Jewel Weed Part 31

"A sort of public housemaid," said Lena scornfully.

"Exactly!" d.i.c.k laughed and nodded.

But Lena shrugged her shoulders and pouted as the door shut and she idly watched her husband's final hand-wave.

He walked down town and the fresh northern air set his pulses quickening. He noted how few gray heads there were, how full everything seemed of the vitality of youth. On the piazzas were groups of happy well-kept children, bundled up for winter play and bubbling over with exuberance. To any pa.s.ser-by they told that these were the homes of young married people. Everywhere life looked sweet and normal and vigorous. And he knew that for miles in every direction there were more such homes of more such people.

But when he reached the part of town whither his steps were bent, all this was reversed. Here was dirt, if not of body, then of spirit. Here were a thousand evil influences at work. Here was public plundering for private greed; here were wire-pullings and bargainings and selfishness reigning supreme. And these forces were the nominal rulers of a city, the greater part of whose life was good.

However, he was getting the ropes in his hands. These things were no longer vague generalities floating in his mind, as rosy clouds might be backed by thunder-heads on the horizon. They were growing definite. He began to know who were the evil-workers and how they did it. He had the art of making friends, and he made friends among publicans and sinners as well as--well, there weren't any saints in St. Etienne to make friends with. At any rate some of the powers that were began to say that d.i.c.k Percival knew entirely too much. And some of the powers that ought to be, but still slept, namely the good citizens of St. Etienne, found their slumbers disturbed by his straight and convincing words.

But to-day all his labors seemed not worth while. There was a sour taste in his mouth. To do the little thing with a big heart was after all nothing but a sham. His ideals, he thought, had simmered down to petty things. He was spending his time in nosing out small evil-smelling scandals and in running for a mean inferior office. He felt nauseated with himself. Worse, he felt a horrible new doubt of his wife. Mrs.

Appleton had been to him the type of woman he disliked, worldly, shallow, busy with the sticks and straws; yet now there would creep in a suspicion that some of the things he had forgiven to Lena's beauty and lack of sophistication were close of kin to the older woman's more blatant materialism. Materialism was the thing d.i.c.k had not learned to a.s.sociate with his own women.

This radiant morning, then, he felt himself under the dominion of the grand inquisitors who invented the torture of little things. Life consisted in having slow drops of water fall on his head, one at a time.

Family life was slimed with small bickerings, children were a nuisance, society a bore, and the most beautiful woman in the world defiant and uninspiring at the breakfast-table.

It does not take Cleopatra long to wither the ideals.

d.i.c.k began to a.n.a.lyze his wife, which is a dangerous thing for a man to do. If a husband wishes to preserve the lover's state of mind, he must continue to think of his wife as a single indivisible creature, not a compound of faults, virtues and charms, lest in some unlucky moment he find that the faults are the biggest ingredient.

d.i.c.k, however, was thinking, and the substance of his thoughts was that this little girl, who bore his name, had her seamy side. Up to now, if he noticed a defect, he instantly and chivalrously put it out of his mind, but now certain doubts had knocked so long that by sheer persistence they forced an entrance. Lena, who began by being a sweet, innocent, much-enduring little thing, now that he knew her more and more intimately, was less and less the creature he imagined. To the world in general she was still the big-eyed ingenue, learning to take her place in society. To him alone, it seemed, to him whose love and reverence she ought to have desired, she was becoming indifferent as to the impression she made. Was the other side of her a pose? d.i.c.k found himself walking very fast, and he slackened his pace to a respectable gait. If Lena the lovable was a pose, then the inspiration and ideals and joy of his life were frauds. That thought was too appalling. He deliberately stopped thinking about it and turned his thoughts to frauds in city politics, which were easier to endure.

Lena, on the other hand, sitting idly by the window, indulged in a little reflection on her own part. She was revolving with some bitterness her disappointment and disillusionment. She remembered what a glorious gilded creature d.i.c.k had appeared to her at one time. Now he was sunk to be a very ordinary young man, with curious and stupid idiosyncrasies, and not nearly so rich and important as many of the people she came in contact with. Might she have done better if she had waited? She too stopped regretting and turned her attention to a novel.

She was just beginning to discover the charms of "Gyp." She looked up to see Mr. Early come up the pathway, and a moment later he stood beside her.

"Mrs. Percival," he said, "I have brought you this little vase, the first of its kind that my artists have produced. I thought it so really beautiful that I could not resist laying one before you as a kind of tribute."

"Oh, it is lovely. And am I really the only person in the world who has one?"

"You and Miss Elton." A pang of small jealousy shot through Lena's heart. It was always and everywhere Miss Elton. "I sent her another, but of slightly different shape. I am, as you know, a wors.h.i.+per of beauty, but all these creations of man's hands are but parodies, are they not, Mrs. Percival, on absolute beauty? They are like ourselves, the creatures of a day. Nature herself, in sea and air and woodland, produces exquisite loveliness, and yet even her achievements are dwarfed when one stands face to face with one of creation's masterpieces--a woman."

And Mr. Early made a ponderous bow as he presented his work of art. Lena was so impressed by this compliment that she wrote it out while it was fresh in her memory, and when d.i.c.k came home, she read it to him. He gave a great bellowing laugh that grated harshly on Lena's nerves; and then at sight of her reproachful eyes, he drew himself together and gave her a friendly pat on the shoulder, affectionate, to be sure, but quite different from Mr. Early's chivalrous manner, and said:

"Thinks you better than his old straight-legged tables, does he? Well, I should say so! Serves him right for being an old bachelor, and having nothing but furniture and Ram Juna to illuminate existence. I should expect that combination to drive a man either to drink or to blank verse."

"I don't think it is nice of you to swear, d.i.c.k," Lena answered severely, but on the verge of tears.

"Swear, sweetheart? Why, what do you mean?"

"Well, it's almost the same thing to talk about 'blank' verse." d.i.c.k laughed again and went directly to the library without even noticing the extremely lovely new dress which his wife had put on for his edification.

d.i.c.k's limitations were becoming manifest to young Mrs. Percival. He might be a gentleman, but she feared that he would never be more. There was nothing imposing about him. He had lifted her out of sordid want, but he would not raise her to the pinnacle of greatness. The bland flat face of Mr. Early and his commanding slowness of movement impressed her imagination much as a great stone image might its votary. Here was indeed the truly ill.u.s.trious. She devoured every floating newspaper paragraph that concerned Sebastian; for she was still under the dominion of the idea that greatness in the dailies const.i.tuted greatness indeed.

She would have been proud to touch the hem of his frock-coat. How much greater her elation when, on public occasions, he singled her out and stalked across the room to utter in loud tones, intended for the ears of half a hundred, some well-rounded compliment. A conquest of Mr. Early would have been, for Lena, the consummation of achievement; but she could not help seeing that his eyes turned more frequently upon Miss Elton than upon Mrs. Percival--upon Miss Elton, of whom she felt constant jealousy and abnormal curiosity.

Jealousy rose to its height when, on a certain afternoon, from her favorite post beside a window, Lena watched a carriage drive up to Mr.

Early's door, and Miss Elton dismount and run up the steps. Mrs.

Percival leaned forward to make sure of her eyes, and then she sat and eyed the hole where the mouse had disappeared.

Of course she could not know what was going on inside. When Madeline received a note from Mr. Early, asking her to come and see some very wonderful tapestries that he had just hung, it seemed the most natural thing in the world. Sebastian's house was always more like a museum than bachelor's quarters. He was continually turning it inside out for public inspection, so Madeline went in all innocence, expecting to find a dozen or so of her friends sharing the private view. She was embarra.s.sed, but hardly seriously, as Mr. Early came forward to welcome her.

"Am I all alone?" she said with a little laugh.

"Apparently you are. But I dare say some others will drop in on us in a moment," Mr. Early made answer. "Meanwhile I am favored, for your opinion is what I particularly want. These queer old tapestries have been sent to me from France, but whether I keep them or not depends on whether they seem the right thing in the right place. Will you come this way?"

The big hall had a singularly impersonal aspect. Madeline had never before seen it except when thronged with people, and now that they two stood alone in its wide empty s.p.a.ce, she was struck with a certain desolation in it.

"Well?" inquired Mr. Early.

"I can't tell at once," said Madeline slowly. "Beauty is a thing that takes time to unfold itself upon one, isn't it? But I think they are beautiful. They are certainly strange and solemn, and they intensify the dignity of this big room; but they make it seem less homelike than ever.

They seem to me things to look at rather than to live with. I suppose their appropriateness depends a little on what you want to make of this place. And you do want it only for a public room, do you not, Mr.

Early?"

"I am afraid that is all I am capable of," said Sebastian, looking pensively at her. "You see the home feeling is beyond my achievement. It needs the feminine touch to create that ideal atmosphere. That, Miss Madeline, is above art."

"It is so common, are you sure it is not below art?" Madeline smiled.

"I am sure," responded Mr. Early with conviction. "It is a subject on which I have thought much since you came home last year. Never until then did I wholly realize the lack in my home and in my life. If now, in all humbleness, I am consulting your taste, it is because I have sometimes dared to hope that you, my dear lady, would one day give that final grace to this which would make it indeed a home, instead of the mere abiding place that it is now."

Madeline turned upon him sharply.

"Mr. Early," she said, "it isn't wholly courteous in you to take advantage of my being alone with you in your own domain to speak to me in this way."

"I beg your pardon," Sebastian answered. "It was a wholly unpremeditated expression of what has long been an ardent desire. I did not mean to speak, but your own words seemed to break down the barriers of my pa.s.sion. I could wish that you would permit me to put it in the form which my heart prompts; but perhaps you are right. Your fine sense of the proprieties must be my rule of conduct. I shall only trust that I may soon find a time to speak when I shall not offend your delicacy, and when, I pray, I may not offend your heart."

"Neither now nor at any other time should I advise you to go any further," said Madeline laughingly, for it was hard to take the bombast of Mr. Early very seriously. He made her think now of a sort of pouter pigeon. And Sebastian remained only partly satisfied as to the effect which he wished to produce. He wanted to give her something to think about, and so make way for the more impa.s.sioned wooing that he was resolved should follow. He was convinced that to stand alone with him in the midst of his splendors would make a strong impression on the mind of any sensible girl. The great hall was certainly a place to capture the imagination--not only from its stately proportions and the mellow coloring that melted into shadow in the far-off roof, but from the mult.i.tude of smaller details, the intricate carvings, gathered abroad or made under Mr. Early's own eye, the few priceless paintings, the great jars whose exquisite decorations blended their richer tones with the deeper shades around. In a wide alcove was gathered a collection of portraits of distinguished men and women, statesmen, artists and literati of this country and of Europe, and each picture was accompanied by an autograph letter to the well-beloved Sebastian Early. It could be no small thing to contemplate the possession of this house of notabilities and of the man who had built it up around himself. This, Mr. Early meant, should be the artistic opening of his campaign. And Miss Elton had laughed.

There was silence for a long minute, and Madeline, glancing nervously at her host, saw that his face was grave and that his eyes were fixed upon her in a melancholy way. She began to feel uncomfortable.

"I think I must be going now," she said.

"You have not told me whether I am to keep the tapestries," Mr. Early humbly objected.

"Oh, I couldn't possibly decide for you. But they seem to harmonize beautifully with this room."

"I am grateful for your decision. Permit me to see you to your carriage, Miss Madeline."

Lena, watching hungrily from her vantage post, noted Mr. Early's obsequious courtesies, Madeline's flushed face, and drew angry conclusions. Nevertheless, she leaned forward and bowed graciously as Madeline drove past.

"If she should marry Mr. Early, I shouldn't feel as if I had triumphed a bit in getting d.i.c.k away from her," she said to herself, with a bald comprehension of her true state of mind. For Lena made up for her pose toward others by a certain unimaginative frankness in her self-communings.

Then, catching a glimpse of another figure, she exclaimed, "Oh, there comes Miss Huntress!" and immediately settled herself with an air of elegant leisure to receive her former superior. Miss Huntress was a source of continual satisfaction to Lena, the opposite of a skeleton at the feast, a continual reminder of present prosperity as compared with past nonent.i.ty. To meet her gave Madame Cecropia the same thrill of satisfaction that it still did to draw her dainty skirts around her and step into her carriage, half hoping that some envious girl was viewing her perfections as she had once eyed those of others. On the other hand, Miss Huntress derived almost equal pleasure out of her acquaintance with Lena, whose littleness she measured, and whose small successes she looked upon with amus.e.m.e.nt, unflecked by envy. Emily Huntress was a plodding person, with much business on hand and an earnest necessity for earning money, and though her canons were not over fine, still she had her standards and lived up to them. She found Lena useful as a source of social information.

"You want to know what is going on?" inquired Mrs. Percival. "Well, of course you know it's Lent, and there isn't anything much. But if you will come up to my boudoir, I will look over my engagement book, and perhaps I can help you to a paragraph or two."

The word boudoir was a sweetmeat to Lena's palate, combined, as it was, with the knowledge that her visitor, with a sister, kept house in three rooms.

So they went up stairs, and Lena babbled and preened herself, while Miss Huntress frowned and pondered on the difficulties of making anything readable out of her small kernel of information. The arrival of a cup of tea, Miss Huntress, being a woman as well as a reporter, found mollifying to the hardness of life.