Chapter XVI: Mrs. Leslie Braithwaite’s Husband

MRS. BRAITHWAITE was superb;—at least, that was Mr. Dodge’s impersonal conception of her. Never before had he seen sainthood so suavely combined with a piquant beauty, nor an evening gown of dull red silk and black lace so exquisitely invested with an angelic presence. For to-night this lady looked not only noble, she looked charming; and either his wife had made a grotesque mistake or he stood before an actress unmatched in his experience. She began talking at once, in her serene and sweet contralto voice—a beautiful voice, delicately hushed and almost imperceptibly precise in its pronunciation. “It seemed to us really rather absurd, Mrs. Dodge, that you and your husband should be our next-door neighbours for so long without even having set foot in our house or we in yours. And as Mr. Dodge has lately been so generous to my poor little Workers’ Welfare League—the unhappy creatures do need help so, and the ladies of the committee were so touched by your kindness, Mr. Dodge—we thought we’d just make that an excuse to call, even thus informally and for only a few minutes. We wanted to express the thanks of the League, of course, and we thought it was about time to say we aren’t really so unneighbourly as we may have seemed—and we hope you aren’t, either!”

“No, indeed,” Mr. Dodge responded with a hasty glance of sidelong uneasiness at his wife. Her large face was red and rather dismayingly fierce as she sat stiffly in the stiffest chair in the Dodges’ white-walled, cold, and rigidly symmetrical drawing-room; but she said, “No, indeed,” too, though not so heartily as her husband did. In fact, she said it grimly; yet he was relieved, for her expression made him fear that she would say nothing at all.

“One of the things I find to regret about modern existence,” Mrs. Braithwaite continued, in her beautiful voice, “is the disappearance of neighbourliness even in a quiet suburban life like yours and ours. Of course, this is anything but a new thought, yet how concretely our two houses have illustrated it! So it did seem time, at last, to break the ice, especially as I have good reason to think that just these last few days you must have been thinking of me as quite a naughty person, Mrs. Dodge.”

Mrs. Dodge stared at her; appeared to stare not only with astounded eyes but with a slowly opening mouth. “What? What did you say?” she asked, huskily.

“I’m afraid you’ve been thinking of me as rather naughty,” the serene caller said, and her ever promised smile seemed a little more emphatically promised than it had been. “I ought to confess to you that as a collector for my poor little Workers’ League I’m terribly unscrupulous. It’s such a struggling little organization, and the need of help is so frightfully pressing, I may as well admit I haven’t any scruples at all how I get money for it. Yet, of course, I know I ought to apologize for asking Mr. Dodge to contribute to a cause that you didn’t feel particularly interested in yourself.”

“Oh!” Mrs. Dodge said, and to her husband’s consternation she added formidably: “Is _that_ what you’re talking about!”

No disastrous effect was visible, however. Mrs. Braithwaite nodded sunnily. “I’m sure you’ll forgive me for the sake of the happiness the money brought to a pitiful little family—the father hasn’t had any work for eight months; there are four young children and one just born. If you could see their joy when——”

“I dare say!” Mrs. Dodge interrupted. “I’m glad it did _some_ good!”

“I was sure you’d feel so.” Mrs. Braithwaite glanced gently at her host, whose face was a remarkable study of geniality in conflict with apprehension;—then her gaze returned to her hostess. “I wanted to make my peace not only for myself,” she added, “but for your husband. I’m sure you’re going to forgive him, Mrs. Dodge.”

Innocently, Mr. Dodge supposed this to be intended as a kindly effort on his behalf and in the general interests of amiability. He was surprised, therefore, and his apprehensions of an outbreak on the part of his wife were little abated, when he perceived that its effect upon her was far from placative. Her ample figure seemed to swell; she was red but grew redder; her action in breathing became not only visible but noticeable; to his appalled vision she seemed about to snort forth sparks. For several perilous moments she did not speak;—then, after compressing her lips tightly, she said: “Mr. Dodge sent you his check upon my direction, of course. Naturally, he consulted me. I told him that since you had twice solicited me for a subscription it would be best for us to send you some money and be done with it.”

Mrs. Braithwaite uttered a soothing sound as of amused relief. “That’s so much nicer,” she said. “I was afraid you might have been annoyed with both of us—with both poor Mr. Dodge and myself—but that exculpates us. I’m so very glad.” She turned to the perturbed host. “I was _so_ afraid I’d involved you, Mr. Dodge—perhaps quite beyond forgiveness.”

“Not at all—not at all,” he said, removing his gaze with difficulty from his wife’s face. “Oh, no. Everything—everything’s been perfectly pleasant,” he floundered, and Mrs. Dodge’s expression did not reassure him that he was saying the right thing. “Perfectly—pleasant,” he repeated, feebly.

“I _so_ hoped it would be,” Mrs. Braithwaite said. “I hoped Mrs. Dodge wouldn’t be _very_ hard on you for aiding in such a good cause.”

“No,” he returned, nervously. “No, she—she wasn’t. She proved to be entirely—ah—amiable, of course.” And again he was dismayed by Mrs. Dodge’s expression.

“Of course,” Mrs. Braithwaite agreed, sunnily, with only the quickest and sweetest little fling of a glance at her hostess, “I was _sure_ she’d forgive you. Well, at any rate, we’ve both made our peace with her now and established the _entente cordiale_, I hope.” She turned toward her husband and spoke his name gently, in the tone that is none the less a command to the obedient follower: “Leslie.” It was apparently her permission for him to prepare himself for departure; but it may also have been a signal or command for him to do something else;—Mr. Dodge noticed that it brought an oddly plaintive look into the eyes of the small and dark Braithwaite.

Throughout the brief but strained interview he had been sitting in one of the Dodges’ rigid chairs as quietly as if he had been a well-behaved little son of Mrs. Braithwaite’s, brought along to make a call upon grown people. He was slender as well as short; of a delicate, almost fragile, appearance; and in company habitually so silent, so self-obliterative that it might well have been a matter of doubt whether he was profoundly secretive or of an overwhelming timidity. But as he sat in the Dodges’ slim black chair, himself rather like that chair, with his trim, thin little black legs primly uncrossed and his small black back straight and stiff, there were suggestions that he was more secretive than timid. Under his eyes were semicircles of darkness, as if part of what he secreted might have been a recent anguish, either physical or mental. Moreover, if he had been in reality the well-trained little boy his manners during this short evening call had suggested, those semicircles under his eyes would have told of anguish so acute that the little boy had wept.

When his wife said “Leslie,” he swallowed; there came into his eyes the odd and plaintive look his host had noticed—it was the look now not of a good little boy but of a good little dog, obedient in a painful task set by the adored master—and he stood up immediately.

“We really must be running,” his wife said, rising, too. “This was just our funny little effort to break the ice. I do hope it has, and that you’ll both come in to see us some evening. I _do_ hope you’ll _both_ come.” She put an almost imperceptible stress on the word “both” as she moved toward the door; then said “Leslie” again. He was still standing beside his chair.

“Ah—” he said; then paused and coughed. “I—I wonder——”

“Yes?” his host said, encouragingly.

“I—that is, I was going to say, by the way, I wonder if you happen to know of a good chauffeur, Mr. Dodge.”

At this, Mrs. Dodge’s breathing became audible as well as visible, there fell a moment of such silence.

“A—a chauffeur? No,” Mr. Dodge said. “No, I don’t think I do. We haven’t one ourselves; we do our own driving. A chauffeur? No. I’m afraid I don’t know of any.”

“I see,” Braithwaite returned. “I just happened to ask. We’ve—ah—lost the man we’ve had lately. He was a very good driver and we haven’t anybody to take his place.”

Mrs. Dodge spoke sepulchrally as she rose from her chair. “That’s too bad,” she said, and, to her husband’s relief, stopped there, adding nothing.

“Yes,” Braithwaite assented. “He was a very good driver indeed; but he was a college graduate and only yesterday he found another position, tutoring, and left us. He was a very good man—Dolling.”

“What?” Mr. Dodge said. “Who?”

“Dolling,” Braithwaite replied; and followed his wife to the door. “I just happened to mention his name: Dolling. I—I didn’t address you as ‘darling,’ Mr. Dodge, though I see how you might easily have thought I did. The man’s name was Dolling. I shouldn’t like you to think I’d take the liberty of calling _you_——”

But here he was interrupted by such an uproarious shout of laughter from his host that his final words were lost. Mr. Dodge’s laughter continued, though it was interspersed with hearty expressions of hospitality and parting cheer, until the callers had passed the outer threshold and the door had closed behind them. Then the hilarious gentleman returned from the hall to face a wife who found nothing in the world, just then, a laughing matter.

“The worst thing you did,” she assured him, “was to be so fascinated that you told her I’d been amiable to you about your sending that check—just after I said I knew all about it _before_ you sent it and had _told_ you to send it! That was a pleasant position to put your wife in, wasn’t it?”

“Lydia!” he shouted, still outrageous in his mirth. “Let’s forget that part of it and remember only Dolling!”

“All right,” she said, and her angry eyes flashed. “Suppose his name _was_ Dolling. What was she talking to him about rosemary and remembrance for?”

“I don’t know, and it doesn’t seem important. The only thing I can get my mind on is your keeping to yourself so solemnly the scandalous romance of Dolling!” And becoming more respectably sober, for a time, he asked her: “Don’t you really see a little fun in it, Lydia?”

“What!” she cried. “Do you? After you saw that wretched little man of hers stand up there and recite his lesson like a trained monkey? Did you look at _her_ while he was performing? She stood in the doorway and held the whip-lash over him till he finished! And if this idol of yours is so innocent and pure, why did she go all to pieces the way she did when she saw me that morning by the hedge?”

“Why, don’t you see?” he cried. “Of course she saw you thought she’d called the man ‘darling’! She knew you didn’t know his name was Dolling. Isn’t it plain to you _yet_?”

“No!” his wife said, vehemently. “It isn’t plain to me and it never will be!”