Chapter VIII

Maud heard about that ride with much satisfaction. Her respect for her sister was going up by leaps and bounds. To be clever enough to land a man with a past that was frightening as well as a young and wealthy hero was a genuine achievement worthy of record. Secretly Maud dreamed of a life to be a continual flirtation, and to hint at these romantic things deftly as part of Horatia’s doings made a very interesting topic. She sighed and said:

“It’s all very easy to decide what you ought to do in abstract cases, but when one’s own young sister is involved!”

How Horatia would have writhed if she had heard those conversations! If she had guessed how Maud made her a girl whose allure was irresistible--whose danger to men was terrific, and yet who was so innocent and unsophisticated herself that the very streetcars held danger. But she did not guess. Nor did she dream that it was Maud who took pains to inform Anthony Wentworth about Langley. Maud wanted to be connected with the Wentworths and she did not intend to have the Langley affair scare Anthony off. So, meeting him at a dance, she rallied him gaily.

“What did you do to my young sister?”

Anthony asked her for a dance, paying off his dinner debt and also thinking he would like to know the reason for her remark. They sat it out.

“What did I do to your sister? You tell me. I didn’t think she knew I was alive.”

“Oh, yes, she very much knows it. She doesn’t say much--Horatia never does--but she certainly did enjoy that ride with you.” Horatia had not mentioned it to Maud, but Maud was sinning for the greater cause.

“And I’m glad she has a wholesome man friend. I don’t know if you know----”

Anthony expressed total ignorance.

“Well--you know Jim Langley.”

“Oh, yes.”

“He’s a fascinating sort of person, you know. And Horatia has seen far too much of him. She went to work on that paper just out of devilment.”

That didn’t tally with what Horatia had told Anthony about her work.

“Well--she thinks she’s in love with him and he--is certainly in love with her. Of course, she’s young and beautiful--any man would. But Jim Langley isn’t the sort of person one would pick out for a husband for one’s sister, of course. There are things we’ve all heard----”

“I like Jim very much, myself,” said Anthony, surprisingly.

Maud drew in her horns.

“Why, we all do--he’s wonderfully fascinating. But he’s so much older than Horatia, and then I myself never would be sure of the stability of such a man’s affection. And Horatia is so wonderful. I’m sure I don’t know why I’ve told you all this.” Which both of them knew was another falsehood.

Anthony went away leaving Maud with a feeling that he understood her better than was comfortable to know. She might have guessed that he had not been a sought-after young man for years without growing pretty astute. At his club he met an old acquaintance and after a few moments’ conversation asked him,

“What about Jim Langley? How’s he coming on?”

“Oh, he’s a queer fish. Doing rather better lately. They tied the can to him socially when he got involved in that Hubbell scandal.

“Mrs. Hubbell’s back, isn’t she?”

The man nodded. “And charming as ever in her mourning clothes. She says, I believe, that her great sorrow is not that her husband died but that he died insane--because otherwise she can not explain his suing for divorce and his suicide. She says, ‘Poor Jack. He must have been quite insane!’ very touchingly. She gets away with it.

“Langley still in her train?”

“Trust her. I suppose so. But Langley’s all right. He’s been doing damned good writing lately. Now if he could get a job on a newspaper somewhere else, I believe he’d go far. Here, of course, he got off with the wrong foot.”

“Must be thirty-five or six--1904, wasn’t he at the University?”

“Yes--about that. Well, that’s not too late for a man to begin to make real headway. If he married the right woman. It’s marriage these queer ducks need, you know.”

Wentworth agreed.

“Still, he’s hardly the right man for a young girl and----”

“No--not a match for youth and innocence--not Jim Langley. However, that’s the kind they usually pick.”

Wentworth snapped the conversation off there. Perhaps he had heard enough. He went home--not to his sister’s house but to the half-closed house of his father, and sat in his own room before his fire, musing. The fire made his fine profile unusually handsome. He looked about the room appreciatively. These were the deep chairs that had welcomed him on vacations and furloughs--the Remington that his father had given him--his few books, his pipes and the big windows that almost made up one wall.

“Why should I leave it?” he murmured, and fell to smoking luxuriously.

* * * * *

And so the winter slipped into spring, with Horatia revelling in the work of the office and in the thrills which shot through her at the mere presence of Langley; enjoying, too, the friendliness of Anthony Wentworth and the pleasant things he devised for them to do; enjoying everything all the more because of the flashes of wonder and fear and depression with which she was touched sometimes; with Langley working and watching Horatia; with Maud making plans and buying spring clothes with morbid carefulness; with Mrs. Hubbell buying clothes too and planning little entertainments and pressing people to attend them; with the chains which bound them all together being drawn tighter and tighter, and the web of their drama being spun on the vast frame of life. Each of them undoubtedly dreamed that the pattern was different from what it was and each of them must have had a pattern clearly in mind; while Nature, the scene-painter, began to change her set and shaking the white burdens from the trees, helped them to bud again.

With the spring, too, Aunt Caroline and Uncle George came back from the South, Aunt Caroline laden with little bronze alligators and pictures of herself picking oranges and Uncle George frankly rejoicing in getting back and with a tendency to disparage everything Southern. They took Langley and the news of the engagement, which Horatia felt they should know, rather more quietly than either of the nieces had expected, but as they thought about it they realized that these two West Parkians were, after all, too far out of the world to understand all its ways and meanings. Perhaps if Aunt Caroline had discussed it at the Ladies’ Guild she might have heard disturbing things, but since it was a secret and couldn’t be discussed she formed her opinions on the impression Langley made on her, which was pleasant enough. He knew how to listen interminably and defer properly and that was enough for Aunt Caroline. For those hours of listening to her over a heavy Sunday dinner, Langley was paid by Sunday afternoons with Horatia, long walks out by the lake through the mists or the winds when everything evil and unhappy seemed to drop away from him and the world was all life and energy and Horatia. The tediums of Aunt Caroline were a very little thing to bear.

Horatia kept her apartment in the city, pleading an unbreakable lease to her aunt, but she liked to get back to West Park once in a while, just for the “clean, fresh dullness” of it, she said. She had not yet learned what she was to learn, that dullness is one of the most beautiful things in the world for an harassed spirit to come back to, and that dullness is not always stupidity, but sometimes safety. So she patronized West Park mentally and laughed at herself for looking forward to Sundays there. It was natural enough that she should look forward to them as a respite from the existence about her. She was seeing a great deal of very concentrated life. When a woman shoots a man, a newspaper office has the real facts of the case very quickly. When a man suddenly retires from politics and his wife leaves town for a few months and a fatherless child is reported in the “Birth” columns, the public may not connect the three events. But often enough the newspaper knows that there is a link. It knows, too, how so many fortunes are made and it connects them with queer obscurities. They did not reveal ugliness to Horatia willingly in that little office, but she saw and heard it because she was there and could not always be well shielded. Some of the worst of it never reached her but she saw enough. She began to know that the things that happened in the world were not based on justice and she saw that pain can not always be healed and that the wages of sin were sometimes opulence and public respect. She, who had crusaded out into the world, loving its beauty and its freshness and yearning for all it had to offer, began to see that it offered a selection of things which had to be looked over very carefully.

None of this saddened her, because it had not touched her yet, but it aroused her pity and her wonder and her scorn. With the assurance of her age, it never frightened her to see and hear of trouble. These tragedies might happen to others, but not to her--not to her who had work and love. If she ever thought of her future she admitted that she would have “her share of trouble,” but that trouble was so delightfully in the distance as to be merely a romantic ingredient of life--a spice--and not a thing to be afraid of. But there began to be a complexity of thoughts back of her clear eyes, where once there had been only curiosity and eagerness. Day by day it deepened and day by day she loved her work more. It brought many a chance to do interesting things--to render little services to all kinds of people. There was beginning to be an increasing number of women in politics and many of these came to make use of the “woman on _The Journal_.” If they came merely to make use of her they usually departed without accomplishing anything. Horatia understood them very easily and disconcertingly. It was very obvious to her who had no axe of her own to grind, that some of these women had. If they came to ask her advocacy of something decent and necessary, it was easy to explain and easy to get support. But if they came to barter or exchange favors, as so many of them did, they went away empty-handed, simply because they had nothing to give Horatia and because she desired no favors--or offices--or social advancement.

She made enemies. When Mrs. Perry Hill, president of the City Symphony Society, came down to _The Journal_ office one day, she came with an air of concession and as one descended from a pedestal. She explained her purpose lengthily to Horatia. The City Symphony wanted to raise a hundred thousand dollars to put up a musical studio building as a memorial for soldiers and sailors who had been killed during the war. She told enthusiastically of the struggle of the Symphony to raise itself from a little club into a great organization which brought the artists of America to the city to play and to sing. She outlined the tremendous need for a studio building and told of the music-students and teachers who would bless the city and the City Symphony for a place to study and teach. She touched upon the needs of a commercial age and the general low level of musical appreciation. And she ended by telling of the other great lack--the lack of a suitable Soldiers’ and Sailors’ Memorial. “Nothing could be a more fitting tribute to those noble lads.”

Horatia frowned. “I’m afraid I don’t understand.”

She stopped Mrs. Hill, who was just about to repeat her entire speech. “I understand, of course, that the Symphony is a worthy organization--of course--and it has given its members much pleasure--but why should a studio building be a tribute to soldiers and sailors? What good will it do them, living or dead?”

“Only by upholding the highest ideals can we be worthy of those noble boys,” answered Mrs. Hill sententiously.

Horatia persevered.

“But how would it touch them?”

“In the proposed auditorium we would have many fine concerts for everyone.”

“Free?”

“My dear young lady, it costs a thousand dollars to bring great artists here.”

“I see.” Horatia’s tone was not encouraging. “Have you seen many soldiers and sailors, Mrs. Hill?”

“My own son was an aviator.”

“I mean common soldiers. The kind that like ‘Ja-da’ and ‘Come On, Papa’ and would go to sleep at a concert, most of them. They need--oh, tremendously, to be educated in just the things you speak of. But you can’t do it by building recherché auditoriums. They need lots of things more than that--and lots of things before that. Mrs. Hill, I haven’t an objection in the world to a studio building for the Symphony--I’d be glad to contribute if you’ll bring Galli-Curci and Kreisler--but to go about asking funds from people on the plea that you are doing something in the name of those unfortunate boys who were killed or of those commoners who once were soldiers is to me an absurdity.”

It was not the sort of reception to which Mrs. Hill was accustomed when she went to society editors.

“May I see Mr. Langley?”

Horatia opened the door to his office and ushered in Mrs. Hill, who went into some detail as to her worthy project and Horatia’s inadequate appreciation. Horatia chuckled at her desk outside, wondering how Langley would deal with her, and was fully satisfied when Mrs. Hill swept out with a last overheard comment--“Of course, there are many reasons why you are taking this attitude, sir, and none of them does you credit.”

She was ruined, however. Horatia ran a column on the new auditorium studio building and memorial, touching gently on the fact that the question of its erection was in dispute, and then she telephoned some of her friends and some of the real women thinkers of the city for opinions. Also she telephoned some architects. The article was not condemnatory. It was gently questioning, but many a business man read it and agreed heartily with the questions in it, having them ready as an excuse for not contributing. The project failed and Mrs. Hill knew why it had failed. She took to saying “there was opposition from the sort of places from which you might expect it,” which was cryptic, hinted at scandal and saved her face. But even with her face saved she detested Horatia.

It was only an incident, but there were other incidents which, added together, made the “woman on _The Journal_” a subject of much speculation. There was the woman who wanted to be made city commissioner in order to enhance her husband’s chances of getting city contracts and who failed to get _Journal_ support. There was the case of the teacher who resigned from the schools in order to run for the School Board and work for raises in teachers’ salaries. She and Horatia had many a consultation in _The Journal_ office and many a plan hatched there finally put across the woman’s successful election. It was undoubtedly true that Horatia had a straight eye, Bob Brotherton said--and not only did she have a straight eye but she used it. She came to be in demand for many things--as a member of committees projecting new schemes, as a member of boards of directors. The men liked to have her because she had a sense of humor and of brevity in discussion and the women liked to have her because the meetings were usually a success when she came and because she never wanted to be chairman. Horatia enjoyed all these things too, but most of all she liked to get back to the office, to her own papers and her own companions and to the welcome of its familiarity and to Langley’s smile, which had all the love of the world in it. The love of the work and the love of Langley ran so intermingled in her that they sometimes blended. They seemed already married in the things they were doing. The other marriage could only complete this one. So she told herself, but the “other marriage” sounded in her soul sometimes with a solemn note which frightened her a little. Her inexperience frightened her. Women on the street, with shapeless figures and worn faces, commanded respect from her for these women had been married. They knew what living with a man meant. Perhaps they had not played the game very well, but they had played it and they knew the rules.