behind
him lighted up his thick white hair so that he appeared to have a halo
about his rugged sunburnt face.

Seated in a big chair by the fire was the stranger who must be Lord
Haxton. As they came into the room he stood up.

He was old too with silvery white hair, but very thin and straight with
a look of extraordinary distinction. It was a very handsome face with
finely cut nose and chin, high forehead, flat temples and high
cheek-bones. It was fine without being feminine, the last flowering of a
type before it went too fine and fell into decadence. The eyes were of a
bright blue which looked brighter in the healthy pinkness of the face.
He was, thought Janie suddenly, the handsomest man she had ever seen.

Her great-grandmother said, "This is Lord Haxton. He's a very old
friend. I haven't seen him for years until today."

He shook hands with Janie and said that he was glad to know her. Then
she had to kiss Uncle Henry because he always expected it and might grow
very angry if she refused. Uncle Henry, she knew, liked kissing young
girls and that only made it worse. He had been in some sort of trouble
when he was in his sixties. No one ever spoke of it in the family save
in whispers, but everyone knew about it. She hated the feel of his beard
but she liked the smell of soap and horses which hung about him. He was
really her great-uncle, the old Major's younger brother by a different
mother, and he never seemed to belong to the family.

She knew her great-grandmother was watching her and she carried off
Uncle Henry's kiss as gracefully as possible. Then her great-grandmother
said "You shouldn't drive after dark, Henry. Neither of us is as young
as we once were."

"I couldn't feel younger, Susie. You needn't worry about me."

"You are certainly very spry." He was indeed, marrying again and
happily, when he was past seventy. The original Parkingtons were
certainly prodigious.

"As I was saying," continued Uncle Henry, addressing Lord Haxton, "If
England would adopt proper agricultural methods she could feed herself
... but get an Englishman to change his ways! Never! That's what is the
matter!" He moved away from the fireplace a little and thrust his hands
into his trousers pockets, rocking a little on the balls of his feet
like a young vigorous man of thirty. "Now, I've got only four hundred
acres--none of it too good and ninety acres of it in timber but I
produce enough on it to feed a village."

As he talked, Lord Haxton seemed to shrivel, to become more fragile and
overbred. Beside Uncle Henry he seemed delicate and very old.

Mrs. Parkington, watching them, thought: Harry is bored and he is wrong
to be bored. He should listen because Henry is a prodigious fellow and
is talking sense.

Harry was sitting there, listening with a kind of superior politeness,
cushioned by a security which had once produced and protected him, but
which no longer existed. He was the answer to so much that was
happening, to the falling apart of the British Empire, to the shattering
of that bright secure luxurious world of which the violets had suddenly
reminded her earlier in the day. No, he should be listening to Henry who
loved his four hundred acres and liked common people and the power of
all his money and produced a specimen son at the age of seventy-one.

Without willing it, she sighed, thinking of Henry's other four children
by his first wife, who was the daughter of a neighboring market
gardener, and his grandchildren and how different they all were from her
own descendants. And her mind wandered back a long way to the time when
she had first seen Henry, on the day the Major brought his boy-brother
to the Brevoort, a rugged, awkward lad of fifteen, twenty years younger
than the Major himself, with a different mother. And she remembered
suddenly the news of Henry's marriage ten years later to the gardener's
daughter and the scandal it had made and the Major's fury. But Henry was
right and the Major was wrong. The Major had wanted to "be somebody," to
have his daughter marry a duke, to have a great house on Fifth Avenue
and a yacht and to know kings. The Parkingtons were common and earthy
and the Major had tried to escape his own destiny. But he had failed and
had remained common, thank God, until the sordid end in the hotel in
Cannes.

That was his great quality and he had not been able to escape it, as
none of us, thought Mrs. Parkington, can escape the molding thumb of
destiny. But Henry was right. People called him eccentric and even
crazy, but he was not in the least crazy. Like herself he had lived long
enough to see all the others who had called him crazy, melt and decay
and disappear along with all their fortunes and ambitions. He had lived
through the whole of the indecent era, going his own way like a peasant,
beyond destruction. And look at him now, standing there like a young
man. His children and grandchildren hadn't made "good matches" watering
the blood with each generation. He hadn't allowed them to. And look at
him now!

Janie, listening, felt bored with Uncle Henry's talk of "concentrated
farming" and rotations and fertilizers and soils. Yet she could not help
feeling the feminine stimulus of his vigor and masculinity. She
suspected that perhaps he had spoiled her great-grandmother's afternoon
by bouncing in without warning. He had taken over Lord Haxton for
himself. The signs were there in Mrs. Parkington's dress and the
flamboyant flower she had pinned coquettishly on her shoulder. Granny
had meant to have tea with an old beau, talking about the old days and
now it was all spoiled by herself and Uncle Henry. She thought: I ought
to go away, but even if I went away it wouldn't make any difference
because Uncle Henry won't go until he's ready to. He's come for a
"visit" with Granny and he doesn't mean to go until he's had his fill.
And now that he had got going on Lord Haxton, there was no telling when
he would leave. She was glad of the excuse to stay. It was very pleasant
here, and secure and warm. If she went away there would be no place to
go but back to the dreary house with all the expensive furniture.

Opposite her, behind the tea tray, Mrs. Parkington had virtually ceased
listening to the discussion between the two men. She managed out of her
worldly experience to hear enough of their conversation to follow its
trend and permit her, now and then, to put in a sentence or two which
gave the illusion of participation, but her mind lingered in another
world, of boredom and disillusionment and weariness. She was aware now,
and honest with herself about it, that the call of Harry was a failure;
it had been a failure even before Henry arrived. To be quite honest,
Henry had made it better by bouncing in, ruddy and smelling of horse
manure.

She supposed that one should never try to take up old friendships after
so many years. Too many things happened in between, to yourself and to
the world. Certainly too many things had happened since she last saw
Harry ... things which he seemed unaware of, upholstered in his conceit
and trust in his own security. He still talked as if there were no
danger; he still quoted John Donne and Milton and Spenser, rather
sententiously, as he had always done long ago in a different world. He
still talked as if, at most, this war was not serious really, but only
an annoyance. Harry like half of England, she thought, went to Munich
with Chamberlain and his umbrella and he learned no more there than
Chamberlain learned.

She saw now, quite clearly, that Harry was a fool, and that he had
always been a fool, for all his record long ago at Oxford and his
brilliant career. She wondered suddenly what that career would have been
if Harry had had to make it on his own as the Major had done, without
privilege and position and friends. Like so many Englishmen of his kind,
his career had been a long record of brilliant failure, going from
office to office, from post to post, without ever achieving anything
beyond being witty and intelligent and knowing everyone in Europe.
Sometimes he had been responsible for tragic blunders but he had gone on
and on just the same because, despite the shallowness, he was what the
English called "a gentleman."

Henry was really going to town now, in his blunt, vigorous way. He was
saying, "In fact there has really been no British Empire since the
passing of the Statutes of Westminster. It is dead but it has refused to
lie down."

It always astonished her how much Henry knew. You thought of him as
eccentric and blunt and uncouth and ignorant and all the time he kept
hidden a vast amount of information, facts and hard thinking. And she
heard Harry saying, "But, my dear sir, you don't understand the
intricacies of British politics," and suddenly she felt a really vicious
contempt toward him. Those damned intricacies they always fell back
upon. They talked the same way forty years ago. Only then you could
afford intricacies as you could afford "brilliant failures" like Harry.
You couldn't afford them any longer. Something was loose in the world,
something exasperated, something infuriated which would snuff all the
Harrys and the "intricacies" out of existence. It was loose in Russia,
in Germany, in England, in America, in India and the islands of the
East. Even before the Major died, he had known it, the way he had known
when it was a good time to sell wheat or cotton or railroad shares. That
was why he put everything into nontaxable securities and left it all to
her. But those damned English like Harry who thought their politics
something special and precious which other people, even more civilized
people like the French could not understand! There was an end in sight
to "blundering through."

And for no reason at all, she wanted suddenly to cry, partly because she
remembered the Major with sudden clearness as he had been in the
beginning in the red and gold room at the Brevoort. Henry always made
her think of him. And with the memory was the knowledge that out of all
the women he had known, he had loved her best of all. He had loved her
and trusted her. It was there in every sentence of the long and
intricate will. Again and again he had written in it, "to my beloved
wife who will understand my purpose," or "to my beloved wife who may be
trusted to carry out my wishes." And she wanted to cry too out of some
cosmic sadness at the vanity and folly of the whole human race.

And suddenly she wanted Harry to go away and never return, because he
had become, while he sat there arguing feebly with Henry, a symbol of
all the years in her life which might have been rich but were, she saw
now, only glittering and empty and wasted. Henry had done a much better
job, farming and leading his warm, solid existence, with a dull healthy
wife, wise and concupiscent and uxorious in the Parkington way.

She thought: I must be getting old ... dozing like this and wandering
away into the past. And she was aware that Harry was rising, lifting his
slim overbred elegance out of the depths of his chair. He looked
beautiful but fragile. I will outlast him, she thought with the
triumphant feeling of very old people, although he is eight years
younger than I. It was better to think of him as he had been forty years
ago. He seemed to have flowered and gone to seed in futility.

"In any case," he was saying to Henry, "I am glad to hear the American
point of view."

"It is not the American point of view," said Henry, "It is my own. The
American people do not understand what is happening in the world. They
don't think very far although they are great for feeling and have a
remarkable instinct about things."

Then Harry did that remarkable thing which people of his station in life
in his country had a way of doing. He turned away from Henry and came
toward Mrs. Parkington and as he did so, he seemed to eliminate Uncle
Henry from existence, as a child might wipe the chalk words from a
slate. Henry did not seem to mind or even to notice for he was already
talking to Janie. Mrs. Parkington thought: That is what they have been
doing for too long. That is what they are still doing. Oh, the fools!
The bloody fools! That's why they're where they are today.

She smiled at him but there was no feeling in the smile. It caused her
pain.

"I'll go with you as far as the door," she said and they went out
together, Mrs. Parkington feeling dry and withered and old. In the
hallway, Harry said, "Your brother-in-law is quite a fellow."

"He is indeed."

"There is something about him that is very like Gus."

"Yes ... a great deal. What are your plans?" She asked them out of
politeness although she had not the least interest.

"I go to Washington ... after that home, I suppose."

She did not say, "I must see you again," or, "Let me know when you pass
through." She had not the least interest. This was very likely the last
time they would ever see each other.

"Well. Good luck on your trip."

Taylor had helped him on with his coat and was holding out his hat for
him.

"It has been very nice seeing you," said Harry, "You were always a
wonderful woman. You still are."

"Thank you, Harry. Good-by again and good luck."

She stood at the top of the three low steps until the door closed behind
him. Then slowly she went back again to the sitting-room, thinking how
extraordinary it was that the past and the present and even the future
were sometimes so intricately entangled, and she wished that she might
not die but live on and on to see what was coming. Harry had not changed
at all. He was the same Harry, older and more tired, she had known at
Sandringham, in London, at Monte Carlo, at Oriander. It was herself who
had changed. Harry, it seemed to her, was no more than a wraith out of a
world which no longer existed. But once long ago he had done her a great
kindness in the case of Norah Ebbsworth. That was something she would
never forget.

When she returned Henry was already leaving. He kissed Janie again and
then pressed his white beard against Mrs. Parkington's cheek and with
the scent of cologne water and tobacco and horses, her spirits rose
again.

She said, "Henry, I am going to drive up and see you when the weather is
better."

"It's about time. You haven't been there since just after Gus died."

"I didn't realize it was so long."

He turned and smiled at Janie. "Why don't you bring her too?" he said to
Mrs. Parkington. "She's never seen her new cousin, Johnny."

"How old is he?" asked Mrs. Parkington.

"He'll be four his next birthday."

Janie laughed, "I've never been able to figure out his relationship--the
son of my great-grandfather's brother."

"Cousin, I suppose," said Henry. "The Parkingtons are a remarkable
family."

"I'll come," said Janie, "I'd love to."

Then he went away and when he had gone, the smile still remained on
Janie's face. "I haven't seen him since I was a little girl. I never
knew he was like that. Mama always said he was crazy."

"I'm afraid your mother doesn't understand Henry's quality," said Mrs.
Parkington, and she too smiled as if she shared a secret with Janie
which none of the others knew.

Then Taylor appeared to take away the tea tray. He said, "Mr. Stilham
called, madame. He said he would be here about eight o'clock."

She looked at Janie slyly and then picked up the black Pekingese and
began rubbing its ears. She thought: The child doesn't know anything. If
it's really serious who is to tell her? And she knew that of course, the
burden would fall upon her, because you couldn't trust the others to
make it as easy as possible for Janie.

                 *        *        *        *        *

When Amory came in she noticed that his eyes were bloodshot and that his
face was more high-colored than usual and she thought: It must be bad.
He has been drinking. She had never known Amory to drink too much, save
perhaps at college reunions and club dinners. There was, she knew, a
sort of relief in such drinking for men like Amory who had never really
grown up or learned anything. They drank because they wanted somehow to
escape from a life which baffled and thwarted them back into the world
of adolescence. She thought too: Amory is the kind of man who becomes a
nasty drunk, and as if to prepare herself she stiffened her thin body a
little and put down her coffee cup.

"Good evening, Amory," she said, "I'm just finishing my coffee. Would
you like some?"

"No, thanks, Granny. But I could do with a glass of brandy."

She pushed the bell beside her and flushed. Nothing irritated her so
much as to have Amory call her Granny--a great, grown, stupid man
patronizing her. Now, since he was drunk, it was particularly offensive.
The thing was beginning all wrong. In its essence, she knew, the
interview would be one of the most unpleasant she had ever known, but
his drinking and surliness made it worse.

Taylor appeared and she told him to take away the coffee and bring the
brandy for Mr. Stilham. Then Mattie appeared and took away the Pekingese
for their supper and Taylor returned with the brandy and poured a glass
and served it to Amory. He said, "Thank you, Taylor." He had not even
said good evening to Mattie.

To Taylor Mrs. Parkington said, "Don't disturb us, Taylor. If anyone
calls, take the message."

"Yes, madame." His face showed no sign of anything at all.

As the door closed, she said, "Janie was here this afternoon and Uncle
Henry."

"Crazy, as usual, I suppose," said Amory.

"Henry's not very crazy," she said quietly, "In the end he's turned out
better than most of us."

She knew that Amory thought Henry vulgar and one of the many liabilities
of the family. It was extraordinary how vulgar people were unable ever
to understand what vulgarity was. It was like the uncanny ability of
bores to recognize bores.

"I haven't seen Janie since the Christmas party," Amory said, "She's
never at home any more. She comes in about five in the morning and never
gets up till afternoon."

"She looked very well and happy."

He did not answer but only finished his brandy and asked, "May I have
another glass?"

"Yes, of course." She wanted to say, "You are a grown man. You should
know best if you should have another glass." But she held her tongue.

He stood up and went to the decanter and poured himself a second glass
of brandy. Then he leaned against the yellow marble mantelpiece sliding
his elbow along it to steady himself. She knew what was going to happen
and knew that she could not prevent it. His elbow touched the
shepherdess in Dresden china and gently, slowly in a kind of enchanted
inevitable movement, pushed it over the edge. Mrs. Parkington gave a
faint cry and started up out of her chair. The shepherdess struck the
marble slab below and shattered, and she heard herself saying peevishly,
"Oh, Amory! How could you?"

What she saw in the movement of the crash was not the death of the
shepherdess but the death of the shepherd which had been her companion
and was shattered long ago in the house on Thirty-fourth Street with the
huge chandelier and the great hall with the oriental vases and the
marble stairway.

For the death of the shepherd had been a more violent death, although
there was at least dignity in it. The shepherd had not been thrust to
destruction by a drunken man but hurled all the way across the ballroom
by a man who was very nearly insane with fury.




                                   VI


She had cried out almost the same words to the Major, "Oh, Gus. How
could you?" And had begun to cry.

Aspasie Conti was in the room and Harriette Livingstone and Mrs. Morton
Ogden and Gus had shouted, "I'll be God-damned if I'll take it lying
down. I'll make the bastards pay for it!"

In the eyes of Harriette, there was a look of shock and alarm, because
it was probably that in all her life she had never before heard words
like "God damn" or "bastard," but in the eyes of Aspasie and Mrs. Morton
Ogden there was a bright look, such as comes into the eyes of feminine
women at the glorious sight of an angry man whose fury is not directed
at them. Aspasie was dressed in a chic but demure dress of black with a
white fichu, which made her ugliness and handsome figure seem tall and
tragic. She wore it because earlier in the evening she had been reciting
a great scene from Phdre and the long speech of Climne from _Le
Misanthrope_ for the guests. And Mrs. Morton Ogden was upholstered in
purple velvet wearing the most famous necklace of diamonds in New York
and an aigrette in her hair. Harriette was in gray taffeta, dressed like
a mouse. As the shepherdess fell from the mantelpiece the whole scene
returned to Mrs. Parkington in utter clarity, as if it were happening at
that moment and not sixty years earlier.

The shepherd and shepherdess had been a pair until Gus smashed the
shepherd. They were pretty and delicate and expensive and she had
admired them in the window of Tiffany's shop and a little later Aspasie
had bought them and the Major had presented them to her on her birthday.
And now Gus had hurled the poor shepherd across the room and shattered
him beyond repair against the wall of the ballroom.

She heard Mrs. Morton Ogden say, "You shouldn't have done that, Gus. The
evening has already been bad enough for poor Susie. You should have
considered her condition."

Then she felt Gus's arms about her and his voice, the rage suddenly
melted out of it, saying, "I'm sorry, sparrow. Forgive me. I'll buy you
ten shepherds tomorrow or fifty if you like, only don't cry. It wasn't
you I was angry at."

"_Vous tes brut_" Aspasie said in the same angry voice Susie had heard
once through the door of the red and gold room at the Brevoort.

"Take her to bed," said Mrs. Morton Ogden, and Gus still with his arm
about her said, "Come along, sparrow," and led her out of the ballroom
past the dining-room where the men from Delmonico's were putting into
big wicker panniers all the rich food which had not been eaten by the
guests who had not come. The sight made her feel sick with humiliation.

At the foot of the stairs Gus picked her up and carried her past the
palms and the lilies and red roses and garlands of smilax. Halfway up
the stairs, he stopped and kissed her throat and for a moment she forgot
all about the party and what had happened. Then he said, "They'll pay
for it, sparrow! They'll pay for it!"

"No, Gus. You mustn't feel like that," she whispered. "It doesn't
matter. It really doesn't matter at all. I didn't cry because of that. I
swear I didn't ... It was because I'm tired."

He did not answer her but carried her the rest of the way up the stairs
and placed her on the great double bed of ebony inlaid with
mother-of-pearl which he had bought at the Paris Exposition. Then he
called in her maid. It was long before the day of Mattie and the maid
was an Alsatian girl called Thrse, a nice girl, sympathetic and very
professional. He said to the maid, "Will you see that Madame is put to
bed at once and then go to the kitchen and bring her some hot milk." He
kissed her again and said, "I must go downstairs now and say good night
to Mrs. Ogden. I have one or two things to discuss with her."

When he had gone away Thrse helped her out of Madame de Thbes' loops
and garlands of pale yellow satin and white roses and she went into the
next room to look at the children. She went in so softly that she did
not even waken the nurse who snored on while she stood looking down at
them in their small cots. Alice was sleeping with one hand thrown across
her face, her straight dark hair rolled in the _bigoudis_ which produced
the sausagelike curls the nurse thought were fashionable. Herbert lay on
his side, his face pressed into the pillow, his blond curls damp, his
clear skin beautiful even in the dim light that came through the door of
the bedroom. She stood longer at the side of Herbert, because he was
beautiful and the sight of him always brought a pang, half of
satisfaction, half of fear. Alice was a nice child, docile and good, but
she was sallow and dank without the radiance of her small brother. Susie
admitted these things in the darkness, alone, secretly, but in the
daylight she always treated Alice as if she were a beauty.

Now, looking down at them, she found herself praying--that they would
have a decent, good life, that they would understand how to live and
know the value of things that were good and simple as she knew them, in
spite even of Gus and all his flamboyance and generosity. She prayed out
of a fear which she herself did not quite understand.

                 *        *        *        *        *

What went on belowstairs she did not know until years afterward when
Mrs. Morton Ogden told her just before she died in the great marble
house at Fifty-seventh Street. And even then, long afterward, she was
able to reconstruct the scene, and because she knew the participants so
well she was able to see it in her imagination and even divine what they
had said and the part each played in the peculiar council of war.

After they had dispatched Miss Livingstone to her invalid father in the
Parkington brougham, the three of them--the Major and Mrs. Morton Ogden
and Aspasie went into the small gold sitting room with the Italian
scenes painted on the walls and sat down with a bottle of iced
champagne. The men from Delmonico's had gone and the servants were sent
to bed and all the lights were out save the gas flames inside the
cut-glass globes of the great chandelier in the hall. Mrs. Morton Ogden
sent home her own brougham which had been standing in the snow for an
hour and awaited the return of the Parkington brougham from Miss
Livingstone's flat in Eighth Street. None of them had discussed the
business of shipping Harriette off; they all knew that she was not a fit
listener to what they meant to discuss. A mouse had no place at a
conference of eagles.

In the hearts of each of them sitting in the ornate little room there
was fury. In the heart of Aspasie was the fury of a baffled performer.
She had expected to perform before a large and fashionable audience, the
cream of New York society, and on the gold chairs after dinner she found
herself confronted by thirty or forty stockbrokers, speculators, Tammany
politicians and their wives, not one of whom understood a word of the
long sonorous passages of Racine nor the wit of Molire. She had gone on
heroically reading in her deep passionate voice while her audience
stirred and grew glassy-eyed on the gold chairs, bewildered by the
spectacle of an ugly woman grimacing and making inexplicable and
extraordinary sounds in a tongue of which not one of them understood
anything.

But she was enraged too because the _bourgeoisie_--she could not dignify
their provinciality by the word _mondaine_--had insulted her darling
Susie. Many of them had refused the invitations. That was
understandable. But most of them had accepted, perhaps out of fear of
the Major's power and then failed to appear. The ones who had come were
the "wrong people" but friends of the Major, some of them disreputable,
whom he had insisted upon inviting. "They are my friends," he said. "I
see no reason why people should not mix. It is a civilized and
intelligent thing for people of all sorts to know each other." The only
ones from St. John's parish and the fashionable world were those who
came because they dared not refuse the Major anything, people like the
rector and his horse-faced wife and Mr. Agnew and his wife. But those
who did not appear had insulted the "_plus charmante femme du monde, ma
chre_ Susie!"

Opposite her in purple velvet and diamonds, tightly corseted and
slightly red in the face from champagne and the long pressure of her
stays, Mrs. Morton Ogden enjoyed a special fury of her own. She rather
liked what she called "having the furies" because otherwise life in New
York in the seventies became boring beyond the point of endurance. And
at heart, Mrs. Morton Ogden was a tyrant and a dictator. She was furious
now because by the insult to Gus and Susie Parkington, she too had been
insulted--or worse, she had been slapped in the face by scores of people
whom in her heart she regarded with only faintly concealed contempt.
They had insulted Susie Parkington and Susie Parkington was her
protge, whom she had chosen partly because Susie was pretty and
charming, but more because her husband was a challenge, one of the worst
challenges. He was flamboyant and irrepressible. He had a way of
laughing at things which the women who dwelt behind the closed doors
cherished most. He was a gambler and reckless and had a way with women,
and disturbed many a respectable lady's imagination in a way she had not
believed possible until the moment he began talking to her. He was a
buccaneer, a nobody who had made an immense fortune by none too
scrupulous methods even in a day when scruples were of no great value.
He was indeed a challenge, but Mrs. Morton Ogden's perversity enjoyed
challenges and she had made up her mind that she would "put over" the
Parkingtons.

It was not wise to cross Mrs. Morton Ogden if you wished to survive. She
had immense power and she was perfectly aware of her power. It was
compounded of many things. She had immense wealth come to her out of the
original fortune of a grandfather who dealt in cattle and land, and of
this wealth she had complete control, being a widow and childless. She
managed it admirably and was not above investing in adventures with
Major Parkington whose touch appeared to turn everything into profits of
one hundred to two hundred per cent and sometimes more. She had with Gus
Parkington a perfect understanding.

But she had more too than wealth; she had an impeccable position with an
ancestry on her grandmother's side studded like plush with cairngorms
with Livingstones and Van Rennselaers and Suydams and other members of
heavy Dutch families which had come over to New Amsterdam to get on in
the world. Her wit and her vigor, she knew well enough, had not come
from them but from her grandfather, the rich cattle drover. But they had
their place in the scheme of things; she did not undervalue those heavy
names any more than she undervalued the millions and vigor that had come
down from her grandfather.

She had a great marble house far uptown on Fifty-seventh Street--within
sight of the squatters and their goats and she had lived much abroad and
when ambassadors and princes and dukes came to flatter the middle-class
snobbery of her fellow citizens, they stayed with Mrs. Morton Ogden or
were introduced to society and entertained in her house. And Mrs. Ogden
had the courage of her own beliefs--that New York was dull and
provincial and stuffy and that among those who constituted the _bon ton_
there were no brains and very little cultivation. She would have
preferred living in Paris or Rome but two things held her back--one her
greed for more and more money and the other a deep-dyed, deeply rooted
patriotism which she concealed almost shyly. She had no patience either
for the precious delicate souls who had fled the shopkeepers paradise of
New York for Europe. She had an idea, indeed a kind of mission, that she
could civilize New York and teach it how to use its money. She would say
again and again, "By God, I'll civilize them, if it's the last thing I
do!"

And so she forced many things down the throats of the already gorged,
gouty and upholstered world of fashion; among them her parties which
were different from any other parties. Her food was the best food in the
city but she did not bring it on by wagon-loads; she did not have five
or six courses of meat, game and fish, interrupted by Roman punch to
provide the guests with an opportunity to recover their breath. And
after dinner the men were not permitted to stay for two hours swilling
brandy and telling dirty stories or talking about the stock market.
After dinner she frequently had singers from the French opera or
recitations--Aspasie had read many times in her great marble house--and
most horrible of all she invited the artists not only to sit at table
with other guests but encouraged them to mingle as well. Only Mrs.
Morton Ogden could achieve all these things. The others lacked the
daring or the intelligence and sometimes both.

She had taken up the Parkingtons as she had taken up the singers from
the French opera, partly as a diversion from plush boredom, partly
because of genuine fondness for Susie and admiration for Gus (whom she
looked upon as a kind of picturesque bandit whose friendship was
immensely profitable) and partly out of utter perversity and
exasperation. She made them a cause, and they could not have found a
more powerful friend.

This, then, was Mrs. Morton Ogden, a free woman unhampered by
conventions or complexes, who now sat with Aspasie and the Major in the
gold room with the Italian pictures. While she listened to the
conversation and occasionally put in a word, she was compiling a list of
those who had defied her espousal of the Parkingtons and who would never
again pass the doors of her house. Among them were many people on the
way up (they were always the worst snobs) to whom this privilege meant
almost as much as life itself and some others who considered themselves
the Old Guard and strong enough to defy her. There were ways of humbling
them as well. If anyone knew how, it was Mrs. Malvina Ogden. She had not
only prestige; she had what in that world was a supreme power--she did
not even know how rich she was.

Aspasie was inclined to be a little hysterical. She cried out, "It is a
conspiracy! They came together and agreed upon it!"

Mrs. Ogden was not of that opinion. A few perhaps had conspired but most
of them had simply done it deliberately thinking that on the next day
they could say, "Did _you_ go to the Parkington ball? We didn't.
Impossible people! One has to draw the line somewhere!" But they would
live to regret that.

The Major said very little, but he too thought a great deal. He too was
making lists of names which must not be forgotten. For very nearly the
first time in his life, he was tired with a weariness born of the
interminable, agonizing evening. There had been a curious kind of
torturing humiliation about it as the hour grew later and later and only
about half the guests who had accepted appeared, and slowly it became
clear that it was, with one or two exceptions, the "wrong" half which
came in. For a long time he had held on to the belief that they were
late only because it was a snowy night, with icy streets over which the
horses would have to move slowly. After the program of recitation and
singing began, he gave up hope and sat near the back of the half-empty
ballroom, miserably, on a stiff gold chair, carrying off the humiliation
with a frozen face, checking over and over again those who had come and
resolving that he would never forget their loyalty--the politicians, the
hangers on, the speculators. A dozen men in the room, without even
knowing it, were started that night on their various ways to becoming
rich men. Two or three, years later, were saved from jail because
Augustus Parkington intervened with power and money. He was not a man to
forget either a friend or an enemy.

It was for Susie that he suffered most. For himself he was not
sensitive. He had managed very well for himself and had no doubts about
the future, but the humiliation for Susie was not to be borne. He
suffered, never once understanding or believing that Susie did not care
very much, that she would have preferred not giving a ball at all, that
in her heart she did not even like the big house.

As the guests left, he said good-by to them with an air of cordiality
but the eyes were cold, like marble, and the lips drawn tight in a hard,
brutal line. It was only when the last guest had gone and there was only
Susie, Aspasie and Harriette and Mrs. Ogden that his temper broke and he
smashed the poor Dresden shepherd.

But now in the room with the Italian pictures he was cold again, with
the icy coldness which Susie never knew, but which terrified other
people. When he turned cold Major Augustus Parkington could be sadistic,
criminal and ruthless. And when he turned cold he was silent with a
frightening silence. Aspasie was frightened and Mrs. Ogden was
interested but unmoved because she was herself a little like Gus
Parkington and understood him, and because she always felt quite able to
take care of herself.

The butler appeared presently and said the carriage had returned and
Mrs. Ogden rose and left with Aspasie. In the hall she said to the
Major, "Thank you for the evening. I'll expect you at tea tomorrow ...
without Susie. By God, I'll civilize them or know the reason why."

When they had gone the Major wearily climbed the white marble stairs. He
undressed in the darkness so as not to disturb Susie and all that night
she slept with his arms about her, as if he would protect her thus
forever.

In the morning after he had gone away, she felt suddenly ill and
Harriette sent for Dr. Westbrook, but by the time he arrived it was too
late to do anything. She lost her third baby and for a long time
afterward was very ill.

                 *        *        *        *        *

When she was well enough, the Major took a house for her in Long Branch
and sent her and the children and nurse there for the summer. The house
was not a big house; it was much smaller than the Major would have liked
but there was nothing else available. It was the kind of house Susie
liked, rather worn and lived in. In it she felt safe and hidden away.
There was no necessity for going out to restaurants nor any for having
people to dinner. There was in it no marble and no statuary and no
palms. For the first time it seemed to her that she had a home.

The Major came down on Friday and stayed until Tuesday and long
afterward it seemed to her that in the ugly red house under the maple
trees, they were happier than they had ever been before or afterward. It
was not the wild happiness of those first passionate days at the
Brevoort, but a warm, easy happiness in which they were used to each
other, in which neither of them felt the need or desire for anyone else
in the world. It was as if the Major's impulse to protect and shelter
her had become a passion.

Sometimes during the week Aspasie came down to stay, for Aspasie was by
now like one of the family. Usually she arrived on Tuesday after the
Major had left and returned to the city on Friday before he had come
back. All during the week they talked together in French because Susie
wanted to speak the language perfectly and because by now, it was very
nearly as natural for her to speak French as to speak English. She began
to read French books and poetry and plays. When the weather was fine
they took the children with them and picnicked on the beach beneath a
great parasol.

Harriette did not come down at all since she could not leave her poor
father and there was really no need for her, since there were no
engagements, no meetings, no housekeeping which could cause any worry.
Her father knew now about her connection with Major Parkington and he
had become reconciled almost with pleasure to the shocking connection
because it meant that he lived now almost in luxury in a new flat and no
longer had to write once a month to three or four rich relatives to
remind them that their contributions to his upkeep were overdue. Major
Parkington took care of everything, lavishly. It was extraordinary;
Harriette's father discovered how useful money could be.

The absences of the Major seemed to make him only the more devoted. He
never again spoke of the ball to which people had not come and Susie was
thankful for that. It was an ugly thing, and she saw no reason to
embrace ugly things unless one was forced to face them. Nor did Aspasie
ever speak of it. All that summer it was as if the ugly thing had never
happened. The summer itself passed lazily with the Major spending the
evenings at home and sometimes going out late at night after she was
asleep to go to the gambling casino. The city seemed far away, like
something Susie had dreamed, and presently as the summer wore on, she
came to begrudge the passing not only of each day but each hour. At last
she ceased even reading the newspapers, although Aspasie with her French
mind could not pass a day without reading her _journal_ from cover to
cover. But Aspasie did not trouble to read or repeat any but the most
sensational of the paragraphs she encountered. That was how Susie came
to hear of Radnor Beaumont's suicide.

There it was spread in a great headline in two inch type across the
whole front of the paper, because Radnor Beaumont was a rich man and an
important man in New York, not only in finance but in the fashionable
and sporting world as well.

Susie and Aspasie had been sitting under the parasol while the nurse and
children walked along the edge of the surf collecting shells, and when
Aspasie took the newspaper out of her bag and opened it and read the
headline, the name Radnor Beaumont meant not very much to Susie, little
more at first than simply the dim image of a big heavy man with gray
hair and a pompous manner and a tall thin wife whom she had met at one
of Mrs. Morton Ogden's _soires_. She remembered them as being a
disagreeable couple to whom the Major had presented her with pride. They
had not seemed impressed and had turned away after talking for a little
time about nothing at all.

She went on sewing, her mind filled with images of the Beaumonts, while
Aspasie went on reading. Aspasie had hoped, clearly, that the suicide
was _une affaire passionelle_ and when she discovered that it had only
to do with money, the interest went out of her voice. The account of the
tragedy was not an inspiring story. Radnor Beaumont had inherited a
large part of his wealth and influence, and so like most conservatives,
not being at all certain that he could replace it once it was lost, he
had been a careful man. The news that he had plunged and that he was a
ruined man and a bankrupt was probably more shocking to his friends than
the actual fact of his suicide. He had hung himself to a hook in the
wardrobe of his own dressing-room in the house on Fifth Avenue and no
one had found the body until many hours after the act. (In these details
Aspasie's voice betrayed her interest.) There was a note which stated
simply that he was ruined, and could not possibly hope to meet his
debts.

When she had finished reading, Aspasie folded the newspaper and lay it
across her knees and sat looking out at the sea. When she did not speak
for a long time Susie looked up from her sewing at the strong fierce
profile and in a sudden swift wave of intuition, she thought: Aspasie is
thinking that Radnor Beaumont was one of those who accepted for dinner
and the ball and then did not appear. For the profile of Aspasie against
the blue of the Atlantic was set and hard with no pity in it. But
neither of them spoke of the ball.

Presently Aspasie said, "I did not like him. He was a vulgar, provincial
man who put on airs."

Two days later a letter came from Mrs. Morton Ogden. She was at Newport,
she wrote, and the weather was very bad with much fog. She hoped that
Susie had recovered and was feeling herself again. If she felt strong
enough it might be a good idea to leave the children and come to Newport
for a short visit. She was certain Gus would not object; in fact she had
discussed it with Gus when they had met recently at a directors'
meeting. No doubt, she added, Susie had heard of Radnor Beaumont's ruin
and suicide.

_I do not think_ [she wrote], _that he will be greatly missed. He no
longer really had any place in the financial life of New York. The city
is no longer a small town closed corporation, belonging to a few people
whose money grew out of real estate. He was behind the times--a small
frog in what is becoming a big puddle. One day New York will be the
banking center of the world. I understand his wife has collapsed
completely and after the funeral will go away for a "rest cure."_

Susie did not go to Newport. She wanted simply to stay on and on forever
at Long Branch. She answered that while she could think of nothing more
enjoyable than a visit with Mrs. Ogden, the doctor advised against it.

She did not like the idea of the friendship between Gus and Mrs. Ogden,
nor the fact that they had been seeing each other during the summer. It
was not that she had any physical jealousy of Mrs. Ogden; Susie was not
by nature a jealous woman and it would certainly have been preposterous
to suppose that the Major, with his liking for young pretty women, could
find anything physical to admire in a war horse like Malvina Ogden. The
jealousy was of another kind--because she divined that Gus talked to
Mrs. Ogden about such things as politics and railroads and mines and
banks, and never mentioned them to his own wife, treating her as if she
were too frivolous or too stupid to understand. And her instinct told
her that they were bad for each other because they were too much
alike--energetic, ruthless, willful and contemptuous of others. The
ambitions of both were insatiable. Gus was bad enough on his own,
without being stimulated by someone like Mrs. Ogden.

That was one of her small worries. She had another too about little
Alice. She was a good child who never cried or soiled her frocks, who,
even at three, had good manners. It was as if, already, she understood
that she was sallow and dull and must somehow make up for it by being
gentle and agreeable. When people passed the children on the boardwalk
or the beach they always overlooked Alice and spoke to her brother,
sitting up, golden haired and blue-eyed in his end of the pram. They
would say that he was an angel and charming and beautiful and touch his
curls. And if they noticed Alice at all it was to say, "She is a nice
child too. How do you do, little girl?" And Alice would answer politely,
"Very well, thank you."

The awful thing was that Susie herself, in her heart, deep inside her,
felt like the people on the beach. At sight of little Herbert her own
heart leapt with delight; at sight of Alice she felt nothing at all with
her heart. Her head told her: You must be doubly nice to Alice to make
up for the difference. Sometimes, almost in anguish, she thought: Oh,
why couldn't Alice had have Herbert's looks. It doesn't matter what a
boy looks like. A boy can take care of himself. Alice was so dull and
good and little Herbert even at two was high-spirited and willful and
naughty. Sometimes she wondered where Alice had come from, for she
seemed to have in her looks and manner nothing of either herself or the
Major. Even her looks would not have mattered so much if she had not
been so listless and dull. Aspasie was an ugly woman but after a few
moments of conversation with her one forgot her looks entirely and
thought of her as handsome.

She was thinking of all these things one morning for the thousandth time
as she watched the two children playing with their buckets and shovels
in the sand, when Aspasie began again reading aloud from her newspaper.

There had been, it seemed, a whole epidemic of failures in New York.
Radnor Beaumont was the first and three other solid firms had followed
in quick succession. The partners of one of them, James Bradish and
Alister Alsop, had been arrested. More arrests, predicted the newspaper,
would probably follow. Again when she had finished reading, Aspasie
folded her paper carefully in her thrifty French way and looked out to
sea, and again Susie remembered that James Bradish and Alister Alsop and
their wives were among those who had accepted but had not come to the
ball. Of this neither Aspasie nor herself said anything. Again when she
looked at Aspasie the Frenchwoman was looking out toward the sea, her
profile fierce as an eagle. Then for the first time a strange suspicion
came to Susie, a suspicion so fantastic as to be scarcely believable.
She looked again at Aspasie and said suddenly, "What are you thinking,
Aspasie?" The Frenchwoman sighed and without turning toward her she
said, "I'm thinking what a remarkable man your husband is. He should
have been a general like Bonaparte."

When they arrived home from the hot beach, there was a telegram from New
York on the table in the hall. Telegrams were not common in those days
and the sight of it alarmed Susie. No one telegraphed unless they had
something terribly important to say. As she tore it open she thought of
Gus. Nothing must happen to Gus!

But it did not concern Gus. It was from Harriette Livingstone. It read,
"Am arriving by afternoon train. Hope it will not inconvenience you but
need is urgent. Lovingly, Harriette."

How could Harriette leave her father? How could Harriette who never
traveled at all come all the way to Long Branch alone?

Susie and Aspasie drove to the little pitch-roofed, shingled, red
station and brought her back to the house through the hot afternoon sun.
Harriette was tremulous and full of apology.

"I know Aspasie will forgive me if I don't say why I have come. I would
not have troubled you but it was so important. It is something very
secret." She laid a gray-gloved hand on the hand of Aspasie and said,
"You will forgive me, won't you? I know you will understand. Some day
I'll be able to tell you."

"Of course," said Aspasie, politely, but Susie knew that curiosity was
already devouring Aspasie like a cancer and she thought: Probably it's
nothing at all ... Harriette's sense of proportion is so grotesque. Very
likely it is nothing at all. She kept telling herself this because she
was really troubled lest what Harriette had to tell her concerned Gus.

She did not deceive herself; she had known for a long time that sooner
or later someone would come to her and say, "Have you heard that your
husband is keeping an actress?" Gus, she knew well enough, was like
that. A wife wasn't enough for Gus. There was too much of him, too much
vitality, too much gusto, too much of an appetite for parties and gaiety
and low life. He had to have a lot of things a wife could not give him,
things indeed which he would not permit a wife to give him because if
she was like that he would no longer want her as his wife. For a long
time she had known that one day she would know about his other life. She
had worked to prepare herself for the discovery, yet now as she drove
back to the little house with Harriette and Aspasie, she knew that when
the time came it would be no easier for her than if the news had come to
her, unprepared, out of the blue.

The horses stopped beneath the big maples and the three of them got
down.

"What a pretty house!" said Harriette, "And such a pretty lawn and
trees! It's what the French would call _trs coquette_!"

"It is nice," said Susie, thinking that at times Harriette's gentleness
and simplicity approached the borders of half-wittedness. There were
times when she doubted that Harriette minded very much having been
jilted, or being an old maid, or having to take care of her father.
Sometimes she thought it was useless to waste pity on someone who had no
profound feelings of any kind. She remembered something Gus had once
said--that to be capable of tragedy, you must be of tragic stature to
begin with.

Inside the house, she led Harriette to her own bedroom, to "freshen up"
but Harriette could not even wait for that. The moment the door was
closed she stood with her back against it and said, "It is a great favor
I have to ask from you."

Susie felt suddenly weak with relief and sat down on the big bed; it
wasn't then what she thought, it wasn't that Gus was unfaithful. She was
aware that Harriette was experiencing a kind of perverse enjoyment in
the excitement of the moment. Harriette was blossoming since she had
come to know spectacular people. She was no longer the old pathetic,
persecuted Harriette. Susie said, "What is it, Harriette?"

"It's about my cousin, Goodhue Blair." She moved away from the door and
sat on the bed beside Susie. "He came to the flat last night. He was a
little intoxicated and said that if I could not help him there was only
one thing to do and that was to kill himself. Goodhue is a very
respectable man. I never saw him like that before. He said that he knew
I was a friend of yours ... I hope he was not exaggerating."

Susie made a deprecating gesture but did not interrupt Harriette. She
continued, "He said that whether or not he killed himself was a matter
entirely in the hands of Major Parkington."

"How could that possibly be?" asked Susie.

"I'm afraid I don't understand myself," said Harriette, "I'm not very
good about things which have to do with money, but it seems that
Goodhue's firm is in great difficulty and that the Major could save it
and Goodhue. It is a very good firm, very old and well-established. When
he asked me to come to you, I could not well refuse. I hope you don't
think I am presuming."

Susie laid her hand on Harriette's gray-gloved one, "Of course not. You
have been very kind to me. I don't quite understand but I will speak to
the Major."

"I have never seen my cousin Goodhue in such a state before. He said he
had appealed to Major Parkington himself but that he had refused to help
him. Goodhue is a very proud man. I think he must have drunk too much in
order to get up his courage. There is not much time, he said. Only until
tomorrow evening at the latest."

Harriette had neither the tact nor the intelligence of Aspasie and now
she plunged full into the fire, "I know Goodhue and his wife did not
come to the party, but I think he meant to come. He said that
Esther--that's his wife--was ill in bed with kidney complaint. She's
never been quite right since her last child was born. I think he was
telling the truth."

Susie felt the color rising in her cheeks and said quickly, "I'm sure
that all this has nothing to do with whether they came to the party or
not, Harriette. The Major isn't like that. I'll explain it as best I can
to him. I'm sure he'll know more about it than either of us do."

"You're very good to me," said Harriette, "You've always been so good to
me. You are really an angel, Susie."

"Never mind that. Will you be spending the night?"

"No, that I couldn't do. Father will be expecting me. There is a train
tonight, isn't there? They told me there was."

"There's a train at six-ten. Aspasie is going back on it. If you'd like
to stay, I'm sure we'd be delighted to have you."

"No. I'll go back with Aspasie." Suddenly she began to cry. "I love you
and the Major so much," she said, "Your kindness has made all the
difference to Father and me."

"It's nothing," said Susie, and with a remarkable degree of clairvoyance
she divined that the "Harriette period" was coming to an end. Gus would
arrange for her and her father, but gradually, in a kindly way,
Harriette would have to go out of the picture. She was not only becoming
tiresome but silly as well. The dreary Harriette had been much
preferable to this sentimental one. Thank God there was no
sentimentality in Aspasie.

Susie rose from the bed and said, "There is just time for you to have
tea and a sandwich before the train leaves. Come along."

She held the door open for Harriette and followed her as she went out.
Already she had forgotten Harriette's tiresomeness because she knew now
that her suspicion was true. Gus had deliberately set about ruining the
people who had humiliated them. He had been responsible for Radnor
Beaumont's suicide and the arrest of James Bradish and Alister Alsop.
And now there was Goodhue Blair and many others. And in the background
was Mrs. Ogden ... She saw it all clearly now. Between them they had
planned this revenge. The knowledge made her suddenly and violently ill.

                 *        *        *        *        *

After Aspasie and Harriette had gone to the train she went to her own
room and lay on the bed preparing herself for what she should say when
the Major arrived on the evening train. At first as she listened to
Harriette's fluttering muddled appeal, she had experienced only a swift
sense of relief that what Harriette had come to tell her was not what
she dreaded; but now the feeling of relief was gone and there remained
only the knowledge of what Gus had done--that he was responsible for
Radnor Beaumont's death and the ruin of a dozen other men because they
had dared to humiliate him.

The fact itself had very little reality for her; what shocked her was
the knowledge that her husband whom she loved could be so vindictive, so
bitter, so ruthless. For a little time she tried to persuade herself
that Harriette, being so addlepated, had got the whole story muddled,
but she could not quite accomplish this because she remembered the look
in the Major's eye as he hurled the Dresden shepherd across the
ballroom. It was a Gus she had never seen before although people had
told her he could be like that. And she remembered the cold glint in
Mrs. Ogden's eyes. These were powerful, ruthless people who struck with
violence and calculation. She had her own fashion of getting what she
wanted; sometimes she achieved it even against the force of people like
the Major and Mrs. Ogden. There were soft ways of wearing people down,
of tricking them into doing what you wanted. She was herself no innocent
and cooing dove. But the other two could be terrifying.

She heard her carriage come in the drive and heard the Major descend and
climb the steps and open the door, and still she thought: He cannot be
like that! Harriette must be crazy!

Always she was glad when he returned and was at the door to be kissed by
him, but tonight she could not bring herself to meet him because she
herself experienced a curious feeling of shame, as if she had
unwittingly been involved in something disgraceful. And what Harriette
told her had made her feel more acutely than ever that there was a part
of the Major she did not know at all and had never known, all that part
which had to do with his mines and banks and railroads. That part of him
he had always kept hidden, thrusting her aside when she sought to
penetrate the mystery and understand him, all of him. She felt now that
when she saw him, there would be in her feelings as in her manner, a
strangeness, almost a hostility, which had never been there before.

Then she heard his voice calling, "Susie! Susie! Where are you?" and she
opened the door and went to the stair rail and said, weakly, "Here I am,
Gus. Could you come up here?"

He came up the stairs three steps at a time but when he saw her,
something in her face chilled him and he stopped in the doorway and
said, like a small boy, "What is it, sparrow? What's the matter? Why
weren't you there to meet me?"

She sat down on the bed, confused and unhappy. At sight of him, the old
rush of love swept over her and when it had passed, she thought: He is
the one who did that. He was mean and spiteful and small and vengeful.
But she managed to say, "Something happened. I meant to be at the door
but I couldn't."

"What happened?"

"Harriette was here. She stayed only an hour or two. She told me about
Goodhue Blair ... and all the others."

He did not answer her at once. He took a chair from against the wall and
placed it beside the bed. Then he sat down and looked at her, distantly,
with a coldness she had never before encountered in him. And she
thought: This is how he is outside, with other people. That is why they
are afraid of him, for she herself was suddenly frightened.

"So Harriette has been telling tales," he said.

"No. She didn't come for that. She came to ask me to ask you a favor ...
not to ruin her cousin. She said it was entirely in your hands and that
her cousin would kill himself like Radnor Beaumont if you didn't help
him."

"Goodhue Blair won't kill himself. He hasn't the guts. The worst he
could do would be to drink himself to death." The contempt in his voice
was like ice.

He moved a little nearer and after a moment said, "Do you know what you
are talking about, Susie?"

"No. Only what I've been told and what I guessed. You never let me know
anything. I'm not a fool, you know, Gus. I've plenty of brains. My
brains might even be useful to you. That's the only thing I've ever
resented ... that you treated me always like a fool in these things."

"Business has nothing to do with women ... it's ugly."

"But Mrs. Ogden ..."

"Malvina Ogden is not a woman. She's much smarter than most men. Tell
me, what is it that you guessed?"

She looked away from him, filled again with a curious sense of shame,
for him. She said, "That you ruined a score of men and their families
because they didn't come to a ball we gave ... and you caused one man at
least to kill himself."

Slowly she forced herself to look at him. His head was bent. He was
looking at the heavy gold watch chain which he wore across his
waistcoat, turning it round and round with his long strong fingers.

"Yes," he said, "That's true. People can't do a thing like that to my
wife. I might have had another son but for them."

"No," she said quickly, "That's not true. I had a fall. That was what
caused it." But she knew that he would never believe her, not until the
day he died.

"But that's not all the story," he was saying, without looking at her,
"There's much more to it, much more than you will ever understand. It's
not woman's business but I'll try to explain it to you. Those same men
would have ruined me just as ruthlessly. They were trying to do it, but
they weren't strong enough. They weren't clever enough, not all of them
together. I can tell you one thing--that if they had succeeded I
wouldn't have hung myself in a cupboard. I'd have gone back to work and
made another fortune and got them in the end. They weren't only my
enemies, they were the enemies as well of the whole country."

She could not imagine what he meant but she was aware of a change in his
manner. The anger was gone; he was calm and serious. Even the quality of
his voice had changed.

"Do you know what this country is?" he asked rhetorically, "It's the
biggest thing there has ever been on this earth. It's got everything.
Did you ever think about the coal, the oil, the mines, the good fertile
soil, the forests? We haven't even scratched the surface yet. There
aren't ten people in this country who understand what is ahead of us,
what this nation can become. I'm one of the ten people, Susie. It's so
big that I can't even believe it myself. It needs big men to go ahead
and build it up--not men like Radnor Beaumont and Goodhue Blair. They're
New Yorkers and small-town men. Why, they've never even seen this
country. What can men like that know about a place like Leaping Rock?
What can they know about the West when they stick around New York and
worry about whose parties they should go to or not go to. Do you know
where they made their money? They inherited most of it and it didn't
even take much brains on the part of their fathers and grandfathers to
make it. They just sat and watched their land turn into money because
other people developed factories and business and made it valuable for
them. All they had to do was hang on to what they had. Always remember
one thing, Susie, that the people who inherit money are always the
tightest with it. They're afraid that if they lost it they'd never be
able to make it again. That's why Radnor Beaumont hung himself--because
he knew in his heart that once he was ruined he was ruined for good.
There wasn't any coming back."

As if to help him make clear what he was trying to tell her, he stood up
and began walking up and down. "Those men were trying to run the
country--this great God-damned wonderful country they don't know
anything about. They were trying to make it into a closed corporation
for themselves--the country they didn't know anything about at all. They
were trying to buy it all for themselves and they're pygmies--that's
what they are--pygmies. They did their best to ruin us. They thought we
were nobodies, upstarts. They thought because they had hung on to what
was given them, that they were smart with their two-penny tight little
minds."

He whirled about suddenly, "They'd have ruined the country! They'd have
let it stagnate! All they wanted was to keep it for themselves. They
wanted to stop all progress, to keep it the small tight world they'd
always known." He came over and stood at the foot of the bed, "They had
to go just as all little people all through history have to go. There's
a new world coming, a world so big most people can't even understand it
and it needs a new kind of men who can take chances and think big ...
big as the great valley at Leaping Rock. This tight little world is
busting open. There's a new sort of men who are big enough to break it
wide open and make it into something ... Gould and Harriman and
Vanderbilt and a lot of others and myself. In another twenty-five years
all the Goodhue Blairs and Radnor Beaumonts will be living in houses on
back streets if they won't learn."

He bent over the end of the bed and took her hand, "Listen, sparrow. Did
you ever know what I think about this country? I wouldn't trade Texas
for the whole of Europe. Texas you can do something with. You can build
into the future. Europe is stuck in a groove. It's all developed and
finished. No, these little fellows tried to drive us out, to smash us.
They tried to block us every way they could. They're not going to count
much longer. If you're to get ahead as a banker you've got to be big and
think big from now on. Nobody'll ever miss 'em. They had to go. The rest
of us have a job to do. A big job that takes big, wide-open thinking and
men who don't invest for a three per cent sure thing."

She was dazzled by his eloquence and the look of fire in his blue eyes.
She had never thought of him like this. Even all his gusto and pleasure
in life had seemed to her no more than a natural phenomenon, without
direction. Now she began to understand many things.

"It happened to work two ways," he said, "It killed two birds with one
stone ... because it killed off a lot of birds who were rude to you." He
took her hand between his two big hands and said, "You see? I'm sorry
you thought me so small that I'd do something like that just out of
revenge."

"I didn't think that ... really. I didn't know."

"We're set now. The world belongs to us." He came round the end of the
bed and sat down beside her. "I'll take care of Goodhue Blair," he said,
"If it means so much to Harriette. I'll leave him with enough to live on
but not enough to ever again be dangerous."

"Thank you, Gus. I'll telegraph to Harriette." And then, out of her
immense curiosity, she asked, "And Mrs. Ogden?"

"What do you mean--Mrs. Ogden?"

"Was she in on it?"

"Yes. She's one of the ones who understands how big this country is." He
grinned. "And you remember she always said, 'I'll civilize 'em or know
the reason why!' Do you understand and will you forgive me?"

"Yes, Gus."

Then he kissed her and she forgot all her anxieties for the moment.

"It wasn't so bad losing the baby, Gus," she said, "I'm going to have
another."

It was all right now, save for one little sadness. She knew now that the
little red house was no more than a dream. She was never to have a
home--the kind of home she wanted. A home didn't fit in with what Gus
had been talking about as he paced up and down her bedroom, illuminated
by the passion and excitement of his ambitions, of his vast and curious
dream.




                                  VII


In the moment she stood there watching Amory, red-faced and clumsy,
trying to pick up the pieces of the shattered shepherdess, it had all
come back to her--the painful memory of the ball and the figures of
Aspasie and Harriette, Mrs. Ogden and the Major. Of late the past
returned to her in sudden unexpected flashes of memory, very clear and
compressed, as if in a capsule containing only the essence and the
significance of what had happened. And things which had occurred long
ago began to fall into place in the pattern of her long existence, so
that she understood how each apparently isolated episode had grown out
of the past and in turn had its influence upon the future--that future
which for a long time now had become the past. Time she found was a
curious thing which people had not yet explored deeply enough to fathom
its meaning and operation in relation to man. She thought suddenly of
the simple description of relativity which her friend Dr. Salveminni had
given her--that if you went along a river in a boat the landscape
unfolded bit by bit in succession but that if you saw the same landscape
from an airplane, you saw it all at once. She was beginning now to see
her whole life as a whole, as if she saw it all at once from an
airplane, rather than strung out, incident by incident, like the pearls
of a necklace. She did not doubt the toughness and agility of her mind.
In some ways it was brighter and quicker than it had ever been, alive
with intuition and a kind of clairvoyance, darting this way and that
like a firefly, and in a way it was stronger than it had ever been
because it had wisdom for a base.

But relativity, philosophy, were not the concern of the moment. It was
Amory, stooping and holding on to the yellow marble fireplace, while he
struggled to pick up the shattered fragments of the shepherdess.

She said, "Let it go, Amory, Taylor will clear it away later. You may
fall into the fireplace and burn yourself."

Relieved, Amory stood erect and said, "I'm very sorry, Granny. I don't
know how it happened."

The word "Granny" infuriated her again but she still held her peace. She
thought: If he is to make any sense, he must have a moderately clear
head and aloud she said, "I think some coffee would help you," and
relighted the flame under the silver coffee urn.

He went over to a chair and sat for a time with his elbows on his knees,
his head in his hands. When the coffee was hot, she poured a cup and
carried it over to him. "It will be better without cream and sugar," she
said.

Then he looked up at her suddenly as if he saw her for the first time
and she was aware that he was afraid and that this was why he had been
drinking. The look in his eyes softened her and brought a quick, sudden
understanding. She thought: It is really not his fault. He was born
above his station. He is a dull fellow, not very bright, and he was
taught all sorts of false things in school and at home, among them that
any Stilham was a superior and privileged creature, that the world
somehow depended on what he and his friends did and thought. Things were
expected of him that were far beyond his capabilities. They tried to
make a silk purse out of a sow's ear. And he himself had believed it all
until now ... now when he had at last overstrained in his effort to
convince himself that he is what he is supposed to be.

He drank the coffee and she said, gently, as if to help him back to
clarity, "You wanted to talk to me, Amory. What was it about?"

"It was about the money," he said, "You told me you would consider
loaning it if I told you all the circumstances."

"Yes. That's right."

He said nothing more for a moment but sat staring into space as if
making a gargantuan effort to regain possession of himself.

"More coffee?" she asked.

"Yes, please." He came over to her and she refilled the cup.

When he sat down again he said, without looking at her, "You never liked
me much, did you?" He was saying things now that it would never have
occurred to him to say if he were completely sober.

"No, Amory. Although it wasn't exactly dislike. I thought you were the
wrong person for Helen and wrong in our family and I did not think you
and Helen loved each other enough to make up for all that."

"Maybe you were right. Sometimes I think you were."

"Let's not bother with that," she said, "It's all water under the
bridge."

He sighed and she knew what was behind the sigh--a desire to go back and
begin over again, to go back to his early youth when, like Harry, he had
lived in an enchanted world which seemed to have been constructed only
for his pleasure and success. There were so many American men like that,
huddling together in their clubs like refugees, going back to class
reunions and club dinners to recapture what could not be recaptured save
in the hazy illusion of alcohol.

"What do you want this money for?" she asked, and bluntly he said, "To
pay back what I have stolen."

"It's as bad as that?"

"Yes."

Wonderingly, she asked, "Why did you do it? You had plenty of money. You
knew there was more, much more, in the background. You had only to wait
until I died. I had already given Helen a great deal."

"All that hasn't much to do with why I did it. I wanted to make more
money. I wanted to be successful."

"There are so many things you could have done, so many things in this
world to be interested in." And into her mind came a childish jingle she
remembered out of nowhere: _The world, is so full of a number of things,
I'm sure we should all be as happy as kings_. But Amory was unaware of
all that. All his expensive education hadn't taught him anything, least
of all how to live the short span of time allotted to man. At fifty he
had a child's mind without a child's curiosity or enthusiasm. Somewhere,
sometime, something had gone wrong. There were too many men like him in
America, so many that there must be some deep-rooted colossal fault in
the very foundations of the whole structure.

"What I did wasn't really wrong," Amory was saying, "I used clients'
securities as collateral on loans. It's been done many times before, by
people we all know in Wall Street. If things had gone as I expected
there wouldn't have been any trouble. I'd have replaced it all. But the
government began to meddle and pry into the books. After all, we are a
reputable firm. It wasn't as if it was done by a nobody. They might have
left me alone. We haven't any rights left, even in our private lives."

She did not answer him at once. She was trying to see his point of
view--that what he had done was all right since it was done by Amory
Stilham. It was a curious point of view and he, she knew, was not the
only one who shared it. They all had been brought up to believe things
like that. The Major had, in his lifetime, been guilty of all sorts of
skullduggery, things as bad as this and worse, but he had been clever
enough to get away with them and he had never pretended that he deserved
special privileges or that what he did was anything but crooked. His
only rule was the frank one, that the end justified the means; if you
got away with it, everything was all right. Amory was stupid.

"It's the interference of the government which has ruined everything,"
he was saying. "It's killed all our business. It's made it impossible to
operate."

It was a curious point of view, leading nowhere but backward. She saw,
quite clearly, that he did not feel himself guilty of wrongdoing because
he was Amory Stilham and a broker and that as such he should suffer no
interference. There was no use going on with it.

She asked, "How much did you tell me you'd need?"

"About seven hundred and fifty thousand dollars."

She caught her breath, "That, Amory, is a great deal of money. If I gave
it to you, it would have to come out of Helen's share. Does she agree to
that?"

He moved uneasily in his chair, "I don't know. She knows nothing about
it."

"There is another thing," she said, "If I gave it to you to pay back
your clients, would it stop the whole thing?"

"I don't know."

"That is something you had better find out."

He did not answer her.

"How soon," she asked, "Would this have to be done?"

"Now ... as soon as possible. It's about to come before the Grand Jury."

"Why didn't you tell me sooner? Now it may be too late."

"I hoped to get money from partners and friends and hush the whole thing
up."

"And they didn't give it to you?"

"No. A lot of them didn't have it ... with taxes and restrictions and
all this New Deal rot."

"And if the thing can't be stopped?"

"I shall have to stand trial."

"And then?"

"If they find me guilty ..." He looked away from her without finishing
the sentence and she felt a sudden chill come over her whole body.
"Prison" was what he had not said. She had felt the chill, the same sort
of awful dead, cold, chill years ago when a reform campaign and the law
had very nearly caught up with Gus and they had had to live out of New
York State for a whole year while he bribed himself out of the hole. It
was only a little while after Eddie was born. That was how he had come
to be born in Wilmington instead of New York City, because the shadow of
prison hung over his father. Bribery! That was how Gus had done it. He
had bought his way out. Perhaps it could be done again now, half a
century later, in the case of Amory. She was not afraid for herself, she
was beyond being touched by scandal, nor was she afraid for Amory. What
happened to him was of no importance. It was only for the sake of Janie
and her young man.

She said, "I will have to talk to Judge Everett before I can do
anything. Does he know anything about it?"

"I don't know."

"He mentioned the possibility of some kind of trouble to Alice."

The color came into Amory's face. The mutual hatred of the Duchess and
Amory was of long standing in the family, "Why did he tell _her_ of all
people."

"I don't know."

"When can I have an answer? It must be quick or it will be too late to
do any good. Once it's in the papers they'll all be after me just
because I'm Amory Stilham and in Wall Street."

Very calmly she said, "That has nothing to do with it, Amory. It's
exactly as if you were a little bank clerk who stole money out of the
till to gamble with at the races."

He looked at her in astonishment, "I don't see any likeness at all," he
said, "I'm a respectable and prominent businessman with a good deal of
background and connections." Quite suddenly he was sober again. Still
there was no use in trying to make him understand what she meant.

"Are you going to tell Helen and the children?"

"If it can be settled, there will be no need to tell anyone." Bitterness
corroded his voice. "Sometimes lately I think that what happened to me
wouldn't matter much to the children. They're like strangers to me."

She did not deny this. She only said, "If I can arrange this I want only
one promise ... that I'm to be allowed to tell Janie."

"It would make it easier for me."

She was suddenly weary of him and said, "I think the best thing for you
would be to go home and get some sleep."

"I don't sleep."

"And Helen?"

"She doesn't sleep either. She hasn't slept for months."

He rose and said, "Could I have another glass of brandy? It's the only
thing that keeps me going."

"Of course, but I wouldn't depend on it." As he poured the glass she
added, "The Major always had a remarkable rule. When things were going
well he could and did drink many a man under the table. When things went
badly, he never drank anything at all."

Amory drained the glass and said, "The Major was a remarkable man. I
could never hope to emulate him." He said it simply without sarcasm and
with a touch of admiration.

She looked at him sharply, "The Major was a remarkable man," she said,
"But in many ways not an admirable one. I should advise anyone against
emulating his morals in these days. They would spend most of their lives
in jail."

He looked at her in astonishment, a little shocked by her honesty. "But
you were devoted to him?"

"I was devoted only to a part of him. I felt only contempt for the rest.
I have, I think, never said that before. I wanted you to know. He caused
much unhappiness and tragedy through his ambition. That is unforgivable
in anyone. I have lived a long time, Amory. That is the unforgivable
crime. It is something to contemplate."

But she was getting beyond his depth and she drew back. "If you don't
mind, I'll go to bed. I'll need a lot of strength for tomorrow."

He flushed, "Of course. I'm sorry. But before I go there's one thing I'd
like to say." She waited without speaking and he went on. "It's about
Janie. I wish you could persuade Janie to stop seeing this young man
she's lost her head over. You're the only one who has any influence with
her."

"What's wrong with him? He seems a very nice young man."

"He hasn't anything to offer her." Again she didn't answer him and he
said, "Besides it's very embarrassing for me. He was the one who
uncovered the trouble."

"But I thought she met him in your house, Amory."

"That's true. He did come out for a weekend."

"Why?"

The bluntness of the question startled him. Again the color swept the
big, handsome, empty face. "I wanted to see whether there was some way
of inducing him to call the thing off before he found out too much."

"Was there?" she asked bluntly.

"No. He's a damned fanatic, a Red, filled with crackpot ideas."

She smiled and moved toward the bell to summon Taylor. Amory followed
her and a moment before Taylor appeared he said, "You have been very
good and understanding. Thank you."

"I'll do all I can, Amory."

Then Taylor came in and Amory said Goodnight and left. She saw that
Taylor noticed at once the shattered fragments of the shepherdess, and
she said, "Mr. Stilham accidentally knocked the piece of Dresden off the
mantel."

"Shall I save the pieces and have it mended, madame?"

"No. It's not worth it. Throw them out."

She knew suddenly that she was glad to be rid of the shepherdess. There
had been something ill-omened about the Dresden pair. Each had been
shattered at a moment of great unhappiness, almost of disaster.

Taylor said, "Judge Everett called, madame. He said he would call again
in the morning."

"Thank you, Taylor and good night."

She went out thinking: If he called, it must be bad enough for him to
offer to help. In any case he knows. It will save me the trouble of
having to explain.

                 *        *        *        *        *

She did not go to sleep at once. After Mattie had gone away, she tried
to read but the great, red, handsome face of Amory kept getting between
her and the pages, so that the words on them meant nothing. She kept
thinking too of other things--all the nonsense Amory had been taught and
believed, all the folly and shabbiness of the world out of which he had
come. It seemed to her, thinking of the war and what was going on in
Europe as she lay there quietly in her bed, that the folly of the human
race was beyond comprehension, that it was bent upon destroying itself
through stupidity as the great dinosaurs and Brontosaurus had done. The
human race seemed to have developed very little common sense and
virtually no sense of values at all. She could not, honestly, exempt
herself since again and again in her lifetime she had yielded to the
common vanities and stupidity. Perhaps, she thought, addressing herself,
you did acquire wisdom only through experience and by the time you had
acquired wisdom you were too old to put it to any good use. It was a
poor thing to belong to the human race; being a dog like Bijou was much
more satisfactory. Even the most maltreated dog had a better time in
life than many people in Europe were having at the moment.

Presently she put aside the book altogether and turned out the light,
but still sleep did not come. The darkness seemed to make it worse; her
mind went round and round like a carrousel, always in movement, always
returning to the same place--this ugly business of Amory. She thought
bitterly that it was pretentious of him to believe that he could be a
crook and get away with it; he wasn't clever enough. The Major had
certainly done many shady things but they were conceived on a grand
scale involving millions, and somehow, curiously enough, people and even
the nation itself had drawn great wealth and benefits from his
operations. There seemed to be no men like him any longer; there hadn't
been for a long time. And it was not true--what Amory whined--that they
no longer had the opportunity. The opportunity was still there, in a
different way, for the grandeur of vision which the Major had had.

And she thought how pitiful it was--that American rule of shirt sleeves
to shirt sleeves in three generations--and how true, except that it
wasn't really shirt sleeves to shirt sleeves, it was shirt sleeves to
soiled and shabby silks.

She began to plan her day--that she would see Judge Everett--and find
out what had happened and how really serious the whole thing was, and
after that she would get in touch with Janie's young man and have a talk
with him. That, she knew, would be painful. There were many things she
would discover, perhaps without his being aware of it, although he was
clever enough. She would try anything to get Amory out of the mess, not
for his sake but for Janie's.

But Judge Everett would come first. She fell asleep thinking about the
first time she had ever seen him, when he had come to Newport as a young
lawyer to see the Major about the Consolidated Mills and Ore business.
She remembered him at dinner in the yellow marble dining room and the
sound of the surf on the beach below the cliffs. By that time the Major
had got what he wanted. Nobody stayed away from his parties any longer.
He had got what he wanted without making concessions, bludgeoning his
way through, helped by a wife who seemed made by God to suit his
purpose. He had remained common and vigorous and Rabelaisian, only by
that time people called it eccentricity and genius because they had to
find excuses for themselves and their acceptance of him, to cover up
their own vanity and weakness. That, she thought, was the root of
whatever greatness he had, not that he had made great fortunes and
changed the whole face of the continent, but that he remained the same
to the very end, the same man who had come to the Grand Hotel of Leaping
Rock in a checked suit and purple tie with a diamond in it.

And as she fell asleep she remembered Judge Everett as the first man
whom she had ever heard openly defy the Major. After dinner while the
two men sat in the next room having their cigars and brandy and she
worked at her needlepoint, she overheard, shamelessly and with great
interest, fragments of their conversation. As it progressed, it turned
louder and more violent in tone as the disagreement grew stronger, and,
listening, she discovered an admiration for the young man who dared defy
a man so powerful as the Major, who might make or break the whole career
of a young lawyer.

Toward the end, as the argument grew in violence, she heard the young
lawyer say, "I'll have nothing to do with the whole affair and I'll
advise my firm not to touch it. There are some limits, and I think, sir,
that you have passed them in this business."

Then the Major said something she could not hear and she heard the young
man saying, "Some day there will be a reckoning. It may not happen in
your time but it is certain to come and when it comes it will be very
nearly a revolution against you and all your kind. People will rise up
and put an end to this kind of thing and you and your class will have to
pay for it."

Then she heard the Major speaking and knew that he had risen from his
chair. This time she could hear what he said, very clearly, "You talk
like an anarchist, young man, but there may be something in what you
say."

"Anarchist" was an odd old-fashioned word. In those days Gus had used it
the way Amory used the word "Red" to designate anyone who opposed him.

Then quietly she had slipped out to the piazza overlooking the sea and
when the two men came into the room where she had been sitting, she made
an ostentatiously innocent entrance from the piazza as if she had been
there all the time and had heard nothing. But the young lawyer seemed a
new man to her and she thought: If I had married someone like that it
would have been better in spite of everything and Alice wouldn't be
marrying a week from now a dissolute and shabby young man who wants her
money as much as she wants to be a duchess.

She marked the young man, then, thinking: If Gus dies before me I shall
take him as my lawyer. It will make me feel respectable again. And now
as she fell asleep she remembered the speech about the revolution and
people catching up with men like the Major. It had happened too late to
capture the Major; it had caught instead his grandson-in-law who was
only a pitiful imitation of the old Titan.

                 *        *        *        *        *

When the judge called in the morning about ten o'clock he said that he
had something serious to discuss with her and at once she said, "I know
what it is. Amory was here last night. Is it as bad as I suspect?"

"It is pretty serious. We'll discuss it when I come over. It's not a
thing to talk about over the telephone."

After she had hung up she sat for a time staring out of the window at
the dull faade of the apartment across the street. While she was
sitting there, Mattie knocked and came into the _bewdwar_. Mrs.
Parkington was aware of her presence but it lay somewhere outside the
realm of actual consciousness, as if she were hypnotized by the faade
opposite, although she really did not see it at all. It was the
certainty that Mattie was staring at her which roused her. She turned
and said, "Mattie. What is it?"

The honest, petulant, round face was filled with concern. Mattie said,
"You slept badly last night."

"How do you know that?"

"By the way the bed looked. When you sleep well, the bed hardly looks as
if it were slept in. It's very rumpled this morning ... worse than I've
ever seen it."

She knew that Mattie was trying to pry from her some hint of what was
wrong. It was possible that she had overheard her conversation with the
judge, even though the door between the rooms was closed.

"It was nothing," she said. "As we get older, Mattie, we need less
sleep."

"You look very badly," said the implacable Mattie. "You have great
circles under your eyes like oysters."

"Never mind!" Mrs. Parkington said, tartly, "I always have circles in
the morning. Go about your work."

"I only spoke of it for your own good, madame," said Mattie. She rarely
used the word "madame" unless she was angry about something. Then she
said, "Mr. Amory had no right to keep you so late, telling you things to
worry you."

"How do you know what he told me?"

"I don't know, but I can guess," said Mattie, her voice dropping with
insinuation. Mrs. Parkington remembered that Amory had not greeted
Mattie when she came into the room for the dogs. He had given no sign of
being aware of her presence. That was unwise of him since Mattie was
really like one of the family, in some ways more like one of the family
than her family itself.

"Well, it was nothing. He told me nothing to worry me."

Mattie sniffed a sniff more eloquent that if she had said, "You needn't
try to get away with lying to me." Then she went out, artfully leaving
the door ajar, but not artfully enough for the maneuver to escape Mrs.
Parkington's notice. Eavesdropping she considered an invasion of privacy
although she herself had been guilty of it in the past. She called out
angrily, "Please close the door, Mattie," and the door was closed
without any further comment than the violence with which wood struck
wood.

Then she picked up the telephone and called Amory's house and asked for
Janie. The sound of the girl's voice excited and delighted her, as if
somehow the quality of it gave her strength.

She said, "I want to talk to Ned, my dear. Where can I reach him?"

Janie gave her the telephone number and said, "He won't be in until
eleven. He's flying up from Washington. He has wonderful news, Granny.
He's been promoted. He's going to San Francisco in the autumn."

"Will you like that?"

"Yes. I'll love it."

"You haven't yet decided when you're going to be married?"

"Sometime in September."

"That's fine." There was a pause because Mrs. Parkington, knowing what
she knew, for once could not think of anything to say. Presently she
said, "I just wanted to talk to Ned about some business ... about the
law and certain securities I have."

"He'll know everything about that."

"I'm sure he will. Drop in to see me soon."

The judge appeared at eleven-thirty. He had always been punctual. Busy
people always were; only idlers and those who had nothing on their minds
could afford to waste the little time allotted to a lifetime.

He was a tall, thin man with white hair and mustaches and a rosy skin,
who carried himself very erect with an air of pride. In this Mrs.
Parkington thought him justified since he had been an ambassador and a
cabinet member, but above all he had led an honorable life and done much
good. Always, even as far back as the night she had overheard him facing
down the Major, there had been a kind of spark, a kind of secret
understanding between them. It was as if they knew something that others
did not know; when they were together they could go directly to the
heart of anything, without preliminaries, without hemming and hawing or
pretense or explanations of any kind. That was why she did not dread his
visit now but rather welcomed it. His advice would be good and very
likely she would find that he believed her judgment correct.

When he saw her, he said, "It's a long time since you have sent for me,
Susie. Much too long."

"There was nothing to prevent your coming in for tea now and then. I
don't bother much with dinners any more. There seems so much to do
nowadays."

She asked after his wife who, he said, was well except that she could
not get wholly over her arthritis. The interest was one of politeness
which deceived neither of them; he had, they both knew, married too
young when his mind had had little to do with his choice. His wife was
both dull and frivolous but he had stuck by her because there were three
children, although there were times, even now, when she exasperated him
to the point of violence. Mrs. Parkington knew this and she knew that he
was aware of her knowledge, although neither of them had ever spoken of
it. She knew too that she herself in some ways was nearer to him in
understanding than his wife had ever been.

When they had gone through the whole of his family, she said, "This
business of Amory is pretty bad?"

"I'm afraid it is."

"I don't know how bad it is or whether anything can be done. He seems
very vague about the whole business. I might as well explain my side of
the situation." She picked up one of the dogs and continued, "I'll be
quite frank. I've never admired Amory. We never got on very well, even
in the beginning."

"I think," the judge smiled, "that was apparent to a good many people.
Certainly it was to me."

"He was always arrogant without having anything to be arrogant about.
However, that has nothing to do with the present situation or very
little at least. The point is that I want to do whatever I can to help.
Above all, I should like to hush it up before it ever gets out at all.
It is not a question of money. I'm prepared for that. If paying back the
whole amount will help at all I'm perfectly willing."

There was no use in going into detail with him. He was her lawyer. He
knew how enormous was her wealth and that even the loss of seven hundred
and fifty thousand dollars would scarcely be noticed.

The judge said, "I don't know, Susie, how far it has gone or whether it
can be mended now. Until now it has been officially none of my business.
What I know I have only heard through channels which are not exactly
public. However, it is beginning to get around." He took out his wallet
and from it he took a newspaper clipping. He handed it to her and said,
"You see? It is marked."

She put on her reading glasses and found the sentence he had marked. It
was a gossip column and the sentence read:

    _Keep watch for a scandal concerning money in which one of New
    York's richest, most prominent clubmen with powerful connections
    is involved. If worst comes to worst he may have to join some of
    our other financiers up the river._

As she came to the end she felt suddenly sick. Trying to control
herself, she said, "Those damned columnists!"

"If it becomes known at all, there'll be no stopping it. The temper of
the country isn't what it used to be." He did not add, "In the Major's
day," but there was no need to say it.

She said, "Do you read the gossip columns regularly?"

"I read everything. I discovered long ago that it was the best way to
understand this fantastic country of ours."

"Whose securities has he used?" she asked.

"I don't know all the names. Some of them you will know. They are
friends of yours."

"In a way that makes it worse."

She heard the telephone ringing distantly and thought bitterly: I
suppose that is more trouble.

"What do you advise me to do, John?" she asked.

"Sit tight. I will go to work on it. If anything can be done I should be
able to manage it."

Then there was a knock at the door and when she answered it, Taylor came
in, "It is Mrs. Sanderson's maid, madame," he said, "She wants to speak
to you. It is urgent, she said."

Mrs. Parkington took up the telephone beside her and heard the
hysterical voice of the maid. "There's something the matter with Mrs.
Sanderson, madame. I can't waken her. She just lies there. She won't
speak or open her eyes."

Mrs. Parkington thought quickly: Then she isn't dead, and aloud she
said, "Call Dr. Thursby at once. I'll give you his number." She picked
up the address book beside the telephone and found the number, aware
that the maid was still talking wildly into the telephone but hearing
nothing she said.

"Listen to me," she said into the telephone. "Please be quiet for a
moment. Call Dr. Thursby and ask him to come over at once. I will come
immediately." She gave the number and said, "Have you got it right?
Please repeat it." The maid repeated the number and she added, "If Dr.
Thursby is out tell them to send someone else. And put hot-water bottles
at her feet and wrap her in blankets. I shall be over immediately."

She put down the telephone and said, "It's Alice. The maid can't waken
her. She's been taking things to make her sleep and very likely took too
much."

The judge stood up, "I can drop you. My car is outside."

Then she rang for Mattie and Mattie, tiresomely, insisted upon going
with her. There was no preventing her. Mattie said firmly, "If you don't
take me, I shall run along behind the car. Maybe you would like that?"

In the car Mattie insisted on sitting in front with the driver. The
judge and Mrs. Parkington sat side by side in silence, neither of them
feeling any need for talk. The judge, knowing all about the Duchess and
her drug taking, was thinking: It is extraordinary--the things that have
happened to Susie, the tragedies and troubles. She is a remarkable woman
to have survived them.

And in her corner Mrs. Parkington was thinking about her daughter Alice,
not as she was now, insensible, lying in her bed, a tired woman of
sixty-five, but as she had been a long time ago before she had married
and gone to France to live.

It was as if there had always been a kind of blight upon Alice, from
that summer long ago in Long Branch when she had worried because Alice
was not as attractive as her brother Herbert. There were times when Mrs.
Parkington came near to a belief in astrology since it seemed to offer
the only explanation to the strangeness and diversity in the lives of
people. How otherwise could one's life be as dull and futile as Alice's
whole life had been? Why was it then that her own life had been a long
record of the spectacular?--certainly not because she herself had sought
the spectacular. All she had ever wanted, in her heart, was a quiet home
and a pleasant unspectacular existence.

It seemed to her that the whole trouble had really begun with Mrs. Ogden
and her espousal of Alice, her determination that Alice should be
attractive and make a good match. It all began with Malvina Ogden's
determination to give a great ball for Alice when she was eighteen, to
push her forward, to make something of her when there was no material in
Alice from which to make a brilliant career. If Malvina had only left
her in peace she might have been an old maid or had a dull but
respectable husband, which very clearly was the fate designed for her by
nature.

The worst of it was that Alice had always known she was unattractive
from the very beginning when people stopped the pram and admired
extravagantly the golden-haired younger brother. Separated from her
brother by school, it had been no better. It was not only that she had a
sallow skin and was inclined to be pimply, but that there was no fire
inside her which might have compensated for these things. She had not
wanted any of the things which were given her so lavishly, neither the
fashionable schools nor the clothes nor the parties; she had wanted only
to be left in peace to become a nurse.

It was the Major who in the beginning had started the long misery. In
his egotism and exuberance his children and even his wife were mere
appendages and trappings of his success. No daughter of his would become
so humble a thing as a trained nurse; _his_ daughter must make a great
match and make a glorious success in her life. It did not matter that
his daughter had none of the qualities this demanded--neither the looks,
nor the brilliance, nor the hardness. She was only a plain, dull,
sentimental girl, immensely rich, who wished only to sink out of sight.

Mrs. Parkington remembered well the quarrels, the violence, that marked
the whole period. It was the only real violence, they were the only real
quarrels she and the Major had ever known, because she took Alice's
side. But always there was pitted against her not only Gus but Mrs.
Ogden who had made of Alice one of her _causes_.

And then Alice herself had deserted her mother. Some odd thing happened
to her, something which even now Mrs. Parkington had never understood.
The girl had said suddenly, "Very well! I shall go to parties and wear
fine clothes and do all the things Father wishes." And after that, her
dullness took on a quality of chillness and indifference. Gus and Mrs.
Ogden had their way, and at the great ball given by Mrs. Ogden, Alice
wore a gown from Worth and the pearls her father had given her which
reached halfway to her knees, and she had dozens of bouquets and her
dance card was filled far in advance of the ball, but she had never
believed in her own success. She knew that the flowers and the
invitations came only because she was Major Parkington's daughter and
Mrs. Ogden's protge and because no one dared oppose so formidable a
combination. Also because she was very rich ...

And so when the Duke came to New York to stay with Malvina Ogden,
clearly looking for a rich wife, poor Alice was the obvious victim,
waiting like a sacrificial heifer in Worth clothes and pearls, to become
the Duchess de Brants. There was nothing Mrs. Parkington could do, for
the girl herself wanted it, perhaps because she could, by becoming a
duchess, stifle her own sense of her dreariness and compensate for past
humiliations.

In the back of the judge's car, Mrs. Parkington sighed heavily, so
heavily that the judge looked at her without being noticed at all. It
was as if Alice had been doomed from the beginning, and now she was
perhaps dying, having suffered much unhappiness and countless
indignities without ever having lived at all.

Suddenly the car was at the door of the apartment house and the judge
got down to help her out and Mattie got down from beside the driver.
Mrs. Parkington felt suddenly weary and filled with despair. It had gone
on and on like this for years now. They all turned to her when ill or in
trouble and they were all God-damned dull and tiresome and scarcely
worth the trouble. When Gus died, she thought she could do as she
pleased, but it had only turned out to be worse than when he was alive.
She thought: If only Herbert or Eddie had lived, I would have had
someone ... One could have forgiven them many things because they were
handsome and gay and alive and attractive. But all the others, all
except Janie, had no brightness. They had no right to call upon her.

She pulled herself together and managed to say good-by to the judge and
went into the apartment house on the arm of Mattie. On the way in she
thought, apparently for no reason at all, of the cowboy Al, and felt a
sudden intense desire to see him again, as if somehow his simplicity and
quietness could give her the strength she needed.

                 *        *        *        *        *

The doctor was already there, a short grave humorless man of sixty with
a small goatee and very shiny eyeglasses. There was no need of pretense
between him and Mrs. Parkington. The Duchess was one of his charges and
Mrs. Parkington paid him well--a yearly salary--to care for her
daughter.

After they had exchanged greetings, he said, "She has taken an over-dose
of sleeping stuff. I think she will be all right. She has a very strong
heart and a good constitution."

It was odd how perverse nature could be, to give to Alice the physique
and constitution of an ox, when Alice did not care whether she lived or
died and had not cared for many years.

"Have you sent for a nurse?" asked Mrs. Parkington.

"Yes. She should be here in half an hour."

"I'm wondering whether it would not be wise to keep a nurse
permanently."

The doctor looked at her. "You mean it might prevent this happening
again?"

"Yes."

"It might be a good idea if Mrs. Sanderson would consent."

"I think she will consent," said Mrs. Parkington, "My daughter is rather
careless. Shall I leave it for you to arrange?"

"If you like."

"I think a middle-aged woman, rather gossipy, would be best. It might
help divert Mrs. Sanderson."

"I think I know just the woman," he said.

"If that's all, I'll go to her room."

"That's all. I'll wait until the nurse arrives."

Mrs. Parkington crossed to the hallway leading to the bedroom. In the
doorway she turned and said, "Thank you, Doctor. Thank you for
everything."

He only bowed without answering her.

It was extraordinary how they had held a whole conversation without
mentioning what lay at the root of it--that Alice had taken an over-dose
of sleeping medicine, not because she meant to take her life but only
because she had been drinking alone, in her own flat. She was not the
temperament to be tempted by suicide; drunkards seldom were. Each time
they drink, they escape from life into a little death.

Emily, the maid, was sitting bolt upright on a chair by the bed,
ostentatiously keeping watch over her mistress. Emily was a thin parched
virgin, both hysterical and calculating. Mrs. Parkington was an
immensely rich woman who might die leaving her daughter in the care of
her maid and Emily wanted no mistake made concerning the fact of her
devotion. There might be legacies to faithful servants and devoted
retainers, of the sort Emily had read about in the newspaper accounts of
the wills of rich and fashionable people like Mrs. Parkington. She might
have chosen a comfortable chair, but the effect would not have been so
good, so eloquent of Emily's vigilance and devotion.

Mrs. Parkington was not deceived by Emily's charades. She said, "Good
morning," briskly and then said, looking at Alice who lay on her back
breathing through her mouth, "How did it happen, Emily?"

Emily, already on her feet, said, "I don't know, madame. Mrs. Sanderson
told me to go out to the pictures. She was alone here and already asleep
when I came in."

If things had been different and they were more sympathetic, Alice might
have been dining at home with her mother instead of drinking alone in
her own flat. Mrs. Parkington sighed, thinking how yellow her daughter's
skin looked against the white pillow. She reproached herself for not
having made enough effort with Alice, although she could not think what
more she could have done. It was difficult to deal with people who were
both dull and bitter. Alice had been like that since she was seventeen.

"You needn't wait here," said Mrs. Parkington to Emily, "I'll stay until
she comes round. Ask cook if she has a chop or a couple of eggs."

Then Emily went out leaving Mrs. Parkington alone with her daughter.
When the maid had gone the old woman opened the window a little wider to
let in the soft spring air and then seated herself in a comfortable
chair where she could watch her daughter.

The weariness and boredom seemed gone from the face now, almost as if
Alice were dead and had achieved that peace which comes to some people
only in death. Beneath the flabbiness there were other faces, very clear
in the memory of Mrs. Parkington--the face of Alice as a young girl on
the day she married the Duke when, for a little time, she was happy
because as a rich bride marrying a famous name she was for once
genuinely important and envied by girls much prettier and more
attractive than herself. All that had meant a great deal to Alice.

And there was the face of Alice when everything was finished and she had
returned home from France with bitter lines about her mouth and a dull
look of suffering in the hyperthyroid eyes. And the face of Alice when
she married that cheap English remittance man who kept other women out
of the allowance she gave him. And the aging middle-aged face that
married for the third time a middle-aged, sexless widower called
Sanderson, from Pasadena. He was not even attractive. He collected
stained glass, played the organ and had halitosis. Each time it was
money which had made Alice desirable; each time it was money which
betrayed her into an unhappy marriage. Each time the man was a little
less attractive. With all his faults the Duke was the best of the lot.
All three marriages had ended only in disaster and humiliation.

Quietly, as she waited, she fell to thinking of the Duke. She had not
really thought of him for many years, save when the papers recorded his
death at the age of fifty in the Battle of Verdun. Until then he had
written to her once or twice a year, as if the whole misery of his
marriage to Alice had never happened at all. Sometimes she acknowledged
the letters with a formal line or two as a woman of the world, but more
often she left them unanswered. But it had made no difference. He went
on writing to her just the same, charming letters, filled with wit and
flattery, very Gallic, faintly impudent letters in which at times he
seemed almost to be wooing her. Once he had written, "It can be a
tragedy for a plain daughter to have a mother who is pretty and
charming. It has, in fact, been a tragedy in more than one life."

The letter had made her unhappy for it revealed suddenly something which
she had never considered until then and which now became clear to
her--that Alice had been jealous of her because Gus had loved her so
deeply, that she had been jealous of her because her brothers had adored
their mother, and because they themselves were so much brighter and more
handsome. It made her understand many things like the sullenness and
defiance of Alice as a young girl and her sudden almost joyous
submission to the will and schemes of Mrs. Morton Ogden.




                                  VIII


Presently, wondering why the nurse had not yet come, Mrs. Parkington
fell into a doze in which the past and present were hopelessly mixed.
She was in Newport again in the great marble house, in June when Newport
was loveliest, and the house and piazzas were hung with flowers and
there were people about everywhere, caterers and florists and men
hanging garlands of Chinese lanterns among the flowering trees, for Gus
was making a typical Parkington effort. His daughter was about to marry
a peer of France, to become a duchess, and this was to be the greatest
wedding anyone had ever seen.

Herbert and Eddie were very good about it, although Eddie who was
seventeen, thought it was all a lot of tripe and said so. And the Blair
girl, Amlie, was there staying in the house because Herbert seemed
unable to live without her. She was nineteen, Herbert's own age, a tall,
slim girl, a little mad like all the Blairs--you never knew when or how
the Blair eccentricities would break out. Thus far Amlie had done
nothing worse than dress like a Botticelli and wear fresh flowers in her
hair, which made her at times seem more like Ophelia than a Botticelli
spring. Mrs. Parkington hoped the attraction was puppy love because it
wasn't a good thing for anyone to marry a Blair. She did not try to
oppose it openly for fear of turning Herbert against herself--and
Herbert was more to her than any of the children, a fact which she
acknowledged to herself but hid away shamefully in the deepest part of
her. He was still in a way the beautiful baby in the pram whom everyone
stopped to admire. There was something clear and bright about him with
his fair hair and blue eyes and the vigor of his father. It was that
vigor which kept him always in trouble, driving him on and on without
relief, since he, unlike his father at the same age, already had
everything. And so it was girls and pleasure, and now it was the Blair
girl who moved about and spoke in an affected voice. It was odd, Mrs.
Parkington thought, how life went round and round, turning up the most
unlikely happenings. Amlie Blair was the granddaughter of Goodhue Blair
whom Gus had saved from ruin because Harriette came all the way to Long
Branch that hot summer afternoon to intercede for him.

Eddie, who was born a little while after that visit, was wild and
precocious and good-looking. Already he had been sent home from St.
Bart's for bringing a case of beer into the dormitory. His father
planned to send him out West into one of the mines "to straighten him
out," but secretly Gus admired his wild adolescent young son because he
was like himself. "I was only sixteen when I got a girl into trouble,"
he had boasted once to Susie. He would never see that his case and the
cases of his sons were not in the least alike. A young man without a
penny and colossal fierce ambitions could be as wild as he liked without
harm because the fierceness of his ambitions would keep him going
straight. It was different with two boys who already had all the things
their father wanted. Their very good looks conspired to ruin them. But
Gus would never listen to her. He wanted his children to have all the
things he had never had as a boy, and always his sons were, in a way,
merely an extension of his ego; they must be brilliant and clever
because they were _his_ sons. Their successes, their good looks, their
marriages, were only a part of his own immense and complicated pattern
of success. Gus wanted to swallow the whole world; that it did not wreck
him meant only that he had the vigor, the hardness and constitution of a
mythical figure.

That day of the wedding was not a happy one. All day Susie worried and
fretted, not about the details of the wedding which she left to Aspasie
with her French talent for such things, but about her own family and
this marriage which depressed her.

And then about noon, the Duke appeared at the house to have a look at
all the confusion. He was a neatly made young man of twenty-nine,
overbred, with a rather lean face and dark, passionate eyes and a
faintly effeminate manner, good-humored and agreeable enough but
decidedly not what Susie in her wisdom would have chosen for a
son-in-law. When he was with Gus, Susie felt a persistent wild desire to
burst into laughter, because there was so little of understanding
between them. The very air seemed to crackle with absurdity.

And now the Duke had come to pay his respects to her before lunch and
with revulsion she faced what she had determined to do before he sailed
with Alice on the "Carpathia" for London. She had to do it because there
existed between her husband and her future son-in-law no ground whatever
on which they might discuss the intimate things which troubled her.

She took him into her small sitting-room overlooking the sea and sent
for sherry and when they were served, she said boldly, "Jacques, this is
the last time we shall see each other before the wedding. There are one
or two things I should like to say."

"Yes, _belle-mre_," he said, smiling.

"Alice is not a beautiful girl."

He frowned suddenly, "She is not a beauty, but she is
pleasant-looking--_jolie-laide_."

Susie did not deceive herself. This was flattery and also an effort to
convince himself that Alice was not so plain or poor-spirited a bride.
To be a _jolie-laide_ one had to have spirit and brains. Aspasie was a
_jolie-laide_ if you like, even now when she was over fifty.

"I want you to be good to her for that reason."

"Of course I shall be good to her, _belle-mre_."

He said it glibly. He was altogether too smooth and cynical for her
taste.

"I think I understand the basis of this marriage," she said, and without
blushing he answered, "Yes."

The terms were good, thought Susie. Gus had seen to that. There was a
fund set up which would give the Duke one hundred thousand a year so
long as he lived, half of it for the upkeep of the estates, half for
himself.

"What I am trying to say is painful," she continued, forcing the words
out with a great effort. "To be quite honest I was always against the
marriage but Alice wanted it and Mrs. Ogden and my husband. I do not
believe in this sort of marriage."

He started to speak but she raised her hand, "Let me finish," she said,
"It will be easier that way." He sank back in his chair and the
passionate mocking eyes turned cold.

"I am not asking you to love Alice. I cannot even ask you the
impossible--to be faithful to her. I am only asking you to be kind and
considerate of her and not to make her more unhappy than she is already.
If and when you are unfaithful, I only ask you to be discreet about it
and never let her know or let her be humiliated by the knowledge that
other people know. Treat her with dignity as your wife and possibly the
mother of your children. I do not think she is a demanding girl. Only be
kind and considerate."

Even as she spoke she felt the force going out of her so that the speech
ended weakly. She had the impression he was not listening at all or that
if he were listening it was with mockery and cynicism, believing that
she was very nave and bourgeois.

Then he said, surprisingly, "I will take very good care of your
daughter, _belle-mre_. You need not worry. You seem to be a wise woman
and a very frank one. I have sometimes wished I was marrying you instead
of Alice. Your husband is a very fortunate man."

It was a strange thing to say, but she thanked him for it. It seemed
very odd to her that she should be talking like an old woman to this man
who was only eight years younger than herself and in some ways immensely
older and more tired than she would ever be.

Then they talked of other things and presently Aspasie knocked on the
door and came in and said that Alice wanted to see her. The Duke went
out and for a moment Aspasie stood looking after him, the proud firm
profile outlined against the brilliant blue of the June sea. Susie
watched her and after a moment she asked, "What are you thinking?"

Aspasie, looking handsome as she always did when she was angry, said,
"There is no reason why I should not be honest. I was thinking what a
_voyou_ he is."

There was certainly no reason why she and Aspasie should not be honest
with each other, considering how long and close their friendship had
been and the strange circumstances in which it had been born.

"Alice is hysterical," she said, "Now she doesn't want to go through
with the wedding. You'll have to force her."

"I don't know whether she is not right."

"She may be right but one can't behave like that," said Aspasie simply,
"Let her marry him. It does not matter. If she does not marry him, it
will be another like him. She is a doomed girl."

So she went down and quieted Alice who had suddenly taken an
unreasonable and passionate dislike to the Duke, and as she sat with the
girl, she saw through the window the figures of Malvina Ogden and her
maid arriving in the victoria. Mrs. Ogden sat bolt upright,
triumphantly. She had grown immensely heavy so that her side of the
victoria sagged. Her horselike ugliness was emphasized by the green
traveling costume she wore. She looks, thought Susie, as if this were
her day--as if it were her daughter who was being married. In a way it
was. She had "put over" the Parkingtons. No one would stay away from
this party. There were even people who through Harriette and Aspasie had
begged for invitations. Gus had what he wanted and Mrs. Ogden. It was
odd that even after years of apparent intimacy, she could never think of
the woman as "Malvina" but only as "Mrs. Ogden."

Then in another victoria Harriette arrived. She looked ruddy and well
and was dressed, despite her thick middle-aged figure, in a frilly
costume much too young for her. Her "poor father" had been dead for
seven years now, and with the money Gus gave her she had founded a home
for stray cats and dogs and was happy and blooming. It was strange,
thought Susie, what curious and diverse satisfactions people demanded
from life.

For the rest of the day Harriette bustled about the house, feeling
important as a friend of the rich and fashionable Mrs. Parkington,
distracting the servants and strewing confusion wherever she went. She
had gone a long way since that first evening at the Brevoort when she
had blushed at being seen dining with the notorious Major Augustus
Parkington and his bride.

And there was Henry Parkington come down from the Genesee Valley with
his bride, the farmer's daughter, dressed, both of them, carelessly and
awkwardly. Their presence didn't please Gus but it gave Susie, amid all
the flowers and decorations and hubbub, a sudden sense of having some
contact with reality. Henry's wife was pregnant and showed it but it
seemed to trouble neither Henry nor herself. Already people were
beginning to say that Henry was crazy, but Susie didn't think so; it
seemed to her that there was an old-fashioned common sense about him and
his wife, the kind of sense which had begun to disappear utterly from
the lives of herself and Gus in spite of anything she could do.

She took Henry's wife, whose name was Ida, under her wing and saw to it
that, amid all the confusion, she had rest and quiet--something for
which Ida did not appear to have any need or any desire. But it left
Henry free to wander about staring at guests and decorations and making
rude remarks. He was irrepressible, like a handsome young stallion,
turned into pasture. Herbert's girl, Amlie Blair, took a great liking
for him and Aspasie herself took him over at the end of the day. Susie
knew that he couldn't be crazy if Aspasie approved of him. She had never
been wrong about anyone.

And then as Mrs. Parkington was watching Aspasie and Henry talking in an
alcove hung with smilax, she heard the sound of taxi horns in a day when
there were no taxis and opened her eyes suddenly to find herself in
Alice's room with the sound of the taxi horns coming in the open window
from Park Avenue, and Alice, an old woman, unconscious, was lying on the
bed. Before Mrs. Parkington was standing Emily, the maid, who said that
the nurse had arrived at last and that lunch was served. Would she still
like it on a tray or in the dining room?




                                   IX


The nurse was a big woman of about forty called Mrs. Dodsworth, with a
kindly face. Mrs. Parkington thought she might do very well for a
permanent companion for Alice. Time would tell.

The memories of Newport and the wedding stayed with her, pleasantly, as
memories have a way of doing with old people who have lived a full rich
life, and it was not until the middle of lunch that she remembered Amory
and his trouble and that she had forgotten to call Ned Talbot who was so
important in the whole affair. She sent Emily to get the number for her
and, although it was in the midst of the lunch hour, Ned was in.

The sound of his voice gave her a feeling of pleasure and reassurance.
He said, "I have just come back from Washington." And when she asked if
he could come in at teatime to see her about something important, he
said, "I have arranged to meet Janie. May I bring her?"

"No. I think better not. We had better be alone."

"All right. I'll call her. I'm sure she won't mind."

About three o'clock the Duchess opened her eyes and the nurse came to
tell Mrs. Parkington who was reading in the drawing room.

"I'd like to see her alone," said Mrs. Parkington.

"Of course," replied Mrs. Dodsworth and Mrs. Parkington thought: She is
going to be all right. She's not a fool like Emily.

At first the Duchess only stared at her mother out of the nearsighted
eyes, not recognizing her. Then as she heard her voice, she said, "I'm
sorry to have bothered you, Mother. How long have you been here?"

"It's no trouble, my dear. I'm only happy it wasn't more serious. I've
been here since this morning."

Mrs. Parkington drew up a chair beside the bed and the Duchess made a
faint effort to sit up and then gave it up and lay back again, "How long
have I been asleep?" she asked.

"Since last night. How do you feel?"

"A little woozy. I cannot imagine how it happened. The nurse said I took
too much sleeping stuff."

"Yes. The doctor is coming again at four."

Then the Duchess closed her eyes again, with a sigh of infinite
weariness, and said, "It was very pleasant. I don't remember anything at
all."

Her mother thought: She mustn't get that idea or she'll be trying
suicide. Aloud she said, "It's very bad for you, very depressing
physically. If I were you I'd try to go back to sleep and come out of it
easily." She didn't speak about keeping on the nurse. That could wait.
Now, it might only disturb her.

"I'll go now and you go back to sleep. I have a business appointment at
five and I'll try to come back later."

She rose from the chair and Alice did not appear to hear or notice her.
She had slipped back again into that world of peace and oblivion where
there were no memories and no unhappiness and nothing at all happened.

The doctor returned at four and said she would be all right now and Mrs.
Parkington went home with an odd feeling that her daughter had been
snatched from death against her will. This raised in her mind a moral
issue--should not people be allowed to die, if they chose. Their lives
belonged to them alone. It should be their right to die if they
preferred it, just as if they willed to go from one room into another.
Sometimes it was a kind of torture to force them to go on living. It was
a little like that with Alice. Alice was already dead. She walked and
created a semblance of life but already she was dead. She had really
been dead for a long time. There were few memories even to which she
would want to return. In England, Mrs. Parkington remembered, they
arrested people for attempting suicide. That, surely, was the height of
absurdity.

England made her think again of Harry Haxton and all his class, in fact
all the Conservative party. They had been committing mass suicide for
more than a quarter of a century, ever since she and Gus knew them well
in the days of their friendship with the Prince.

Sometimes it seemed to her that the era in which she and Gus lived had
been made especially for them--a wide-open, hell-bent-for-leather time
in which a man like Gus could go all out, wide open, on a career so
ambitious that most men would have trembled even to contemplate it. If
he had been born earlier, the opportunity of a whole rich continent
opening up would not have existed. If he had come to full flower in this
new crumbling world he would have spent half his life in jail. Even the
Prince with his liking for horse racing and Jews and actresses and
Americans and all the wrong people had been made for Gus. It was
extraordinary how Gus and the Prince had got on, how well the son of
Queen Victoria and the millionaire-adventurer on the make, had
understood each other. They had been friends from that very first poker
game in the house in Park Lane.

But all that world was vanished now, swept away, shattered in the
dustbins of time. She had the present to deal with and the future. Ned
would be waiting for her.

                 *        *        *        *        *

Taylor had taken him into the small sitting-room, observing that Mrs.
Parkington would certainly be in very shortly as she was always on time
for appointments. Ned looked at his watch and said, "It doesn't matter.
In any case, I'm early."

He was early because all the afternoon he had been tormented by
speculations as to why she had sent for him and why she wanted to see
him alone. The old imagination, the source of most of his unhappiness,
had leapt into action, creating worry after worry--that the old lady was
opposed to his marriage with Janie, that she had discovered his small
part in uncovering the crime of Janie's father and was angry; that she
meant to use him in some obscure fashion. From each of these worries
sprang smaller ones, so that by the time he reached Mrs. Parkington's
small sitting room he was prepared for anything at all. He sat on the
edge of the chair listening for some sound of her arrival.

It came at last, the sound of the motor, after an interminable time of
waiting. And after he heard the sound of the footsteps of the butler
opening the door, hours again seemed to pass before Mrs. Parkington
herself stood in the doorway, smiling at him the curious, crinkled wise
smile which had made him trust her when he had seen her before. He
thought: It isn't what I feared most of all. She isn't against me.

She came toward him holding out her hand and saying, "I'm sorry if I'm
late. My whole day has been upset and confused. Everything seems to go
wrong. When one starts off a day being late one is apt to grow later and
later as the day advances." Then she turned to Taylor and asked him to
bring tea, "Unless," she said to Ned, "You'd like something stronger."

"No, thank you. Tea will do."

She seated herself by the fire and said, "It was very good of you to
change your plans and come. I hope Janie wasn't disappointed."

"No. That's all right. We're dining together in any case. And I had good
news for her. I've been promoted in the service. I'm being sent to San
Francisco."

"I'm delighted to hear that," said Mrs. Parkington and thought: That's
fine. It will take her away from New York, out of everything into a new
world.

Then Taylor brought the tea and she asked him to close the door. There
was a little silence while her small blue-veined hands covered with
rings moved about the silver and porcelain on the tea tray and as he
watched her Ned thought: She looks so fragile and weak, but she isn't
fragile or weak. She's tough as nails and strong as a lion. It was the
kind of strength born, he thought, of experience and wisdom and a
perfect adjustment to life. People felt the strength in her; that was
why they came to her when they were in trouble.

He heard her saying, "I've forgotten how you like it. I'm never very
good about things like that."

"Milk and one lump, please."

He rose to take the cup from her, feeling for no reason at all suddenly
very young and awkward. He thought: As a young woman she must have been
fascinating--gentle and pretty but clever and strong. It was
extraordinary that even at her age she gave you a strong sense of her
femininity and charm. And then it occurred to him that when she was a
young girl she must have been very like Janie ... Janie without that
sadness which clung to her even when she laughed.

When he had reached his chair again and sat down, she said abruptly, "I
suppose you've been wondering why I was so serious about our seeing each
other alone. It's because I had to talk to you about my grandson-in-law,
Amory."

So that was it, after all. Someone had told her.

"He was here last night. He told me the whole story. You probably know
as much of it as he does."

"Yes," said Ned gravely. She was making it easier than he had hoped. Her
voice was very quiet and sure and above all, casual.

"He has a strange point of view about the whole thing ... as if what he
did was not wrong because he was the one who did it. I don't suppose
you're very used to that kind of attitude. It grows out of his
background and upbringing."

He could not think exactly how to answer this. He managed to say, "It is
a strange point of view. I've run into it more often than you'd suppose.
It's a kind of class attitude."

"My husband had the same attitude but with him it was a kind of
grotesque egoism, and individuality ... rugged, I believe they used to
call it ... rugged individualism. He was always alone--an individual. He
never belonged to any class. On the other hand he accomplished a great
many remarkable and stupendous things."

Ned thought: She doesn't deceive herself there. She knows he was a
robber and a crook.

"But you must not be too narrow about a man like Major Parkington. He
was a character. There were a lot of characters in those days." She
turned down the flame beneath the silver kettle. "It's classes and class
feeling that are dangerous in a democracy," she said. "If ever our
people congeal into classes, then our democracy is lost. Individuals may
be as bad as they like without too much harm. It's only when they gang
up that they become dangerous. You see Amory isn't really an individual
like the Major. He goes about in gangs--his old school, his old college,
his clubs and stockbroker friends, his industrial associates. They gang
together out of a mental need to reinforce each other, because none of
them is big enough to stand alone. They keep telling each other that
they have greater advantages than most people, that because they run
this or that business or factory they are God-sent geniuses, that
because they have the knack of making a little money, they are
privileged and above law or control, that they know better than anyone
about everything. And so a large part of the time they hover near to the
edge of what is dishonest and criminal, and at the same time they don't
accomplish very much--nothing like building the railroads and opening up
the West. It's a singular, hypocritical and corrupt point of view, but
Amory believes in it. In his heart he thinks he is right and the law is
wrong."

She smiled and made a clucking sound, "Well, well, I've delivered quite
a lecture on something you have perhaps thought out for yourself. I only
venture to speak because I lived through so much at very close range.
I've known most of the old giants--they were always in the house--and I
know a good many of these others who huddle together like bison for
protection. That's what rotted England. It's what produced men like
Chamberlain and Sam Hoare and John Simon--a gang of Brahmins conspiring
to keep the world under control for their own little group. Queen
Elizabeth thought first of the glory of England--so did Pitt and
Melbourne and Gladstone and Disraeli. No, the point of view of people
like Amory alarms me. There are too many of them. They added up to the
ruin of France as well--the little men who sold out to protect their own
property."

She laughed and said, "I can't seem to stop myself but I don't often
have an opportunity to talk to someone like you. Most of the people I
see are old and belong to another world that doesn't exist any more, or
they belong to Amory's tight, blind, doomed little world. I don't have
much chance to exercise my brains, such as they are."

Opposite her, the young man had fallen into a state of utter quiescence
and receptivity, willing to listen without speaking. He knew now why
Janie said that it was difficult to get Mrs. Parkington to talk much
about any but trivial things, but that when she did talk the
conversation was stimulating. There was so much she could tell if she
ever chose to tell, so much she knew which she could share if she chose
to share it. He found it extraordinary that even at eighty-four her mind
was not only alert but that it continued to grow and adapt itself,
instead of turning set and bitter as happened so often to the minds of
rich old people.

By way of response he said, "I've tried to think out a lot of these
things but of course I'm always hampered by lack of experience. You read
this and that about people like Major Parkington, but it's never the
same as having known them. The people who write of them always manage to
inject their own personalities into the picture. Either they are
muckrakers who find no good in them or they are paid to whitewash them
by the family which sets out to prove they were saints."

Mrs. Parkington laughed, "They certainly weren't saints, but they
weren't as evil as the reformers would have you believe. We have a book
like that about Major Parkington. I didn't pay to have it written but
some of his friends did--I think in the hope that some of the whitewash
applied to the Major would spatter them at the same time. That was what
they wanted."

She gave him another cup of tea and said a little wearily, "Of course
it's about Amory's case I wanted to talk. I think to begin with you'd
better understand my point of view. I've no special interest in Amory
himself. I've never liked him but that's beside the point. When you get
to my age and are still reasonably in possession of your faculties, you
acquire, if you have any sense, a certain objectivity, even about the
members of your own family. When your glands begin to slow down, you
begin to acquire wisdom rather than to practice emotion. I don't much
care what happens to Amory. He deserves whatever happens, but I want to
do all I can to help him for only one reason and that is Janie. Perhaps
you guessed that."

For a moment he couldn't answer her. Moisture came into his eyes and a
lump into his throat and at the same time he thought, "_That_ is glands,
damn it!" Then he managed to say, "Thank you, because Janie means a lot
to me."

"You can help Janie," she said, "You can take her away. You can give her
a chance. If you don't she may just marry anybody and turn out like all
the others, God help her. And I think you had better do it quickly."

He felt suddenly embarrassed and shy. It was not that she had
complimented him extravagantly in words, it was what she implied. What
he did not understand was the liking, very close to maternal love, which
she had felt for him at sight, and the thought that had come to her not
once but many times--that if things had been different, her own sons
might have been like this, the sons who had been dead for nearly forty
years, who had never really had any chance.

She was saying, "I had better make my point of view clear. I mean to pay
back what Amory has taken. If we can't save him from jail, we can at
least prevent people from saying that Janie's father robbed them. I
should like to prevent his going to jail, even from being indicted. Do
you think it is too late to prevent that?"

He was silent for a moment. Then he said, "I don't know. I'm no longer
close enough to the case. I had very little to do with the whole thing
beyond the original investigation. That's my part of the job, not the
prosecution. But I should think the whole thing has gone too far to be
stopped now. The case is a very clear one--almost hopelessly clear and
simple." He put down his cup and said, "You have been very honest with
me. May I be as honest with you?"

"It's the only way we shall get anywhere."

"Mr. Stilham must be a very stupid man to think he could get away in
these days with what he tried to do."

She sighed and said, "I am afraid he _is_ a very stupid man."

"You see, he even tried to buy me off. That was how I came to meet
Janie, the weekend he asked me to the country. He proposed paying me ten
thousand dollars to turn in a report which covered him up. That too was
very stupid of him. It proved that he had no understanding of what was
going on in the world. In any case my report was almost finished. Too
many people in the department knew of it. Even if I had been dishonest,
I could not have done it. It was too late."

Then he hesitated for a moment looking down at his hands, as if
considering whether he dared to say all he meant to say. Mrs. Parkington
sat watching him, without speaking, liking his reasonableness and the
clearness of his mind, that he did not say priggishly that he had turned
down the offer of a bribe because he was virtuous, but only that in any
case it was too late for him to accept it. She knew well enough from the
face that he was not the kind that could be bribed. Amory, if he had had
any instinct or wisdom, could have known it.

The boy was talking again, "He was very angry with me, as if I were in
the wrong for what I had done. He talked about interference with private
rights and spying and persecution. He seemed obsessed by the idea of
persecution of himself and his class."

"He talked to me in exactly the same way."

"There is something in the persecution angle--very little--but
something, and even that something Mr. Stilham does not understand. He
doesn't understand that he and 'his class' have been put into a strait
jacket because of the lawlessness of the generation or two before him.
Because they were so crooked, the whole thing became intolerable and so
the revolution came. That is why so little can be done to help him now.
It is political now, not merely a question of bribing or honesty. No one
would dare to help him in the face of public feeling. In a way, he and a
lot of others like him are sacrifices of atonement for the sins of men
who are already gone."

"For Major Parkington and his friends," she said.

"Yes, that's true."

Mrs. Parkington looked at her watch, "What time were you meeting Janie?"

"As near six-thirty as possible. It doesn't matter. She'll wait."

"No. Don't keep her waiting. Before you go there's one more thing I
wanted to say...." He waited and saw the color rising in Mrs.
Parkington's face. She frowned a little and then said, "It's just this.
If there's any way of buying Amory out of this ... if there's anyone
susceptible, you need only mention it to me, quite casually. The money
doesn't make any difference."

"I don't know of any way. I'd do almost anything to help Janie out of
this, Mrs. Parkington. I hope you understand that."

"I do."

"It's too late and anyway I doubt that any of those concerned could be
bought off."

"It's different from my husband's day. I'm aware of that. He bought his
way in and out of a great many things. Always it was a good investment."
Then very quietly she added, "It was profitable for himself. But he
destroyed the souls of two or three men who might otherwise have died
honorably and two or three went to prison because of him. And a lot of
women and children suffered. The curious thing is that so far as he was
concerned, there seemed to have been no retribution."

"No. It has fallen on the second and third generation. The whole country
has had to pay for it."

She stood up and said, "Now, I'm going to send you along to Janie." He
rose too and came across the room. She continued speaking, "Does she
have any suspicion about any of this?"

"No. Not yet. I'm sure she would have spoken to me about it."

She laid one hand on his shoulder and looked up into his face. "There's
one more thing I want to ask you and that is, when and if it becomes
necessary, you'll let me do the talking. I am old enough to understand a
lot of things. I think I can do it better than anyone else, with less
hurt."

"Sometimes," he said, "I've thought I should be the one to do the
telling."

"No. Things like that leave scars that can never be got rid of, no
matter how hard you try. Believe me, I know. And she might get some
ideas that she ought not to marry you because she was ruining your
career. She's fantastic in some ways. You'll promise to let me do the
telling? You'll promise, won't you? Believe me, I'm being wise about it.
I mustn't spoil things between the two of you. That is worth saving. All
the rest, all the others are mere rubbish."

He was thoughtful for a moment, looking away from her. Then he said,
"Very well. I'll leave it to you...."

She turned toward the door and as they walked, side by side, the very
old woman and the very young man, she said, "This afternoon was the
first time in eighty-four years I ever attempted to bribe anyone. It
cost me a great deal to say what I did, but what things cost me does not
matter any longer."

At the door, she said, "It was very strange of you to go on seeing Janie
when you knew what you did. I wondered why you did it."

They were alone now in the hall. She did not ring for Taylor to help him
on with his coat. She did not want the understanding between them
broken, even by the presence of a mute servant.

He said, "I felt sorry for Janie. Then that weekend we went for long
walks and while we were together I began to understand what was inside
Janie and that she was unhappy and there was something between us which
I'd never felt with any other girl. We kind of understood each other
without saying anything as if we were meant for each other. And when I
went away I kept thinking of her and then one afternoon I called her up
and asked her to dine. And when she saw me she said, 'I was afraid you
had forgotten all about me. I was hoping you hadn't.' I knew what I was
doing. There was a moment when I could have pulled out, but I didn't.
We'll make out all right--no matter what happens."

He had never said any of this before, even to Janie. Mrs. Parkington
standing here, small and very straight, with her hands clasped behind
her back, made it easy for him.

"It's going to be tough for Janie. You'll have to help me."

"You can count on me." She took his hand and held it between her two
thin beringed hands, "You're a good boy. Good-by and good luck."

After he had gone out the door, she stood for a little time staring at
nothing at all, thinking of her own boys and that perhaps now, as a very
old woman, she had, at last, found someone to take their place. But for
Gus--but for all the things which had come between her and them, despite
anything she could do....

Then she turned and walked toward the elevator. It was too late now to
think about all that, too late by forty years....

                 *        *        *        *        *

She had meant to return to the flat of the Duchess after dinner but when
she went to her own room to spruce up a bit she found Mattie blocking
her way. Mattie had been turning down the bed and when she saw Mrs.
Parkington at the door of the cupboard which contained her hats, Mattie
said abruptly, "I hope you are not thinking of going out, madame."

That she used the word "madame" instead of addressing her mistress as
Mrs. Parkington set the tone of the encounter. Mrs. Parkington said with
as much firmness as possible, "I am going over to Mrs. Sanderson's."

Mattie said, "Have you looked at yourself in the mirror? You look as if
you had been dragged through a knothole."

Mrs. Parkington went on firmly selecting a hat without answering, but
Mattie continued, "Bags under your eyes, madame, and a yellow face. You
should go to bed early and not leave the house. Mrs. Sanderson is
probably all right. I will get the nurse on the telephone. If you need
to go over, I'll go with you."

As Mrs. Parkington took down a hat and turned from the cupboard, Mattie
was already dialing a number. The sight angered her as much as she was
able to be angered by Mattie. She said, "Leave that telephone alone,
Mattie. I am still able to decide things for myself."

But Mattie ignored her. She finished dialing and got the number. The
silly maid, Emily, answered but Mattie would have none of her. She asked
for the nurse.

During the waiting, Mrs. Parkington sat down at her dressing table and
put on her hat and at the same time it gave her an excuse to study her
face in the glass. It did look saggy and tired and yellow. It certainly
did. Then she heard Mattie lying over the telephone. "Just a moment.
Mrs. Parkington asked me to call you. She is right here." She carried
the telephone to the dressing table and put it down before her mistress.

The voice of the nurse came over the wire, warm and confident and
pleasing to Mrs. Parkington. As she listened, Mrs. Parkington thought:
Very likely she will do. It will only be necessary to persuade Alice
that she must keep her on.

Mrs. Sanderson, the nurse said, was sleeping. The doctor reported that
she would be all right now. "There's no need to come over, Mrs.
Parkington. She'll be able to see you in the morning."

As she put down the telephone, she realized that Mattie was standing
very near--near enough to hear what the nurse said, so that her mistress
wouldn't be able to lie and cheat about the conversation.

"You see," said Mattie, "There's no use killing yourself for nothing."

Mrs. Parkington felt a slight sense of irritation at defeat by Mattie's
superior tactics. She lifted the hat from her head and said, "Please go
about your work, Mattie, and stop haggling me."

Mattie only said, "Now take off your clothes and get into bed. I'll
bring you some warm milk in a thermos jug and you can have a good rest."

But the nagging was not yet finished. Mattie went into the bedroom while
Mrs. Parkington undressed, but after a moment she returned to hang up
the clothes and put away the hat and as she went about the tasks she
said, "I think it's a shame the way the family imposes on you. They're
certainly old enough to take care of themselves when they get into
trouble. There's no use in their always running in and out of the house
to put their worries on you."

Mrs. Parkington glanced at her, suspicious that Mattie knew something
about Amory, but Mattie's round, plump face was perfectly blank save for
the fine lines born of her irritation about the mouth and eyes. She kept
right on talking, "Sometime I'm going to break out and speak my mind. I
think it's awful--the way they all hang on you."

She brought a nightdress and dressing gown and laid them on the arm of
the chair beside her mistress, asserting herself by a faint snort of
rage. Mrs. Parkington did not answer her and was not worried by the
threat. For twenty years or more Mattie had been threatening to "break
out" at the people she said imposed on her mistress, but never yet had
she done so.

Then she said, "The bed is turned down. I'll go and fetch the milk."

When Mattie had gone, Mrs. Parkington got into bed and adjusted the
reading light. She was glad now that Mattie had bullied her into staying
at home for it meant that she would have the whole evening alone,
without family, without committees, without all the people who were
always wanting things from her. Solitude was the most precious thing in
the world if you knew how to employ it. It built up your endurance, and
permitted you to see yourself coldly, with all your faults and virtues;
it allowed you to get some sort of perspective on things. It made it
possible to face and to endure many things which otherwise would have
been unendurable. If you suffered in solitude, there was no need to
parade your suffering shamefully in public.

Solitude was something Gus had never understood. He liked people, crowds
of them. They did not sap his boisterous vitality; on the contrary he
seemed to absorb fresh and inordinate supplies of vitality by mere
contact with people. Some he had destroyed temporarily; a few, among
them the people who worked for him, he destroyed permanently. Even when
he was alone, his whole mind and body, untouched by reflection, were
occupied and absorbed by planning fresh actions calculated to realize
his vast ambitions or promote and feed the monstrous appetite of his
egotism. When Gus was alone in a room behind locked doors, there was no
solitude; alone on a desert island there would have been none, for the
very air was always infested by the shadows of people, of plans, of
plots, of tremendous events.

He had never understood her own hunger for occasional solitude, that
there were times when, out of the complicated and artificial life into
which he had thrust her, it was necessary to disappear, to be alone for
a time, in order to go on living. He had been hurt when, after they had
moved from the house on Thirty-fourth Street to the great mausoleum next
door to Mrs. Ogden, she had insisted that she have a bedroom of her own
in order now and then to have a little solitude. He had gone on being
hurt for the rest of his life, believing to the very end that she had
demanded her own room because she had been offended by the discovery of
one of his infidelities. He had never understood why, after "the
terrible summer," she had firmly gone off to the Rockingham Hotel in
Portsmouth, to stay for a time under a different name where she would
see no one she knew. He could never understand that this was the only
thing which made it possible to go on living after the deaths of Herbert
and Eddie.

The novel lay on the bed beside her, unopened, perhaps because the plot,
the characters, the situations were all far less absorbing than the
things she had lived through, the people she had known, the curious
quality of suppressed melodrama that had always surrounded her from the
very moment the mine had blown up and Gus had been trapped into marrying
her; for she knew now as she had known for nearly forty years that he
had never meant to ask her to marry him. He had merely meant to take her
for his mistress; it was her own navet and innocence which had trapped
him, these things and perhaps his own desire and his gambler's
temperament which told him, "I might as well marry her as anyone else.
Something can be made of her." Gus himself had admitted it during the
nasty business over Mrs. Ebbsworth at the beginning of "the terrible
summer."

Then the door opened and Mattie came in with the warm milk and some
biscuits on a tray. Silently she crossed to the bedside table and put
them down.

"Thank you, Mattie," said Mrs. Parkington, "That's everything I'll
need."

But Mattie didn't go away. She stood there at the foot of the bed,
respectfully but firmly, looking down at Mrs. Parkington. The old lady
smiled, "Go on, Mattie. Say it! There's something on your mind. There's
no use in our holding back anything from each other."

Mattie coughed and looked down at the footboard, "It's about Mr. Amory,
Mrs. Parkington. I've been hearing some strange things. I thought maybe
he had been troubling you ... that was why he was coming here." Before
Mrs. Parkington could answer, she said, "I've thought you should go away
somewhere--make a trip, maybe."

"It might be a good idea, Mattie, but I couldn't go away yet ... not
until Mr. Stilham is out of his trouble. You see that, don't you,
Mattie?"

The servant considered this for a moment, "No, Mrs. Parkington," she
said, "I don't. I've lived with you for a long time now. I hope I can
say we are friends ... more than just servant and mistress, although
it's not perhaps for me to say. I've lived with you for a long time and
I've seen you put upon by people all those years. I think you've taken
enough of that. You've a right to have some peace. God knows you've
earned it. I don't see why you have to stay and face Mr. Amory's
trouble. You didn't ask for it. You didn't do it. He's no blood relation
of yours. I don't even think you like him. I think you ought to go away
somewhere."

Mrs. Parkington listened, trying to stop the tears that kept coming into
her eyes. She knew that her eyes were misted because she was tired and
because she felt, perhaps more than she had ever felt it, the depth of
Mattie's friendship and their closeness to each other. Mattie was an
extraordinary woman; it was even more extraordinary that a woman of such
character had gone on for years putting up patiently with a willful
woman like herself.

Going away on a trip somewhere _was_ a good idea; it would be a good
idea for Mattie as well as herself--Mattie who rarely went out of the
house, even to take the air by walking round the block. Mattie had been
getting into a rut, more and more lately. Mattie certainly deserved a
change, but not now.

"I like what you said about being friends, Mattie," she said, "I think
we don't even need to talk about that. And I think going away is a good
idea but I can't go until this trouble is straightened out. Did you ever
think how many people are going to be upset by it ... their whole lives
upset ... and they won't know what to do--not Janie or Mrs. Stilham or
Jack or even Mr. Amory himself. They just aren't made that way."

Mattie was watching her with resentment in the clear blue eyes. She
wasn't being convinced. When she chose to be stubborn, Mattie could be
simply colossal. Lots of Swedes were like that. So, craftily, exercising
that peculiar beguiling charm which had always been her greatest and
ultimate weapon, she said to Mattie, "Come Mattie. Sit down here on the
edge of the bed."

She was being unscrupulous because she didn't want Mattie to leave her
in a resentful mood and because she could not help herself. Mattie, she
knew, would not be deceived by what she was doing. She would see through
it but she would like it. She knew her mistress so well that she would
know she was being victimized and enjoy it; sometimes Mattie could be
very like a man. She came over and sat on the edge of the bed with a
determined air of detachment and respect, so Mrs. Parkington had to go
further. She reached out and took Mattie's hand. At the touch, the
elderly maid relaxed a little.

"You see, Mattie. There's something I've only figured out lately. It
took a long time to discover it ... years and years. It's this ... that
some people are well provided by God with strength and common sense. In
a way they're the lucky ones. Most people are fools or afraid or they
run away from things. They're always coming to the well-provided people
and unloading their burdens. I've come to the conclusion that I must be
one of the tough ones who can take very nearly anything. That's the
price I've had to pay for the great things that God gave me ... and He
gave me a great deal. Don't ever forget it ... no matter what has
happened to me in the past. You see, if someone like me runs away he's
ducking his job and if he ducks his job something happens to him ...
something destructive and evil happens. All the strength goes out of you
if you're that kind of person. If you go on doing it, you destroy
yourself, because some kind of God-made or natural law operates like
that. Don't you see that if I ran out on this now ... it couldn't be any
rest for me? I'd be miserable all the time thinking about the thing I
was running away from and worrying about what was happening to Janie and
Jack and Mrs. Stilham and even Mr. Amory. Janie and Jack aren't old
enough yet to know how to behave if Mr. Amory should go to prison and
neither he nor Mrs. Stilham have enough sense to know what to do. God or
nature or something was ungenerous to them. It isn't their fault. I
shan't try to tell them what to do but they'll come to me just the way
they always have--all of them and a lot of others the minute they are in
trouble. Because it's a kind of law. It just works that way. You can't
do anything about it."

Mattie was looking at the floor but she was listening. Mrs. Parkington
knew it by the very stillness of Mattie's plump fingers. When Mattie
said nothing she continued, "And you must remember another thing, Mattie
... that if you're one of the strong people you get stronger and
calloused and hard, and the older you get, the more people lean on you,
the wiser you get. You get so that you can take almost anything. You get
so that, as Janie says, you know all the answers." She pressed Mattie's
hand and said, "You're worrying about how this disgrace of Mr. Amory is
going to affect me. I'll tell you something, Mattie, I wouldn't tell
anyone else I know. What happens to Mr. Amory doesn't affect me at all.
It's just part of a story in which I've lived for a long time--a story
in which very little affects or shocks me any longer. It's like
something I'm reading ... something that exists at a great distance from
me. None of it really touches me at all, but it touches Mrs. Stilham and
the children terribly because they don't know how to deal with it, and I
couldn't go away knowing that they were bewildered and suffering. They
need someone to tell them what to do, to cheer them up, to give them a
sense of perspective. Do you see what I mean, Mattie? Do you understand?
You must, because you yourself are always having people coming to you.
If you hadn't been like that yourself, you wouldn't have given your
sister the money to come to America when her husband was killed. You
wouldn't have volunteered to pay for your cousin Helga's baby when she
got into trouble. You wouldn't be bothering to look after an old woman
like me, worrying about whether I'm tired or not. You wouldn't go up to
Cook's room every night to massage her back and look after that awful
brat Hicks leaves with you on Thursdays when his wife has to visit her
mother at the asylum. You know exactly what I mean, Mattie. Your body's
being tired doesn't matter much. If you betray yourself then it's much
more than weariness ... it's destruction. It's something you can no more
do than can I. God didn't ask us if we wanted the job. He just gave it
to us--to both of us. You do see, Mattie, don't you?"

For the first time Mattie looked at her. She pressed Mrs. Parkington's
thin hand and said, "Yes, Mrs. Parkington, I do ... I'm afraid I do.
Sometimes I don't think that it's very fair of God."

"Sometimes I've thought the same thing, Mattie. I used to think it a
long time ago when so many terrible things happened to me. And then I
began to see that in a way there was a plan in it all ... it still seems
a pretty muddled confused plan but it does seem that it works out to
make life better for us. When it all adds up you and I have got
something that the others never knew. We've got a kind of love and
respect from people that they never knew and never will know and most of
all we've got pretty clear consciences. When we die we'll be willing to
die because we've had so much, we won't die feeling ... well,
unfinished. It's a great thing that God gave the strong ones. Because
God was so generous to us in making us strong, I can afford to say it
now without seeming smug because I've got a kind of detachment about
things, even about myself. I wouldn't dream of saying any of these
things to anyone else in the world."

She released Mattie's hand, "As soon as all this is settled, you and I
will go for a trip. Where would you like to go?"

Mattie blew her nose firmly and said, "There's not very many places
left. We can't go to Europe or the East."

"I've got a kind of hankering to make a trip West, Mattie. You've never
really seen the West except from the train on the way to California. If
you haven't seen the West in some ways you haven't seen anything."

"I'd like that," said Mattie, simply.

"We'll go in the car and take Hicks along and we'll stop at funny hotels
and maybe at trailer camps and something they call by the silly name of
Motels."

Mattie rose heavily from the bed and Mrs. Parkington said, "There's one
thing I'd like to ask you. Where did you hear all this about Mr. Amory?"

"Cook heard it from another cook at market ... you know, that shop that
sells _pat de foie gras_ and such stuff. It was Mrs. Everett's cook."

So that was it. Judge Everett had been talking in front of the servants
at lunch. It was extraordinary how many things servants knew and how
much they repeated. Well, very shortly it probably would not matter.
Everyone would know about it.

Before Mattie could pry further, she said, "I think I'll go to sleep
now, Mattie. Call me at seven forty-five."

Mattie looked at her sourly again. "That's very foolish, madame. You
know you have the Symphony Board tomorrow and the Bellevue Guild and
with having to see Mrs. Sanderson and this worrisome business about Mr.
Amory ..."

Mrs. Parkington interrupted the catalogue, "How am I to get all that
done if I don't get up early?"

"It's too early, madame."

"It's much less tiring to get up a little earlier than to have to hurry
all day from one thing to another always being late. Besides, there was
a time when I got up before daylight and helped get breakfast for
thirty-eight men."

Mattie sniffed, "That, madame, was about seventy-five years ago."

"I still want to be called at seven forty-five," said Mrs. Parkington.
"Good night, Mattie."

"Good night, Mrs. Parkington."

She went out, closing the door very quietly behind her. Mrs. Parkington
was glad that she had addressed her by her name instead of saying,
"madame."

When Mattie had gone, Mrs. Parkington turned out the light, partly
because she knew that Mattie would not go to sleep otherwise but would
return again and again to look for darkness instead of a thread of light
beneath her door and partly because she knew that the talk with Mattie
had roused a whole rush of memories that would not permit her to read in
any case. She would simply turn the pages without knowing what she was
trying to read, because her memories were, in a way, more improbable
than the contents of most books.

Somehow "the terrible summer" kept coming back to her thoughts. First
Amory's trouble and then the Duchess' "illness" had revived it. It had
been there, in the background of all the talk with Mattie.

In the darkness, lying awake because she was too tired to sleep, "the
terrible summer" came alive again, quietly like a very distant landscape
enveloped in a cold winter mist, and out of it she saw the figures of
Norah Ebbsworth and Gus crossing the lawn from the stables beneath the
Cedars of Lebanon at Oriander.




                                   X


It was the week the Prince had come down to stay. The Prince and Mrs.
Keppner and the Baron Rothschild and Harry Haxton were with her on the
terrace. They had been talking about a horse called Arreau owned by
Monsieur Blanc of Monte Carlo, which had just won the Grand Prix, and
all the time she had been watching the figures of Norah Ebbsworth and
Gus as they crossed the lawn, and hating Norah. It wasn't that she was
jealous of Norah; she wasn't really a jealous woman. It was simply that
she hated Norah as Norah--as a well-born penniless, unscrupulous
woman--a whore born in the midst of a world where everyone was
privileged and protected, a whore without the decent qualities or the
courage of a whore. Norah was tall and dark, with blue eyes and a fair
skin, a beauty whose loveliness had been spoiled long ago by the
hardness of the mouth and eyes. She was a good gambler and gay in a
bitter fashion.

Lying in the darkness, it seemed to her that Norah was the only person
in the world she had ever really hated because Norah was the only person
she had ever known who seemed to her to be wholly evil. Norah was not
content with the evil inside herself; she sought to spread it by
corrupting all about her. It seemed to her now that with Norah began the
degeneration of Gus's taste in women. After that episode it had grown
progressively worse until the sordid end in Cannes. Norah corrupted him
as she had corrupted so many others. It was no satisfaction to know that
she had died long ago, an old bitter woman, in squalor in a pension in
Genoa. She still hated Norah Ebbsworth because she was Norah Ebbsworth,
without warmth or generosity or kindliness.

And while on the terrace they talked about Arreau, she was watching the
pair coming across the lawn, with Norah, probably telling some vulgar,
strong story, turning to Gus and laughing as they walked. And as they
neared the terrace and saw the others sitting there, Norah put her arm
through Gus's arm, waved to them and threw back her head and laughed. It
was exactly as if she had cried out, "See! I've taken him away from
Susie! I've got him! He's mine!"

And Susie couldn't any longer hear the conversation about her. She rose
quietly and slipped into the big Georgian house to go up to her room and
sit there very stiffly upright on a chair, trying to think what she
should do.

There had been other women before Norah. She had come long ago to accept
that, understanding that this was something Gus could not help because
he was made like that, because there was so much of the animal in him
that no one woman could ever keep him for herself. He just didn't fit
into a tame, domestic scheme of things. She had come to believe, partly
to salve the hurt to her own vanity, that what she did not know could
not hurt her.

But this business of Norah Ebbsworth was different. It had happened in
her own house, at her own table, before her eyes and in the presence of
people staying with them. She remembered Gus's saying once that no wise
man ever had an affair with a woman who would by any chance ever sit at
the same table with his wife. And now he had broken the rule. She did
not hold it against him; Norah, doubtless, had outmaneuvered him, and
had come on the house party against his wishes.

She could fight back; belowstairs, on the terrace, Harry Haxton was only
waiting for her to accept the proposals he was forever making; but this
she could not bring herself to do since the tactics of cheating in
revenge had always seemed to her not only vulgar but foolish, all the
more so since Harry seemed to her amusing and pleasant but no more than
that. Sitting bolt upright she tried to reason coldly what she should do
since it was clear that it was impossible to stay on in the same house
with Norah flaunting her triumph, telling everyone by every action,
every gesture, every glance, that she had got what she wanted--the big
good-looking, rich American. With Norah it wasn't simply the question of
a weekend affair. With the evil there was in her, she wouldn't let it
rest on that. She would want money ... more money. That was why she had
set her trap for Gus. If he hadn't been so rich the whole thing would
never have happened. There were always women, hordes of them, in pursuit
of Gus not only because he was big and attractive, but because he was
rich and generous. In a way he was a victim but unfortunately a victim
who himself enjoyed thoroughly and with gusto the sacrifice. Luckily his
pocket could afford it.

For a time as she sat there in this strange, beautiful house which they
had rented for the summer, she thought: Maybe it will be worse from now
on. Maybe I should leave him now. Maybe I should go back to America and
have my own life. Maybe it is not too late to have some of the things I
have always wanted. The boys are grown now and Herbert is married with
two children of his own. I'm only forty-three years old and I'm still
attractive.

But she could not bring herself to go away. She thought: No, I cannot go
now, not until I've beaten Norah. If it had been an ordinary woman, she
would not have minded so much going off and leaving her with Gus. That
sort of thing never lasted for long; he always came back quickly. But
Norah was different. Because she was evil she would follow him, trying
to blackmail him. She would show him off wherever she went.

Presently when she had pulled herself together she rang for her maid.
The girl was Swedish, a well-trained girl, pretty too in a robust
peasant fashion. Susie had grown very fond of her, but there was another
stronger bond between them; in all the world only Mattie knew what had
happened in Salzburg. Only Mattie knew about those ten days in the hotel
at Bad Gastein. And Mattie had never betrayed her by so much as a word
or a look of understanding. She had behaved, always, as if she were
unaware that anything had happened there.

And now the sight of Mattie brought it all back again and eased a little
the pain and humiliation of this other thing. There were times when it
seemed to her that what had happened in those ten days was something
which could never have happened to her, like something she had dreamed,
but now suddenly the memory was very real and gave her a curious, deep
satisfaction. It was something Gus had never known, something he never
would know because she would never tell him. There was a kind of
satisfaction in his not knowing. She could watch him across the table
beside Norah and think: You are not the only one!

And now the Swedish maid was asking her what she would wear for dinner
and when she suggested a simple dress, Mattie said, "If you will forgive
me, madame, I'd suggest that you wear the new black Worth gown and your
diamonds."

Susie turned to look at her, astonished that she should have made such a
suggestion. The girl's face was quite blank, so deliberately blank of
all expression that Susie divined that she must know about Gus and Norah
Ebbsworth. Mattie, she understood suddenly, was on her side but she was
being discreet. She understood what it was Mattie wanted her to do. She
wanted her to be brilliant and glittering and outshine Norah Ebbsworth
which she could do, not only because she was clever enough but because
she looked young enough to wear black and diamonds and still seem softer
and younger than Norah with her hard mouth and eyes.

So she said quietly, "Very well, Mattie, although it seems a little odd
as a summer dress."

"There is no summer in England, madame," said Mattie, "And in any case
it is a large dinner and the Prince is here. Formality will flatter the
Prince."

While she was dressing Gus came in. He stood behind her watching her
reflection in the glass as she and Mattie worked over her hair. Without
looking at him directly, she could watch him.

He said, "Well, sparrow. We missed you on the terrace."

He was pretending, she knew, trying to make himself believe that she did
not know what was going on.

"I came up to lie down for a time. I suddenly felt very tired. You had
better dress. There's not much time."

He bent over suddenly and kissed the back of her neck. Mattie stood
aside stiffly in order to permit the caress. He took no notice of
Mattie. He had no shyness.

Then he said, "I'll be ready," and went out. When he had gone Susie was
aware that her heart was beating more rapidly and that the color had
come into her face and she thought how handsome he was and what a
remarkable man for fifty-six years. She was aware that the unexpected
caress was not simply a spontaneous action. He had been telling her
something. He had been saying, "I know I'm in the wrong. I'm ashamed too
because Norah is a bitch. Forgive me. She does not matter at all beside
you ... no one does, no one ever has or ever will."

The kiss somehow took all the strength, all the resentment out of her
because it made her remember suddenly that night at the Brevoort before
they went out to Delmonico's when, standing behind her, he had clasped
the pearls about her throat and kissed her.

The Swedish girl went on silently fixing the complicated waves and curls
which were fashionable that year, and Susie knew that she could never
leave him, and that what happened at Bad Gastein had been of no
importance, however strange and wonderful it had seemed at the time.

When she went downstairs to the big drawing-room, Harry was already
there and she knew at once that he had come down earlier than the others
expressly to talk to her. His presence made her nervous and unhappy. She
was fond of him and did not want to hurt him, but she was aware that she
could not help herself, for the kiss had roused all her old feeling for
Gus and with Gus in her very blood, Harry's good looks seemed pale and
decadent and soft.

He said, "You look dazzling tonight."

"Thank you." She went about touching the flowers, loosening them,
letting them breathe, and as she went from vase to vase, he said, "You
have a hand of magic."

"Flowers must look like flowers, not like funeral offerings."

She knew he was watching her. She never doubted that he knew all about
Gus and Norah. There was something feminine about Harry which made him a
gossip, an intriguer and a very fine minor poet. He knew things before
they happened.

He said suddenly, "I can't bear to see you hurt, Susie."

She knew it was stupid to say, "What makes you think I'm hurt?" It would
not deceive him in the least. So she said nothing at all.

"Norah is a foul bitch. I have scores of my own to settle with her."

"It doesn't matter," she said, "Gus belongs to me, really. He's like
that. But it doesn't mean anything."

"I'm going to get married."

She had redone the last of the flowers and she turned toward him to say,
"I'm very glad. I think it's much better that way."

"I've told no one yet."

"Who is the girl?"

"I doubt that you know her. She's young and she's very rich and I think
she likes me. Her father is a rich builder, one of the richest in
London."

"So it's that kind of a match?"

"Yes. You wouldn't be hurting her. She'd never know anything about it.
It's rather our last chance, Susie. You'll be going back to America and
I'll be getting married." He looked out of the window. "You've never
believed how much I really love you. You'll never believe it because I
can't make you believe it. I don't know how. But you _are_ a woman,
_what_ a woman, my dear. If nothing ever happens between us, I'll die
feeling that I've missed what is the most wonderful thing that could
ever have happened to me."

"Thank you, Harry."

"I could arrange it. I could arrange to leave Gus with Norah when you
came to stay with me."

She thought: Now is my chance if I wanted revenge on Gus. But she still
did not want such a thing. She took Harry's hand and said, "It wouldn't
be any good, Harry. It would only be a disappointment to you and it
would violate something in me. I'm very fond of you but not that much.
I'm not like Norah and so many other women over here. A thing like that
for me isn't just like shaking hands. The answer my dear is 'no.' You
get married to your rich young girl. It's much better that way."

Still no one came down the great stairway. He looked away from her and
said, "It's odd how your saying 'no' makes you all the more desirable.
I'm not used to women like you. Very few women have ever said 'no' to
me." He walked over to the window and said "You'd be something to win
and possess and keep. I think I've always known that since the
beginning. If ever there is anything I can do for you, even the least
thing, you have only to ask me. I know that sounds like bad Tennyson,
and consequently to say it, costs me more than you can ever know, but
it's true." Then he turned toward her again. "I'll never speak of it
again but there's one thing for you to remember--that I shall always be
waiting for you somewhere until I die."

She started to speak but found no words with which to answer him and
after a moment he said, "You must get Gus away from Norah. She is a
cheat and a blackmailer."

With a curious pride she answered, "She'll have to be very clever to
cope with Gus."

Then the Baron came downstairs and Lady Woolsey and from the drive
outside the window came the coughing explosions of Lord Hinchcombe's
deLaunay-Belleville, and suddenly the room was filled with people--all
the brilliant, fashionable people the world read about and envied and
admired and hated and imitated. It was a world that was theatrical and
witty and gay and above all secure but it had never brought Susie any
happiness.

At dinner she sat on the right of the Prince with Harry on the other
side. Deliberately she had put Norah beside Gus. Norah wore a bright
poison green dress cut very low but Susie saw that the dress was a
mistake. Choosing it was the gesture of a woman "forcing" her youth. It
only made her seem harder. While Susie talked to Harry or the Prince she
used unscrupulously that softness and charm which she had learned to
summon up when she was tired or determined to gain something she wanted.
The Prince was very fond of her and she knew that the fondness or even
the sometimes frank manifestations of it did not alarm Gus, but it
annoyed the snob in Norah, that special sort of snobbishness that was
peculiar to England. To be "on the inside with the Prince"--to be called
by him "Norah" instead of merely being called "Mrs. Ebbsworth"--she
would gladly have given up Gus. Each time the Prince addressed her as
"Susie" she knew that it was like the thrust of a knife in Norah's back.
Susie was shrewd enough to know all that. She hated Norah because Norah
was evil. For Norah she felt no mercy.

The scene happened in the card room just after the men had joined the
ladies. It was a cool evening and around the fire had gathered a little
group which included Harry and Norah, Lord Hinchcombe, the Baron, Mrs.
Keppner and Mrs. Pulsifer, the American wife of a London banker, waiting
for the Prince to give the word for starting the poker. He already sat
at the table laying out cards and playing patience while he talked to
Gus about some American investments. Susie had just finished giving
orders to the butler and was closing one of the tall windows giving on
to the terrace when she heard Harry saying, "It will be warmer in
Biarritz. It's lovely there now and the Prince is very fond of it. He
was delighted with the idea."

"Who's going?" Norah asked boldly.

"All the men," said Harry, "And Susie and Anne perhaps."

"What about me?"

"No, my dear, you're not going. This holiday is to be a rest. The party
includes only quiet sensitive people."

There was a little edge of mockery in Harry's voice which Susie knew
very well. Never had it been directed at her, but she had seen the
mockery grow and sometimes turn into something terrible. It always meant
that Harry was laying a trap for someone. The very timbre of his voice
should have warned Norah. As soon as she heard Norah speak again, she
knew that Norah had fallen into the trap. She turned away and took down
a book of sporting prints from the shelf near her and pretended to be
looking for some special print; actually she did not see the book at all
for she was listening, straining every nerve to hear.

Norah said, "That's very rude of you, Harry. I'd no intention of going
in any case."

"I didn't mean to be rude. Only a precaution, Norah. You're a disrupting
influence wherever you turn up."

Then Norah said, "I doubt that Gus will want to go. He's planning to go
to Southampton yachting."

She heard again Harry's cold, level voice, "As a matter of fact it is
Gus's idea as much as anyone's. He proposed it."

When Norah spoke again there was fury in her voice. Harry was making an
exhibition of her, showing everyone in the group about the fire that she
did not in the least possess Gus, giving the lie to all her actions, all
the bold implications that he was hers. Susie waited, her heart beating
rapidly.

"I'm surprised that you wanted Gus. I should think he would be in the
way."

With her back to them, still turning the pages of the book Susie
thought, "It's going to happen. She is a fool to lose her temper." For
the first time she understood a little how desperate Norah was, how
necessary it was for her to keep possession of Gus. For a second Susie
almost felt pity for her.

"I've no idea what you mean by that," said Harry.

The Baron said, "Norah thinks you're trying to cut her out of
something."

"I think nothing of the sort," said Norah. "If you want to know what I
think, I'm surprised that Harry and Susie don't want to keep Gus out of
the picture."

Then Susie heard Gus's voice and the moment she heard it she knew that
the quick ferocious temper had flared up. She wanted to check him but
she still had to pretend that she was absorbed in the book and had heard
nothing.

Gus said, "What did you mean by that, Norah?" Susie knew without turning
how he looked, the face crimson, the vein in the forehead throbbing.

Norah was a fool not to be frightened, but there was in her the sluttish
hardness of a pub prostitute. She said coldly, "Only what everybody
knows already."

Then Susie could no longer resist looking. As she turned, she saw that
Gus, in his anger, had left the table where he had been talking to the
Prince. The Prince had stopped playing his absent-minded game of
patience. He held the pack of cards in one hand and with the other he
stroked his beard. Gus stood in front of Norah now. He was shaking and
for a moment quite incapable of speech. Susie heard herself calling out,
"Gus! Please! Gus!"

Gus without turning to her said, "Leave this to me." And then to Norah,
he said, "What you implied about my wife is untrue. Admit now that it is
untrue."

Norah's mouth, painted in a day when paint was not common on women, was
hard and ugly. She said, "You're a fool, Gus, if you don't believe it."

Then an extraordinary thing happened. The Prince rose and said, "Never
mind, Gus. No one believes it. No one could believe anything but good of
Susie."

Gus recovered his temper with that suddenness which accompanied its
ferocity. He said, "I beg your pardon, sir, for making a scene in my own
house and in your presence."

"If there is an apology owing," the Prince said, "I think it is to
Susie."

Then he turned to Norah and said, "I think Mrs. Ebbsworth must be
overtired. It might be a good idea for her to go up to her room and rest
before going back to London."

The humiliation was complete. Nothing remained for Norah but to leave.
She began to speak and then thought better of it and turning quickly,
she walked the length of the card room and out of the door. She had lost
both Gus and the favor of the Prince. Never again would she be invited
to any house in which he was present.

Susie, standing there, humiliated but triumphant, knew that it was not
possible to follow Norah. It was not possible even to see her again
before she left the house.

The Prince said, "Come. Let's get on with the poker," and seated himself
at the table. When they were all seated Susie went to Anne Pulsifer and
asked her to go up and speak to Norah and discover her plans.

When Mrs. Pulsifer had gone she said to Harry, "Thank you."

Harry said, "There is no sluttishness like that of an English slut who
should know better."

Then he turned quickly to the game and Susie went to stand by the
fireplace, looking into the fire, filled with a sudden happiness that
frightened her.

Gus did not come to her room that night although she lay awake for a
long time hoping he would come. There were times when he had sudden
surprising flashes of tact and fine feelings and she knew that he had
gone directly to his own room because it would have seemed both vulgar
and sloppy to have staged a great reconciliation immediately after the
scene with Norah. Susie knew that it was all over. Very likely Gus would
never speak of the scene; probably he would never again speak Norah's
name. He was like that.

When Mattie came in she said, "I have a message for you, madame. The
housekeeper said to tell you that Mrs. Ebbsworth had been called up to
London. She'll be leaving early in the morning."

While Mattie helped her undress, Susie said suddenly, "Do they know in
the servant's room what happened in the card room?"

"Yes," said the girl, "They know something about it. There was quite a
quarrel over it between the housekeeper and Mrs. Ebbsworth's maid."

"You mustn't speak of it outside, Mattie. It's the kind of story that
will go everywhere once it's started. You mustn't speak of it because of
His Royal Highness."

"Of course, madame," said Mattie, "I wouldn't think of telling it
about."

"I'll speak to the housekeeper and the others in the morning."

Susie got into bed, and it was only after the clothes had been put away
and the dressing-room in order that Mattie spoke again. She asked, "Is
there anything more I can do for you?"

"No, Mattie, thank you. Good night."

"Good night, madame. I am glad you had such a success. I was sure the
black dress was the one to wear."

It was the first time Mattie had ever "presumed"--the first of what were
to be countless times. She closed the door before Susie could answer,
but she left her mistress smiling in the darkness. It was good to have
friends like Harry and the Prince and Mattie.

When she opened her eyes the room was full of morning light and Gus was
standing beside the bed. Like all alert people, Susie wakened suddenly,
and she knew almost at once that something terrible had happened. She
knew by the look in Gus's eyes and by the touch of his hand, stroking
her hair, very quietly. In his other hand he held a bit of paper which
she recognized at once as a telegraph form.

Gus said, "Take it easy, sparrow. Take your time. Wake up." She was
awake as she always was on opening her eyes, and she asked, "What is it,
Gus? It's something bad."

He sat down on the edge of the bed, stopped stroking her hair and took
her hand. "It's bad news," he said, "About Herbert." She knew by his
voice what he was feeling and she knew too that the news was the worst
possible. She said what immediately came into her mind, "It couldn't be
Herbert" ... not Herbert, her bright, shining Herbert, the boy in the
pram, whom everyone stopped to admire. People like Herbert couldn't die
young. They brought too much into the world. Their beauty and charm were
too great to be wasted or destroyed.

"It is Herbert," said Gus, quietly. "There was an accident on the road
from Newport to Narragansett. The automobile got out of control and went
off a bridge."

She only thought: That damned automobile! I never wanted him to buy one
until they made better ones. That damned automobile! She was aware of a
kind of numbness in which she felt nothing at all.

Gus said, "Aspasie sent the cable. It's a long one. She has told
everything. I think the funeral will be on Thursday. There will be a
memorial service when we get home."

But Susie's mind had already leapt far beyond such things as funerals
and memorial services. Herbert was dead. She said, "Those poor children
with no one to bring them up but that crazy Blair girl!"

"Yes," said Gus, "that's bad." Then he leaned down and put his arm about
her and said, "Cry, sparrow! Go on. Cry! I'll hold you. I'll take care
of you."

And then the tears came, in a wild rush, not so much then at the death
of Herbert as at the sudden tenderness of Gus. The tears for Herbert
would come later. They would always be there in her heart until she
died.

                 *        *        *        *        *

It was curious how Aspasie was always at hand in every terrible moment
of her life. There was an efficiency about Aspasie, a human efficiency,
which few Americans understood. Americans, who thought of efficiency in
terms of machinery, said the French were inefficient, and consequently
few of them understood people like Aspasie whose life was founded upon
common sense and eternal human values. And there was in Aspasie the
formalism of the French which, like that of the Chinese, clothed naked
human relationships with the cloak of civilization. The Chinese hire
mourners who wail and cry at the head of a funeral procession in order
that the bereaved need not beat his breast in public, calling out upon
all to witness his grief. When one is born or dies or is married both
the French and the Chinese have a printed card or a formal phrase of
congratulations or condolence which takes care of the situation and
permits people who are not especially interested one way or another to
get on to other and more interesting subjects of conversation. By
formalism they have encouraged sincerity. It was all part of an
efficiency, Mrs. Parkington often reflected, which would long survive
the dull mechanical efficiency of water closets and automobiles.

Aspasie was like that. In a time of calamity or tragedy she was always
on hand, quiet, sympathetic, knowing the thing to be done and doing it
perfectly, with taste and without ostentation. She did not take
possession of the injured or the bereaved, exploiting him to demonstrate
publicly her own sympathy and greatness of spirit. She simply went to
work doing the dull, painful things which had to be done.

As Mrs. Parkington grew older she came to understand that only two women
in her life had been very close to her, only two whom she loved and
understood so well that communication between them and herself was
rarely necessary. The two women were her maid and a woman who had once
been her husband's mistress.

Even in that role Aspasie was wonderfully and humanly efficient.
Whatever there had been between herself and the Major was ended when he
married Susie and the new relationship was begun upon a new basis. There
remained no sloppy tags and ends of sentimentality, of faded memories,
of implications and intimations. What was ended was ended; in it there
had been happiness for which Aspasie was grateful, knowing that there is
very little perfect happiness placed at the disposal of the poor human
race. Despite the scene in which she had given so pictorial a
performance in the red and gold sitting-room at the Brevoort, she did
not see any reason why the past should slay her friendship with a woman
like young Susie Parkington for whom she felt affection and respect. Her
heart had not been in the scene because she had believed none of the
conventional speeches she made nor the conventions upon which they were
founded. This was very French; it was also very civilized. Because of it
the Major respected her more than any woman in the world except his own
wife, and there were even times when of the two Aspasie seemed to be the
more practical and sensible.

Long after that scene between the two women, Susie often considered how
much of intelligence, of guidance, of understanding, or richness, she
would have missed during her life, if she had been a fool and said, "No,
since you were my husband's mistress, we must never again see each
other." She had not the human efficiency of Aspasie, nor the background
of deep civilized wisdom, but she had a sound instinct which she trusted
and Leaping Rock had spared her the sentimentality she might have
acquired in a half-civilized community. At one end of her experience lay
Leaping Rock, an utterly barbaric community, rooted in harsh reality; at
the other end stood Aspasie, a monument to complete civilization. Both
were good; the bad half-civilized ground between them she had never
trod, in all her existence. For that she was grateful.

So it was Aspasie, very smart in dark clothes, more handsome at sixty
than she had been at twenty, who met them at the pier. Everything had
been arranged by her. The house was open and the servants expecting
them. There were no newspaper men because Aspasie had given them a
performance which so distracted and enchanted them that they were
willing to forego seeing the great Major Parkington until he had landed
and was settled in his own house. The memorial service at St. Bart's had
been arranged.

She did not rush forward gushing tears, crying out, "My poor darling
Susie!" There was a swift perfunctory kiss on the cheek, a pressure of
the hand, and she began brightly asking about the voyage, telling bits
of gossip, arranging with the Major's secretary, Mr. Billingsley,
concerning what was to be done with the luggage. What she said without
saying it was, "This is something so deep one must not talk of it now.
That will come later on. Now, the immediate thing is to go on living,
picking up the small threads. That alone will help the pain and bring
back the knowledge that there is tragedy in life which we must endure
and put into its proper place in the scheme of things, into that
perspective from which one will see it much later in life. In all
things, in all human experience, even in tragedy, there is a richness
which must not be denied, lest it turn into a cancer which devours you."

And so when in that same "terrible summer" the news came that Alice
could no longer endure the humiliation of her marriage and had asked for
a divorce, it was Aspasie who said, "Dear Susie, I think I should go
with you to Paris. There are things about the French that I know which
you could not possibly know."

It wasn't possible for the Major to leave but he and young Eddie came to
the boat with Susie and Mattie and Aspasie. The Major was efficient in
the grand manner, committing them to the care of an American
international lawyer in Paris named Bates who was a friend of his.

On the dock, she took Eddie aside and said, "Try and take it easy,
Eddie. You don't look well. You've lost weight. Try not to stay up all
night. Try to drink less." She said nothing about women because she knew
that it would be no good and he would only resent it and thrust out his
lip stubbornly. And it was women who troubled her most.

He looked at her, grinning, and said, "Sure, Ma. I'll slow down. I
promise it. I'm going out to the mines in the fall. I'm only having a
good time until I go. Out there I'm not expecting much fun."

She could understand why he was so successful with women. There was
something engaging and boyish about his red hair and freckles and blue
eyes but really there wasn't anything boyish in him. He was too
precocious and knowledgeable; in his tough young body was all the
violence, the vitality, the capacity for desire, which was in all the
Parkingtons, but with Eddie there was no direction but that of his own
pleasure. It wasn't often that a woman found in a young man all these
things, along with money, all the money of Eddie's father, money which
he gave his son with a lavish extravagant generosity.

It wasn't as if Gus tried to restrain Eddie or give him good advice.
Gus, whose own youth had been both wild and hard, thought a young man
should sow his wild oats. He found a kind of pride in the fact that his
son should be keeping a show girl as beautiful, as famous, as Shirley
Seagram; at his son's age, Gus had been courting waitresses. If it had
only been Shirley, Susie wouldn't have minded so much but there were
others too. It wasn't something you could discuss with Eddie; Susie
would have discussed it if the choice had been left to her alone, but
she knew that neither Gus nor Eddie would have tolerated it. To them it
was a subject a wife and a mother never spoke of; it was something
concerning which a good woman should remain in ignorance, or at least in
the pretense of ignorance.

The two men, husband and son, stood on the pier until the big ship had
slipped away into the river, waving their straw hats until they were no
longer distinguishable among the crowd on the pier. Susie felt a pang at
leaving them and a pride that two such splendid specimens belonged to
her.

As the evening closed down on the ship, she walked round and round the
deck, arm in arm, in silence with Aspasie, trying to fight off the
depression that settled over her as America slipped away behind the ship
into darkness. It was a depression filled with self-reproach and a
belief that she had failed as a mother. She was on her way to Paris to
see through the divorce of a daughter whose marriage was a failure. One
son had made a foolish marriage and been killed, leaving behind two
little girls, and the other, for all his charm and good looks, was only
a wastrel.

In the thickening darkness, she tried to discover where she had failed.
She had been as good a mother, as wise a mother as it was possible for
her to be, yet somehow it had come to nothing because outside the realm
of her influence, where she herself was powerless, there were forces too
strong for her, pulling forever against her. There was Gus himself with
his wild generosity and egotism and pride in his own wife and in his
children, and Mrs. Ogden, and the huge fortune and the great houses in
Newport and New York and the yacht and the newspaper reporters whom Gus
was forever encouraging. The very schools to which Gus had insisted on
sending the children had ruined them by their peculiar vulgar snobbery
and emphasis on wealth, on family, on importance. In spite of anything
she could do, the schools had implanted, in the two boys, at least a
sense of being possessed of some special privilege, of being outside the
rules which governed the conduct of ordinary people. Neither Eddie nor
Herbert had, thank God, been snobs; there was too much vigor, too much
Parkington in them, but they believed they belonged to a world
especially blessed and privileged. In a way, that was the hidden result
if not the purpose of St. Bart's and schools like it with their feeble
traditions and imitations of everything English.

All of these things had conspired to defeat her--these things and that
curious passion for Gus which always softened her and made her yield to
him and his ideas against her instinct and judgment. It seemed to her
that there had been a time when, if she had asserted herself, she could
have changed the whole course of their lives. It was during the summer
in the little red house at Long Branch after the awful business of the
ball. She could have fought then to go on living as they had lived that
summer, quietly and well and above all, simply. Then the children would
have had a chance. She could have kept them outside all the forces which
had in some slow and mysterious fashion, deformed their lives.

But when she went on thinking, reproaching herself, she knew that such a
course had been impossible so long as she was married to Gus, because a
quiet, respectable life would have been insupportable to him. He had to
take everything he possessed, even his wife and children, with him on
his way, or leave them behind forever. Gus had wanted what he had got;
he was pleased with it. After the first shock it seemed to her that he
had forgotten even Herbert's death. He did not live in the past, but
only in the present and future. What was gone was gone. She did not
doubt how deeply he loved her but neither had she any illusions as to
what would happen if she died. For a little while he would grieve, but
only for a little while, and then there would be another woman and after
a little while he would never think of her at all unless by chance he
saw her picture or someone spoke of her. Gus was always a kind of wonder
to her; he was a natural man, perhaps therefore a lucky and happy one.
Gus was perhaps what nature intended man to be--a creator, a breeder,
violent and healthy and unreflective. It seemed to her at times that man
had complicated and deformed his own existence and perhaps even doomed
himself by believing in civilization.

And she knew that as soon as Gus and Eddie left the pier, they would go
together, father and son, to Delmonico's or Rector's to eat and drink
well and meet a couple of girls, Shirley Seagram perhaps and a friend,
and at the end of the evening Gus would perhaps be faithful to her and
perhaps he would not. The odd thing was that somewhere, in some remote
part of her being, she loved them both for loving life so much. In some
remote part of her there was a little envy of them because they were men
and full of the enjoyment of life. In Bad Gastein she had understood
them. In some strange fashion it made her love them all the more.

Then the ship passed from the harbor into the open sea and the wind came
up sweeping the open deck and screaming through the rigging and Aspasie
who perhaps divined what she had been thinking and so kept silent said,
"We had better go and dress for dinner. It will make you feel better to
change."

It was the Frenchwoman speaking again, drawing her back into the frame
of everyday existence which made life in times of disaster endurable.

                 *        *        *        *        *

Alice had left the Duke's great house in the Rue de Varenne for the
Hotel Meurice. It was a famous house designed by Gabriel with a great
garden at the back. At the time of the marriage, the great house stood
empty for, bit by bit, the Duke and the Duke's father had sold the
furniture and sculpture and pictures and tapestry deposited there
generation after generation by the descendants of the first Duc de
Brants, peer of France and treasurer of Francis the First. The house
was restored now with the money Major Parkington had made out of
railroads and mines and oil in a country discovered about the time the
first Duc de Brants received his title. But its splendor held no
attraction for the Major's daughter. There was in her, as Susie well
knew, a streak of commonness which rendered her uneasy in the presence
of splendor. There was in her none of the adaptability of her mother to
circumstances, none of the flair of Susie for living up to a situation,
of _acting_ as she had acted in response to Aspasie's performance in the
Brevoort long ago. Alice merely remained awkward and uneasy. Only
bitterness and disillusionment and long habit of worldly associations
gave her, late in life, a kind of brittle poise and a kind of malice and
wit. In the year she divorced the Duke she was merely an awkward,
stubborn and provincial young woman who surprisingly spoke the classic
French of the Thtre Franais taught her as a child by Aspasie.

It was this rather dreary young woman, dressed in expensive clothes by
Worth which she wore badly, who met Susie and Aspasie at the Gare du
Nord. She had the air of a bedraggled, beaten puppy. Her pleasure and
excitement at seeing her mother and Aspasie was more unbearable than the
misery in the eyes.

Remembering what Aspasie had said on the day of the wedding--that Alice
might as well go through with the marriage since if she did not marry
the Duke she would marry someone just as bad--she thought: Perhaps it
would be better for her to stay married to the Duke no matter how bad it
was. But almost at once she saw the weakness of that idea. She was
assuming that Alice was like herself--that she had resources and could
build up a life of her own outside the realm of her husband's existence.
Alice was not clever and resourceful; she was dull and dependent and
without initiative. And the story was much worse, when she heard it,
than anything she had imagined.

At the end of the summer, the Meurice was filled with Americans and
English, buying clothes, returning from summer holidays or on their way
to Austria or Hungary for grouse and pheasant shooting. It was filled
with people whom Susie knew. They were everywhere, in the great halls,
in the restaurant and in the lift and Susie saw at once that it was
impossible to think of staying on there in circumstances so humiliating.
In the taxicab Alice had said, "He has decided to fight the suit." And
Susie knew at once what that meant--dirty linen, recriminations, all the
horrors of a scandal in an age and a country where a divorce scandal was
more than a scandal of any other sort could possibly be.

Susie had asked, "Are you still determined to go through with it?" and
Alice answered with an astonishing intensity of feeling, "I want to be
free of him! I have to be! I will never feel clean again if the whole
thing is not finished completely!"

Across Alice, Susie's eyes met Aspasie's black ones. It was worse than
either of them had ever expected.

In the hotel sitting-room Aspasie, once they were settled and Mattie had
the unpacking under way, said that she was going out to look up some old
friends and relatives. She would not return until after dinner. There
_were_ friends and relatives and Aspasie meant to see them, but that was
not the reason she went out. Susie discovered afterward that she went
out in order to leave mother and daughter alone, and also on a kind of
scouting trip. She went out to purchase all the newspapers, the gossip
papers, the _revues mondaines_ to discover the state of mind of Paris
itself--French Paris as well as international Paris.

When Aspasie had gone, Susie ordered lunch and while she and Alice ate,
Susie talked of things at home, trying to establish a casual feeling
which would permit Alice to tell her all that was clearly shut up in her
heart. She was not very successful for she felt between them almost at
once that curious undefeatable strangeness which had obscured, like a
fog, the relationship between them since the time Alice was old enough
to talk. It was as if they were no relation to each other, as if Alice
were a foundling of some strange blood. Sinfully and filled with shame,
Susie sometimes thought: If she had been pretty and gay and amusing, it
would have been different. How much I would have enjoyed that kind of
daughter. Because this was not so, Susie had tried all her life to make
up for it, conscientiously straining to establish something which could
not be established; the effort perversely only heightened the sense of
strangeness.

Halfway through the lunch, it became slowly evident to Susie that Alice
had become even more remote and difficult to reach. She sat there,
sallow-faced and plain, her eyes dark with misery and hurt pride,
wanting sympathy and kindliness but thrusting it away the moment it was
offered. It was the misery of a person whose whole world was encompassed
by her own ego. If the weather was bad, the fact was of importance only
in its effect upon herself. It was the misery of a person destined
always to suffer because she remained enclosed in a shell, shutting out
all sympathy, giving out nothing, uninterested in anything beyond the
limits of her own self-imposed and gloomy prison. It was in a strange
way the fierce egotism of Gus himself, inverted and devouring not other
people but itself. Watching her, Susie thought shamefully that it was a
strange and bitter world--that if one of her children had to die, why
had it not been Alice, who found so little pleasure in life, rather than
Herbert, bright Herbert, who loved life so passionately and gave back
more than he received from it.

She sighed and looked at the dusty tops of the chestnut trees in the
Tuileries gardens. This Paris, dominated by the disaster of Alice,
seemed a strange, gray city, cold and unfamiliar. Even the station and
the streets did not look the same, but dimmed and misted over by the fog
of Alice's private misery.

When the waiter came, Susie ordered champagne with the dessert, hoping
wildly that somehow it would release the sense of strain and permit
Alice to talk. But Alice only refused it, saying something about her
liver--an organ which Susie thought it unnecessary and unattractive to
mention save in the presence of one's doctor.

Then unexpectedly, when the waiter had taken away the table and Susie
stood looking out of the window into the Rue de Rivoli, it happened.
Alice began to cry, silently, the tears rolling down the sallow cheeks,
and she began to talk; the whole story, shut up for so long deep inside
her lonely spirit, poured forth now without check, like water from a
shattered dam. Susie, standing by the window, turned for a moment toward
her and then thought: No, I must not look at her. I must not touch her!
If I try to console her, it will spoil everything! So she turned away
again and with a casual air of listening absent-mindedly as she watched
the street, she heard the whole of the sordid story, never once
interrupting Alice, but saying "Yes" now and then or murmuring some
indistinguishable phrase so that Alice would believe that she was
hearing it all and continue to unburden what clearly had to be told if
she was to save her sanity. Without being told, Susie knew the girl had
kept the whole story locked up inside herself, telling nothing beyond
the simple record of the Duke's infidelities, even to her lawyer.

It was a dreadful story, filled with dark intimations which shocked
Susie and which she was certain Alice herself did not understand, a
story of humiliation both public and private, a story of mistresses and
obscure debauchery. Much that Alice told innocently fitted together with
Susie's knowledge and experience into a pattern of perversity and vice.
What Alice knew was bad enough; what she did not suspect was far worse.
The Duke had not lived with her for more than two years. Quite openly he
had shown all Paris that in fact she was no longer his wife and that he
felt only contempt for her. Susie, listening to the end, was aware that
she had always known what the end would be; she had hoped that somehow
Alice could defend herself or at least build a life independently, of
her own. But she knew now, as she had known in her heart all along, that
this was a vain hope. The strength was not in Alice; poor Alice who
would always be dependent upon men, would never be able either to hold
them or to discipline them. The end had come much more quickly even than
she feared.

And as she listened, she realized how helpless the girl was--that she
had really learned nothing at all since she had left home on the day of
her marriage. She had gained nothing from experience, nor was it
possible to explain or teach her anything. It was as if she were
determined to be miserable, and found a kind of perverse satisfaction in
it, the satisfaction denied her elsewhere in life.

The story finished at last in a burst of hysterical sobbing. Then Susie
crossed the room and sat beside her daughter and drew the shaking body
of the girl against her. She said very quietly and in a matter of fact
way, "From now on you must leave the whole thing to Aspasie and me. You
must try not to think of it any more. Are you certain that he means to
fight the divorce?"

"He has it all planned. He has even worked out evidence to show that I
have been unfaithful."

Susie considered this for a moment and then asked, "Have you?"

Alice looked at her in astonishment. "No. Of course I haven't. I have
had friendships with one or two men who were kind to me. That is all."

"You haven't been indiscreet?"

"I don't know. I am not a lawyer."

It was clear enough that Alice would not know what indiscretion might
mean to a lawyer or a court. It was quite clear that she was altogether
helpless in a strange country whose laws were very strange and different
from those of America. Susie thought: It's all Gus's fault in a way ...
Gus's wild generosity and his passion for doing everything in a big way
... as if to advertise his success and his wealth. If he had not settled
so much money on the Duke, the Duke would not have dared to threaten a
countersuit.

They might, of course, still be able to buy him off, but that was not
what Susie wanted. Deep inside her there was a sense of profound and
bitter outrage, very like the outrage she felt at the behavior of Norah
Ebbsworth. The story Alice had just told her was impregnated with evil,
with deliberate cruelty and perversity, and these were things which
Susie had never been able to tolerate. Now she would not try to buy off
the Duke, she would do it only as a last resort. She had a better plan,
but before she acted she needed the advice of Aspasie.

She said to Alice, "You had better lie down now. I'll get tickets for
the theater and when Aspasie comes in we'll make arrangements to take a
flat or a small house. It's quite impossible for us to stay in any hotel
at this time of year. There are too many people about we know. Go now
and rest and leave the whole thing to Aspasie and me."

Then suddenly, for the first time in all their lives together, Alice
kissed her spontaneously and with feeling, so much feeling that there
was in the gesture a sense of hysteria, almost of madness. She said,
"You don't know how much difference it makes to have you here. It's
changed everything. I feel now as if I wasn't completely alone any
longer. I can trust everything to you."

It was the first time there was understanding between them, the first
occasion on which the sense of strain between them was broken. It would
take a long time for them to understand each other completely; the
understanding would not be complete until Alice herself was an old
woman.

                 *        *        *        *        *

At teatime Aspasie unexpectedly returned burdened with newspapers and
periodicals, reporting that the whole thing was worse than she had
feared. The divorce was the talk of Paris; every _revue mondaine_ had
references to it. Some took the side of the young American woman against
the dissolute Duke; others said that she had got her just desert for
buying her way into an ancient French family. But it did not rest there;
imaginative and black-mailing journalists wrote dark intimations of
orgies, of Lesbianism, of androgynous activities on the part of the
Duke. The divorce found its way even into serious and solemn political
newspapers; the conservative ones cited it as an example of the evil
results of the breaking down of old traditions; the Roman Catholic
papers attacked it as an example of the evils of Catholic-Protestant
marriages; the radicals used it as a brilliant example of the evils of
wealth and capitalism. It was clear that Paris had had no such scandal
since the accusation and suicide of the Duc de Praslins.

Together Susie and Aspasie went drearily over the whole sheaf of papers,
Aspasie ashamed of her own people for the peculiar vicious pettiness of
the journals, Susie astonished by the notoriety which a person so dull
and unspectacular as Alice had somehow managed to achieve. The odd thing
was that Alice seemed unaware of the attacks; it was as if, buried in
her own personal misery, she were utterly indifferent to the opinion of
a world in which she had at best played a small, pale role.

When they had finished with the journals, the two women set themselves
to planning a campaign.

"_C'est honteux_," said Aspasie, "The French can be at the same time the
most elevated and vulgar of people."

Susie did not mind so much the French journals; she was aware that
Alice's life in France was ended, that Alice felt no regrets at the
fact. It was the American papers she feared, the awful, sensational
Sunday supplements and their stories about "Another American girl who
bought a title." For a moment she wished that the Major was in Paris to
deal with the situation, but after a little reflection, she realized
that nothing could be worse than the presence of Gus; he would grow
furious and contemptuous and violent and only make everything far worse.
This was a thing for herself and Aspasie to handle.

There was no theater that night. Alice did not even waken at the hour
for dinner and Susie did not wake her. It was as if the release of
telling the whole story to her mother had brought the first relaxation
she had known in many months, and with it the first sleep she had known
in all that time.

Susie and Aspasie dined in the sitting-room and after dinner they laid
their plans for action. It included the spending of much money, the use
of unscrupulous people, much knowledge of the world in all its aspects,
not a little blackmail and above all, promptness of action. There was,
they decided, not a moment to be lost.

Tomorrow Susie would see all the lawyers in the case and Aspasie would
find a house or a flat and engage four or five private detectives, as
unscrupulous as she could possibly find. It would be simple enough to
find them, they were everywhere in Paris. Most difficult of all was the
task of Susie herself; it was necessary for her to arrange a meeting
with the Duke. In all of it Alice must be kept quiet and out of the
picture.

                 *        *        *        *        *

And so the two women set to work. The flat was easy to find and after
Susie had interviewed Alice's lawyers she understood at once that very
little was to be expected from them. The American lawyers were elderly
and uninspired and respectable and more concerned with their position at
the Traveler's Club and at the embassy than with fighting for their
client; it was clear almost at once that they wished, but for the huge
fee they expected to receive, that they had never become involved in so
scandalous a case. Their French partners, nice, elderly and funereally
respectable, were no more than bookkeepers; both were listed in the
telephone directory not only as _avocats_ but as _hommes de lettres_.
The detectives were much more what Susie needed. One of them looked like
a fashionable undertaker and kept dry-washing his hands throughout the
first interview as if he had some stain upon his soul from which he was
unable to cleanse himself. The other was a short, dark man with a brutal
face and a tic. One was named Monsieur Blanc, a perfectly innocuous
name, and the other, the undertaker, was called Monsieur de Trevillac, a
noble enough Breton name concerning the falseness of which neither
Aspasie nor Susie had any illusions. The two gentlemen promised to turn
up whatever was desired. As their business caused them to spend a great
deal of time among the more vicious elements of the Paris underworld,
they already had, they said, a considerable _dossier_ on the Duke. One
collected such things and filed them. One never knew when they might be
of use. When they brought what impromptu things they had already
collected so casually, Susie and Aspasie went over the whole record with
them and Susie concluded that already she had all she needed for her
purpose. When they had gone, bowing their way backward out of the
drawing-room, Susie sat down with the aid of Aspasie to write a letter
to the Duke requesting an interview. They sent it by messenger and the
answer came by messenger.

The Duke would be delighted to see his mother-in-law again, nothing
would give him greater pleasure, but he could not possibly accept her
proposal to call upon him; it was his duty and correctness demanded that
he call upon her. It was for her to set the time. She did not like the
note. It was, she thought, not the moment for suavity, not the time for
flattery.

He arrived at four on the following afternoon. Susie was alone in the
flat. She had wanted Alice out of the way but there was another more
important reason; she meant to do something which was shameful to her,
which violated profoundly her whole nature. It would be difficult enough
to do it alone face to face with her son-in-law; she could not possibly
achieve what she meant to achieve in the presence of a third person,
even Aspasie who knew all the details of the plan.

When she came into the drawing-room of the flat she had taken in the Rue
Tilsit, he was standing at the window looking down into the street. He
did not hear her come in and she stood for a moment in the doorway, the
awful _dossier_ furnished by Monsieur Blanc and Monsieur de Trevillac,
under her arm. When she spoke she did not call him "Jacques" nor even
address him as "my son-in-law." She said in a low voice, "Monsieur le
Duc." There was both mockery and insult in what she did.

But as soon as he turned and she saw his face, she felt her bitterness
weakened by something which was beyond her control as a woman; he was a
very attractive man, as dissolute men can sometimes be. It was as if his
mere presence, his mere mocking, flattering smile broke down barriers of
resistance, of moral principle. It was not the overwhelming physical
attraction of a man like the Major; this one's charm was more
insinuating and evil, more destructive, as if inviting you, seducing
you--the charm of a good-looking and utterly abandoned man who stopped
at nothing.

He crossed the room and kissed her hand, saying, "I am delighted to see
you again, _belle-mre_. It is not flattery when I say that you are one
of the women I am always eager to see."

She was aware again that she was only a little older than he and that
there was something grotesque about her being his mother-in-law. She was
aware too, with shame now, that she had made a special effort to make
herself attractive for the meeting. She felt suddenly ashamed of being
feminine and vain and almost whorish. Yet she was secretly pleased that
he found her attractive.

She said, "Thank you, Jacques. You needn't be flattering. It's scarcely
a time for that."

She asked him to sit down and said, "This is a painful business. I did
not expect the marriage to be happy but I had hoped that it might
outwardly be decent." She put the _dossier_ on the table beside her and
noticed that he watched the action even while she was speaking.

He said, "I assure you, _belle-mre_, that I tried to make the best of a
bad situation. You may believe me or not."

"It has turned out very badly."

He looked away from her and the dissipated, good-looking overbred face
grew serious. The seriousness brought sadness into it. He said, "I did
my best. Perhaps it was not a very good best. Have you ever lived
closely with Alice? Have you ever spent an evening alone with her?"

She saw where he was leading her and determined to avoid the trap. It
was impossible to argue that Alice was brilliant or amusing or even
companionable. She said, "After all, Alice is my daughter."

"There is a curse on her," he said, "Please believe me, I have no
feeling of hatred for her. If I feel anything at all it is pity, but a
pity which I wish to avoid having awakened by her presence. Pity may be
an estimable virtue but it is also sometimes a painful emotion to the
one who experiences it. I make no pretense of virtue on my part. I only
believe one thing--that I have but one life to live. I am already
thirty-nine years old. That is very old for a man who has lived as I
have lived. I do not believe specially in self-flagellation. I tried
with Alice and one or both of us failed. It was misery from the
beginning. Nothing is worth that."

Then Susie said, "Not even with a hundred thousand dollars a year?" She
had meant to be nasty. Now she was forcing herself and the effort filled
her with shame.

"It might buy my body for a little while but never my soul. There are
times when the violation of the soul renders the body impotent and
incapable."

She said nothing to this. She thought, "What he is saying is at least
honest, however unscrupulous may be the motives, however depraved the
character." It made it difficult for her that in her curious honesty she
could not deny what he said of Alice.

She heard him saying, "Alice does not want love, _belle-mre_. She does
not know how to receive it or respond to it. I am not an unattractive
man. Nor an inexperienced one. At least experienced women do not
consider me so; yet each time I made love to your daughter she treated
it not only as an indignity but, what is much worse, as a bore. What she
wanted was not a lover or a husband, but someone to sit with her doing
nothing, nothing at all, during long interminable evenings. She wanted
someone, a man to exhibit to the world as belonging to her. It was
intolerable, _belle-mre_. Believe me I tried. I am an impatient man,
but I tried."

There was a kind of honor and anguish, a shadow of genuine suffering, in
his voice that moved her despite all her bitterness, and she saw that to
him the painful egotism and lack of spirit in Alice must have been an
agony. It would have been the same with herself, if she had married some
man who was dull and passive and conventional, instead of Gus. The man
opposite her, however unscrupulous he might be, however depraved, was of
those who had been blessed with wit and intelligence, those in a strange
way who were the elect.

She said, "If all this is true, why then do you want to bring a
countersuit against Alice?"

He was thoughtful for a moment, covering his face with his hands. At
last he said, "That is difficult to answer, perhaps more difficult for
you as an American to understand. I do not hate Alice. Divorce for me
presents a problem which scarcely exists in your country. That Alice did
not bear me an heir, that she seems incapable of having a child is
something, but less important to me than to some men. There will be men
in my family to carry on the title. I have, as you know, two nephews. I
am not certain that I want to bring children into a world which I have
never found especially satisfactory and which I see deteriorating to a
level at which all men will be reduced to a uniform mediocrity. I do not
believe in divorce. Even though Alice wins a divorce in the civil
courts, it means nothing to me. Only an annulment in Rome can free me.
For that I do not need a divorce. But for that, I am frank to say,
money, perhaps much money, may be needed."

She was beginning now to understand. He was being remarkably honest, as
only the French can be honest. In spite of everything she found a
satisfaction in dealing with a man who had no hypocrisy. She thought:
Now the time has come. Now is the time to do it.

Quietly she said, "There isn't going to be any money, Jacques. My
husband was too generous to you in the first place. Money doesn't mean
anything to him. It's just something to have around. He has no idea how
rich he is, and so he throws it about. He doesn't understand what good
money can do or what evil--what colossal evil."

Watching him, she understood what had happened in his mind. He had come
cheerfully believing that she meant to buy him off, and then he had
noticed the _dossier_ lying on the table beside her and became alarmed.
It appeared to fascinate him, for despite himself he kept glancing at it
all through the conversation. She thought: He has seen a _dossier_
before. It isn't the first time he's been blackmailed!

She went on talking in the same level voice, filled now with a kind of
evil amusement at what she was doing. She said, "It would probably be
cheaper to buy you off, but that isn't what I intend to do. You
understand, money doesn't mean much in the whole affair. It's very
likely that my husband at this moment has available as much as two
billion francs. There's no need for him to save it. He makes money all
the time. Every day more comes rolling in from all over the world. You
can understand that he wouldn't mind spending a billion francs just on
this case alone."

She was being deliberately vulgar because it suited her purpose, and she
saw that her course was having its effect. The astronomical figures she
mentioned chilled his thrifty French heart and his logical French mind.

"You are aware, I am sure, that a billion francs could buy all the
newspapers in Paris, and also you are aware that most of them--and
certainly the scandalous ones--are perpetually for sale." (This was on
the sure information of Aspasie who had given her much good advice just
before the interview.)

He began to smile as he divined what she was up to, a curious smile of
amusement and admiration, and again she felt a liking for his perverse
honesty; he had planned to blackmail her into buying him off, very
politely and in a gentlemanly fashion, and now he realized that the plan
had failed and that she was about to turn the game against him. And he
did not mind very much. He was enjoying the meeting and the conversation
and admiring her quite sincerely for what she was doing. He was hopeless
but somehow likable.

"Yes, _belle-mre_," he said, "I'm aware of all that."

"And you understand that Alice has no intention of staying on in France
or of carrying on any life here. Nothing that happens can affect her in
relation to France. I doubt even that she would ever come to France
again, even as a tourist."

"Yes, _belle-mre_."

Now the time had come. She reached for the _dossier_ and his smile grew
more radiant.

"That," he said, "is possibly a _dossier_ on the subject of my evil
doing."

"That is exactly what it is."

She untied the string very slowly, and he said, "You are very good at
your game." And again he smiled in frank admiration, as if he were
admiring a fine performance by a great actress.

"The trouble with you, Jacques," she said, "is that you have no morals
at all ..."

"No, _belle-mre_, none." His face grew serious suddenly, "Morals come
out of moral background and I never had any moral background. My mother
was a frivolous woman. I am not even certain who was my father. I never
believed that I shouldn't enjoy myself in life. The body causes us great
pain. It is only proper that it should give us in return great pleasure.
It withers and dies all too soon. One had best enjoy it while it is
still capable of providing enjoyment."

"What a philosophy!" she said, "It is one in which self-respect plays no
part."

"What is self-respect? It is founded only upon conformity with what
others have set up as a standard of behavior. That has no interest for
me. I am an individualist, perhaps an anarchist."

"You are a _voyou_," she said, conscious again that she was enjoying his
company far more than she should.

The _dossier_ lay opened now in her lap. Monsieur Blanc and Monsieur de
Trevillac had done a very neat, efficient job. It was even
cross-indexed, according to vice and according to names of persons
involved. It was a perfectly fantastic record, but rather fascinating.

She said, "I think we had better go on with the business. Do you know a
Madame Lazare who has a strange establishment in the Rue Blanche?"

He smiled without answering and she turned a page, "A Madame Celestine
in Marseilles. She had an establishment there as well as in Tunis. Her
business is criminal under the Code Napolon and her clients as well as
herself are liable to prosecution and imprisonment." She looked up at
him and continued, "In all this you must remember that it is not only
yourself who is involved. An expos would drag in the names of other
important people--bankers and at least one cabinet minister. It would
make a really horrible scandal and you would be responsible. It would
not make you popular. It might make it almost impossible to live in
Paris. Certainly it would be the end of the Jockey for you and the
Traveler's and a good many other things."

The smile grew broader and she was aware that he was scarcely listening.
He was simply watching her.

"_Suivi_," he said.

And turning the pages she said, "There is a _voyou_ in the rue de Lappe
commonly known as Pep Le Marteau. That is a singularly _un_pretty story
... especially for a professional lady-killer in a country where
lady-killing is a profession."

He stood up and said, "Never mind. I see your point. You might read me a
few more names just to see how good the record is, but I won't take your
time. I am forced to say that your two investigators are remarkably good
and they worked very quickly."

She closed the _dossier_. "They had most of it on file. It appears that
in their business they keep records of prominent people. You must
occasionally remember, Jacques, that you are the Duc de Brants and very
fashionable and that you married the daughter of an immensely rich
American _milliardaire_. These facts I've been reading mean business at
some time or other to gentlemen like Monsieur Blanc and his friend. It's
a kind of investment they keep in their safe-deposit boxes waiting for
an occasion like this to turn up."

He said, "_Vous gagnez, belle-mre._ And you gave a fine performance. My
lawyer and yours will get together." He smiled again. "There is only one
thing?"

"Yes?"

"How did you know about what to do? How did you know where to find your
friends the private investigators?" She did not answer him. "Was it
Aspasie who found them?"

"It is of no importance who found them."

He kissed her hand, "Good-by, _belle-mre_. I am sorry that things could
not have been different. I think that you and I might have made a
remarkable couple. Together we could have gone a long way. I shall write
to you now and then."

"Good-by, Jacques." She tucked the _dossier_ under her arm. "Good luck."

And then he was gone and she was aware of a desire to call after him,
"Don't go yet. Stay a little while and talk. Now that the awful business
is over we can enjoy ourselves." It wasn't often you met someone like
Jacques; too many people were bores, whose conversation was without
spirit, only turgid, void and vapid mumblings.

Then she heard the door close and knew that he was gone and suddenly she
was very tired and filled with an unaccustomed sense of profound
loneliness.

It was the last time she ever saw him, although afterward, he had from
time to time written her flattering and amusing letters that came year
after year, three or four times a year until he was killed at Verdun. He
did not even appear in court for he told his lawyers not to contest the
case and she never knew whether he had given up his plan because of the
blackmail or because of herself. It was one of the unsatisfactory,
unfinished things which tormented her for the rest of her life.

But "the terrible summer" was not ended with the divorce. She sailed
with Alice and Aspasie at the end of September. It was a dull voyage
marked by apathy and weariness, one of those periods in which nothing at
all happened, which later in life seemed to have been utterly lost out
of the span of existence.

The Major and his secretary came aboard at quarantine. She had not
expected him and so was in her cabin and he sent for Aspasie before he
saw her, for what he had to tell he was without the strength or the
courage to accomplish. For the first time in all his life, even his
great vitality, his great egotism, were not enough.

He had no son left, for Eddie was dead now too in a mining town in
Montana. It was not until a month afterward that she knew for certain
that her boy had shot himself and not until years afterward that she
discovered he no longer wanted to live because he was sick with a
disease which in those days no one mentioned in decent society. That had
been the end of all his wild hysterical enjoyment of life.

It was after the funeral she went away to Portsmouth with Mattie to the
Rockingham Hotel to hide away, alone, where no one knew her, like a hurt
animal. There were many things she had to face, many things she had to
think out for herself before she could return to live again with Gus.
When she returned, she was aware of a new strength she had never had
before; after that summer she knew that nothing again could ever really
hurt her.

Lying there alone, tired and wakeful in the comforting darkness, Mrs.
Parkington knew suddenly that at last the wounds had healed, for now at
eighty-four, the memories of "the terrible summer" no longer had the
power of giving her sharp pain that was almost physical. It was at last
all very remote and hazy like a distant landscape veiled by mists. In a
strange way it was a part of the extraordinary richness of her life. She
thought: Perhaps one day I will meet Eddie and Gus and Herbert again.
Who knows? Perhaps in another world I shall know them not as themselves
but as creatures more perfect. Perhaps I myself will be in that world a
better woman--less vain and less hard, more understanding and stronger
and wiser than I have been in this world.

Toward morning she fell asleep.




                                   XI


She was wakened by Mattie placing the tray with her tea on the table
beside her bed. When Mattie said, "Good morning!" Mrs. Parkington
noticed that she seemed more cheerful and this pleased her for Mattie's
own moods had an extraordinarily powerful effect upon her own despite
anything her reason could do about it. When Mattie drew back the
curtains, she saw that it was a beautiful day and that too cheered her.
It would be a busy day but there were times when it was better to be
busy than to think too much. That knowledge, she knew, had been Gus's
greatest strength; he never reflected; he was always busy up to the very
end. He understood very little even of business for he was above all a
gambler, but he knew how and when to act.

Considering that she had slept very little, Mrs. Parkington felt
remarkably brisk, perhaps because in those long dark hours while she lay
awake living over again the unbearable hours of "the terrible summer,"
she had achieved at last a certain release from the past. She had
awakened, cleansed and purified, with an extraordinary sense of freedom.
It was almost like being reborn, like feeling as she had felt long ago
as a young girl on waking, before there was any past to fill her with
forebodings regarding the future.

She said to Mattie, "You had better call Miss Beasely and ask her to
come at ten instead of ten-thirty. It will give us an extra half hour to
go over things."

Mattie gave her a sudden searching look as if she were saying, "What has
come over you since last night?" And then said, "Do you think that wise,
madame?"

"Yes, Mattie. I feel remarkably well this morning. Almost gay."

"You certainly beat anything, Mrs. Parkington" said Mattie and her
mistress felt a great sensation of satisfaction that she had won
Mattie's approval for once. The day was indeed going well.

The newspaper was not cheering. The war was going from bad to worse, and
she thought: There is no way of our keeping out of this thing. It has
been coming to us for twenty years and more--oh, much more than that.

Looking backward, it seemed to her that she could out of the past recall
signs of it as far back as 1910 or 1911 or even before that in the days
of their friendship with the Prince. The Prince too had seen it coming,
although there were many things that he had not reasoned out that were
not clear to him then or to any of them and had since become clearer,
long after he was dead.

Because this morning she felt exceptionally well, it was one of the
occasions when Mrs. Parkington wished that she might go on living
forever in order to see what came out of this tormenting, depressing,
chaotic confusion. It might be that a bright new world, brave in its
decency and understanding might be born of all the agony, and that would
be something to see. There were other times when, feeling less cheerful,
she hoped to die quietly in her bed before her country too was swept
into the misery of war and the confusion and bitterness of peace.

But this morning she felt almost frivolous and even the depressing news
of fresh defeats for her friends the British and fresh misery for her
friends the French, did not depress her. Nowadays, she reflected, people
took far too immediate a view of everything. It was, she knew, difficult
not to do so with news bulletins and commentators and headlines pounding
at you every hour of the day. In the making of history it was not the
short view which was important, the immediate defeats and victories, but
those great turbulent waves of feeling which swept whole peoples to
achievement or destruction. In this modern complicated world one could
not see the forest for the trees. Everyone thought for a day or two that
the fall of Crete or the retreat from Dunkirk was all important and
decisive, but these things were only a part of a much greater whole,
pebbles beneath a great surging wave pounding upon the beach of time
itself--just as the war itself was not in itself an end but only a
manifestation of a vast revolution engulfing all the world, a revolution
of which Amory himself was a strangely minute and insignificant victim
just as Gus if he had been alive now would have been a victim.

As she drank her tea she turned away from the accounts of the war and
deliberately thrust aside the heavy weight of the _Times_, taking up in
its place the more sensational papers which she asked Taylor to get for
her since the judge had made his remark about reading everything in
sight in order to understand what was going on. In these she knew that
she would find the first hint of what was going to happen to Amory. But
in their pages she found no hint of disaster.

Mattie returned presently and helped her with her bath and dressing. She
had just finished as Miss Beasely arrived and came up to the boudoir.

She was a quick squat woman of thirty-eight, like Harriette Livingstone,
a lady and consequently not too efficient, but Mrs. Parkington put up
with her out of kindness because Miss Beasely's mother had no means of
support but Miss Beasely and it was extremely unlikely that Miss Beasely
could have long held a job in the world outside. Her very dress betrayed
her character. She set out in the beginning to costume herself in
clothes befitting a mannish, energetic, efficient woman, but sooner or
later frills and ribbons and bits of lace had a way of attaching
themselves to various parts of her plain person, so that in the end
there emerged a picture, neither of an efficient nor of a feminine
woman, but only of one atrociously dressed. There were times when it
seemed to Mrs. Parkington that the inside of Miss Beasely was very
nearly as silly as the inside of Harriette had been up to that moment
when she found expression in the salvage of stray dogs and cats. Miss
Beasely, especially in the matter of checking accounts, possessed an
immense power of irritating her employer, but Mrs. Parkington put up
with her since Miss Beasely tried so hard and so desperately to overcome
the profound sense of suffering and confusion roused by the mere sight
of a column of figures.

Now Miss Beasely, in a confusion of tweed and lace, opened her dispatch
case and took out pencil and notebook and awaited orders. Mrs.
Parkington first of all gave her a list of things to be done. Call Judge
Everett and ask for an appointment. Ring up the South Street Settlement
to discover if they had yet got the estimate on the new playground. Ring
Miss Janie and ask her to come in at teatime. Order fresh flowers sent
to Mrs. Sanderson and flowers to old Mrs. Edgerton who was dying at the
Doctor's Hospital. Call Mr. Montgomery who was writing a life of Edward
VII and wanted her impressions and anecdotes and tell him that she would
see him on Friday at four. Make the usual monthly checks for the British
War Relief, the British Book Fund for soldiers (on the London account)
and the France Forever Fund for short-wave broadcasts and the Chinese
Relief. Ring up Doctor Chung at Hampshire House and ask him for tea for
Monday.

She recited them all as they came through her head, all the endless,
dull, sometimes annoying tasks which devoured so much of time and of
thought. Besides all these there was the great pile of letters which had
to be answered, letters of every kind and sort from fawning ones begging
for help for someone she had never seen, through letters which had to do
with business, to the semi-personal ones which were the most tiresome of
all because the senders presumed upon friendship or acquaintance to ask
you to do impossible things.

Mrs. Parkington was aware that many people said she was a wonderful
woman and how wonderful it was that at her age she remained so
interested and conscientious about so many things, but she had no
illusions; she was not wonderful at all. If she had been really strong
she would have chucked the whole lot into a wastepaper basket to lie
there forgotten and impotent to wear down her vitality and disrupt the
pleasant routine of existence. She was not wonderful at all; she was
simply the victim of a compulsion from which she would not save herself.

In the midst of her morning's work, Taylor knocked at the door and came
in to say that there was a woman belowstairs who wished to see her. He
carried a note which he said the woman had given him to deliver to her.
Mrs. Parkington took the note and told Taylor to wait.

She tore it open and read:

    _Dear Madame_:

    _I realize that what I am doing is not a correct thing to do but
    the case was so urgent that I overstepped the bounds of
    etiquette. I must see you. It concerns Mr. Stilham and myself. I
    am frantic and do not know which way to turn. Only a moment of
    your time would make a great difference to me. I apologize
    profoundly for intruding upon your privacy._

    _Hoping that you will grant this favor, I am_

                                                _Yours sincerely_,
                                                    _Esther Hobson_
                                               (_Mrs. J. W. Hobson_)

Even while she was reading the note she conceived a picture of Mrs.
Hobson--that she was vulgar, that she was timid, that she was frightened
and that she had a pitiful awe of wealth. Possibly she occupied some
small niche in life which was sheltered but also limited. Who she was or
what she wanted, Mrs. Parkington did not know. From the letter she
judged that the woman was both pretentious and toadying and beyond
question a bore. But her curiosity, she knew, would force her to see the
woman, and in any case the way things stood now she would have to see
anyone who knew anything whatever about Amory. If he was to be saved,
the salvation must come accidentally now from some unexpected quarter.

She said to Taylor, "Take her into the small sitting room and tell her
I'll be down directly."

Then very quickly she finished the immediate business with Miss Beasely
and went downstairs.

                 *        *        *        *        *

The woman was almost exactly what she had expected and the discovery
made Mrs. Parkington feel both clever and pleased.

As she entered the room, the woman rose quickly and came toward her.
Before Mrs. Parkington was able to say anything, she said, "I apologize
for having intruded upon you." (It was the wording out of a column given
as advice on etiquette.) "My name is Esther Hobson."

"How do you do?" said Mrs. Parkington, and then saw that Mrs. Hobson's
eyes were red from weeping. "Please sit down."

Mrs. Hobson appeared to be in her middle forties, a pretty woman in a
banal fashion, with too-small features and more than inclined toward
plumpness. Mrs. Parkington divined that as a young girl she must have
been extraordinarily pretty. She was dressed in the kind of clothes
which are a poor imitation of smart ones, which somehow go awry in line,
in pattern, in material, resulting only in an effect which is neither
bad nor good but only mediocre.

She seated herself in anxiety on the edge of her chair. Mrs. Parkington
sat down opposite her and said, "Now, what is it I can do for you?"

Mrs. Hobson did not look at her. Instead she regarded the red handbag
she carried, her fingers fondling the clasp. She said, "It is very
difficult to explain. I don't know quite how to begin."

"I am a very old woman," said Mrs. Parkington, "You need not mind saying
anything you like."

Again the woman hesitated and Mrs. Parkington, aware of the busy day
ahead of her, wanted to say, "Do stop being silly and get on with it."
But she held her tongue and Mrs. Hobson said, "It may seem very strange,
my coming to you of all people, but I was desperate."

"So you said in your note." Mrs. Parkington had no desire to be
unsympathetic but the woman did seem sillier and sillier.

Then suddenly with an effort so great that her face became quite red,
she said, "You see, Mr. Stilham has been my friend for a long time."

"Oh!" The expression came out despite Mrs. Parkington. So that was it.

"And now it's all finished." She began to cry. "That's what I can't
bear. It's not the money so much as his throwing me over now, after all
these years."

Mrs. Parkington said very quietly, "I wouldn't cry if I were you. That
never does any good. Just try to relax and tell me about it."

"You're very good to me ... to let me take all this time."

"Never mind that. I should like to hear about it. I shan't be able to
understand if you don't tell me about it. Where do you live?"

"In New Rochelle. I have a nice house there and I belong to several
clubs. Nobody there has ever known anything about it."

She looked up now, a little encouraged by Mrs. Parkington's curiosity
which she misinterpreted as sympathy, "You see he never came there. He
always had to make a good many business trips and I used to go ahead of
him and stay at the same hotel ... in different rooms of course ... in
places like Rochester and Cleveland and Kansas City. We never saw each
other in New York except a few times when he wanted to see me and then
it wasn't really New York. It was in Newark or Brooklyn. But he gave
that up. He thought it was too risky."

"Are you married?" asked Mrs. Parkington.

"No. I'm a widow. I've been a widow for fourteen years since before I
met Amory--I mean Mr. Stilham."

"How did you meet?"

The woman looked again at her red handbag. "In Atlantic City," she said.
"It was just after my husband died. I went there for a rest. Mr. Stilham
was there at some kind of convention and somebody introduced us in the
bar." A sigh interrupted her and she said, "He was so good-looking
then."

Mrs. Parkington thought, "What a fool!" Aloud she said, "He is still a
very good-looking man ... only gone a little puffy and red in the face."

All the time Mrs. Parkington was listening, she kept seeing Amory,
taking up the collection in St. Bart's on Sunday, acting as governor of
St. Bart's school, appearing always as a model husband, father and
citizen. It wasn't simply that he was all these things; he was a prig as
well, always talking about standards and behavior and such stuff. He had
dared to disapprove of people like Gus who, God knows, whatever else he
was, had never been a hypocrite.

She said, "What is it you want me to do? Do you want me to persuade him
to return to you?"

Mrs. Hobson's face turned scarlet again. "No, I didn't expect that. That
would be too much." She coughed and held her gloved hand before her
mouth. "It's about money." And then stopped talking again. Considering
that she had to ask favors it seemed strange that you were forced to pry
the request out of her now.

"Yes?" said Mrs. Parkington, wondering whether this dull, commonplace
little woman contemplated blackmail.

"I don't know whether you've heard about Mr. Stilham's trouble. He's
lost just about everything."

"Yes. I know all about that."

Mrs. Hobson looked down again at her handbag. "It's been very hard on
me. It was bad enough having him break off with everything. That just
about finished me." Suddenly, it seemed an idea came to her. "You
understand, Mr. Stilham never gave me money. It wasn't like that." The
face turned red again. "He paid for the expenses of the trips and gave
me a present now and then but he didn't give me money. It wasn't like
that." She seemed passionately anxious to cling to the last shreds of
respectability, to establish in the eyes of Mrs. Parkington the
conviction that she was not a real kept woman.

Opposite her Mrs. Parkington was listening with equal passion to this
further revelation of Amory's character. She was thinking that it was
always unbelievable how consistent most people could be. If she had
invented a mistress for Amory and devised a code of behavior for her it
would be exactly like this. Mrs. Hobson, with her passionate desire for
respectability, her pride in her position in New Rochelle as a
clubwoman, was absolutely safe. She would never be indiscreet or attempt
blackmail. She was exactly the sort Amory would pick. It must, she
thought, have been a very pedestrian, dreary affair. What did they talk
about, sitting in dark corners of "tea shoppes" and taprooms in
Harrisburg or Newark or Kansas City. Amory must have been a very dull,
uninventive lover, but no duller than the woman sitting opposite her.

"You see," Mrs. Hobson continued, "I was always independent. My husband
left me the house we lived in and quite a good income. I didn't need to
accept anything from Mr. Stilham even if he had offered it. But now my
income is gone and I don't know what I'm to do." She began to cry again,
helplessly now, like a meek and not very clever child. "Now I'll have to
give up the house and leave New Rochelle."

Her anguish was genuine. Eve, thought Mrs. Parkington, could not have
suffered more anguish at the expulsion from the Garden of Eden than Mrs.
Hobson at the prospect of having to leave New Rochelle.

"What happened? How did you lose your money?"

"Mr. Stilham asked me to loan him my securities. He told me that he
would make a lot more money for me, and now they're gone and he says he
can't pay me back."

Mrs. Parkington tried to remain calm. She asked. "How much did you lend
him?"

"At that time," said Mrs. Hobson, "They were worth about a hundred and
forty thousand dollars." She took out her handkerchief and blew her nose
in a very refined fashion.

"And why did you come to me?"

"I thought you might help me. I didn't know where to turn. I was
desperate. I could have married again but for Mr. Stilham. During the
years we were together I had two offers ... very good suitable offers. I
refused them because of him."

There was no doubt of it, the woman was a fool, but that, Mrs.
Parkington knew, did not make Amory's case any the better nor Mrs.
Hobson's situation any the less pitiable. She thought suddenly: She is
like hundreds of others who were ruined by Gus's manipulations. They all
want to get rich quick and they haven't any brains and when they lose
their money they're helpless. But Gus had never seen the women he
ruined; they were ciphers, remote and hazy and unreal, "widows and
orphans" on the periphery of his vast machinations. And Gus had
certainly never robbed his own mistresses.

She said, "The whole business is very unfortunate, Mrs. Hobson. I don't
know what is to happen. It may be that things will work out so that
we'll be able to pay you back."

Mrs. Hobson's face grew bright and expectant. "Do you really think so?"

"I don't know."

"You see, it isn't as if I could sue him. If I did that I would lose
everything too. I might get back my money but I'd have to resign from my
clubs. I'd have to leave New Rochelle. I'd have to give up all my lovely
friends."

She was safe all right. Amory had certainly picked shrewdly. She was
safe as a church.

"I know you'll forgive me, Mrs. Hobson, if I don't give you any more
time," said Mrs. Parkington, "But I have a very full day and I'm already
late. I'm quite sure something will be worked out. If I were you I'd go
home and not worry about it too much. I think I can assure you that
you'll get back your securities or others of the same value. If you'll
give me a card, I'll send it to my lawyer and he'll keep in touch with
you."

Mrs. Hobson opened the handbag and began fishing in the disorder of
lipstick and matches and cigarettes it concealed. Without looking up she
said, "You're very good to me. You've changed everything." She found the
card at last and gave it to Mrs. Parkington. One more thing seemed to
trouble her. She asked, "Do you think everything can be arranged so that
Mr. Stilham won't get into trouble? I wouldn't want anything bad to
happen to him ... I mean really bad, if you know what I mean?"

"I know what you mean. I can't answer that. We can only hope for the
best. In any case I don't think you'll have to give up New Rochelle or
your clubs."

"They mean a great deal to me," said Mrs. Hobson. "I have so many lovely
friendships and a lovely home. If you're out driving some day I would
love to have you see it."

"Thank you," said Mrs. Parkington graciously but with utter insincerity,
"I may take up your invitation." She rose and asked, "Have you enough
money to carry on with?"

"Yes," said Mrs. Hobson, eagerly, "Yes. It's just the future ... You see
I'm not as young as I once was."

Mrs. Parkington held out her hand and Mrs. Hobson took it. Then suddenly
in a swift gesture she swept Mrs. Parkington's beringed fingers to her
lips and kissed them.

"You've been so good to me ... so generous."

Quickly Mrs. Parkington snatched her hand away. "Don't do that," she
said with sudden ferocity.

"I didn't mean to offend you. It was only that you've been so good to me
... so kind."

"I haven't been anything at all," said Mrs. Parkington. Never, it seemed
to her, had she hated all Gus's money so much as in that moment, because
it had the power to degrade a fellow human creature. "You must
understand I wasn't angry with you."

She went with Mrs. Hobson to the outer door and watched her plump
buttocks quivering as she tottered on her too-high heels, down the steps
into the street. Then she turned away and instead of taking the lift,
walked up the stairs because she was not yet prepared to face Miss
Beasely and Mattie. She had first to understand and analyze her own
anger and contempt. The groveling gesture of Mrs. Hobson left her
feeling sick, and the revelations about Amory had filled her with
contempt. Amory, she thought, was the pattern of a "gentleman," the kind
of "gentleman" who had been trained to pay his gambling debts and let
the grocer sing for his money. But Amory hadn't even paid his gambling
debts. Certainly there was something very awry with a system which
produced men like Amory. You gave them every advantage of education and
background only to have them develop the psychology of pimps.

As she reached the top of the stairs the telephone was ringing and as
she entered the room she heard Miss Beasely saying, "Yes, Doctor, I'll
call her."

He was speaking from St. Luke's Hospital. He had just brought Mrs.
Sanderson there from her flat. She had developed symptoms of pneumonia
and was better off, he thought, at the hospital. No, up to now she
seemed to be doing very well but it was too early to tell how serious a
case it would be.

Mrs. Parkington put down the telephone and turned to Miss Beasely. "Ring
up Mr. Brearly and say that on account of illness in the family I shan't
be able to go to the Symphony Board meeting. It's Mrs. Sanderson. She
has pneumonia." Then she called into the next room, "Mattie, get your
hat and coat and go with me. We're going to St. Luke's."

She did not want to go alone. She wanted a friend with her. In her heart
she knew that it was all finished. The Duchess was getting at last what
she wanted. There wouldn't be any more need of drink or drugs.

                 *        *        *        *        *

The Duchess died quietly and quickly, slipping out of life without pain
in a dim fog of delirium in which she recognized no one about her. All
the last night until early in the morning Mrs. Parkington sat beside the
bed, knowing perfectly well that there was nothing she could do and that
there was no hope. At the end, in order that Alice might die quietly and
without struggling, they gave her again for the last time the drugs
which for so long had dimmed the edges of daily existence and blurred
the unhappy memories of the past.

Mattie stayed with her mistress all through the long night, dozing off
and waking suddenly now and then to apologize for having dropped asleep.
Twice Mrs. Parkington suggested that she go home to her own bed, but
Mattie knew that the old woman wanted her to stay there and nothing on
earth could have driven her away. Mrs. Parkington was not afraid; she
was not even troubled, for she was aware by midnight that no skill, no
knowledge, no amount of money could save her daughter from death. But
she was lonely.

There were many things which Mattie, out of their long intimacy, divined
and understood. She knew, sitting there on the uncomfortable chair, her
head nodding on her plump body, that Mrs. Parkington was thinking that
the last of the children born of her own flesh was dying. When the
Duchess was gone, she would be alone, for not even Janie who was so
close to her, could ever take the place of her own child.

Just before midnight Mrs. Parkington sent for Dr. Fletcher. He knew very
little about pneumonia; his field was psychiatry, but Mattie knew that
her mistress had not sent for him in any hope that he could save the
Duchess, but because he was a very old friend and his presence there
helped her loneliness and the conscience which even now still had the
power to torment her with the faint, querulous reproach that somehow,
long ago, she could have helped the woman dying there in the room with
them. When the doctor arrived, tall and gray and slightly stooped,
Mattie said, "I think I'll go out and get some air. I'll just walk
around the block and come right back." She knew that there was something
her mistress wanted to say to the doctor alone.

There was never any need to say it, for Dr. Fletcher knew what it was
she wanted of him. He knew Mrs. Parkington very well and had known her
for a very long time. He had dined with her many times alone, while they
talked of all the strange dark tangles of the human mind which he knew
so well, perhaps better than any other man on earth. And he knew Mrs.
Parkington's mind, its quietness and sureness, its honesty, its quick
intuition and the long experience and understanding which lay beneath
its brilliant surface. For a long time he had preferred her company to
that of any other woman, even that of his own wife to whom he was
devoted.

Now as Mattie closed the door he said, simply, "I am sorry, Susie. It is
hard for you. In spite of everything death is always hard. You've been
told the truth--that there is nothing to be done. There is another truth
that I can tell you--that it is much better this way. Above all, it's
better for Alice herself." He took Mrs. Parkington's hand. "It is always
hard for a mother to survive her child but Alice is already an old
woman--much older than you, dear Susie. There are things you know as
well as I do--things you know by intuition which I have had to work hard
to learn. One of them is that Alice has already been dead for a long
time. She had a will to die. Nothing can bring her as much happiness as
death. It is the only thing that can bring her peace. For a long time
she has been seeking peace and oblivion. She was a very tired woman."

She said nothing but looked away from him, aware that tears were filling
her eyes, not tears of sorrow or even now of pity, for Alice was already
beyond the need of that, but of gratitude for something which she did
not quite understand. In the quiet silence she heard the slow labored
breathing of the dying woman.

Then Louis Fletcher spoke again, "And above all, dear Susie, you mustn't
reproach yourself. The things which destroyed Alice were beyond your
control. They were in Alice herself, when she was born, in her very
glands when she was a tiny girl. The doom was already there. And it was
there too in the world into which she was born, an ugly, harsh world in
which only strong and willful or hard or clever people could survive."

Then she looked up at him. She was a small woman and he was a very tall
thin man. She said, "It was very good of you to come. It was very silly
of me to have sent for you. I don't know why I did. Perhaps I sent for
you not as a doctor but as a friend. You have always been a very good
friend."

She took her hand out of his and added, "Now go home. You have told me
what I wanted to hear. It was something I knew already but I needed to
hear you say it before I would believe it."

"I think you know me well enough to know I wouldn't be stupid enough to
try to make you believe anything your intelligence rejected. What I have
said is honest and it is the truth. There are people in life who are
doomed by the very stars. There are others like ourselves to whom God,
or whatever it is that controls this universe, has given special favors,
special reserves of strength and understanding. Why this is so I do not
know nor does anyone else, but you yourself have lived long enough to
know the truth of what I am saying."

The tears had wet her cheeks now. Very quietly she said, "Please go,
Louis, quickly. You have done what I wanted you to do."

He picked up his hat and quietly without another word, he left the room
and when he had gone she walked to the window and standing there with
her back to the bed as if she were ashamed lest the unconscious dying
woman should see her tears, she quickly dried them. Below her in the
street, two cars passed each other. In the doorway opposite, a sailor
and a girl stood in the doorway, their bodies pressed together in the
eternal embrace which marked the beginning of all life. It had been
raining and the reflections of the yellow street lights were drowned in
pools of water gathered on the uneven surface of the asphalt. Far off
down the river the lonely whistle of a freighter sounded through the
fog, and suddenly the strange, unearthly feeling of gratitude for life
burst forth again from Mrs. Parkington's heart. There were no words, or
even thoughts which could translate what she felt. Only through music
perhaps could it be clarified and given form.

How long she stood there she did not know, for it was one of those
moments in life when there is no time, when one's very existence seems
suspended in space.

The sound of Mattie opening the door quietly roused her and she thought:
Perhaps that is what death is. Perhaps in the end it is only death that
brings complete understanding, for in that moment it had seemed to her
that she understood all that had ever happened to her, that all the
tragedy, all the pleasure, all the satisfaction, the suffering had come
together like a single superb tapestry in which every fragment, every
line had a meaning and a beauty related to the whole.

She asked, "Is it cold out, Mattie?"

"No, Mrs. Parkington, it is much warmer."

While the two old women sat there, thinking and dreaming, the nurse came
in to take the pulse of the dying woman. She said nothing. She was a
clever woman; although death was familiar to her, she still respected
it. It was one of the few things in life which, for every man and woman,
partook of dignity. Watching her through half-closed eyes, Mrs.
Parkington thought: All she is doing is futile, yet she is going through
it because somehow we must go on, making gestures so long as the heart
beats, so long as the breath stirs--gestures made in the very face of
fate itself.

Since Louis Fletcher had gone, since the curious moment of revelation at
the window, there was peace in the room. The doubts, the fears were
dissolved. There were people who in themselves had the power of bringing
peace. Louis Fletcher was one of them; the power had made him a great
physician.

This was the only one of her children she had seen die. Now suddenly it
seemed strange to her that both her parents had died in violence away
from her. So too both her sons had died. And then she thought of Gus,
who had died quickly in the arms of a woman she had never seen, whose
name she never even heard, in a hotel bedroom in Cannes, an old man
fighting to the end against old age and death.

Quite suddenly she understood that too--that to Gus the prospect of
growing old and tired was beyond endurance. It was not peace he had
sought, but violence and sensuality and power. In the end, she
understood now, with a sudden clarity, he had been unfaithful to her not
because he did not love her, but because in the beginning he could not
help himself and in the end because he had tried to defy weakness and
death with the gesture of a vigorous young man. And in the very gesture
of life, death had taken him. That was something perhaps only Louis
Fletcher of all people in the world, would understand--that there had
always been something magnificent about Gus which made her forgive him
everything, that there were times when she was grateful for the curious
quality of extravagance and splendor with which he had invested all
their life together. That was a gratitude and forgiveness many women
would never understand.




                                  XII


Outside on the river, the whistle sounded again, this time nearer at
hand, and quite suddenly she was back again on the yacht in the basin at
Cannes and it was early morning with the mist still hanging over the
blue line of the Mediterranean and Mattie was in the room waking her and
saying something about Captain MacTavish and when she had arranged her
hair and put on a dressing gown and gone outside the cabin door, Captain
MacTavish, red-faced and uneasy was standing there with a little fat,
pock-marked _sergent de ville_. Captain MacTavish said, "I apologize for
disturbing you, Mrs. Parkington, but something has happened to the
Major."

Instinctively she started toward the door of the Major's cabin but
MacTavish, his face now scarlet as a poppy, said, "He's not in there,
madame. He's at the Carlton." He was a blunt man but now he was suddenly
tactful. He said, "It seems that he played at the casino until very late
and then went to the Carlton for some champagne with friends and stayed
on the night."

She knew immediately what had happened. It was the thing she had feared
for a long time. She knew that he was dead and she knew how it had
happened and she understood that whatever the sequence of events she
must pretend that she did not know or understand anything, if for no
other reason, only to save poor Captain MacTavish from embarrassment.

Quickly she dressed. Mattie helped her, saying, "I can go with you, Mrs.
Parkington, if you like." But she refused Mattie's offer. Mattie's
presence would only complicate things. She thought, "Somehow we must get
him back on the boat so that no one ever knows." And quickly she glanced
at the clock and saw that it was a little before five o'clock. No one
would be about, no one they knew.

Through the chill mist she went with MacTavish and the _sergent de
ville_ to the Carlton, all the way on foot since she could not wait
until they sent for a car and in any case the Major's driver must not
know of what had happened. In the hallway of the Carlton two old women
were scrubbing the floor. The manager, unshaven, his hair still
uncombed, was there in his frock coat and striped trousers wringing his
hands and talking French as rapidly as he was able to articulate.

She tried to check the wild flow of his speech. He kept saying, "I do
not know how it happened. Such a thing has never happened before. It is
very unfortunate. Such a thing has never happened before in the Carlton.
I apologize, madame. I apologize."

Quite coldly she said, "Never mind all that. I should like to go to the
room." There was something monstrous and grotesque in the idea of his
apology.

MacTavish tried to prevent her because, for all his gruffness he was a
nice man, but she was aware that, with his incredible French and his
lack of tact, he would never be able to manage the stupid _sergent de
ville_ and the hysterical manager. The thing would have to be done by
herself.

The manager kept wringing his hands and the door of the office nearby
was opened suddenly and a fat short woman of fifty with a mustache came
out. In the second the door was opened, there came from the room the low
wailing sound of a woman's voice, sobbing hysterically. The manager said
fiercely to the mustachioed woman, "Get that _grue_ out of here. Why is
she still hanging around?"

The mustachioed woman disappeared again into the room and the others
went with Susie in the lift and when they reached the door of the room,
she said, "I would like to go in alone," and they stood aside.

It was only when she had closed the door behind her and stood there
looking down at him that the fact of his death had any reality, and even
then what she saw was not Gus. Gus was life and vigor and enjoyment. Gus
was good humor and recklessness and warmth and tenderness. Gus wasn't
there at all. There was only the body of a man lying on the floor
covered with a sheet, a stranger with Gus's giant physique and strength,
grown cold now and lifeless. It had nothing to do with Gus. She need
never have come to the room at all.

Quickly she turned and opened the door and to the manager outside, she
asked, "Have you a _brancard_--a stretcher," and in a silly way he
replied, "No, madame. We have only a wheel chair."

"Can you get a stretcher?"

"Perhaps, madame, at the hospital."

"It would require a requisition," said the _sergent de ville_.

She knew what that meant--red tape, perhaps for an hour or more--the
endless red tape without which the French seemed unable to exist. There
was no time.

In English she said to MacTavish. "We must get him back to the yacht
into his own cabin."

MacTavish thought it a good idea, but difficult. The _sergent de ville_
had not even allowed him to move the Major's body from the floor to the
bed. There must be a report first, an investigation.

That was exactly what they must avoid.

She turned quickly to the _sergent de ville_ and said, "Could you use
five thousand francs?"

The blue eyes widened in the pink face, "Five thousand francs! Of
course, madame. Five thousand francs! Who could not use five thousand
francs?"

"It's for you if you make no trouble. The circumstances are perfectly
simple. I want the body of my husband taken to the yacht."

"It can be done," said MacTavish, "We can manage it if we have a
stretcher."

"There is no stretcher. There is no time. There is only the wheel
chair."

It took a moment for MacTavish to gather what it was she meant and then
he said, weakly, "Yes ... I see."

The _sergent de ville_ was now scarcely noticing them. He seemed to be
dreaming, perhaps of what he meant to do with more money than he had
ever seen before in his life. To the manager she said quickly, "No one
must know anything."

His hysteria was gone suddenly, translated into admiration. He said, "Of
course, madame. Of course. No one will ever know," and he seemed
suddenly to become weak with relief.

To MacTavish she said, "I will go back to the yacht and you will come to
my room and waken me when you return. What about the crew? Will they be
about?"

"I think I can manage that. I will go ahead and if there is anyone about
I will send him below. If there is any slip-up, I will say that the
Major had a seizure while gambling."

Then she left them and hurried back down the stairs and through the
corridor into the garden. As she passed the door of the office, it stood
open. Neither the woman with the mustache nor the woman who had been
wailing were there. It was quite empty.

The whole thing went off admirably. A man washing the streets and two
gardeners watering the cinerarias around the newly erected statue of
Queen Victoria, saw an invalid being wheeled across the street toward
the basin by a man in the uniform of a ship's officer. The invalid lay
back in the wheel chair, the hat pulled low over his face to shut out
the rays of the rising morning sun. The workman and the gardeners were
scarcely aware of what they saw. Invalids were common enough in Cannes
and besides in few places in the world could the human race behave more
strangely than in Cannes.

Mattie had never been more magnificent. When her mistress returned to
the yacht she was waiting and she asked no questions, accepting the
statement that the Major was dead.

When Susie said, "I'd like to be alone now, Mattie," she went away
without a word. She was there in the passageway when MacTavish arrived
and helped him with his grim task. When they had placed the body of the
Major in his bed MacTavish took the wheel chair off the ship, to the end
of the pier and pushed it into the blue water. Then he went back to the
hotel and sent a messenger for the hotel physician.

In her own cabin Susie threw herself down, her face away from the light,
buried in the pillows. No tears came. She was suddenly very tired and
she was aware of a feeling of great emptiness as if only part of her
were alive. The death still had no reality. She only knew that something
magnificent had gone out of her life, something she had loved, which had
brightened all her existence, something too powerful for her which had
brought her some sorrow but much happiness, was gone. It was something
she would never again find. For the rest of her life it would be as if
she were only half alive. In the Major's cabin there was a body but Gus
was gone forever. At last the tears came, quietly, searing her eyes.
They came out of her heart, out of the very depths of her body--out of
her soul and her spirit for in a strange way all of these had belonged
to him.

The newspapers in every part of the world reported that the famous and
fabulously rich Major Parkington was dead at seventy-one years of age in
bed on his yacht "Navajo" at Cannes, France.

                 *        *        *        *        *

Dimly she heard again the sound of the boat's whistle through the fog
and was aware that someone was standing before her and knew that she had
been dozing. She heard the voice of the nurse saying quietly, "You can
go home now, Mrs. Parkington. There is no longer any reason to stay. I
have telephoned for your car."

She thanked the nurse and suddenly noticed Mattie, sound asleep in her
chair, her head sunk in to her short plump neck, her hat a little over
her eyes, and she thought "I must get Mattie a new hat. She is so
tiresome about spending money--saving it all for that niece of hers."
She rose and crossed the room and laid her hand gently on Mattie's arm.
Softly she said, "Come Mattie. We'll go home now."




                                  XIII


It was her granddaughter Helen who took over. Helen was like that. For
all the drooping mouth and the listless unhappiness, she could be,
except for Mrs. Parkington herself, the only really efficient member of
the family. She was especially good at weddings and funerals. At times
Mrs. Parkington thought that much of Helen's unhappiness and futility
came of her having been born at the wrong time and in the wrong station
in life. In a small village, a small world, where there were endless
small fragments of gossip and loose ends of living, Helen might have
been happy, she might even have been a splendid citizen. She was meant
for a petty world, cluttered with details, and she had been born into a
large world whose responsibilities she neither understood nor accepted.

Now she was in the house quietly doing all the dull tiresome things
which go with funerals--the telephoning, the announcements, the grim
business of the undertaker, the calls and notes and flowers of friends
and acquaintances. She went about quietly, engrossed in her task, the
sagging mouth rising a little at the satisfaction of all the petty
activity. She managed even Miss Beasely who resented orders from anyone
but Mrs. Parkington. And Janie helped her; Janie was in and out of the
house bringing brightness to Mrs. Parkington merely by her presence.

If the funeral had been left to Mrs. Parkington she would have said,
"Let us have a cremation and a quiet quick burial without fuss." But the
thing was not entirely in her hands. It was clear that Helen and Amory
believed there should be an important funeral at St. Bart's. It was a
curious thing, Mrs. Parkington thought, how people whose importance was
waning should always be so insistent upon "importance" for themselves.
Gus had never needed to worry about such things as importance; it was
thrust upon him; whatever he did was important and exciting.

But there was another element which softened Mrs. Parkington and that
was the thought of the kind of funeral Alice herself would have liked.
It was a subject that they had never discussed but Mrs. Parkington knew
that Alice would like her own funeral to be important as she had liked
along ago the importance of her wedding to the Duke. Birth and marriage
and death had been after all the only moments of importance in all the
life of Alice. Public funerals like public weddings had long ago become
for Mrs. Parkington barbarous affairs, remnants of some less civilized
era in which there was time and place for primitive spectacles and
festivals. Now she thought: I shall hate it all--the walking down the
aisle, the odious show, the tiresome drive to Woodlawn, the whole
business of putting what remains of Alice into the earth beside her
father and brothers. I shall hate it all but no matter, it will give
pleasure and satisfaction to a great many people. It would be like a
christening of which Gus had said long ago, "It can't do the child any
actual harm and it will give a lot of people pleasure."

There were, she knew, actually people who _liked_ funerals, who went to
them almost professionally. She only wished that she need not be the
central figure, that she might go incognito to watch all the people who
came out from under stones, the forgotten once important people whose
only contact with the great world any longer was through funerals, all
the forgotten, rather decayed people from obscure, dingy brownstone
houses who would come to St. Bart's as to a kind of village home-coming
because they knew that the ceremony for the daughter of the rich and
fashionable Mrs. Parkington would attract great crowds. They would see
people there whom they had not perhaps seen in months and years, not
since the last fashionable funeral.

So to Helen she said, "My dear, I will leave it all in your hands,
willingly."

And so Helen did a really splendid job. The obituaries were splendid and
occupied a great deal of space, especially in the _Times_, the _Tribune_
and the _Sun_. There were pictures of Alice, years old, taken from the
newspaper "morgues" and an account of her marriages to the Duc de
Brants, Lionel Swinford, the remittance man, and Alfred Sanderson of
Pasadena. But the odd thing was that nearly half the space was given
over to the Major who had been dead for nearly thirty years, to his
achievements, his fame, his spectacular history. Even in the grave he
was more "important" than most people who were living, far more
important than any of his descendants.

Flowers came in great sheafs, in baskets and blankets and set pieces and
Mrs. Parkington, annoyed by the great number of them, was coldly aware
that they were offerings not to Alice or the memory of Alice but to
herself because she was rich and important and powerful. If she had died
first, the offerings to Alice who had been almost forgotten by the great
world, would have been miserable indeed. When she herself died
everything, she knew, would fall apart; in a few years after her death,
the whole family would disappear into obscurity and only in history
would the memory of the Major survive.

Only once did Amory come to the house and then she managed to see him
alone for a moment. The disturbance of death had made her forget for a
little time the trouble of her grandson-in-law. He was still drinking
and although his eyes were swollen and bloodshot and his handsome empty
face the color of mahogany, he seemed to make sense.

He did not know what the Grand Jury meant to do, nor how far the hearing
had advanced, but it was clear that he had given up hope and was making
no effort to save himself, trusting only to some turn of luck which by a
miracle might save him. He was sullen and morose and said, "It does not
matter. In any case it is the end of everything--for all our class. The
whole world is going to hell. I might as well have a peaceful time of it
in jail."

It was a silly statement and she asked, "What do you mean by our class,
Amory? I am not aware of belonging to any class. I happen to have a
great deal of money, but that is an accident."

"I mean," he said heavily, searching for words, "All the people who have
standards, who were brought up to believe that tradition and decency and
responsible government were important."

She did not answer. She only thought: The man is completely crazy. There
was no use in talking to him. The very words he used had no meaning for
her, or a meaning so distorted that the conversation could only become
empty and without significance.

He grinned at her, showing one of his rare traces of humor, "At least,"
he said, "Helen is happy. I think she should have been a caterer or a
female undertaker or something."

On the day before the funeral, Janie had tea with her great-grandmother
in the boudoir. Mrs. Parkington managed it so that they would be alone
and in the middle of the half hour they spent together, Janie suddenly
said, "Do you think, Granny, that Great-Aunt Alice was ever happy?" And
Mrs. Parkington answered, "No, my dear. Now and then perhaps for a
little while. She once had a Cairn terrier she loved very much. Its name
was Sally." And after a moment she said, "Happiness is an odd thing.
Perhaps people who have never known it are not really unhappy. I do not
know whether Alice ever knew that she was unhappy. Sometimes I think
only that life was intolerably dull for her always, and that is
something which comes from the inside. The outside, other people, have
very little to do with it."

"She wasn't happy in any of her marriages?"

"No. I don't think that she was. You see people are really happy I
think, in proportion to how much they give out. Sometimes I think it
doesn't much matter what it is so long as they give out something. Your
grandfather wasn't always a good man but he gave a great deal. In a way
he gave a great deal more than he took from others, and I don't mean
money. Money is easy to give away whether it's a penny for a beggar or a
million to charity. That's nothing. It's what you give of yourself that
matters in time, in amusement, in stimulation. You see your great-aunt
Alice never gave out anything and so she never got anything back. She
just existed. I doubt that she was ever happy or unhappy. She might have
been happy, she might even have been different but for all the money her
father had. It spoiled all her chances. It deformed her whole life."

Janie was silent for a time watching the tip of her cigarette burning
away. Mrs. Parkington regarded her, secretly, wondering what all this
could mean to her. Presently the girl looked up and said, "Granny, I've
been thinking a lot lately and sometimes I've thought just what you've
been telling me. I think my mother's unhappy because she's never had any
fun. Everything was always arranged for her. Everything was always easy
for her. She's never had any excitement. She's never had to fight for
anything. Nothing that ever happened to her was ever an adventure."

Mrs. Parkington said nothing and suddenly Janie began to talk again,
rapidly as if what she was saying had long been shut up inside her.
"Granny, I don't want money. I don't want any money at all except what
Ned and I earn. You can leave it to all the others. They'll need it
because they couldn't get on without it. I'd like to marry Ned and do my
own housework or get a job and go away with him somewhere into a small
town somewhere ... like pioneers. I'd like to get away from everything
I've known." She looked shyly at her great-grandmother, "Maybe I sound
very childish to you."

Mrs. Parkington smiled, "No, I don't think so. Only I wouldn't
underestimate money. In a way it's all in how you use it, what you buy
with it. It's not worth anything in itself, but only what you can
exchange it for. Most people exchange it for rubbish and so it doesn't
bring them either wisdom or satisfaction or self-respect. You cannot buy
these either, nor what comes out of your mouth, nor what is inside you."
The old woman put down her teacup and said, "Did you ever talk about
this to Ned? He might like you to have money. It's for him to decide
too."

"I've never talked to him about it directly, as we're talking, but he
worries because some day I may be rich. He doesn't like it. He'd like it
a lot better if I just worked for my living like anybody."

They got no further with their talk that day for Janie's mother knocked
and came in. She seemed calm and pleased about something, "I succeeded
in arranging it," she said, "Bishop Burchard himself is going to read
the service. I think Aunt Alice would have liked that."

"That's very nice," said Mrs. Parkington, "I'm sure Alice would have
liked it. Thank you very much Helen."

But she wasn't thinking really about whether Bishop Burchard read the
service or not. She was thinking suddenly about the bishop's grandfather
whom Gus had bought with a new heating plant and a gift of fifty
thousand dollars, and his horse-faced wife who had called on her long
ago at the Brevoort. It was in a way a racketeer family, running a
racket inside the church--three generations of bishops. Gus had been
right when he said that the Reverend Burchard would get along. His
grandson shook hands with the same false enthusiasm, with the same show
of teeth which looked false in the fierce intensity of the smile. He
talked in the same mealymouthed way ... In some ways it was fun to live
so long, just to see how things turned out if for no other reason.

                 *        *        *        *        *

On the afternoon of the funeral it rained, but the rain did not prevent
a crowd from filling St. Bart's and standing on the sidewalk outside to
watch the fashionable people arrive. The family entered the church by
the vestry room but as Mrs. Parkington's car passed the main door she
lifted her veil a little to look at the people who stood outside the
entrance. There were no young people among them, they were mostly women,
elderly or middle-aged, who could still remember that the woman for whom
the service was being said had once been the Duchess de Brants and the
daughter of the great Major Parkington. Some of them no doubt had read
the accounts of the wedding long ago at the house in Newport.

She was glad of the mourning veil. You could look through it without
people being able to see your face. They couldn't see that there were no
tears in your eyes; there was no necessity for feigning an air of
tragedy and grief. It permitted her, too, to study the faces near her
without their being aware of it.

As she walked down the aisle from the vestry door near the center of the
church, she saw that it was all exactly as she knew it would be. The
church was filled, mostly by people who had come out of curiosity. There
were all sorts of faces--old Mrs. Sackville and her old maid daughter.
(Their money had vanished long ago. She had not heard of them for years.
Annie Sackville had once been very pretty and smart.) And the Manson
twins, both widows, who must be nearly seventy, and Jim Donaldson, a
whiskey-faced old pauper whom Gus helped long ago when he had gotten
into difficulties in the Hercules mine business. And Sarah Goodson who,
they said, never left her home among the Fifth Avenue shops except to
attend funerals. In the fifty feet she walked on the arm of Amory, she
saw perhaps a score of faces that she recognized and a dozen others
which were vague and distantly familiar, and each one of them involved
something of the remote past, memories, stories that were by now
legends.

This was one of the last of the fashionable funerals and she regretted
that she happened to be one of the principal performers; she would have
preferred to be in the audience itself where she could study the faces.
She understood suddenly that the remnants of a world which was
vanishing, which was almost gone, had gathered here like sheep to attend
the funeral ceremonies of one of the last of their number. In a few more
years most of them would be dead, their houses closed or pulled down.
The horses and yachts of most of them had gone long ago, along with all
the tinsel and glitter, the snobbery and vulgarity and promiscuity of
their era. The world had long since passed them by; some of them it had
mocked, some of them it had ruined, most of them it had already
forgotten. She had lived long enough to have seem, the world out of
which these relicts appeared come into existence, flourish, wither and
die. Once she had been a part of it but somehow she had escaped and gone
on into a new and other world which was beyond the reach of most of
them, a world which included people like the judge and Louis Fletcher, a
world which was everlasting and indestructible because it was founded
upon the eternal qualities of man's civilization.

In the expensive showy church, the spectacle was a bitter foot-note upon
the shabbiness of mankind. Alice had been rich and a duchess, but that
was not why they had come to her funeral; they had come because the
occasion was an excuse to bring them all together once more. Like sheep,
huddled together, they felt less lonely. She saw suddenly that although
she and Gus had spent a large part of their lives in their world,
neither of them had ever really been a part of it. They had seen it all;
they had lived in it like lodgers in a lodging house and in the end
rejected it. Long before Gus died they had chosen other worlds--Gus his
gay and raffish one filled with dclass but human people and herself a
world in which beauty and things of the mind were the standard. What
both of them chose had nothing to do with money. What they attained
could not be bought; they would have had it if they had been beggars.
They had escaped the ultimate vulgarity, that of buying things. As she
reached the pew, she was suddenly very proud of Gus and of herself. They
had been very lucky.

She had come down the aisle on the arm of Amory because that was the
conventional thing to do and since the whole funeral was the apotheosis
of conventionality, it had to be done however distasteful it might be.
Once she arrived at the pew, she managed to place Mattie on one side and
Janie on the other.

It was a pity, she thought, that Alice couldn't see the magnificence of
all the flowers, or perhaps she did see them and knew about them. She
did have a curious feeling that Alice was not far away, that she was
somewhere just on the other side of a curtain, taking part after a
fashion in her own funeral. And she found herself wondering whether all
very old people, like herself, had no fear of death nor any special
desire to embrace it, but only regarded it with indifference, as a fact
like the rising or setting of the sun. Perhaps others too had the same
curious certainty which she was experiencing in this moment, that the
death of the body was not the end of spiritual entity, but only a break
in a journey, like transferring from one tramcar to another in the old
days. Once when she had been younger, as at the moment of the boys'
deaths, the pain had been not over the physical fact of death but over
the certainty that she would never again, in this life, know the
pleasure of seeing them smile, of hearing their voices calling to her up
a stairway, of hearing Herbert's funny chuckle and Eddie's loud laugh
that was so like that of Gus. This pain she had not felt when Gus died.
Then she had felt lonely and once or twice, when she was very tired, she
would have welcomed death. And now at the funeral of Alice she felt
nothing at all, either at the death of Alice or the prospect of her own
death which could not be far away.

And while they waited for the service to begin, she thought that perhaps
she had no resentment because her own life had been so filled with human
experience that it had, like a good book which one has enjoyed, to come
at length to the last page. It might be that she experienced this
serenity now only because in the past she had known as much suffering as
pleasure; and grotesquely she remembered the curious philosophy the Duke
had uttered the day she had blackmailed him into behaving like a
gentleman--that "the body causes us in our lifetime great pain.
Consequently it owes us the debt of all the pleasure we can wring from
it." That might be true too of human experience--that if one had too
much happiness and satisfaction, or too much suffering and sorrow, the
spirit itself became deformed and in the end there was a lack of
serenity and a sense of incompleteness which made one resist the fact of
death. In her own life she had known extremes both of suffering and of
happiness; looking back upon it now, she was aware that in it there had
been an even, a complete balancing of the scales.

And presently through the veil she was aware of the figure of the bishop
crossing toward the lectern and at the same time she became aware of the
hymn being played by the organist. Until now she had not heard it with
her mind although somehow it had penetrated her consciousness and
perhaps had its effect upon the strange thoughts going through her head.
There was a magnificence in the music, a splendor which filled her with
a sense of elevation. There was no hymn more beautiful in its splendrous
assertion of faith, no hymn as beautiful in the sense of music. Her
heart sang, _Ein feste Burg ist unser Gott_ and she was no longer at the
funeral of her daughter in fashionable St. Bart's but in a tiny baroque
church in Bad Gastein.




                                  XIV


It was a church, she had thought even then, such as churches should be,
all pink and blue and gilt and with gilded cherubs winging into space
from the cornices.

Outside it was a sunny autumn day and at the keyboard sat Eric, the late
afternoon sun shining on his gold-red hair. He had gotten permission
from the priest to use the organ and had been playing Bach fugues,
explaining them to her, for at that time she was only in the midst of
learning all about music. And quite suddenly he had turned from Bach
into _Ein feste Burg_ saying, "This too is great music--the greatest!"
And while she listened something happened inside her heart. She knew
with a curious certainty that the thing which she already knew existed
between them was somehow right ... that it was a beautiful and good
thing and that if she denied it she would live with regret until the end
of her days. It was something which might come to a woman once. It was
not at all like her feeling for Gus. This feeling for Eric was quite
different, so different that in yielding to it, she was doing no wrong
because it was something she could never give Gus because he would
neither understand nor desire it nor even be aware of its existence. And
yet it was something she had to give if she were honest with herself and
were ever to know the richness of existence which she must achieve.

It was not that she said these things to herself; they were said to her
out of the fading sunlight, out of the splendor of the music itself. Out
of the music a voice to which her body and spirit paid eager heed, said,
"This is a beautiful world. It is filled with beauty which was meant by
God for man's enjoyment. The men who built this gay little church knew
it. The man who wrote the splendor into the music you are hearing knew
it. The painters knew it. The artists knew it. All those especially
beloved by God have always known it. To deny this splendor and beauty is
evil." She knew that Eric had brought her to the little church to woo
her with music because all else had failed and he was young and ardent
and in love. But it was very odd that it should be a hymn, which seduced
her.

She saw him now very clearly as he turned from the keyboard to smile at
her, a curious enveloping smile which seemed somehow a part of the music
which still echoed in the little church. She saw the straight nose, the
wide mouth and the dark eyes set in a face that was heavily tanned
through his passion for mountain climbing.

They went back to the hotel past the little rushing stream which divided
the village. And that night they dined together as they had done on the
three preceding nights and afterward they sat drinking brandy on the
terrace above the rushing little river and then in the moonlight she
went back with him to the little hotel where the young men lived who
climbed mountains in summer and skiied in winter.

Until now, sitting here between Mattie and Janie, she had never
understood the madness of what happened on that night and in the days
which followed. Afterward, even when the news came to her of Eric's
death, it seemed to her that in Bad Gastein she had been another woman,
a stranger; that she herself, Mrs. Augustus Parkington, wife and mother,
was utterly incapable of what had happened, that in some way it had
never happened to her at all. It had come at a time when Gus was more
passionately interested in his vast manipulations than he was in herself
or in any woman, when for the only time in his life women existed for
him in the abstract, as a convenience, nothing more or less. She was in
Bad Gastein because he had sent her there for the cure to keep her out
of the way, perhaps because he wanted, through shame, to conceal from
her manipulations that were rather more ruthless and shady than usual.
That was something she would never know for Gus had never told her and
now he was dead. She had arrived in Bad Gastein, ill and depressed,
troubled that perhaps the thing which had always existed between them
was at last waning, at least on Gus's side. She had thought (She could
remember it well even now, sitting here in the front pew at St. Bart's):
Perhaps he no longer finds me attractive. Perhaps, after all, the
understanding between us had its roots only in a passionate physical
attraction. Perhaps that is waning and with it the confidence, the
simple pleasure, the zest we find merely in each other's company.

She was wrong, for that part of their love had survived everything, but
she did not know it until she had said good-by to Eric and the whole
thing was finished between them. What she did not know then and knew now
because she was much wiser, was that men--especially tremendous men like
Gus--could at times, when their plans or ambitions obsessed them, lay
aside love and even women for a time, turning to them again when what
they sought was realized, turning to them again with the same or greater
zest than before. Of such a thing no woman was capable, since for a
woman in love, love invested whatever she did--her plans, her dreams,
her work, her very breathing. It was not a thing apart--"Man's love,"
she thought, beginning the old quotation "is of man's life a thing apart
..." It was extraordinary the truth which underlay all banalities,
perhaps because they contained, each one of them, so much of human
experience.

Yet even now the memory of Eric had the power of bringing a sudden
warmth to her old body. He had been many things that Gus was not,
careless and free and without ambition beyond draining from each day,
each hour, each minute, all there was of enjoyment and sensual delight.
She had learned much from the adventure of Bad Gastein, much, much,
wisdom which Gus could never have taught her, which she could not have
learned alone. She learned that one must not calculate too much but
seize the pleasure and the beauty of the moment, and Eric, somehow, in
that little time had taught her to see _inside_ many things, that you
could not live at all by mind or by will alone, no matter how clever you
were. The cleverest people she knew were very often the most empty, the
ones who drew the least from the rich springs of satisfaction from which
one could, if one knew how, drink one's fill. Perhaps because of what
she had learned from Eric she had afterward suffered no remorse.
Certainly because of Eric she knew what magnificence lay _inside_ the
splendorous chords of "_Ein feste Burg_."

But these were things you could not go about preaching because they
would be dangerous to those without wisdom or appreciation. It was like
giving fine wine to a drunkard to whom alcohol of any sort brought equal
satisfaction. Perhaps that was why churches existed and fierce codes of
morality and restraints and stupid admonitions--to protect those who
were not strong and wise from a wisdom and a knowledge too heady for
them. And she remembered suddenly a coarse, vulgar, lusty story which
Gus had told her "... It is too bloody good for the common people ..."
and at the same time she heard Bishop Burchard's voice reading, "I am
the resurrection and the Life ..." and thought, "I am a wicked old
woman, unrepentant and unregenerate, thinking such things at the funeral
of my own daughter." Yet a voice told her, "All this is more important
than the barrenness of the life of poor Alice who died in the end by her
own desire because there was in her life none of the richness and warmth
which came from people like Gus and Eric--those people whose relation to
life and nature was so simple and sound and direct." Poor Alice for whom
nothing could ever be done ...

But because she disliked the bishop and felt a contempt for his
worldliness, she could not go on listening to his voice and she drifted
back again to Bad Gastein, seeing Eric again as he was the last time she
had ever seen him, when he came to the station at Salzburg to see her
off on the Orient Express, dressed in _Lederhosen_ and a shirt open at
the throat because when her train left he meant to go to Berchtesgaden
to climb the very peak which Hitler had chosen long afterward as his
vulture's nest. He had not kissed her because of the other people in the
station and because of Mattie who went on pretending she suspected
nothing, but he had gone through the farce of shaking hands and saying,
"I'll be in Paris in April. Until then ..."

The train pulled in and after she was in her compartment, she had gone
to the window to look at him again for the last time as he stood there
looking up at her, one lock of hair fallen over his forehead, thinking:
He is bright and beautiful and healthy and I will never again see anyone
like him, for she knew perfectly well that this was something which
could not be carried over the interruption of weeks or months or years.
Once she was out of this pretty bright Austrian world, there would be no
returning to it. What had happened was perfect, but it was finished now.
If she could manage it, she would never see him again. If she did see
him again, perhaps in months, perhaps in years, she would greet him as
an old friend, for the madness would be gone, and in its place only a
sentimental sadness.

When the train pulled out she pretended to be absorbed in the landscape
because she could not look at Mattie, but the pretense was no deception
because nothing could check the tears that came flooding until she was
forced to dry her eyes and blow her nose--tears not so much at the
sadness of parting as of happiness and gratitude that the thing had
happened to her. And Mattie who then still had a faint accent which she
could hear again now, said, "A small bottle of champagne might help,
Mrs. Parkington."

That was the only time Mattie ever betrayed for a moment that she
understood all that had happened, that she too somehow saw _inside_
things. From that moment until this when she sat here in the pew, an old
woman, Mattie had never spoken his name or mentioned Bad Gastein. Only
on the occasions of the Christmas parties when the little band came in
to play Viennese waltzes, Mattie would never look at her. Sometimes she
managed to disappear during the whole time the band was there and when
that happened Mrs. Parkington never called upon her or made any effort
to find her. There were times when Mrs. Parkington thought that Mattie
had lived through those bright days of her adultery vicariously,
half-believing that it was herself whom Eric loved.

She had never seen him again for she heard, quite casually and by
accident, through letter from Annie Pulsifer who suspected nothing, that
he had been killed climbing in the Tyrol near Innsbruck. But by that
time she knew that the thing between herself and Gus was beyond waning
or destruction and the figure of Eric had become unreal like something
in a dream.

And now she felt a nudge in her ribs and heard Mattie saying, "It's
over, Mrs. Parkington." The others had risen and the under-taker's men
were bustling about carting out the great bundles of flowers. She felt a
sudden desire to say to Mattie, "You couldn't imagine where I have been
during the services," but restrained herself. But she thought: How
wonderful it is to have had a satisfying life, full of excitement to
which one can return at moments of boredom.

There was still the dull business of the drive to the cemetery and the
brief service at the grave. She felt that she must say, "Come along,
Alice, and see the rest of it. It's very dull but a lot of people are
enjoying it." Only of course you couldn't say that, because people would
simply think you were crazy.

The organ was playing, but the magnificence of _Ein feste Burg_ no
longer filled the church. It was an insipid evangelical hymn, vulgar and
limited, and she thought again, "And the king said 'but it's too bloody
good for the common people.'"




                                   XV


The death and funeral were a kind of interlude which interrupted the
steady, busy flow of Mrs. Parkington's life and provided in a curious
way a kind of holiday from responsibility. During those three days, the
committee meetings, the appeals for help and funds, the troubles of all
the family, had been put aside and nearly forgotten. For three days
because there was death in her house, old Mrs. Parkington was permitted
to lead a lazy life without cares, without the perpetual annoyance of
the telephone and Miss Beasely's good intentions. She hated the
telephone most of all and never spoke over it save when it was
absolutely necessary and then only to communicate or to obtain
information. The telephone she said, was the invention of the devil. It
permitted people to intrude upon your privacy, to poke into your
affairs, to derange your existence. There was no more reason for people
to expect you to answer a telephone call than to expect you to welcome
their barging into the room while you were in the midst of a bath.

But the morning after the funeral, it all began over again with the
arrival of Miss Beasely. There was a long list of things for Miss
Beasely to do, and worst of all, Amory's trouble returned--more menacing
than ever. Mrs. Parkington realized that really she had done nothing at
all to cope with the situation and now Amory, as if paralyzed, had
simply folded up and taken refuge in drink. While she had her breakfast
she went quickly through the newspapers but found there nothing, not
even a gossip paragraph, which had any bearing on the situation. The
news of the world was not good; it was a sick world, it would go on
being sick for the rest of her life and probably for the rest of the
life even of a child like Janie. A little later she said to Miss
Beasely, "I want to give a dinner. Will you send out notes to Dr.
Fletcher and his wife, to Judge and Mrs. Everett, to Herbert Edmonds--he
is in Washington now at the Mayflower--and to Count Sforza and the Dutch
Minister. There will be some other names later as I think of them."

She thought: I'd like to be rid of the wives but there's nothing I can
do about it. Wives of well-known men so often suffered from a deep sense
of inferiority and took to asserting themselves, as they grew older, in
all sorts of impossible and tiresome ways. I'm getting slack and lazy,
she thought, it's time I pulled myself together and got interested again
in the world. I've had too much of the family lately.

Miss Beasely, waiting with her pencil poised, asked presently, "What
day, Mrs. Parkington?"

She reflected for a moment, "Make it in ten days. People are busy
nowadays." She turned the pages of the date calendar on the table beside
her. "Let's see. That would be Thursday the twenty-third. And please say
that inasmuch as I am in mourning, the whole thing will be a simple
dinner and no formality--simply a gathering of friends to talk." She
gave a long list of other instructions and said at last, "And call Judge
Everett and ask if he could come in about four o'clock. If you want me
I'll be downstairs. I want to clear away some of the flowers. I can
smell them all the way up here."

It was the fragrance of the lilies, heavy and rich, which troubled her.
They were, in her mind, associated with funerals, and now that all the
sad dreary business was finished, the sooner it was forgotten the
better. Alice would not be forgotten; Alice would always be with her, a
kind of perpetual reminder that somehow in spite of everything she had
failed to help her own daughter. She had a curious feeling that Alice
had at last moved into the house and was sharing it with her. At last,
in death, Alice had come home.

A great many of the flowers, in pots, had been sent, not to the funeral
but to Mrs. Parkington herself, and Taylor, proud of the tribute, had
put them everywhere, on tables, on the floor, in the fireplaces, while
she had been occupied with other things. They were handsome expensive
flowers but there were far too many of them. The house looked like a
florist's shop and had a strange, exotic, suffocating smell.

She opened the pantry door and said to Taylor, "Will you call up the
florist and ask him to send his delivery truck. I want to clear away
some of the flowers. There are too many of them. If you'll help me I'll
move out those I want sent to the hospitals. Some of them are too heavy
for me."

Resentfully Taylor called the florist and then came to help her move out
the heavier pots. He hated to see them sent away; it was as if somehow
she was sending away her own prestige.

While they worked, Taylor said, "It was a fine funeral, madame. Very
distinguished."

"Yes. Very distinguished." But by what she did not know.

And then suddenly she remembered that Madeleine and her cowboy had not
been there. Madeleine had sent a wire from Nassau saying that she would
come by plane but she had not arrived. She was sorry, not because of the
family slight or because she missed Madeleine, but because she wanted to
see Al again. As they moved out the last of the heavy-scented lilies, it
seemed to her that she wanted to see Al's tanned, lean face and clear
blue eyes more than anything in the world, more even than Ned and Janie.

                 *        *        *        *        *

Judge Everett came punctually at four but he brought no good news. As
her lawyer he had talked with nearly all of the clients whose securities
Amory had used and he had discovered a surprising thing--that most of
them, even one or two who had been schoolmates of Amory, felt bitterly
toward him. Out of eleven, two were out of town and could not be
reached, four were willing to let the matter drop if Mrs. Parkington
paid their loss but the others were for pushing the prosecution.

"It was very puzzling," the judge said, "I had not expected that
attitude, especially from some of them. I imagine that all of them would
have been even harder but for you. They were all very sorry that you
should have this trouble. What is it Amory has done that has so set them
against him? Most of them are friends or at least more than
acquaintances."

Mrs. Parkington said, "Do you know Amory very well?"

"No ... only casually."

"I think it was his pompousness. Only stupid people are ever pompous ...
no matter how high a station they occupy in life, you can always be sure
that a pompous man is a stupid one who, sooner or later, will be found
out. A few years ago Amory made a lot of money. He was insufferable.
Caesar or Napolon or Alexander the Great or God became less important
to Amory than Amory Stilham. Now when he is in trouble, he has
collapsed. Amory is, I'm afraid, a very tiresome fellow."

"Dick Weston," said the judge, his eyes twinkling with humor, "was very
bitter. He said Amory should be punished for having let down his whole
class at the very time when his class was being attacked."

"That's Harvard Club talk," said Mrs. Parkington.

As she spoke someone knocked at the door and Mrs. Parkington said,
turning, "Come in."

The door opened and Mattie stood there. Mrs. Parkington noticed that her
face was deep red. She was carrying a tabloid newspaper tightly folded
as she came toward her mistress. She gave Mrs. Parkington the newspaper
and said, "Cook just brought this in. I thought you would want to see it
at once."

"Thank you, Mattie."

Mattie went out the door, closing it behind her and Mrs. Parkington
opened the tightly folded paper. She knew exactly what she would find
but she had not divined the bitter wording of the headline. It read:

    GRAND JURY CHARGES RICH CHURCH AND CLUB-MAN WITH GRAND LARCENY

Beneath it was a picture of Amory and Helen entering the ornate doorway
of St. Bart's--a picture which must have been taken on an Easter Sunday,
and a caption which read:

    Amory Stilham, vestryman of St. Bart's Church, charged with
    theft by Grand Jury, accompanied by his wife as they entered the
    church last Easter Sunday.

She handed the paper to Judge Everett.

It had happened and now she was immediately troubled, not by the
disgrace but by the vulgarity of the paper and the fact that she had
been too late to warn Janie before it happened. She must find Janie at
once; she might be anywhere on the street or in a shop or a hotel with
people saying, "Her father has just been indicted!" They might be saying
it even before Janie herself knew it.

She rose and said, "I'm going to leave you now, Judge. I must go to see
Helen and Janie. There isn't anything we can do right now." Then she
said, "Will you help with the trial?"

"I'm not a criminal lawyer and Amory hasn't asked me. You can count on
me to help all I can."

"It would make a great difference in prestige and respectability."

He was thoughtful for a moment. "I'd rather be out of it, Susie, but if
you think my name would help, I'd do it for your sake."

"I think it would help."

"My car is outside. I can drop you at Helen's."

"No, thanks. I'd rather go alone. There are so many things to think
out."

She refused even to take Mattie. This time she was quite firm. There was
quite a quarrel about it.

                 *        *        *        *        *

In the hallway of the Stilham house she was met by a chamber-maid, one
she had never seen before, for Helen was always changing servants. The
girl looked at her in a stupid, frightened fashion as if there were
murder in the house and then scuttled up the stairs.

While she waited, Mrs. Parkington thought: This is a gloomy house. It's
as if there were invisible dust and cobwebs clinging to everything. What
is it that makes it so dreary? She began to study the furniture bit by
bit. There was nothing wrong with any of it, yet the whole was terrible.
She thought, "Poor Janie!" and then the maid appeared again to say that
Mrs. Stilham asked her to come up to her sitting-room.

The door was open and Helen was standing by the window looking toward
the door, her face gray, even in the lamplight. The mouth sagged
bitterly and there seemed to be new sharp lines drawn from the nostrils
to the lips. As Mrs. Parkington came in, she simply said, "It's
unbelievable. Why did Amory do it?"

It was curious that she did not even express a doubt concerning his
guilt.

Mrs. Parkington said, "I came right over. Where is Janie?"

"I don't know. She lunched out today. She didn't tell me where. She
never tells me anything any more since that boy came into her life."

"I want to find her."

Helen did not answer her. She said in anguish, "Why did he do it? How
could he do it to us?" She blew her nose and added, "Do you really
believe he did it, Grandmother?"

Mrs. Parkington sat down, "I'm afraid so, my dear. He told me so
himself."

"You knew it all the time! And you never told me!" The fretful look
turned to one of anger. "You might at least have tried to prepare us."

She saw that Helen was going to be difficult. Firmly she said, "Now try
to pull yourself together, Helen. It's bad enough as it is. I didn't
tell you because we hoped until the last minute that everything could be
arranged."

"I suppose everyone in New York knew about it before me."

"I'm afraid a great many people knew something about it. Certainly the
ones who had the money taken knew. And I don't imagine they held their
tongues altogether. Even Cook heard about it. Judge Everett was working
to straighten it out. He was working until the last minute. He was with
me when Mattie brought in the newspaper."

Helen began to walk up and down. Suddenly she cried out, "It's that
woman. I knew it would happen. It's that God-damned woman!"

"What woman?" Mrs. Parkington asked innocently.

"I don't know her name. She used to meet him in hotels in places like
Buffalo and Kansas City."

"How did you know that?"

"I hired detectives. I knew something was happening. Twice they got the
evidence."

"That was a vulgar thing to do. Why did you do it?"

"I had to know. I couldn't stand it any longer."

"Were you planning to get a divorce?"

"You know I don't believe in divorce."

"Then you were a very foolish woman as well as vulgar. Was it because
you were jealous? Do you love Amory?"

"I wasn't jealous. I just had to know." She flung herself on the chaise
longue where Janie had found her reading at four in the morning. "No, I
don't love Amory. I don't think I ever loved him."

So it was like that, and here was another woman who had not loved at
all, who had never given or forgiven anything. What if she had been
married to Gus? But a man like Gus would have had no patience with her.
He would have thrown her out. Aloud Mrs. Parkington said, "We are
getting very far from the point. I can put your mind at rest. It wasn't
the woman who ruined him. He never gave her anything and he took
everything she had as well. It wasn't even as good as that. It was all
just plain sordid."

Helen stopped crying and looked at her sharply, "How do you know that?"

"Because I've talked to her."

"Do you mean that you received her and tolerated her after you knew?"

"That's a ridiculous word 'tolerate.' I tolerate a lot of people worse
than she is."

Helen was drying her eyes and blowing her nose. She was really a very
sour, unattractive woman now. She asked, quietly, "What was she like?"

"A dull, commonplace, provincial little woman who must have been pretty
once in a waitress kind of way."

"And he preferred her to me!"

"Maybe he didn't prefer her, Helen. I imagine she was restful and
satisfied him. Amory isn't exactly what you'd call an intellectual."
Then after a moment she asked, "Where is Amory?"

"He's with his lawyers."

"Do you know whether there will be any trouble about bail? That's one of
the disagreeable things we have to consider."

"I don't know. I don't know anything about it. I don't want to know. I'm
going to leave the house. Can I come and stay with you?"

Mrs. Parkington reached out and touched her granddaughter's hand. "Come
now, Helen. You must keep your head. You can't do any of those things.
You can't run out on him when he is in trouble."

"I won't see him. How could he have done this to me and the children?"

"I certainly can't have you in my house. I'm too old and cranky for
that. And I think your place is here. If you don't believe in divorce,
you can't consider leaving now."

"This is different."

"If you feel like this, divorce would have been a much more honest and
honorable business."

She was aware that she was wasting time. It was Janie she must help, not
this peevish, unreasonable woman whose life was already over, who would
only undo everything you did to help her, who would only defeat herself
eternally.

She said, "I am going to do three things. I am going to call Amory's
lawyers to see about the bail business and then I'm going to call
Janie's young man and then I'm going out and look for Janie."

Helen, she saw, would be of no use to her. She said, "Where do you keep
the telephone book?"

"It's there. Under the lower part of the table."

Mrs. Parkington picked it up. "Will you find the number, please?"

Sullenly Helen found the number and repeated it to her.

"You had better dial the number," said Mrs. Parkington, "I'm not certain
that I'd do it correctly. I never telephone if I can help it."

But before Helen was able to take the telephone and dial the number, the
bell rang and Mrs. Parkington said, "Shall I answer it?"

"I wouldn't. It might be those awful newspapermen. They've already
called twice."

Mrs. Parkington only said, "I think I can manage them. I've done it
pretty well all my life." The bell rang again, more insistently this
time, and she took up the telephone and said, "Hello. This is Mrs.
Stilham's house."

A familiar voice came back, "Is Miss Jane Stilham there?" and suddenly
she felt a great sense of relief. It was Ned's voice, a deep voice,
eager and anxious but comforting to her because it made her feel that
she was no longer alone. The whole thing wasn't, as always, all on her
shoulders.

She said, "Is this Ned? This is Mrs. Parkington." And the voice came
back, "Oh, I'm glad I got you, Mrs. Parkington. I'm trying to find
Janie."

"She's not here. I'm trying to find her myself. Do you know where she
had lunch?"

"She had lunch with me, downtown here. I left her about two o'clock.
It's very important that I find her."

Mrs. Parkington saw that Helen was watching and listening, with a
certain catlike intensity, so that she could hear Ned's resonant voice
as well as her own. There was a curious expression of bitterness in her
eyes.

Into the telephone Mrs. Parkington said, "It's the most important thing
in the world. I was about to go out and look for her."

"Did you tell her anything?"

"No. I had meant to but I hadn't yet done it. Can you get away now?"

"That's what I'm counting on doing."

"You had better come to my house. She may come straight there." Across
the telephone she saw the bitterness in Helen's eyes deepen and the
drooping mouth twist with contempt. It was no time to save Helen's
feelings. Only Janie mattered. Janie was young and would be hurt and
bewildered and frightened. She said, "I'll leave word here for Janie to
call me the moment she comes in."

"I'll come straight up ... or I'll stop first at my flat. She might just
have gone there."

"I'll be waiting for you."

As she put down the telephone, Helen said, "I don't see why you think
she wouldn't come straight to her mother first."

Mrs. Parkington felt suddenly irritated. She asked, "Do you think she'll
come straight to you first?"

Helen did not answer at once, then said, "That's where she should come.
I've done everything for her. I've always tried to be a good mother."

"That has nothing to do with it," Mrs. Parkington said sharply. There
was much more that she could have said but she held her tongue. If Helen
chose to be truculent she could be more than a match for her.

"It's that boy," said Helen, "She's not been the same since she lost her
head over him. He's brought nothing but bad luck to all of us."

Mrs. Parkington stood up, "I think that's a very silly attitude to take,
Helen. The boy is certainly going to be your son-in-law. Behaving like
that is not going to bring Janie any nearer to you." And even while she
was speaking, she understood that behind the whining of Helen there was
more than irritation. Helen was afraid. The whole of her empty secure
life was falling apart and what she saw beyond frightened her. She was
neither a clever woman nor a resourceful one. Mrs. Parkington for the
first time felt sorry for her. Helen was alone now and she knew it. She
was aware that she could not turn to her husband, her son or her
daughter.

Mrs. Parkington said, "I think you ought to know that of course I'll go
on doing all I can to help Amory. Judge Everett is going to help if
Amory wants it and I'm going to pay back all the money, no matter what
happens."

Helen's eyes were filled with astonishment. "Pay it back _now_? Pay it
back even if they go on prosecuting Amory?"

"That has nothing to do with it? Amory stole the money. He as good as
confessed it to me. I'll pay it back. It can come out of your share of
the inheritance."

"I don't think that's fair."

"You don't expect to ask Madeleine and Janie and Jack to pay it."

"I don't see why not. _I_ didn't take the money."

It was fantastic, Mrs. Parkington thought, but there was no use going on
with the discussion.

But Helen meant to go on with it. She said, "You certainly don't intend
to pay back that woman?"

"I certainly do. Amory took everything she had."

Helen's mouth turned hard, "I certainly don't understand you. If the
whole world was like you there'd be no morality at all."

Mrs. Parkington started to speak and then checked herself. There was no
use in going on with the conversation. What was there in Helen's
background, and the world in which she lived that had perverted all
reason and common sense? She was quite as smug and amoral as Amory
himself and just as bitter. Why was it that people like this who made
their own troubles always whined loudest about them?

She said, "I'm going now, Helen. Call Amory's lawyers for me and say
that I'm ready to do anything at all to help." Then she asked, "Where is
Jack?"

"I don't know. He has had his own flat now for two weeks. I've scarcely
seen him."

"What do you think he'll do?"

"How should I know?" asked Helen, "Nothing perhaps. I don't understand
him, I'm afraid."

There seemed to be nothing more to do or say. Mrs. Parkington turned
toward the door, "Tell Amory he can count on me in every way. I think
you should both go out of town until it is necessary to come back. Only
let me know where you go and what name you'll be using. It's the only
way to avoid newspapermen and more trouble. Tell Amory to hire someone
to look after that end of it. I don't trust him not to make a fool of
himself." At the doorway she turned and said, "I certainly advise
against your leaving him. It might just be that out of this will come a
chance for you and Amory to come together again. It's something to
consider. You're not yet forty-five. You have a long time to live yet,
Helen. It might not be a bad idea to make something of it."

Then, before Helen could gather the full significance of what she had
said, Mrs. Parkington left the room. She had left a good deal unsaid.
She might have added, "In a way you're as much to blame as Amory. If
you'd been a gay and amusing wife, if you'd ever tried to show him a
good time, find for him things he'd enjoy and share with him the things
he already enjoyed, he wouldn't have gone to the 'God-damned' woman and
he might have understood that making money wasn't everything in life. He
might not have gone out stealing because he found life so dull that
making money was his only interest. You could have taught him many
things but you didn't. There are so many things you didn't do. Even your
sister Madeleine with all her husbands and lovers has done a better job
of living than you. She at least doesn't live by denial but by
affirmation."

The startled maid appeared from the back of the house to open the door,
looking more wild-eyed than ever. "I suppose," thought Mrs. Parkington,
"this is the first time she has served in the house of a major
criminal."

                 *        *        *        *        *

In the car outside Hicks, the driver, was deeply absorbed in a
newspaper, so deeply absorbed that he did not even hear the closing of
the house door and jump down to open the door of the car. She knew what
he was reading. No doubt at home Taylor and Cook and the kitchen maid
were all doing the same thing--reading about Amory's disgrace and
discussing it.

Taylor, like Mattie, she thought as the car drove off, had no liking for
Amory. They resented his bluff, patronizing way of greeting them, his
condescension when he talked with them. No one detected insincerity more
quickly than a servant; no one resented it more. Amory's manner was a
professional one, the manner taught at St. Bart's of a gentleman toward
servants. It was bogus through and through, bogus and hearty and false
because it was not founded upon simplicity but the affectation of it.
Each time Mrs. Parkington saw him speaking to Mattie or Taylor, she felt
slightly sick. It had never occurred to Amory that servants might also
be friends. His social outlook was a very simple one, all in neat
layers. No, neither Taylor nor Mattie would feel any sorrow for Amory's
predicament.

In front of her own house, Hicks got down and opened the door and helped
her out and then ran up the steps to ring the bell. She had never asked
Hicks for these attentions. She had never asked anything of Mattie or
Taylor or even Cook. There were many small extra things they did out of
the kindness of their hearts. This touched Mrs. Parkington but not so
much as the knowledge that if any of them was worried or in trouble they
came to her before they went to any other friend. They had done so many
times. They were both wise and kind, for they had never allowed the fact
of all her wealth to create a barrier between her and themselves as
vulgar people often did. They were neither awed nor impressed by it.

Now Hicks said quietly, "I'm very sorry about all this trouble Mr.
Stilham is having. I'm sure it will turn out all right."

"Thank you, Hicks. I hope it will."

"If there's any little thing I can do to help, Mrs. Parkington ... I
mean any special extra thing, I'll be glad to do it."

She smiled at him and said, "Thank you again. I know that." Then as he
was turning away a sudden thought came to her and she said, "Would you
like to go on quite a long trip with me out West a little later?"

"Yes, of course, Mrs. Parkington."

"Your wife wouldn't mind your being away two or three months?"

"No, Mrs. Parkington."

"Well, it's not definite. It's just an idea I had. I'll let you know if
it develops."

Then she entered the house and Taylor said, "I'm very sorry about the
trouble, madame. Cook said to tell you that's the way she felt too."

"Thank you, Taylor. No one has telephoned?"

"No one, I think."

"Mr. Talbot isn't here?"

"No, madame."

"When he comes take him into the sitting-room and let me know."

He went with her to the lift, saw her inside and as he closed the door,
she asked, "Is there champagne on ice?"

"Yes, madame."

"When Mr. Talbot comes I'll have a split in the sitting-room. I'm a
little tired. I don't know what Mr. Talbot will want. You might ask him
when he comes."

Then he closed the door and pressed the button.

Upstairs Mattie was waiting for her, pretending to be occupied with
putting fresh tissue paper in the drawers. Mrs. Parkington knew why she
was hanging about instead of having her rest. She wanted to talk, so
Mrs. Parkington said as she took off her hat and fluffed out her hair
before the glass, "It's an unfortunate business, Mattie. I doubt that we
can do anything to save him."

Mattie went on with her work, "I've never liked Mr. Stilham," she said,
"I always thought he was a pompous humbug. But it's very hard on all the
others. He had no right to bring all this trouble on the rest of you,
especially you and Miss Janie."

"I'm afraid people don't think about that before they get into trouble.
If they did there'd be a lot less of it."

Looking at herself in the glass she decided that she looked sallow and
tired and, skillfully, so that Ned would not notice it, she put rouge on
her cheeks and powdered her nose. In the mirror she saw Mattie was no
longer making a pretense of working but was standing by the bureau
watching her, and suddenly she knew what was troubling Mattie. Mattie
was being devoured by curiosity about the woman who had called on the
morning Alice was taken to the hospital. Since then there had been no
time for Mattie to hint or practice her sometimes devious ways of
finding out things.

So Mrs. Parkington, as she went on with her prinking, said quite
casually, "That woman who came to see me just before we went to the
hospital was a Mrs. Hobson. She lived in New Rochelle. Mr. Stilham had
been living with her off and on for fourteen years." In the glass she
saw in Mattie's reflected face a look of pleasure and release.

"I suppose he squandered a lot of money on her," said Mattie.

"No. On the contrary, he lost all _her_ money."

Mattie made a clucking sound, "It's a very funny story," she said, "Mr.
Stilham had every advantage in his life and look how he turned out."

"I'm afraid it was the advantages which ruined him, Mattie. He was
taught by his family and school to believe that he had special
privileges. Most men grow up and unlearn all that after a time but he
never did. He still believes there's something wonderful and special
about being a Stilham and belonging to all those clubs."

Mattie considered this for a time. Then she said, "I must say the woman
seemed very ordinary and common. I should have thought he would have had
better taste ... that he'd at least have found something flashy. It has
always seemed to me that if you were keeping a woman you ought to get
something for your money. Of course with a wife it's different."

"I'm afraid," said Mrs. Parkington, "that she was just about his speed."
She turned and stood up, "So you peeked that morning."

"Yes," said Mattie, "I peeked. I thought she must have had something to
do with Mr. Stilham's trouble."

Then Taylor knocked and said that Mr. Talbot was downstairs.

                 *        *        *        *        *

The sight of his face filled her with extraordinary pleasure, almost as
if she had been a young woman meeting the man whom she loved very much.
There was something so straightforward and nice about him, his face dark
now with anxiety, the grave blue eyes troubled and full of pain. He held
an envelope in his hand and as she came in, he said, "Janie had been to
the flat but she had gone away again. I found this letter in the box."
He opened the envelope and took out a sheet of paper marked with the
name of the Ritz Hotel.

The note read:

    Darling Ned:

    It's no good. It isn't possible now. I can't go through with it.
    It would spoil everything for you. You certainly cannot marry me
    now. The whole thing would be too sensational. Don't try to find
    me. I promise I'll come back when I get used to the idea and
    talk it over with you. But if I were you I'd just try to forget
    the whole thing. Just pretend you never met me or knew me. Love,

                                                               Janie

Without raising her eyes, Mrs. Parkington said, "It reads like something
out of _True Love Stories_."

When she put down the note she found herself looking into Ned's blue
eyes. They were questioning her, pressing her for some sort of an
answer. She said, "It's a very foolish childish note. Sometimes Janie
can be very childish."

"You don't think she'd do anything foolish?" he asked.

"No. I don't think that. She isn't that kind. She's an emotional girl
but very steady too with a great capacity for pain." She did not say
exactly what she was thinking. What she thought was that Janie was
extraordinarily like herself and that at Janie's age she would possibly
have acted exactly as Janie had acted. Look how easily she had accepted
Gus, so easily that he married her without meaning to. But that was very
lucky.... She said, "I think the important thing is for us to find her
as quickly as possible."

"What shall we do? I've tried to think of everything. Maybe you have
some idea where she might have gone. I hate to think of her alone on a
train somewhere or in a hotel bedroom."

"There's only one thing. The police mustn't know anything about it. We
can't go to them. The papers would love a story like that--'Clubman's
Daughter Flees Father's Disgrace.' I haven't the faintest idea where she
could have gone."

Then Taylor knocked and brought in the champagne and when she asked Ned
what he wanted, he said, "Nothing at all, thanks."

"But that's foolish," said Mrs. Parkington, "You'd better have some
champagne in any case." And without waiting for his answer she told
Taylor to bring more champagne.

When Taylor had gone out she asked Ned, "How do you feel about it
yourself?" But knew at once that this was a silly question.

"I mean to marry Janie," he said, "This doesn't make any difference at
all. She had a lot of crazy ideas about her being rich making a
difference, but I could manage that. That didn't worry me. It only
worried me because it seemed to make her unhappy. She worries about a
lot of silly things."

Mrs. Parkington smiled, "One or the other of you has got to give up
worrying. Two worriers in a family is impossible."

Then Taylor came in with more champagne and went out again and Ned said,
"I'll stay away from the office until we've found her. I'll go every
place she might possibly go to hide."

"Can you stay away from the office?"

"I'll send word that I'm ill and can't come in."

An idea began to take form in Mrs. Parkington's brain. She asked, "Who
is your big boss in Washington?"

"Holman Drury."

She said, "Oh, yes, of course." She did not say that she knew Holman
Drury, lest she make the boy suspicious. She only said, "Of course, it
was stupid of me to have forgotten that. Is he very difficult?"

"He's always been very nice to me. I think he likes me."

"Then if it was necessary, it wouldn't be too difficult to arrange a
leave of absence--I mean if we didn't find Janie right away?"

"No--probably not. I wouldn't want to ask it unless it was necessary."

And while she was speaking she was putting together all the things she
knew about Holman Drury--that he was untidy in appearance but had a
brilliant mind, that he had gone to Princeton and had a rich father,
that all this was why Amory had always reserved for him a special spite
and hatred. Amory said that Holman Drury had betrayed his class, that he
was therefore one of the worst men in Washington. She remembered Holman
Drury's mother and his grandparents who thought he had lost his mind
when he turned out to be a crusader.

Her nimble wits were leaping ahead, planning what was to be done after
Janie was found. Janie, she suspected, would be abysmally stubborn as
she herself had sometimes been stubborn with Gus.

Aloud she said, "I think the best course would be to engage the services
of a detective bureau. They could put three or four men on the job.
Sometimes they are very good at such things."

At this idea he seemed to brighten and the misery to go out of his eyes.

"I doubt if it's any use counting on Janie's parents," she said. "They
seem too much upset by everything. I'll call my lawyer and arrange it.
You had best stay here and dine with me."

"Could you call your lawyer now?" he asked, "I could call him for you."

"He's Judge Everett. His number is in the little book there by the
telephone."

While he turned to the number she said, "You know I think it would be a
good idea if you came here and stayed in the house until we find her.
There is plenty of room and it will be more convenient for both of us."
For some reason, perhaps because it was still difficult for her to feel
that she was an old woman, she felt shy and waited for him to become
occupied with the telephone before she made the suggestion.

He dialed the number and while he was waiting he said, "Thank you. I
think it's an excellent idea. Then we wouldn't have to be calling each
other all the time."

In a moment she was speaking to the judge, apologizing for always
causing him trouble because of her family. He agreed to come to dinner.
He would try to come early and bring the head of the detective bureau
with him. They could go to work at once, the sooner the better. Had they
any idea of where she might have gone? No. That would make it difficult.

                 *        *        *        *        *

It was nice having Ned in the house. And it pleased Mattie. After the
Judge had gone and Ned had gone out in the wild hope that he might find
someone somewhere in the city who had seen Janie, Mrs. Parkington and
Mattie sat up for a long time talking. They always found a great deal to
discuss but tonight both of them, each with a fear of betraying it to
the other, sat up hoping that Ned would come in before they were in bed,
that he might have news, that they might talk with him. It was almost as
if the two old women had gone back forty years to the time when Herbert
and Eddie came home late from parties to look for the light under their
mother's door and come in to talk about the evening. They had left the
door of the boudoir ajar so that they might hear the street door open
when Ned came in.

Mattie was worried about Janie. She kept saying, "It's not like her.
She's such a sensible girl."

Mrs. Parkington smiled, thinking about herself at Janie's age, about how
dove-like and quiet she had appeared to be. She said, "She's that way on
the surface, Mattie, but underneath she's a seething torrent of romance.
And she has too much imagination. How what has happened affects her is
very difficult for us to understand. We're both old and tough and in our
hearts we both know that even if Mr. Amory goes to prison it won't make
very much difference in Janie's life, if she chooses to keep control of
things. She's at the age when people suffer most, when little things
becoming overwhelming tragedies. After all what is happening to her
isn't easy to take."

While they sat there, Mrs. Parkington found herself wishing Aspasie was
with them. Aspasie always gave you a feeling of confidence because she
had a clear sharp realistic way of dealing with everything. She always
considered all the elements, made an analysis, and acted in a
straightforward resolute fashion, just as she had acted at the time the
boys died and when Alice was divorced and it became necessary to
blackmail the Duke.

But Aspasie had been dead for fourteen years, dead in her bed of a
stroke in the great chteau in Fifth Avenue. When she died, something
went out of Mrs. Parkington's life which could not be replaced,
something of wit and intelligence and bravery and style. It was
extraordinary how chic Aspasie had remained, even as a very old woman.
She was chic even lying in her coffin, leaving behind a debt for Susie
Parkington which could never be repaid. There were many things in her
life which Mrs. Parkington could not perhaps have survived or even
endured but for the wisdom of Aspasie. Aspasie always preached that no
woman should ever put all her eggs in one basket, since if one dropped
the basket everything was lost, and so Susie had learned to spread her
affections over many people and her interests over many fields, and by
doing so had come, like Aspasie, to find the world a wonderful and
fascinating place in which there was so much to be enjoyed and
understood that the wise never despaired and were never defeated.

Opposite Mrs. Parkington, Mattie had begun to doze in her armchair and
Mrs. Parkington, feeling there was no longer any reason to pretend that
they were sitting up because they were fascinated by each other's
conversation, said, "I think I'll go to bed, Mattie. There's no use
sitting up any longer. There's no telling when he'll come in. If there
had been any news he would have telephoned."

While Mattie was helping her mistress get ready for bed, they heard the
sound of footsteps on the stairway. He had come back but he had no news.
He had found no one who had seen her.

For the first time Mrs. Parkington was frightened, although she was
careful not to betray her feelings. Bravely she said, "I'm sure she's
simply hiding out in some strange place like Philadelphia or Atlantic
City. Try to get some sleep. I'm sure there will be good news in the
morning."

And as he left she thought, "Janie mustn't lose him. She mustn't lose
him. She mustn't be a little fool. And she mustn't go back again to that
awful house."

She had forgotten until the moment she entered Amory's house how bad it
was, how terrible for the children who had grown up there and had been
forced to live in it. She herself never went there if she could avoid
it, but she saw now that somehow she should have rescued Janie. Until
Helen stood there, whining and bitter and naked suddenly of all
pretense, she had never known how bad it was. It was terrible how a
house could be affected by the people who lived in it, and how in turn
it could affect them. Houses certainly had auras, created by what had
happened within their walls. As she grew older she had become aware of
this. The house in England where Gus had taken up with Norah Ebbsworth
had had an unhappy aura, as if there were a curse upon it. Within its
walls "the terrible summer" had begun. If she had known then what she
knew now, she would never have taken it. From the moment she and Gus
walked through the door she had known, even then, that it was, like
Amory's house, an evil one.

As she said good night to Mattie she added, "Don't bother to call me,
Mattie, unless there's news of Miss Janie. I'll sleep late. I could do
with a little sleep."

"I'm glad you're showing some sense."

Then as she went out Mattie turned and said with a sudden extraordinary
passion, "You won't let him get away from her, will you, Mrs.
Parkington? It would be terrible if she lost a boy who feels as he does.
You can see it in his eyes. You can fix it if you try. You've fixed a
lot of things in your life."

"I'll do all I can, Mattie."

She got into bed and put out the light at once, for she was very tired,
more tired, she thought, than she had ever been in all her life. At last
she fell asleep wishing still that Aspasie were here to help her.

                 *        *        *        *        *

All the next day there was no news. In the morning Helen, apparently
alarmed at last, came in to spend a peevish hour with Mrs. Parkington.
She was still fretful because Janie had not turned to her instead of
running off alone, and then just as she was leaving Jack appeared.

It was the first time his mother had seen him since the awful news and
she asked at once, "Where have you been?"

"In my flat mostly. I couldn't very well go out where I'd see people."

"That's a strange attitude to take and very disloyal. There's no reason
to suppose that your father is guilty. He's the victim of persecution."

Mrs. Parkington said nothing, waiting for them to finish their squabble.
Jack did not answer his mother. Instead he addressed Mrs. Parkington, "I
don't think Mother understands," he said, "I don't really owe my father
anything. He never forgave me because I didn't make his damned clubs. He
always forced me to do things I didn't like, things I didn't want to do.
He wouldn't let me go on with music. He wanted me to be a football
player and be elected to all the clubs. I don't give a damn about that
and I never did. I'm really not any relation to him. I'm like the crazy
Blairs. From now on I'm going to do as I please."

"You see what he's like?" said Helen, her mouth drooping.

"I've really come to say good-by to you, Granny. I'm going to Canada
this afternoon to join the air force."

Mrs. Parkington's heart gave a great leap. He, too, then, was going to
escape before it was too late! There was in the handsome, rather
decadent face, a look of bitterness and dissipation that was horrible in
so young a boy. Perhaps, she thought, he'll manage to lose that. Perhaps
he wasn't as bad, as worthless as he seemed. Perhaps it was only Amory
and Helen and the frame into which they had tried to force him that had
made him wild and vicious--that idiotic frame which had deformed their
own generation with its snobbery, its imitation of English standards,
its utter lack of relation to anything real or American. It was as false
as Amory himself and now it was being smashed with all the wealth which
had made possible its imbecility.

She heard Helen saying, "At least you're going to say good-by to your
father."

"I'm not going near him. I wouldn't care if I never saw him again. You
can tell him that for me. You can tell him I'm sorry that I'm any
relation to him."

"Jack!" said Mrs. Parkington, softly.

"It's true, Granny. He never did anything for me. He was always a
humbug, always even in the days when I was a kid in school and he would
lead the school in prayer and then back in my room he'd knock me around
because I hadn't made the football team. He used to yell at me 'I'm
ashamed to have such a sissy for a son. I was a big man in my school.
Why can't you be?'" He turned suddenly to his mother. "You never knew
that, did you? Well he did all that and a lot more. And look at him now.
I knew he was like that all along." Then he looked away from Helen and
said in a low voice, "And so did you."

He glanced suddenly at Mrs. Parkington, "You see, Granny, I never had a
real home. I used to go on visits to friends whose families were happy
and everyone had a good time. In our house no one even smiled. Sometimes
we'd sit through a whole meal without anyone at the table speaking. And
all the time everybody was pretending to the outside world that we had a
lovely devoted home life when it was about as lousy as it could be."
Helen did not answer him. After a moment Mrs. Parkington said quietly,
"What about Janie?"

He looked up at her and she saw that his eyes were filled with rage and
tears. "You mean about her getting lost? She'll turn up. Janie is
tougher than I was. She has more sense too. She's always known enough to
do what she wanted, without asking him. Only let me know when she turns
up. I'll wire you from Canada as soon as I know where I'll be." He came
over to her and shyly bent down and kissed her cheek, "Good-by, Granny.
Write me the news sometimes."

Then he took his mother's hand and said, "Good-by, Mother, I'll let you
know my address," and went quickly out of the house.

When he had gone, Helen began to cry in a curious, childish, helpless
fashion and suddenly she seemed very like Alice, although Alice, even in
her most unhappy moments was never shrewish.

For a time Mrs. Parkington sat watching her, saying nothing, thinking,
"Perhaps if she cries, it will calm her." But the crying only seemed to
grow worse until Mrs. Parkington said, "What are you and Amory planning
to do?"

"We can't do anything until we find Janie. Then we'll go away to the
Bensons' camp in the Adirondacks. You see Amory can't leave the state."

"No. Of course not."

"You don't think Janie has done anything foolish, do you?"

"No. That kind of thing isn't in Janie." But she wasn't so certain now
after the outburst of Jack. Suddenly he had lifted a curtain and let in
the light and what she saw there was terrifying.

She said, "I think you'd better go home now, Helen. Is Amory at home?"

"Home!" said Helen bitterly, "Home? That dead house with Amory sitting
in his room drinking himself insensible!"

"He'll get over that."

"It doesn't much matter." Helen spoke with a dull indifference and Mrs.
Parkington thought: It isn't possible that she is as dead as that. And
then she saw what really lay behind the remark--that Helen, without
being honest enough to admit it, would not be displeased if Amory drank
himself to death before the ultimate disgrace of a public trial. There
were people who believed that one had one's hell on earth, and it seemed
now to Mrs. Parkington that this was what she was witnessing in the
lives of her granddaughter and her husband. She thought: Nothing that
ever happened to me--not even the death of the boys--was as bad as this.
Death was sharp and clean and made no compromises and in the end one
learned to accept it, but this other thing was hideous because it went
on and on devouring happiness and health and decency and self-respect.

She heard herself saying, "I was wrong the other day when I said I
didn't want you in this house, Helen. I was worried and overwrought and
I apologize now. If ever you should want to come here I hope you will
come and think of this house as your own, just as you did when you were
a child. Whatever is mine is yours." She could not help herself. It had
to be done just as one had to help a stray dog wounded and suffering in
the gutter.

Helen stared at her for a moment and then her eyes filled with tears
again, "Thank you, Grandmother. I shan't come now. I'm going to stick
with Amory until this is all finished one way or another. If ... if ...
the worst should happen I would like to come here. I should like to be
under your wing for a little time anyway. It's very good of you." She
stood up and said, "I think I'll go home now."

"I'll call you the minute there's any news of Janie."

"And thanks for taking all the trouble about her. What she did is very
selfish and it's really my responsibility but I appreciate all you've
done."

"I haven't done anything really. It's all been done by Ned." They were
moving toward the door now and Mrs. Parkington went right on talking. It
seemed the best way to say what she had to say, very casually, "I think,
too, Helen, that you should know the boy better. Janie is very lucky ...
as lucky as a girl could be. You must remember that the world is very
different from what it was when you were her age, and Janie is going to
live her life in a world which is still more different. The old things
are breaking up. What has happened to Amory is a part of it. The
advantages Amory had--what people called 'advantages'--have become
disadvantages in this new world."

"Perhaps," said Helen dully, as if she wished to dismiss the whole
thing, because she was desperately weary of it. There was little use in
talking to her in this vein. It was as if one spoke Greek. It occurred
to Mrs. Parkington that nothing on earth was so provincial as the New
Yorker of Helen's and Amory's sort.

                 *        *        *        *        *

Evening came and there was still no news or even the faintest clue as to
what might have happened to Janie or where she might have gone. It was a
busy day, for which Mrs. Parkington was thankful. She saw Judge Everett
again and told him about Mrs. Hobson and how the money Amory had lost
for her must be paid back, and she had to go through the tiresome
business of arranging for the restoration of the stolen funds to all the
other clients and friends. And there were many things to do with Miss
Beasely. For a time she considered calling off the dinner she had
planned, but in the end she rejected the idea. Despite the scandal she
must go on living exactly as she had always done; she must, above all,
preserve the prestige she had won and the place she had made for
herself, since these things would provide a shelter for Helen and be a
help to Amory when it came to the point of seeing the thing through to
the bitter end. She saw very clearly the dread duty which lay before
her. When the time came she would have to go and sit in the courtroom
beside Helen day after day until it was over. Whatever Amory had done,
however great a hypocrite he was, however great a scamp, he was a part
of the family and the father of Janie and Jack, in whose veins flowed
her own and Gus's blood. The least she could do was to bring him as much
dignity as possible.

And through the whole of the busy day between appointments and plans and
dictating letters, her mind kept returning to one thing--what was it
that had blighted the lives of nearly everyone in her family? She had
done her best, however poor that was, and yet somehow, she felt, she had
failed. Gus and even she perhaps had spoiled their own children day in
and day out. Parents had done so since the beginning of time, yet
spoiled children sometimes turned out to be satisfactory and brilliant.
It was certainly a pity that Alice had started off her career with the
Duke, but perhaps it was a blessing that she had never had any children,
just as it was unfortunate that Herbert had chosen to marry a Blair with
the eccentric, melancholy taint that ran through all that family. How
Herbert and Eddie would have turned out, she would never know, since
fate had cheated her there during "the terrible summer."

The more she considered all her life and the lives of the family, the
more the finger of evidence pointed always toward money. But for Gus's
great wealth and ambitions, Alice would never had met the Duke and
married him. He would not even have wanted to marry her. But for the
money, Alice would never have had a remittance man for a second husband
and an idle feeble man for a third. But for the money Alice might have
carried through her idea of becoming a nurse. She might have found a
husband who suited her and with him found a peaceful useful existence.
But for all the money, Herbert would never have met and married the
Blair girl or bought the automobile which killed him at the time when
automobiles were fantastic luxuries. But for the money, Eddie would not
have gone wild and come to a tragic bitter death. But for the money
Madeleine would not have been able to lead her wild, empty, vicious life
nor satisfy in a shameless open fashion her insatiable desire for men.
And Helen would never have met Amory with all his "advantages" and
married him because he was the catch of the season. It was always the
money; down whatever alley or bypath her mind wandered during the long
day, always at the end of it was the money. It was there still,
increasing faster than she could give it away or taxes could devour it.
It was like a monster created by Gus which had destroyed all the things
the son of a village grocer had wanted most in life for himself and his
descendants. He had wanted to be a founder, a great figure who left
behind him descendants who would be distinguished and a glory to his
name and memory.

And now look at the damned thing!

There was, she thought too, something wrong with American life during
the long span of her existence, something wrong with American education,
creating a tradition which confused automobiles and water closets with
civilization, which corrupted decent standards and set up monstrous
values. It was like Amory thinking there was something distinguished in
being a stockbroker, like automobile manufacturers who believed they
were messiahs and had brought about the millennium, like men believing
that intelligence and honor, civilization and wisdom could be bought at
so much a pound.

Dimly, as through a mist, she began to see that there was some logical
connection between all these things and the creaky straining collapse of
the world founded upon their falsity that was going on all about her.
She thought: That is something I would like to discuss with minds
clearer and wiser than my own. And she called Miss Beasely and added to
the list for dinner the names of one philosopher and one economist.
There was so much still to be learned and understood, and the time was
so short.

                 *        *        *        *        *

Four times during the day Ned called to say that he had no news nor any
clue and the detectives had been no more successful than himself. His
voice sounded tired and dead and she knew that he, like herself, was
beginning to have dreadful doubts--that perhaps Janie _had_ done
something foolish, that perhaps in the end they would find not Janie but
only a body floating in the river. But neither of them even hinted at
such doubts in the conversations over the telephone. There was an
extraordinary understanding between them. Mrs. Parkington sometimes felt
when they talked, that they would have understood each other just as
well without words. He had a kind of instinctive wisdom and an intuition
with which only a few people, she knew, were blessed.

At seven he called to say that the detectives had found a man at the
Pennsylvania Station who thought that he remembered selling a ticket to
Philadelphia to a girl who fitted the description of Janie. He noticed
her, he said, because she seemed to have been crying.

"I'm sure we'll find her very shortly," said Mrs. Parkington, over the
telephone. "I have a feeling in my bones."

When she put down the receiver she called Taylor and said that she would
have dinner in bed.

While she ate Mattie hovered about the two rooms performing all sorts of
needless tasks and fussing over the tray. It was, Mrs. Parkington knew,
her way of saying that she too was troubled and that she understood all
the anxiety of her mistress.

She said again, "When Miss Janie is found you must go away on a trip.
What you need is to get out of town and away from the whole family."

Mrs. Parkington laughed, "It always seems to be one more thing. After
Mr. Amory it was Janie and after Janie it will no doubt be something
else."

"You've got to be strong. You've got to walk out on all of them."

"That isn't always easy to do, Mattie."

"You're too soft--that's what you are."

So Mattie was going to begin all over again.

She tried not to listen to Mattie's grumbling. She was thinking, "I only
hope Janie is as much like me as I think she is. If she's really like me
she'll be all right. She'll come back." It was odd that never once in
her life, never even at the moments of bitter unhappiness, had she ever
thought of suicide. The idea just wasn't there ... very likely because
she had a very sound liver and a well-balanced set of glands.

Then she heard the distant ringing of the doorbell. The sound came to
her from the outside through the windows on the garden, as it always did
when Cook left the pantry door open on a warm evening. The bell rang
again and again urgently, before Taylor reached the door to open it.

Sitting up in bed Mrs. Parkington thought: It's something to do with
Janie. Oh, please God, let it be nothing bad. Please God! And for the
first time in her life she thought: This is the one more thing I cannot
endure. If this was bad news, she would simply take to her bed and die
because she had no more force to go on.

Through the doorway into the boudoir, she saw that Mattie's curiosity
had overcome her. She was standing in the hallway peering down the
stairs. From Mattie's stolid faithful body she could tell, perhaps, what
it was. The seconds passed, unbearable seconds, each one heavy and slow
and unendurable. And then she saw Mattie turn toward her and come
hurrying across the boudoir, her broad face smiling. She could not even
wait until she entered the room but called out, "It's Miss Janie! It's
Miss Janie herself, Mrs. P.!"

                 *        *        *        *        *

She looked pale and tired and a little sheepish as she came through the
doorway with Mattie following her. She came directly to the bed and
without saying a word kissed her grandmother and said, "I'm very ashamed
of myself, Granny."

"Sit down ... here on the bed beside me. It doesn't matter now."

"Where's Ned?"

"Where do you suppose? Out looking for you. You won't be able to reach
him anywhere. He's living here in the house. He'll be in some time
tonight. Here, give me your hand."

Mrs. Parkington was trembling now, simply from excitement as if, instead
of being a very wise old woman, she was herself a young girl alarmed and
a little bewildered at the prospect of all the living which lay ahead of
her. And Mattie was standing there trembling too and crying like an old
fool. Now Mattie said, "Maybe you'd like something to eat, Miss Janie. A
sandwich and some tea. I could make it in a minute."

Janie smiled at Mattie. "I'd love a sandwich and some tea. I didn't have
any dinner. You see I ran out of money."

"You poor little darling," said Mattie.

"Come! Come! Mattie," said Mrs. Parkington, "get yourself in hand."

"I'll go right now and fetch it. Cook will be glad to hear you're back.
Taylor was glad too, wasn't he, Miss Janie?"

Janie laughed, "He looked as if he thought he was seeing things."

"Then run along, Mattie," said Mrs. Parkington, "so you can hurry back
and not miss anything."

So Mattie hurried out and Mrs. Parkington said, "Here, kiss me again."
And she put her thin arms about the girl and hugged her. "I knew you
wouldn't do anything silly. I knew you were _my_ Janie." She said, "And
now I think you'd better call your mother."

"Oh, Granny. I don't want to go back to that house. I can't. Will you
let me stay here?" There was real fear in her voice and now, after the
talk with Helen, Mrs. Parkington understood the fear. The poor child had
gone on and on all this time never once betraying what really took place
in that gloomy house.

Janie picked up the telephone and with her free hand she held tightly
the thin blue-veined hand of her great-grandmother.

When her mother answered on the other end of the wire, she said, "It's
Janie. I'm all right. I'm at Granny's."

Then Helen said something and Janie answered, "No. Don't come over
tonight. Granny's in bed and I'm going to have a bath and go to bed too.
I'll be home in the morning."

Again Helen said something and Janie answered, "But I'm all right.
There's nothing to worry about. I'll come over early in the morning."
Then Helen interrupted and Janie said, "Don't be difficult, Mother.
Everything is absolutely all right. Please don't begin all over again."

Mrs. Parkington knew what Helen was saying. Her voice would be full of
reproach and injured vanity. There was only one thing that mattered now
and that was for Ned and Janie to come together again. Nothing must
prevent that. Silently she shook her head at Janie and her lips formed
the words, "Don't give in."

At last Janie was able to speak. She asked, "How is Father?" And after a
moment Janie said, "Then I'll see you in the morning. Good night and
don't worry."

As the girl turned from the telephone she seemed limp and exhausted as
if somehow, even by way of a telephone wire, her mother had managed to
drain all her vitality.

"You're not going on with this foolishness about not marrying Ned," said
Mrs. Parkington.

"I don't know. He's so queer. He'd want to marry me even if it ruined
everything for him. That's why I came straight here to you. I wanted to
talk it over with you. I don't want to give him up. I can't Granny ... I
can't ... I don't know what to do."

"You were a foolish girl to run away. It never solves anything and it
was very hard on Ned."

Janie didn't answer her. She only sat there like a naughty child being
scolded, looking down at her hands. And suddenly Mrs. Parkington
understood that Janie really _was_ a child, that the strangeness of her
life had kept her a child. Now her great-grandmother thought: At her age
I was already a woman. I knew hardship and worry and responsibility. I
knew all the things that went on the length of Main Street in Leaping
Rock, in the gambling dens and brothels. I knew people as people--good,
bad, tough, rotten, decent and indecent. I could look at a man or woman
and know pretty well what they were up to. But Janie--Janie didn't
really know anything much. Everything in her life had conspired to shut
her away from reality. Whatever had happened to her was enveloped in
falseness.

"Tell me," said Mrs. Parkington, "What happened? How did you come to run
away?"

She knew that the answer would cause pain to Janie, but that would be
good for her, like cauterizing a wound. She would have to be cured of
the impulse to run away from things.

The girl swallowed and looked away from her great-grandmother. Then she
said, "I had lunch with Ned and afterward I went to the British War
Relief and about four o'clock I left to go home and write some letters
and I was walking along Fifty-fourth Street when I heard a newsboy
yelling something about 'a prominent clubman indicted' but I didn't pay
much attention to it. I hardly heard it. And then at Madison Avenue I
stopped, waiting for the light and I happened to look at a news-stand
and there I saw on the front page of the _Globe_ a big picture of mother
and father." She stopped suddenly and began to cry and Mrs. Parkington
took her hand and said, "I know it's hard, my dear. But go on and tell
me. It will clear up things in your head."

With a great effort Janie began again, "I knew the picture because it
was one that appeared in the _Times_ on Easter but I couldn't believe
it. I looked at it again and then saw it was certainly mother and father
on the steps of St. Bart's." She stopped again and Mrs. Parkington
patted her hand gently, "I thought I was going to faint and then I
thought 'I can't do that. It would only make it worse.' So I went into
the drugstore and ordered a soda. I don't know whether I drank it or
not. I just sat there. I couldn't even think. All that went through my
head was, 'I must go away and hide. I must go away and hide somewhere
... anywhere!' I don't know how long I stayed there but after a time I
knew what I meant to do. I went to the Ritz and wrote a note and took it
to Ned's flat and put it in the mailbox and then I went to the
Pennsylvania Station and I thought, 'I'll go to Atlantic City! They'll
never think of looking for me there.' And everywhere I looked was that
picture or some newsboy yelling about 'prominent clubman' and I was
afraid of meeting someone I knew who would be sorry for me and want to
talk. I didn't meet anyone. I don't think anyone saw me. On the train I
went into the day coach because I knew I wouldn't see anybody there I
knew and because I didn't have much money. And when I got to Atlantic
City I went to a hotel. I didn't eat anything. I couldn't have eaten. I
just went to my room and locked the door and tried to think things out.
And the more I tried to think, the worse it got. It wasn't only the
thing about Father itself, but there was Ned too. He couldn't marry a
daughter of Amory Stilham. The newspapers would make a terrible story of
it. The whole thing would be notorious and awful, with newspapermen and
cameras and everything. I wanted to die but that wasn't possible either.
And I didn't want to give up Ned. Oh, Granny, it was terrible! And this
afternoon I came to the conclusion that I didn't have enough sense to
decide anything for myself and that I ought to come and talk to you, so
here I am."

As she finished the story, the figure of Mattie carrying a tray appeared
in the doorway. There was much more on it than a sandwich and a cup of
tea. There was a cup of broth and buttered toast and an omelet under a
china cover, and cold chicken and lettuce and mayonnaise and fruit and a
large piece of cake.

Mattie brought it over and put it on the table beside the bed and as she
put it down, she said, "There now, Miss Janie. You mustn't cry like
that. It's all going to turn out all right. I've brought you something
to eat. Cook said you ought to have something hot so she got up and
fixed this for you. You must eat it or you'll hurt Cook's feelings."

Janie said, "Thank you, Mattie. I think I can eat it. I haven't had
anything but a chocolate bar since yesterday."

"That's a good girl," said Mattie. "You'll get your young man and
everything will turn out all right."

Mrs. Parkington, watching Mattie, tried not to smile. She said, as
Mattie prepared to leave, "You needn't go, Mattie. We're trying to
arrange things. You might be able to help." And Mattie seated herself
happily to watch Janie eat and hear what was going to happen. She said,
"Cook says if that's not enough, she'll make up another omelet."

"It's plenty, thanks," said Janie.

She was already eating, hungrily. Mrs. Parkington thought: "That's fine.
When she has some food in her she'll make more sense." Once she stopped
eating to say, "Do you think Ned will be in soon?"

"I don't know, my dear. He might not come in till after midnight." Then
Mrs. Parkington thought: I've got a big job to do. I've not only got to
make her marry Ned but right away--tomorrow. And I've got to fix it so
that no one knows and they've both got to get out of town quickly.

To Janie she said, "You are going to marry Ned and there's to be no
nonsense about it."

"I don't know how he feels."

"I do. I know very well. There's nothing to worry about concerning his
future. You'll have plenty of money."

Janie looked up at her, "Don't talk about the money, Granny. I hate it.
In that dreary hotel I thought about a lot of things. And I thought
about money too and I hated all the money we've always had. It was money
that got Father into trouble. Anyway money isn't any good so far as Ned
is concerned. That isn't what he wants."

"I know that isn't what he wants. I'm merely being practical, my dear.
You can't starve to death and sleep in the gutter. Money has never meant
anything to you because it was always there, and now you want to get rid
of it ... but unfortunately you have to have it now and then."

There was tartness in her voice, partly born of irritation roused by
Janie's highfalutin speech and partly born of the knowledge that she had
to destroy this whole fantastic point of view. She remembered herself at
Janie's age; she knew then what money was and what it was worth. She
knew about mortgages and interest and debts and the possibility of being
turned into the street out of the Grand Hotel in Leaping Rock, and she
knew how much work it took to produce that money, work which broke the
back and calloused the hands and dimmed the eyes. She remembered her own
dreams of great houses and restaurants and jewels and all the things
that could be bought with money.

"If you had to work for money, you would know what it is worth." She
added, "You mustn't be a little fool."

"I wish I could work for money," said Janie, "I've always wanted it more
than anything. But it seems sort of silly to work for it when you've
already got more than you know what to do with."

"Yes," said Mrs. Parkington, feeling that she had been answered, "There
is a great deal of truth in that. Indeed the whole thing is fairly
obvious, but that doesn't solve anything. It's like a lot of other
things in the world ... people sit around telling you that obvious
disaster is obvious, but frequently they don't do much about it."

                 *        *        *        *        *

It was Mattie's slightly deaf ears which heard the sound of the bell in
the yard below the window. Perhaps the others failed to notice it
because they were both lost and enchanted by the new intimacy which had
arisen between them. For a long time, since Janie had ceased to be a
little girl, she and her great-grandmother had been feeling their way
toward the Janie who was no longer a child or a _backfisch_ but a grown,
sensible woman. The relations between very old and very young people are
simple enough; the one should have acquired simplicity and directness,
the other has not yet had his simplicity corrupted. Adolescents only
understand each other and are misunderstood by all the world because to
children they seem incomprehensible and to older people merely comic or
silly. Their sufferings, more tragic, more hopeless than are any
sufferings which ever come to them again seem, like childbirth, to be
dimmed in a kind of haze in the memories of older people. Afterward, as
with women who have passed through childbirth, people like to talk of
their adolescence, perhaps because in both adventures there is an
ultimate clarity, an ultimate reality of suffering which they never
again attain.

And so Mrs. Parkington, watching Janie change from a child to an awkward
bumptious young girl, too plump, with braces on her teeth (which came
from the Blair side) had tried to understand all the morbid, ingrowing
suffering of a creature who was miserable without understanding why she
was miserable or being able to do anything about it. But this, with Mrs.
Parkington's wisdom and hardness, was not easy to do. She had a feeling
that somehow she had failed as long ago she had failed with Alice.
Adolescence, she knew, was in some ways the loneliest, saddest time in
one's existence, especially if one was a woman. Unless one was simply
marked for futility or sluttishness. Amory had probably had a very
happy, triumphant adolescence, so successful indeed that for the rest of
his life he had clung to it, seeking always to return to that period in
which he was a leader because he had great physical strength and could
bully others. And Madeleine, earmarked for sluttishness since the age of
ten, had found adolescence uncomplicated because her purpose in life was
always clear and simple. It was men she wanted, men who were to be her
whole existence. And so she had never been complicated or unhappy or
given much trouble save for using lipstick at the age of twelve and
leading boys out onto the fire escape at assemblies. It seemed to Mrs.
Parkington that a carefree adolescence marked you later in life for
stupidity or sluttishness. And she had never been very interested in
Amory's kind of achievements nor Madeleine's direct assaults upon men.

But Janie had troubled her and so, when Janie stood in the doorway and
said, "I'm very sorry, Granny. I've been very stupid," the old woman was
happy because she saw suddenly that Janie was emerging from the fog of
uncertainty and misery which had held her captive for a long time. Janie
was becoming a woman. The running away was perhaps her last childish
act. And now when Mattie said, "There's the bell. Perhaps it's Mr. Ned."
Mrs. Parkington thought, "It's all right now. I can leave her to make
the decision without being bullied."

Janie sprang up, her whole face alive with excitement and said, "Do you
think it could be?"

"You'd better go and see, Mattie," said Mrs. Parkington. And Mattie,
pleased at the chance to break the news of Janie's return, hustled out
of the room across the boudoir into the hall.

To Janie, Mrs. Parkington said (Just in case she might need a _little_
bullying) "Now, don't be silly, my dear. Ned matters more than anything
in your life ... not because you love him so much but because you're
lucky to have found the right boy. Don't think too much about what you
want or how noble you'd be to give him up. Do what _he_ wants. Now go on
and see him ... I'm sure it's Ned. Nobody else would be coming at this
hour. I'm going to sleep now. I'll see you both in the morning. We'll
have some planning to do."

Lying back in the pillows, she watched the girl hurry out of the other
room into the hall and heard her cry out, "Ned! Ned!" from the top of
the stairs, and in spite of everything she felt a sudden small pang of
envy and she remembered again the first night at the Brevoort with the
red curtains and the gold _baldaquins_, the white roses and the
champagne on the marble-topped table and the snow falling outside. She
had been lucky. In spite of all the bad things, she had been lucky. If
Janie could only be as lucky ... perhaps she and Ned could start afresh
... Perhaps they could take the curse off the family.

Then Mattie reappeared, her big round face shining. She said, "It's
going to be all right, Mrs. P. I think Miss Janie's found her head
again."

"It isn't her head she's found, Mattie. It's her heart and that's much
more important." She pulled herself up very straight in bed and said,
"Close both doors, Mattie. I've got a job to do. I've got to call Mr.
Ned's boss in Washington and neither of them must know anything about
it."

When Mattie had closed the doors she dialed very efficiently the
long-distance operator and said, "I want to speak to Mr. Holman Drury in
Washington. He lives at the Mayflower Hotel."

What she was about to do was one of the most difficult things she had
ever attempted in all her life. It was not only that she risked refusal
and humiliation; she might even have to humble herself, a thing which
did not come easily to Mrs. Parkington even at eighty-four. She, the
widow of Augustus Parkington, immensely rich, entrenched in wealth, the
relict of another age, the product of a world which had been ruthless
and unscrupulous, was about to ring up a man who was the avowed enemy of
everything she represented, who had set himself to destroy it, and ask
him a favor in behalf of the daughter of a man whom he had run to earth.
While she waited, she tried to remember exactly how Holman Drury looked
and how he had behaved on the two occasions when she had encountered him
casually at great dinners in Washington. For this was important; if you
knew something of a person, how he looked and how his mind worked, it
was a great help in getting what you wanted from him.

She did remember his face fairly clearly--a dark face with a high,
domelike forehead, a thin tight mouth, a receding chin and burning,
fanatic eyes. It was not an impressive face, not the face of a powerful
man whose ideas were big, whose power of accomplishment was without
limit. It was an unhappy face, at times almost feminine and peevish, the
face of a nagger who felt the mantle of God had descended upon him.
There were many faces like that in Washington nowadays; they were there
because of the things Gus and men like him had done long ago. The
pendulum had swung to the other extreme from the days when Gus had only
to go to Washington with a fat checkbook to get done what he wanted.
Washington was nowadays overrun with little messiahs, each with a pocket
formula for the salvation of the world. The pendulum had swung now to
the other extreme, and somehow good, honest, sane citizens were always
caught in between.

She dreaded having to speak to this particular, pocket-sized messiah for
other reasons. If he had been a scoundrel she could, she knew, manage
him, or if he had been a poor man of simple origin who had raised
himself to a position of importance. But Holman Drury was neither of
these things. He was a fanatic who had no scruples so long as he got
what he wanted, and he came of exactly the same background as Amory
himself, only long ago, perhaps in boarding school, because he had been
ill-treated or unpopular or nonconforming, he had revolted and out of
the bitterness of the revolt was born an unscrupulous pocket messiah,
set upon the destruction of the world which he hated and which in a way
had created him. Amory had gone one way and Holman Drury the other, but
in a curious fashion they were the same. Holman Drury, the reformer, was
as destructive in his way as Amory Stilham the crook.

Such men, Mrs. Parkington reflected while she waited, could be very
dangerous, and they were difficult to approach and difficult to manage
especially if you were called Mrs. Augustus Parkington. In her heart she
had a contempt for Holman Drury, not because he was the natural enemy of
Gus nor because he was as much a product of a system as Amory, but
because he was feminine and vengeful, and because there was something
never quite reliable or authentic about the radical produced by revolt
against a Tory background. The very process implied frivolity and
resentment and hysteria as if all the time the force behind his revolt
was no more profound or dignified than to get back at the boys who had
persecuted him at school.

Then the bell of the telephone beside the bed rang and when she
answered, the operator said that Mr. Drury was on the wire and would
speak to her. She thought quickly: I must not let my feelings color my
voice. I must show him great deference. It will please him to think he
has brought the widow of Augustus Parkington to her knees.

When she heard his voice she said, "This is Mrs. Augustus Parkington
speaking. Do you remember me?"

The voice of Holman Drury came back, rather deep and pompous, a kind of
false voice like a false face.

"Of course I do. Yes, indeed. How are you?"

She thought quickly: He believes I'm going to ask him a favor in behalf
of Amory and he is treating me as if I were a doddering old fool. And
she answered, with exaggerated briskness, "Very well, thank you. I'm
sorry to trouble you at this hour but something urgent has come up."

"I hope I can be of service to you."

She was old enough and wise enough to know that he would be certain to
answer her call because he thought it concerned Amory's case. He would
not want to escape her because he could not say "no"; on the contrary it
would give him pleasure to say "no" because it would give him the
opportunity of delivering a small lecture on the side. She must make
clear her purpose at once.

She said, "You have a boy called Edward Talbot in your department."

"That's right." The voice came back, colored by enthusiasm. "He is one
of our best young men."

"What I have to ask is simple enough. It happens that he was going to
marry my great-granddaughter, Amory Stilham's daughter, and all this
unpleasant business has very nearly wrecked everything."

"I'm very sorry to hear that."

"My great-granddaughter and Ned Talbot are very much in love with each
other and it seems to me that there is one way out. You could help them
a great deal."

"I'd be delighted to help if possible. What do you suggest?"

She was certain now that she had passed the worst point. She had
established the fact that she was asking nothing in behalf of Amory, and
she discovered his liking and enthusiasm for Ned. So she went directly
to the point.

She said, "I think they should be married as quickly as possible, but
that isn't possible in New York. You know what the newspapers are. It
occurred to me that if he were transferred to Kansas City or San
Francisco or some place like that, it could be accomplished without any
fuss. No one would know about it. Do you understand what I mean?"

"Yes, I think I do. You want Ned sent somewhere where no one will know
his wife or know who she is."

"That's it. Exactly. Could it be done?"

She felt her heart beating more rapidly now, for as she talked this
thing had become to her the most important thing in the world. It was as
if she herself were Janie.

The voice of Holman Drury came back, more pompous than ever--the voice,
she thought, of a despot bestowing a favor.

"Of course. Nothing could be simpler. Ned was in line for that in any
case."

"There's one more thing. Could it be done very quickly--by telegram yet
tonight so that he'll receive it in the morning?"

"I'll send a wire at once."

"Could you send it here to my house?"

"Certainly."

She gave him the address and then said, "I can never say how much I
appreciate this. If there is anything I can do ..."

His voice interrupted her. "I'm delighted to do it, Mrs. Parkington, I'm
delighted to do anything for you."

"Of course you'll never let Ned know that I called you."

"You may count on me."

"Good night and thank you again."

"Good night."

It was done then. Quickly she put out the light and lay back among the
pillows, feeling very tired. It had been easier than she hoped.

It seemed to her that somehow all the troubles of the family were being
solved, all its tiresomeness eliminated, partly by the inevitable turn
of fate, partly by her own efforts. Mattie's idea was a good one; once
Ned and Janie were out of the way, a trip would be the thing. It would
give her the strength to go through the agony of Amory's trial and the
misery of having Helen under her wing for a long time.

She was pleased over the way the interview with Holman Drury had turned
out. What she did not know was that she had succeeded because Holman
Drury remembered her, extremely well, as the most witty, charming and
amusing old lady he had ever met, and he had wanted to help her so that
he might have an opportunity of seeing her again. That was one of the
dividends on a life which had been long and human and sometimes wise.

And she did not know that Holman Drury loved old ladies like herself. He
had never married and he worshiped the memory of his own mother.

In the morning Mattie brought her breakfast and wakened her at nine
o'clock. She knew by the look of the bed that Mrs. Parkington had slept
well and was probably in a good humor. So she said, "Have you been
thinking more about the trip, Mrs. P.?"

"Yes. As soon as the date of Amory's trial is settled, we'll know how
much time we have."

"It won't be for three or probably four months," said Mattie. (She was
very knowing this morning and sure of herself, a little as if she'd
swallowed a canary.)

"How do you know that?"

"From Mr. Ned. He says Mr. Amory's lawyers want the trial put well ahead
on the calendar." (And now she was talking like a lawyer.)

"Have you seen Mr. Talbot already this morning?"

"Yes, Mrs. P. They're going to be married."

"When?" asked Mrs. Parkington.

"I don't know. Some day when everything is straightened out."

"That's not soon enough."

"Mr. Ned has some good news."

"What sort of good news?"

"He says he's going to San Francisco at once."

Mrs. Parkington was silent for a moment. Then she said, "That's good.
Will you ask Miss Janie to come here as soon as she's dressed?"

"She's dressed already. I'll tell her to come in."

Then Mattie went away and Mrs. Parkington began thinking how she could
send a wire of thanks to Holman Drury without anyone's finding out about
it, and she thought at first that it might be a good idea to include
with the thanks an invitation to the dinner, but almost at once she saw
that this was impossible since it was Drury who directed the
investigation which trapped Amory. It was very tiresome having a
relation like Amory.

Janie came in presently but she wasn't alone. Ned was with her and Mrs.
Parkington saw at once that something had been settled. She saw it in
their faces, in the way they walked, in the way their voices sounded
when they wished her good morning.

She drew a lacy peignoir a little higher to hide the bones in her neck
and said, "Mattie tells me that you're going to be married."

"Yes," said Ned.

"When?"

"As soon as people have forgotten about the whole thing. The newspapers
won't bother us then."

"That isn't soon enough," said Mrs. Parkington. She looked at Ned.
"Mattie tells me you've been ordered to San Francisco."

"Yes. The telegram arrived about an hour ago. It was sent here. I don't
know why. Nobody knew I was here."

"That _is_ odd," said Mrs. Parkington, "How could they have known?" Then
she said, "Sit down. I have a better plan than yours. I want you to
consider it carefully."

Like small children they sat down on the edge of two gilt chairs.

"It's this. You're going to get into Ned's car and leave town, before
noon if possible. And you're not to tell anyone where you're going or
that you're going away together. And you can get married in Maryland if
you like or when you get to San Francisco or along the way if you can
find a place where you can get married right off. I've heard they do
that in Kentucky. The point is that you must get out of town without
anybody's knowing it and together, and you can turn up in San Francisco
as man and wife and Janie need never say who she was and nobody will
know anything. You'll just be two nice, attractive new people arriving
in San Francisco to do a job. Do you see the point?"

Ned certainly saw it. His face betrayed his delight, and watching him
Mrs. Parkington thought: He must learn to control his face better than
he does. It isn't safe like that--as if someone had set off fireworks
inside him.

Janie looked puzzled. She asked, "What about Mother and Father?"

"I'll take care of them. You're to tell them I've sent you away to stay
with friends--with Mrs. Rodney at Aiken. I'll fix it with Molly Rodney
to forward mail and telegrams. I don't trust your mother not to let out
the news."

"She won't like that."

"It doesn't matter what she likes now," said Mrs. Parkington. She wanted
to add, "She and Amory forfeited long ago the right of consideration
from their children." But she held her tongue. To Ned she said, "You'll
have to straighten out things at your office, so you'd better be on your
way and get it done. And Janie will have to go home and get some
clothes, and now come and kiss me."

Janie kissed her and said, "You're wonderful, Granny."

"I'm nothing at all but I hope I've learned some sense in eighty-four
years."

Then Ned kissed her shyly and said, "Thank you, Mrs. Parkington."

"Just write me when you get to San Francisco and tell me about the
trip."

Then they went out and as they reached the doorway of the other room
Mrs. Parkington called to them, "Tell Mattie to come and talk to me
while I dress."

She felt suddenly old and lonely. But there was no time to be lonely
because when Mattie returned, she said, "Miss Madeleine's husband is
downstairs."

"At this hour?"

"Yes. He said he had dropped in to say good-by."

"Why 'good-by'?"

"He didn't tell me," said Mattie, going off to turn on the bath.

Mrs. Parkington called out, "How does he look?"

"Peaked ... a little peaked," said Mattie above the sound of running
water and Mrs. Parkington thought: I suppose that's the last of this
marriage too.

                 *        *        *        *        *

The cowboy was standing with his back to the door studying the Boucher
nudes that hung over the fireplace and when she said, "Good morning,
Al!" he turned nervously and said, "Good morning, Mrs. Parkington." The
morning light was not good in the small sitting room and she could not
see whether he blushed or not.

He said, "Maybe I came too early. Maybe I should have telephoned."

"No ... no. I'm delighted to see you."

There was something solid and reassuring in the trim wiry figure and the
honest blue eyes set in a face which had not lost its tan beneath the
luxurious sun of Nassau and Miami. She noticed at once that his manner
seemed easier and more assured. That would be, she thought, because he
has seen plenty. He's got the numbers of a great many people who once
awed and frightened him.

Almost at once he politely expressed his sympathy over the death of
Alice and the ugly business of Amory. He did it with dignity and
feeling, quietly and simply, so that his earnestness touched her.

Then he said, "It's all broken up between Madeleine and me. I'm going
back to Nevada."

"I'm sorry to hear that. It didn't last very long."

He looked down at his feet. "No, it didn't. I don't say it was anyone's
fault. It was just the way Madeleine wants to live and the kind of
people she sees. I said I couldn't go on leading that kind of life and
she said '_What_ kind of life?' It wasn't that she was pretending. She
really didn't know what I meant. She really meant what she said when she
asked that. She really doesn't see anything crazy about it. You see,
that's the trouble. I'm sorry. I liked Madeleine. I still like her. When
I saw her out there in Nevada, she was different. She could ride all day
and drink and she was good with the cattle--real good, better than most
of the hands. And she never got tired either. I thought she was a pretty
swell woman and that mebbe together we could build up a ranch that would
be the best in the country. She was going to be a partner and put money
into it and I was going to do all the organizing and buying and selling.
Out there we had a lot in common."

While she listened, aided by experience and a knowledge and
understanding which in his simplicity he could never possess, she began
to see the whole story in its true light. Knowing Madeleine too, she
understood many things which puzzled him. She saw it all suddenly as it
must have been, not as it appeared to be. She divined clearly how
Madeleine had operated. Madeleine had cast her eye upon Al and decided
that he was what she wanted, and then almost at once his simplicity must
have baffled her. She would never understand that Al would feel very
simply about their relationship--that if they found each other agreeable
and sympathetic, then marriage was the solution. And as Al became more
difficult to possess, she worked herself into a passion over him, and
held out all sorts of bait and bribes which very likely she never meant
to pay. In the whole affair, armed by sophistication and trickery, she
had been the wooer just as she had been as a little girl when she took
boys out on the fire escape at assemblies. In most ways poor Al could
never be a match for her, least of all in the beginning; it would only
have been in the end that he might have won out as he was winning now by
his simplicity and integrity. Al wasn't a callow boy; he was a man who
knew what he wanted and what things were worth.

And he had stood up under Madeleine's demands, better than the Argentine
or any of the others. The trouble with Madeleine was that she had a
split personality. On one side she was a good, hearty sort who would
have made an excellent cashier in a Las Vegas gambling establishment. On
that side she was kindly and bawdy and insatiable. But on the other side
she was a fool, a kind of half-baked Messalina with an appalling taste
in friends and in life itself.

But Al was going on with his story. "Here in the East," he was saying,
"She seemed like a different person ... like someone I didn't know. She
didn't seem to have any sense. She just wanted to stay up all night and
lay in bed until six in the evening. I ain't made that way, Mrs.
Parkington. I guess I couldn't take it. I tried to make a good husband.
I gave her everything a husband could give her ... within reason, but it
wasn't enough."

Mrs. Parkington thought, "I wonder if he's trying to tell me discreetly
what I already know." There was about him a simple air of astonishment.

"She wanted me to be a lot of other things than I am. I'm just me. I'm
smart in a lot of ways, Mrs. Parkington, but I couldn't keep up with
Madeleine and her friends." He put his head on one side and grinned,
"You know. I never met women like her friends. I never met women who
tried to take men away from their best friends. One of them--maybe you
know her, a Mrs. Posley--just came right out cold and said"--the tanned
face grew darker as he blushed and hesitated--"I couldn't say in front
of a lady like you what she really said. I said to her, 'But I only met
you last night' and she said, 'What difference does that make? I just
wanted to know what it would be like.' And when I said, 'But you're a
friend of Madeleine's,' she said, 'So what? Do you think she wouldn't
try the same thing on me?'" The blue eyes became grave and shocked. "You
know, Mrs. Parkington. We have some pretty tough women out there in a
place like Las Vegas but we haven't got anything like that."

Mrs. Parkington felt an irresistible desire to chuckle. She only smiled
and said, "I'm sure you haven't."

"So when I said we were going back to the ranch, Madeleine said, 'Oh,
no, we aren't. We're going to stay three or four weeks in New York' and
I said, 'Who says so?' and she said, 'I do!' So I said, 'All right. Then
you're going to stay alone.' And then we had quite a fight and I packed
up and went to another hotel."

He looked down at his hands. The big horny fingers twined and untwined
and that was the only sign he gave of any inward emotion, but Mrs.
Parkington understood the curious gesture. It was the only way he
betrayed what he was feeling, the shame and disillusionment he
experienced, the certainty he had that he had been made a fool of, that
he had been used until Madeleine's curiosity was satisfied. His pride
was hurt as well as his sense of decency.

"It'll be kind of nice to get back there again. I'm sorry about
Madeleine but I guess there was nothing I could do or nothing she could
do either. Sometimes I think it's a sickness with Madeleine. Maybe if
she'd had to work or had a family, it would have turned into something
else ... something good ... all that energy."

And Mrs. Parkington knew that he understood the whole thing, simply and
profoundly, and that he was sad because he had once been fond of
Madeleine and knew now that she was a lost woman and that nothing could
ever save her from an end that it was better not to think about.

"You don't think she might come back, do you?" he asked, "You don't
think anything might change her?"

"No," said Mrs. Parkington, "I'm afraid it's too late for that--she got
started off on the wrong foot long ago."

All the time she had been listening and thinking about the sadness of
these two people who had both wanted something and failed to find it,
who had hoped, even Madeleine herself, for a little time, only to be
disillusioned, she had been thinking too of something else--an idea
which had been there, half-realized, in the dim reach of her mind since
the moment he had crossed the room to say, "Good-evening, ma'am," on the
night of the Christmas dinner. It became clear now as she watched the
honest, tanned face and blue eyes, as she watched the hands twisting
over and over upon themselves. She knew what it was she wanted--to go
back, far, far back, beyond all the triumphs, the tragedies, the
satisfaction and bitterness and brilliance of her life, back to the very
beginning. She had known that for a long time. Almost without being
aware of it, she had been searching for some key to unlock the door of
the past, some means by which she could escape the accumulated thicket
of wisdom and cynicism, of knowledge and experience, which enclosed her.
And now by a curious twist of circumstances, Madeleine, in her
insatiable desire, had delivered her the key. It was Al, sitting there
opposite her, miserable and hurt. Al could do her great good and perhaps
she could help a little to make him forget his hurt pride and
disillusionment. She liked Al very much. She hadn't seen a man like him
for more than half a century; even good friends like Louis Fletcher and
the judge did not have his quality of simplicity which was like the
simplicity of a nice and faithful dog. She hadn't really seen a man like
him from the day she left Leaping Rock until Al crossed the room at the
Christmas dinner. Something had happened to men like that, or perhaps it
was only that her life had led her into worlds where they did not and
could not exist. No, she liked Al very much. He touched a part of her
which had been lonely for a long time.

Quietly she said, "When are you planning to leave?"

"As soon as I can go. I don't know what to do with myself here."

"I've been thinking for a long time that I'd like to see Leaping Rock
again."

He smiled at her as if he understood what was in her heart, "There isn't
much left of it, ma'am. A few deserted, run-down buildings."

"I'd expect that. It wouldn't be a disappointment." Now she herself felt
shy. It required an effort to speak. She said, "I have an idea and if it
doesn't suit your plans, I want you to be perfectly frank and give me an
honest answer. For a long time I've wanted to make a trip somewhere and
I didn't go because I couldn't make up my mind. I've been so many places
and I've seen so much. But now I know where I want to go--to see Leaping
Rock again and to see your ranch."

"It would give me great pleasure, Mrs. Parkington. It might not be as
comfortable as you'd like, though it's pretty good."

"I'm sure that wouldn't trouble me. I like to be luxurious when it's
possible but if it isn't, I'm just as satisfied--especially if it's
something I want to do." She looked away from him and added, "But that
isn't all. It would give me great pleasure if you'd come with me in my
own car. It's a big car, and very comfortable. I like traveling at a
good speed. It wouldn't take us more than a week. I could be ready in
two days if you could bear to wait that long."

There was an eagerness in her voice like the eagerness of a timid child
which must have touched him, for he grinned and said, "Of course, ma'am.
I could wait two more days. I'd like to go with you. I could show you a
lot of things once we got to Denver and beyond. I'd like to show you
that country ... it's great country."

His eyes were shining so that she could not doubt his sincerity. She
thought suddenly, "Perhaps it's true that age has nothing to do with
years--that people separated by years can be the same age in spirit."

Then she said, "Maybe it would be less lonely for you to come here and
stay in the house."

But this plan he rejected and she knew suddenly that it was because the
luxury made him feel awkward and shy and she thought, "What a fool
Madeleine is to lose a man like this!" But then poor Madeleine was lost.
She was long past exercising any sort of sane judgment. Already she
would be searching for some other man.

"But you will come for a meal or two," she said.

"Yes, I'd like that."

"I could be ready on Friday morning. We could certainly get as far as
Pittsburgh on the first day."

"That would suit me, ma'am. I think it's a mighty fine idea." The
weathered face contracted in a frown, and he said, "I'm worried about
Madeleine, Mrs. Parkington. I'd like to do something to help. But I
don't know how. That's what I really came here to talk about."

She was thoughtful for a moment, trying to decide what it was best to
say in reply. She thought, "He is a simple, direct man. There is no use
in being highfalutin with him." So she said, "There is nothing you can
do for her, Al. There's nothing anyone can do for her. All I can do is
to see that her money is taken care of so that she'll always have enough
to save her from poverty and misery. That's about all anyone can do."

He rose from his chair and said, "I'm sorry, ma'am. I felt that way
myself but I thought that maybe I was wrong. It is a frightening thing."

That was it--a frightening thing. He had said it simply and directly. It
was a frightening thing when a soul was deformed, when obsession
obscured judgment and decency, when a human ceased any longer to
understand decency and shame. Yet Madeleine could be at times so
generous and agreeable and plausible.

"We meant to come back at the time your daughter died," said Al, "but
the weather was bad and the plane couldn't take off. It wasn't just an
excuse. It was the only way we could have got here in time for the
funeral. I wanted you to understand that."

"I did understand it, but thank you for saying that."

"And now I'll go. I apologize again for not telephoning first. I just
didn't think of it."

That was it. He had just dropped in, the way people did long ago in
Leaping Rock. Suddenly for no reason at all she remembered the kindness
of the trollops on the morning her parents were killed.

"Would you like to come to dinner tonight?"

"Yes, ma'am."

"We could go to the theater afterward if you like."

"It would be something to do."

That gave her the clue. It would have to be a musical show.

"We'll have to dine then at seven."

"I'll be here."

She went with him to the door and at the door she said, "It was very
good of you to come and tell me about it. If you hadn't come, I might
never have seen you again and that would have been a pity." She did not
add, "It would have been a pity because I think we get on, that we
understood each other from that first moment, and that does not happen
often in life. It is a thing to be glad of, to be cherished."

"I almost didn't come," he said, "I thought maybe you'd be angry and
wouldn't understand what happened exactly. And then I thought 'Yes, I
think she'll understand better than anyone.' And then I wanted to see
you and say good-by. So I came." He picked up his hat, the smart,
expensive gray felt Madeleine had forced upon him and which suited him
so little, which looked so wrong above the leathery face.

"I'll see you tonight then at seven," he said awkwardly and went out the
door. As he opened the door she had an odd feeling that outside in
Sixty-seventh Street there should be a hitching rail with a cayuse tied
to it. That was what God meant him for--not Madeleine.

                 *        *        *        *        *

Miss Beasely had a busy morning, indeed there was far more than her
unclear head had the power to cope with. First of all, the whole dinner
had to be called off. Mrs. Parkington dictated the form of this note
which was to be sent. She regretted that "she would have to put off the
dinner until her return from the West because of circumstances beyond
her control." And Miss Beasely had to call the judge and Louis Fletcher
and find an hour during the next forty-eight when they could meet with
Mrs. Parkington. And there were committees to be called and checks to be
made out in advance for various charity and relief organizations, and
invitations to be refused.

Miss Beasely appeared not only to be flustered by the amount of work and
detail but also by the knowledge that a woman of eighty-four could
change all her plans so quickly and set out upon a transcontinental
journey as if it were no more than driving downtown to the florist's.
She kept boring Mrs. Parkington with such remarks as, "You are
wonderful, Mrs. Parkington," and, "I don't see how you do it," her dull
eyes taking on a glimmer of vicarious excitement. Like Harriette
Livingstone long ago, Miss Beasely was a groveler. In her own
exaggerated humbleness, she worshiped clever people and energetic
people. She was unendurable because there was no envy or spite in her
soul; that at least might have added spice to her character and made her
less tiresome.

As she dictated and gave instructions, Mrs. Parkington thought, "I must
get rid of her when I get back. I can't endure her cowlike glances of
admiration any longer. But I shall have to find something in which she
is interested and safe as Harriette was." The difficulty was that she
could never discover anything which could rouse Miss Beasely out of
apathy into interest.

When she had finished with Miss Beasely she had to talk to Hicks to tell
him about the trip. He was delighted with the idea. He said, "My wife
and Johnny will go and stay with her mother in Trenton. It's a visit
she's been wanting to make."

"Is the big car in order?" she asked.

"It's in good shape," said Hicks, "Ready for anything."

"There won't be much luggage--only three or four suitcases and the
dogs."

A shadow crossed Hicks's face at the mention of the Pekingese. He didn't
really dislike them; he only hated them for their yapping and their
occasional mock-savage attacks on the cuffs of his trousers. Long ago he
had come to accept them as the fly in the ointment, the only thing which
marred his utter devotion to Mrs. Parkington.

Apologetically she said, "I'll have to take them, Hicks. It's impossible
to leave them with anyone. You know how they are?"

"Of course, Mrs. Parkington," he said, without enthusiasm.

Mattie was violently excited by the news. She, like her mistress, like
all her own ancestry, was a born traveler. At the prospect of a voyage,
however difficult, her blood pressure rose, her cheeks grew pink, the
years dropped from her. On a journey you never knew what might happen;
and for a long time, all too long a time, her whole life had been inside
the four walls of the house.

Cook and Taylor were pleased too, not only at the prospect of a holiday
but at the idea that Mrs. Parkington was going to have a change which
they thought she needed badly. It was not that she seemed ill or even
older but that at times she seemed bored and listless. And always they
were haunted by the fear of Mrs. Parkington's death because they knew
that never again would they find places in which they were so happy,
where they felt the house in which they worked was their house, that
they were a part of all that took place within its walls, where what
happened to their employer or what happened to them was of equal
importance. In their hearts they wanted to keep Mrs. Parkington going on
forever, because she was their friend and because if she died something
would be gone from their lives which could never again be replaced. They
knew, too, that with the world what it was, there would be very few Mrs.
Parkingtons in the future. In a way she was the last remnant of a world
which was already almost destroyed--a world which to them was everything
because it represented dignity and security and strength. They knew too
that they had been very lucky to have found, in the long pattern of
their lives, a woman like Mrs. Parkington. It was Taylor himself who
once unbent enough to say in vulgar slang that "Mrs. Parkington knew all
the answers."

Now that Mrs. Parkington was going on a trip, Cook would go to stay with
her sister who was married to a mill foreman in Bethlehem and Taylor
would go to visit a cousin who was a farm manager in North Carolina.

The house would be left in charge of Mary Jenney, who brought up Janie
and Jack, and her husband. It wasn't merely that a trip was being taken
by Mrs. Parkington. It was a change and a holiday for everyone. A whole
small world was involved.

At last all was in order and everything and everyone arranged for save
the matter of the will and as, one by one, she checked off the list of
things to be done with Miss Beasely and things to be done by herself
such as writing to Molly Rodney at Aiken to hold all letters addressed
either to Jane Stilham or Mrs. Edward Talbot, Mrs. Parkington felt
younger and younger. There were a great many small things, having to do
with committees and directors' boards, which others would have to take
over while she was gone, things which had tied her down, day after day,
week after week, like so many tiny cords. And now they were broken by
one simple decision and she was going away to forget them all because
Madeleine had picked up a rancher and married him and brought him into
her own life, making her know at last what it was she wanted.

There were times when her life and all that it encompassed seemed in a
curious fashion like the life of her own country--that its melodrama,
its color, its fantasy, its opportunities, its tragedy, was like a
history in miniature of the huge incredible opulent nation which she had
loved without ever wavering for so long. Now at last something like Al
might come to help and free it, as Al had come to help and free her,
showing her the way back to those simple things upon which all the rest
of her existence had been based, out of which she had drawn the
strength, the wisdom and the wit to survive and perhaps even to triumph
over all the turmoil, the disappointments, the fears and the shattered
hopes.

                 *        *        *        *        *

On Thursday evening the judge and Louis Fletcher came to dinner. It was
a good dinner for Cook had done her best, and the talk was good, of
politics, of neuroses and medicine and the war, for here were three
people who knew what conversation was, three people who had done well
not only by themselves but by their fellow men, who were just and
honest, who had never cheated nor evaded a responsibility. Most of all
they had rarely been guilty of the great American error of deceiving
themselves. And so they belonged to that small world of those who were
permitted to know and understand the inwardness of things and the
brilliance of the spirit.

It was altogether one of those rare evenings which raised the mere
privilege of breathing and thinking and speaking, indeed the whole of
existence, to a level which one day all of mankind might attain. And
Mrs. Parkington, aware of this now and then in a brilliant moment of
satisfaction, understood that the foundation of all the satisfaction lay
in simplicity. Pretentious people were inevitably shut out from such a
world as theirs. Watching the two men whom she had known for so long,
she divined the ultimate secret of their curious splendor--that at heart
they were not much different from Al. Circumstances had provided them
with perhaps a better brain than his, and greater opportunities and
experience had brought them the wisdom which only experience can create,
but all of these things would have been futile and dead save for the
goodness and simplicity which gave them solidity and purpose and
direction.

After dinner in the small sitting-room, she said presently, "It is
growing late and I think we had better get down to the business I wanted
to talk about with you both. I want to make a new will before I go
away."

Both men, aware of what was in her mind, found no words for an adequate
remark and so, wisely, they kept silent, waiting for her to continue.

"I've had a lot of new ideas during the past year and I want to put them
into effect now." She rose and took out of a drawer of the table a pad
of fresh white paper and a pencil, and giving them to the judge, she
said, "I'll tell you what I want and you can have it ready for me when I
get back from the West." She smiled suddenly and said, "And until I've
finished I don't want you to interrupt me to tell me that I'm being
foolish or fantastic. What I am doing, I have considered carefully for a
long time. In fact, in a way, I've been moving toward all this all my
life. It's just become clear to me lately."

Then she turned to Louis Fletcher and laughed, "I suppose you don't know
what part you play in all this."

Fletcher grinned and said, "No, I don't, Susie. I'm not a lawyer."

"I want you to make a statement, drawn up legally, that I am in my right
mind, in full possession of all my faculties, and not the subject of
undue influence. You do believe all that ... don't you?"

"I've never seen anyone more in their right mind or more in possession
of their faculties."

"Very well. Then we can go ahead. Are you ready, Judge?"

"Yes, Susie."

She picked up the small bit of paper she had taken from the drawer along
with the pad and pencil and glanced at it.

"First of all, there is the family--that is to say, Madeleine and Helen
and Helen's children. I want to leave trust funds which will yield
thirty thousand a year each to Madeleine and Helen." She glanced at
Judge Everett and saw his expression of surprise. "I think that's about
right. They can do on thirty thousand. If I left them everything
outright they'd be sure to lose it sooner or later and neither of them
would be able to make fifteen dollars a week if they had to go to work.
Amory is finished. He'll never make any more money even if people came
to trust him again. They have to be taken care of. In a way, all three
are useless members of society. I don't say it's their fault. It's
partly my fault and the fault of Gus and the fault of the age they were
brought up in. It conspired to make them useless. It was a trashy era.
With thirty thousand a year they'll be able to live very well and at the
same time they won't be able to make fools of themselves. You understand
that Helen and Amory are getting really a great deal more than that as
I'm paying out about seven hundred thousand to take care of the money
Amory misused ... Have you all that?"

"Yes," said the judge.

"Do you approve?"

"They won't like it considering the huge amount of money they count on."

"I don't mind that. If I thought they had even the faintest idea of how
to use so much money, I'd feel differently. They have to be taken care
of but they shouldn't be entrusted with money. They don't understand
what money is for nor how to use it."

She turned over the small bit of paper. "And I want to leave ten
thousand a year to Jack. He has a little Blair money. Maybe he won't
need it. Maybe he'll be all right. I don't know yet and I may die before
I find out. He's one of the leftovers ... bewildered by everything. He
doesn't know what anything means or where he is bound and that's not his
fault either. He's never had a proper chance. There are a lot of young
Americans like him."

She saw the judge's eyebrows move a little and his eyes brighten with
curiosity. Louis Fletcher was smiling as if he had already caught the
clue to what she was doing.

"And Janie," she said, "I'm not going to leave Janie anything now ...
not for fifteen years, and by that time things will be all right. She'll
have had the fun of working up to something with the young man she's
marrying. They'll have made their life together. She'll know what that
is like. It won't be spoiled for her--all the sacrifices and the
economies and the sense of reality upon which a good life is founded.
She'll know by that time what everyday people are like. She'll know the
things which money can't buy, the things which money would keep her from
ever acquiring."

She turned suddenly to Louis Fletcher, "You use words very well. You'll
know how to write what I'm trying to say. It would be a great favor to
me if you'd write the paragraph about Janie. She'll understand what I
meant. We've already talked of it. You understand what I'm trying to
say, Louis ... don't you?"

"I think I do ... perfectly," he replied with gravity. She had known
that he would understand.

She turned back again to Judge Everett. "I do want her to have a fund
which gives her thirty thousand but not now ... not until she's nearly
forty. Then she's to have the right to the whole amount. By that time
she'll know how to use it properly." Her small face grew stern as she
said, "You know, Janie's the only one who's worth a tinker's dam. She's
bewildered too but she tries to understand. And that boy Ned has a good
head on his shoulders."

She was thinking of them as she spoke, somewhere on the way to San
Francisco, together now as they should be, as they were meant by God to
be. And in her heart she felt again the faint sharp stab of envy because
they still had before them all that for her was in the past.

Judge Everett was saying, "I understand that you want the fund to be set
aside immediately upon your death and the interest to accumulate until
Janie is forty years old."

"Yes. That's right. That's it exactly."

"And if anything should happen to her?"

"Then it's to go to her husband and children if any."

The judge had been making figures, neatly and precisely on the edge of
his pad of paper. He looked at her and said, "And the rest? What are you
going to do with the rest? There's still a huge amount of money."

"How much?"

"At the last audit and appraisal in January, the total estate amounted
to about forty-seven million dollars."

She smiled, "Yes, that's a lot of money ... so much that it doesn't mean
anything at all to me. For a long time now, for about fifty years I've
never had any sense of money. I always knew that there was all I wanted,
all I could possibly spend even with all that Gus gave away toward the
end of his life. It seemed to come in faster than he gave it away,
faster than he could spend it, and Gus could spend money. Sometimes it
used to frighten me. It seemed to me that there was something wicked
about it, but I don't bother to worry about it any more. After Gus died
I didn't need much. All the things Gus spent money on didn't mean much
to me. I just keep giving it away and when I die it will all go back
where it came from."

"And where is that?"

"Back into the country itself. Gus did a lot of good but he did more
evil. He did a lot of plundering."

"How are you going to do this?"

"I don't know. That's where I want you both to help me. Giving away
forty or so million dollars is a job in itself."

The judge took a sip of brandy and then said, "Of course the simplest
fashion would be to set up a foundation ... something called the
Parkington Foundation to the memory of Gus and yourself."

Her face grew very serious and her voice turned hard. "No, that is
exactly what I don't want. I want it to be given away without any bronze
plaques, without any fanfare. I'm not interested in creating a legend at
this late date that Gus was a great American who devoted his life to the
good of his country. Gus did a lot of good but most of it was done
accidentally. He was always thinking about Gus first, along with power
and making money, like all the other rich, successful men of his day.
I've no desire to have them whitewashed. His partners tried that when
they hired that miserable hack to write up his life so that he sounded
like a saint. I couldn't even read it. It made me want to vomit. If Gus
had been like that I wouldn't have stayed married to him for forty
years. I'd have left such a pious husband after a couple of years. I
stayed married to Gus because he was a scamp on a gigantic scale and
because he was fascinating, and because I was in love with him right up
to the end." The faint echo of a chuckle came into her voice and she
said, "I was a kind of gun moll to the very end. And that's the truth.
You know what I say is true, Judge. I heard you practically tell him
that one night long ago in the house in Newport. You probably don't even
remember it. It was when you first came to be his lawyer. We had dinner
together ... just the three of us and afterward you two went into the
library to talk and the window was open and I could hear what you said
on the verandah."

The judge smiled, "I remember the night because I remember thinking, 'If
I say this it'll either mean that I'm out of a job, or that Gus
Parkington and I will understand each other and we'll get on.' I thought
that night, 'The way he's going he'll need good advice. Maybe I can keep
him out of trouble, if only for the sake of his wife Susie, whom I liked
very much.'" He grinned and added. "I didn't know that you were
listening. If it had happened later on, when I knew you better, I'd have
known that when you were around, even the walls had ears. I liked Gus in
spite of all I knew about him. That's why I stuck to him to the very
end. There aren't any more like him."

Mrs. Parkington said, "Then you understand what I mean when I say that
publicly there was little about Gus that ought to be memorialized but
that privately I was in love with him always. I suppose that either he
or I or both of us had what are called split personalities." She turned
to Louis Fletcher, "Am I right, Louis?"

"Split," said Louis, "Split into fragments, both of you."

"What we know, we know," she continued, "but that is no reason for
trying to make future generations believe Gus was a saint and his whole
period the acme of American civilization. There's too much of that
already, too many foundations to the memory of men who were crooks like
Gus and ruthless and thoroughly bad citizens while they were alive. I
doubt they'll succeed in the whitewashing process. Sound historians are
likely to be fairly accurate men who can't be bought like hacks." She
lifted her brandy glass and said, "But to get back to business. I want
to leave something to the symphony and to St. Mary's Hospital and the
MacKenzie Street Settlement and enough to keep Harriette's Cat and Dog
Hospital going as long as money means anything. For the rest I want you
and Louis to make me out a list of things which would benefit most, and
institutions that would do the most good. I'd like some of it to go
where it would undo two great American falsities--that making money is
distinguished and important and that automobiles and water closets have
anything to do with what is called civilization. You two can figure that
out. You've had more experience than I have. If you do it wisely, maybe
Gus's money will do some good after all. It's certainly done his own
family little but harm for nearly seventy years. You can send the list
to me. I'll wire you my address from time to time in case you need it.
I'll okay the list or make any changes I think advisable. But I want the
gifts made as anonymously as possible."

Louis Fletcher smiled, "You don't think that when you die the papers are
going to let you off lightly. Your whole life is too good a story."

"No, I don't suppose I can expect to be able to just die and be buried,
but I hope you both try to make it as much like that as possible. I just
want to die and be cremated and put away beside Gus with as little fuss
as possible."

She remembered the show and vulgarity of Alice's funeral and the ghosts
who appeared there out of the brownstone houses and second-rate
apartments, and she added, "I suppose there will have to be some sort of
services to satisfy Helen, but I hope it will be short and sweet. Put
that in the will as well." She laughed suddenly, "I suppose it doesn't
really matter. I remember when old Mrs. Morton Ogden insisted that
Herbert be christened properly, Gus said, 'It can't do the child any
harm and it will give a lot of people pleasure.' Maybe I'm being
selfish."

Louis Fletcher joined her laugh, "You might as well let them have their
fun. In any case, you'll probably live to bury us both and then we won't
have anything to say about what is done."

"I might at that." She looked at the watch on her wrist. "Have you got
everything straight, Judge?"

"I've got the idea. I'll draft a form and send it along to you."

"I think we'd all better go to bed. I have to start on a long journey
tomorrow."

The two men stood up. Louis Fletcher grinned at her suddenly and said,
"There's one question I'd like to ask you."

"What's that?"

"Are you going to Leaping Rock?"

"Yes, of course. Why?" There was a little irritation in her voice as if
he had surprised something she had meant to keep secret.

"I knew you'd have to go back there before you died."

"So I'm a specimen to you?"

"Yes," said Louis Fletcher gravely, "All people are."

She was silent for a moment and then said, "Maybe you would have had a
great success as a clairvoyant."

"Yes, that's quite true. So would you. In a way, we've always been in
the same business, only you've always been an amateur."

The judge felt suddenly out of it and interrupted by saying, "Good night
then, Susie. And thank you for an excellent dinner and an entertaining
evening."

"Give my best to Margaret. I hope she understood that this was business
and not pleasure this evening."

The judge smiled. "I'm sure she understood."

To Louis Fletcher she said, "Give your wife the same message."

"Of course."

Then they went out and when they had gone she walked slowly up the
stairs feeling that nearly everything was now wound up, neatly and
efficiently, all but Amory's trial. At the thought of that she sighed.
_Everything_ would probably never be wound up and settled until she
died.

Mattie was waiting for her and asked, "Was it a pleasant evening, Mrs.
P.?"

"Very pleasant, Mattie. Are you all packed and ready to go?"

"I've been all ready since four o'clock."

"That's good. You had better go off to bed now and call me early--about
seven. We'll have to make an early start if we're to make Columbus by
evening. Mr. Swann is in a hurry to get back to the ranch and Hicks
doesn't like to drive above fifty. It makes him nervous."

                               _The End_






[End of Mrs. Parkington, by Louis Bromfield]
