The Magpies Nest

by Isabel Paterson

  Packed away neatly she had half a dozen letters from Mary to people who might be able to help her find a footing. But that part of the future did not seem to matter so much. Mary knew people all over the world, and reassured her needlessly as to her ability to make her way in some sort.

  "I thought you meant to come with me," said Hope. "I promised to stay," said Mary. So she went alone, as she had come.

  PART II THE FORTY-SIXTH LATITUDE

  CHAPTER XVII

  THE carpet was red, and a red-flowered screen stood in front of the wood-fire in the grate. A rose-coloured lantern hung over the electric lamp. In the tempered light Hope looked not a day older. Perhaps she should not have; three years is no great time in the early twenties. But to Mary's quietly observant second glance it was plain she was thinner, and her sleepy eyes seemed larger, still softly blue, but impenetrable. Inquiring eyes still, now they volunteered nothing; and her thinness brought out strongly the salient line from chin to ear.

  "I never noticed the visible sign of her obstinacy before," thought Mary, saying aloud:

  "You're pretty sometimes, Hope."

  "What a backhander," remarked Hope. "Would you like me to tell you you must have been pretty once? I look a hag by daylight. Did you come all this way to flatter me? Tell me all the news instantly. Oh, if I could tell you how I've missed you!"

  "Well, I was pretty once," remarked Mary placidly. "That's no mean consolation—at thirty. And I came all this way to beat you. You should be strong enough to stand it now; you weren't when you left."

  "Maybe I'm not now," said Hope. "I nearly killed myself kicking against the pricks for a long, long time.

  If I look well-preserved, it's because I pickled myself in brine of my own making. I had to stop when I found I was getting nerves. Extraordinary things, nerves. Have you any?"

  "Enough," said Mary. "You never told me, in your letters?"

  "About my teapot tempests? They weren't worth it." She rose and went across the room to pick up a fan of carved sandalwood, but merely played with it, as if her hands demanded occupation. And she no longer relaxed into her chair, but seemed always ready to leave it again. It was true; she had made immense drains on her reserve vitality, and she knew herself that now she lived from day to day, storing up nothing. But it did not seem a matter of moment. "But news, woman, news!" she demanded.

  "I think I must have written you everything," said Mary. "That Lisbeth's gone abroad—I was so glad when the money came to her."

  "Is she happy?" asked Hope softly, almost as afraid of the word.

  "There are several kinds of happiness,"' said Mary. "Yes, she has hers. Did you know that she hoped you would write?"

  "No. But I am glad. I suppose we felt just the same! I wanted her to write. How is Con—Mr. Edgerton?"

  "He's made another million," said Mary, laughing. "And he sent you this. I saved it till you should ask." She reached into the bosom of her gown and drew out a carved gold bracelet, held on a ribbon. "I was so afraid of losing it. He said you had such round arms."

  "He does remember me," said Hope, with mirth in her eye.

  "Do you remember him?"

  And Hope showed herself different.

  "You want to know if I regret him? No, but I'm glad I knew him. What a plague he missed! I don't believe I regret anything much— what's done is done— except..."

  "Except who?"

  "Except Allen Kirby." And Hope laughed at the open surprise in Mary's face. "I wonder what became of him, and I'll never know."

  "I daresay you do," said Mary drily. "He was the only one who escaped you, wasn't he? Well, I used to envy you both sometimes; you were so young You are very comfortable here."

  It was comfortable, if shabby; there, was room enough, a big window for the drawing-board, large chairs in which the mistress of the place could be pleasantly swallowed up, and the spiritual consolation of an open fire. Hope had taken it over in toto from some migrating bachelor tenant, and, characteristically, had altered nothing in it, unless by a very few small additions.

  "Yes," she said, grinning, "you can let your soul down here; there's not an atom of taste in it to live up to. Nothing to clash with my Art! And that Chinese lantern is the greatest labour saver. When I haven't time to dust, I simply drop that over the lamp. I call the whole place The Tub!"

  "You pup!" remarked Mary, in her delicious, well-bred tones. "Hope, does your Art progress?"

  "Well, you've seen it," said Hope dubiously. She drew for a coloured Sunday fashion page of a city daily—large-eyed and sweetly simpering girls in meticulously up-to-date frocks—and filled in during the week with whatever might be required of her in the way of special illustrations, some of which betrayed an impish humour that struggled through her limited technique with more or less success. "I don't think it's a topic for polite conversation. Ask me how I like Seattle; nobody has for nearly a year and I miss the dear old question."

  "How do you like Seattle?"

  "Very much. A newspaper is rather fun, isn't it?"

  "It gives you the key of the fields, to a certain extent," agreed Mary, in whose mind that point had special importance just then. "Have you many friends here?"

  Hope shook her head, rose, and walked about the room again.

  "No," she said. "Acquaintances—some agreeable people. I can't seem to put anyone in the place you and the others occupied. Oh, I have been so lonely, but I didn't want new people. But look, I like this better than the dust and desolation I left." She drew back the curtain. Mary came and stood beside her. The house stood on top of one of Seattle's myriad hills, and over the roofs of the buildings that dropped away like a vast dark stairway to the harbour they could see far down, to a galaxy of twinkling lights that marked the mast-heads of ships from all the ports of the world. And a climbing rose peered in at the casement from the violet dusk. "I like all that," said Hope. "I daresay I'm romantic yet. Sometimes I go down to the docks and mouse around for hours, sniffing at bales of stuff in tea-matting and piles of square timber—smells of spices and cedar and the salt-water —and Chinamen and bilges," she broke off, laughing. "There are weird shops down there, too, and yellow-faced people, and big tall turbaned men with black beards—Sikhs. And lumberjacks and sailormen. I wish I could really draw. You must come down tomorrow. No, I haven't really any friends. Oh, bother!"

  The door-bell was tinkling apologetically. She dropped the curtain and went across the room quickly, but drew the door open only a few inches. Mary had a momentary glimpse of a tentative looking young man, quite a personable youth, holding his hat in his hand in a manner ludicrously suggestive of one waiting for instructions. He must have said good evening, at least, but Hope did not listen.

  "I'm sorry, Ches," she said. "I forgot; and I'm busy. I want to talk to Mary to-night. She came a day early. I don't believe I'll have any time this week —why, yes, you might take us round to see the town; I never thought of that. Telephone me; good night." She closed the door again with decision, and the tentative youth apparently ceased to exist.

  "Well, if you haven't any friends. I should think you must have a few enemies," suggested Mary mildly.

  "Who—Ches Landry? Oh, bosh!" She seemed to think that enough, but amplified, with a yawn, "I didn't say I was a hermit, It serves him right," she added darkly.

  "Because he's a man?"

  "Oh, no—really, I have a sense of humour left. He's merely an example of it. The first time I met him he said he didn't like me and I heard about it!"

  Envisioning that waiting attitude, Mary said:

  "Nero was at that rate a great humourist. Do you jest often?"

  "Now, you're inquisitive," said Hope defensively. "Well, there was one other; but I wasn't the humourist that time. Perhaps you'll appreciate this, so I will divest myself of honour and tell you. I had a proposal here —one. His name doesn't matter, but there's his portrait." She tossed over a photo of another man, not so young quite, but still ornamental, wearing that peculiar expression of
insouciance almost typical of the man who, with every opportunity to succeed, still fails. Just such a look Tony Yorke had. "He didn't belong here, and he clung to my hearthstone like a drowning mariner."

  "A drowning mariner," reflected Mary audibly, "really might make a better choice of something to cling to than a hearthstone."

  "So might this party," retorted Hope promptly. "I was just telling you he was a stranger here, and 'that's how it all began.' I became quite an agreeable habit to him, and, falling in with what I suspect was another habit of his, he proposed. He told me that he had had his romance, and no doubt I had had one; he could not ask my first girlish love, or words to that effect, and hoped I felt the same. I was positively quite sympathetic, and he told me how his heart had been blighted. She was all that was lovely and good, but neither of 'em had much money, so she married another man who had. It broke their hearts, of course, but what could they do? He gave her his blessing. Do you know—would you believe it—he really thought she had done something highly creditable in landing the man with money! Yes, he respected her for it! I simply goggled at him, and asked why on earth they couldn't have taken a chance and lived on what he earned. I shall never forget his answer. He said I didn't understand—she was too fine and rare—why, she paid fifteen dollars a pair for her shoes! I told him I did, too, sometimes, and earned the money myself. We weren't really simpatico, after that."

  "But are you divorced—did you tell him you were free?" Truly Hope had changed.

  "I did not," said Hope. "I do not tell anything to anyone. Mary, do you just happen to know anything about Ned? Where is he—and what—and why?"

  "I believe he is back in Montreal, still in the bank," said Mary. "Of course, you know his people, after everything..."

  "Ah, yes, that's something else I should like to know now. What was 'everything'? People did hear of it, then?"

  "Oh, heavens," said Mary, "it was a nine days' wonder; everyone knew, and no one knew just how it got about. If I had felt like laughing, I'd have laughed myself weary, watching them try to make up their minds to ask me, and not doing it. Ned closed up like a clam, too. And his people heard, and he went home suddenly, and went into the bank again at home.

  That's all I know. Do you still think..."

  "No. I was just curious." She sighed a little, and poked the fire absently. It was late spring, but the evenings were still refreshingly cool. "I forgot to ask about Emily Edgerton."

  "She's engaged to someone I don't know—a man from the East, I think," said Mary. "I saw her awhile ago; she's quite wonderful."

  One other, too, she had forgotten to ask about. Not once did she mention Tony Yorke's name, and at the end of the visit Mary was convinced it was from neither pride nor pique, but because she did not care. But then neither did she seem to care much for anything; that inquiry in her eyes was terribly impersonal. Mary had come to see, and now she did not like what she saw. Once she had vowed she would never again play deus ex machina, but what was a vow against a friend? Mary thought deeply during the week of her stay, and sifted Hope's life to the bottom. In it she found only husks and a few vivid memories; poor food for a soul that must fare as it may. Hope had grown —she even looked physically taller, perhaps because of her thinness—she was a woman, now, but she had not come into a woman's heritage.

  The episode of Ches Landry served as a keynote to her emotional state. Hope had really told it all in the one sentence. When she met him she had had her face turned from men in apathy, hardly in scorn; and his casual flouting of her had affected her strangely. Was she not desirable—she, who had been torn by the very claws of desire? It was to make nothing of her griefs, and, in short, she would not endure it. And then, having vindicated her right to her own woe, he was nothing to her. He had never kissed her lips; more, he had hardly touched her hand. She made a casual confession of that to Mary, and turned her emotions inside out briefly for her friend's enlightenment.

  "I understand, now; I haven't got my astounding ignorance for an excuse. So I can't play at it all any more. Con used to kiss me sometimes, and it just meant to me that he was kind and I liked him. What should I do if I met him again? Well, I'm sorry about Ches—that is, if I've hurt him; he never said — I was a cat; I won't do it again. But you can see it's those terms or nothing; and he doesn't go away. There won't be any others, probably."

  "You flatter yourself," said Mary.

  "No, I don't," said Hope. "I used to. I was always weaving nets and throwing them to the winds to snare love. Not for any one man—but every girl's like that —you know yourself, you find what you're looking for. Like a sailor whistling up a wind; it's our attitude. If it hadn't been for that, should I ever have taken Ned seriously? Why, I thought that men might die for love; not that I quite foresaw him in such extremity, but it seemed a terrible thing for me--as if every touch of fever might be mortal! Maybe love does make the world go round; but at that, I needn't have imagined it would stop turning because a young cub sighed in vain after some particular girl." She laughed lightly.

  If in the face of that declaration it seemed foolish of her to be still so spent and undone, the point were missed. She suffered not from the mere loss of the desired object, but from the moral shock of seeing Tony as he was, and the following revelation of her marriage. To have her sand castle swept away by the tide was perhaps no great matter—but what dead men's bones had come to light in the backwash!

  And now she firmly believed she was done with all that.

  "Read Merimée," said Mary. "He has wisdom for you." She quoted: " 'You have troubles of the mind, pleasures of the mind, but the viscera called heart is developed at 25 years of age only, in the forty-sixth latitude. When you shall have a heart for good . . . you shall regret the good old days when you were living only by the mind, and you shall see that the evils which make you suffer now are only pinpricks in comparison with the stabs which shall rain on you when the days of passion come!' "

  "Yes, no doubt," said Hope rather absently, but with a sudden unlooked-for kindling of energy in eyes and figure. "No; I mean, you're wide of the mark. You know why I was so anxious to have you come now."

  "I thought you wanted to see me," Mary offered.

  "So I did, idiot! But it was to say morituri, te salutamus. I am going away."

  "Now, you've forestalled me," said Mary, with mild disgust. "I came to make you go. And where?"

  "To find the forty-sixth latitude? No, of course not. I'm going to find the other things. There are other things, aren't there? No sentimental journey. I feel so, so ridiculous, after sitting around moping for three years. If you want to express a similar opinion, do so."

  "No, I decline to waste words. But tell me, what do you really hope to find?" All Mary's worldly wisdom was in the anxious glance she bent on Hope. This romanticism—how it could disguise itself, reappear smiling with a fresh face! "Do you hope to be famous?"

  "The woman is mad," scoffed Hope. "Famous? I? No. But I'm going to get something," she said, with an assumption of dark mysteriousness that did not conceal a real determination.

  "But what?" asked Mary rather wildly.

  "I'll tell you when I get it." She sobered suddenly. "Why, Mary, I thought you believed in life?"

  "Yes—no—of course I do. The only people who don't commit suicide."

  "Too dogmatic. Some of 'em live just through inanition. Well, I'm going after the thing we believe in, whatever it is. It doesn't seem to be love."

  "Much you know about love," scoffed Mary, under her breath.

  Hope divined the words, and answered them only with an impudent sidelong glance.

  "Whatever it is," she repeated calmly. "Maybe the thing itself is only knowledge of what it is. Giggle at my grandiloquence, if you like; but also admire my practical nature. I have a tender young shoot of a bank account already, provision against the seven lean years while I shall be walking around the walls of Jericho blowing my trumpet."

  "Blowing your nose," returned Mary in mild exasp
eration. "When you mix your allusions, do it thoroughly. Now, why must you take the wind out of my sails, when my heart was set on meddling again?"

  She meddled so far as to press an emergency fund on Hope of a hundred dollars. She did not mention that the money was not her own, but said it could be easily spared. In fact, it came from Edgerton, a sort of last tribute. He saw her, at Mary's determination— already confided to him—receding still further from him, in time and physical distance; and speeded her with gifts and garlands, like a Hawaiian host.

  A week was all too short, Hope said pleadingly, for Mary's visit, which had been long deferred. She was silenced when Mary at last divulged her reason for haste.

  "My divorce is to be heard," she said, "very shortly, before the Senate."

  "Why, Mary!" Hope almost shrieked, "I never knew you were married!"

  "No?" said Mary interestedly. "I suppose I forgot I had left all that behind me in the East. Some people there knew it, of course; I believe I took you for granted. But you never heard gossip. You are so tactful, though, that no doubt that was why I thought you never mentioned it. You have a tactful heart. You ought to get a divorce yourself. No family should be without one."

  "It's expensive," said Hope dubiously. "And what would I do with it? I have so many other things to do. How does it come you are getting one now? You see, my heart has hardened."

  "Because at last I have been able to produce a reason that convinces my worthy uncle." Mary smiled. "You shall hear it some time. Uncle is putting the divorce through quietly, and paying for it. With his influence, there will be no trouble—nor publicity. Now, we must plan for your descent on the great world."

  They talked of that, and did not mention the divorce again.

  So Hope was a-wing again when Mary left; or if not yet, still she was poised for flight; her resolution was made. There remained only the summer for preparation.

  The curious thing about this was that she was going with neither joy nor interest, but merely urged by something iron in her own soul that refused to be still and rust.