“Got rid of him?” Lily repeated, slowly.
“Mamma — you — you weren’t—” She left the sentence eloquently unfinished.
“Certainly I wasn’t rude to him,” Mrs. Dodge returned, sharply. “I showed him the patience of an angel as long as I could, and then I merely mentioned something I wish I’d thought of long before; and he picked up his plush hat and yellow gloves and went home.”
“That’s as unjust as everything else you say of him. It isn’t plush; it’s velours,” Lily said. Then she asked ominously: “Mamma, what was it you merely mentioned?”
“I told him it was getting to be about your father’s usual time of returning for dinner; that was all.”
“All!” Lily cried. “When you knew that Papa wrote him to stop coming here, and Price never does come any more when Papa’s here.”
“Yes,” Mrs. Dodge said, grimly. “‘I’ll admit he’s that sensitive! Your father’s letter was courteous — but clear.”
“Courteous!” Lily echoed, and she became tragically rigid. She breathed visibly; her eyes were luminous with suffering and indignation; her sweet and searching little silver carillon of a voice became tremulous and loud. “It was unspeakable! I never knew Papa had such brutality in him. And you — I thought you were my friend, Mamma; but now I see what you did this afternoon! Price told you the story of his life because he was defending himself; he was trying to make you understand him. And all the while he was trying to, you sat there coldly critical, and then insulted him by telling him Papa might come in. You did, Mamma! You did! That’s just what it amounted to.”
“You consider it’s an insult to a young man to tell him that your father may be arriving home presently?”
“Under the circumstances,” Lily returned, bitterly, and quite correctly, “it certainly was a deadly insult.
And you say he isn’t sensitive! Nobody understands how sensitive he is! And to think he has to undergo such humiliations for me — all for me!” With that, becoming every moment more emotionally dramatic, Lily turned to a silver-framed photograph upon her desk, and addressed it, extending her arms to it in piteous appeal. “Oh!” she cried, “when I think of all you have to go through for my sake — for me — —”
“Lily!” her mother shouted. “Stop it! Stop that nonsense this instant. Good heavens! your father and I both thought you were getting over it. We thought you’d begun to see the truth about Price Gleason for yourself. What on earth has started you all up again?”
This was a singular question for Mrs. Dodge to be asking, since she herself was the origin of the renewal she thus lamented. Lily had indeed begun to question her own feeling for the romantic Gleason, as she had confessed to Ada within that very hour. Moreover, there had crept upon her lately some faint and secret little shadows of doubt in regard to the tale of Mexican slaughter and other tremendous narratives included by this new Othello as elements of his wooing. Left to herself, Lily might have found her doubt increasing; but her mother had changed all that in a few minutes.
Mrs. Dodge believed she had been accurately describing an unpleasantly absurd and erratic young egoist who had trespassed upon her time, her patience, and her credulity until she at last thought of a fortunate device to get rid of him; but this was not the picture she had painted upon her daughter’s mind. What Mrs. Dodge really made Lily see was a darkly handsome poet adventurer, eloquently telling the story of his life, not to a stirred Desdemona such as she herself had been, but to a cynical matron who sat in frosty judgment, disbelieving him, and then put humiliation upon him. Lily’s pale doubts of him vanished; Mrs. Dodge had made her his champion, with all ardours renewed.
Moreover, no one in the throes of a championing emotion likes to be asked, “What on earth has started you all up again?” Perhaps Lily resented this most of all, for the expression taken by her resentment was the one best calculated to dismay the questioner. “I’m not precisely ‘started up’ again, if you please, Mamma,” she said, suddenly icy, as she turned from the photograph. “It is time you and Papa both understood clearly. I have never stopped caring for Price. I have never cared for any one else.” And, having heard herself say it, she straightway believed it.
Mrs. Dodge uttered a dismal cry. “Oh, murder!” she said. “We’ve got it all to go through again!
“You cannot change me,” Lily informed her. “Nothing you could possibly say will ever change me.”
“But you know what he is!” Mrs. Dodge wailed, despairingly. “Your own father says there isn’t a word of truth in his whole body, and besides that, didn’t he inherit four thousand dollars from his great-aunt and spend almost every cent of it the day after he got it on an automobile, and then smash the automobile to pieces after a very wild party? You know he did, Lily! He’s irresponsible and he’s dissipated, too; everybody knows he is; and that’s why Mr. Corey didn’t want him to come to their house any more than your father wants him to come to ours. He was interested in Ada Corey before he began to come to see you, Lily.”
“I know all about it,” Lily said with dignity. “He told me, of course, that he’d had a friendship with Ada; and so did she. But Mr. Corey behaved so outrageously to him, they both thought it would be better to give it up.”
“Ada’s father and mother saw what that young man is, Lily,” Mrs. Dodge said, gravely. “They told Ada it was their wish that she shouldn’t receive him or encourage him in any way; and she listened to them and saw that they were right, and she obeyed them, Lily.”
“Yes,” said Lily; “she’s that sort of a girl. I’m not, Mamma.”
Mrs. Dodge’s eyes suddenly filled with tears. “I know you’re not,” she said, simply, out of much experience.
But at this Lily threw her arms about her. ‘Mamma!” she cried. “I wish I could be like Ada! I know how I trouble you, and I’d give anything to be a steady, philosophical, obedient, comfortable daughter! Oh, I do wish I could!”
“Then why can’t you do as she did about this young man, dear? Why can’t you see the truth about him as everybody else sees it? There aren’t any fathers and mothers of girls in the whole place that don’t feel the same way about him. He may seem fascinating to a few susceptible girls who haven’t any experience, but he’s just a bad sort of joke to everyone else. Why can’t you be as sensible as—”
But the moment of melting had passed. When her mother spoke of young Mr. Gleason as just a bad sort of joke, Lily stepped away from her, trembling. “Mamma,” she said, “I wish you never to speak of him to me again until you have learned to respect both him and myself.”
Mrs. Dodge stared helplessly; then, hearing her husband closing the front door downstairs, she made gestures as of wringing her hands, but said nothing, and went down to relieve herself by agitating Mr. Dodge with the painful narrative.
XIX. PARENTS IN DARKNESS
UPON ITS CONCLUSION, he went so far as to pace the floor of the library, and make what his wife called an attack upon herself. “I’ve done everything anybody could,” she protested in defence. “How could I help it if he has been here a few times when you weren’t in the house? It’s all very simple for you! You merely write him a letter and then sit in your office, miles away, and expect me to do the rest! You don’t have to go through the scenes with Lily when it comes to keeping him out. I believe it would be better, instead of making an attack on your wife, if you’d put your mind on what’s to be done about it.”
He shook his head gloomily. “I’m not so sure it was wise to write him that letter. I’m not sure we haven’t been mistaken in our whole policy with Lily.”
“Well, you’ve always overruled me,” Mrs. Dodge returned, defensively. “What mistake do you think you’ve made?”
“I think we’ve probably been wrong from the start,” he said. “Looking back over all our struggles with Lily, it’s begun to seem to me that we never once accomplished anything whatever by opposing her.”
“What! Don’t you realize that she’s still a child, and that
children have to be opposed for their own good?”
“Not when they’re nineteen, and it’s opposition about their love affairs or their friendships,” he returned, frowning; and he continued to walk up and down the room, his hands clasped behind him. “I mean open opposition, of course. I’ve begun to believe it never does the slightest good.”
“Why doesn’t it?” she asked, challengingly. “Are mothers and fathers supposed to sit aside with folded hands and calmly watch their children ruin their lives?”
He shook his head again, and sighed. “Sometimes it seems to me that fathers and mothers might just as well do that very thing. Certainly you and I could have saved ourselves a great waste of voice and gesticulation ever since Lily’s babyhood if we’d never opposed her. And so far as I can see, results would have been just the same. Suppose we go on struggling with her about this Gleason nuisance; trying to keep him away from her, arguing with her, and all the rest of it. Will it change her in the slightest? Will it do any good to anybody?”
“You mean to say that we have no effect whatever upon our own child?”
“No,” he answered. “We might have an effect. That’s just what I’m afraid of.”
“You mean we shouldn’t keep on telling Lily the truth about Price Gleason?” his wife cried, incredulously.
“Yes; I’ve almost come to that conclusion. It doesn’t seem to her to be the truth about him when we tell it. She only sees it as an attack on him. We spoil our own cause by making her his defender, and a defender can’t help idealizing what he defends. I’ve come to believe that’s where we parents make a lot of our worst mistakes — we’re always throwing our children into the camp of our enemies. And in particular, when a girl is showing signs of being in love with a worthless young poseur, like this Gleason, I believe that all our denouncing and arguing and bossing only puts a glamour about the fellow in the girl’s eyes, and makes her more certain she’s in love with him and wants to marry him.”
“Why, no,” Mrs. Dodge returned, triumphantly demolishing him at a stroke. “Look at Ada Corey. Her father and mother told her the truth about Price Gleason and declined to let her see him. That was enough for Ada. She just quietly gave him up.”
“I know — I know,” Mr. Dodge admitted; but clung to his point. “Ada isn’t like most girls of her age. I understand her, because she’s sensible, and I don’t understand most of ’em — particularly my own daughter; but I’ve grown pretty sure of one thing and that is this: If we want to throw Lily into this bounder’s arms, we’ll keep on telling her the truth about him. Our one chance is to let her alone and see if she won’t find it out for herself.”
“In other words, you intend to revoke our whole policy toward him?”
“In a manner, yes, I believe we should,” Mr. Dodge admitted. “I don’t go so far as to say I mean to tell Lily I consent to his coming to the house again; but I propose that we stop mentioning him at all in her presence, and that if she speaks of him we say nothing in dispraise of him. That is, from now on we’re no longer actively and openly opposing her; and if you’re going with her to that country club affair to-morrow night, and he’s there, I suggest that you do and say nothing to make her think you object to her being with him. Let her dance with him all she wants.”
“It won’t work,” Lily’s mother predicted ominously. “Ada Corey’s father took the right course; he simply put his foot down and that ended the matter. Why can’t you do as Mr. Corey did?”
Mr. Dodge uttered sounds of rueful laughter. “I’ve put my foot down with Lily so many times I’ve worn the sole off my shoe. Remember, too, it’s not so long ago since she cured herself of another infatuation because you thought it would be better for us to withdraw our opposition.”
“That was utterly different, and the whole Osborne affair was a mere childish absurdity. Lily’s older now, and you’re proposing a terribly dangerous thing.”
“Nevertheless, let’s try it. What else can we do but try it?”
“I suppose we’ve got to, since you’ve made up your mind,” his wife said, stubbornly. “But I consent to it under protest. She’s absolutely infatuated, and we’re throwing her straight in his arms. You’ll This tragic prophecy of hers was in a fair way to be fulfilled almost immediately, she thought, the next evening, as she sat in the little gallery of the Blue Hills Country Club ballroom and looked down upon the dancers. The radiant Lily danced again and again with the picturesque Gleason; and her posture, as they moved gracefully together, was significant — her vivid, delicate face was always uplifted, so that her happy eyes, sweetly confident, seemed continuously engaged with pretty messages to her partner. The poetically handsome Price, on his part, bent his dark head above her ardently; and a stranger would have guessed them at first sight to be a pair newly betrothed. In fact, Mrs. Dodge was disquieted by much such a guess of her own, and her heart sank as she watched them. Moreover, while her heart sank, her indignation rose. This, then, was the result of Mr. Dodge’s new policy! And she wished that he had been beside her to see its result — and to hear her opinion of it!
Her guess, however, like that of the supposititious stranger, was not quite accurate. Lily was not engaged to Mr. Gleason — not “absolutely” so, to report her own feeling in the matter. But she would have admitted being “almost” — almost engaged — that night. The Mexican hero had never definitely proposed marriage, any more than she had felt herself prepared for a definite consent to such a proposal; but his every persuasive word and look and all her own reciprocal coquetry pointed to that end. And as the evening continued and they danced and danced together, murmuring little piquancies to each other meanwhile, the haziness implied in “almost” seemed more and more on the point of being dispersed. Lily preferred that it be not quite; but her partner was “wonderful” to look up to, and to listen to as she looked. He had warmly appreciative dark eyes and a stirring mellow voice; and he danced, if not like a Mordkin, then at least like a Valentino, which may sometimes be preferable. All in all, she might have been swept away if he had pressed the sweeping.
She was the happier because he did not — the indefinite “almost” was so much pleasanter and more exciting — and she had what she defined as a simply magnificent time. Now and then she knew, in an untroubled, hazy way, that a mute doomfulness havered above her in the gallery; but she felt that her mother was behaving excellently — most surprisingly, too — in not interfering at all. The one thing to bother Lily — and that only a little, and because it puzzled her — came at the very end of the evening. It was something her friend Ada said to her as they were alone together in the corner of a cloakroom, preparing to go home after the last dance.
XX. DAMSEL DARK, DAMSEL FAIR
DIDN’T I TELL you that you could get away with anything?” Ada said. “Weren’t all three of ’em just as wild about you to-night as if you hadn’t done it?”
“Done what?”
“Skipped out to walk with me and didn’t leave any word behind, when you’d made engagements with all of ’em.” And then, as Lily’s flushed and happy face showed a complete vagueness upon the matter, Ada exclaimed, “Good gracious! Yesterday!”
Lily remembered, but as one remembers things of long ago. “Oh, that?” she said, dreamily. “It wasn’t anything.”
Ada looked at her sharply and oddly; and Lily afterward recalled the strangeness of this look. Ada’s eyes, usually placid, were wide and lustrous; her colour was high, and she seemed excited. “Have you done anything to get out of being practically almost engaged to any of them?” she whispered, leaning close. “If you haven’t, you don’t need to worry anyhow, Lily.”
She spoke hurriedly, all in a breath, then kissed Lily’s cheek quickly and whispered, “I’m sorry!” She ran out into the crowded hallway, drawing her cloak about her as she ran.
“Why, what in the world—” Lily began, but Ada was already out of hearing, and disappeared immediately among the homeward-bound dancers near the outer doors. Lily followed, b
ut could catch, not even a glimpse of her, though she found an opportunity to say good-night — again — to Mr. Gleason, who was departing.
“Good-night, but never good-bye, I hope,” he said, with a fervour somewhat preoccupied. “You’ve been beautiful to me. I hope you’ll always be my friend.” And with the air of a person pressed for time, he touched her hand briefly and passed on.’ Lily attributed his haste to the approach of her mother, who was ponderously bearing down upon them; but this interpretation may have been a mistaken one. Mr. Gleason had much on his mind at the moment, and Mrs. Dodge carefully withheld herself from joining her daughter until he had gone.
.. Mr. Dodge had not retired to bed; he was smoking in the library when the two ladies of his household returned from their merrymaking. Lily kissed him enthusiastically, while his wife stood by, pure granite.
“You’ve had a jolly evening, Lily?”
“Beautiful!” she said. “Oh, simply magnificent!” And she ran upstairs to bed.
That is to say, she was on her way to bed, and she ran up the stairs as far as the landing; but there she paused. The acoustic properties of the house were excellent, and from the stairway landing one could hear perfectly what was said in the library when the library door was open. What stopped Lily was the bitter conviction in her mother’s voice.
“Do you see?” Mrs. Dodge demanded. “Do you see what you’re doing? It’s just as I told you it would be. Absolutely!”
“Oh, no!” he protested. “This much isn’t a fair trial. You haven’t given it a chance.”
“Haven’t I?” Mrs. Dodge laughed satirically. “It’s had chance enough to show where it’s certain to end. Don’t you see that for yourself?”
“No. What makes you think I should?”
“I’ll tell you.” But before going on to relate her impressions of the evening, Mrs. Dodge had a deterrent thought. She stood silent a moment, then went to the door and called softly upward, “Lily?”
Collected Works of Booth Tarkington Page 375
