"No woman ever did. That is a sentimental falsehood of the emotional.
No woman ever did help a man in that way. Sylvia, if love were the only question, and if you do truly love him, I--well, I suppose I"d be fool enough to advise you to be a fool. Even then you"d be sorry. You know what your future may be; you know what you are fitted for. What can you do without Howard? In this town your role would be a very minor one without Howard"s money, and you know it."
"Yes, I know it."
"And your sacrifice could not help that doomed boy."
Sylvia nodded a.s.sent.
"Then, is there any choice? Is there any question of what to do?"
Sylvia looked out into the winter sky, through the tops of snowy trees; everywhere the stark, deathly rigidity of winter. Under it, frozen, lay the rain that had scented the air. Under her ambition lay the ghosts of yesterday.
"No," she said, "there is no question of choice. I know what must be."
Grace, seated in the firelight, looked up as Sylvia rose from her desk and came across the room; and when she sank down on the rug at her feet, resting her cheek against the elder woman"s knees, nothing was said for a long time--a time of length sufficient to commit a memory to its grave, lay it away decently and in quiet befitting.
Sore doubt a.s.sailed Grace Ferrall, guiltily aware that once again she had meddled; and in the calm tenor of her own placid, marital satisfaction, looking backward along the pleasant path she had trodden with its little monuments to love at decent intervals amid the agreeable monotony of content, her heart and conscience misgave her lest she had counselled this young girl wrongly, committing her to the arid lovelessness which she herself had never known.
Leaning there, her fingers lingering in light caress on Sylvia"s bright hair, for every doubt she brought up argument, to every sentimental wavering within her heart she opposed the chilling reason of common sense. Destruction to happiness lay in Sylvia"s yielding to her caprice for Siward. There was other happiness in the world besides the non-essential one of love. That must be Sylvia"s portion. And after all--and after all, love was a matter of degree; and it was well for Sylvia that she had the malady so lightly--well for her that it had advanced so little, lest she suspect what its crowning miracles might be and fall sick of a pa.s.sion for what she had forever lost.
For a week or more the snow continued; colder, gloomier weather set in, and the impending menace of Ash Wednesday redoubled the social pace, culminating in the Westervelt ball on the eve of the forty days.
And Sylvia had not yet seen Siward or spoken to him again across the wilderness of streets and men.
In the first relaxation of Lent she had instinctively welcomed an opportunity for spiritual consolation and a chance to take her spiritual bearings; not because of bodily fatigue--for in the splendour of her youthful vigour she did not know what that meant.
Saint Berold was a pretty good saint, and his church was patronised by Major Belwether"s household. The major liked two things high: his game and his church. Sylvia cared for neither, but had become habituated to both the odours of sanct.i.ty and of pheasants; so to Saint Berold"s she went in cure of her soul. Besides, she was fond of Father Curtis, who, if he were every inch a priest, was also every foot of his six feet a man--simple, good, and brave.
However, she found little opportunity, save at her brief confession, for a word with Father Curtis. His days were full days to the overbr.i.m.m.i.n.g, and a fashionable pack was ever at his heels, fawning and shoving and importuning. It was fashionable to adore Father Curtis, and for that reason she shrank from venturing any demand upon his time, and n.o.body else at Saint Berold"s appealed to her. Besides, the music was hard, commonplace, even blatant at times, and, having a delicate ear, she shrank from this also. It is probable then that what comfort she found under Saint Berold"s big, brand-new Episcopal cross she extracted from observing the rites, usages, and laws of a creed that had been accepted for her by that Christian gentleman, Major Belwether. Also, she may have found some solace from the still intervals devoted to an inventory of her sins and the wistful searching of a heart too young for sadness. If she did it was her own affair, not Grace Ferrall"s, who went with her to Saint Berold"s determined always to confess to too much gambling, but letting it go from day to day so that the penance could not interfere with the next seance.
Agatha Caithness was there a great deal, looking like a saint in her subdued plumage; and very devout, dodging nothing--neither confession nor Quarrier"s occasionally lifted eyes, though their gaze, meeting, seemed lost in dreamy devotion or drowned in the contemplation of the spiritual and remote.
Plank came docilely from his Dutch Reformed church to sit beside Leila. As for Mortimer, once a vestryman, he never came at all--made no pretence or profession of what he elegantly expressed as "caring a d.a.m.n"
for anything "in the church line," though, he added, there were "some good lookers to be found in a few synagogues." His misconception of the attractions of the church amused the new set of men among whom he had recently drifted, to the unfeigned disgust of gentlemen like Major Belwether; "club" men, in the commoner and more sinister interpretation of the word; unfit men, who had managed to slip into good clubs; men, once fit, who had deteriorated to the verge of ostracism; heavy, over-fed, idle, insolent men in questionable financial situation, hard card players, hard drinkers, hard riders, negative in their virtues, merciless in their vices, and whose cynical misconduct formed the sources of the stock of stories told where such men foregather.
Mortimer had already furnished his world with sufficient material for jests of that flavour; now they were telling a new one: how, as Leila was standing before Tiffany"s looking for her carriage, a masher accosted her, and, at her haughty stare, said sneeringly: "Oh, you can"t play that game on me; I"ve seen you with Leroy Mortimer!"
The story was repeated frequently enough. Leila heard it with a shrug; but such things mattered to her now, and she cried over it at night, burning that Plank should hear her name used jestingly to emphasise the depth of her husband"s degradation.
Mortimer stayed out at night very frequently now. Also, he appeared to make his money go farther, or was luckier at his "card killings,"
because he seldom attempted to bully Leila, being apparently content with his allowance.
Once or twice Plank saw him with an unusually attractive girl belonging to a world very far removed from Leila"s. Somebody said she was an actress when she did anything at all--one Lydia Vyse, somewhat celebrated for an audacity not too delicate. But Plank was no more interested than any man who can"t afford to endanger his prospects by a closer acquaintance with that sort of pretty woman.
Meanwhile Mortimer kept away from home, wife, and church, and Plank frequented them, so the two men did not meet very often; and the less they met the less they found to say to one another.
Now that the forty days had really begun, Major Belwether became restless for the flesh-pots of the south, although Lenten duties sat lightly enough upon the house of Belwether. These decent observances were limited to a lax acknowledgment of fast days, church in moderation, and active partic.i.p.ation in the succession of informal affairs calculated to sustain life in those intellectually atrophied and wealthy people entirely dependent upon others for their amus.e.m.e.nts.
To these people no fear of punishment hereafter can equal the terror of being left to their own devices; and so, though the opera was over, theatres unfashionable, formal functions suspended and dances ended, the pace still continued at a discreet and decorous trot; and those who had not fled to California or Palm Beach, remained to pray and play Bridge with an unction most edifying.
And all this while Sylvia had not seen Siward.
Sylvia was changing. The characteristic amiability, the sensitive reserve, the sweet composure which the world had always counted on in her, had become exceptions and no longer the rules which governed the caprice and impulse always latent. An indifference so pointed as to verge on insolence amazed her intimates at times; a sudden, flushed impatience startled the habitues of her shrine. There was a new, unseeing hardness in her eyes; in her att.i.tude the faintest hint of cynicism. She acquired a habit of doing selfish things coldly, indifferent to the canons of the art; and true selfishness, the most delicate of all the arts, requires an expert.
That which had most charmed--her unfeigned pleasure in pleasure, her unfailing consideration for all, her gentleness with ignorance, her generous unconsciousness of self--all these still remained, it is true, though no longer characteristic, no longer to be counted on.
For the first time a slight sense of fear tinctured the general admiration.
In public her indifference and growing impatience with Quarrier had not reached the verge of bad taste, but in private she was scarcely at pains to conceal her weariness and inattention, showing him less and less of the formal consideration which had been their only medium of coexistence. That he noticed it was evident even to her who carelessly ignored the consequences of her own att.i.tude.
Once, speaking of the alterations in progress at The Sedges, his place near Oyster Bay, he casually asked her opinion, and she as casually observed that if he had an opinion about anything he wouldn"t know what to do with it.
Once, too, she had remarked in Quarrier"s hearing to Ferrall, who was complaining about the loss of his hair, that a hairless head was a visitation from Heaven, but a beard was a man"s own fault.
Once they came very close to a definite rupture, close enough to scare her after all the heat had gone out of her and the matter was ended.
Quarrier had lingered late after cards, and something was said about the impending kennel show and about Marion Page judging the English setters.
"Agatha tells me that you are going with Marion," continued Quarrier.
"As long as Marion has chosen to make herself conspicuous there is nothing to be said. But do you think it very good taste for you to figure publicly on the sawdust with an eccentric girl like Marion?"
"I see nothing conspicuous about a girl"s judging a few dogs," said Sylvia, merely from an irritable desire to contradict.
"It"s bad taste and bad form," remarked Quarrier coldly; "and Agatha thought it a mistake for you to go there with her."
"Agatha"s opinions do not concern me."
"Perhaps mine may have some weight."
"Not the slightest."
He said patiently: "This is a public show; do you understand? Not one of those private bench exhibitions."
"I understand. Really, Howard, you are insufferable at times."
"Do you feel that way?"
"Yes, I do. I am sorry to be rude, but I do feel that way!" Flushed, impatient, she looked him squarely between his narrowing, woman"s eyes: "I do not care for you very much, Howard, and you know it. I am marrying you with a perfectly sordid motive, and you know that, too. Therefore it is more decent--if there is any decency left in either of us--to interfere with one another as little as possible, unless you desire a definite rupture. Do you?"
"I? A--a rupture?"
"Yes," she said hotly; "do you?"
"Do you, Sylvia?"
"No; I"m too cowardly, too selfish, too treacherous to myself. No, I don"t."
"Nor do I," he said, lifting his furtive eyes.
"Very well. You are more contemptible than I am, that is all."