CHAPTER XIV

Cecily started on a fairly determined round of gayety for a few weeks. She found it interesting at first and a little boring afterwards. It was very difficult for her to take or even pretend to take casual interest in people, and casual interest was all that society wanted of her. She was beautiful and had a charming manner. So much every one admitted. But she was a married woman with three children and the faint flavor of mystery which had made her so alluring before she had been married had gone. Of course she would consciously seek to charm no one, and her unconscious charm so definitely belonged to Dick Harrison that there was not much left for other men. She was not an invigorating presence or a stimulating companion unless she was really stirred to interest, and the net result was that Cecily found herself bored fairly often.

Dick was not. He could still amuse himself greatly with a pretty girl, because she was pretty; he enjoyed dancing and being foolish. Unlike Cecily he did not always carry depths around with him. Cecily had to fit play into a scheme of life or she could not enjoy it. Dick just played. He appreciated that Cecily went about to please him, thanked her for it, always told her and always sincerely thought that she was the loveliest woman in any group and proceeded to have a good time. It was not quite subtle enough for Cecily.

In the society into which she was thrown there was no one who marked the course of her development with interest. There were plenty of spectacular women doing interesting things, paradoxical things, and they saw in Cecily only passivity. The very domestic women who liked to talk babies and husbands rather intimately and eternally found her a little aloof and reserved; and those of a gayer, hedonistic type thought her overserious. She was an individual in an age in which individuality has to be advertised and she had not the faintest ability or desire to advertise herself.

Older men and women said that she was a “good wife and mother”; women of her own age said she was “hard to get to know”; the younger girls said, like Jenny, “beautiful, but without pep.” So she was a little lonely.

Being uninterested, she saw many things of which she disapproved. Her early training had been all towards a fastidiousness of manner and a perhaps exaggerated modesty, so that it hurt her to see the manners of the girls and women. They were greedy for notice, in politics and on the dance floor; they were unreserved in thought and noisy in manner. Ugly--ugly in thought and manner--she found them often. It was partly the forced seclusion of her life, during the periods before and after her children’s births, that had kept her from any understanding of the reasons underlying the lack of stability and absence of dignity which bothered her so much. She had gone through war worries, borne war problems, but she had not known the terrors or horrors of war at first hand or through those dear to her. She had maintained her standards in her seclusion; and she could not see that some of this noise had been deliberately begun to silence the thoughts of those who had seen standards overthrown and trodden upon; who had seen them scorned, doubted, analyzed away.

Of course she was told that, but it did not make her more lenient. She could not condone the spirit of those she saw around her or see its relation to the spirit of exaltation into which the war had been popularly preached. It bothered her that girls were not more delicate; it bothered her that married women did not seem to appreciate the possible joy in a husband and in having children; she heard remarks that seemed to her to prove that the world was on its way to corruption.

The criticism which she felt of things around showed in her attitude towards her stepbrothers. They were in college now, boys of nineteen and twenty. Walter, the older boy, was extremely handsome; Gerald not so handsome, but even more spirited than his brother. Mr. Warner’s attitude towards his sons was to let them do pretty much what they would while they were finding themselves. To his wife and Cecily it seemed a very dangerous policy.

“It’s not as if the atmosphere of society itself were wholesome,” said Mrs. Warner, discussing with her husband the matter of further increasing Walter’s allowance. “It isn’t just gayety and frivolity. There’s something dangerous in the air. No one has any repose.”

“Except Cecily.”

“Cecily has it and the fact that she stands out sometimes as almost prudish shows what we are coming to.”

Her sons had brought Mrs. Warner almost to the point of developing and acknowledging a philosophy. Not quite. She, like her daughter, was still somewhat negative.

“Well, shall we give Walter that extra hundred?” asked her husband.

“He hasn’t said why he needs it. What do you suppose he does with it? Gambling or some woman?”

“I don’t think so. You might talk to him, dear. As far as I can make out it’s just that girls and clothes are expensive. It costs an appalling amount to take a girl to a Prom.”

“Any special girl?”

“I think he likes a girl in Philadelphia.”

But when Walter came for Christmas a few weeks later and they sounded him about the girl from Philadelphia he looked astonished.

“Oh, her--no, I haven’t seen her lately. Good reason, too, hey, Gerald?”

They burst into confidential chuckles and told nothing more.

Both boys had always been extremely fond of Cecily, even though she had been away from home so much that the children had not been much together, and Cecily was five years older than Walter. But they were proud of her and had a very good time with Dick. Cecily was equally proud of them, but they, too, worried her.

The two weeks before Christmas brought with them an unceasing round of parties, dances of one kind and another. Cecily was tired before it began. She nearly suggested that they should decline all Christmas holiday entertaining, but neither Dick nor the boys gave her any chance for that. So she shopped for the children and made preparations all day for Christmas at home, and in the evening her only rest came while she leaned back against the cushions of the car as they drove to some club, house or hotel to dance and be gay for hours. When she got there she usually found her brothers there, too, for Carrington society was small enough to include all the possible young men from eighteen to thirty-five at its functions. Walter would be dancing with some pretty girl, held caressingly close in his arms, flirting furiously. Gerald might be dancing or he might be standing on the side lines looking debonairly on, or worse yet, already adjourned to some dark corner with a girl. It obsessed Cecily. She could not let them alone. She wanted them to be reserved, dignified even, in their gayety and they were not. To-morrow she knew they would tell hilarious tales to each other about the very girls they were flirting so scandalously with.

* * * * *

Gerald, bending over her, “It’s my dance, Cecily.”

She felt herself horrified at the very way he held her. “Don’t dance so close,” she protested. Then, “Who was that girl you were dancing with?”

“Helen Ramsay--pretty fluffy chicken, isn’t she?”

“You shouldn’t talk that way.”

“That’s what she is.”

“Gerald, haven’t you any respect for women--for yourself--that you can cheapen yourself so?”

“Where do you get that stuff, Cecily?”

Gerald’s intolerance hurt. The situation grew out of all proportions for Cecily. Gerald was being corrupted. He must be taken out of this. He must be reasoned with, shown that he was making himself cheap.

But he did not take to the reasoning kindly.

“What’s the matter with all of you? Mother rowing because I’m a few hundred dollars short; dozens of fellows are a few thousands; and now you making a male vamp out of me. What do you want me to do? Study for the ministry and wear blinders so I can’t see the girls?”

“I hate to see you with such stupid, inconsequent girls. That’s what bothers me. I hate to see you get flippant”--she stumbled in her speech--“valuing love lightly.”

“Lord, I’m not in love with the little Ramsay, if that’s what’s on your mind.”

“I know you’re not. Why play at it?”

“Fun!” said Gerald.

He left her and Cecily sat thinking of his last word and how she had come to hate it. It typified all the cheapness she despised. It amazed her to see how, during these few weeks of semi-unwilling participation in “fun” she had come to formulate a philosophy which definitely excluded it. Where she had been indifferent, she was now condemnatory.

From where she sat on the veranda she could see the ballroom. Dick was looking for her, Walter was dancing, not with a girl his own age, but with Fliss. Fliss was dancing just as Helen Ramsay had danced, close up to Walter, head against his shoulder, and Walter was talking to her in admiration. That was clear. An unaccustomed anger rose in Cecily. Her bodily weariness and her spasm of anger left her faint. As she turned, shuddering a little, she saw Matthew.

“Aren’t you well?”

“Tired--could you slip out and take me home?”

But, once in his big car he did not take her home, a matter of a dozen blocks. Instead he turned to the road which circled the boulevards.

“Hush,” he said, at her protest. “I told Dick that you were too tired to dance and that I was going to take you for a ride. It’s all fixed. I’ll be back there long before Fliss is ready to go. And I’ve not had a chance to talk to you for ages.”

But they did not talk much. They watched the city below them, spreading so big, a thousand lights coming from places of comedy and tragedy all intermingled. Once she roused herself out of her relaxation to tell him how peaceful she felt. He merely nodded.

High over the city he stopped on the very crest of the hills and shut off the motor. The place was black and silent and isolated. Stars hung close and the city looked small and remote.

“How infinitesimal it all is--all the fuss down there,” said Cecily.

“Of course you’d feel that,” said Matthew, lighting a cigarette. “That’s why I brought you up. It’ll do you good. You mustn’t let things as small as that eat you up, Cecily.”

“What do you mean?”

“Don’t let things bother you. Nothing matters an awful lot.”

“Life matters. So Mother Fénelon said once.”

“Perhaps it does--perhaps she’s right. But only in the large. Certainly little habits of life don’t.”

“It’s easy to feel that way up here, but down in the midst of those lights you can’t get the sweep of things. Little things irritate--habits of life do matter.”

“You ought to get away by yourself more. When I feel irritated I go up to my rooms and read what a lot of my betters, long dead, had to say and had to think.”

“Can’t be done by the mother of three.”

“I question that. The mother of three would certainly profit. I hate to see you all harassed. It isn’t right. Since the first day I saw you it’s always been a satisfaction to me just to think of you--even when I didn’t see you--as being calm and peaceful and beautiful. You mustn’t lose those things.”

“I wonder if I ever was calm and peaceful, passing up the other exaggeration. Now I nag at myself. I don’t know when it began.”

“Anything special on your mind, or just the accumulation of domestic duties?”

“I hate it,” cried Cecily suddenly, with a passion quite unlike her. “I hate the way people are living. I can’t make it out--anything out. If the principle they taught me that marriage is an institution for the home, for the bringing up of children is right, then all this--this fun--is wrong. You can’t have what they call ‘fun’ and be a good woman. You can’t play at making love with all this dancing that is only embracing--with all this loose talk--and keep your feeling for your husband or wife clean. And if you don’t you’re stupid or a bore--out of date. I know what people think of me. Women have actually told me that I’m foolish to have three children; that I shouldn’t let my household submerge me; that Dick is bound to crave ‘fun’! He does like it; he’s happier when we are going out places all the time; he makes himself cheap with these silly women; he uses the words he used to me when he talks to _them_--oh, that seems trivial, doesn’t it?”

“No, no, not trivial! Don’t talk any more, Cecily. You’ll regret it if you do. I’m going to drive on. I’m afraid, a little, that you are battering yourself against a real difficulty, against things which can’t be obviated. I want to think about it. See if I can’t explain some things to you later. But it’s hard to have to explain things when I am so sorry, Cecily, that I lose my philosophy.”

“Don’t bother, Matthew. I guess perhaps I’m just tired and a little jealous.”

“No. You are tired and a little jealous, too, but it’s deeper than that. You’ve been slipped into an age that doesn’t fit you and instead of making things better for you by hardening you young they preserved your quality to your own--no, not destruction. It mustn’t be that.”

He didn’t say any more. Nor let her talk.

“Hush. Now you are to rest. There’s nothing to worry about. Think of those nice healthy babies that ought to make you eternally grateful to your fate. Three of them to bring up. That gives you a reason to straighten out all these problems--so you can help them. But you can’t straighten them out by fretting.”

“Or by bothering you.” Her face, against the dark fur collar of her cloak, and dimly visible in the night, was very beautiful as Matthew turned to her.

“You couldn’t bother me. I care for you,” said Matthew with restraint and yet conviction. “I care for you more than any other single thing in life. And,” he went on quickly, warned by her little gasp, “there’s not the faintest disloyalty to Fliss or jealousy of Dick involved. It’s a different kind of feeling than any one else gives or could give you.”

Cecily’s slim arms, outlined under her wrap as she clasped her hands in sudden fear, relaxed again. “You’re beautiful, Matthew.”

He left her at her door and went back to find Fliss. The ballroom was very hot by this time. On the faces of the men perspiration or pallor showed that even they were beginning to feel the strain of five hours’ dancing. The circles under the eyes of the women showed the weariness which their rouge could not hide. But, tired though they might be physically, relaxation seemed the last thing in any one’s mind. The music was gayer, encores more frequent, the laughter was keyed higher, the abandon of dancing greater than before.

The men were cutting in on the dances of other men, women slipping from the arms of one man to those of another. Indefatigable. Fliss was wonderfully vivid. She never became disarranged when she danced. The bit of color that was his wife caught Matthew’s eye and held it. She waved at him, nodding to him to come in and claim her. But he shook his head. He wanted to see Dick first. Dick was talking to Gerald by the wall. They were quite uproarious over something. Matthew joined them.

“Cecily get home?” asked Dick. “Already?”

“We went for a ride around the boulevards first; she seemed pretty tired.”

“She is tired,” said Dick. “It’s too bad. With the babies and the maids and Christmas.”

“It’s making her cross,” said Gerald. “She called me down to-night. Didn’t like the way I was dancing.”

“Cecily really doesn’t care for going out much. She doesn’t like all the jazz stuff.” Dick’s smile was one of tolerance as he said it.

“Well, I wouldn’t let Cecily get to be a prig.” Gerald was, in intention, very worldly and broadminded.

“Oh, she’s not that,” said Dick.

“Not at all that!” Matthew interrupted. “Cecily is vastly superior to all this rabble and their doings. Do you really like this stuff yourself, Dick?”

“It’s sort of fun, but I’m off it for to-night. That’s sure. No, I’m going to have one more foxtrot with Fliss. She’s showing me how to get in an extra step.”

He stole Fliss from her partner. Matthew was alone again.

* * * * *

“Have a good time, Fliss?” asked her husband, unlocking their front door.

“Lots of fun,” said Fliss.

He looked at her crossly. “What in hell is fun, anyway?”

“Poor Matthew. You’ll never know. It’s a gift. You’re born with it, or you never get it.”