Kitabı oku: «Ainslee's, Vol. 15, No. 5, June 1905», sayfa 2

The enormity of the offense crushed his irritation; it struck at the very foundations of his trust in Deena’s judgment, at her whole future usefulness to him; he almost felt as if his bank account were not in his own keeping.

She tried to answer, but no words would come; explanations were beyond her powers, and she left the room, shutting the door behind her. A passion of tears would have made the situation bearable, but when you are the lady of the house and unexpected company is coming to tea, and you have but one servant, you have to deny yourself such luxuries.

Deena went for a moment into the open air while she steadied her nerves; she forced herself to think what she could add to the evening meal, and succeeded in burying her mortification in a dish of smoked beef and eggs.

Old Mrs. Ponsonby had never given in to late dinners, and Simeon’s digestion was regulated to the more economical plan of a light supper or tea at seven o’clock.

Deena gave the necessary orders and went upstairs to her own room. One blessing was hers – a bedroom to herself. Simeon had given her his mother’s room and retained his own, which was directly in the rear. She shut the communicating door, and was glad she had done so when she heard his step in the passage and knew he had come to make the brief toilet he thought necessary for tea. She tore off her finery – hung the pretty costume in her closet, and, as she laid her hat on the shelf, registered a vow that no power on earth should induce her to pay for it with Ponsonby money. Though the clock pointed to ten minutes to seven, she shook down her hair and parted it in the severe style that had won its way to her mother-in-law’s heart. At this point Simeon’s door opened, and Deena remembered, with regret, that she had omitted to tell him that French was coming to tea. He was already halfway downstairs, but she came out into the passageway and called him. He stopped, gave a weary sigh, and came back.

“I forgot to tell you Mr. French is coming to tea,” she said, quite in her usual tone.

“Who asked him?” demanded Simeon, and Deena, too proud to put the responsibility on French, where it belonged, said: “I did.”

Simeon was not an ill-tempered man, but he had had an exasperating day, and his wife’s conduct had offended his prejudices; he was not in a company frame of mind, and was at small pains to conceal his feelings; he hardly looked at her as he said:

“I do not question your right to ask people to the house, but I should be glad to be consulted. My time is often precious beyond what you can appreciate, and I happen to be exceptionally busy to-night – even French will be an unwelcome interruption.”

“I shall remember your wish,” Deena said, quietly, and returned to her room.

A moment later she heard Stephen arrive, and the study door shut behind him.

Her toilet was soon made. She knew every idiosyncrasy of the hooks and buttons of her well-worn afternoon frock. It was dark blue, of some clinging material that fell naturally into graceful lines, and was relieved at the throat and wrists by embroidered bands always immaculate. The damp sea breeze had ruffled her hair into rebellion against the sleekness Simeon approved, so that, in spite of her efforts, some effects of the holiday still lingered. Suppressed tears had made violet shadows under her eyes, and her mouth – sweet and sensitive like a child’s – drooped a little in recollection of her annoyances, but, all the same, she was a very beautiful young woman, whether sad or merry.

The study door was still shut as she passed downstairs and into the little parlor. Her workbasket was standing by her chair, piled high with mending that she had neglected for her pleasuring. It was Saturday night, and no good housewife should let the duties of one week overlap the next. Simeon’s aphorism, “A day off means a night on,” seemed likely to be her experience with darning needle and patches, but it was a quarter past seven, and she deferred beginning her task till after tea.

The servant announced the meal, and by Deena’s orders knocked at the study door, but got no response; indeed, the pièce de résistance– the smoked beef and eggs – had almost hardened into a solid cake before the friends emerged, arm in arm, and followed Deena to the table. French drew out her chair with that slight exaggeration of courtesy that lent a charm to all he did, and with his hands still on the bar he bent over her and said – smiling the while at Simeon:

“I have been telling your husband of what I hinted to you this afternoon, Mrs. Ponsonby; the expedition to Patagonia and his chance to join it.”

Simeon’s brow contracted. It was disagreeable to him to have momentous affairs like his own discussed by anticipation with Deena – Deena, who was only a woman, and he now feared a silly one at that.

“It is no secret, then!” said Simeon, contemptuously, and added, turning to his wife: “Be good enough not to speak of this before the servant; I should be sorry to have the faculty hear of such a thing from anyone but me.”

She grew scarlet, but managed to murmur a word of acquiescence. Stephen looked amazed; he thought he must be mistaken in the rudeness of his friend’s manner, and then began making imaginary excuses for him. Of course, the tea table was not the place for confidences, and, naturally, a man would prefer telling such things privately to his wife, and the rebuke was meant for him, not for Mrs. Ponsonby. How lovely she looked – even prettier than in those smart clothes she had worn in the morning. He wondered whether Ponsonby knew how absolutely perfect she was.

The servant was much in the room, and the talk turned on the progressive spirit of Argentina, its railroads, its great natural resources, its vast agricultural development. It was a dialogue between the men, for Simeon addressed himself exclusively to French – what could a woman know of what goes to make the wealth of nations! – and, as for Stephen, he was still uncomfortable from the failure of his first effort to bring her into the discussion.

When tea was over Simeon pushed back his chair and was about to stalk from the room, when he remembered that French was his guest, and halted to let him go out first, but when French waited beside him to let Deena pass, an expression of impatience crossed her husband’s face, as if the precious half seconds he could so ill spare from his work, in order to reach conclusions, were being sacrificed to dancing master ceremonials.

Deena sat sewing till Stephen came to bid her good-night.

“I think it is all arranged,” he said, but without the joyousness of his first announcement. He had, perhaps, lost a little of his interest in his friend, Ponsonby, since the incident at the tea table.

Deena, with a woman’s instinct, guessed at his feelings, and made no effort to detain him. She was tired and discouraged, and would gladly have gone to bed when their guest departed, except for a suspicion that Simeon would want to talk things over with her, in spite of his seeming indifference. She was not mistaken. In ten minutes he came into the parlor and threw himself wearily on the sofa.

“Deena,” he said, and his tone was kind, “if I should go away for six months, do you think you could manage without me?”

“I am sure I could,” she answered, cheerfully, “and I want to say to you, now that you have opened the subject, that you must not let my expenses stand in your way. I know, of course, if you give up your college work, part of your salary would naturally pass to the person who, for the time, undertakes your duties, and I have been thinking that a simple plan would be to rent this house.”

The idea was not quite agreeable to Simeon – the old house was part of himself; he had been born there; his love for his mother overflowed into every rickety chair; but the common-sense commercial value of the scheme made him regard Deena with revived respect.

“It is hardly practicable,” he said. “In the first place, it is too old-fashioned to attract, and, in the second, there is no market for furnished houses at Harmouth.”

“Mrs. Barnes would take it, I fancy,” said Deena. “She is the mother of the student who was hurt last week in the football match. She is trying everywhere to find a furnished house so that she can take care of him and yet let him stay on here. I think we could rent it, Simeon, and I should need so little – so very little to keep me while you are gone.”

He took off his spectacles and sat up.

“It isn’t a bad idea,” he said, almost gayly. “The rent would pay the taxes and give you a small income besides, and leave me practically free. You have relieved my mind of a serious worry. Thank you, Deena.”

“You will see the president to-morrow?” she asked.

He hesitated before admitting that such was his intention; it was one thing for his wife to meet his difficulties with practical suggestions, and quite another for her to put intrusive questions.

“You shall be informed when things take a definite shape,” he said, pompously. “Good-night, my dear; I shall be at work on my galley proof till daylight.”

“Good-night, Simeon,” she said, gently. “I am sorry I displeased you today.”

He mumbled something about young people having to make mistakes, but his mumble was pleasant, and then he crossed to her side, and kissed her forehead.

She felt the pucker of his lips like wrinkled leather, but she told herself it was kind in Simeon to kiss her.

As she laid her head on her pillow, she thought:

“He never had the curiosity to ask what I proposed to do with myself when my home and husband were taken from me,” and the tears came at last, unchecked.

CHAPTER III

Simeon was gone – gone with his clothes packed in the sole leather trunk that his father had used before him, but with an equipment for botanizing as modern and extended as his personal arrangements were meager.

The house was rented to Mrs. Barnes, the mother of the too ardent champion of the football field – but as her son was too suffering to be moved for several weeks to come, Deena had leisure to get the house in order and habituate herself to the idea of being homeless.

Simeon behaved liberally in money matters; that is, he arranged that the rent should be paid to his wife, and he gave her a power of attorney which was to make her free of his bank account should anything delay his return beyond her resources. At the same time the injunctions against spending were so solemn that she understood she was to regard her control of his money as a mere formality – a peradventure – made as one makes his will, anticipating the unlikely.

The faculty made no objection to Simeon’s going; indeed, his researches were thought likely to redound to the high scientific reputation that Harmouth particularly cherished, and Stephen French had taken care to foster this impression.

The day he left was sharp for October; a wood fire crackled on the hearth in the dining room, and Deena, pale and calm, sat behind the breakfast service and made his coffee for the last time in many months. He ate and drank, and filled in the moments with the Harmouth Morning Herald, and his wife’s natural courtesy forbade her interrupting him. Without a word he stretched his arm across the table with his cup to have it refilled, and Deena, feeling her insignificance as compared with the morning news, still dared not speak. When finally he pushed back his chair, the little carryall was at the door waiting to take him and his luggage to the train.

“You will write from New York, Simeon, and again by the pilot,” she urged, following him into the hall. “And where is your first port – Rio? Then from Rio, and as often as you can.”

He was stuffing the pockets of his overcoat with papers and pamphlets, but he nodded assent.

She came a step nearer and laid her hand on his arm.

“Be sure I shall try to do as you would wish,” she half whispered, and there were tears in her eyes.

“To be sure, to be sure,” said Simeon, with a kind of embarrassment. “Oh, yes, I shall write frequently – if not to you, to French, who will keep you informed. Don’t forget to make your weekly contribution to your mother’s housekeeping. I cannot allow you to be a burden on them during my absence; and consult Stephen whenever you are in doubt. Good-by, Deena – I am sorry to leave you.”

He puckered his lips into the hard wrinkles that made his kisses so discreet, and gave her a parting embrace. She stood at the open door watching the distribution of his luggage, which he superintended with anxious care, and then he stepped into the one free seat reserved for him, and the driver squeezed himself between a trunk and roll of rugs, and they were off.

Simeon waved his hand, and even leaned far out from the carriage window and smiled pleasantly, and Deena wiped her eyes, and began the awful work of making an old house, bristling with the characteristic accumulations of several generations, impersonal enough to rent. She had plenty to do to keep her loneliness in abeyance, but in the back of her consciousness there was a feeling that she had no abiding place. Her family had urged her to marry Simeon, and he was now throwing her back upon her family, and her dignity was hurt.

At sunset Stephen came to see how she was getting on, and they had a cup of tea beside the dining-room fire, and talked about the voyage and the ports Simeon would touch at; and Stephen, who had the power of visualizing the descriptions he met with in his reading, made her see his word-painted pictures so clearly that she exclaimed:

“When were you in South America, Mr. French?” and he laughed and declared himself a fraud.

They talked on till the firelight alone challenged the darkness, and then French remembered he was dining out, and left her with an imagination aglow with all the wonders Simeon was to see. Lest she should be lonely, he undid a roll of papers, and took out several new magazines which he said would keep her amused till bedtime, and somehow he put new courage into her heart.

Presently she went into the study and lit the Welsbach over the table, and curled herself up in Simeon’s great chair to enjoy her periodicals, and then her eye fell upon a parcel of proof, directed but not sent, and she read the address, weighed and stamped the package, and rang the bell for the servant to post it. As she took up her magazine once more, she noticed on the outside cover the same name of street and building as on Simeon’s direction, and she wondered whether the same publishers lent themselves to fact and fancy.

Her servant brought her something to eat on a tray – women left to themselves always find economy in discomfort – and she nibbled her chicken and read her stories till she felt surfeited with both, and fell to pondering on what made a story effective. Her eye lit upon a short poem at the end of a page; it seemed to her poor to banality – did it please the public or the editor? Her own verses were a thousand times better.

She sat up suddenly with a heightened color and shining eyes, and laughed out loud. She had an inspiration. She, too, would become a contributor to that great publishing output; she would try her luck at making her brains pay her bills. The name “Mrs. Simeon Ponsonby” would carry weight with the magazine she selected, but, while disclosing her identity to the editor, she determined to choose a pen name, fearing her husband’s disapproval.

From childhood Deena had loved to express herself in rhyme, and of late years she had found her rhyming – so she modestly called it – a safety valve to a whole set of repressed feelings which she was too simple to recognize as starved affections, and which she thought was nature calling to her from without. It was nature, but calling from within, thrilling her with the beauty of things sensuous and driving her for sympathy to pen and ink.

Tossing down her book, she ran to her own room, unlocked a drawer, took out an old portfolio and returned to the study. There were, perhaps, twenty poems she had thought worth preserving, and her eye traveled over page after page as she weighed the merits and defects of each before making her choice. A sensitive ear had given her admirable imitative powers in versification, and her father, before dissipation had dulled his intellect, had been a man of rare cultivation and literary taste. Deena, among all his children, was the only one whose education he had personally superintended, and she brought to her passion for poetry some critical acumen.

She finally selected a song of the Gloucester fishermen she had written two years before – a song of toil and death – but with a refrain that effaced the terror with the dance of summer seas. She wrote a formal note to the editor, saying the price was fifteen dollars, that if accepted the signature was to be Gerald Shelton, and the check to be made to her, and she signed her own name. Simeon should know as soon as he came home, but she thought he could have no objection to Geraldine Ponsonby accepting a check for the supposititious Gerald Shelton.

Before all this was accomplished, her servant had gone to bed and Deena, afraid to be left alone downstairs in a house so prone to spooky noises, followed her example, but alas! not to sleep. She tossed on her bed, sacred for many years to the ponderous weight of old Mrs. Ponsonby, till suddenly all she had suffered from the maxims and example of her mother-in-law took form, and she wove a story half humorous, half pathetic, that she longed to commit to paper; but her delicacy forbade. She was even ashamed to have found a passing amusement at the expense of Simeon’s mother, and she tried to make her mind a blank and go to sleep. Toward morning she must have lost consciousness, for she dreamed – or thought she dreamed – that old Mrs. Ponsonby sat in her hard wooden rocking-chair by the window – the chair with the patchwork cushion fastened by three tape bows to the ribs of its back; the chair Simeon had often told her was “mother’s favorite.” The old lady rocked slowly, and her large head and heavy figure were silhouetted against the transparent window shade. A sound of wheels came from the street, and she raised the shade and looked out, leaning back, in order to follow the disappearing object till it was out of range, and then she buried her face in her hands and sobbed the low, hopeless sobs of old-age.

Deena found herself sitting up in bed, the early daylight making “the casement slowly grow a glimmering square.” The impression of her dream was so vivid that the depression weighed upon her like something physical. It was impossible to sleep, and at seven o’clock she got up to dress, having heard the servant go downstairs. On her way to her bath she passed the rocking-chair, and lying directly in her path was a little card, yellow with age. Deena picked it up and read: “From Mother to Simeon.” The coincidence worked so on her imagination that she sank into the nearest chair trembling from head to foot, and then she reflected that she must have pulled the card out of the table drawer when she went to fetch the portfolio the night before, and she called herself a superstitious silly, and made her bath a little colder than usual, as a tonic to her nerves. Cold water and hot food work wonders, and after breakfast young Mrs. Ponsonby forgot she had ever had a predecessor.

Her family paid her flying visits during the day, with a freedom unknown in Simeon’s reign, and she worked hard at her preparations for renting, but in the evening, when the house was quiet, she settled herself at the study table and made her first attempt at story writing, this time steering clear of the personal note that had brought such swift reprisal the night before. The occupation was absorbing; she neither desired nor missed companionship. She was not the first person to find life’s stage amply filled by the puppets of her own imagination.

At the end of the week two things had happened. The Illuminator had accepted her poem, and her story was finished. She determined to submit it to Stephen, and yet when he looked in at five o’clock, she was ashamed to ask him; what she had thought so well of the night before, in the excitement of work, suddenly seemed to her beneath contempt.

He lingered later than usual, for he mistook her preoccupation for unhappiness, and hated to leave her alone.

“When do you move to your mother’s?” he asked, for he thought anything better than her present desolation; the genteel poverty brought about by Mr. Shelton’s habits, the worldliness of Mrs. Shelton, and the demands upon time and temper made by the younger brothers and sisters, were only the old conditions under which she had grown up.

“Next week,” she said, sadly. “I shall be sorry to leave here.”

“You are not lonely, then, poor little lady?” he said, kindly, while he searched her face to see whether she told the whole truth.

His eyes were so merry, his smile so encouraging, that Deena blurted out her request.

“I haven’t felt lonely,” she said, “because I have been writing a foolish story, and my characters have been my companions. I am sure it is no good, and yet my head is a little turned at having expressed myself on paper. Like Dr. Johnson’s simile of the dog walking on its hind legs, the wonder isn’t to find it ill done, but done at all. I am trying to screw my courage to the point of asking you – ”

“To be sure I will,” he interrupted, eagerly, “and what is a great deal stronger proof of friendship, I’ll tell you what I think, even if my opinion is nihilistic.”

He followed her into the study, and she laid her manuscript on the table and left him without a word.

The story was the usual magazine length, about five thousand words, and Deena’s handwriting was as clear and direct as her character. At the end of half an hour she heard his voice calling her name, and she joined him.

“It is very creditable,” he said. “It fairly glows with vitality. Without minute description, you have conveyed your story in pictures which lodge in the imagination; but in construction it is poor – your presentment of the plot is amateurish, and you have missed making your points tell by too uniform a value to each.”

“I understand you,” said Deena, looking puzzled, “and yet, somehow, fail to apply what you say to what I have written.”

He drew a chair for her beside his own, and began making a rapid synopsis of her story, to which he applied his criticism, showing her what should be accentuated, what only hinted, what descriptions were valuable, what clogged the narrative. She was discouraged but grateful.

“You advise me to destroy it?” she asked.

“I advise you to rewrite it,” he answered. Then, after a pause, he asked: “Why do you want to write?”

“For money,” she answered.

“But Simeon told me,” French remonstrated, “that he had left you the rent of this house as well as part of his salary, and a power of attorney that makes you free of all he possesses. Why add this kind of labor to a life that is sober enough already? Amuse yourself; look the way you did that day at Wolfshead; be young!”

“Simeon is very generous,” she said, loyally, silent as to the restrictions put upon his provisions for her maintenance, as well as the fact that his salary only covered the letter of credit he took with him for such expenses as he might incur outside the expedition. “In spite of his kindness, can’t you understand that I am proud to be a worker? Have you lived so long in the companionship of New England women without appreciating their reserves of energy? I have to make use of mine!”

“Then use it in having ‘a good time.’ I conjure you, in the name, as well as the language, of young America.”

Deena shook her head, and French stood hesitating near the door, wondering what he could do to reawaken the spirit of enjoyment that had danced in her eyes the day at Wolfshead.

“Will you dine with me to-morrow if I can get Mrs. McLean to chaperon us?” he asked.

The phrase “chaperon us” was pleasant to him; it implied they had a common interest in being together, and her companionship meant much to him. He smiled persuasively – waiting, hat in hand, for her answer.

Deena felt an almost irresistible desire to say yes – to follow the suggestions of this overmastering delightful companion who seemed to make her happiness his care, but she managed to refuse.

“Thank you very much,” she murmured, “it is quite impossible.”

It was not at all impossible, as Stephen knew, and he turned away with a short good-night. He wondered whether his friend’s wife were a prude.

Undoubtedly the refusal was prudent, whether Mrs. Ponsonby were a prude or no, but it had its rise in quite a different cause. She had no dress she considered suitable for such an occasion. Her wedding dress still hung in ghostly splendor in a closet all by itself, but that was too grand, and the others of her trousseau had been few in number and plain in make, and would now have been consigned to the rag bag had she seen any means of supplying their place. They were certainly too shabby to grace one of Stephen’s beautiful little dinners, which were the pride of Harmouth.

Deena’s ideas of French in his own entourage as opposed to him in hers were amusing. Viewed in the light of Simeon’s friend, voluntarily seeking their companionship and sharing their modest hospitality, they met on terms of perfect equality; but when associated with his own surroundings he seemed transformed into a person of fashion, haughty and aloof. It was quite absurd. Stephen was as simple and straightforward in one relation as the other, but perhaps the truth was that Deena was afraid of his servants.

The house was the most attractive in the town, and stood in the midst of well-kept grounds with smooth lawns and conservatories, and Deena felt oppressed by so much prosperity. On the few occasions when Simeon had taken her there to lunch on Sunday – the only dissipation he allowed himself – she had thought the butler supercilious, and the maid who came to help her off with her wraps, snippy. She had suspected the woman of turning her little coat inside out after it was confided to her care, and sneering at its common lining.

Deena was too superior a woman not to be ashamed of such thoughts, but the repression of her married life had developed a morbid sensitiveness, and she was always trying to adjust the unadjustable – Simeon’s small economies to her own ideas of personal dignity; she hardly realized how much the desire to live fittingly in their position had to do with her wish to earn an income.

While Stephen’s criticisms were still fresh in her mind she rewrote her story, and when she read it again – which was not till several days had passed – she felt she had made large strides in the art she so coveted.