She had promised Dudley that the calls should be made, and she put on her visiting gown without a thought of shirking the fulfilment of her pledge. From the day of her marriage she had zealously accepted the obligations forced upon her by Dudley"s political aspirations, and Mrs.
Rann became to-day simply a heavier responsibility than usual. Her world was full of Mrs. Ranns, and she braved them with dauntless spirits and triumphant humour. As she b.u.t.toned her gloves on the way downstairs she was conscious of a singularly mild recognition of the fact that the world might have been the gainer had Mrs. Rann abided unborn.
But the fresh air restored her courage, and by the time she sat in Mrs.
Rann"s drawing-room, face to face with her hostess, she was at ease with herself and her surroundings. She gave out at once the peculiar social atmosphere of her race; she uttered her gay little nothings with an intimate air; she laughed good-humouredly at Mrs. Rann"s gossip, and she begged to see photographs of Mrs. Rann"s babies. It was as if she had immediately become the confidential adviser of Mrs. Rann"s domestic difficulties.
Mrs. Rann, herself, was little and plain and obsolete. She appeared to have been left behind in the sixties, like words that have become vulgar from disuse. She wore bracelets on her wrists, and her accent was as flat as her ideas. Before the war--and even long after--n.o.body had heard of the Ranns; they had arrived as suddenly as the electric lights or the trolley cars. When Miss Chris had alluded to them as "new people,"
and Juliet Galt had declared that she "did not call there," Dudley had thrown out an uncertain line to Eugenia. "Rann is a useful man, my dear," he had said. "He may be of great help to me," and the next day Eugenia had left her card. Where Dudley"s ambitions led she cheerfully followed.
"We are politicians," was her excuse to Juliet, "and we can"t afford to be exclusive. Of course, with Emma Carr and yourself it is different.
You may exclude half society if you please, and, in fact, you do; but Dudley and I really don"t mind. He wants something, and I, you know, was born without the instinct of cla.s.s."
So she sat in Mrs. Rann"s drawing-room and received her confidences, while Juliet and Emma Carr were gossiping across the street.
"The greatest trouble I have with Mr. Rann when he comes to town," said Mrs. Rann, "is that he refuses to wear woollen socks. I don"t know whether Mr. Webb wears woollen socks or not."
Eugenia shook her head.
"I"ve no doubt he would be a better and a wiser man if he did," she responded.
"Then he doesn"t catch cold when he puts on thin ones with his dress suit. Now Mr. Rann says woollen socks don"t look well in the evening--and he takes cold every time he goes out at night. He won"t even let me put red flannel in the soles of his shoes."
"Then he"s not the man I thought him," said Eugenia as she rose. "Do you know, the baby is so pretty I stopped her carriage. If she were mine I shouldn"t let her grow up."
Mrs. Rann glowed with pride, and in the depths of her shallow eyes Eugenia read a triumphant compa.s.sion. This little vulgar countrywoman, upon whom she looked so grandly down, was pitying her in her narrow heart.
She flushed and turned away.
"You have never had a child?" asked the little common voice.
Eugenia faced her coldly. "I lost one--a week old," she replied, and she hated herself that she was proud of her seven days" motherhood. She had mourned the loss, but she had never vaunted the possession until now.
As she left the house her name was called by Juliet Galt from her window across the way. "Come over, Eugie," she cried. "We"ve been watching you," and as Eugenia ascended the steps the door was opened and she was clasped in Emma Carr"s arms. "We"ve shut our eyes and ground our teeth and put ourselves in your place," she said. "Oh, Eugie, she"s worse than the dentist!"
"I went to the dentist"s first," was Eugenia"s reply.
She followed Miss Carr into the drawing-room and sank into the window-seat beside Juliet, who was bending over her embroidery frame.
Then she laughed--a full, frank laugh.
"You dear women," she said, "if you knew the lot of a politician"s wife, you"d--marry a footman."
"Provided he were Dudley Webb," returned Emma Carr. She seized Eugenia"s hand and they smiled at each other in demonstrative intimacy. "You know, of course, that we are all in love with your husband--desperately, darkly in love--and you ought to be gray with jealousy. If I were married to the handsomest man in Virginia I"d get me to a nunnery."
"That"s not Eugie"s way," said Juliet, snapping off her silk. "If she went, she"d drag him after."
"Oh, he"s just Dudley," protested Eugenia. "I"d as soon be jealous of Aunt Chris--and he"s waiting at home this instant with his senators come to judgment on my dinner. If I were free, I"d spend the day with you.
Juliet, but I"ve married into servitude."
IX
When Eugenia went upstairs that night she softly opened Lottie"s door and glanced into the room. By the sinking firelight she saw Lottie lying asleep, her hand upon the pillow of her younger child, who slept beside her. The pretty, nerveless hand, even in sleep, tremored like a caress, for whatever Lottie"s wifely failings, as a mother she was without reproach. Lottie--vain, hysterical, bewailing her wrongs--was the same Lottie now resting with a protecting arm thrown out--this Eugenia admitted thoughtfully as she looked into the darkened room where the thin blue flame cast a spectral light upon the sleepers. From this shallow rooted nature had bloomed the maternal ardour of the Southern woman, in whom motherhood is the abiding grace.
Eugenia closed the door and crossed the hall to Miss Chris, who was reading her Bible as she seeded raisins into a small yellow bowl. The leaves of the Bible were held open by her spectacle case which she had placed between them; for while her hands were busy with material matters her placid eyes followed the text.
"I thought I"d get these done to-night," she remarked as Eugenia entered. "I"m going to make a plum pudding for Dudley to-morrow. Where is he now?"
"A political barbecue, I believe," responded Eugenia indifferently as she knotted the cord of her flannel dressing-gown. She yawned and threw herself into a chair. "I wonder why everybody spoils Dudley so," she added. "Even I do it. I am sitting up for him to-night simply because I know he"ll want to tell me about it all when he comes in."
"It"s a good habit for a wife to cultivate," returned Miss Chris, shaking the raisins together. "If my poor father stayed out until four o"clock in the morning he found my mother up and dressed when he came in."
"I should say it was "poor" grandmamma," commented Eugenia drily. "But Dudley won"t find me after midnight." Then she regarded Miss Chris affectionately. "What a blessing that you didn"t marry, Aunt Chris," she said. "You"d have prepared some man to merit d.a.m.nation."
"My dear Eugie," protested Miss Chris, half shocked, half flattered at the picture. "But you"re a good wife, all the same, like your mother before you. The only fault I ever saw in poor Meely was that she wouldn"t put currants in her fruit cake. Tom was always fond of currants--" in a moment she abruptly recalled herself. "My dear, I don"t say you haven"t had your trials," she went on. "Dudley isn"t a saint, but I don"t believe even the Lord expects a man to be that. It doesn"t seem to set well on them."
"Oh, I am not blaming Dudley," returned Eugenia as leniently as Miss Chris. "We live and let live--only our tastes are different. Why, the chief proof of his affection for me is that he always describes to me the object of his admiration--which means that his eyes stray, but his heart does not, and the heart"s the chief thing, after all."
"I"m glad you aren"t jealous," said Miss Chris. "I used to think you were--as a child."
"Oh, I was--as a child," replied Eugenia. Her kindly face clouded. It was borne in upon her with a twinge of conscience that the absence of jealousy which had become the safeguard of Dudley"s peace proved her own lack of pa.s.sion. What a h.e.l.l some women--good women--might have made of Dudley"s life--that genial life that flowed as smoothly as a song. In the flights and pauses of his temperament what discord might have shocked the decent measure of their marriage? Persistent pa.s.sion would have bored him; exacting love would have soured the charm of his radiant egotism. It was because she was not in love with him, that her love had wisely meted out to him only so much or so little of herself as he desired--and with a sudden arraignment of Fate she admitted that because she had failed in the first requirement of the marriage sacrament, she had made that sacrament other than a mockery. Out of her own unfulfilment Dudley"s happiness was fulfilled.
"Yes, Dudley suits me," she said absently, "and, what"s the main thing, I suit Dudley."
"Well, well, I"m glad of it," returned Miss Chris, but in a moment Eugenia was kneeling beside her, her hand upon the open Bible.
"Dear Aunt Chris, you haven"t told me all," she said.
"All?" Miss Chris wavered. "You mean about Bernard?"
"I mean about the governor." She closed the. Bible and pushed it from her. "Do you think he is quite, quite happy?"
Miss Chris laughed in protest.
"Do I believe him to be pining of hopeless love? No, I don"t," she retorted.
"Oh, not that!" exclaimed Eugenia impatiently. She appeared vaguely to resent Miss Chris"s a.s.surance. She was feminine enough to experience an irrational jealousy at the idea of a vacancy which she had done her best to create. It destroyed an example of the permanence of love.
"I don"t suppose anybody could be happy on politics," observed Miss Chris. "It doesn"t seem natural." And she slowly added: "I wish some good woman would marry him."
"I don"t!" said Eugenia sharply. She rose with a spring from the rug, and left Miss Chris to her reflections and her raisins. In her own room she sat down before the fire and loosened her hair from the low coil on her neck. She drew out the hairpins one by one, until her hands were full, and the thick black rope fell across her bosom. Then she tossed the pins upon her bureau and shook a veil over her face and shoulders.
As she settled herself into her chair she glanced impatiently at the clock. Dudley was late, and she listened for his footsteps with the composure of a woman from whom the flush of marriage has pa.s.sed away.
His footsteps were as much a part of her days as the ticking of the clock upon the mantel. If the clock were to stop, she would miss the accustomed sound, but so long as it went on she was almost unconscious of its presence. Her affection for Dudley had grown so into her nature that it was like the claim of kinship--quiet, unimpa.s.sioned, full of service--the love that is the end of many happy marriages, the beginning of few.
As she sat there she fell vaguely to wondering what her lot would have been had her pulses fluttered to his footsteps as they came and went.
She would have known remorseless waitings and the long agony of jealous nights--all the pa.s.sionate self-torture that she had missed--that she had missed, thank G.o.d! She made the best of her life to-day, as she would have made the best of blows and bruises. It was the old buoyant instinct of the Battle blood--the fighting of Fate on its ground with its own weapons. She had insisted strenuously upon her own happiness--and she had found it not in the great things of life, but in the little ones. She was happy because happiness is ours in the cradle or not at all--because it is of the blood and not of the environment.