Something in Stephanie’s gray eyes checked her. When breeding goes to pieces it makes a worse mess of it than does sheer vulgarity.
“If I were Louis I would marry her,” said Stephanie very quietly. “I gave him that advice.”
She rose, looking down at Lily where she sat bowed over her wool-work, her face buried in her hands.
“Think about it; and talk patiently with Louis,” she said gently.
Passing the stairs she glanced toward the telephone. Louis was still talking to somebody in New York.
* * * * *
It was partly fear of what her husband had hinted, partly terror of what she considered worse still — a legal marriage — that drove Lily Collis to write once more to Valerie West:
“DEAR MISS WEST: It is not that I have any disposition to doubt your word to me, but, in view of the assurance you have given me, do you consider it wise to permit my brother’s rather conspicuous attentions to you?
“Permit me, my dear Miss West, as an older woman with wider experience which years must bring, to suggest that it is due to yourself to curtail an intimacy which the world — of course mistakenly in your case — views always uncharitably.
“No man — and I include my brother as severely as I do any man — has a right to let the world form any misconception as to his intentions toward any woman. If he does he is either ignorant or selfish and ruthless; and it behooves a girl to protect her own reputation.
“I write this in all faith and kindliness for your sake as well as for his. But a man outlives such things, a woman never. And, for the sake of your own future I beg you to consider this matter and I trust that you may not misconstrue the motive which has given me the courage to write you what has caused me deepest concern.
“Very sincerely yours,
“LILY COLLIS.”
To which Valerie replied:
“MY DEAR, MRS. COLLIS: I have to thank you for your excellent intentions in writing me. But with all deference to your wider experience I am afraid that I must remain the judge of my own conduct. Pray, believe that, in proportion to your sincerity, I am grateful to you; and that I should never dream of being discourteous to Mr. Neville’s sister if I venture to suggest to her that liberty of conscience is a fundamental scarcely susceptible of argument or discussion.
“I assume that you would not care to have Mr. Neville know of this correspondence, and for that reason I am returning to you your letter so that you may be assured of its ultimate destruction.
“Very truly yours,
“VALERIE WEST.”
Which letter and its reply made Valerie deeply unhappy; and she wrote
Neville a little note saying that she had gone to the country with
Hélène d’Enver for a few days’ rest.
The countess had taken a house among the hills at Estwich; and as chance would have it, about eight miles from Ashuelyn and Penrhyn Cardemon’s great establishment, El Naúar.
Later Valerie was surprised and disturbed to learn of the proximity of Neville’s family, fearing that if Mrs. Collis heard of her in the neighbourhood she might misunderstand.
But there was only scant and rough communication between Ashuelyn and
Estwich; the road was a wretched hill-path passable only by buck-boards;
Westwich was the nearest town to Ashuelyn and El Naúar and the city of
Dartford, the county seat most convenient to Estwich.
Spring was early; the Estwich hills bloomed in May; and Hélène d’Enver moved her numerous household from the huge Castilione Apartment House to Estwich and settled down for a summer of mental and physical recuperation.
Valerie, writing to Neville the first week in May, said:
“Louis, the country here is divine. I thought the shaggy, unkempt hills of Delaware County were heavenly — and they were when you came and made them so — but this rich, green, well-ordered country with its hills and woods and meadows of emerald — its calm river, its lovely little brooks, its gardens, hedges, farms, is to me the most wonderful land I ever looked upon.
“Hélène has a pretty house, white with green blinds and verandas, and the loveliest lawns you ever saw — unless the English lawns are lovelier.
“To my city-wearied eyes the region is celestial in its horizon-wide quiet. Only the ripple of water in leafy ravines — only the music of birds breaks the silence that is so welcome, so blessed.
“To-day Hélène and I picked strawberries for breakfast, then filled the house with great fragrant peonies, some of which are the colour of Brides’ roses, some of water-lilies.
“I’m quite mad with delight; I love the farm with its ducks and hens and pigeons; I adore the cattle in the meadow. They are fragrant. Hélène laughs at me because I follow the cows about, sniffing luxuriously. They smell like the clover they chew.
“Louis, dear, I have decided to remain a week here, if you don’t mind. I’m a little tired, I think. John Burleson, poor boy, does not need me. I’m terribly worried about him. Rita writes that there is no danger of pneumonia, but that Dr. Colbert is making a careful examination. I hope it is not lung trouble. It would be too tragic. He is only twenty-seven. Still, they cure such things now, don’t they? Rita is hoping he will go to Arizona, and has offered to go with him as his model. That means — if she does go — that she’ll nurse him and take care of him. She is devoted to him. What a generous girl she is!
“Dear, if you don’t need me, or are not too lonely without seeing me come fluttering into your studio every evening at tea-time, I would really like to remain here a few days longer. I have arranged business so that I can stay if it is agreeable to you. Tell me exactly how you feel about it and I will do exactly as you wish — which, please God — I shall always do while life lasts.
“Sam came up over Sunday, lugging Harry Annan and a bulldog — a present for Hélène. Sam is so sentimental about Hélène!
“And he’s so droll about it. But I’ve seen him that way before; haven’t you? And Hélène, bless her heart, lets him make eyes at her and just laughs in that happy, wholesome way of hers.
“She’s a perfect dear, Louis; so sweet and kind to me, so unaffected, so genuine, so humorous about herself and her funny title. She told me that she would gladly shed it if she were not obliged to shed her legacy with it. I don’t blame her. What an awful title — when you translate it!
“Sam is temporarily laid up. He attempted to milk a cow and she kicked him; and he’s lying in a hammock and Hélène is reading to him, while Harry paints her portrait. Oh, dear — I love Harry Annan, but he can’t paint!
“Dearest — as I sit here in my room with the chintz curtains blowing and the sun shining on the vines outside my open windows, I am thinking of you; and my girl’s heart is very full — very humble in the wonder of your love for me — a miracle ever new, ever sweeter, ever holier.
“I pray that it be given to me to see the best way for your happiness and your welfare; I pray that I may not be confused by thought of self.
“Dear, the spring is going very swiftly. I can scarcely believe that May is already here — is already passing — and that the first of June is so near.
“Will you always love me? Will you always think tenderly of me — happily — ! Alas, it is a promise nobody can honestly make. One can be honest only in wishing it may be so.
“Dearest of men, the great change is near at hand — nearer than I can realise. Do you still want me? Is the world impossible without me? Tell me so, Louis; tell me so now — and in the years to come — very often — very, very often. I shall need to hear you say it; I understand now how great my need will be to hear you say it in the years to come.”
Writing to him in a gayer mood a week later:
“It is perfectly dear of you to tell me to remain. I do miss you; I’m simply wild to see you; but I am getting so strong, so well, so deliciously active and vigorous again. I was rather run down in town. But in the magic of this air and sunshine I have watched the r
eincarnation of myself. I swim, I row, I am learning to sit a horse; I play tennis — and I flirt, Monsieur — shamelessly, with Sam and Harry. Do you object —
“We had such a delightful time — a week-end party, perfectly informal and crazy; Mrs. Hind-Willet — who is such a funny woman, considering the position she might occupy in society — and José Querida — just six of us, until — and this I’m afraid you may not like — Mrs. Hind-Willet telephoned Penrhyn Cardemon to come over.
“You know, Louis, he seems a gentleman, though it is perfectly certain that he isn’t. I hate and despise him; and have been barely civil to him. But in a small company one has to endure such things with outward equanimity; and I am sure that nobody suspects my contempt for him and that my dislike has not caused one awkward moment.”
She wrote again:
“I beg of you not to suggest to your sister that she call on me. Try to be reasonable, dear. Mrs. Collis does not desire to know me. Why should she? Why should you wish to have me meet her? If you have any vague ideas that my meeting her might in any possible way alter a situation which must always exist between your family and myself, you are utterly mistaken, dearest.
“And my acquaintance with Miss Swift is so slight — I never saw her but once, and then only for a moment! — that it would be only painful and embarrassing to her if you asked her to call on me. Besides, you are a man and you don’t understand such things. Also, Mrs. Collis and Miss Swift have only the slightest and most formal acquaintance with Hélène; and it is very plain that they are as content with that acquaintance as is Hélène. And in addition to that, you dear stupid boy, your family has carefully ignored Mr. Cardemon for years, although he is their neighbour; and Mr. Cardemon is here. And to cap the climax, your father and mother are at Ashuelyn. Can’t you understand?
“Dearest of men, don’t put your family and yourself — and me — into such a false position. I know you won’t when I have explained it; I know you trust me; I know you love me dearly.
“We had a straw ride. There’s no new straw, of course, so we had a wagon filled with straw from one of the barns and we drove to Lake Gentian and Querida was glorious in the moonlight with his guitar.
“He’s so nice to me now — so like himself. But I hate Penrhyn Cardemon and I wish he would go; and he’s taken a fancy to me, and for Hélène’s sake I don’t snub him — the unmitigated cad!
“However, it takes all kinds to make even the smallest of house parties; and I continue to be very happy and to write to you every day.
“Sam is queer. I’m beginning to wonder whether he is really in love with Hélène. If he isn’t he ought to have his knuckles rapped. Of course, Hélène will be sensible about it. But, Louis, when a really nice man behaves as though he were in love with a woman, no matter how gaily she laughs over it, it is bound to mean something to her. And men don’t seem to understand that.”
“Mrs. Hind-Willet departs to-morrow. Sam and Harry go to Ashuelyn; Mr.
Cardemon to his rural palace, I devoutly trust; which will leave José to
Hélène and me; and he’s equal to it.
“How long may I stay, dear? I am having a heavenly time — which is odd because heaven is in New York just now.”
Another letter in answer to one of his was briefer:
“My Darling:
“Certainly you must go to Ashuelyn if your father and mother wish it.
They are old, dear; and it is a heartless thing to thwart the old.
“Don’t think of attempting to come over here to see me. The chances are that your family would hear of it and it would only pain them. Any happiness that you and I are ever to have must not be gained at any expense to them.
“So keep your distance, Monsieur; make your parents and your sister happy for the few days you are to be there; and on Thursday I will meet you on the 9.30 train and we will go back to town together.
“I am going anyway, for two reasons; I have been away from you entirely too long, and — the First of June is very, very near.
“I love you with all my heart, Louis.
“Valerie West.”
CHAPTER XIII
He never doubted that, when at length the time came for the great change — though perhaps not until the last moment — Valerie would consent to marry him. Because, so far in his life of twenty-eight years, everything he had desired very much had come true — everything he had really believed in and worked for, had happened as he foresaw it would, in spite of the doubts, the fears, the apprehensions that all creators of circumstances and makers of their own destiny experience.
Among his fellow-men he had forged a self-centred, confident way to the front; and had met there not ultimate achievement, but a young girl, Valerie West. Through her, somehow, already was coming into his life and into his work that indefinite, elusive quality — that something, the existence of which, until the last winter, he had never even admitted. But it was coming; he first became conscious of it through his need of it; suspected its existence as astronomers suspect the presence of a star yet uncharted and unseen. Suddenly it had appeared in his portrait of Valerie; and he knew that Querida had recognised it.
In his picture “A Bride,” the pale, mysterious glow of it suffused his canvas. It was penetrating into his own veins, too, subtle, indefinable, yet always there now; and he was sensitive to its presence not only when absorbed in his work but, more or less in his daily life.
And it was playing tricks on him, too, as when one morning, absorbed by the eagerness of achievement, and midway in the happiness of his own work, suddenly and unbidden the memory of poor Annan came to him — the boy’s patient, humorous face bravely confronting failure on the canvas, before him, from which Neville had turned away without a word, because he had no good word to say of it.
And Neville, scarcely appreciating the reason for any immediate self-sacrifice, nevertheless had laid aside his brushes as at some unheard command, and had gone straight to Annan’s studio. And there he had spent the whole morning giving the discouraged boy all that was best in him of strength and wisdom and cheerful sympathy, until, by noon, an almost hopeless canvas was saved; and Annan, going with him to the door, said unsteadily, “Kelly, that is the kindest thing one man ever did for another, and I’ll never forget it.”
Yes, the something seemed to have penetrated to his own veins now; he felt its serene glow mounting when he spent solemn evenings in John Burleson’s room, the big sculptor lying in his morris-chair, sometimes irritable, sometimes morose, but always now wearing the vivid patch of colour on his flat and sunken cheeks.
Once John said: “Why on earth do you waste a perfectly good afternoon dawdling in this place with me?”
And Neville, for a second, wondered, too; then he laughed:
“I get all that I give you, John, and more, too. Shut up and mind your business.”
“What do you get from me?” demanded the literal one, astonished.
“All that you are, Johnny; which is much that I am not — but ought to be — may yet be.”
“That’s some sort of transcendental philosophy, isn’t it?” grumbled the sculptor.
“You ought to know better than I, John. The sacred codfish never penetrated to the Hudson. Inde irac!”
Yes, truly, whatever it was that had crept into his veins had imperceptibly suffused him, enveloped him — and was working changes. He had a vague idea, sometimes, that Valerie had been the inception, the source, the reagent in the chemistry which was surely altering either himself or the world of men around him; that the change was less a synthesis than a catalysis — that he was gradually becoming different because of her nearness to him — her physical and spiritual nearness.
He had plenty of leisure to think of her while she was away; but thought of her was now only an active ebullition of the ceaseless consciousness of her which so entirely possessed him. When a selfish man loves — if he really loves — his disintegration begins.
Waking, sleeping, in happiness
, in perplexity, abroad, at home, active or at rest, inspired or weary, alone or with others, an exquisite sense of her presence on earth invaded him, subtly refreshing him with every breath he drew. He walked abroad amid the city crowds companioned by her always; at rest the essence of her stole through and through him till the very air around seemed sweetened.
He heard others mention her, and remained silent, aloof, wrapped in his memories, like one who listens to phantoms in a dream praising perfection.
Lying back in his chair before his canvas, he thought of her often — of odd little details concerning their daily life — details almost trivial — gestures, a glance, a laugh — recollections which surprised him with the very charm of their insignificance.
He remembered that he had never known her to be ungenerous — had never detected in her a wilfully selfish motive. In his life he had never before believed in a character so utterly unshackled by thought of self.
He remembered that he had never known her to fail in sympathy for any living thing; had never detected in her an indifference to either the happiness or the sorrow of others. In his life he had never before believed that the command to love one’s neighbour had in it anything more significant than the beauty of an immortal theory. He believed it now because, in her, he had seen it in effortless practice. He was even beginning to understand how it might be possible for him to follow where she led — as she, unconsciously, was a follower of a precept given to lead the world through eternities.
Leaning on the closed piano, thinking of her in the still, sunny afternoons, faintly in his ears her voice seemed to sound; and he remembered her choice of ballads: —
— “For even the blind distinguisheth
The king with his robe and crown;
But only the humble eye of faith
Beholdeth Jesus of Nazareth
In the beggar’s tattered gown.
”I saw Him not in the mendicant
Works of Robert W Chambers Page 544
