Chapter VI

The next day was Sunday. Horatia told Maud her news after dinner as they sat on Maud’s comfortable veranda. She was neither surprised nor disappointed at Maud’s reception of the news. There was just about as big a storm as she had expected. Maud, having laid the worrying ghost of Langley, was enraged at its reappearance.

“And Anthony Wentworth was so taken with you the other night,” she wailed. “Don’t you ever want to get anywhere? You little fool----”

Horatia had quite forgotten about Anthony. For a moment she did wonder vaguely what he would think. But she was too absorbed in herself to wonder about such trivialities. Her whole being was full of an exaltation which seemed to run stirringly through every vein. Her ignorance of emotion made everything more amazing. There did not seem much resemblance in what she was feeling to anything she had ever read or talked about. Her love was so warm, so alive, so much hers----

“I really think you could have had Anthony Wentworth.” Maud harped desperately on her own disappointment.

“I _wish_ you wouldn’t talk that way about a man I’ve met only once. It’s indecent, Maud. It’s disgusting.”

“It’s indecent to engage yourself to a man who is twice as old as you are--who’s been the talk of the city! At your age! It will ruin you! It’s impossible! Talk to Harvey and you’ll see.”

Horatia permitted herself a smile.

“I knew when you went down there that something dreadful would happen,” Maud went on. “I should think you’d see the fatality of mixing up with a man like that.”

“Please, Maud, stop; there’s no sense in being so violent. It’s my affair after all.”

“It’s a family affair. I didn’t marry a man who’d disgrace us all.”

Horatia turned from coaxing tolerance into sudden hauteur.

“Nor shall I.”

Maud was politic enough to abandon a hopeless cause. She laid a hand on her sister’s unresponding shoulder.

“You get me all worked up. I don’t blame you really. You’re so young and inexperienced. And he is fascinating. So people say. But he hasn’t a thing to offer you.”

“Marriage to me isn’t a question of offerings.”

Maud looked skeptical.

“Marriage, my dear,” she said, “isn’t a matter of love in the moonlight purely. And the question of bread and butter is pretty important.”

“I can earn my bread and butter.”

“Not after you’re married.”

“Just as I’m doing now. I wouldn’t think of not working. That’s been the whole trouble with marriage,” went on Horatia, recalling some of her early college theories. “It’s been an exploitation on both sides. It ought to be a partnership.”

She wasted her breath. Maud, convinced that Horatia was merely talking, returned to the main issue.

“I’m sure you’ll see, dear, if you’ll be reasonable, how utterly impossible this is. He’s not young and----”

“For heaven’s sake, Maud, why attack all sides at once? Isn’t it bad enough to destroy his character without also attacking him on the score of age?”

“You haven’t made any plans for marriage, have you?”

“When we marry we’ll do it without planning. I’ll not hang around waiting for guest towels.”

Maud cheered at this lack of definiteness.

“Well,” she said, “there’s no use in being hasty. Take your time and think it over. But remember that marriage is a very serious thing.”

“And very expensive,” Horatia added satirically.

“Bring him up to call. I’d like to meet him and talk to him.”

“He never makes calls.”

“He used to.”

Horatia flushed a little again.

“Did he tell you about Mrs. Hubbell?” asked Maud with some eagerness.

“If you are going to be spiteful, Maud, I shall not come here any more at all. I am not bothering about--Jim’s--past personal affairs nor the fact that a lot of old gossips have nothing better to do than to pry into them.”

“Well, I’d never marry a man without finding out a little something about his past. And such a past! It’s all very well to be high and mighty, Horatia, but when a man has been a co-respondent!”

But Horatia had put on her hat and gone down the steps. Maud ceased with a gesture and looked after her sister thoughtfully.

Horatia went home to her apartment and threw herself down to fume in rage. Grace Walsh laughed. Horatia, in ardent need of a confidante, had told her about Jim that morning and Grace guessed where Horatia had been.

“What did you expect? What you want to do is to make Langley a social asset. Don’t growl so. I mean what I say. There’s no reason why he shouldn’t be. Turn the tables on Mrs. Williams.”

Grace’s own attitude had not brought much satisfaction to Horatia. Her modernism apparently involved cutting the roots of all sentiments. Love and marriage were to her states which were productive of many epigrams--interesting studies. She had a stock of opinions about such things made of a blend of W. L. George, Havelock Ellis, W. G. Robinson and the more skeptical modern specialists in sex literature. A rather brilliant conversationalist when discussion hinged upon such things, in the face of an emotional awakening like Horatia’s she had little to say. But she had not been satirical. A little questioning, non-committal--her attitude satisfied nothing in Horatia’s heart.

“Your sister,” she went on, “only approves of something quite fashionable in matrimony and Jim Langley is a bit out of style.”

Horatia laughed and telephoned Jim, first at his rooms and failing there, tried the office, where she located him. There was a delicious sense of possession in conversation with him now.

“I want to go out in the country to shake off a lot of foolish talk. Can’t you come?”

The very tone of his voice over the wire brought back the glow in her heart but he told her that it must be later, that he was busy.

“Then I’ll come down too and work and we’ll pretend that the office is the country.”

He welcomed that suggestion. She put on a different dress, her choicest one, which she had meant to save for a very special occasion with Langley. But then she meant today to be a special occasion. She meant to ask him about this Hubbell affair. She should know about it so that she could contradict false impressions, correct them. It was essential that these silly wonderings in her own mind should be laid to rest too.

As she entered the office a woman sitting at Horatia’s own desk, dangling a dry pen from lazy white-gloved fingers, looked up at her and then questioningly at Langley opposite.

She was a delicately blonde person with a close-fitting black hat, smartly trimmed with black paradise feathers and a French veil. The rest of her was in harmony with the black and pale yellow of her head. She looked--not faded--but cleverly artificial, as if created in the image of some lovely picture. Her face was raised in delicate expectancy for Langley’s move.

Horatia felt suddenly blundering. She was conscious of herself, awkward, and before she had time to collect herself Langley introduced her.

“Miss Grant--one of my colleagues on _The Journal_--Mrs. Hubbell.”

Horatia had guessed the identity of the lady before he spoke. She half-hesitated. But Mrs. Hubbell was in languorous command at once.

“I knew you must be working under stimulus, Jim,” she smiled.

Horatia felt affronted and bereft of repartee, but Langley inclined his head gravely.

“I am.”

Mrs. Hubbell waived that point and continued.

“I’ve just come back to town and I’m so eager to meet people. I’ve quite gotten out of touch. I have taken a little apartment in Hanover Street, Miss Grant, and I hope you’ll come to see me there. I can promise you tea, music and a place where gossiping women are absolutely not admitted--and only those can come who are above gossip or else tremendously gossiped about.” She smiled a little plaintively, thus delicately dealing with her own situation.

Horatia rather liked it. Perhaps there was more in this Mrs. Hubbell than she imagined. She was lovely to look at anyhow.

“And we must find a place to dance, Jim,” said Mrs. Hubbell, turning to him again.

“But I’m working hard, Rose. I’ve not much time to be frivolous.”

How queer it was, thought Horatia, to hear him call another woman by her first name. Of course last night was the first time he had called her ‘Horatia,’ but it had seemed---- She wasn’t quite sure what it had seemed.

“Then you will come to see me, Miss Grant?”

Oddly insistent, thought Horatia.

“I would love to.”

“Do you always work on Sunday--both of you?”

Mrs. Hubbell’s questions came lightly but they were questions that had to be answered.

“Miss Grant was going to take me for a walk.”

An astute glance flashed under the black hat from Horatia to Langley.

“Then why don’t you walk out my way now? Towards the South Shore and stop for tea? It’s a lovely walk. I’ve just come back, of course, and my apartment isn’t really comfortable yet, but I can usually brew a good cup of tea, can’t I, Jim? And you deserve it after working over my tiresome affairs this afternoon. I bounce in on him with my usual tangle of papers that need signing and he shows me where the dotted lines are and tells me whether I’m renewing my mortgages or signing a Bolshevik constitution. Come, both of you, walk out with me. Won’t you?”

Horatia, finding decision left to her, tried to think quickly of a way out. But Langley did not help her and she hesitated too long to do anything but acquiesce.

They walked badly, for Mrs. Hubbell was hampered by her conversation and the tightness of her skirts and seemed continually to be appealing to Langley for petty gallantries. Horatia, who liked to walk swiftly and silently, found herself again unhappily awkward, moving badly and getting ahead of the others. It annoyed her that Langley had not told Mrs. Hubbell that they were more to each other than office companions, and yet she could not think what he should have said. They reached the apartment with Horatia rather dreading the rest of the encounter.

But Mrs. Hubbell pushed open her door with an apologetic smile, revealing a large living-room of most unusual charm. The ceiling was very high and the walls held few pictures so that the two great soft blue couches, armchairs and stools were comfortably spaced. A long narrow table between the windows held two delicately shaded lamps and many books. Horatia hadn’t connected Mrs. Hubbell with books and while that lady went to remove her hat and “find tea,” Horatia stood by the table examining the titles of the volumes. It was all very up-to-date material, much of it feminist--sparkling novels, plays.

“She doesn’t read them,” said Langley lightly, watching Horatia. “She has them here because she entertains the people who read or write them sometimes. But she doesn’t know that she doesn’t read them. I imagine she absorbs a deal through the covers.”

“I’m sorry she spoiled our walk,” said the man under his breath, “and you’ll forgive me if I seemed odd. But I’d hate to have her the medium through which to announce our--feeling.”

“I told Maud.”

“Your sister--was she horrified?”

She smiled at him humorously. “Quite.”

Their hostess came in. She had taken off her hat and the great coil of flaxen hair was even more effective than Horatia had guessed. She looked like a Saxon princess, thought Horatia--no, the lovely servant of a princess, the one who is mistress of the king.

She had not been long in town but they were not her only callers. Three men came in while they were there and one woman, a slim, well-dressed unhappy looking woman called Mrs. Boyce, or Kathleen, who smoked constantly and contributed cynicisms. She stared frankly at Horatia and the men showed great interest in her too. Horatia sat on a straight oak chair, her color a little heightened by the attention and implied admiration and not displeased. She was conscious vaguely that Mrs. Hubbell thought she was an asset. Well--asset or not, it was interesting. Mrs. Hubbell listened to everyone and talked little generalities, sometimes foolish, sometimes keen. It appeared that two of the attendant men were married. No one asked after their wives but there were references to engagements which must be kept. With an odd sort of informality they did not seem to consider that Mrs. Hubbell was included in some activities they mentioned. Nor did she seem to expect to be included. But when they spoke of theaters and of dancing, she became an immediate authority.

“I teach them to dance,” she said mockingly to Horatia, “these heavy awkward men--and then they run off and forget me.”

“Did she teach you, Jim?”

“Absolutely.”

Langley had a half-mocking, half-indulgent attitude towards Mrs. Hubbell that was new to Horatia. She had never seen him alternate his grave courtesy to women with anything except his new attitude towards herself.

No one spoke of Mr. Hubbell or of trouble. This room, so much a source of scandal to so many people, showed within itself only good feeling and security. There was nothing awkward or forced in anyone’s tone or manner. The conversation was of dancing, places to dance and to eat, theaters, novelties in New York entertainments. And they talked of things and people which were behind the times and of modern points of view, reminding Horatia oddly of the talk which went on in her own apartment with Grace, and yet this talk seemed to lack a solidity, and a depth, which she felt in Grace’s conversations. However, in its way this was commendable and on the right track. Horatia had an enormous respect for people of new ideas and she contrasted the “let live” of this room with the gossiping group on Maud’s porch--and believed she deeply preferred this. And as they easily included her, she found herself enjoying it immensely. It was Langley who suggested going. He had been friendly but aloof a little, and only Mrs. Hubbell talked much to him. She had a special little air of appropriation for him, as if she leaned on him, mentally and spiritually, as she had leaned on his arm during their walk. And he responded with a cynical gallantry which was too trivial to be taken seriously and too deft to be insulting. Horatia marvelled at this new glimpse of him. He was no longer the man who saw clear issues in politics, who wrote angry philippics about the abuse of men, women and governments. This tall, easy-mannered man bending over a tea-table was entirely different. He seemed at ease in his pose and Horatia had a vision of him as he must have been before he had given up society so abruptly--how sought after, how fascinating he must have been. There was a trace of the philanderer----

“Now,” said Horatia, emerging from the elevator and the repeated requests of Mrs. Hubbell to be sure to come to see her often, “let’s walk--and walk fast.”

“It’s a shame to have taken you there,” said Langley, “but I thought it might be an experience and you like experience. She came to see me unexpectedly--you came in, and I couldn’t just see a way to explain to her that we would prefer to walk alone without giving her something to get her claws into.”

“Claws--bad as that?”

“No--not really. She’s really quite harmless most of the time, but she has times when she is dangerous.”

“She’s very good-looking.”

“Always good-looking--always amusing--and she’s had on the whole a raw deal.”

“Jim,” Horatia spoke warmly out of the gathering darkness, “what is it about you and Mrs. Hubbell? Who is she?”

He hesitated and for a moment Horatia thought with a little fear that he was going to evade her question. But he began to speak quietly.

“Mrs. Hubbell, Horatia, is just a woman--not much more than that. She didn’t live here until after her marriage, and I met her through her husband, who was one of my best friends. He met her somewhere out West and married her and he was one of the most tremendously--tremendously in love persons that I ever saw. He was absolutely swayed by all that daintiness and delicateness that you saw this afternoon.

“After they had been married about a year or so she began to see a good deal of other men than Jack. I was there a good deal--so were lots of others. It was a pleasant place to go and none of us realized that Jack was jealous--except perhaps Rose--I don’t know. Anyway, he got hold of a fool letter that I wrote”--he stopped and Horatia was ashamed of her curiosity and passionately eager to gratify it further.

“The letter didn’t mean anything at all. But Jack came to ask me--to accuse me of inconceivable outrages towards him. I denied them, of course, but he was crazy--he wouldn’t believe me--and he sued Rose for a divorce and named me. Of course for her sake I should have fought it through and I think I could have cleared up Jack’s mind as well as the situation, but three weeks later Jack killed himself. The thing that gave the affair so much publicity was his suicide.

“It left his wife and me in a rotten unjustified situation. But for his sake we decided to let the matter drop. There was nothing on our consciences and she was very game. She said she didn’t care to clear her skirts by dragging poor Jack’s feeling into publicity after he was dead. And that he had paid the biggest price. Of course I had really, however innocently, created the situation, so I felt more cut up than I can ever tell you. So we let the matter drop and people thought what they liked.”

Horatia was quiet. They walked along under the darkened trees for a long way in silence.

“So you know what no one else knows,” said Jim. “It is a big confidence.”

“Of course.”

“And I like to confide in you.”

She thanked him by a pressure of her hand his arm.

“You know, Jim,” she told him, “that whole thing needn’t have happened so easily. Most of the trouble in the world comes from these women who work men up so terribly and have nothing in the world to do except love and marry.”

“There’s a lot to that job if it’s done right.”

“Not enough. I want love and--marriage, but----”

He held her closer to his side in the darkness and her voice caught for a minute.

“Horatia, you are so heavenly sweet----”

Afterwards Horatia was to remember that evening and to try in vain to recapture its charm and warmth. She felt it then as the beginning of many wonderful evenings. Jim’s story had been saddening but reassuring. It had stolen none of her romance. They were closer than before. They went back to Horatia’s rooms and Grace Walsh, having helped to provide supper, left them alone afterwards. Horatia told the usual callers, who telephoned, that she would not be home and laughed joyously at her casual lying.

She was altogether so joyous, so anticipatory, flying about the little kitchen, setting a table in front of the fire, for the apartment boasted a real fireplace, washing dishes, flinging gay comments about her, that she radiated it to the others. Langley’s face relaxed and he laughed as she had never seen him laugh. But after Grace had gone out a sudden shyness fell upon them both. Then Horatia slipped down before the fire on a hassock and Jim came to sit beside her.

“Tell me wise things,” she begged.

“It’s you who know wisdom.”

“I know how we shall live when we are married. I was thinking of it this afternoon. I want a place without too much household machinery--awfully few napkins and pillowcases. But such a happy sunny place--with lots of light and color. And I want to make you so comfortable but it won’t take all my time. I want to work too.”

“Working after you’re married is hard. I’m not sure----”

“It’s the only solution,” said Horatia firmly. “Otherwise you get soft. I want to work. To come home at night feeling tired and glad to get home--to meet you and not be bored with myself and my home.”

“I want to care for you, Horatia, as I have never cared for anything.”

“I don’t want care--I want love--love----”

A cloud came over Langley’s face--the faintest frowning cloud.

“Of course,” said Horatia somewhat irrelevantly, “even if I work, I don’t mean I shan’t want children. I do want them.”

He caught her in a quick, stirred embrace.

“What do you know about children?” he mocked. And then, under his breath--“Darling, darling, I want them too. But I shall be a poor father--and husband.”

And then again they fell silent and in the glow of the fire every now and again he pressed his lips to the hollow of her hand or held her hand against his cheek. They were very happy.

* * * * *

Mrs. Hubbell was quite forgotten. She was sitting in her living room just then, before the spinet desk in the corner, reading and methodically sorting letters and placing them in drawers and pigeon-holes. There was one letter she hesitated over. Once she made a gesture as if to tear it across. Then she reconsidered and placed it in the desk again.