The Second Generation Part 16

Mrs. Whitney was called away, and Ross tried to write to Theresa. But the words wouldn't come. He wandered restlessly about the room, ordered the electric, went to the Country Club. After an hour of bitterness, he called up his mother. "You needn't send that note we were talking about just yet," he said.

"But I've already sent it," his mother answered. In fact, the note was just then lying on the table at her elbow.

"What were you in such a devil of a hurry for?" he stormed--an unnecessary question, for he knew his mother was the sort of person that loses no time in settling an important matter beyond possibility of change.

"I'm sorry, Ross," she replied soothingly. "I thought I might as well send it, as you had told me everything was settled."

"Oh--all right--no matter." He could break with Theresa whenever he wished. Perhaps he would not wish to break with her; perhaps, after a few days he would find that his feeling for Adelaide was in reality no stronger than he had thought it at Windrift, when Theresa was tempting him with her huge fortune. There was plenty of time before it would be necessary to make final choice.

Nevertheless, he did not leave Saint X, but hung round, sour and morose, hoping for some sign from "tamed" Adelaide.

As soon as Theresa got Mrs. Whitney's note, she wrote to Adelaide. "I've promised not to tell," her letter began, "but I never count any promise of that kind as including _you_, dear, sweet Adelaide--"

Adelaide smiled as she read this; Theresa's pa.s.sion for intimate confession had been the joke of the school. "Besides," Adelaide read on, "I think you'll be especially interested as Ross tells me there was some sort of a boy-and-girl flirtation between you and him. I don't see how you could get over it. Now--you've guessed. Yes--we're engaged, and will probably be married up here in the fall--Windrift is simply divine then, you know. And I want you to be my 'best man.' The others'll be Edna and Clarice and Leila and Annette and perhaps Jessie and Anita. We're to live in Chicago--father will give us a house, I'm sure. And you must come to visit us--"

It is hardly fair to eavesdrop upon a young woman in such an hour as this of Adelaide's. Only those might do so who are willing freely to concede to others that same right to be human which they themselves exercise, whether they will or no, when things happen that smash the veneer of "gentleman" or "lady" like an eggsh.e.l.l under a plowboy's heel, and penetrate to and roil that unlovely human nature which is in us all.

Criticism is supercilious, even when it is just; so, without criticism, the fact is recorded that Adelaide paced the floor and literally raved in her fury at this double-distilled, double treachery. The sense that she had lost the man she believed she loved was drowned in the oceanic flood of infuriated vanity. She raged now against Ross and now against Theresa "She's marrying him just because she's full of envy, and can't bear to see anybody else have anything," she fumed. "Theresa couldn't love anybody but herself. And he--he's marrying her for her money. She isn't good to look at; to be in the house with her is to find out how mean and small and vain she is. It serves me right for being sn.o.b enough to have such a friend. If she hadn't been immensely rich and surrounded by such beautiful things I'd never have had anything to do with her. She's buying him; he's selling himself. How vile!"

But the reasons why they were betraying her did not change or mitigate the fact of betrayal; and that fact showed itself to proud, confident Adelaide Ranger in the form of the proposition that she had been jilted, and that all the world, all her world, would soon know it. Jilted!

She--Adelaide Ranger--the all-conqueror--flung aside, flouted, jilted.

She went back to that last word; it seemed to concentrate all the insult and treason and shame that were heaped upon her. And she never once thought of the wound to her heart; the fierce fire of vanity seemed to have cauterized it--if there was a wound.

What could she do to hide her disgrace from her mocking, sneering friends? For, hide it she must--must--_must_! And she had not a moment to lose.

A little thought, and she went to the telephone and called up her brother at the Country Club. When she heard his voice, in fear and fright, demanding what she wanted, she said:

"Will you bring Dory Hargrave to dinner to-night? And, of course, don't let him know I wanted you to."

"Is _that_ all!" exclaimed Arthur in a tone of enormous relief, which she was too absorbed in her calamity to be conscious of.

"You will, won't you? Really, Arthur, it's _very_ important; and don't say a _word_ of my having telephoned--not to _anybody_."

"All right! I'll bring him." A pause, then. "Father's just the same?"

"Yes," she answered, in sudden confusion and shame.

CHAPTER VIII

A FRIEND IN NEED

In the turmoil of his own affairs Arthur forgot his promise almost while he was making it. Fortunately, as he was driving home, the sight of Dr.

Hargrave, marching absent-mindedly along near the post office, brought it to his mind again. With an impatient exclamation--for he prided himself upon fidelity to his given word, in small matters as well as in larger--he turned the horse about. He liked Dory Hargrave, and in a way admired him; Dory was easily expert at many of the sports at which Arthur had had to toil before he was able to make even a pa.s.sable showing. But Dory, somehow, made him uncomfortable. They had no point of view in common; Dory regarded as incidental and trivial the things which seemed of the highest importance to Arthur. Dory had his way to make in the world; Arthur had been spared that discomfort and disadvantage. Yet Dory persisted in pretending to regard Arthur as in precisely the same position as himself; once he had even carried the pretense to the impertinence of affecting to sympathize with Arthur for being so sorely handicapped. On that occasion Arthur had great difficulty in restraining plain speech. He would not have been thus tactful and gentlemanly had he not realized that Dory meant the best in the world, and was wholly unconscious that envy was his real reason for taking on such a preposterous pose. "Poor chap!" Arthur had reflected. "One shouldn't blame him for s.n.a.t.c.hing at any consolation, however flimsy." In those days Arthur often, in generous mood, admitted--to himself--that fortune had been shamefully partial in elevating him, without any effort on his part, but merely by the accident of birth, far above the overwhelming majority of young men. He felt doubly generous--in having such broad views and in not aggravating the misfortunes of the less lucky by expressing them.

Dr. Hargrave and his son--his only child--and his dead wife's sister, Martha Skeffington, lived in a quaint old brick house in University Avenue. A double row of ancient elms shaded the long walk straight up from the gate. On the front door was a huge bronze knocker which Arthur lifted and dropped several times without getting response. "Probably the girl's in the kitchen; and old Miss Skeffington is so deaf she couldn't hear," he thought. He had known the persons and the habits of that household from earliest boyhood. He followed the path round the house and thus came in sight of a small outbuilding at the far corner of the yard, on the edge of the bank overlooking and almost overhanging the river--Dory's "workshop." Its door was open and Arthur could see the whole of the interior. Dory and a young woman were standing by a bench at the window, were bending over something in which they seemed to be absorbed. Not until Arthur stepped upon the doorsill did they lift their heads.

"h.e.l.lo, Artie!" cried Dory, coming forward with extended hand.

Arthur was taking off his hat and bowing to the young woman. "h.e.l.lo, Theo," said he. "How d'ye do, Estelle?"

Miss Wilmot shook hands with him, a shade constrainedly. "How are you, Arthur?" she said.

It was in his mouth to ask why she hadn't been to see Adelaide. He checked himself just in time. She and Adelaide were great friends as youngsters at the public school, but the friends.h.i.+p cooled into acquaintance as Adelaide developed fas.h.i.+onable ideas and tastes. Also, Estelle had been almost a recluse since she was seventeen. The rest of the Wilmots went into Saint X's newly developed but flouris.h.i.+ng fas.h.i.+onable society. They had no money to give return entertainments or even to pay their share of the joint, dances and card parties Arthur decided to sheer off. "I came to ask you to the house for sup--dinner to-night," said he. "It's lonely--just mother and Del and me. Come and cheer us up. Come along with me now."

Dory looked confused. "I'm afraid I can't," he all but stammered.

"Of course, I can't blame you for not caring about coming." This a politeness, for Arthur regarded his invitation as an honor.

"Oh, you didn't understand me," protested Dory. "I was thinking of something entirely different." A pause during which he seemed to be reflecting. "I'll be glad to come," he finally said.

"You needn't bother to dress," continued Arthur.

Dory laughed--a frank, hearty laugh that showed the perfect white teeth in his wide, humorous-looking mouth. "Dress!" said he. "My other suit is, if anything, less presentable than this; and they're all I've got, except the frock--and I'm miserable in that."

Arthur felt like apologizing for having thus unwittingly brought out young Hargrave's poverty. "You look all right," said he.

"Thanks," said Dory dryly, his eyes laughing at Arthur.

And, as a matter of fact, though Arthur had not been sincere, Dory did look "all right." It would have been hard for any drapery not to have set well on that strong, lithe figure. And his face--especially the eyes--was so compelling that he would have had to be most elaborately overdressed to distract attention from what he was to what he wore.

On the way to the Rangers, he let Arthur do the talking; and if Arthur had been noticing he would have realized that Dory was not listening, but was busy with his own thoughts. Also Arthur would have noticed that, as they came round from the stables to the steps at the end of the front veranda, and as Dory caught sight of Adelaide, half-reclining in the hammock and playing with Simeon, his eyes looked as if he had been suddenly brought from the darkness into the light.

"Here's Dory Hargrave, Del," cried Arthur, and went on into the house, leaving them facing each other.

"So glad you've come," said Adelaide, her tone and manner at their friendliest.

But as she faced his penetrating eyes, her composure became less a.s.sured.

He looked straight at her until her eyes dropped--this while they were shaking hands. He continued to look, she feeling it and growing more and more uncomfortable.

"Why did you send for me?" he asked.

She would have liked to deny or to evade; but neither was possible. Now that he was before her she recalled his habit of compelling her always to be truthful not only with him but--what was far worse--also with herself.

"Did Arthur tell you I asked him to bring you?" she said, to gain time.

"No," was his reply. "But, as soon as he asked me, I knew."

It irritated her that this young man who was not at all a "man of the world" should be able so easily to fathom her. She had yet to learn that "man of the world" means man of a very small and insignificant world, while Dory Hargrave had been born a citizen of the big world, the real world--one who understands human beings, because his sympathies are broad as human nature itself, and his eyes clear of the scales of pretense. He was an ill.u.s.tration of the shallowness of the talk about the loneliness of great souls. It is the great souls that alone are not alone. They understand better than the self-conscious, posing ma.s.s of mankind the weakness and the pettiness of human nature; but they also appreciate its other side. And in the pettiest creature, they still see the greatness that is in every human being, in every living thing for that matter, its majesty of mystery and of potentiality--mystery of its living mechanism, potentiality of its position as a source of ever-ascending forms of life.

From the protoplasmal cell descends the genius; from the loins of the sodden toiler chained to the soil springs the mother of genius or genius itself. And where little people were bored and isolated, Dory Hargrave could without effort pa.s.s the barriers to any human heart, could enter in and sit at its inmost hearth, a welcome guest. He never intruded; he never misunderstood; he never caused the slightest uneasiness lest he should go away to sneer or to despise. Even old John Skeffington was confidential with him, and would have been friendly had not Dory avoided him.

Adelaide soon fell under the spell of this genius of his for inspiring confidence. She had not fully disclosed her plans to herself; she hesitated at letting herself see what her fury against Theresa and Ross had goaded her on to resolve. So she had no difficulty in persuading herself that she had probably sent for Dory chiefly to consult with him.

"There's something I want to talk over with you," said she; "but wait till after din--supper. Have you and Artie been playing tennis?"

"No, he found me at home. Estelle Wilmot and I were playing with a microscope."