CHAPTER III

Cecily’s mother had been married twice. That was as it should be, for she had not managed to get much happiness out of her first marriage. Allgate Moore, Cecily’s father, had been handsome and brilliant and well placed socially and his young wife, so very charming, so very much in love, had surely expected--must have expected--that all the good things of the world were to be laid at her feet. The wedding had been staged with considerable ceremony, as a picture of Mrs. Moore in the midst of banks of stiff white bridal satin still showed. But the aftermath had been less brilliant. The future prophesied for Allgate Moore had not come to pass and instead a great deal of dissipation and debt as well as a cherubic but upsetting Cecily had come to crowd young Mrs. Moore’s life.

It was fortunate, people soon said, that nothing seemed to disturb or harass Mrs. Moore greatly. She had an air of moving among her own troubles as if they concerned some one else to whom she was lending every aid and sympathy. And there was no trace of hysteria to be seen by the casual observer even when her young husband died of pneumonia three years after they were married and left her nothing but a somewhat soiled memory and some badly tangled financial affairs.

The debts were settled as scrupulously as they could be and there were several relatives and friends who opened their doors to Mrs. Moore with a real sincerity in their wish that she would make her home with them. But that, it seemed, was impossible to her. With her baby Cecily, she did a little visiting in various cities at first, but, wearying of that, took a small apartment in Carrington and managed somehow to pay her rent, satisfy her dressmaker, and tide over the three years during which she was rejecting proposals of marriage. She probably had more than the usual pretty widow because she had seemed to come so unscathed through the business of marriage once. To look at her cool, unlined face and watch the graceful slimness of her movements was to doubt that harassing affair of Allgate Moore entirely. But it must to some extent have made Mrs. Moore afraid, for she refused several offers of homes and fortunes which almost any woman might have felt too valuable to lose. Or perhaps she was more tired than any one knew or than she confessed even to herself. When she did decide to marry again she chose as complete a contrast to her first husband as could have been found. Allgate Moore had been the handsomest man of his group. Tall, dark, magnetic, he could ride, dance, or convince a stupid woman that the plans he had made for building her a mansion were perfection, with equal ease. He had flashes of brilliance in his work as an architect, but with his brilliance went an unscrupulousness, a readiness to cheapen himself by passing off inferior work, which had kept him from going very far. The man his widow chose as his successor was so deliberate a contrast to him as to be almost a repudiation of his memory unless it showed simply the versatility of her affection. She married Leslie Warner, a successful business man of forty who had distinguished himself by indefatigable work and unerring business judgment. He had in addition a keen sense of humor, a real kindliness of spirit and of manner, and a leaning towards fine solidity in his possessions. Why he married Mrs. Moore after forty years of bachelorhood was a puzzle to many people, but his emotions were as inscrutable as hers and certainly gave the public a chance for nothing more than conjecture. They built a spacious imitation Colonial house shortly after they were married and Mrs. Warner furnished its large halls and sunny rooms with quiet luxury, utterly disregarding the bizarre colorings and furnishings which had characterized her first home. Subsequently the Warners had two children, both boys.

* * * * *

Cecily admired her mother more than she found it easy to say and was as fond of her stepfather as he deserved. But perhaps, because she had come ready-made into the big white Colonial house, or perhaps because that curious characteristic aloofness had descended to her from her mother, there was something more than the difference in Cecily’s surname to remind people that she was the child of Mrs. Warner’s first marriage. She was four years old when her mother married Leslie Warner. When she was ten her mother, at a loss for proper schooling for her, dissatisfied with a succession of inefficient governesses and unwilling to let Cecily go to public school, had decided to try the Convent of the Sacred Heart. There were no Catholics in the family, but it was apparent to Mrs. Warner that these well-bred nuns would make no effort to proselytize her daughter and with confidence she intrusted Cecily to them as a boarding pupil, that being the only way they would take students. And so it was the convent rather than her home which had made the deepest impress on Cecily during the years of her adolescence. To be sure, she had come home for vacations, but the sense of permanency had always been connected with her life in the convent--with the going back to the quiet halls and definite routine rather than with the vacationing which had so kindly but so deliberately been made pleasant for her. She wondered what she was going to do with all her time at home. Perhaps her mother had been wondering too, for after the few first days of Cecily’s return, she came into the girl’s room one night and somewhat uncertainly seemed to settle herself for a talk. Mrs. Warner was still a very lovely woman, not quite forty, and Cecily looked at her with the irrepressible admiration she always felt.

“I wish you’d show me how to do my hair like yours, so that I’d know always which way it was going to wave,” said the girl.

Mrs. Warner smiled. “It’s much prettier to see yours as it is,” she answered. “Cecily, I’ve been thinking about you a good deal. Now that you are through school we must arrange things so that you will be happy. Later on we may travel, but this year your father is tied down in Carrington for most of the year, so I can’t see much ahead except a few weeks in New York with me this fall, a month in the South in the spring and after we get back from New York I thought I had better give a rather large party for you so you could meet people and become an orthodox débutante. Would you like that?”

Cecily looked a little perturbed, but what fear there was seemed to be overlaid with delight.

“I think I’d like it,” she said, “but, mother--you know I don’t dance very well--or know a thing about society.”

“The dancing we shall arrange and the other is no drawback.”

Cecily’s mother came over to lay her slim white hands on her daughter’s shoulders. “Were you happy in the convent?”

“So happy.”

“I want you to be happy outside of it, too. There’s no reason why you shouldn’t be. And I want you to be rather close to me until you marry, Cecily. I want you to marry the right sort of man, one who will care for you and protect you.”

“I’ve been thinking about marrying,” said Cecily ingenuously.

Her mother looked at her aghast. “Marrying whom?”

“Oh, just marrying.”

“You mustn’t think about it at all, dear. I want you to marry some time. But put it out of your mind until the time comes. Just be happy and then, when the time comes when you want to choose a man, let me know him a little first.”

“Of course,” Cecily became judicious, “I may never marry at all.”

Mrs. Warner smiled and closed the conversation rather rapidly.

“We can let that rest, dear.”

She lingered to look over Cecily’s wardrobe, criticizing with severity the frocks which Cecily put before her. Heretofore there always had been three new black Peter Thompson suits, a blue mohair and a white net dress each year. Now it seemed all the standards were to be changed. Even Cecily’s loved blue sweater was cast into the discard. She was to have new things, an appalling amount.

She lay wide awake, too happy to sleep, while her mother went into the library and sat down before her husband with a gesture of mock despair.

“Cecily frightens me to death,” she declared. “Here she is, all grown-up and absolutely terrifying. She is full of a kind of wiseness which I suppose reflects the nuns. Imagine, she has just been talking about marriage. Said she had been thinking about it.”

Mr. Warner reflected her own dismay and question. “But where did she meet any men?”

“That’s just it--she hasn’t. She thinks about marriage in general. I didn’t encourage the subject. Imagine, at eighteen, coolly contemplating it without a giggle.”

“Cecily doesn’t giggle much. I wonder if she has a sense of humor.”

“She doesn’t giggle at all. But I think she has humor. She’s not stupid. She’s puzzling.”

Mr. Warner smiled in a kind, wise fashion of his own. It was interesting to hear his wife reflect on herself as exemplified in her daughter--and funny--and pathetic.

“You were puzzling too, my dear--you are puzzling.”

She did not share his smile.

“She is like me--and I won’t be able to get close to her because she is. I tell you that she frightens me, Leslie. If I thought she had to go through some things----”

“She won’t, my dear. We’ll take jolly good care of that. She shall be cared for.”

He rose a little heavily. “What we shall have to do now is to knock some of the sanctity out and replace it with gayety. I think I’ll teach her to smoke and play poker.”

* * * * *

So Cecily’s secular education began; with her stepfather’s wonderful and surprising gift of a saddlehorse which she must learn to ride at once to please him; with her mother’s new and fascinating interest in her clothes and her own awakening interest in them too; with dancing lessons which made her quickly forget the two-step and Virginia reel of the convent; with a new kind of world to watch and explore and adjust to. She startled herself. In her mirror she saw not the girl in black sailor suits, to whom she was accustomed, but a new figure, a slim, lovely, dark haired girl, with wondering eyes and glowing cheeks, to whom every new frock seemed the most becoming. She was not alone in being startled. Her mother had much the same sensation, having not realized Cecily’s possibilities until recently. She seemed very proud to take her daughter about with her. So Cecily was initiated into a new routine. Instead of rising in the chilly dormitory and hurrying down to a breakfast of oatmeal porridge, toast and milk and then to an early class in French, she still rose early, but to go horseback riding with her stepfather and come back to a sunny breakfast-room where, over shining silver dishes and a great bowl of fruit, she and her mother planned the course of the day. Perhaps they would shop in the morning or sometimes attend some morning lecture which was attracting attention from society and lunch with friends at a city tearoom or go to a more formal luncheon to be followed by a matinée. This in place of lessons or basketball in the convent garden or chapel attendance. It was not a riotously gay life to which Mrs. Warner introduced her daughter. She had far too good taste for that. It was wholesome and the hours were as pleasantly regular as they had been in the convent. Cecily felt it the gayest of existences and it was not until much later that she discovered from how much cheapness and excitement her mother had shielded her at first, or how carefully chosen her pleasures had been. But Mrs. Warner saw to it that the city became conscious of Cecily as a new star on the social horizon, and that she was kept remote only added to her prestige.