Chapter 6 No.6

Lucretia, departing, left me tremulous. The flame-like rush of her mind had scorched my consciousness; the great waves of her emotion had pounded and beaten me. I shared, and yet shrank from, her passionate apprehension of our little Desire's failure in the righteous life. For I was, and am, fond of Desire.

I spent a feverish and most miserable day. There were so many unhappy things to consider! The gossip that would rack the town apparently did not concern Lucretia at all. I am hide-bound, I dare say, and choked with convention. Certainly I shrank from the notoriety that would attach itself to us when young Mrs. Arnold Ackroyd took up her residence in Reno, as a first step toward the wider life. {82} Then there was the disruption of old ties of friendship and esteem. It would be painful to lose the Ackroyds from among our intimates, yet impossible to retain them on the old footing. I already had that curious feeling of having done the united clan vicarious injury.

Toward five o'clock my sister Mary, Mrs. Greening, tapped on the door.

Mary Greening and I are good friends for brother and sister. As children we were chums; we abbreviated for each other the middle name we all bore, Mary calling me Stub, and I calling her Stubby. We meant this to express exceptional fraternal fealty. It was like a mystic rite that bound us together.

She came in almost breezily. For a woman in late middle life Mary Greening is comely. There is at the bottom {83} of her nature an indomitable youthfulness, to which her complexion and movements bear happy witness.

"Well, Stub, has Lucretia been here?"

"Come and sit down, Mary. Yes, Lucretia has been here. Very much so," I answered dejectedly.

Mary swept across the room almost majestically. Quite the type of a fine woman is Mary Greening, though perhaps a thought too plump. She threw back her sable stole and unfastened her braided violet coat; she prefers richly embellished garments, though they are thought garish by some of the matrons in her set.

"You keep it much too warm in here," she said critically.

I made a grimace.

"Your hat is a little to one side, Stubby, as usual."

{84}

She put her hand up tentatively to the confection of fur, yellow lace, and violet orchids.

"I don't think Lenore ballasts my hats properly," she said plaintively. "It can't be my fault that they slide about so. But I did n't come to talk about hats."

I sighed. "No, you came to talk about Desire. Mary, how long have you known about this deplorable affair?"

"Oh--ever since there has been anything to know! Desire has always talked to me more than to her mother. You know, Ben, one would n't choose Lucretia as a confidante in any kind of a heart affair."

"Don't put on that worldly air with me, Mary Greening," I said crossly. "Lucretia is a little austere, but it seems to me that austerity has its {85} advantages. For instance, it keeps one out of the newspapers. Am I to infer that you sympathize with Desire?"

"Not at all," she protested. "You may not believe me, but I have suffered and suffered, over this thing. I can't count the nights I have lain awake thinking about it. At first it seemed to me I simply could not have it, and I thought I was going to influence Desire. But nobody ever influences people in matters of the heart. Of course this is an affair on the highest possible plane--so I thought they might be more reasonable. But I don't observe that they are."

"On the highest possible plane," I mused. "Mary, be candid with me. I would like a good woman's point of view on this. If a game of hearts ends in the courts, breaking up a home and smashing the lives concerned to {86} flinders, do you really think it matters whether that affair is on a high plane or a low one? Does it seem any better to you for being the finer variety?"

"Certainly it does," returned Mary Greening promptly; "though," she added reflectively, "judged by results, I see it is illogical to feel so."

She cogitated a little longer.

"You put the thing too crudely. Here is the point, Ben. The Devil never makes the mistake of offering the coarser temptation to persons of taste. You couldn't have tempted Desire to break up her home with any temptation that did n't include her intellect, her spirit, and her aesthetic instincts. And when one gets up in that corner of one's nature, people like you or me or Desire are so used to regarding all the demands emanating from there as legitimate, as something to be {87} proud of, to be satisfied at almost any cost, that it takes a very clear sense of right and wrong to prevent confusion. And, nowadays, hardly anybody but old fogies and back numbers, and people who have lived the kind of life Lucretia has, possesses a clear sense of right and wrong. It has gone out."

"What became of Desire's married happiness, Mary? I thought there was so much of it, and that it was of a durable variety."

"Oh, it leaked away through small cracks, as happiness usually does. It is hard to explain to a man, but if Arnold were a woman, you might almost say that he nagged. He is too detailed, too exact, for Desire. If, for instance, she said in May, I believe I will have a green cloth, embroidered, for a fall suit, about the first of November, you {88} might expect Arnold to remark, I don't see that green cloth suit you said you were going to have. What made you change your mind? Desire delights to say things she does n't mean and lay plans she does n't expect to carry out, so a constant repetition of such incidents was really pretty wearing. I have seen her when she reminded me of a captive balloon in a high wind.

"A woman in your position ought not to make unconsidered speeches was one of his pet remarks. He is scientific, she is temperamental--and each of them expected the other one to be born again, and born different by virtue of mutual affection and requirements. Arnold will go on wondering to the end of his life why Desire can't be more accurate, more purposeful. As if he did n't fall in love with her the {89} way she is! And then along comes the Westerner--"

"Where did they meet?"

"Bessie Fleming introduced them--at some silly place like Atlantic City. It was after Desire had that nervous breakdown two years ago. I know they were both in wheeled chairs at the time, and they rode up and down together, talking, like long-separated twin souls, about the theory of aesthetics and kindred matters. They did n't require diagrams to see each other's jokes, and that is always a strong tie. He was a man used to getting what he wanted, and when he became bewitched--can't you see how it would all work together? I know Lucretia thinks there is no excuse for Desire. But I see this excuse for her. None of us ever trained her to know she could n't have everything she wanted. Of course, we never {90} expected her to want anything but the finest, the highest. But she is human, and when she found a most wonderful thing in her path that she wanted more than she had ever wanted anything before--she put out her hand to take it, as she had taken other things when we were all applauding her choice. And I will do her the justice to say that I don't believe she has the faintest notion Arnold will really fight to keep the children. You see, she still thinks the world is hers."

"Perhaps it is," I offered. The comfort of Mary's presence was beginning to rest and appease me, and I was a little less conscious of my aching conscience. "The Westerner--is he--is he--"

"Perfectly presentable. Quite a scholar. Collects pictures. Has all kinds of notions. He and Desire are {91} ideally congenial. Very properly he is keeping himself at long distance and entirely out of it. No one but ourselves surmises that he exists. And it really is an enormous fortune. I can imagine Desire doing all kinds of interesting things with it."

"Do you know what Lucretia said to me, Mary?"

She shook her head.

"You, too? Can money buy you, too?" I quoted. "I shall never forget how Lucretia looked as she said it."

"Stub--the world moves. It may be moving in the wrong direction, but if we don't move with it, we are bound to be left behind."

"Mary Greening," I retorted, "do you really mean that you detect in yourself a willingness to have an unjustified divorce and a huge, vulgar {92} fortune in the family, just because they are up to date?"

"Benjamin Raynie, if down at the bottom of my soul there is crawling and sneaking a microscopical acquiescence in the muddle Desire is making of life, it is probably due to the reason you mention. I am just as ashamed of it as I can be! I ought to be plunged in grief, like Lucretia. And I am--only--well, I want to help Desire, and I can't help her if I let myself feel like that. I suppose you'll think I'm an unmoral old thing, but I see it this way: if these affairs are going to happen in one's very own family, one might as well put them through with a high hand. I intend to stand by Desire. Of course the Ackroyds will do the same by Arnold. Desire will never be received in this town again with their consent. They are entirely in the right. But I shall {93} have to fight them for Desire's sake, just the same."

"Stubby! Stubby! There is n't a particle of logic as big as a pin-head about you, and I don't approve of you at all--but I do like you tremendously!"

Mary Greening rose abruptly, crossed to the window, and stood looking out for a time. Then she came back and, dropping awkwardly beside my chair, buried her convulsed and quivering face in the woolly sleeve of my jacket, while the tears dripped fast from her overflowing eyes.

"Stub," she brought out jerkily, between her sudden choking sobs, "I did n't make a long face and tell Desire 'whom God hath joined'--I--I tried to appeal to her common sense. Irreligious people often do have a great deal of common sense, you know. {94} But--I am the child of our fathers, too. I wish--I wish she would n't do it!"