Charlotte did not die. She lived to grow robust and middle aged, energetic and even tyrannical. And as the transformation in her character took place she became more and more like the typical old maid: precise, methodical, absorbed in trifles, and attaching an exaggerated importance to the smallest social and domestic observances. Such was her reputation as a vigilant house-wife that, when poor Jim Ralston was killed by a fall from his horse, and left Delia, still young, with a boy and girl to bring up, it seemed perfectly natural that the heart-broken widow should take her cousin to live with her and share her task. But Delia Ralston never did things quite like other people. When she took Charlotte she took Charlotte’s foundling too: a dark-haired child with pale brown eyes, and the odd incisive manner of children who have lived too much with their elders. The little girl was called Tina Lovell: it was vaguely supposed that Charlotte had adopted her. She grew up on terms of affectionate equality with her young Ralston cousins, and almost as much so—it might be said—with the two women who mothered her. But, impelled by an instinct of imitation which no one took the trouble to correct, she always called Delia Ralston “Mamma,” and Charlotte Lovell “Aunt Chatty.” She was a brilliant and engaging creature, and people marvelled at poor Chatty’s luck in having chosen so interesting a specimen among her foundlings (for she was by this time supposed to have had a whole asylum-full to choose from).
The agreeable elderly bachelor, Sillerton Jackson, returning from a prolonged sojourn in Paris (where he was understood to have been made much of by the highest personages) was immensely struck by Tina’s charms when he saw her at her coming-out ball, and asked Delia’s permission to come some evening and dine alone with her and her young people. He complimented the widow on the rosy beauty of her own young Delia; but the mother’s keen eye perceived that all the while he was watching Tina, and after dinner he confided to the older ladies that there was something “very French” in the girl’s way of doing her hair, and that in the capital of all the Elegances she would have been pronounced extremely stylish.
“Oh—” Delia deprecated, beamingly, while Charlotte Lovell sat bent over her work with pinched lips; but Tina, who had been laughing with her cousins at the other end of the room was around upon her elders in a flash.
“I heard what Mr. Sillerton said! Yes, I did, Mamma: he says I do my hair stylishly. Didn’t I always tell you so? I know it’s more becoming to let it curl as it wants to than to plaster it down with bandoline like Aunty’s—”
“Tina, Tina—you always think people are admiring you!” Miss Lovell protested.
“Why shouldn’t I, when they do?” the girl laughingly challenged; and, turning her mocking eyes on Sillerton Jackson: “Do tell Aunt Charlotte not to be so dreadfully old-maidish!”
Delia saw the blood rise to Charlotte Lovell’s face. It no longer painted two brick-rose circles on her thin cheek-bones, but diffused a harsh flush over her whole countenance, from the collar fastened with an old-fashioned garnet brooch to the pepper-and-salt hair (with no trace of red left in it) flattened down over her hollow temples.
That evening, when they went up to bed, Delia called Tina into her room.
“You ought not to speak to your Aunt Charlotte as you did this evening, dear. It’s disrespectful—you must see that it hurts her.”
The girl overflowed with compunction. “Oh, I’m so sorry! Because I said she was an old maid? But she is, isn’t she, Mamma? In her inmost soul, I mean. I don’t believe she’s ever been young—ever thought of fun or admiration or falling in love—do you? That’s why she never understands me, and you always do, you darling dear Mamma.” With one of her light movements, Tina was in the widow’s arms.
“Child, child,” Delia softly scolded, kissing the dark curls planted in five points on the girl’s forehead.
There was a soft foot-fall in the passage, and Charlotte Lovell stood in the door. Delia, without moving, sent her a glance of welcome over Tina’s shoulder.
“Come in, Charlotte. I’m scolding Tina for behaving like a spoilt baby before Sillerton Jackson. What will he think of her?”
“Just what she deserves, probably,” Charlotte returned with a cold smile. Tina went toward her, and her thin lips touched the girl’s proffered forehead just where Delia’s warm kiss had rested. “Good-night, child,” she said in her dry tone of dismissal.
The door closed on the two women, and Delia signed to Charlotte to take the armchair opposite to her own.
“Not so near the fire,” Miss Lovell answered. She chose a straight-backed seat, and sat down with folded hands. Delia’s eyes rested absently on the thin ringless fingers: she wondered why Charlotte never wore her mother’s jewels.
“I overheard what you were saying to Tina, Delia. You were scolding her because she called me an old maid.”
It was Delia’s turn to colour. “I scolded her for being disrespectful, dear; if you heard what I said you can’t think that I was too severe.”
“Not too severe: no. I’ve never thought you too severe with Tina; on the contrary.”
“You think I spoil her?”
“Sometimes.”
Delia felt an unreasoning resentment. “What was it I said that you object to?”
Charlotte returned her glance steadily. “I would rather she thought me an old maid than—”
“Oh—” Delia murmured. With one of her quick leaps of intuition she had entered into the other’s soul, and once more measured its shuddering loneliness.
“What else,” Charlotte inexorably pursued, “Can she possibly be allowed to think me—ever?”
“I see…I see…” the widow faltered.
“A ridiculous narrow-minded old maid—nothing else,” Charlotte Lovell insisted, getting to her feet, “or I shall never feel safe with her.”
“Goodnight, my dear,” Delia said compassionately. There were moments when she almost hated Charlotte for being Tina’s mother, and others, such as this, when her heart was wrung by the tragic spectacle of that unavowed bond.
Charlotte seemed to have divined her thought.
“Oh, but don’t pity me! She’s mine,” she murmured, going.
VII.
Delia Ralston sometimes felt that the real events of her life did not begin until both her children had contracted—so safely and suitably—their irreproachable New York alliances. The boy had married first, choosing a Vandergrave in whose father’s bank at Albany he was to have an immediate junior partnership; and young Delia (as her mother had foreseen she would) had selected John Junius, the safest and soundest of the many young Halseys, and, followed him to his parent’s house the year after her brother’s marriage.
After young Delia had left the house in Gramercy Park it was inevitable that Tina should take the centre front of its narrow stage. Tina had reached the marriageable age, she was admired and sought after; but what hope was there of her finding a husband? The two watchful women did not propound this question to each other; but Delia Ralston, brooding over it day by day, and taking it up with her when she mounted at night to her bedroom, knew that Charlotte Lovell, at the same hour, carried the same problem with her to the floor above.
The two cousins, during their eight years of life together, had seldom openly disagreed. Indeed, it might almost have been said that there was nothing open in their relation. Delia would have had it otherwise: after they had once looked so deeply into each other’s souls it seemed unnatural that a veil should fall between them. But she understood that Tina’s ignorance of her origin must at all costs be preserved, and that Charlotte Lovell, abrupt, passionate and inarticulate, knew of no other security than to wall herself up in perpetual silence.
So far had she carried this self-imposed reticence that Mrs. Ralston was surprised at her suddenly asking, soon after young Delia’s marriage, to be allowed to move down into the small bedroom next to Tina’s that had been left vacant by the bride’s departure.
“But you’ll be so much less comfortable there, Chat
ty. Have you thought of that? Or is it on account of the stairs?”
“No; it’s not the stairs,” Charlotte answered with her usual bluntness. How could she avail herself of the pretext Delia offered her, when Delia knew that she still ran up and down the three flights like a girl? “It’s because I should be next to Tina,” she said, in a low voice that jarred like an untuned string.
“Oh—very well. As you please.” Mrs. Ralston could not tell why she felt suddenly irritated by the request, unless it were that she had already amused herself with the idea of fitting up the vacant room as a sitting-room for Tina. She had meant to do it in pink and pale green, like an opening flower.
“Of course, if there is any reason—” Charlotte suggested, as if reading her thought.
“None whatever; except that—well, I’d meant to surprise Tina by doing the room up as a sort of little boudoir where she could have her books and things, and see her girl friends.”
“You’re too kind Delia; but Tina mustn’t have boudoirs,” Miss Lovell answered ironically, the green specks showing in her eyes.
“Very well: as you please,” Delia repeated, in the same irritated tone. “I’ll have your things brought down tomorrow.”
Charlotte paused in the doorway. “You’re sure there’s no other reason?”
“Other reason? Why should there be?” The two women looked at each other almost with hostility, and Charlotte turned to go.
The talk once over, Delia was annoyed with herself for having yielded to Charlotte’s wish. Why must it always be she who gave in, she who, after all, was the mistress of the house, and to whom both Charlotte and Tina might almost be said to owe their very existence, or at least all that made it worth having? Yet whenever any question arose about the girl it was invariably Charlotte who gained her point, Delia who yielded: it seemed as if Charlotte, in her mute obstinate way, were determined to take every advantage of the dependence that made it impossible for a woman of Delia’s nature to oppose her.
In truth, Delia had looked forward more than she knew to the quiet talks with Tina to which the little boudoir would have lent itself. While her own daughter inhabited the room, Mrs. Ralston had been in the habit of spending an hour there every evening, chatting with the two girls while they undressed, and listening to their comments on the incidents of the day. She always knew beforehand exactly what her own girl would say; but Tina’s views and opinions were a perpetual delicious shock to her. Not that they were strange or unfamiliar; there were moments when they seemed to well straight up from the dumb depths of Delia’s own past. Only they expressed feelings she had never uttered, ideas she had hardly avowed to herself: Tina sometimes said things which Delia Ralston, in far-off self-communions, had imagined herself saying to Clement Spender.
And now there would be an end to these evening talks: if Charlotte had asked to be lodged next to her daughter, might it not conceivably be because she wished them to end? It had never before occurred to Delia that her influence over Tina might be resented; now the discovery flashed a light far down into the abyss which had always divided the two women. But a moment later Delia reproached herself for attributing feelings of jealousy to her cousin. Was it not rather to herself that she should have ascribed them? Charlotte, as Tina’s mother, had every right to wish to be near her, near her in all senses of the word; what claim had Delia to oppose to that natural privilege? The next morning she gave the order that Charlotte’s things should be taken down to the room next to Tina’s.
That evening, when bedtime came, Charlotte and Tina went upstairs together; but Delia lingered in the drawing-room, on the pretext of having letters to write. In truth, she dreaded to pass the threshold where, evening after evening, the fresh laughter of the two girls used to waylay her while Charlotte Lovell already slept her old-maid sleep on the floor above. A pang went through Delia at the thought that henceforth she would be cut off from this means of keeping her hold on Tina.
An hour later, when she mounted the stairs in her turn, she was guiltily conscious of moving as noiselessly as she could along the heavy carpet of the corridor, and of pausing longer than was necessary over the putting out of the gas-jet on the landing. As she lingered she strained her ears for the sound of voices from the adjoining doors behind which Charlotte and Tina slept; she would have been secretly hurt at hearing talk and laughter from within. But none came, nor was there any light beneath the doors. Evidently Charlotte, in her hard methodical way, had said goodnight to her daughter, and gone straight to bed as usual. Perhaps she had never approved of Tina’s vigils, of the long undressing punctuated with mirth and confidences; she might have asked for the room next to her daughter’s simply because she did not want the girl to miss her “beauty sleep.”
Whenever Delia tried to explore the secret of her cousin’s actions she returned from the adventure humiliated and abashed by the base motives she found herself attributing to Charlotte. How was it that she, Delia Ralston, whose happiness had been open and avowed to the world, so often found herself envying poor Charlotte the secret of her scanted motherhood? She hated herself for this movement of envy whenever she detected it, and tried to atone for it by a softened manner and a more anxious regard for Charlotte’s feelings; but the attempt was not always successful, and Delia sometimes wondered if Charlotte did not resent any show of sympathy as an indirect glance at her misfortune. The worst of suffering such as hers was that it left one sore to the gentlest touch…
Delia, slowly undressing before the same lace-draped toilet-glass which had reflected her bridal image, was turning over these thoughts when she heard a light knock. She opened the door, and there stood Tina, in a dressing-gown, her dark curls falling over her shoulders.
With a happy heart-beat Delia held out her arms.
“I had to say goodnight, Mamma,” the girl whispered.
“Of course, dear.” Delia pressed a long kiss on her lifted forehead. “Run off now, or you might disturb your aunt. You know she sleeps badly, and you must be as quiet as a mouse now she’s next to you.”
“Yes, I know,” Tina acquiesced, with a grave glance that was almost of complicity.
She asked no further question, she did not linger: lifting Delia’s hand she held it a moment against her cheek, and then stole out as noiselessly as she had come.
VIII.
“But you must see,” Charlotte Lovell insisted, laying aside the Evening Post, “that Tina has changed. You do see that?”
The two women were sitting alone by the drawing-room fire in Gramercy Park. Tina had gone to dine with her cousin, young Mrs. John Junius Halsey, and was to be taken afterward to a ball at the Vandergraves’, from which the John Juniuses had promised to see her home. Mrs. Ralston and Charlotte, their early dinner finished, had the long evening to themselves. Their custom on such occasions, was for Charlotte to read the news aloud to her cousin, while the latter embroidered; but tonight, all through Charlotte’s conscientious progress from column to column, without a slip or an omission, Delia had felt her, for some special reason, alert to take advantage of her daughter’s absence.
To gain time before answering, Mrs. Ralston bent over a stitch in her delicate white embroidery.
“Tina changed? Since when?” she questioned.
The answer flashed out instantly. “Since Lanning Halsey has been coming here so much.”
“Lanning? I used to think he came for Delia,” Mrs. Ralston mused, speaking at random to gain still more time.
“It’s natural you should suppose that every one came for Delia,” Charlotte rejoined dryly; “but as Lanning continues to seek every chance of being with Tina—”
Mrs. Ralston raised her head and stole a swift glance at her cousin. She had in truth noticed that Tina had changed, as a flower changes at the mysterious moment when the unopened petals flush from within. The girl had grown handsomer, shyer, more silent, at times more irrelevantly gay. But Delia had not associated these variations of mood with the presence of Lanni
ng Halsey, one of the numerous youths who had haunted the house before young Delia’s marriage. There had, indeed, been a moment when Mrs. Ralston’s eye had been fixed, with a certain apprehension, on the handsome Lanning. Among all the sturdy and stolid Halsey cousins he was the only one to whom a prudent mother might have hesitated to entrust her daughter; it would have been hard to say why, except that he was handsomer and more conversable than the rest, chronically unpunctual, and totally unperturbed by the fact. Clem Spender had been like that; and what if young Delia—?
But young Delia’s mother was speedily reassured. The girl, herself arch and appetizing, took no interest in the corresponding graces except when backed by more solid qualities. A Ralston to the core, she demanded the Ralston virtues, and chose the Halsey most worthy of a Ralston bride.
Mrs. Ralston felt that Charlotte was waiting for her to speak. “It will be hard to get used to the idea of Tina’s marrying,” she said gently. “I don’t know what we two old women shall do, alone in this empty house—for it will be an empty house then. But I suppose we ought to face the idea.”
“I do face it,” said Charlotte Lovell gravely.
“And you dislike Lanning? I mean, as a husband for Tina?”
Miss Lovell folded the evening paper, and stretched out a thin hand for her knitting. She glanced across the citron-wood work-table at her cousin. “Tina must not be too difficult—” she began.
“Oh—” Delia protested, reddening.
“Let us call things by their names,” the other evenly pursued. “That’s my way, when I speak at all. Usually, as you know, I say nothing.”
The widow made a sign of assent, and Charlotte went on: “It’s better so. But I’ve always known a time would come when we should have to talk this thing out.”
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