"She understood her man better than he did himself. She knew that he would never be a great money-getter, hadn"t the mental or the physical qualifications for it. So she turns him deftly into a reformer, a kind of gentlemanly politician. She"ll make him Congressman or better,--much better! Meantime she has given him a delightful home, one of the nicest I know,--on a street down town near a little park, where the herd does not know enough to live. And there Conny receives the best picked set of people I ever see. It is all quite wonderful!"
"And we thought her coa.r.s.e," mused Isabelle.
"Perhaps she is,--I don"t think she is fine. But a strong hand is rarely fine. I don"t think she would hesitate to use any means to arrive,--and that is Power, my dear little girl!"
Margaret Pole rose, the enigmatic smile on her lips.
"I must leave you now to your nap and the peace of the hills," she said lightly. "We"ll meet at luncheon. By the way, I ran across a cousin of mine coming in on the train,--a Virginian cousin, which means that he is close enough to ask favors when he wants them. He wishes to meet you,--he is a great favorite of the Woodyards, of Conny, I should say,--Tom Cairy.... He was at college with your brother, I think. I will bring him over in the afternoon if you say so. He"s amusing, Thomas; but I don"t vouch for him.
Good-by, girl."
Isabelle watched Margaret Pole cross the light green of the lawn, walking leisurely, her head raised towards the mountains. "She is not happy,"
thought Isabelle. "There is something wrong in her marriage. I wonder if it is always so!" Margaret had given her so much to think about, with her sharp suggestions of strange, new views, that she felt extraordinarily refreshed. And Margaret, her eyes on the blue hills, was thinking, "She is still the girl,--she doesn"t know herself yet, does not know life!" Her lips smiled wistfully, as though to add: "But she is eager. She will have to learn, as we all do." Thus the two young women, carefully avoiding any reference to the thought nearest their hearts, discovered in a brief half hour what each wanted to know....
After the noisy luncheon, with its interminable variety of food, in the crowded, hot dining room, Isabelle and Margaret with Cairy sought refuge in one of the foot-paths that led up into the hills. Cairy dragged his left leg with a perceptible limp. He was slight, blond hair with auburn tinge, smooth shaven, with appealing eyes that, like Margaret"s, were recessed beneath delicate brows. He had pleased Isabelle by talking to her about Vickers, whom he had known slightly at the university, talking warmly and naturally, as if nothing had happened to Vickers. Now he devoted himself to her quite personally, while Margaret walked on ahead. Cairy had a way of seeing but one woman at a time, no matter what the circ.u.mstances might be, because his emotional horizon was always limited. That was one reason why he was liked so much by women. He had a good deal to say about the Woodyards, especially Conny.
"She is so sure in her judgments," he said. "I always show her everything I write!" (He had already explained that he was a literary "jobber," as he called it, at the Springs to see a well-known Wall Street man for an article on "the other side" that he was preparing for _The People"s Magazine_, and also hinted that his ambitions rose above his magazine efforts.)
"But I did not know that Conny was literary," Isabelle remarked in surprise.
The young Southerner smiled at her simplicity.
"I don"t know that she is what _you_ mean by literary; perhaps that is the reason she is such a good judge. She knows what people want to read, at least what the editors think they want and will pay for. If Con--Mrs.
Woodyard likes a thing, I know I shall get a check for it. If she throws it down, I might as well save postage stamps."
"A valuable friend," Margaret called back lightly, "for a struggling man of letters!"
"Rather," Cairy agreed. "You see," turning to Isabelle again, "that sort of judgment is worth reams of literary criticism."
"It"s practical."
"Yes, that is just what she is,--the genius of the practical; it"s an instinct with her. That is why she can give really elaborate dinners in her little house, and you have the feeling that there are at least a dozen servants where they ought to be, and all that."
From the Woodyards they digressed to New York and insensibly to Cairy"s life there. Before they had turned back for tea Isabelle knew that the lame young Southerner had written a play which he hoped to induce some actress to take, and that meantime he was supporting himself in the various ways that modern genius has found as a subst.i.tute for Grub Street. He had also told her that New York was the only place one could live in, if one was interested in the arts, and that in his opinion the drama was the coming art of America,--"real American drama with blood in it"; and had said something about the necessity of a knowledge of life, "a broad understanding of the national forces," if a man were to write anything worth while.
"You mean dinner-parties?" Margaret asked at this point....
When he left the women, he had arranged to ride with Isabelle.
"It"s the only sport I can indulge in," he said, referring to his physical infirmity, "and I don"t get much of it in New York."
As he limped away across the lawn, Margaret asked mischievously:--
"Well, what do you think of Cousin Thomas? He lets you know a good deal about himself all at once."
"He is so interesting--and appealing, don"t you think so, with those eyes?
Isn"t it a pity he is lame?"
"I don"t know about that. He"s used that lameness of his very effectively.
It"s procured him no end of sympathy, and sympathy is what Thomas likes,--from women. He will tell you all about it some time,--how his negro nurse was frightened by a snake and dropped him on a stone step when he was a baby."
"We don"t have men like him in St. Louis," Isabelle reflected aloud; "men who write or do things that are really interesting--it is all business or gossip. I should like to see Conny,--it must be exciting to live in New York, and be somebody!"
"Come and try it; you will, I suppose?"
In spite of Margaret"s gibes at her distant cousin, Isabelle enjoyed Cairy.
He was the kind of man she had rarely seen and never known: by birth a gentleman, by education and ambition a writer, with a distinct social sense and the charm of an artist. In spite of his poverty he had found the means to run about the world--the habited part of it--a good deal, and had always managed to meet the right people,--the ones "whose names mean something."
He was of the parasite species, but of the higher types. To Isabelle his rapid talk, about plays, people, pictures, the opera, books, was a revelation of some of that flowing, stream of life which she felt she was missing. And he gave her the pleasant illusion of "being worth while." The way he would look at her as he rolled a cigarette on the veranda steps, awaiting her least word, flattered her woman"s sympathy. When he left for Washington, going, as he said, "where the _People"s_ call me," she missed him distinctly.
"I hope I shall meet him again!"
"You will," Margaret replied. "Thomas is the kind one meets pretty often if you are his sort. And I take it you are!"
Isabelle believed that Margaret Pole was jealous of her young cousin or piqued because of a sentimental encounter in their youth. Cairy had hinted at something of this kind. Margaret patted Isabella"s pretty head.
"My little girl," she mocked, "how wonderful the world is, and all the creatures in it!"
From this month"s visit at the Springs the Colonel got some good golf, Mrs.
Price a vivid sense of the way people threw their money about these days ("They say that Wall Street broker gave the head waiter a hundred dollar bill when he left!"). And Isabelle had absorbed a miscellaneous a.s.sortment of ideas, the dominant one being that intelligent Americans who really wished to have interesting lives went East to live, particularly to New York. And incidentally there was inserted in the nether layers of her consciousness the belief that the world was changing its ideas about women and marriage, "and all that." She desired eagerly to be in the current of these new ideas.
CHAPTER XX
"What makes a happy marriage?" Rob Falkner queried in his brutal and ironical mood, which made his wife shiver for the proprieties of pleasant society. It was at one of Bessie"s famous Torso suppers, when the Lanes and Darnells were present.
"A good cook and a good provider," Lane suggested pleasantly, to keep the topic off conversational reefs.
"A husband who thinks everything you do just right!" sighed Bessie.
"Plenty of money and a few children--for appearances," some one threw in.
Isabelle remarked sagely, "A husband who knows what is best for you in the big things, and a wife who does what is best in the small ones."
"Unity of Purpose--Unity of Souls," Tom Darnell announced in his oratorical voice, with an earnestness that made the party self-conscious. His wife said nothing, and Falkner summed up cynically:--
"You"ve won, Lane! The American husband must be a good provider, but it doesn"t follow that the wife must be a good cook. Say a good entertainer, and there you have a complete formula of matrimony: PROVIDER (Hustler, Money-getter, Liberal) and ENTERTAINER (A woman pretty, charming, social)."
"Here"s to the Falkner household,--the perfect example!"
Thus the talk drifted off with a laugh into a discussion of masculine deficiencies and feminine endurances. Isabelle, looking back with the experience of after years, remembered this "puppy-dog" conversation. How young they all were and how they played with ideas! Bessie, also, remembered the occasion, with an injured feeling. On the way home that night Lane had remarked to his wife:--
"Falkner is a queer chap,--he was too personal to-night."
"I suppose it is hard on him; Bessie is rather wilful and extravagant. He looked badly to-night. And he told me he had to take an early train to examine some new work."