Part 69

He knocked upon the door, and Mrs. Boles called “Come in!” and in he went. The gas was turned low, and by the dim light the room looked remarkably cheerless. Mrs. Boles lay flat on her back, her gray hair in two braids, like an Indian, her gaunt, weather-beaten face immobile, her eyes staring straight before her.

“Desborough!” she said, without turning her head.

He waited, thinking she was going to go on, but she said nothing further.

“How are you feeling now?” he asked.

She didn’t trouble to answer that.

“Desborough!” she exclaimed. “It’s malaria. I thought so yesterday, and now I know it. You’ve got to get out of here. It’s a nasty, unwholesome place.”

“But perhaps--” said her nephew, terribly crestfallen.

“There’s no ‘perhaps’ about it,” she declared sharply. “I know all about malaria.” She was silent for a moment; then her brows drew together in a severe frown.

“That girl!” she remarked. “Just look at that!”

He looked where she pointed, and there, on the chair, he saw a tray. The antique china, the lace handkerchiefs--A great pain seized his heart.

“Mi--Miss Dexter--” he began.

“Yes,” said Mrs. Boles. “She brought me some tea. And just look how she fixed up that tray!”

Anger arose in him. He wouldn’t listen to a word against Mimi.

“It seems to me Miss Dexter has--” he began again, but once more Mrs. Boles interrupted him.

“I never in my life had any one take so much trouble for me,” she announced. “Bread--cut out star-shaped. Her own little handkerchiefs. No, I never.”

She paused, and across her grim face came a smile the like of which he had not seen there before.

“The bonnie wee thing!” she said.

“What!” cried Hughes. “What! I mean--why did you say--that?”

“It suits her,” said Mrs. Boles. “Her mother was talking to me to-day. She told me that there was an old professor--a Mr. MacAllister--”

“MacAndrews,” Hughes explained.

“You’ve heard about him, then. Well, it seems to me--” Once more she paused. “As soon as I told Mrs. Dexter that this was malaria, and we ought to leave here, they both invited me to visit them. Both of them--without an instant’s hesitation. She told me about their flat in the city--and their life. They’re not at all well off, but they’re happy.

“They know how to live!” Mrs. Boles continued. “Kind, gracious people. They know how to live. Any one could see that. They make every detail--this tray, for instance. Desborough, it’s been a revelation to me!”

“Er--yes--” her nephew said absently. “Well, I’d better go downstairs, now, and--and see if I can help them. What? What did you say?”

“I said--you’d better get them to help you!” Mrs. Boles explained.

V

He went out of the room, and closed the door behind him, but he did not go downstairs; he stood there in the dim and drafty hall, thinking. He had been going to show Mimi the right way to live, had he? He had brought her here, to this house, to these malarial mosquitoes, to this “nasty, unwholesome place.” He had made her eat her breakfast from a red and white checked cloth; he had deprived her of doilies and frilled curtains.

He had been the most heartless, the most presumptuous, priggish, despicable ass who had ever lived. Even his aunt had known better. His “plan”! It had served one purpose, though; it had shown him to Mimi as he really was, a blind, obstinate, humorless, cheerless--

She was coming up the stairs now; he knew her light, quick step. So he pretended that he was coming down, and in the middle of the flight they met.

“I was looking for you!” she announced cheerfully. “Dinner’s ready!”

He stood before her in silence for a few moments, his head bent; then suddenly he said:

“Mimi!”

Such a miserable voice!

“Oh, what’s the matter?” she cried, anxiously.

“I haven’t appreciated you!”

His tone was very contrite.

“Heavens!” said Mimi. “I don’t care such an awful lot about being appreciated, Mr. Hughes!”

“But I do love you!” he declared. “I always have loved you. Only--I didn’t appreciate you. I thought--if you came here--”

“Well,” she said, “you were right! You knew perfectly well that if I came here, and saw you in this awful house--and such an awful, dismal life--You knew! It wasn’t fair!”

“I never thought of such a thing!” he protested, indignantly. “My plan was--”

“Anyhow, it’s too late now,” she pointed out. “The harm’s done.”

“What do you mean?” he asked, with a sinking heart.

“I mean,” she replied sternly, “that you’ve simply got to have somebody to take care of you!”

He looked down at her. The size of her! The age of her!

“But--do you mean--that _you_ are going to do that?” he demanded.

“Yes!” she cried. “That’s _my_ plan!”

He came down onto the step where she was standing. And she had really very little trouble in convincing him of the merits of her plan.

MUNSEY’S MAGAZINE

JUNE, 1926 Vol. LXXXVIII NUMBER 1

Vanity

MADELINE HOLLAND HAS A TRYING HOUR WHEN SHE SEES HER MIDDLE-AGED HUSBAND ATTRACTED BY A YOUNGER AND PRETTIER RIVAL

By Elisabeth Sanxay Holding

Mrs. Holland came out of her room, closing the door carefully behind her. A shaft of sun came through the skylight, but beyond that bright bar the hall was dim and very quiet, for her footsteps made no sound on the thick carpet. She stood there for a moment, as if listening. A tall woman she was, straight and slender, with a proudly carried head and a proud and serene face. She did not look her fifty years, but she felt them this morning.

She listened, but she heard nothing, and presently she went on through the warm patch of sunshine that for an instant brightened the smooth blackness of her hair. At the head of the stairs she heard a sound of life. Some one was coming up from the basement, breathing hard and walking heavily, and accompanied by a pleasant little jingling of china and silver.

Mrs. Holland began to descend, and halfway down the flight she met Hilda, carrying a tray.

“I’ll take it to Miss Joyce, Hilda,” she said.

“No, ma’am,” replied Hilda firmly. “Don’t you bother.”

“I’d like to, Hilda,” returned Mrs. Holland with equal firmness.

“It’s too heavy, ma’am.”

“Nonsense!” said Mrs. Holland.

Her hands, cool and slender, grasped the tray and came into contact with Hilda’s roughened fingers; and Hilda, the vassal, was somehow shocked by this.

“All right, ma’am,” she agreed.

Mrs. Holland took the tray and turned back. She heard a miserable little sniffle from Hilda, but she dared not take notice of it. She was not prepared to give consolation to other people this morning.

She set the tray down on the floor, and opened one of those closed doors. It was like another world in there, bright with sun, and a breeze rioting through, setting in motion all the charming disorder there--ribbons and silks and tissue paper in half open boxes, gay and frivolous things hanging over the backs of chairs. It was a very untidy room, but Mrs. Holland knew it would never be like this again. After to-day it would be a neat, quiet, empty room.

She closed the window, and then went over to the bedside. Joyce lay there, with the sheet huddled about her so that only the top of her rough, bright head was visible. Mrs. Holland touched her shoulder.

“Wake up, child!” she said.

She forced herself to stand there and to greet Joyce cheerfully on this last morning.

“Here’s your breakfast, you lazy little thing,” she added.

Joyce sat up, dazed and heavy-eyed. Mrs. Holland held out a dressing gown, and the girl slipped her arms into it with a childlike passivity.

“It’s a beautiful day,” said Mrs. Holland. “You couldn’t have a better day.”

Suddenly Joyce awoke. Her dark eyes widened, and over her face stole a shadow--a look so tender, so lovely, that Mrs. Holland was obliged to turn away to bend over the tray.

“Don’t let the toast get cold, child,” she said.

Joyce did not speak, and when Mrs. Holland turned toward her again she saw tears in her child’s steady, shining eyes.

“Joyce,” she said, “my dear, my dear, let’s make this a very happy, a very wonderful day!”

They looked at each other, and Joyce’s lip quivered, but Mrs. Holland still smiled.

“I must bear this,” she told herself. “I must, and I can.”

She pulled the table close to the bedside, poured out a cup of coffee, and put cream and sugar into it, just as Joyce always liked it. Then she lifted the silver cover from the toast.

“Poor Hilda was so disappointed!” she said. “She wanted to bring the tray herself. Come now, my pet! There, there!”

Joyce’s eyes were still fixed upon her mother’s face.

“This won’t do!” said Mrs. Holland, and then, with that gracious gayety which so few were ever permitted to see in her, she tied a napkin about the girl’s neck and began to feed her--a spoonful of coffee, a bit of toast, a spoonful of coffee.

“Spoiled little thing!” she scolded. “Naughty little thing, when there’s so much to be done to-day!”

“I know it!” cried Joyce, sitting up straight. “Mother, what shall we do about old Mrs. Marriott’s candlesticks? When she comes and doesn’t see them with the other presents, she’ll be so frightfully hurt!”

“I found them last night in a hat box,” replied Mrs. Holland, laughing.

“And, mother, suppose the jeweler hasn’t got that new clasp ready?”

“Your father’s going there as soon as he has had breakfast. He told me to tell you that if that clasp isn’t ready, he’ll buy you another necklace.”

“But I want the one that daddy picked out! I--oh, mother!”

The girl stretched out her arms, with tears raining down her face; but for an instant Mrs. Holland did not respond. She stood motionless, with an odd, stony look, as if beyond measure affronted by those tears.

“Oh, no, no!” she cried in her heart. “How can I stand this?”

“Mother!”

She sat down on the edge of the bed, took her child in her arms, and stroked the ruffled head that lay against her breast.

“Don’t, my darling,” she said gently. “It’s not right. It’s not kind to Nick.”

“I c-can’t help it,” Joyce answered in a stifled voice. “You and daddy--my own darling people--”

“You must help it, my sweetheart. You’ve eaten nothing at all. I’m going to run your bath, now, and afterward Hilda will bring you some hot coffee and toast.”

She disengaged the clinging arms from about her neck, and took both the girl’s hands in her own. She looked steadfastly into her child’s face, and still smiled.

“Don’t be so naughty!” she said. “There! Sit up and read your letters until the bath’s run.”

The tiled bathroom was dazzling in the sunlight. The nickel fittings flashed like silver, and the water filling the tub was a wonderful translucent green.

“Mother!” Joyce called out. “Uncle Thomas has sent a check and an awfully sweet letter!”

Mrs. Holland pretended not to hear. She could not speak just then. She sat on the edge of the tub, staring down into the shimmering, greenish water, and even her child’s voice sounded very far away. The last moment was almost here. In a few hours Joyce would be gone.

“I must not spoil her day,” she thought. “I’ve got to be brave, just until she goes; and then--then I don’t care.”

The water had risen high enough. She turned off the tap and went back into the bedroom.

“All ready!” she said cheerfully. “Don’t dawdle, sweetheart.”

“I won’t, mother,” Joyce promised.

She had dried her tears, now. She was very grave, but quite composed.

“That’s exactly how she looked when she went to apologize to grandma for losing the family photographs,” thought Mrs. Holland. “She was a tiny girl, then, and she was wearing that funny little plaid dress. She doesn’t look any older now. She’s so young--so young!”

She crossed the room briskly, opened the door, smiled back over her shoulder, and stepped out into the dim, silent hall. It seemed to her that the house had grown terribly old, a pompous, dull old house. She went down the stairs slowly, for she was old, too. Her life was finished. Joyce was going away.

II

Hilda was serving breakfast in the basement dining room this morning, leaving the upper floor to the caterer’s men. That basement room had not been used since Joyce was a small girl and Mrs. Holland a young and very anxious mother. She had had no one to help her then except Hilda, and Hilda couldn’t be expected to go up and down stairs with the dishes.

How different it had all been in those days--such a busy, eager sort of life, with herself and Hilda always doing something for the baby! She remembered other sunny mornings like this, and both of them in the kitchen, Hilda ironing little white dresses, while she prepared barley water for the precious bottles. Now there was a cook in the kitchen; a competent woman, but a trifle forbidding--a stranger, not a friend like Hilda. Everything was changed.

Frank was sitting at the table, a newspaper propped up before him.

“Oh, hello, Madeline!” he said with a vague sort of amiability. “How’s everything going, eh?”

“All right, thank you, Frank,” she replied, quietly.

As she sat down, he put aside the newspaper; but, after all, he found nothing to say. All he could think of this morning was Joyce, and he was afraid to mention her.

“Might upset Madeline,” he thought.

To be sure, it was a good many years since he had seen his wife at all upset. A quiet and dignified woman, she was, never at a loss; but this morning there was something about her that disquieted him.

“I remember how it used to be,” he thought, “when Joyce was a baby. That time when there was a blizzard, and the milkman didn’t come--Lord, she was almost wild! I had to go out in the storm to see what I could do. Couldn’t get milk anywhere, and I didn’t dare to go home and tell her so.”

He smiled a little at the memory of that very good-natured young husband, struggling through the blizzard in a vain search for milk. In the end he had gone to their family doctor. The doctor had laughed at him and told him to use condensed milk, and had written down directions on a piece of paper. Then Frank had gone home to find them all crying--Madeline and Hilda and the baby.

Mrs. Holland saw her husband’s smile, and it did not please her. It was so easy for Frank to smile, so easy for his nimble mind to turn away from anything disagreeable and go off upon another tack! She knew very well that his heart ached at the thought of losing Joyce. He had suffered and would suffer from that; but he could forget for a time, and she could not.

He had always been like that. There was gray in his hair, and he had grown much stouter--a big man, a handsome, jovial sort of _Porthos_, in place of the slender and romantic young fellow he had been; but he was changed in no other way. As he smiled, he had raised his hand to his mustache in a gesture that was familiar to her. It meant that something had amused him. He was not thinking about Joyce, because that would disturb him, and he did not like to be disturbed.

“Oh, life’s too short to worry!” he was fond of saying.

Sometimes the anxious young mother had found consolation in that debonair phrase, but to-day it seemed heartless and false. Life too short? It was the monstrous length of life that appalled her now. Twenty years more to her allotted span--twenty years, and they might be all empty, all useless.

Her divinely appointed work in the world had been to bear and to rear her child, and now it was done. Joyce was going away to a new life of her own in a distant city, and she no longer needed her mother. Nobody needed Madeline Holland any more--certainly not Frank. He loved her, but he was a remarkably independent creature, quite sufficient unto himself in his own cheerful fashion.

She looked across the table at him. He was a little downcast for the moment, but as he caught her eye he smiled. He had finished his breakfast. He rose, came round the table to her, and laid his hand on her shoulder.

“Well, old girl!” he said. “Here we are, eh? Day’s come at last! Thing is, she’s got a good man--fine fellow. She’ll be happy, eh?”

“Yes,” replied Mrs. Holland.

But her own words and her husband’s words had no meaning at all this morning. She had always hoped that Joyce would marry. Nick was a dear boy, and Joyce would be happy with him. If Joyce were happy, she, too, ought to be happy.

“Only--oh, I’m a selfish woman!” she thought. “A selfish, selfish woman! For I can’t be happy--not without my child, my baby, my one child. I don’t want to live without my child!”

Frank was speaking. She did not hear his words, for his voice sounded faint and far off, but she was grateful to him for his kindliness, and she looked up into his face with a smile.

He patted her shoulder.

“I know, old girl, I know,” he said. “I’m sorry! Well, I’ll be off, now--some things to see about.”

She heard him go out of the room, and heard his heavy tread on the stairs. Halfway up the flight he stopped, and struck a match, and the scent of tobacco smoke drifted down to her. He had “things to see about”--he had his business, his many friends, his club. His life would go on as usual, but hers was ended. Her work was done.

She got up and crossed the room to the battered old high chair that had been Joyce’s. For a moment she thought she would sink on her knees before it, press her lips against the rung where scuffling little feet had worn away the paint, close her eyes, and let the black and bitter tide of pain close over her head; but the hour had not come yet. Joyce still needed her for a few hours more.

III

There was the strangeness of a dream about it. Madeline Holland stood there and smiled and chatted with her guests, and nobody looked at her curiously, nobody suspected her anguish. It was incredible, inhuman, unreal.

There was a slight confusion in the hall. Looking across the crowded room, she saw the chauffeur and another young fellow bringing down Joyce’s trunks to the car that waited outside. It was over. Joyce was married--only it didn’t seem real yet.

Even in the church it hadn’t seemed real. Madeline had been preoccupied, distrait, her mind filled with the stupidest little thoughts. The caterer’s men had been a little late. No one had remembered to thank old Mrs. Marriott for her candlesticks, and she looked affronted. Would Hilda be sure to stitch the collar and cuffs on that jersey dress before she packed it?

There was Frank standing before the altar; and he and Joyce and Nick all looked so strange, so pale, so grave, so unfamiliar. Joyce’s veil was a little too long. It was the veil that Madeline had worn at her own wedding, but the fashion had changed so!

No, the whole thing hadn’t been real. It was a dream, like all these last days, when she had gone shopping with Joyce, when people had always been coming and going in the house, and presents arriving, with such a queer, excited sort of gayety in the air, and so much to be done. There had been no time to think.

She wasn’t really thinking now--only waiting, in a daze, for that last moment which she knew she could not endure. The perfume of the roses made her feel a little faint. There were roses everywhere, the breeze from the open windows made a soft stir among them, and the petals floated down silently upon the carpet.

The big dining room had lost its look of solemn formality. It was thronged with people, and filled with the sound of gay, light voices and little muffled clinkings of silver on china. When a lull came in the talk, Mrs. Holland could hear the familiar noises of the city streets, of daily life going on out there in the heat and dust of the June day. Unreal, all of it!

She remembered a children’s party, here in this very room, years and years ago, yet a hundred times more real than this. It was a dreadful failure, for Joyce had been the worst of young hostesses--such an absurd, impulsive little thing! She had devoted herself entirely to a rather obnoxious little girl with blond pigtails and a smug face. She had neglected all her other guests, even quarreling with them in defense of this idolized creature; and afterward she had been so sorry. She had knelt in her mother’s lap, with tears running down her flushed face into Mrs. Holland’s neck, and their arms clasped tight about each other.

“It’s so--so awful hard to be polite!” Joyce had sobbed.

But really it wasn’t. Mrs. Holland found it easy enough to be polite, even cheerful, with that last moment drawing nearer and nearer. Mrs. Marriott was giving her an account of her grandson’s wedding in California.

“In a _bower_ of roses!” concluded the old lady, with a triumphant glance at Mrs. Holland’s mere bowls and jars.

“That must have been very pretty,” said Mrs. Holland.

“It was beautiful!” the old lady corrected her, rather severely.

She went on talking, but Mrs. Holland no longer heard her, for some one had touched the piano in the drawing-room--a little chain of arpeggios like a sweet and drawling voice. It hurt her to hear it, for she did not want any one else to touch that piano. She remembered Joyce, so straight and correct, her long braid hanging down her back, playing her new pieces for her mother and father. Such funny, sprightly pieces they were--“The Bullfrogs’ Carnival,” “The Elfin Schottische,” “Romping in the Barn”; and so earnestly, so heavily, so determinedly were they played by the blunt little fingers!

No, that surely was not Joyce’s touch. Madeline wanted to know who it could be, sitting there in Joyce’s place.

Skillfully she maneuvered the talkative old lady to the center of the room, where she could look through the open doorway into the drawing-room, and there she saw her--a little blond creature with the fragile figure of a child. She was a pretty girl, very young, and a little pitiful in her flimsy silk dress, sleeveless and short-skirted; but Mrs. Holland saw no pathos in her at that minute, for Frank Holland was standing beside her, looking down at her with an air of bland indulgence.

The blond girl touched the keys again, and then she raised her eyes to Frank’s face with a languishing smile. She spoke, and he raised his hand to his mustache with that familiar gesture.

“He’s flattered!” thought Mrs. Holland.

She forgot all about Mrs. Marriott, and stood staring over the old lady’s head at the pitiful scene--Frank so pleased and flattered by that silly, vulgar little thing.

“Madeline,” said old Mrs. Marriott, “who’s that young woman talking to Frank? I never set eyes on her before.”

“She’s poor Stella’s daughter,” replied Mrs. Holland. “I thought I ought to ask them.”