Chapter II

Mrs. Lennox stood dully at her parlour window in the Dorset, a set of residential apartments situated in the Fifth Avenue. This was her birthday. She had almost forgotten the fact, but when she came downstairs a few minutes ago, she had found the parlour adorned with great stands of long-stalked roses and bowls of camellias. One of Imogen’s visiting cards with the words ‘Birthday Greetings to Mother,’ was tied with gold cord to the largest bouquet. Somehow the expensive flowers succeeded only in making the apartment look more like an hotel’s best suite than before. Mrs. Lennox had neither the experience nor the aptitude necessary to make a home. Buying the furniture--that had been easy enough. She had rather enjoyed driving with Imogen to the great stores and selecting objects without even asking their prices. It had filled quite pleasantly the first few weeks after her daughter’s return from the protracted European honeymoon--the only real holiday Mr. Vandeleur had ever allowed himself. She had not even minded the period of Imogen’s absence. The quarter of a century of theatrical touring had left Mrs. Lennox more tired than she had realised, and she had been quite glad to sink for six months into one of the Vandeleur country houses--an electric-lighted, water-supplied ‘log-cabin’ in the Adirondacks. Besides the arrangement had been merely temporary--a protracted stand--and that made everything bearable. But this was the permanent life. And now, now that she was rested, now that the apartment was furnished, what in the world was she to do with herself? For the last month the question had been forcing itself upon her more and more insistently. She moved over to a great plated casket, which Palmer, the maid, had just brought in, and began to eat the candy it contained. Oh, how tired she was of candies! She returned to her outlook at the window.

Yes, it was her birthday; she was forty years old. It sounded dreary, not because forty was old, but because it was young. Time never used to go so slowly. These nine months of leisured calm had been longer than the previous quarter of a century of stage life. In retrospect, at any rate, the cheap hotels, the midnight suppers, the warm fleeting friendships, sparkled as gay and delightful. She was tired of always being herself, or rather of never being herself, for Mrs. Lennox, the rich, society woman was a mere part, the make-up for which could never be put off. It was rather paradoxical, she reflected, that this translation into a staid and dowered matronhood had been brought about, not by her own marriage, but by her daughter’s. Her own marriage--she smiled as she recollected John Vandeleur’s agitation at finding that Imogen was a posthumous child only in the sense of being born after her father’s divorce and not after his decease. Of course Mr. Vandeleur realized at once that his fiancée had innocently misinformed him; the girl’s having been kept in ignorance of the true facts was the one point of which he approved. In vain Mrs. Lennox explained that her marriage had been so early and so brief that she would not now recognize her ex-husband in the street. The idea of a vague, unknown father-in-law floating at large filled Mr. Vandeleur with unconcealed alarm. The best detective in New York was put on the service, who, after tracking Mr. Lennox through a series of undesirable episodes, at last happily located him in an unhonoured grave. Then, and not till then, was the great Mr. Vandeleur’s engagement publicly announced.

And now Imogen had been married nearly a year, and was to all appearance perfectly happy. Her daughter never found it dull to be dull, Mrs. Lennox told herself pettishly, as she gazed out at the wide, wet street. How could she ever have wanted to live in this miserable city? But the New York of her dreams, she reminded herself, was another New York; it was Broadway, The Rialto, the Great White Way--not Fifth Avenue. Down town, even externally, it was different; there was light, and noise, and colour; not this dreary, deadly respectability hanging over everything like a pall. Here there wasn’t even a street car to liven up the prospect, only secluded private carriages. One now stopped at the door, and her son-in-law got out. His neat, dark clothes of the best quality, his silk hat, his quiet, dignified walk seemed in keeping with the street. Then Mrs. Lennox saw that Imogen was also in the carriage, waiting evidently to see if her mother was at home before she got out. Mrs. Lennox tapped delightedly on the window-pane. Her raps were so vigorous that the one or two passers-by looked up in surprise.

Imogen also heard. She stepped out of the carriage rather slowly; there was a cloud on her fair face. “Mother is so impulsive,” she always said with regret. However, when she and her husband came in a moment later, she kissed her mother affectionately, and uttered all the proper birthday wishes, looking particularly lovely as she did so. Imogen was one of the fortunate people who can combine respect for the dead with gratification of the living. She was in mourning for her husband’s sister, Mrs. Sharman, who had died almost immediately after the Vandeleurs’ return from their honeymoon, but the black only enhanced the golden hair and rose leaf complexion. As for the costume itself, it did not attract any special remark; like all Imogen’s clothes, it gave one a restful sense of absolute perfection.

Meanwhile, Mrs. Lennox had been returning her daughter’s salutation with an almost hungry warmth; at the same time she extended her left hand to Mr. Vandeleur, an unconventionality he much disliked. “It’s just sweet of you to come so early,” she exclaimed, “and to have sent all those lovely flowers and candy.” She turned towards her son-in-law. “I declare I’m quite overwhelmed at your wasting time over me on a week-day morning.”

“Not at all.” In spite of his denial, Mr. Vandeleur thought his mother-in-law had phrased it correctly. However, Imogen had wished him to come. “I only regret that I shall not be able to stay very long.”

“John wanted to get here an hour since, but I told him there wouldn’t be the smallest chance of finding you up,” Imogen laughed. John Vandeleur had never got over his incredulous amazement at his mother-in-law’s hours of rising.

“Well, if you’d ’phoned me you were coming, I’d have made an effort,” Mrs. Lennox protested. “But _you_ will stop on a little while, won’t you, darling, even if--John cannot?” Mrs. Lennox still hesitated over her son-in-law’s Christian name, and would have been happier had her daughter not insisted on her using it.

But Imogen could not stay. She always drove down town with her husband. “John might get lost on the way to Wall Street if I were not there to look after him,” she said, with a charming smile. Also she added that she must be home in good time to see after the preparations for the ladies’ lunch party. Her tone was a little worried; indeed, she seemed pre-occupied altogether this morning, as was only natural in view of her approaching début in entertaining. Mrs. Sharman’s death had, of course, prevented any earlier festivities, for Imogen was the last person to fail in observing the decorous quiet demanded by this sad event. Even now, she had some doubt about the ladies’ lunch, but after all her husband would not be present, and Mrs. Sharman had been his sister, not hers. “And I do want to introduce Mother to really nice people,” she had said. For though Imogen had been to no parties, most of the ladies in her husband’s circle had already called upon her.

It was a pity that Mrs. Lennox was not more appreciative of her daughter’s efforts. Personally, she thought a ladies’ lunch sounded a dreary sort of function, and the idea of meeting any of the Vandeleur set gave her a tremor of apprehension. Perhaps Imogen noticed the lack of warmth, for she went on cheerfully, “Next year, when we are not in mourning, we will have a big dinner-party in honour of your birthday.”

It could not be said that either of her companions took up the idea with enthusiasm, although Mr. Vandeleur’s acquiescence came with sufficient promptitude. Poor Mrs. Lennox felt that if the prospect of a mild ladies’ lunch made her nervous, how would she ever be able to face a grand dinner-party under the severe eye of her son-in-law? He might even take her in! She trembled at the thought. However, birthdays come but once a year, she reassured herself. Perhaps some more Vandeleur relatives would obligingly die in the interval.

“But here we are quite forgetting your birthday present,” Imogen broke in upon her mother’s thoughts. “It is rather of an unusual kind, but I think you will like it.” She held out a small, familiar-looking envelope with printing at the top.

Could it--yes, it must be theatre tickets. Mrs. Lennox nearly snatched at her present. The dear, dear child; this would be a real birthday treat. One of the stipulations that John Vandeleur had made on his marriage was that Mrs. Lennox should become dramatically a total abstainer. He had feared that in the conspicuous seats befitting his wife’s mother, some of her former theatrical friends might see and recognize her. Also, although he did not mention it, he had thought of the tiger tasting blood! Mrs. Lennox had meanwhile drawn the little printed slip out of its envelope. It took a form unfamiliar to her. Then she saw the word “opera.” Her heart sank. “Is it for to-night?” she asked.

“Oh no, Mother, it is a box for the season--every Monday. The seats were all taken for to-night.”

“A box for the season at the opera!” Mrs. Lennox’s surprise might fortunately pass for gratification. “That is sweet of you,” she said slowly. How could Imogen have forgotten that she had absolutely no ear for music? “I shall enjoy being with you one evening every week for certain.”

“You are forgetting that we are in mourning, Mother. John and I cannot go to the opera this season. But I felt that our being cut off from things is no reason why you should not enjoy them. Now, I know John is thinking that his beloved Wall Street cannot get on without him a moment longer! Good-bye for the present, Mother, dear. I want to have a talk with you after my visitors go this afternoon.” Imogen’s tone gave the words a slight emphasis. “And you will remember that lunch is at two o’clock. I made it later on purpose to suit you, so you will be punctual, won’t you? And you do like the opera?”

“Yes, darling.” Mrs. Lennox did not specify to which question this was the answer.

After the Vandeleurs had gone, Mrs. Lennox put the opera ticket on the mantelpiece and stood gazing at it balefully. If only she could tear it into very small pieces! Of course going to a play might have been painful, with its keen reminder of the past. She would have wanted to have been _of_ the performance and not merely _at_ it. Still, it would have interested her, taken her out of herself. But this miserable mockery of an opera! What little story an opera ever possessed was obscured by the wretched music while the acting was entirely spoilt. She knew, for when Imogen returned from Europe, just before Mrs. Sharman’s sudden death, they had gone to “Götterdämmerung” together. How she had ached with boredom by the end of the evening. “Cut the cackle and come to the ’osses”--never had the theatrical tag seemed so applicable. Imogen’s loveliness and placid enjoyment had been some compensation, but now she was expected to go through the ordeal without the alleviation of her daughter’s society. She was to sit there one whole evening every week; and on Wagner nights the evening started at four o’clock in the afternoon! If only she could take a nap like some people she would not mind so much, but with her, the duller she felt the more wakeful she grew. It was really too much. She could not stand it. But then Imogen’s feelings would be hurt. With a sigh Mrs. Lennox offered herself up on the altar of parental piety.

By a great effort Mrs. Lennox reached the Vandeleur’s house by the specified time. Perhaps it is the reaction from professional exactitude that makes punctuality in everyday life such a rare quality among actors. The sound of a clock striking two as she pressed the door bell, gave Mrs. Lennox a glow of unaccustomed virtue. The house itself, as Mr. Hobson had said, was small and unassuming for that part of Fifth Avenue. Only the expert would have guessed its cost. The highest wealth, Mr. Vandeleur felt, was to conceal wealth, and Imogen instinctively acquiesced in her husband’s sentiment. Even the liveries of the two men who answered the door were richly inconspicuous. As they took Mrs. Lennox’s wraps, she was conscious of the embarrassment with which they always filled her. Not that she had been unaccustomed to men servants in her life as Frances West. Are they not the prop of every society play? But the stage flunkeys had been her friends and equals. The hotel waiters had been her enemies and superiors. She had never before encountered this deferential, automatic type of ministering male. A deprecating note was in her voice as she murmured something about keeping her scarf. She felt these awful beings had guessed the hidden reason, an uncertainty as to whether she had finished fastening the back of her gown.

In the reception room Imogen was holding quite a little court. The girl’s youth and beauty, her delicate refinement had evidently won over this select essence of New York society. She came forward as Mrs. Lennox was announced. “My mother,” she said, introducing her in turn to each of the ladies present. “This is really Mother’s party; it is her birthday to-day.”

Mrs. Lennox shook hands, feeling impossibly awkward. It seemed ridiculous in a woman of her age to be shy, but how could she help it? She was given a part to play without any rehearsals, and was expected to make up her own words as she went along. No wonder she had stage fright! If only she had possessed Imogen’s apparently instinctive sense of the correct thing to do and to say ... “never guess they were mother and daughter ... how sweet dear Imogen is to her....” The overheard, whispered comments only increased Mrs. Lennox’s embarrassed self-consciousness, although she warmly agreed with them. Through training and through temperament she was sensitive to the “feeling of the house,” and it was dead against her. To her relief lunch was announced.

She found herself seated next to Mrs. Vansittart, an elderly lady with white hair dressed in the pompadour style, and an aristocratic face. Mrs. Vansittart was evidently waiting for her neighbour to open the conversation. What should she talk about, Mrs. Lennox asked herself desperately? Dramatic topics were the only ones that came to her mind, and they were taboo. When John Vandeleur had stipulated that no reference should ever be made to his mother-in-law’s stage life, he perhaps hardly realized that from the age of fourteen she had had no other. Cutting off this existence had left her floating in space, a disconnected, but unhappily a visible spirit.

“It is not often that we mothers are fortunate enough to have daughters who will give parties in honour of _our_ birthdays.” Mrs. Vansittart’s clear, delicate intonation at last broke the silence.

“No, it was real lovely of my girl, wasn’t it?” A happy thought struck Mrs. Lennox. The birthday gift would at least serve as a conversational asset. “Imogen has given me a box at the opera for the whole season. Isn’t it a cute present?”

“A very charming one. Which is your night, Mrs. Lennox?”

“I have forgotten; oh yes, Mondays.” “Black Monday” she remembered she had told herself when Imogen had mentioned the day.

“Monday, how curious. My box is for Monday, too, so we shall meet. I am in the upper tier on the left. I understand that we are to have the whole ‘Ring’ this season. It is a great treat, is it not?”

“Yes,” Mrs. Lennox replied drearily, her worst fears realized. Mrs. Vansittart was already launched on a Wagner rhapsody, which came to a gradual close, probably for lack of antistrophe. Poor Mrs. Lennox, feeling as though she had missed her cue, was vainly cudgelling her brains for a suitable response. “Yes, Wagner’s real bright, isn’t he?” she ventured, but the “line” evidently did not “catch on.” A fresh plate with some unknown viand was now put before her. Almost without thinking, she took up a silver sugar-sifter and liberally sprinkled it. A slight gasp from her neighbour arrested her hand.

“I beg your pardon.” Mrs. Vansittart smiled; “Only I have never seen terrapin eaten with sugar before, and I wondered if it were nice.”

“Very nice. I always have it served in this way.” Mrs Lennox ate on brazenly. What a nauseous mess! Could terrapin, even without sugar, possibly be palatable? And to think of what it cost! Five dollars a plate, she had heard somewhere. A memory came to her of the time when that sum had had to provide a week’s board and lodging.

The conversation now became more general. The ladies were talking of a new house a few blocks further up that was being built by an ex-pork-packer from Denver. “He thinks the more styles he can crowd in, the more value he is getting for his money,” one of the ladies observed. “At least that is my explanation of the Gothic front and the Renaissance porch and the Queen Anne wing and the baroque chimneys.”

“Don’t forget the Italian Court and the Byzantine ball room,” laughed another.

“Oh I believe the inside is too terrible for words. He has got over two real Adam mantelpieces and chopped them up to make them fit round an open fireplace with chimney corners. It is just desecration.”

“What can you expect?” Mrs. Vansittart’s clear voice interposed, “All those people in the Middle-West are absolute Goths--mere unlettered savages in relation to Art.”

“Indeed, they are not.” Mrs. Lennox’s indignation carried her over both her shyness and discretion. “They appreciate art just as much, and more, than you do. Why, we never had such lovely houses as in the Middle-West.”

There was a surprised pause. “I was not aware that the Middle-West possessed any particular school of domestic architecture,” Mrs. Vansittart began, “although now you mention it, I remember hearing of an artistic colony near Chicago; I suppose they have been carrying their lamp into the wilderness. It shows that one should not speak on mere hearsay, for I must admit I have never been West myself. The lure of Europe is too great.”

“Mother has lived for years in the Middle West,” Imogen’s sweet voice interposed, a shade anxiously, “so you see we cannot have it slighted. I believe Mother thinks that Chicago has all the perfections of Florence and Athens and Paris rolled into one.”

In the laugh that followed, the underlying jar was forgotten. “In which city did you live?” Mrs. Vansittart enquired.

Mrs. Lennox was now only too anxious to escape from the topic. She had broken her promise to her son-in-law, she was thinking in dismay. Fortunately, her slip had not been noticed. “Oh, I was in quite a number of cities,” she answered enigmatically.

Imogen again came to the rescue; perhaps she noticed the shade of puzzled speculation that had crossed Mrs. Vansittart’s face. “Mother is a terrible rolling stone,” she laughed. “She just adores travelling. When I was at Central Park School, she took advantage of having no ties to wander around California and all sorts of places. But now I say she has got to stay at home right close to me.” She smiled at her mother affectionately, and then gave the signal to rise.

As soon as the first guest took her leave, Mrs. Lennox seized the opportunity to do the same. She had quite forgotten that her daughter wished to have a talk. As she went up to say good-bye, Imogen showed a displeased surprise. But poor Mrs. Lennox felt desperate. She had been an absolute failure, she was telling herself. She must “close down,” “cut her loss,” do anything rather than go on like this. “I have to get home at once,” she murmured, and fled.

When she did get home, she reproached herself for not having stayed. She might just as well have given Imogen pleasure. What was there for her to do at home? What was there for her to do anywhere? She flung herself into one of the ultra downy armchairs, and stared into the fire despondently. Of course she had books, but in all her busy life she had never had time for serious reading, and had not acquired the habit. At first she had celebrated her holiday by an orgy of novels, but she soon wearied of them. Needle-work she hated; cards bored her; no one came to see her. What was she to do?

With one of the unreal coincidences of real life, there was a ring at the front door bell. She supposed it was one of her daughter’s new acquaintances, who was thus politely stretching her social circle to include Mr. Vandeleur’s mother-in-law. She wished that she had told Palmer that she was not receiving. It was too late now, for she heard the maid opening the door. “Does Miss Frances West live here?” The tone was familiar.

Mrs. Lennox rushed into the vestibule. Suppose Palmer should send him away. Her usual awe of the stiff English parlourmaid was forgotten. “Miss West doesn’t live here, but I do,” she exclaimed incoherently, seizing both Mr. Hobson’s hands and working them up and down. “My, it’s good to see you again. It’s real good.”

The maid discreetly withdrew, an image of disapproving astonishment. Mr. Hobson, however, took the outburst as a matter of course. He thought at one moment his hostess was going to kiss him, but he had long ceased being surprised by his leading women. “Well, I guess, it’s good to see you too,” he answered genially. “I’d have butted in long since but I thought you were too grand in these days for your old friends.”

“Grand! I’m bored stiff. I’m turning to stone. I sit here morning, noon, and night, like a mummy in a mausoleum. If something don’t happen pretty soon, I shall explode. If I could be Biddy just for one half hour! But it’s no good talking. You know how Mr. Vandeleur feels. And don’t ask for Miss West again, else there’ll be trouble. I’m Mrs. Lennox now, don’t you know?” She had led him into the drawing room as she spoke, and now almost pushed him into the vacated armchair. “My, it’s good to see a live, flesh and blood human being again!”

“What’s your Four Hundred made of, sawdust and starch?” Mr. Hobson laughed, and then looked about the room admiringly. “They seem to have fixed you up here all right anyway.”

“That’s what’s the matter. It’s too right. Everything is everlastingly, unchangingly right. We dress right and talk right, and go to the opera and eat terrapin because it’s right, however much we hate it. It’s wearing me into my grave, this always being right. I feel about a century older than this time last year. We were rehearsing ‘Biddy’ then, don’t you know, mostly on the cars, and everything was going wrong. And we were playing eight times a week, and there was a strike on the line, and we’d got two all night journeys. That’s what I call living.”

“Some folks would call it more like dying! But if you’re on the look out for work and worry, Miss West, perhaps you won’t shut down the little proposition I’ve come to make. I tell you I was half scared to suggest it.”

“Yes, yes, go on,” his companion urged breathlessly.

“Well, I guess you’ve seen in the press that I’ve got a new piece coming on at the Delphic--‘The Haunted Homestead.’ I tell you it’s going to be a sensation--strong you know, a regular spine stirrer, but a lot of laughs in it too. It’s about an old Carolina woman living way up in the mountains; the piece just hangs on her. Well, I got Clare Brown to read over the part this morning. My, she was a terror! She’s done some pretty good work in her time, but she’s no more idea of playing this than the cat. The thing’s killed, sure, if she’s in the bill. It’s got to grip the people, don’t you know--not to be played as a farce. When they laugh, it must be because they want to cry. Well, that’s why I’ve come to you, Miss West; I believe you’re the one woman in America for the part. We’ll just have the biggest kind of success. You’ll make the piece, and the piece will make you.”

Frances West’s eyes were shining. “But how can I play? Mr. Vandeleur--” she demurred.

“Shucks, he needn’t know. It’s a character part; nobody will recognize you. You can change your name again. It ain’t as though you were a star already. There’s no money in ‘Frances West,’ not a cent.”

Mrs. Lennox was only too anxious to be persuaded, still she retained some common sense. “As if Mr. Vandeleur wouldn’t guess that I was playing again, if I were out every evening,” she retorted.

“Well, let him guess. What does it signify? Your daughter’s safely married to him--and you ain’t. I never heard of any text, ‘Obey thy son-in-law!’”

His companion laughed. Then she put aside the big stumbling block for the moment, and turned to the little one. “Anyway, I couldn’t take the part from Clare Brown; it wouldn’t be fair on her.”

“Oh, that’s all right.” Miss West was coming round, Mr. Hobson felt delightedly. “Clare’s was only a trial trip. The woman I had before is took sick--not that she could touch it either. And here I am billed to open in less than three weeks. I tell you I’m desperate. Now look here, you just put on your wraps, Miss West, and come down with me to the theatre right now. I left them all there rehearsing. Mr. Leigh’s along with them; he’s the young man that’s written it, and not so much of a noosance as authors go. Of course, he thinks every word is pearls and diamonds, and if you get him to cut a line he puts in six pages later. But Clare pretty well broke his spirit this morning. He’ll be that glad to have you instead, you’ll find he’ll do any mortal thing you want. So just come right along.”

The blood had rushed to Miss West’s face. Why shouldn’t she go with Mr. Hobson, she was thinking tumultuously. Whatever happened in the future--and she didn’t suppose it would be feasible for her to take the part--still, she wanted to go now. She wanted to be in a theatre, to hear a play again, to see all the dear, warm-hearted, uncritical people. That was her home, not this. Besides, it was her birthday. And they celebrated it with their glacial lunch parties and miserable opera boxes! If they wouldn’t give her any pleasure, she must take it for herself. Surely on her birthday she might be allowed a little treat. “If I come now, Mr. Hobson,” she stipulated, “that doesn’t mean I take the part.” She almost collided with Palmer in her rush upstairs to get her hat and furs.

As the stage door opened, the stuffy, chilly atmosphere of the theatre greeted Frances West like the perfume of Araby; she drew a deep breath of rapture. And how good it was to be treading the bare, dusty boards again after a year of carpeted footfalls. Some dozen people were sitting or standing about the stage, all with rather a depressed mien. A young man, who was sitting apart on a “practical” tree stump, had buried his face in his hands in an access of despair. Miss West guessed that this was the broken-spirited author. Mr. Hobson had paused to give some instruction to the back door keeper, but now he and Miss West came forward together. All the company looked up. There was a cry of “Fanny,” for two or three of them had played with Miss West before, and they thronged around, welcoming her enthusiastically. A pretty, young girl rushed on from the wings. “You dear, dear thing,” she almost sobbed, flinging herself into Miss West’s arms. This was the little girl of whose broken engagement Miss West had spoken to Mr. Vandeleur. “Are you going to play it? Oh, do make her, Mr. Hobson, she must. Oh, you must make her do it, Mr. Hobson.”

“I guess she’ll do it, though she’s keeping it on a string. Anyway, you’ll read the part now, won’t you, Miss West?”

“Oh, but how can I?” Frances demurred, genuinely taken aback. “I’ve never set eyes on the script.”

“Well here’s Mr. Leigh, only too anxious to tell you all about it. Just sketch out the piece to Miss West, Mr. Leigh, and then we’ll run through it. You’ll see it will be an entirely different proposition with Miss West in it. Why, it’s just written for her!”

Four hours later Frances West, tired, dusty, hungry, and supremely happy, was sitting down to a badly cooked dinner in a little restaurant near the theatre. Mr. Hobson and Mr. Leigh were with her, and they were all talking excitedly. Imogen’s guests would not have recognized the constrained, awkward Mrs. Lennox in this animated, voluble woman. “It’s just great, great,” she was exclaiming; “that scene where she finds her daughter’s run away: ‘Well, I must do my washing; guess the tears will keep,’ and breaks down when she finds it’s her daughter’s Sunday waist that’s in the suds--it’s great.”

“If it is great, it is you who make it so,” young Leigh told her. When Miss West read the part, his work was again as good as he had thought it. She seemed to have given him back his own play, the play of his dreams that he had never quite been able to write.

“There won’t be a dry eye in the house,” Mr. Hobson observed with conviction. “All the same, that soliloquy about the daughter’s childhood drags just a bit. Three or four lines out about the little golden head and so forth, would pull the whole scene together, don’t you know?”

“I won’t have a line touched. It is perfect.” Miss West was genuinely indignant. Mr. Leigh gazed at her with an ever increasing admiration. What an intelligent woman!

Mr. Hobson chuckled. “Well, I won’t quarrel over that cut.” He pulled a typewritten document out of his pocket. “Will you sign the contract now, Miss West?”

The words jerked her back into realities. She stared at him in dismay. “I can’t, I can’t,” she stammered. “I must think it over.” What was she doing? she asked herself; she ought not to be here at all. She was not Miss West, she was Mrs. Lennox, Imogen’s mother. And she had promised her son-in-law to give up the stage, unless she severed all connection with her daughter. He would keep her to her word, of that she felt sure. How could she bear to give up Imogen? But how could she bear to give up this chance of work? The miserable oppression of the last month came over her. Oh, she couldn’t go on with it, day after day, year after year, for all her life. She would go mad! And this part appealed to her so; it dragged her. She felt the character; she would make the audience feel it. The revolt of this Carolina woman at the dreary loneliness of her mountain homestead was, paradoxically enough, her own revolt at the dreary loneliness of Fifth Avenue. But Imogen? In the play the Carolina woman’s daughter ran away from her, but here she would be running away from her daughter. Only, after all, did Imogen need her? Did she even want her? Were not Imogen’s visits prompted more by convention than affection? Her daughter had love, wealth, hosts of friends, everything the heart could desire. If Imogen had needed her, it would be different; then she would never have dreamt of leaving her. “I’ll think it over,” she repeated to Mr. Hobson more confidently, “and ’phone you my decision the first thing in the morning.” Neither had any doubt as to what that decision would be, and they parted like pals.

She got home at nine o’clock, and was abashed before Palmer’s cold disapproval. “Oh, I have dined,” she told the maid, trying to conceal her consciousness of guilt under a jaunty air; “I hope you didn’t keep the things hot.”

“Of course the dinner was kept hot, Madam. I will inform them that you do not require it.” Palmer was departing icily when she paused. “Mrs. Vandeleur has telephoned twice, Madam. She instructed me to ring her up when you returned. She said she wished to call if it were not too late.”

“Oh, please say I shall be delighted if she will come round now.” Mrs. Lennox went slowly upstairs. At any rate it was a relief to shake off her domestic martinet. But she wished Imogen was not coming that evening. She would have liked to be alone. What could it be that Imogen wanted to talk to her about? Or did she merely feel a chat was part of the correct birthday procedure? Mrs. Lennox’s lips tightened. Well, anyway, she must hurry and change her gown. Imogen would certainly be shocked at finding her still in her street suit. Besides, she was no doubt exceedingly grubby and untidy.

She was hardly settled in the drawing-room before Imogen came in. Something had upset her daughter; Mrs. Lennox saw that at once. Could Imogen have possibly heard of her afternoon’s programme, she wondered guiltily. The girl’s first pettish words dispelled such an idea. “Whatever were you doing, Mother, all the afternoon? Palmer did not seem to have any idea what had become of you.”

“I went to see some friends, dear.” For an instant Mrs. Lennox thought of telling her daughter everything. But no, Imogen could never understand. “They persuaded me to stay and have dinner with them.”

“How odd and informal!” The subject clearly did not interest Imogen. “Well, I thought you were never coming back.” There was a pause. “There is something I want to say to you.”

Imogen was certainly unlike herself this evening. She seemed embarrassed, even distressed. Mrs. Lennox began to stroke her daughter’s hand, a little diffidently, for Imogen did not care for demonstration; she was apt to consider it vulgar. To her surprise Mrs. Lennox felt her own fingers clutched. “What is it, darling?” she asked. “I thought directly you came in that something must be troubling you.”

Suddenly, to her mother’s dismay, Imogen burst into tears--Imogen who never cried. “It is horrible,” she gasped. “And I was so happy.”

“What is horrible, dearest?” She put her arm around her daughter. “Tell Momma,” she said, as though Imogen was again a little girl. Indeed she felt closer to her than she had done since Imogen had first gone to school. She began to stroke her daughter’s hair, and thought of the time that the baby head used to rest just there on her breast--the little golden head that Mr. Hobson wanted to “cut.” “Tell Momma,” she urged again.

But Imogen only sobbed. “I can’t tell you--I didn’t want it,” she cried at last incoherently.

There was another long pause. “Have you and John quarrelled?” Mrs. Lennox suggested.

It was clearly a wrong explanation. She could not see Imogen’s face, but the violence of her head-shake was conclusive. “Does John know about your trouble, dear?”

Imogen began to cry more vehemently than before. “No, he doesn’t know. That is part of its being so horrible. I believe he will be pleased.” Mrs. Lennox thought she must have misunderstood the sobbing words. How could her son-in-law be pleased? Whatever were his failings, or his irritating lack of them, there was no doubt of his devotion to Imogen. Suddenly the girl flung her arms round her mother’s neck. She was clinging to her like a drowning person. “Oh, Mother, help me,” she cried. “No one else can help me, not even John. I know some women are pleased, but I hate it. I hate the thought of the pain and looking hideous. I am so frightened. I don’t want it. I don’t want to be ill; I daresay I shall die. Mother, it frightens me--Mother.” She was shaking all over, and sobbing wildly in Mrs. Lennox’s arms.

At last Mrs. Lennox understood. And as she understood, she realized sub-consciously that this was the answer to Mr. Hobson’s offer. Her daughter had always been timid and ultra-sensitive. An unattractive woman facing life in this way might have been condemned as a selfish coward, but no one had ever reproached Imogen. And so Mrs. Lennox kissed the frightened girl and fondled her until she had soothed her into something of her usual tranquillity; then she spoke to her reassuringly of the transience of the pain and the joy of the new little life that was to come. But through all Mrs. Lennox’s cheering words, there was a dull ache--the loss of her own renewed life, which was now denied her. Frances West was finally killed--that was the price of Imogen’s baby. The rôle of the Carolina woman would struggle in her for expression and in vain. Henceforward she would only be Mrs. Lennox, an imperfect, half-alive creature. To her daughter had come a living child, but she was tethered for ever to the corpse of her other self. That ascent among the stars of which she had dreamed had become for ever impossible.