Part 27

Well, it hadn’t. Their engagement had lasted five months--not a very happy time for either of them, because of the depression that seized Denis every time he had a letter from his people, or was in any way reminded of them. Emily had endured this with admirable patience. She knew that he loved her with all his honest heart, that he was proud of her, and that he couldn’t help his queer, tribal notions about his family. He was always saying that “a fellow owes it to his family” to do this or that, and it was the strongest possible proof of his love for Emily that he clung to her in spite of their opposition.

Still, no matter how willing she was to understand Denis’s point of view, Emily couldn’t be expected to share his reverence for his relatives. On the contrary, she often found it very hard to hold her tongue--as, for instance, on the day when he came to her with the air of an absolutely desperate man, and told her that he was ordered off to New Orleans on forty-eight hours’ notice, to survey a damaged hull, and that they must be married before he left.

When she objected, he threatened to throw up the whole business--that flourishing business as a marine surveyor which was the very apple of his eye--because he could not and would not leave Emily unless he left her as his wife. She was secretly delighted by this impetuous and domineering conduct, and sorry for him, too, because he was so obviously upset; and yet she was exasperated. He couldn’t hide the fact that he was making a tremendous sacrifice in affronting his sacrosanct people for her sake.

After the wedding he had sent a cable announcing it to his mother. Then a reckless gayety had come over him, like that of a man who has nothing more to lose.

“I don’t care!” said Emily to herself, with tears in her eyes. “It’s all part of his darlingness. He’s so terribly loyal!”

Of course, he hadn’t imagined that his family would descend upon Emily like this, when he was away. He had expected them to stay in England, where they belonged. He would have been appalled at the thought of this meeting.

The latest development had come upon Emily like a thunderbolt. That morning a letter had been brought up to her, and, without the faintest suspicion, she had opened it to read:

MY DEAR EMILY:

I should be very pleased if you would dine with us this evening at half past seven.

Most sincerely yours, MAUDE LANIER.

She had sent a messenger boy with her acceptance, because she knew that that was what Denis would have wished; but she couldn’t make the best of it, couldn’t recapture the smiling, careless bravery that Denis so loved in her. She had had courage enough to leave her dear, shabby old home at eighteen and go off to try her luck in the wide world. She had been able to give Denis the most gallant, bright farewell. She had faced more than one black moment in her twenty years, but she could not face Denis’s family untroubled.

She had given herself two hours to dress in, and she needed every second of the time. Her prettiness seemed to ebb away with every breath she drew. That radiant hair was an unruly tangle when she tried to put it up. The brightness fled from her face, leaving it pale and strained. The dark dress that Denis had admired so much was admirable no longer, but austerely plain and grievously unbecoming. Emily could have wept at her own image in the mirror.

“I look so--so mean!” she cried, with a sob. “Such a meek, scared, silly little object!”

This wouldn’t do. The thing that the serious Denis had loved best of all in her was her absurd, delightful gayety. She straightened her shoulders and drew a long breath.

“You know,” she said to her own reflection, “Denis picked _you_ out from all the other girls in the world, and now you’ve simply got to show the reason why. Even if you’re hideous, you needn’t be dismal. Here goes!”

So she managed a smile, after all.

She had been Mrs. Denis Lanier for only five weeks, had had a check book and money to spend for the same short time, and it was still a little intoxicating. She ordered a taxi from her room by telephone, and when it was announced she went down into the lobby almost her own debonair self again. Think of Mrs. Denis Lanier, in a fur coat and a pearl necklace, getting into her taxi!

Her father was a professor in a small New England college, and Emily had been brought up with a full understanding of the woeful discrepancy between the tastes and the incomes of professors and their families. She had learned to be happy without any of the things for which her young heart thirsted. It was the very essence of her nature to be happy; but it cannot be denied that she was a hundred times more happy now that she possessed some share of worldly goods. She wished and tried to be high-minded, and still she couldn’t forget her pearl necklace.

II

Mrs. Lanier was established in a hotel of the sort which Emily had never yet entered. Directly she entered its august portals, she felt herself dwindle again. What were her fur coat and her necklace here? Who was Mrs. Denis Lanier? Nothing at all!

She went up to the desk and told the haughty young man there that Mrs. Denis Lanier wished to see Mrs. Cecil Lanier; and then she waited.

It was the waiting that unnerved her. If some one had come at once, if she had been taken upstairs without delay, her courage might have held out; but to sit there, alone and unregarded, while fifteen endless minutes went by, was too much for her. She began seriously to contemplate running away.

“She’s doing it on purpose--just to be rude and hateful!” she thought. “I won’t stay! Denis wouldn’t want me to stay. It’s humiliating and--”

She was aware then that some one had come up behind her and stopped at her side, looking down at her. What is more, she felt certain that it was a critical, hostile look.

“Very well!” said she to herself. “Go ahead and stare! It doesn’t bother me the least little bit in the world!”

She sat quite still, trying valiantly not to care; but it was unendurable. She felt her face flush. She stirred uneasily, and very soon she turned, to glance up into a pair of glacial blue eyes.

“Is this Emily?” asked the other. “I fancied so.”

Remarkable, the implications that could be put into six short words!

“Yes,” said Emily. “I’m--I am. And you’re--this is Denis’s mother?”

For a moment they regarded each other in silence, and each with the same thought, almost audible:

“I _knew_ you’d be like this!”

Of course Denis’s mother was like this--a handsome, gray-haired woman, tall, rather angular, with a disdainful nose and a faint, chilly little smile. In spite of her queer, stiff, high-waisted figure, her very unbecoming coiffure, her positively ugly black satin dress, she produced an effect of extraordinary magnificence.

“It’s very odd of Denis to go off that way,” she said.

“He couldn’t help it,” returned Emily hotly. “He had to go.”

“Cecil, my younger son, called in at Denis’s office directly we landed, and he was told that Denis had gone away,” Mrs. Lanier went on, without noticing the interruption. “As soon as we had his cable, we arranged to come. It seems to me very odd that he should run off like that! However”--she paused for a moment, looking carefully at Emily--“perhaps we’d better dine upstairs, alone,” she added, “instead of in the restaurant. I know quite a number of people here.”

With burning cheeks and eyes averted, Emily murmured:

“That would be nicer.”

As they walked together toward the lift, she tried to smile, to talk brightly; but she was terribly hurt--even more hurt than angry.

But this was Denis’s mother, a person of supreme importance in his world. He couldn’t help but be influenced by her opinion; so her opinion _must_ be favorable.

“Is it--do you find it comfortable here?” Emily asked politely.

Mrs. Lanier seemed surprised that any one should imagine her comfortable here. She smiled wearily.

“I’ve been in the States before,” she answered. “I dare say I shall do very well for a time. I’m sorry, though, to hear that you and Denis are going to live about in hotels.”

“But we’re not! We’re going to start housekeeping just as soon as he--”

“Denis is very domestic, like his father. I’m sorry to think of his having to live about in hotels,” Mrs. Lanier went on. “However--”

She preceded Emily down a corridor. At the end she opened a door, and they entered a small sitting room.

“We must have a little chat,” said Mrs. Lanier, “before Cecil comes in.”

She took up a packet of letters from the console near her, and began looking over them.

“Let me see,” she said. “Ah, here it is! ‘She is only twenty, and very young for her age,’ Denis tells me. Are you really? And then he says--let me see--‘a remarkably sweet disposition.’ That’s very nice, I’m sure. ‘Her people are thoroughly respectable, decent people, but they’--well, no matter. ‘She is a very clever and amusing girl.’”

This went on for an intolerable time. Extracts from poor Denis’s letters were read aloud, as if for purposes of comparison with the real Emily, and from time to time Mrs. Lanier asked very direct questions about her parents, her education, her financial position. In the end, Emily had an excellent picture of herself as she appeared to Denis’s mother--a silly, awkward girl, without money or position, who had somehow cajoled a fine young man to his destruction.

She made no attempt to defend herself. She had no great talent for that. She was a sensitive, impulsive creature, quite lacking in self-satisfaction. Moreover, she was very young and inexperienced, and perhaps a little too willing to learn.

She began to think that she really was the contemptible creature that Mrs. Lanier believed her to be. A sense of guilt oppressed her. She sat before her imperturbable judge, pale and downcast, answering the older woman’s questions in a low, unsteady voice.

Presently Mrs. Lanier had an ally in her daughter Cynthia, a cool, casual blond girl, who looked as if she could be beautiful if she liked, but didn’t think it worth trying. Cynthia didn’t ask questions. That, too, she seemed to think not worth trying. She simply began conversations which died at once, because Emily could take no share in them.

There was really no malice in Cynthia--only a measureless indifference to other people and their unimportant feelings. When she discovered that Emily had never set foot in Paris, had never been to the opera or to a race, and bought her clothes in department stores, she saw that poor Denis’s wife was hopeless, and simply stopped talking.

By this time Emily quite agreed with her. The window was open, and Mrs. Lanier had asked her daughter to shut off “that horrible heat.” In a temperature that caused Emily to shiver in misery, those two superior creatures sat in calm comfort.

Very well--if they could endure the cold, in their low-cut frocks, then Emily, in a cloth dress, could also endure it, and would. She would endure their little stinging, icy words, too--every one of them.

In desperation she made an effort to imitate Cynthia’s cool and casual air. A pitiable failure! There was precious little coolness in her strained smile, her faltering words. The last trace of poise had slipped from her. She no longer tried to hold her own, but simply to endure.

“They’ll tell Denis,” she thought, over and over again. “Nothing could really make him change toward me; but oh, this will hurt him so! If only they had waited! Oh, if only they had waited until--until I was a little older and--and had more poise!”

A waiter came in to lay the table, and Mrs. Lanier ordered a dinner of all the things that Emily most heartily disliked--such a cold, flat sort of dinner!

“Cecil should be here by now,” observed Mrs. Lanier, with a glance at the clock. “He promised to make a particular effort to come, on Denis’s account. Poor Cecil!”

Emily wondered in what way she had injured Cecil, that he should be sighed over in this fashion.

It was now after eight o’clock, but Mrs. Lanier decided to wait for the poor boy until half past eight; so there they sat, in the icy room, and all of them silent now. Cynthia had given up, Mrs. Lanier had asked all the questions in her mind, and certainly Emily was not inclined to introduce any topic on her own account. She was stiff with cold, and she fancied her miserable heart was numbed, too. She didn’t care very much about anything.

III

“Hello, people!” cried a jolly voice.

There in the doorway stood a most engaging young fellow--a real human being, thought Emily, a creature warm and happy, and able to smile. Smile he did, and directly at Emily.

“Cecil!” said Mrs. Lanier. “Denis’s wife, you know.”

He went over to her gladly, and took her cold little hand in a cordial grasp.

“Clever of Denis!” he observed. “Very!”

She looked up at him, half incredulous, but in his face there was no mockery, no disdain--nothing but a very frank approbation. She _knew_ that he thought her pretty. In the bright glow of his admiration her prettiness seemed suddenly to come to life again, her frozen heart beat faster, and color rose in her cheeks. A friend had come!

What is more, Cecil was a powerful friend. He had a cheerful, domineering sort of way with his mother and sister, and it was obvious that they idolized him. He said that Emily was chilly, and that the window was to be closed and the heat turned on. They suffered terribly, but did not complain. He consulted Emily about the proposed menu. He insisted upon knowing what she really liked, and saw that she got it. He made her talk and made her laugh, because he was so persistently cheerful and silly, and his mother and sister looked on with an air of patient indulgence.

Back came all her native gayety. She didn’t fear or dislike these frigid women any more. She wasn’t a meek, scared, silly little object now; she was the girl Denis loved, and they would have to love her, too. She felt sure of herself, radiant, happy, no longer alien and oppressed; and beyond all measure grateful to her new friend, her brother Cecil.

IV

Nothing had been said by any of the Laniers about seeing her again, and Emily had consulted her book on etiquette in vain for a hint. She was the more disturbed by this because she had had a letter from Denis--a solemn, miserable letter, filled with careful descriptions of the scenery and the weather. Through it all, in every line, she could read his longing for her and his great anxiety about her. Such a dear, _stupid_ letter--honest and serious and manly, like Denis himself. He knew well enough how to love, but nothing at all about making love.

He hadn’t heard yet of his family’s arrival in New York, and, thought Emily, he was not going to get the news from them first. Very likely his mother would write to him by the same mail, but he would surely read Emily’s letter first, and he should have her account of the meeting.

Just what ought she to tell him? She would say, of course, that she had dined with his people.

“And then shall I say I’m going to call on them? Or should I invite them here to dinner?” she thought. “Or ought I just to wait?”

She was in her room, struggling with this problem, when Mr. Cecil Lanier was announced. She hastened down into the lounge, very much pleased. Here was something else to tell Denis. There was at least one member of his family that she could praise with candor.

She welcomed Cecil with frank pleasure, and he, on his part, seemed so remarkably glad to see her again, so very friendly, that a new and daring idea sprang up in her mind. It might be more diplomatic and more polite to wait a little, however. In spite of his jolly, friendly manner, there was something rather impressive about Cecil. He wasn’t to be treated too casually.

He was really younger than Denis, but he seemed older, not only because his face was a little worn, and his smiling eyes a little tired, but because of his affable worldliness. Denis, in his earnestness, his straightforward simplicity, had sometimes seemed quite boyish to Emily, but there was no trace of boyishness in Cecil. He was a charming fellow, handsome, courteous, and amusing, and he knew it. Emily had mighty little worldly wisdom, but she did not lack intuition, and she thought--and rightly--that Cecil would be extraordinarily kind and obliging to any one he liked, and by no means so to those he did not like; so she decided to make him like her.

It was not difficult. He had already been attracted to her the evening before, and he was delighted with her this afternoon. The time fairly flew. They had tea together at five o’clock; and after what seemed only a few minutes, it was seven.

“Let’s go out somewhere and have dinner,” said he.

“Oh!” said Emily. “I’d like to, but--aren’t there other things you have to do?”

She was thinking of his mother.

“I never have anything to do,” Cecil assured her cheerfully. “That’s the great advantage of being hopelessly incompetent. I _can’t_ do anything, you know.”

“I don’t believe that. I’m sure you could do almost anything, if you tried,” said Emily.

She hadn’t meant to say it in quite that tone, or with quite that admiring glance, and she grew a little red as he returned the glance with interest.

“I’m never going to try,” said he. “Once you start, people begin to expect things of you.” He paused. “But if there’s anything _you’d_ like done, Emily--”

She had no more poise left then than you could put into a thimble. She had a favor to ask of Cecil, and she felt sure he would grant it. She was determined to ask it, too, and saw no reason why she should not, and yet--and yet, in spite of his kindliness, Cecil made her uneasy and confused.

“I just thought,” she began, “that if you were going to write to Denis--”

“Never wrote to him in my life,” said Cecil; “but look here, Emily!”

She did not look there, but down at her clasped hands. After a glance around the empty tea room, Cecil bent forward and took one of these hands.

“Look here!” he said again. “Do you mean--you poor little kid!--do you mean there’s something you don’t like to tell him yourself? Denis is such a confoundedly high-minded--”

“Oh, _no_!” cried Emily, shocked. “Mercy, no! I only thought--if you were going to write--” Well, she had to finish it now. “I thought maybe you’d tell him that you’d met me, and that you--you didn’t think I was so horrible.”

Cecil looked at her for a moment with a singular expression.

“I see!” he said, with a faint smile. “I don’t think you’re exactly horrible, Emily; but still, I don’t think I’d better write and tell old Denis so.”

“Why?”

“Well, you see--”

Emily, looking at him, did see, in a vague, uneasy fashion. She did not care to ask Cecil for any explanation. Suddenly she didn’t want to talk to him any more. She made all sorts of polite excuses, which he accepted very good-humoredly, and they parted in the most friendly way; but in her heart, Emily _never_ wanted to see him again.

She cried herself to sleep that night, longing for her dear, honest, comprehensible Denis, and wishing she need see nobody else but Denis all the rest of her life.

V

When Cecil came again the next afternoon, she could think of no good reason for refusing to see him. After all, what had she against him? Nothing at all--nothing real. He hadn’t said a word that she could resent. It was only--well, she didn’t know what--something in his smile, in his tired eyes.

“It’s my own fault,” she decided. “I know he’d be all right, if I weren’t so--silly. If I had more poise--”

This afternoon she had an unusual amount of poise, for she had had a letter from Denis that made her happy. She was Denis’s wife, and she really didn’t care a snap of her fingers about any one else on earth.

She found Cecil charming that day.

“Let’s go out somewhere,” he suggested. “It would do me no end of good--that is, if you’ll be jolly and a little bit kind to me. I’m not happy to-day, Emily.”

She believed that. She fancied that perhaps he was never very happy, and she felt sorry for him. She was still more sorry when she saw how quickly he responded to her own cheerful mood.

It cannot be denied that this very superficiality of his made him a most engaging companion. They took a taxi up to the Botanical Gardens, went into the hemlock forest there, and wandered about for two hours, breaking the enchanted stillness with their careless, happy talk, without a moment’s constraint or weariness. Away from hotels and family conventions, Cecil was a very different fellow. His polite sophistication vanished, and with it his misleading pretense of being a cheerful idiot. He wasn’t that. He was clever, adroit, and by no means apathetic.

As the sun was beginning to sink, they strolled out of the forest and across the hilltop and the smooth meadows, past the greenhouses, to the entrance. It was growing chilly, and they were tired and furiously hungry.

“We’ll have tea now,” said Cecil. “Please don’t always object, Emily!”

So they took another taxi down town, to a sedate little tea room that Emily suggested, and after tea he left her at her hotel.

“Thank you, Emily,” he said simply. “I’ve never had a better day.”

Emily, too, was happy. She wanted to rush upstairs and write all about it to Denis. He was always pleased when she spent her time out of doors, and he looked upon walking as a solemn duty. He said that she didn’t walk nearly enough--that no American girls did.

“Mrs. Lanier!” said the desk clerk, as she stopped for her key.

With a cordial smile, he handed her a note. She recognized the handwriting as her mother-in-law’s, and took the envelope with no great pleasure. Nor was she in a hurry to open it. She took off her dusty shoes and her street suit, put on slippers and a mandarin coat, let down her glittering flood of hair, and only then, when she was lying in comfort on the bed, did she open the thing.

MY DEAR EMILY:

I should be very pleased if you would dine with us this evening at half past seven.

Most sincerely yours, MAUDE LANIER.

“But that’s the old note!” she cried.

Jumping up, she looked in the desk to see if the other was missing. There it was, and, taking it out, she compared the two. Except for the date, they were exactly alike, word for word. That made her laugh, and laughter gave her courage.