Chapter VII: Part 7

"No, Powder; say no. I'm dreadfully sorry..."

"Very good, madam. I understand it was to bring a favourable answer from the Cardinal--"

"Oh; very well. I'll see. I'll telephone from Cedarledge."

"Please, madam, Mr. Wyant's just telephoned--"

"Mr. Wyant, Powder?"

"Mr. Arthur Wyant, madam. To ask--"

"But Mr. Wyant and Mr. James were to have started for Georgia last night."

"Yes, madam; but Mr. James was detained by business, and now Mr. Arthur Wyant asks if you'll please ring up before they leave tonight."

"Very well. (What can have happened, Nona? You don't know?) Say I've started for Cedarledge, Powder; I'll ring up from there. Yes; that's all."

"Mrs. Manford, wait! Here are two more telegrams, and a special--"

"Take care, Maisie; you'll slip and break your leg..."

"Yes; but Mrs. Manford! The special is from Mrs. Swoffer. She says the committee have just discovered a new genius, and they're calling an emergency meeting for tomorrow afternoon at three, and couldn't you possibly--"

"No, no, Maisie--I can't! Say I've _left_--"

The waves of agitation were slow in subsiding. A glimpse, down a side street, of the Marchesa's cheap boarding-house-hotel, revived them; and so did the flash past the inscrutable "Dawnside," aloof on its height above the Hudson. But as the motor slid over the wide suburban Boulevards, and out into the budding country, with the roar and menace of the city fading harmlessly away on the horizon, Pauline's serenity gradually stole back.

Nona, at her side, sat silent; and the mother was grateful for that silence. She had noticed that the girl had looked pale and drawn for the last fortnight; but that was just another proof of how much they all needed the quiet of Cedarledge.

"You don't know why Jim and his father have put off starting, Nona?"

"No idea, mother. Probably business of Jim's, as Powder said."

"Do you know why his father wants to telephone me?"

"Not a bit. Probably it's not important. I'll call up this evening."

"Oh, if you would, dear! I'm really tired."

There was a pause, and then Nona questioned: "Have you noticed Maisie, mother? She's pretty tired too."

"Yes; poor Maisie! Preparing Cedarledge has been rather a rush for her, I'm afraid--"

"It's not only that. She's just been told that her mother has a cancer."

"Oh, poor child! How dreadful! She never said a word to me--"

"No, she wouldn't."

"But, Nona, have you told her to see Disterman _at once_? Perhaps an immediate operation ... you must call her up as soon as we arrive. Tell her, of course, that I'll bear all the expenses--"

After that they both relapsed into silence.

These domestic tragedies happened now and then. One would have given the world to avert them; but when one couldn't one was always ready to foot the bill... Pauline wished that she had known ... had had time to say a kindly word to poor Maisie... Perhaps she would have to give her a week off; or at least a couple of days, while she settled her mother in the hospital. At least, if Disterman advised an operation...

It was dreadful, how rushed one always was. Pauline would have liked to go and see poor Mrs. Bruss herself. But there were Dexter and Lita and the baby all arriving the day after tomorrow, and only just time to put the last touches to Cedarledge before they came. And Pauline herself was desperately tired, though she had taken a "triple treatment" from Alvah Loft ($100) that very morning.

She always meant to be kind to every one dependent on her; it was only time that lacked--always time! Dependents and all, they were swept away with her in the same ceaseless rush. When now and then one of them dropped by the way she was sorry, and sent back first aid, and did all she could; but the rush never stopped; it couldn't stop; when one did a kindness one could only fling it at its object and whirl by.

The blessèd peace of the country! Pauline drew a deep breath of content. Never before had she approached Cedarledge with so complete a sense of possessorship. The place was really of her own making, for though the house had been built and the grounds laid out years before she had acquired the property, she had stamped her will and her wealth on every feature. Pauline was persuaded that she was fond of the country--but what she was really fond of was doing things to the country, and owning, with this object, as many acres of it as possible. And so it had come about that every year the Cedarledge estate had pushed the encircling landscape farther back, and substituted for its miles of golden-rod and birch and maple more acres of glossy lawn, and more specimen limes and oaks and cut-leaved beeches, domed over more and more windings of expensive shrubbery.

From the farthest gate it was now a drive of two miles to the house, and Pauline found even this too short for her minutely detailed appreciation of what lay between her and her threshold. In the village, the glint of the gilt weathercock on the new half-timbered engine-house; under a rich slope of pasture-land the recently enlarged dairy-farm; then woods of hemlock and dogwood; acres of rhododendron, azalea and mountain laurel acclimatized about a hidden lake; a glimpse of Japanese water-gardens fringed with cherry bloom and catkins; open lawns, spreading trees, the long brick house-front and its terraces, and through a sculptured archway the Dutch garden with dwarf topiary work and endless files of bulbs about the commander's baton of a stately sundial.

To Pauline each tree, shrub, water-course, herbaceous border, meant not only itself, but the surveying of grades, transporting of soil, tunnelling for drainage, conducting of water, the business correspondence and paying of bills, which had preceded its existence; and she would have cared for it far less--perhaps not at all--had it sprung into being unassisted, like the random shadbushes and wild cherry trees beyond the gates.

The faint spring loveliness reached her somehow, in long washes of pale green, and the blurred mauve of budding vegetation; but her eyes could not linger on any particular beauty without its dissolving into soil, manure, nurserymen's catalogues, and bills again--bills. It had all cost a terrible lot of money; but she was proud of that too--to her it was part of the beauty, part of the exquisite order and suitability which reigned as much in the simulated wildness of the rhododendron glen as in the geometrical lines of the Dutch garden.

"Seventy-five thousand bulbs this year!" she thought, as the motor swept by the sculptured gateway, just giving and withdrawing a flash of turf sheeted with amber and lilac, in a setting of twisted and scalloped evergreens.

Twenty-five thousand more bulbs than last year ... that was how she liked it to be. It was exhilarating to spend more money each year, to be always enlarging and improving, in small ways as well as great, to face unexpected demands with promptness and energy, beat down exorbitant charges, struggle through difficult moments, and come out at the end of the year tired but victorious, with improvements made, bills paid, and a reassuring balance in the bank. To Pauline that was "life."

And how her expenditure at Cedarledge was justifying itself! Her husband, drawn by its fresh loveliness, had voluntarily given up his annual trip to California, the excitement of tarpon-fishing, the independence of bachelorhood--all to spend a quiet month in the country with his wife and children. Pauline felt that even the twenty-five thousand additional bulbs had had a part in shaping his decision. And what would he say when he saw the new bathrooms, assisted at the village fire-drill, and plunged into the artificially warmed waters of the new swimming pool? A mist of happiness rose to her eyes as she looked out on the spring-misted landscape.

Nona had not followed her mother into the house. Her dogs at her heels, she plunged down hill to the woods and lake. She knew nothing of what Cedarledge had cost, but little of the labour of its making. It was simply the world of her childhood, and she could see it from no other angle, nor imagine it as ever having been different. To her it had always worn the same enchantment, stretched to the same remote distances. At nineteen it was almost the last illusion she had left.

In the path by the lake she felt herself drawn back under the old spell. Those budding branches, the smell of black peaty soil quivering with life, the woodlands faintly starred with dogwood, all were the setting of childish adventures, old games with Jim, Indian camps on the willow-fringed island, and innocent descents among the rhododendrons to boat or bathe by moonlight.

The old skiff had escaped Mrs. Manford's annual "doing-up" and still leaked through the same rusty seams. Pushing out upon the lake, Nona leaned on the oars and let the great mockery of the spring dilate her heart...

Manford questioned: "All right, eh? Warm enough? Not going too fast? The air's still sharp up here in the hills;" and Lita settled down beside him into one of the deep silences that enfolded her as softly as her furs. By turning his head a little he could just see the tip of her nose and the curve of her upper lip between hat-brim and silver fox; and the sense of her, so close and so still, sunk in that warm animal hush which he always found so restful, dispelled his last uneasiness, and made her presence at his side seem as safe and natural as his own daughter's.

"Just as well you sent the boy by train, though--I foresaw I'd get off too late to suit the young gentleman's hours."

She curled down more deeply at his side, with a contented laugh.

Manford, intent on the steering wheel, restrained the impulse to lay a hand over hers, and kept his profile steadily turned to her. It was wonderful, how successfully his plan was working out ... how reasonable she'd been about it in the end. Poor child! No doubt she would always be reasonable with people who knew how to treat her. And he flattered himself that he did. It hadn't been easy, just at first--but now he'd struck the right note and meant to hold it. Not paternal, exactly: she would have been the first to laugh at anything as old-fashioned as that. Heavy fathers had gone out with the rest of the _tremolo_ effects. No; but elder brotherly. That was it. The same free and friendly relation which existed, say, between Jim and Nona. Why, he had actually tried chaffing Lita, and she hadn't minded--he had made fun of that ridiculous Ardwin, and she had just laughed and shrugged. That little shrug--when her white shoulder, as the dress slipped from it, seemed to be pushing up into a wing! There was something birdlike and floating in all her motions... Poor child, poor little girl... He really felt like her elder brother; and his looking-glass told him that he didn't look much too old for the part...

The sense of having just grazed something dark and lurid, which had threatened to submerge them, gave him an added feeling of security, a holiday feeling, as if life stretched before him as safe and open as his coming fortnight at Cedarledge. How glad he was that he had given up his tarpon-fishing, managed to pack Jim and Wyant off to Georgia, and secured this peaceful interval in which to look about him and take stock of things before the grind began again!

The day before yesterday--just after Pauline's departure--it had seemed as if all their plans would be wrecked by one of Wyant's fits of crankiness. Wyant always enjoyed changing his mind after every one else's was made up; and at the last moment he had telephoned to say that he wasn't well enough to go south. He had rung up Pauline first, and being told that she had left had communicated with Jim; and Jim, distracted, had appealed to Manford. It was one of his father's usual attacks of "nervousness"; cousin Eleanor had seen it coming, and tried to cut down the whiskies-and-sodas; finally Jim begged Manford to drop in and reason with his predecessor.

These visits always produced a profound impression on Wyant; Manford himself, for all his professional acuteness, couldn't quite measure the degree or guess the nature of the effect, but he felt his power, and preserved it by seeing Wyant as seldom as possible. This time, however, it seemed as if things might not go as smoothly as usual. Wyant, who looked gaunt and excited, tried to carry off the encounter with the jauntiness he always assumed in Manford's presence. "My dear fellow! Sit down, do. Cigar? Always delighted to see my successor. Any little hints I can give about the management of the concern--"

It was his usual note, but exaggerated, overemphasized, lacking the Wyant touch--and he had gone on: "Though why the man who has failed should offer advice to the man who has succeeded, I don't know. Well, in this case it's about Jim... Yes, you're as fond of Jim as I am, I know... Still, he's _my_ son, eh? Well, I'm not satisfied that it's a good thing to take him away from his wife at this particular moment. Know I'm old-fashioned, of course ... all the musty old traditions have been superseded. You and your set have seen to that--introduced the breezy code of the prairies... But my son's my son; he wasn't brought up in the new way, and, damn it all, Manford, you understand; well, no--I suppose there are some things you never _will_ understand, no matter how devilish clever you are, and how many millions you've made."

The apple-cart had been near upsetting; but if Manford didn't understand poor Wyant's social code he did know how to keep his temper when it was worth while, and how to talk to a weak overexcited man who had been drinking too hard, and who took no exercise.

"Worried about Jim, eh? Yes--I don't wonder. I am too. Fact is, Jim's worked himself to a standstill, and I feel partly responsible for it, for I put him onto that job at the bank, and he's been doing it too well--overdoing it. That's the whole trouble, and that's why I feel responsible to you all for getting him away as soon as possible, and letting him have a complete holiday... Jim's young--a fortnight off will straighten him out. But you're the only person who can get him away from his wife and baby, and wherever Lita is there'll be jazz and nonsense, and bills and bothers; that's why his mother and I have offered to take the lady on for a while, and give him his chance. As man to man, Wyant, I think we two ought to stand together and see this thing through. If we do, I guarantee everything will come out right. Do you good too--being off like that with your boy, in a good climate, loafing on the beach and watching Jim recuperate. Wish I could run down and join you--and I don't say I won't make a dash for it, just for a week-end, if I can break away from the family. A-1 fishing at the island--and I know you used to be a great fisherman. As for Lita, she'll be safe enough with Pauline and Nona."

The trick was done.

But why think of it as a trick, when at the time he had meant every word he spoke? Jim _was_ dead-beat--_did_ need a change--and yet could only have been got away on the pretext of having to take his father south. Queer, how in some inner fold of one's conscience a collection of truths could suddenly seem to look like a tissue of lies! ... Lord, but what morbid rubbish! Manford was on his honour to make the whole thing turn out as true as it sounded, and he was going to. And there was an end of it. And here was Cedarledge. The drive hadn't lasted a minute...

How lovely the place looked in the twilight, a haze of tender tints melting into shadow, the long dark house-front already gemmed with orange panes!

"You'll like it, won't you, Lita?" A purr of content at his elbow.

If only Pauline would have the sense to leave him alone, let him enjoy it all in Lita's lazy inarticulate way, not cram him with statistics and achievements, with expenditures and results. He was so tired of her perpetual stock-taking, her perpetual rendering of accounts and reckoning up of interest. He admired it all, of course--he admired Pauline herself more than ever. But he longed to let himself sink into the spring sweetness as a man might sink on a woman's breast, and just feel her quiet hands in his hair.

"There's the dogwood! Look! Never seen it in bloom here before, have you? It's one of our sights." He had counted a good deal on the effect of the dogwood. "Well, here we are--Jove, but it's good to be here! Why, child, I believe you've been asleep..." He lifted her, still half-drowsing, from the motor--

And now, the illuminated threshold, Powder, the footmen, the inevitable stack of letters--and Pauline.

But outside the spring dusk was secretly weaving its velvet spell. He said to himself: "Shouldn't wonder if I slept ten hours at a stretch tonight."

XXI

THE last day before her husband's arrival had been exhausting to Pauline; but she could not deny that the results were worth the effort. When had she ever before heard Dexter say on such a full note of satisfaction: "Jove, but it's good to be back! What have you done to make the place look so jolly?", or seen his smiling glance travel so observantly about the big hall with its lamps and flowers and blazing hearth? "Well, Lita, this is better than town, eh? You didn't know what a good place Cedarledge could be! Don't rush off upstairs--they're bringing the baby down. Come over to the fire and warm up; it's nipping here in the hills. Hullo, Nona, you quiet mouse--didn't even see you, curled up there in your corner..."

Yes; the arrival had been perfect. Even Lita's kiss had seemed spontaneous. And Dexter had praised everything, noticed all the improvements; had voluntarily announced that he meant to inspect the new heating system and the model chicken hatchery the next morning. "Wonderful, what a way you have of making things a hundred per cent better when they seemed all right before! I suppose even the eggs at breakfast tomorrow will be twice their normal size."

One such comment paid his wife for all she had done, and roused her inventive faculty to fresh endeavour. Wasn't there something else she could devise to provoke his praise? And the beauty of it was that it all looked as if it had been done so easily. The casual observer would never have suspected that the simple life at Cedarledge gave its smiling organizer more trouble than a season of New York balls.

That also was part of Pauline's satisfaction. She even succeeded in persuading herself, as she passed through the hall with its piled-up golf clubs and tennis rackets, its motor coats and capes and scarves stacked on the long table, and the muddy terriers comfortably rolled up on chintz-cushioned settles, that it was really all as primitive and impromptu as it looked, and that she herself had always shared her husband's passion for stamping about in the mud in tweed and homespun.

"One of these days," she thought, "we'll give up New York altogether, and live here all the year round, like an old-fashioned couple, and Dexter can farm while I run the poultry-yard and dairy." Instantly her practical imagination outlined the plan of an up-to-date chicken-farm on a big scale, and calculated the revenues to be drawn from really scientific methods of cheese and butter-making. Spring broilers, she knew, were in ever-increasing demand, and there was a great call in restaurants and hotels for the little foreign-looking cream-cheeses in silver paper...

"The Marchesa has rung up again, madam," Powder reminded her, the second morning at breakfast. Everybody came down to breakfast at Cedarledge; it was part of the simple life. But it generally ended in Pauline's throning alone behind the tea-urn, for her husband and daughter revelled in unpunctuality when they were on a holiday, and Lita's inability to appear before luncheon was tacitly taken for granted.

"The Marchesa?" Pauline was roused from the placid enjoyment of her new-laid egg and dewy butter. Why was it that one could never completely protect one's self against bores and bothers? They had done everything they could for Amalasuntha, and were now discovering that gratitude may take more troublesome forms than neglect.

"The Marchesa would like to consult you about the date of the Cardinal's reception."

Ah, then it was a fact--it was really settled! A glow of satisfaction swept away Pauline's indifference, and her sense of fairness obliged her to admit that, for such a service, Amalasuntha had a right to a Sunday at Cedarledge. "It will bore her to death to spend two days here alone with the family; but she will like to be invited, and in the course of time she'll imagine it was a big house-party," Pauline reflected.

"Very well, Powder. Please telephone that I shall expect the Marchesa next Saturday."

That gave them, at any rate, the inside of a week to themselves. After six days alone with his women-kind perhaps even Dexter would not be sorry for a little society; and if so, Pauline, with the Marchesa as a bait, could easily drum up a country-neighbour dinner. The Toys, she happened to remember, were to be at the Greystock Country Club over Easter. She smiled at the thought that this might have made Dexter decide to give up California for Cedarledge. She was not afraid of Mrs. Toy any longer, and even recognized that her presence in the neighbourhood might be useful. Pauline could never wholly believe--at least not for many hours together--that people could be happy in the country without all sorts of social alleviations; and six days of quiet seemed to her measurable only in terms of prehistoric eras. When had her mind ever had such a perspective to range over? Knowing it could be shortened at will she sighed contentedly, and decided to devote the morning to the study of a new refrigerating system she had recently seen advertised.

Dexter had not yet made his tour of inspection with her; but that was hardly surprising. The first morning he had slept late, and lounged about on the terrace in the balmy sunshine. In the afternoon they had all motored to Greystock for a round of golf; and today, on coming down to breakfast, Pauline had learned with surprise that her husband, Nona and Lita were already off for an early canter, leaving word that they would breakfast on the road. She did not know whether to marvel most at Lita's having been coaxed out of bed before breakfast, or at Dexter's taking to the saddle after so many years. Certainly the Cedarledge air was wonderfully bracing and rejuvenating; she herself was feeling its effects. And though she would have liked to show her husband all the improvements she felt no impatience, but only a quiet satisfaction in the success of her plans. If they could give Jim back a contented Lita the object of their holiday would be attained; and in a glow of optimism she sat down at her writing-table and dashed off a joyful letter to her son.

"Dexter is wonderful; he has already coaxed Lita out for a ride before breakfast... Isn't that a triumph? When you get back you won't know her... I shouldn't have a worry left if I didn't think Nona is looking too pale and drawn. I shall persuade her to take a course of Inspirational treatment as soon as we get back to town. By the way," her pen ran on, "have you heard the news about Stan Heuston? People say he's gone to Europe with that dreadful Merrick woman, and that now Aggie will really have to divorce him... Nona, who has always been such a friend of Stan's, has of course heard the report, but doesn't seem to know any more than the rest of us..."

Nothing amused Arthur Wyant more than to be supplied with such tit-bits of scandal before they became common property. Pauline couldn't help feeling that father and son must find the evenings long in their island bungalow; and in the overflow of her own satisfaction she wanted to do what she could to cheer them.

In spite of her manifold occupations the day seemed long. She had visited the baby, seen the cook, consulted with Powder about the working of the new burglar-alarm, gone over the gardens, catalogues in hand, with the head-gardener, walked down to the dairy and the poultry yard to say that Mr. Manford would certainly inspect them both the next day, and called up Maisie Bruss to ask news of her mother, and tell her to prepare a careful list for the reception to the Cardinal; yet an astonishing amount of time still remained. It was delightful to be in the country, to study the working-out of her improvements, and do her daily exercises with windows open on the fresh hill breezes; but already her real self was projected forward into complicated plans for the Cardinal's entertainment. She wondered if it would not be wise to run up to town the next morning and consult Amalasuntha; and reluctantly decided that a talk on the telephone would do.

The talk was long, and on the whole satisfactory; but if Maisie had been within reach the arrangements for the party would have made more progress. It was most unlucky that the doctors thought Maisie ought to stay with her mother till the latter could get a private room at the hospital. ("A room, of course, Maisie dear; I won't have her in a ward. Not for the world! Just put it down on your account, please. So glad to do it!") She really was glad to do all she could; but it was unfortunate (and no one would feel it more than Maisie) that Mrs. Bruss should have been taken ill just then. To fill the time, Pauline decided to go for a walk with the dogs.

When she returned she found Nona, still in her riding-habit, settled in a sofa-corner in the library, and deep in a book.

"Why, child, where did you drop from? I didn't know you were back."

"The others are not. Lita suddenly took it into her head that it would be fun to motor over to Greenwich and dine at the Country Club, and so father got a motor at Greystock and telephoned for one of the grooms to fetch the horses. It sounded rather jolly, but I was tired, so I came home. It's nearly full moon, and they'll have a glorious run back." Nona smiled up at her mother, as if to say that the moon made all the difference.

"Oh, but that means dancing, and getting home at all hours! And I promised Jim to see that Lita kept quiet, and went to bed early. What's the use of our having persuaded her to come here? Your father ought to have refused to go."

"If he had, there were plenty of people lunching at Greystock who would have taken her on. You know--the cocktail crowd. That's why father sacrificed himself."

Pauline reflected. "I see. Your father always has to sacrifice himself. I suppose there's no use trying to make Lita listen to reason."

"Not unless one humours her a little. Father sees that. We mustn't let her get bored here--she won't stay if we do."

Pauline felt a sudden weariness in all her bones. It was as if the laboriously built-up edifice of the simple life at Cedarledge had already crumbled into dust at a kick of Lita's little foot. The engine-house, the poultry yard, the new burglar-alarm and the heating of the swimming pool--when would Dexter ever have time to inspect and admire them, if he was to waste his precious holiday in scouring the country after Lita?

"Then I suppose you and I dine alone," Pauline said, turning a pinched little smile on her daughter.

XXII

WHAT a time of year it was--the freed earth suddenly breaking into life from every frozen seam! Manford wondered if he had ever before had time to feel the impetuous loveliness of the American spring.

In spite of his drive home in the small hours he had started out early the next morning for a long tramp. Sleep--how could a man sleep with that April moonlight in his veins? The moon that was everywhere--caught in pearly puffs on the shadbush branches, scattered in ivory drifts of wild plum bloom, tipping the grasses of the wayside with pale pencillings, sheeting the recesses of the woodland with pools of icy silver. A freezing burning magic, into which a man plunged, and came out cold and aglow, to find everything about him as unreal and incredible as himself...

After the blatant club restaurant, noise, jazz, revolving couples, Japanese lanterns, screaming laughter, tumultuous good-byes, this white silence, the long road unwinding and twisting itself up again, blind faces of shuttered farmhouses, black forests, misty lakes--a cut through a world in sleep, all dumb and moon-bemused...

The contrast was beautiful, intolerable...

Sleep? He hadn't even gone to bed. Just plunged into a bath, and stretched out on his lounge to see the dawn come. A mysterious sight that, too; the cold fingers of the light remaking a new world, while men slept, unheeding, and imagined they would wake to some familiar yesterday. Fools!

He breakfasted--ravenously--before his wife was down, and swung off with a couple of dogs on a long tramp, he didn't care where.

Even the daylight world seemed unimaginably strange: as if he had never really looked at it before. He walked on slowly for three or four miles, vaguely directing himself toward Greystock. His long tramps as a boy, in his farming days, had given him the habit of deliberate steady walking, and the unwonted movement refreshed rather than tired him--or at least, while it tired his muscles, it seemed to invigorate his brain. Excited? No--just pleasantly stimulated...

He stretched himself out under a walnut tree on a sunny slope, lit his pipe and gazed abroad over fields and woods. All the land was hazy with incipient life. The dogs hunted and burrowed, and then came back to doze at his feet with pleasant dreamings. The sun on his face felt warm and human, and gradually life began to settle back into its old ruts--a comfortable routine, diversified by pleasant episodes. Could it ever be more, to a man past fifty?

But after a while a chill sank on his spirit. He began to feel cold and hungry, and set out to walk again.

Presently he found it was half-past eleven--time to be heading for home. Home; and the lunch-table; Pauline; and Nona; and Lita. Oh, God, no--not yet... He trudged on, slowly and sullenly, deciding to pick up a mouthful of lunch somewhere by the way.

At a turn of the road he caught sight of a woman's figure strolling across a green slope above him. Strong and erect in her trim golfing skirt, she came down in his direction swinging a club in her hand. Why, sure enough, he was actually on the edge of the Greystock course! The woman was alone, without companions or caddies--going around for a trial spin, or perhaps simply taking a stroll, as he was, drinking in the intoxicating air...

"Hul_lo_!" she called, and he found himself advancing toward Gladys Toy.

Was this active erect woman in her nut-brown sweater and plaited skirt the same as the bejewelled and redundant beauty of so many wearisome dinners? Something of his old interest--the short-lived fancy of a week or two--revived in him as she swung along, treading firmly but lightly on her broad easy shoes.

"Hul_lo_!" he responded. "Didn't know you were here."

"I wasn't. I only came last night. Isn't it glorious?" Even her slow-dripping voice moved faster and had a livelier ring. Decidedly, he admired a well-made woman, a woman with curves and volume--all the more after the stripped skeletons he had dined among the night before. Mrs. Toy had height enough to carry off her pounds, and didn't look ashamed of them, either.

"Glorious? Yes, you _are_!" he said.

"Oh, _me_?"

"What else did you mean, then?"

"Don't be silly! How did you get here?"

"On my feet."

"Gracious! From Cedarledge? You must be dead."

"Don't you believe it. I walked over to lunch with you."

"You've just said you didn't know I was here."

"You mustn't believe everything I say."

"All right. Then I won't believe you walked over to lunch with me."

"Will you believe me when I tell you you're awfully beautiful?"

"Yes!" she challenged him.

"And that I want to kiss you?"

She smiled with the eyes of a tired swimmer, and he saw that her slender stock of repartee was exhausted. "Herman'll be here tonight," she said.

"Then let's make the most of today."

"But I've asked some people to lunch at the club."

"Then you'll chuck them, and come off and lunch with me somewhere else."

"Oh, will I--shall I?" She laughed, and he saw her breast rise on her shortened breath. He caught her to him and planted a kiss in the middle of her laughter.

"Now will you?"

She was a rich armful, and he remembered how splendid he had thought plump rosy women in his youth, before money and fashion imposed their artificial standards.

When he reëntered the doors of Cedarledge the cold spring sunset was slanting in through the library windows on the tea-table at which his wife and Nona sat. Of Lita there was no sign; Manford heard with indolent amusement that she was reported to be just getting up. His sentiment about Lita had settled into fatherly indulgence; he no longer thought the epithet inappropriate. But underneath the superficial kindliness he felt for her, as for all the world, he was aware of a fundamental indifference to most things but his own comfort and convenience. Such was the salutary result of fresh air and recovered leisure. How absurd to work one's self into a state of fluster about this or that--money or business or women! Especially women. As he looked back on the last weeks he saw what a fever of fatigue he must have been in to take such an exaggerated view of his own emotions. After three days at Cedarledge serenity had descended on him like a benediction. Gladys Toy's cheeks were as smooth as nectarines; and the keen morning light had shown him that she wasn't in the least made up. He recalled the fact with a certain pleasure, and then dismissed her from his mind--or rather she dropped out of herself. He wasn't in the humour to think long about anybody or anything ... he revelled in his own laziness and indifference.

"Tea? Yes; and a buttered muffin by all means. Several of them. I'm as hungry as the devil. Went for a long tramp this morning before any of you were up. Mrs. Toy ran across me, and brought me back in her new two-seater. A regular beauty--the car, I mean--you'll have to have one like it, Nona... Jove, how good the fire feels ... and what is it that smells so sweet? Carnations--why, they're giants! We must go over the green-houses tomorrow, Pauline; and all the rest of it. I want to take stock of all your innovations."

At that moment he felt able to face even the tour of inspection, and all the facts and calculations it would evoke. Everything seemed easy now that he had found he could shake off his moonlight obsession by spending a few hours with a pretty woman who didn't mind being kissed. He was to meet Mrs. Toy again the day after tomorrow; and in the interval she would suffice to occupy his mind when he had nothing more interesting to think of.

As he was putting a match to his pipe Lita came into the room with her long glide. Her boy was perched on her shoulder, and she looked like one of Crivelli's enigmatic Madonnas carrying a little red-haired Jesus.

"Gracious! Is this breakfast or tea? I seem to have overslept myself after our joy-ride," she said, addressing a lazy smile to Manford.

She dropped to her knees before the fire and held up the boy to Pauline. "Kiss his granny," she commanded in her faintly derisive voice.

It was very pretty, very cleverly staged; but Manford said to himself that she was too self-conscious, and that her lips were too much painted. Besides, he had always hated women with prominent cheekbones and hollows under them. He settled back comfortably into the afternoon's reminiscences.

XXIII

DECIDEDLY, there was a different time-measure for life in town and in the country.

The dinner for Amalasuntha organized (and the Toys secured for it), there were still two days left in that endless inside of a week which was to have passed so rapidly. Yet everything had gone according to Pauline's wishes. Dexter had really made the promised round of house and grounds, and had extended his inspection to dairy, poultry yard and engine-house. And he had approved of everything--approved almost too promptly and uncritically. Was it because he had not been sufficiently interested to note defects, or at any rate to point them out? The suspicion, which stirred in his wife when she observed that he walked through the cow-stables without making any comment on the defective working of the new ventilating system, became a certainty when, on their return to the house, she suggested their going over the accounts together. "Oh, as long as the architect has o.k'd them! Besides, it's too late now to do anything, isn't it? And your results are so splendid that I don't see how they could be overpaid. Everything seems to be perfect--"

"Not the ventilating system in the Alderneys' stable, Dexter."

"Oh, well; can't that be arranged? If it can't, put it down to profit and loss. I never enjoyed anything more than my swim this morning in the pool. You've managed to get the water warmed to exactly the right temperature."

He slipped out to join Nona on the putting green below the terrace.

Yes; everything was all right; he was evidently determined that everything should be. It had been the same about Michelangelo's debts. At first he had resisted his wife's suggestion that they should help to pay them off, in order to escape the young man's presence in New York; then he had suddenly promised the Marchesa to settle the whole amount, without so much as a word to Pauline. It was as if he were engrossed in some deep and secret purpose, and resolved to clear away whatever threatened to block his obstinate advance. She had seen him thus absorbed when a "big case" possessed him. But there were no signs now of professional preoccupation; no telephoning, wiring, hurried arrivals of junior members or confidential clerks. He seemed to have shaken off "the office" with all his other cares. There was something about his serene good humour that obscurely frightened her.

Once she might have ascribed it to an interest--an exaggerated interest--in his step-son's wife. That idea had already crossed Pauline's mind: she remembered its cold brush on the evening when her husband had come home unexpectedly to see her, and had talked so earnestly and sensibly about bringing Lita and her boy to Cedarledge. The mere flit of a doubt--no more; and even then Pauline had felt its preposterousness, and banished it in disgust and fear.

Now she smiled at the fear. Her husband's manner to Lita was perfect--easy, good humoured but slightly ironic. At the time of Jim's marriage Dexter had had that same smile. He had thought the bride silly and pretentious, he had even questioned her good looks. And now the first week at Cedarledge showed that, if his attitude had grown kindlier, it was for Jim's sake, not Lita's. Nona and Lita were together all day long; when Manford joined them he treated both in the same way, as a man treats two indulged and amusing daughters.

What was he thinking of, then? Gladys Toy again, perhaps? Pauline had imagined that was over. Even if it were not, it no longer worried her. Dexter had had similar "flare-ups" before, and they hadn't lasted. Besides, Pauline had gradually acquired a certain wifely philosophy, and was prepared to be more lenient to her second husband than to the first. As wives grew older they had to realize that husbands didn't always keep pace with them...

Not that she felt herself too old for Manford's love; all her early illusions had rushed back to her the night he had made her give up the Rivington dinner. But her dream had not survived that evening. She had understood then that he meant they should be "only friends"; that was all the future was to hold for her. Well; for a grandmother it ought to be enough. She had no patience with the silly old women who expected "that sort of nonsense" to last. Still, she meant, on her return to town, to consult a new Russian who had invented a radium treatment which absolutely wiped out wrinkles. He called himself a Scientific Initiate ... the name fascinated her.

From these perplexities she was luckily distracted by the urgent business of the Cardinal's reception. Even without Maisie she could do a good deal of preparatory writing and telephoning; but she was mortified to find how much her handwriting had suffered from the long habit of dictation. She never wrote a note in her own hand nowadays--except to distinguished foreigners, since Amalasuntha had explained that they thought typed communications ill-bred. And her unpractised script was so stiff and yet slovenly that she decided she must have her hands "treated" as she did her other unemployed muscles. But how find time for this new and indispensable cure? Her spirits rose with the invigorating sense of being once more in a hurry...

Nona sat on the south terrace in the sun. The Cedarledge experiment had lasted eight days now, and she had to own that it had turned out better than she would have thought possible.

Lita was giving them wonderfully little trouble. After the first flight to Greenwich she had shown no desire for cabarets and night-clubs, but had plunged into the alternative excitement of violent outdoor sports; relapsing, after hours of hard exercise, into a dreamy lassitude unruffled by outward events. She never spoke of her husband, and Nona did not know if Jim's frequent--too frequent--letters, were answered, or even read. Lita smiled vaguely when he was mentioned, and merely remarked, when her mother-in-law once risked an allusion to the future: "I thought we were here to be cured of plans." And Pauline effaced her blunder with a smile.

Nona herself felt more and more like one of the trench-watchers pictured in the war-time papers. There she sat in the darkness on her narrow perch, her eyes glued to the observation-slit which looked out over seeming emptiness. She had often wondered what those men thought about during the endless hours of watching, the days and weeks when nothing happened, when no faintest shadow of a skulking enemy crossed their span of no-man's land. What kept them from falling asleep, or from losing themselves in waking dreams, and failing to give warning when the attack impended? She could imagine a man led out to be shot in the Flanders mud because, at such a moment, he had believed himself to be dozing on a daisy bank at home...

Since her talk with Aggie Heuston a sort of _curare_ had entered into her veins. She was sharply aware of everything that was going on about her, but she felt unable to rouse herself. Even if anything that mattered ever did happen again, she questioned if she would be able to shake off the weight of her indifference. Was it really ten days now since that talk with Aggie? And had everything of which she had then been warned fulfilled itself without her lifting a finger? She dimly remembered having acted in what seemed a mood of heroic self-denial; now she felt only as if she had been numb. What was the use of fine motives if, once the ardour fallen, even they left one in the lurch?

She thought: "I feel like the oldest person in the world, and yet with the longest life ahead of me ..." and a shiver of loneliness ran over her.

Should she go and hunt up the others? What difference would that make? She might offer to write notes for her mother, who was upstairs plunged in her visiting-list; or look in on Lita, who was probably asleep after her hard gallop of the morning; or find her father, and suggest going for a walk. She had not seen her father since lunch; but she seemed to remember that he had ordered his new Buick brought round. Off again--he was as restless as the others. All of them were restless nowadays. Had he taken Lita with him, perhaps? Well--why not? Wasn't he here to look after Lita? A sudden twitch of curiosity drew Nona to her feet, and sent her slowly upstairs to her sister-in-law's room. Why did she have to drag one foot after the other, as if some hidden influence held her back, signalled a mute warning not to go? What nonsense! Better make a clean breast of it to herself once for all, and admit--

"I beg pardon, Miss." It was the ubiquitous Powder at her heels. "If you're going up to Mrs. Manford's sitting-room would you kindly tell her that Mr. Manford has telephoned he won't be back from Greystock till late, and she's please not to wait dinner?" Powder looked a little as if he would rather not give that particular message himself.

"Greystock? Oh, all right. I'll tell her."

Golf again--golf and Gladys Toy. Nona gave her clinging preoccupations a last shake. This was really a lesson to her! To be imagining horrible morbid things about her father while he was engaged in a perfectly normal elderly man's flirtation with a stupid woman he would forget as soon as he got back to town! A real Easter holiday diversion. "After all, he gave up his tarpon-fishing to come here, and Gladys isn't a bad substitute--as far as weight goes. But a good deal less exciting as sport." A dreary gleam of amusement crossed her mind.

Softly she pushed open the door of one of the perfectly appointed spare-rooms: a room so studiously equipped with every practical convenience--from the smoothly-hung window-ventilators to the jointed dressing-table lights, from the little portable telephone, and the bed-table with folding legs, to the tall threefold mirror which lost no curve of the beauty it reflected--that even Lita's careless ways seemed subdued to the prevailing order.

Lita was on the lounge, one long arm drooping, the other folded behind her in the immemorial attitude of sleeping beauty. Sleep lay on her lightly, as it does on those who summon it at will. It was her habitual escape from the boredom between thrills, and in such intervals of existence as she was now traversing she plunged back into it after every bout of outdoor activity.

Nona tiptoed forward and looked down on her. Who said that sleep revealed people's true natures? It only made them the more enigmatic by the added veil of its own mystery. Lita's head was nested in the angle of a thin arm, her lids rounded heavily above the sharp cheek-bones just swept by their golden fringe, the pale bow of the mouth relaxed, the slight steel-strong body half shown in the parting of a flowered dressing-gown. Thus exposed, with gaze extinct and loosened muscles, she seemed a mere bundle of contradictory whims tied together by a frail thread of beauty. The hand of the downward arm hung open, palm up. In its little hollow lay the fate of three lives. What would she do with them? How could one conceive of her knowing, or planning, or imagining--conceive of her in any sort of durable human relations to any one or anything?

Her eyes opened and a languid curiosity floated up through them.

"That you? I must have fallen asleep. I was trying to count up the number of months we've been here, and numbers always make me go to sleep."

Nona laughed and sat down at the foot of the lounge. "Dear me--just as I thought you were beginning to be happy!"

"Well, isn't this what you call being happy--in the country?"

"Lying on your back, and wondering how many months there are in a week?"

"A week? Is it only a week? How on earth can you be sure, when one day's so exactly like another?"

"Tomorrow won't be. There's the blow-out for Amalasuntha, and dancing afterward. Mother's idea of the simple life."

"Well, all your mother's ideas _are_ simple." Lita yawned, her pale pink mouth drooping like a faded flower. "Besides, it's ages till tomorrow. Where's your father? He was going to take me for a spin in the new Buick."

"He's broken his promise, then. Deserted us all and sneaked off to Greystock on his lone."

A faint redness rose to Lita's cheek-bones. "Greystock and Gladys Toy? Is that _his_ idea of the simple life? About on a par with your mother's... Did you ever notice the Toy ankles?"

Nona smiled. "They're not unnoticeable. But you forget that father's getting to be an old gentleman... Fathers mustn't be choosers..."

Lita made a slight grimace. "Oh, he could do better than that. There's old Cosby, who looks heaps older--didn't he want to marry you? ... Nona, you darling, let's take the Ford and run over to Greenwich for dinner. Would your mother so very much mind? Does she want us here the whole blessed time?"

"I'll go and ask her. But on a Friday night the Country Club will be as dead as the moon. Only a few old ladies playing bridge."

"Well, then we'll have the floor to ourselves. I want a good practice, and it's a ripping floor. We can dance with the waiters. It'll be fun to shock the old ladies. I noticed one of the waiters the other day--must be an Italian--built rather like Tommy Ardwin... I'm sure he dances..."

That was all life meant to Lita--would ever mean. Good floors to practise new dance-steps on, men--any men--to dance with and be flattered by, women--any women--to stare and envy one, dull people to startle, stupid people to shock--but never any one, Nona questioned, whom one wanted neither to startle nor shock, neither to be envied nor flattered by, but just to lose one's self in for good and all? Lita lose herself--? Why, all she wanted was to keep on finding herself, immeasurably magnified, in every pair of eyes she met!

And here were Nona and her father and mother fighting to preserve this brittle plaything for Jim, when somewhere in the world there might be a real human woman for him... What was the sense of it all?

XXIV

THE Marchesa di San Fedele's ideas about the country were perfectly simple; in fact she had only one. She regarded it as a place in which there was more time to play bridge than in town. Thank God for that!--and the rest one simply bore with... Of course there was the obligatory going the rounds with host or hostess: gardens, glass, dairy, chicken-hatchery, and heaven knew what besides (stables, thank goodness, were out of fashion--even if people rode they no longer, unless they kept hounds, dragged one between those dreary rows of box stalls, or made one admire the lustrous steel and leather of the harness room, or the monograms stencilled in blue and red on the coach-house floor).

The Marchesa's life had always been made up of doing things as dull as going over model dairies in order to get the chance, or the money, to do others as thrilling to her as dancing was to Lita. It was part of the game: one had to pay for what one got: the thing was to try and get a great deal more than the strict equivalent.

"Not that I don't marvel at your results, Pauline; we all do. But they make me feel so useless and incapable. All this wonderful creation--baths and swimming-pools and hatcheries and fire-engines, and everything so perfect, indoors and out! Sometimes I'm glad you've never been to our poor old San Fedele. But of course bathrooms will have to be put in at San Fedele if Michelangelo finds an American bride when he comes over..."

Pauline laid down the pen she had taken up to record the exact terms in which she was to address the Cardinal's secretary. ("A _personal_ note, dear; yes, in your own writing; they don't yet understand your new American ways at the Vatican...")

"When Michelangelo comes over?" Pauline echoed.