The Spenders Part 15

"Folly--madness? Do you remember the 'Sonnet of Revolt' you sent me?

Sit on this bench; I wish to say it over to you, very slowly; I want you to hear it while you keep your later att.i.tude in mind.

"Life--what is life? To do without avail The decent ordered tasks of every day: Talk with the sober: join the solemn play: Tell for the hundredth time the self-same tale Told by our grandsires in the self-same vale Where the sun sets with even, level ray, And nights, eternally the same, make way For hueless dawns, intolerably pale--'"

"But I know the verse."

"No; hear it out;--hear what you sent me:

"'And this is life? Nay, I would rather see The man who sells his soul in some wild cause: The fool who spurns, for momentary bliss, All that he was and all he thought to be: The rebel stark against his country's laws: G.o.d's own mad lover, dying on a kiss.'"

She had completed the verse with the hint of a sneer in her tones.

"Yes, truly, I remember it; but some day you'll thank me for saving you; of course it would have been regular in a way, but people here never really forget those things--and we'd have been helpless--some day you'll thank me for thinking for you."

"Why do you believe I'm not thanking you already?"

"Hang it all! that's what you made me think yesterday when I met you."

"And so you called me heartless? Now tell me just what you expect a woman in my position to do. I offered to go to you when you were ready.

Surely that showed my spirit--and you haven't known me these years without knowing it would have to be that or nothing."

"Well, hang it, it wasn't like the last time, and you know it; you're not kind any longer. You can be kind, can't you?"

Her lip showed faintly the curl of scorn.

"No, I can't be kind any longer. Oh, I see you've known your own mind so little; there's been so little depth to it all; you couldn't dare.

It was foolish to think I could show you my mind."

"But you still care for me?"

"No; no, I don't. You should have no reason to think so if I did. When I heard you'd made it up I hated you, and I think I hate you now. Let us go back. No, no, please don't touch me--ever again."

Farther down-town in the cosy drawing-room of a house in a side street east of the Avenue, two other persons were talking. A florid and profusely freckled young Englishman spoke protestingly from the hearth-rug to a woman who had the air of knowing emphatically better.

"But, my dear Mrs. Drelmer, you know, really, I can't take a curate with me, you know, and send up word won't she be good enough to come downstairs and marry me directly--not when I've not seen her, you know!" "Nonsense!" replied the lady, unimpressed. "You can do it nearly that way, if you'll listen to me. Those Westerners perform quite in that manner, I a.s.sure you. They call it 'hustling.'"

"_Dear_ me!"

"Yes, indeed, 'dear you.' And another thing, I want you to forestall that Milbrey youth, and you may be sure he's no farther away than Tuxedo or Meadowbrook. Now, they arrived yesterday; they'll be unpacking to-day and settling to-morrow; I'll call the day after, and you shall be with me."

"And you forget that--that devil--suppose she's as good as her threat?"

"Absurd! how could she be?"

"You don't know her, you know, nor the old beggar either, by Jove!"

"All the more reason for haste. We'll call to-morrow. Wait. Better still, perhaps I can enlist the Gwilt-Athelston; I'm to meet her to-morrow. I'll let you know. Now I must get into my teaharness, so run along."

We are next constrained to glance at a strong man bowed in the hurt of a great grief. Horace Milbrey sits alone in his gloomy, high-ceilinged library. His attire is immaculate. His slender, delicate hands are beautifully white. The sensitive lines of his fine face tell of the strain under which he labours. What dire tragedies are those we must face wholly alone--where we must hide the wound, perforce, because no comprehending sympathy flows out to us; because instinct warns that no help may come save from the soul's own well of divine fort.i.tude. Some hope, tenderly, almost fearfully, held and guarded, had perished on the day that should have seen its triumphant fruition. He raised his handsome head from the antique, claw-footed desk, sat up in his chair, and stared tensely before him. His emotion was not to be suppressed. Do tears tremble in the eyes of the strong man? Let us not inquire too curiously. If they tremble down the fine-skinned cheek, let us avert our gaze. For grief in men is no thing to make a show of.

A servant pa.s.sed the open door bearing an immense pasteboard box with one end cut out to accommodate the long stems of many roses.

"Jarvis!"

"Yes, sir!"

"What is it?"

"Flowers, sir, for Miss Avice."

"Let me see--and the card?"

He took the card from the florist's envelope and glanced at the name.

"Take them away."

The stricken man was once more alone; yet now it was as if the tender beauty of the flowers had balmed his hurt--taught him to hope anew. Let us in all sympathy and hope retire.

For cheerfuller sights we might observe Launton Oldaker in a musty curio-shop, delighted over a pair of silver candlesticks with square bases and fluted columns, fabricated in the reign of that fortuitous monarch, Charles the Second; or we might glance in upon the Higbees in their section of a French chateau, reproduced up on the stately Riverside Drive, where they complete the details of a dinner to be given on the morrow.

Or perhaps it were better to be concerned with a matter more weighty than dinners and antique candlesticks. The search need never be vain, even in this world of persistent frivolity. As, for example:

"Tell Mrs. Van Geist if she can't come down, I'll run up to her."

"Yes, Miss Milbrey."

Mrs. Van Geist entered a moment later.

"Why, Avice, child, you're glowing, aren't you?"

"I must be, I suppose--I've just walked down from 59th Street, and before that I walked in the Park. Feel how cold my cheeks are,--Mutterchen."

"It's good for you. Now we shall have some tea, and talk."

"Yes--I'm hungry for both, and some of those funny little cakes."

"Come back where the fire is, dear; the tea has just been brought.

There, take the big chair."

"It always feels like you--like your arms, Mutterchen--and I am tired."

"And throw off that coat. There's the lemon, if you're afraid of cream."

"I wish I weren't afraid of anything but cream."

"You told me you weren't afraid of that--that cad--any more."

"I'm not--I just told him so. But I'm afraid of it all; I'm tired trying not to drift--tired trying not to try, and tired trying to try--Oh, dear--sounds like a nonsense verse, doesn't it? Have you any one to-night? No? I think I must stay with you till morning. Send some one home to say I'll be here. I can always think so much better here--and you, dear old thing, to mother me!"