Julia Bride
I
She had walked with her friend to the top of the wide steps of theMuseum, those that descended from the galleries of painting, and then,after the young man had left her, smiling, looking back, waving allgayly and expressively his hat and stick, had watched him, smilingtoo, but with a different intensity--had kept him in sight till hepassed out of the great door. She might have been waiting to see if hewould turn there for a last demonstration; which was exactly what hedid, renewing his cordial gesture and with his look of glad devotion,the radiance of his young face, reaching her across the great space,as she felt, in undiminished truth. Yes, so she could feel, and sheremained a minute even after he was gone; she gazed at the empty airas if he had filled it still, asking herself what more she wanted andwhat, if it didn't signify glad devotion, his whole air could haverepresented.
She was at present so anxious that she could wonder if he stepped andsmiled like that for mere relief at separation; yet if he desired inthat degree to break the spell and escape the danger why did he keepcoming back to her, and why, for that matter, had she felt safea moment before in letting him go? She felt safe, felt almostreckless--that was the proof--so long as he was with her; but thechill came as soon as he had gone, when she took the measure,instantly, of all she yet missed. She might now have been taking itafresh, by the testimony of her charming clouded eyes and of therigor that had already replaced her beautiful play of expression. Herradiance, for the minute, had "carried" as far as his, travelling onthe light wings of her brilliant prettiness--he, on his side, notbeing facially handsome, but only sensitive, clean and eager. Then,with its extinction, the sustaining wings dropped and hung.
She wheeled about, however, full of a purpose; she passed back throughthe pictured rooms, for it pleased her, this idea of a talk with Mr.Pitman--as much, that is, as anything could please a young person sotroubled. It happened indeed that when she saw him rise at sight ofher from the settee where he had told her five minutes before that shewould find him, it was just with her nervousness that his presenceseemed, as through an odd suggestion of help, to connect itself.Nothing truly would be quite so odd for her case as aid proceedingfrom Mr. Pitman; unless perhaps the oddity would be even greater forhimself--the oddity of her having taken into her head an appeal tohim.
She had had to feel alone with a vengeance--inwardly alone andmiserably alarmed--to be ready to "meet," that way, at the firstsign from him, the successor to her dim father in her dim father'slifetime, the second of her mother's two divorced husbands. It made aqueer relation for her; a relation that struck her at this moment asless edifying, less natural and graceful than it would have been evenfor her remarkable mother--and still in spite of this parent's thirdmarriage, her union with Mr. Connery, from whom she was informallyseparated. It was at the back of Julia's head as she approached Mr.Pitman, or it was at least somewhere deep within her soul, that ifthis last of Mrs. Connery's withdrawals from the matrimonial yoke hadreceived the sanction of the court (Julia had always heard, from farback, so much about the "Court") she herself, as after a fashion,in that event, a party to it, would not have had the cheek to makeup--which was how she inwardly phrased what she was doing--to thelong, lean, loose, slightly cadaverous gentleman who was a memory, forher, of the period from her twelfth to her seventeenth year. She hadgot on with him, perversely, much better than her mother had, and thebulging misfit of his duck waistcoat, with his trick of swinging hiseye-glass, at the end of an extraordinarily long string, far overthe scene, came back to her as positive features of the image of herremoter youth. Her present age--for her later time had seen so manythings happen--gave her a perspective.
Fifty things came up as she stood there before him, some of themfloating in from the past, others hovering with freshness: how sheused to dodge the rotary movement made by his pince-nez while healways awkwardly, and kindly, and often funnily, talked--it hadonce hit her rather badly in the eye; how she used to pull down andstraighten his waistcoat, making it set a little better, a thing ofa sort her mother never did; how friendly and familiar she must havebeen with him for that, or else a forward little minx; how she feltalmost capable of doing it again now, just to sound the right note,and how sure she was of the way he would take it if she did; how muchnicer he had clearly been, all the while, poor dear man, than his wifeand the court had made it possible for him publicly to appear; howmuch younger, too, he now looked, in spite of his rather melancholy,his mildly jaundiced, humorously determined sallowness and hiscareless assumption, everywhere, from his forehead to his exposed andrelaxed blue socks, almost sky-blue, as in past days, of creases andfolds and furrows that would have been perhaps tragic if they hadn'tseemed rather to show, like his whimsical black eyebrows, the vague,interrogative arch.
Of course he wasn't wretched if he wasn't more sure of hiswretchedness than that! Julia Bride would have been sure--had she beenthrough what she supposed _he_ had! With his thick, loose black hair,in any case, untouched by a thread of gray, and his kept gift of acertain big-boyish awkwardness--that of his taking their encounter,for instance, so amusedly, so crudely, though, as she was not unaware,so eagerly too--he could by no means have been so little his wife'sjunior as it had been that lady's habit, after the divorce, torepresent him. Julia had remembered him as old, since she had soconstantly thought of her mother as old; which Mrs. Connery was indeednow--for her daughter--with her dozen years of actual seniority toMr. Pitman and her exquisite hair, the densest, the finest tangleof arranged silver tendrils that had ever enhanced the effect of apreserved complexion.
Something in the girl's vision of her quondam stepfather as stillcomparatively young--with the confusion, the immense element ofrectification, not to say of rank disproof, that it introduced intoMrs. Connery's favorite picture of her own injured past--all thisworked, even at the moment, to quicken once more the clearness andharshness of judgment, the retrospective disgust, as she might havecalled it, that had of late grown up in her, the sense of all thefolly and vanity and vulgarity, the lies, the perversities, thefalsification of all life in the interest of who could say whatwretched frivolity, what preposterous policy; amid which she had beencondemned so ignorantly, so pitifully to sit, to walk, to grope, toflounder, from the very dawn of her consciousness. Didn't poor Mr.Pitman just touch the sensitive nerve of it when, taking her in withhis facetious, cautious eyes, he spoke to her, right out, of the old,old story, the everlasting little wonder of her beauty?
"Why, you know, you've grown up so lovely--you're the prettiest girlI've ever seen!" Of course she was the prettiest girl he had everseen; she was the prettiest girl people much more privileged than hehad ever seen; since when hadn't she been passing for the prettiestgirl any one had ever seen? She had lived in that, from far back, fromyear to year, from day to day and from hour to hour--she had livedfor it and literally _by_ it, as who should say; but Mr. Pitman wassomehow more illuminating than he knew, with the present lurid lightthat he cast upon old dates, old pleas, old values, and old mysteries,not to call them old abysses: it had rolled over her in a swift wave,with the very sight of him, that her mother couldn't possibly havebeen right about him--as about what in the world had she ever beenright?--so that in fact he was simply offered her there as one more ofMrs. Connery's lies. She might have thought she knew them all by thistime; but he represented for her, coming in just as he did, a freshdiscovery, and it was this contribution of freshness that made hersomehow feel she liked him. It was she herself who, for so long,with her retained impression, had been right about him; and therectification he represented had _all_ shone out of him, ten minutesbefore, on his catching her eye while she moved through the room withMr. French. She had never doubted of his probable faults--which hermother had vividly depicted as the basest of vices; since some ofthem, and the most obvious (not the vices, but the faults) werewritten on him as he stood there: notably, for instance, theexasperating "business slackness" of which Mrs. Connery had, beforethe tribunal, made so pathetically much. It might have been, for thatmatter, the very business slackness that affected Julia as presentingits friendly breast, in the form of a cool loose sociability, to herown actual tension; though it was also true for her, after they hadexchanged fifty words, that he had as well his inward fever and that,if he was perhaps wondering what was so particularly the matter withher, she could make out not less that something was the matterwith _him_. It had been vague, yet it had been intense, the mutereflection, "Yes, I'm going to like him, and he's going somehow tohelp me!" that had directed her steps so straight to him. She wassure even then of this, that he wouldn't put to her a query about hisformer wife, that he took to-day no grain of interest in Mrs. Connery;that his interest, such as it was--and he couldn't look _quite_ likethat, to Julia Bride's expert perception, without something in thenature of a new one--would be a thousand times different.
It was as a value of _disproof_ that his worth meanwhile so rapidlygrew: the good sight of him, the good sound and sense of him, suchas they were, demolished at a stroke so blessedly much of the horridinconvenience of the past that she thought of him; she clutched athim, for a _general_ saving use, an application as sanative, asredemptive as some universal healing wash, precious even to the pointof perjury if perjury should be required. That was the terrible thing,that had been the inward pang with which she watched Basil Frenchrecede: perjury would have to come in somehow and somewhere--oh soquite certainly!--before the so strange, so rare young man, trulysmitten though she believed him, could be made to rise to theoccasion, before her measureless prize could be assured. It waspresent to her, it had been present a hundred times, that if there hadonly been some one to (as it were) "deny everything" the situationmight yet be saved. She so needed some one to lie for her--ah, she soneed some one to lie! Her mother's version of everything, her mother'sversion of anything, had been at the best, as they said, discounted;and she herself could but show, of course, for an interested party,however much she might claim to be none the less a decent girl--towhatever point, that is, after all that had both remotely and recentlyhappened, presumptions of anything to be called decency could come in.
After what had recently happened--the two or three indirect but soworrying questions Mr. French had put to her--it would only be somethoroughly detached friend or witness who might effectively testify.An odd form of detachment certainly would reside, for Mr. Pitman'sevidential character, in her mother's having so publicly andso brilliantly--though, thank the powers, all off in NorthDakota!--severed their connection with him; and yet mightn't it do_her_ some good, even if the harm it might do her mother were solittle ambiguous? The more her mother had got divorced--with herdreadful cheap-and-easy second performance in that line and herpresent extremity of alienation from Mr. Connery, which enfoldedbeyond doubt the germ of a third petition on one side or theother--the more her mother had distinguished herself in the field offolly the worse for her own prospect with the Frenches, whoseminds she had guessed to be accessible, and with such an effect ofdissimulated suddenness, to some insidious poison.
It was very unmistakable, in other words, that the more dismissed anddetached Mr. Pitman should have come to appear, the more as divorced,or at least as divorcing, his before-time wife would by the samestroke figure--so that it was here poor Julia could but lose herself.The crazy divorces only, or the half-dozen successive and stillcrazier engagements only--gathered fruit, bitter fruit, of her ownincredibly allowed, her own insanely fostered frivolity--either ofthese two groups of skeletons at the banquet might singly be dealtwith; but the combination, the fact of each party's having been somixed-up with whatever was least presentable for the other, the factof their having so shockingly amused themselves together, made allpresent steering resemble the classic middle course between Scylla andCharybdis.
It was not, however, that she felt wholly a fool in having obeyed thisimpulse to pick up again her kind old friend. _She_ at least had neverdivorced him, and her horrid little filial evidence in court had beenbut the chatter of a parrakeet, of precocious plumage and croak,repeating words earnestly taught her, and that she could scarce evenpronounce. Therefore, as far as steering went, he _must_ for the hourtake a hand. She might actually have wished in fact that he shouldn'tnow have seemed so tremendously struck with her; since it was anextraordinary situation for a girl, this crisis of her fortune, thispositive wrong that the flagrancy, what she would have been ready tocall the very vulgarity, of her good looks might do her at a momentwhen it was vital she should hang as straight as a picture on thewall. Had it ever yet befallen any young woman in the world to wishwith secret intensity that she might have been, for her convenience, ashade less inordinately pretty? She had come to that, to this view ofthe bane, the primal curse, of their lavish physical outfit, which hadincluded everything and as to which she lumped herself resentfullywith her mother. The only thing was that her mother was, thankgoodness, still so much prettier, still so assertively, so publicly,so trashily, so ruinously pretty. Wonderful the small grimness withwhich Julia Bride put off on this parent the middle-aged maximum oftheir case and the responsibility of their defect. It cost her solittle to recognize in Mrs. Connery at forty-seven, and in spite, orperhaps indeed just by reason, of the arranged silver tendrils whichwere so like some rare bird's-nest in a morning frost, a facilesupremacy for the dazzling effect--it cost her so little that her vieweven rather exaggerated the lustre of the different maternal items.She would have put it _all_ off if possible, all off on othershoulders and on other graces and other morals than her own, theburden of physical charm that had made so easy a ground, such a nativefavoring air, for the aberrations which, apparently inevitable andwithout far consequences at the time, had yet at this juncture so muchbetter not have been.
She could have worked it out at her leisure, to the last link of thechain, the way their prettiness had set them trap after trap, allalong--had foredoomed them to awful ineptitude. When you were aspretty as that you could, by the whole idiotic consensus, be nothing_but_ pretty; and when you were nothing "but" pretty you could getinto nothing but tight places, out of which you could then scramble bynothing but masses of fibs. And there was no one, all the while, whowasn't eager to egg you on, eager to make you pay to the last cent theprice of your beauty. What creature would ever for a moment help youto behave as if something that dragged in its wake a bit less of alumbering train would, on the whole, have been better for you? Theconsequences of being plain were only negative--you failed of this andthat; but the consequences of being as _they_ were, what were thesebut endless? though indeed, as far as failing went, your beauty toocould let you in for enough of it. Who, at all events, would ever fora moment credit you, in the luxuriance of that beauty, with the study,on your own side, of such truths as these? Julia Bride could, at thepoint she had reached, positively ask herself this even while lucidlyconscious of the inimitable, the triumphant and attested projection,all round her, of her exquisite image. It was only Basil French whohad at last, in his doubtless dry, but all distinguished way--theway surely, as it was borne in upon her, of all the blood of all theFrenches--stepped out of the vulgar rank. It was only he who, by thetrouble she discerned in him, had made her see certain things. It wasonly for him--and not a bit ridiculously, but just beautifully, almostsublimely--that their being "nice," her mother and she between them,had _not_ seemed to profit by their being so furiously handsome.
This had, ever so grossly and ever so tiresomely, satisfied every oneelse; since every one had thrust upon them, had imposed upon them, asby a great cruel conspiracy, their silliest possibilities; fencingthem in to these, and so not only shutting them out from others, butmounting guard at the fence, walking round and round outside it, tosee they didn't escape, and admiring them, talking to them, throughthe rails, in mere terms of chaff, terms of chucked cakes andapples--as if they had been antelopes or zebras, or even some superiorsort of performing, of dancing, bear. It had been reserved for BasilFrench to strike her as willing to let go, so to speak, a pound or twoof this fatal treasure if he might only have got in exchange for itan ounce or so more of their so much less obvious and Jess publishedpersonal history. Yes, it described him to say that, in addition toall the rest of him, and of _his_ personal history, and of his family,and of theirs, in addition to their social posture, as that of aserried phalanx, and to their notoriously enormous wealth and crushingrespectability, she might have been ever so much less lovely for himif she had been only--well, a little prepared to answer questions. Andit wasn't as if quiet, cultivated, earnest, public-spirited, broughtup in Germany, infinitely travelled, awfully like a high-casteEnglishman, and all the other pleasant things, it wasn't as if hedidn't love to be with her, to look at her, just as she was; for heloved it exactly as much, so far as that footing simply went, as anyfree and foolish youth who had ever made the last demonstration ofit. It was that marriage was, for him--and for them all, the serriedFrenches--a great matter, a goal to which a man of intelligence, areal shy, beautiful man of the world, didn't hop on one foot, didn'tskip and jump, as if he were playing an urchins' game, but towardwhich he proceeded with a deep and anxious, a noble and highly justdeliberation.
For it was one thing to stare at a girl till she was bored with it, itwas one thing to take her to the Horse Show and the Opera, and tosend her flowers by the stack, and chocolates by the ton, and "great"novels, the very latest and greatest, by the dozen; but somethingquite other to hold open for her, with eyes attached to eyes, thegate, moving on such stiff silver hinges, of the grand squareforecourt of the palace of wedlock. The state of being "engaged"represented to him the introduction to this precinct of some youngwoman with whom his outside parley would have had the duration,distinctly, of his own convenience. That might be cold-blooded if onechose to think so; but nothing of another sort would equal the highceremony and dignity and decency, above all the grand gallantry andfinality, of their then passing in. Poor Julia could have blushed red,before that view, with the memory of the way the forecourt, as she nowimagined it, had been dishonored by her younger romps. She had tumbledover the wall with this, that, and the other raw playmate, and hadplayed "tag" and leap-frog, as she might say, from corner to corner.That would be the "history" with which, in case of definite demand,she should be able to supply Mr. French: that she had already, againand again, any occasion offering, chattered and scuffled over groundprovided, according to his idea, for walking the gravest of minuets.If that then had been all their _kind_ of history, hers and hermother's, at least there was plenty of it: it was the superstructureraised on the other group of facts, those of the order of their havingbeen always so perfectly pink and white, so perfectly possessed ofclothes, so perfectly splendid, so perfectly idiotic. These things hadbeen the "points" of antelope and zebra; putting Mrs. Connery for thezebra, as the more remarkably striped or spotted. Such were the _data_Basil French's inquiry would elicit: her own six engagements and hermother's three nullified marriages--nine nice distinct little horrorsin all. What on earth was to be done about them?
It was notable, she was afterward to recognize, that there had beennothing of the famous business slackness in the positive pounce withwhich Mr. Pitman put it to her that, as soon as he had made herout "for sure," identified her there as old Julia grown-up andgallivanting with a new admirer, a smarter young fellow than ever yet,he had had the inspiration of her being exactly the good girl tohelp him. She certainly found him strike the hour again, with thesevulgarities of tone--forms of speech that her mother had ancientlydescribed as by themselves, once he had opened the whole battery,sufficient ground for putting him away. Full, however, of the use sheshould have for him, she wasn't going to mind trifles. What she reallygasped at was that, so oddly, he was ahead of her at the start. "Yes,I want something of you, Julia, and I want it right now: you can do mea turn, and I'm blest if my luck--which has once or twice beenpretty good, you know--hasn't sent you to me." She knew the luck hemeant--that of her mother's having so enabled him to get rid of her;but it was the nearest allusion of the merely invidious kind that hewould make. It had thus come to our young woman on the spot and bydivination: the service he desired of her matched with remarkablecloseness what she had so promptly taken into her head to name tohimself--to name in her own interest, though deterred as yet fromhaving brought it right out. She had been prevented by his speaking,the first thing, in that way, as if he had known Mr. French--whichsurprised her till he explained that every one in New York knew byappearance a young man of his so-quoted wealth ("What did she takethem all in New York then _for_?") and of whose marked attention toher he had moreover, for himself, round at clubs and places, latelyheard. This had accompanied the inevitable free question "Was sheengaged to _him_ now?"--which she had in fact almost welcomed asholding out to her the perch of opportunity. She was waiting to dealwith it properly, but meanwhile he had gone on, and to such effectthat it took them but three minutes to turn out, on either side, likea pair of pickpockets comparing, under shelter, their day's booty, thetreasures of design concealed about their persons.
"I want you to tell the truth for me--as you only can. I want you tosay that I was really all right--as right as you know; and that Isimply acted like an angel in a story-book, gave myself away to haveit over."
"Why, my dear man," Julia cried, "you take the wind straight out of mysails! What I'm here to ask of _you_ is that you'll confess to havingbeen even a worse fiend than you were shown up for; to having madeit impossible mother should _not_ take proceedings." There!--she hadbrought it out, and with the sense of their situation turning to highexcitement for her in the teeth of his droll stare, his strange grin,his characteristic "Lordy, lordy! What good will that do you?" Shewas prepared with her clear statement of reasons for her appeal, andfeared so he might have better ones for his own that all her storycame in a flash. "Well, Mr. Pitman, I want to get married this time,by way of a change; but you see we've been such fools that, whensomething really good at last comes up, it's too dreadfully awkward.The fools we were capable of being--well, you know better than anyone: unless perhaps not quite so well as Mr. Connery. It has got tobe denied," said Julia ardently--"it has got to be denied flat. But Ican't get hold of Mr. Connery--Mr. Connery has gone to China. Besides,if he were here," she had ruefully to confess, "he'd be no good--onthe contrary. He wouldn't deny anything--he'd only tell more. So thankheaven he's away--there's _that_ amount of good! I'm not engaged yet,"she went on--but he had already taken her up.
"You're not engaged to Mr. French?" It was all, clearly, a wondrousshow for him, but his immediate surprise, oddly, might have beengreatest for that.
"No, not to any one--for the seventh time!" She spoke as with her headheld well up both over the shame and the pride. "Yes, the next timeI'm engaged I want something to happen. But he's afraid; he's afraidof what may be told him. He's dying to find out, and yet he'd dieif he did! He wants to be talked to, but he has got to be talked toright. You could talk to him right, Mr. Pitman--if you only _would_!He can't get over mother--that I feel: he loathes and scorns divorces,and we've had first and last too many. So if he could hear from youthat you just made her life a hell--why," Julia concluded, "it wouldbe too lovely. If she _had_ to go in for another--after havingalready, when I was little, divorced father--it would 'sort of' make,don't you see? one less. You'd do the high-toned thing by her: you'dsay what a wretch you then were, and that she had had to save herlife. In that way he mayn't mind it. Don't you see, you sweet man?"poor Julia pleaded. "Oh," she wound up as if his fancy lagged or hisscruple looked out, "of course I want you to _lie_ for me!"
It did indeed sufficiently stagger him. "It's a lovely idea for themoment when I was just saying to myself--as soon as I saw you--thatyou'd speak the truth for _me_!"
"Ah, what's the matter with 'you'?" Julia sighed with an impatiencenot sensibly less sharp for her having so quickly scented some lion inher path.
"Why, do you think there's no one in the world but you who has seenthe cup of promised affection, of something really to be depended on,only, at the last moment, by the horrid jostle of your elbow, spilledall over you? I want to provide for my future too as it happens; andmy good friend who's to help me to that--the most charming of womenthis time--disapproves of divorce quite as much as Mr. French. Don'tyou see," Mr. Pitman candidly asked, "what that by itself must havedone toward attaching me to her? _She_ has got to be talked to--to betold how little I could help it."
"Oh, lordy, lordy!" the girl emulously groaned. It was such arelieving cry. "Well, _I_ won't talk to her!" she declared.
"You _won't_, Julia?" he pitifully echoed. "And yet you ask of_me_--!"
His pang, she felt, was sincere; and even more than she had guessed,for the previous quarter of an hour he had been building up his hope,building it with her aid for a foundation. Yet was he going to see howtheir testimony, on each side, would, if offered, _have_ to conflict?If he was to prove himself for her sake--or, more queerly still, forthat of Basil French's high conservatism--a person whom there had beenno other way of dealing with, how could she prove him, in this otherand so different interest, a mere gentle sacrifice to his wife'sperversity? She had, before him there, on the instant, all acutely, asense of rising sickness--a wan glimmer of foresight as to the end ofthe fond dream. Everything else was against her, everything in herdreadful past--just as if she had been a person represented by some"emotional actress," some desperate erring lady "hunted down" in aplay; but was that going to be the case too with her own very decency,the fierce little residuum deep within her, for which she wascounting, when she came to think, on so little glory or even credit?Was this also going to turn against her and trip her up--just to showshe was really, under the touch and the test, as decent as any one;and with no one but herself the wiser for it meanwhile, and no proofto show but that, as a consequence, she should be unmarried to theend? She put it to Mr. Pitman quite with resentment: "Do you mean tosay you're going to be married--?"
"Oh, my dear, I too must get engaged first!"--he spoke with hisinimitable grin. "But that, you see, is where you come in. I've toldher about you. She wants awfully to meet you. The way it happens istoo lovely--that I find you just in this place. She's coming," saidMr. Pitman--and as in all the good faith of his eagerness now; "she'scoming in about three minutes."
"Coming here?"
"Yes, Julia--right here. It's where we usually meet"; and he waswreathed again, this time as if for life, in his large slow smile."She loves this place--she's awfully keen on art. Like _you_, Julia,if you haven't changed--I remember how you did love art." He lookedat her quite tenderly, as to keep her up to it. "You must still ofcourse--from the way you're here. Just let her _feel_ that," the poorman fantastically urged. And then with his kind eyes on her and hisgood ugly mouth stretched as for delicate emphasis from ear to ear:"Every little helps!"
He made her wonder for him, ask herself, and with a certain intensity,questions she yet hated the trouble of; as whether he were still asmoneyless as in the other time--which was certain indeed, for anyfortune he ever would have made. His slackness, on that ground, stuckout of him almost as much as if he had been of rusty or "seedy"aspect--which, luckily for him, he wasn't at all: he looked, in hisway, like some pleasant eccentric, ridiculous, but real gentleman,whose taste might be of the queerest, but his credit with his tailornone the less of the best. She wouldn't have been the least ashamed,had their connection lasted, of going about with him: so that whata fool, again, her mother had been--since Mr. Connery, sorry as onemight be for him, was irrepressibly vulgar. Julia's quickness was,for the minute, charged with all this; but she had none the less herfeeling of the right thing to say and the right way to say it. Ifhe was after a future financially assured, even as she herself sofrantically was, she wouldn't cast the stone. But if he had talkedabout her to strange women she couldn't be less than a littlemajestic. "Who then is the person in question for you--?"
"Why, such a dear thing, Julia--Mrs. David E. Drack. Have you heard ofher?" he almost fluted.
New York was vast, and she had not had that advantage. "She's awidow--?"
"Oh yes: she's not--" He caught himself up in time. "She's a realone." It was as near as he came. But it was as if he had been lookingat her now so pathetically hard. "Julia, she has millions."
Hard, at any rate--whether pathetic or not--was the look she gave himback. "Well, so has--or so _will_ have--Basil French. And more of themthan Mrs. Drack, I guess," Julia quavered.
"Oh, I know what _they've_ got!" He took it from her--with the effectof a vague stir, in his long person, of unwelcome embarrassment. Butwas she going to give up because he was embarrassed? He should knowat least what he was costing her. It came home to her own spirit morethan ever, but meanwhile he had found his footing. "I don't see howyour mother matters. It isn't a question of his marrying _her_."
"No; but, constantly together as we've always been, it's a question ofthere being so disgustingly much to get over. If we had, for peoplelike them, but the one ugly spot and the one weak side; if we hadmade, between us, but the one vulgar _kind_ of mistake: well, I don'tsay!" She reflected with a wistfulness of note that was in itself atouching eloquence. "To have our reward in this world we've had toosweet a time. We've had it all right down here!" said Julia Bride. "Ishould have taken the precaution to have about a dozen fewer lovers."
"Ah, my dear, 'lovers'--!" He ever so comically attenuated.
"Well they _were_!" She quite flared up. "When you've had a ring fromeach (three diamonds, two pearls, and a rather bad sapphire: I've keptthem all, and they tell my story!) what are you to call them?"
"Oh, rings--!" Mr. Pitman didn't call rings anything. "I've given Mrs.Drack a ring."
Julia stared. "Then aren't you her lover?"
"That, dear child," he humorously wailed, "is what I want you to findout! But I'll handle your rings all right," he more lucidly added.
"You'll 'handle' them?"
"I'll fix your lovers. I'll lie about _them_, if that's all you want."
"Oh, about 'them'--!" She turned away with a sombre drop, seeing solittle in it. "That wouldn't count--from _you_!" She saw the greatshining room, with its mockery of art and "style" and security, allthe things she was vainly after, and its few scattered visitors whohad left them, Mr. Pitman and herself, in their ample corner, soconveniently at ease. There was only a lady in one of the fardoorways, of whom she took vague note and who seemed to be looking atthem. "They'd have to lie for themselves!"
"Do you mean he's capable of putting it to them?"
Mr. Pitman's tone threw discredit on that possibility, but she knewperfectly well what she meant. "Not of getting at them directly, not,as mother says, of nosing round himself; but of listening--and smallblame to him!--to the horrible things other people say of me."
"But what other people?"
"Why, Mrs. George Maule, to begin with--who intensely loathes us, andwho talks to his sisters, so that they may talk to _him_: which theydo, all the while, I'm morally sure (hating me as they also must). Butit's she who's the real reason--I mean of his holding off. She poisonsthe air he breathes."
"Oh well," said Mr. Pitman, with easy optimism, "if Mrs. GeorgeMaule's a cat--!"
"If she's a cat she has kittens--four little spotlessly white ones,among whom she'd give her head that Mr. French should make his pick.He could do it with his eyes shut--you can't tell them apart. But shehas every name, every date, as you may say, for my dark 'record'--asof course they all call it: she'll be able to give him, if he bringshimself to ask her, every fact in its order. And all the while, don'tyou see? there's no one to speak _for_ me."
It would have touched a harder heart than her loose friend's to notethe final flush of clairvoyance witnessing this assertion and underwhich her eyes shone as with the rush of quick tears. He stared ather, and at what this did for the deep charm of her prettiness, asin almost witless admiration. "But can't you--lovely as you are, youbeautiful thing!--speak for yourself?"
"Do you mean can't I tell the lies? No, then, I can't--and I wouldn'tif I could. I don't lie myself, you know--as it happens; and it couldrepresent to him then about the only thing, the only bad one, I don'tdo. I _did_--'lovely as I am'!--have my regular time; I wasn't sohideous that I couldn't! Besides, do you imagine he'd come and askme?"
"Gad, I wish he would, Julia!" said Mr. Pitman, with his kind eyes onher.
"Well then, I'd tell him!" And she held her head again high. "But hewon't."
It fairly distressed her companion. "Doesn't he want, then, toknow--?"
"He wants _not_ to know. He wants to be told without asking--told,I mean, that each of the stories, those that have come to him, is afraud and a libel. _Qui s'excuse s'accuse_, don't they say?--so thatdo you see me breaking out to him, unprovoked, with four or fivewhat-do-you-call-'ems, the things mother used to have to prove incourt, a set of neat little 'alibis' in a row? How can I get hold ofso _many_ precious gentlemen, to turn them on? How can _they_ wanteverything fished up?"
She paused for her climax, in the intensity of these considerations;which gave Mr. Pitman a chance to express his honest faith. "Why, mysweet child, they'd be just glad--!"
It determined in her loveliness almost a sudden glare. "Glad to swearthey never had anything to do with such a creature? Then _I'd_ be gladto swear they had lots!"
His persuasive smile, though confessing to bewilderment, insisted."Why, my love, they've got to swear either one thing or the other."
"They've got to keep out of the way--that's _their_ view of it, Iguess," said Julia. "Where _are_ they, please--now that they _may_ bewanted? If you'd like to hunt them up for me you're very welcome."With which, for the moment, over the difficult case, they faced eachother helplessly enough. And she added to it now the sharpest ache ofher despair. "He knows about Murray Brush. The others"--and her prettywhite-gloved hands and charming pink shoulders gave them up--"may gohang!"
"Murray Brush--?" It had opened Mr. Pitman's eyes.
"Yes--yes; I do mind _him_."
"Then what's the matter with his at least rallying--?"
"The matter is that, being ashamed of himself, as he well might, heleft the country as soon as he could and has stayed away. The matteris that he's in Paris or somewhere, and that if you expect him to comehome for me--!" She had already dropped, however, as at Mr. Pitman'slook.
"Why, you foolish thing, Murray Brush is in New York!" It had quitebrightened him up.
"He has come back--?"
"Why, sure! I saw him--when was it? Tuesday!--on the Jersey boat." Mr.Pitman rejoiced in his news. "_He's_ your man!"
Julia too had been affected by it; it had brought, in a rich wave, herhot color back. But she gave the strangest dim smile. "He _was_!"
"Then get hold of him, and--if he's a gentleman--he'll prove for you,to the hilt, that he wasn't."
It lighted in her face, the kindled train of this particular suddensuggestion, a glow, a sharpness of interest, that had deepened thenext moment, while she gave a slow and sad head-shake, to a greaterstrangeness yet. "He isn't a gentleman."
"Ah, lordy, lordy!" Mr. Pitman again sighed. He struggled out of itbut only into the vague. "Oh, then, if he's a pig--!"
"You see there are only a few gentlemen--not enough to go round--andthat makes them count so!" It had thrust the girl herself, for thatmatter, into depths; but whether most of memory or of roused purposehe had no time to judge--aware as he suddenly was of a shadow (sincehe mightn't perhaps too quickly call it a light) across the heavingsurface of their question. It fell upon Julia's face, fell with thesound of the voice he so well knew, but which could only be odd to herfor all it immediately assumed.
"There are indeed very few--and one mustn't try _them_ too much!"Mrs. Drack, who had supervened while they talked, stood, in monstrousmagnitude--at least to Julia's reimpressed eyes--between them: she wasthe lady our young woman had descried across the room, and she haddrawn near while the interest of their issue so held them. We haveseen the act of observation and that of reflection alike swift inJulia--once her subject was within range--and she had now, with allher perceptions at the acutest, taken in, by a single stare, thestrange presence to a happy connection with which Mr. Pitman aspiredand which had thus sailed, with placid majesty, into their troubledwaters. She was clearly not shy, Mrs. David E. Drack, yet neither wasshe ominously bold; she was bland and "good," Julia made sure at aglance, and of a large complacency, as the good and the bland are aptto be--a large complacency, a large sentimentality, a large innocent,elephantine archness: she fairly rioted in that dimension of size.Habited in an extraordinary quantity of stiff and lustrous blackbrocade, with enhancements, of every description, that twinkledand tinkled, that rustled and rumbled with her least movement, shepresented a huge, hideous, pleasant face, a featureless desert in aremote quarter of which the disproportionately small eyes might havefigured a pair of rash adventurers all but buried in the sand. Theyreduced themselves when she smiled to barely discernible points--acouple of mere tiny emergent heads--though the foreground of thescene, as if to make up for it, gaped with a vast benevolence. Ina word Julia saw--and as if she had needed nothing more; saw Mr.Pitman's opportunity, saw her own, saw the exact nature both of Mrs.Drack's circumspection and of Mrs. Drack's sensibility, saw even,glittering there in letters of gold and as a part of the wholemetallic coruscation, the large figure of her income, largest of allher attributes, and (though perhaps a little more as a luminous blurbeside all this) the mingled ecstasy and agony of Mr. Pitman's hopeand Mr. Pitman's fear.
He was introducing them, with his pathetic belief in the virtue forevery occasion, in the solvent for every trouble, of an extravagant,genial, professional humor; he was naming her to Mrs. Drack as thecharming young friend he had told her so much about and who had beenas an angel to him in a weary time; he was saying that the loveliestchance in the world, this accident of a meeting in those promiscuoushalls, had placed within his reach the pleasure of bringing themtogether. It didn't indeed matter, Julia felt, what he was saying: heconveyed everything, as far as she was concerned, by a moral pressureas unmistakable as if, for a symbol of it, he had thrown himselfon her neck. Above all, meanwhile, this high consciousnessprevailed--that the good lady herself, however huge she loomed, hadentered, by the end of a minute, into a condition as of suspendedweight and arrested mass, stilled to artless awe by the fact of hervision. Julia had practised almost to lassitude the art of tracing inthe people who looked at her the impression promptly sequent; but itwas a striking point that if, in irritation, in depression, she feltthat the lightest eyes of men, stupid at their clearest, had given herpretty well all she should ever care for, she could still gather afreshness from the tribute of her own sex, still care to see herreflection in the faces of women. Never, probably, never would thatsweet be tasteless--with such a straight grim spoon was it mostlyadministered, and so flavored and strengthened by the competence oftheir eyes. Women knew so much best _how_ a woman surpassed--how andwhere and why, with no touch or torment of it lost on them; so that asit produced mainly and primarily the instinct of aversion, the senseof extracting the recognition, of gouging out the homage, was on thewhole the highest crown one's felicity could wear. Once in a way,however, the grimness beautifully dropped, the jealousy failed: theadmiration was all there and the poor plain sister handsomely paid it.It had never been so paid, she was presently certain, as by this greatgenerous object of Mr., Pitman's flame, who without optical aid, itwell might have seemed, nevertheless entirely grasped her--might infact, all benevolently, have been groping her over as by some hugemild proboscis. She gave Mrs. Brack pleasure in short; and who couldsay of what other pleasures the poor lady hadn't been cheated?
It was somehow a muddled world in which one of her conceivable joys,at this time of day, would be to marry Mr. Pitman--to say nothing of astate of things in which this gentleman's own fancy could invest sucha union with rapture. That, however, was their own mystery, and Julia,with each instant, was more and more clear about hers: so remarkablyprimed in fact, at the end of three minutes, that though her friend,and though _his_ friend, were both saying things, many things andperhaps quite wonderful things, she had no free attention for themand was only rising and soaring. She was rising to her value, she wassoaring _with_ it--the value Mr. Pitman almost convulsively imputedto her, the value that consisted for her of being so unmistakably themost dazzling image Mrs. Brack had ever beheld. These were the uses,for Julia, in fine, of adversity; the range of Mrs. Brack's experiencemight have been as small as the measure of her presence was large:Julia was at any rate herself in face of the occasion of her life,and, after all her late repudiations and reactions, had perhaps neveryet known the quality of this moment's success. She hadn't an idea ofwhat, on either side, had been uttered--beyond Mr. Pitman's allusionto her having befriended him of old: she simply held his companionwith her radiance and knew she might be, for her effect, as irrelevantas she chose. It was relevant to do what he wanted--it was relevant todish herself. She did it now with a kind of passion, to say nothing ofher knowing, with it, that every word of it added to her beauty. Shegave him away in short, up to the hilt, for any use of her own, andshould have nothing to clutch at now but the possibility of MurrayBrush.
"He says I was good to him, Mrs. Drack; and I'm sure I hope I was,since I should be ashamed to be anything else. If I could be good tohim now I should be glad--that's just what, a while ago, I rushed upto him here, after so long, to give myself the pleasure of saying. Isaw him years ago very particularly, very miserably tried--and I sawthe way he took it. I did see it, you dear man," she sublimely wenton--"I saw it for all you may protest, for all you may hate me to talkabout you! I saw you behave like a gentleman--since Mrs. Drack agreeswith me, so charmingly, that there are not many to be met. I don'tknow whether you care, Mrs. Drack"--she abounded, she revelled inthe name--"but I've always remembered it of him: that under the mostextraordinary provocation he was decent and patient and brave. Noappearance of anything different matters, for I speak of what I_know_. Of course I'm nothing and nobody; I'm only a poor frivolousgirl, but I was very close to him at the time. That's all my littlestory--if it _should_ interest you at all." She measured every beat ofher wing, she knew how high she was going and paused only when it wasquite vertiginous. Here she hung a moment as in the glare of the upperblue; which was but the glare--what else could it be?--of the vast andmagnificent attention of both her auditors, hushed, on their side, inthe splendor she emitted. She had at last to steady herself, andshe scarce knew afterward at what rate or in what way she had stillinimitably come down--her own eyes fixed all the while on the veryfigure of her achievement. She had sacrificed her mother on thealtar--proclaimed her as false and cruel: and if that didn't "fix" Mr.Pitman, as he would have said--well, it was all she could do. But thecost of her action already somehow came back to her with increase; thedear gaunt man fairly wavered, to her sight, in the glory of it, as ifsignalling at her, with wild gleeful arms, from some mount of safety,while the massive lady just spread and spread like a rich fluid a bithelplessly spilt. It was really the outflow of the poor woman'shonest response, into which she seemed to melt, and Julia scarcedistinguished the two apart even for her taking gracious leave ofeach. "Good-bye, Mrs. Drack; I'm awfully happy to have met you"--likeas not it was for this she had grasped Mr. Pitman's hand. And thento him or to her, it didn't matter which, "Good-bye, dear good Mr.Pitman--hasn't it been nice after so long?"
II
Julia floated even to her own sense swan-like away--she left in herwake their fairly stupefied submission: it was as if she had, by anexquisite authority, now _placed_ them, each for each, and they wouldhave nothing to do but be happy together. Never had she so exultedas on this ridiculous occasion in the noted items of her beauty. _Lecompte y tait_, as they used to say in Paris--every one of them, forher immediate employment, was there; and there was something in itafter all. It didn't necessarily, this sum of thumping little figures,imply charm--especially for "refined" people: nobody knew better thanJulia that inexpressible charm and quotable "charms" (quotablelike prices, rates, shares, or whatever, the things they dealt indown-town) are two distinct categories; the safest thing for thelatter being, on the whole, that it might include the former, and thegreat strength of the former being that it might perfectly dispensewith the latter. Mrs. Drack was not refined, not the least little bit;but what would be the case with Murray Brush now--after his threeyears of Europe? He had done so what he liked with her--whichhad seemed so then just the meaning, hadn't it? of their being"engaged"--that he had made her not see, while the absurdity lasted(the absurdity of their pretending to believe they could marry withouta cent), how little he was of metal without alloy: this had come upfor her, remarkably, but afterward--come up for her as she lookedback. Then she had drawn her conclusion, which was one of the manythat Basil French had made her draw. It was a queer service Basil wasgoing to have rendered her, this having made everything she had everdone impossible, if he wasn't going to give her a new chance. If hewas it was doubtless right enough. On the other hand, Murray mighthave improved, if such a quantity of alloy, as she called it, _were_,in any man, reducible, and if Paris were the place all happily toreduce it. She had her doubts--anxious and aching on the spot, and hadexpressed them to Mr. Pitman: certainly, of old, he had been more opento the quotable than to the inexpressible, to charms than to charm. Ifshe could try the quotable, however, and with such a grand result, onMrs. Drack, she couldn't now on Murray--in respect to whom everythinghad changed. So that if he hadn't a sense for the subtler appeal, theappeal appreciable by people _not_ vulgar, on which alone she coulddepend, what on earth would become of her? She could but yearninglyhope, at any rate, as she made up her mind to write to him immediatelyat his club. It was a question of the right sensibility in him.Perhaps he would have acquired it in Europe.
Two days later indeed--for he had promptly and charmingly replied,keeping with alacrity the appointment she had judged best to proposefor a morning hour in a sequestered alley of the Park--two days latershe was to be struck well-nigh to alarm by everything he had acquired:so much it seemed to make that it threatened somehow a complication,and her plan, so far as she had arrived at one, dwelt in the desireabove all to simplify. She wanted no grain more of extravagance orexcess of anything--risking as she had done, none the less, a recallof ancient license in proposing to Murray such a place of meeting. Shehad her reasons--she wished intensely to discriminate: Basil Frenchhad several times waited on her at her mother's habitation, theirhorrible flat which was so much too far up and too near the East Side;he had dined there and lunched there and gone with her thence to otherplaces, notably to see pictures, and had in particular adjournedwith her twice to the Metropolitan Museum, in which he took a greatinterest, in which she professed a delight, and their second visitto which had wound up in her encounter with Mr. Pitman, after hercompanion had yielded, at her urgent instance, to an exceptionalneed of keeping a business engagement. She mightn't, in delicacy,in decency, entertain Murray Brush where she had entertained Mr.French--she was given over now to these exquisite perceptions andproprieties and bent on devoutly observing them; and Mr. French, bygood-luck, had never been with her in the Park: partly because he hadnever pressed it, and partly because she would have held off if hehad, so haunted were those devious paths and favoring shades by thegeneral echo of her untrammelled past. If he had never suggested theirtaking a turn there this was because, quite divinably, he held itwould commit him further than he had yet gone; and if she on her sidehad practised a like reserve it was because the place reeked for her,as she inwardly said, with old associations. It reeked with nothingso much perhaps as with the memories evoked by the young man who nowawaited her in the nook she had been so competent to indicate; butin what corner of the town, should she look for them, wouldn't thosefootsteps creak back into muffled life, and to what expedient wouldshe be reduced should she attempt to avoid all such tracks? The Museumwas full of tracks, tracks by the hundred--the way really she hadknocked about!--but she had to see people somewhere, and she couldn'tpretend to dodge every ghost.
All she could do was not to make confusion, make mixtures, of theliving; though she asked herself enough what mixture she mightn't findherself to have prepared if Mr. French should, not so very impossibly,for a restless, roaming man--_her_ effect on him!--happen to passwhile she sat there with the mustachioed personage round whose nameMrs. Maule would probably have caused detrimental anecdote mostthickly to cluster. There existed, she was sure, a mass of luxuriantlegend about the "lengths" her engagement with Murray Brush had gone;she could herself fairly feel them in the air, these streamers ofevil, black flags flown as in warning, the vast redundancy of so cheapand so dingy social bunting, in fine, that flapped over the stationsshe had successively moved away from and which were empty now, forsuch an ado, even to grotesqueness. The vivacity of that convictionwas what had at present determined her, while it was the way helistened after she had quickly broken ground, while it was the specialcharacter of the interested look in his handsome face, handsomer thanever yet, that represented for her the civilization he had somehowtaken on. Just so it was the quantity of that gain, in its turn, thathad at the end of ten minutes begun to affect her as holding up alight to the wide reach of her step. "There was never anything theleast serious between us, not a sign or a scrap, do you mind? ofanything beyond the merest pleasant friendly acquaintance; and ifyou're not ready to go to the stake on it for me you may as well knowin time what it is you'll probably cost me."
She had immediately plunged, measuring her effect and having thoughtit well over; and what corresponded to her question of his havingbecome a better person to appeal to was the appearance of interest shehad so easily created in him. She felt on the spot the difference thatmade--it was indeed his form of being more civilized: it was thesense in which Europe in general and Paris in particular had made himdevelop. By every calculation--and her calculations, based on theintimacy of her knowledge, had been many and deep--he would help herthe better the more intelligent he should have become; yet she was torecognize later on that the first chill of foreseen disaster had beencaught by her as, at a given moment, this greater refinement of hisattention seemed to exhale it. It was just what she had wanted--"ifI can only get him interested--!" so that, this proving quite vividlypossible, why did the light it lifted strike her as lurid? Was itpartly by reason of his inordinate romantic good looks, those of agallant, genial conqueror, but which, involving so glossy a brownnessof eye, so manly a crispness of curl, so red-lipped a radiance ofsmile, so natural a bravery of port, prescribed to any responsehe might facially, might expressively, make a sort of florid,disproportionate amplitude? The explanation, in any case, didn'tmatter; he was going to mean well--that she could feel, and also thathe had meant better in the past, presumably, than he had managed toconvince her of his doing at the time: the oddity she hadn't nowreckoned with was this fact that from the moment he did advertise aninterest it should show almost as what she would have called weird. Itmade a change in him that didn't go with the rest--as if he had brokenhis nose or put on spectacles, lost his handsome hair or sacrificedhis splendid mustache: her conception, her necessity, as she saw, hadbeen that something should be added to him for her use, but nothingfor his own alteration.
He had affirmed himself, and his character, and his temper, and hishealth, and his appetite, and his ignorance, and his obstinacy, andhis whole charming, coarse, heartless personality, during theirengagement, by twenty forms of natural emphasis, but never by emphasisof interest. How in fact could you feel interest unless you shouldknow, within you, some dim stir of imagination? There was nothing inthe world of which Murray Brush was less capable than of such a dimstir, because you only began to imagine when you felt some approach toa need to understand. _He_ had never felt it; for hadn't he been born,to his personal vision, with that perfect intuition of everythingwhich reduces all the suggested preliminaries of judgment to theimpertinence--when it's a question of your entering your house--ofa dumpage of bricks at your door? He had had, in short, neither toimagine nor to perceive, because he had, from the first pulse of hisintelligence, simply and supremely known: so that, at this hour,face to face with him, it came over her that she had, in their oldrelation, dispensed with any such convenience of comprehension on hispart even to a degree she had not measured at the time. What thereforemust he not have seemed to her as a form of life, a form of avidityand activity, blatantly successful in its own conceit, that he couldhave dazzled her so against the interest of her very faculties andfunctions? Strangely and richly historic all that backward mystery,and only leaving for her mind the wonder of such a mixture ofpossession and detachment as they would clearly to-day both know.For each to be so little at last to the other when, during monthstogether, the idea of all abundance, all quantity, had been, foreach, drawn from the other and addressed to the other--what was itmonstrously like but some fantastic act of getting rid of a person bygoing to lock yourself up in the _sanctum sanctorum_ of that person'shouse, amid every evidence of that person's habits and nature? Whatwas going to happen, at any rate, was that Murray would show himselfas beautifully and consciously understanding--and it would beprodigious that Europe should have inoculated him with that delicacy.Yes, he wouldn't claim to know now till she had told him--an aid toperformance he had surely never before waited for, or been indebtedto, from any one; and then, so knowing, he would charmingly endeavorto "meet," to oblige and to gratify. He would find it, her case, everso worthy of his benevolence, and would be literally inspired toreflect that he must hear about it first.
She let him hear then everything, in spite of feeling herself slip,while she did so, to some doom as yet incalculable; she went on verymuch as she had done for Mr. Pitman and Mrs. Drack, with the rageof desperation and, as she was afterward to call it to herself, thefascination of the abyss. She didn't know, couldn't have said at thetime, _why_ his projected benevolence should have had most so thevirtue to scare her: he would patronize her, as an effect of hervividness, if not of her charm, and would do this with all highintention, finding her case, or rather _their_ case, their funny oldcase, taking on of a sudden such refreshing and edifying life, tothe last degree curious and even important; but there were gaps ofconnection between this and the intensity of the perception hereovertaking her that she shouldn't be able to move in _any_ directionwithout dishing herself. That she couldn't afford it where she had gotto--couldn't afford the deplorable vulgarity of having been so manytimes informally affianced and contracted (putting it only at that, atits being by the new lights and fashions so unpardonably vulgar): hetook this from her without turning, as she might have said, a hair;except just to indicate, with his new superiority, that he felt thedistinguished appeal and notably the pathos of it. He still tookit from her that she hoped nothing, as it were, from any other_alibi_--the people to drag into court being too many and tooscattered; but that, as it was with him, Murray Brush, she had been_most_ vulgar, most everything she had better not have been, so shedepended on him for the innocence it was actually vital she shouldestablish. He flushed or frowned or winced no more at that than he didwhen she once more fairly emptied her satchel and, quite as if theyhad been Nancy and the Artful Dodger, or some nefarious pair of thatsort, talking things over in the manner of _Oliver Twist_, revealedto him the fondness of her view that, could she but have produced acleaner slate, she might by this time have pulled it off with Mr.French. Yes, he let her in that way sacrifice her honorable connectionwith him--all the more honorable for being so completely at an end--tothe crudity of her plan for not missing another connection, so muchmore brilliant than what he offered, and for bringing another man,with whom she so invidiously and unflatteringly compared him, into hergreedy life.
There was only a moment during which, by a particular lustrous lookshe had never had from him before, he just made her wonder which turnhe was going to take; she felt, however, as safe as was consistentwith her sense of having probably but added to her danger, when hebrought out, the next instant: "Don't you seem to take the ground thatwe were guilty--that _you_ were ever guilty--of something we shouldn'thave been? What did we ever do that was secret, or underhand, or anyway not to be acknowledged? What did we do but exchange our young vowswith the best faith in the world--publicly, rejoicingly, with the fullassent of every one connected with us? I mean of course," he said withhis grave kind smile, "till we broke off so completely because wefound that--practically, financially, on the hard worldly basis--wecouldn't work it. What harm, in the sight of God or man, Julia," heasked in his fine rich way, "did we ever do?"
She gave him back his look, turning pale. "Am I talking of _that_? AmI talking of what _we_ know? I'm talking of what others feel--of whatthey _have_ to feel; of what it's just enough for them to know not tobe able to get over it, once they do really know it. How do they knowwhat _didn't_ pass between us, with all the opportunities we had?That's none of their business--if we were idiots enough, on the top ofeverything! What you may or mayn't have done doesn't count, for _you_;but there are people for whom it's loathsome that a girl should havegone on like that from one person to another and still pretend tobe--well, all that a nice girl is supposed to be. It's as if we hadbut just waked up, mother and I, to such a remarkable prejudice; andnow we have it--when we could do so well without it!--staring usin the face. That mother should have insanely _let_ me, should sovulgarly have taken it for my natural, my social career--_that's_ thedisgusting, humiliating thing: with the lovely account it gives ofboth of us! But mother's view of a delicacy in things!" she went onwith scathing grimness; "mother's measure of anything, with her grand'gained cases' (there'll be another yet, she finds them so easy!) ofwhich she's so publicly proud! You see I've no margin," said Julia;letting him take it from her flushed face as much as he would that hermother hadn't left her an inch. It was that he should make use of thespade with her for the restoration of a bit of a margin just wideenough to perch on till the tide of peril should have ebbed a little,it was that he should give her _that_ lift--!
Well, it was all there from him after these last words; it was beforeher that he really took hold. "Oh, my dear child, I can see! Of coursethere are people--ideas change in our society so fast!--who are not insympathy with the old American freedom and who read, I dare say, allsorts of uncanny things into it. Naturally you must take them as theyare--from the moment," said Murray Brush, who had lighted, by herleave, a cigarette, "your life-path does, for weal or for woe, crosswith theirs." He had every now and then such an elegant phrase."Awfully interesting, certainly, your case. It's enough for me that it_is_ yours--I make it my own. I put myself absolutely in your place;you'll understand from me, without professions, won't you? that I do.Command me in every way! What I do like is the sympathy with whichyou've inspired _him_. I don't, I'm sorry to say, happen to know himpersonally,"--he smoked away, looking off; "but of course one knowsall about him generally, and I'm sure he's right for you, I'm sure itwould be charming, if you yourself think so. Therefore trust me andeven--what shall I say?--leave it to me a little, won't you?" He hadbeen watching, as in his fumes, the fine growth of his possibilities;and with this he turned on her the large warmth of his charity. It waslike a subscription of a half-a-million. "I'll take care of you."
She found herself for a moment looking up at him from as far below asthe point from which the school-child, with round eyes raised to thewall, gazes at the parti-colored map of the world. Yes, it was awarmth, it was a special benignity, that had never yet dropped on herfrom any one; and she wouldn't for the first few moments have knownhow to describe it or even quite what to do with it. Then, as it stillrested, his fine improved expression aiding, the sense of what hadhappened came over her with a rush. She was being, yes, patronized;and that was really as new to her--the freeborn American girl whomight, if she had wished, have got engaged and disengaged not sixtimes but sixty--as it would have been to be crowned or crucified. TheFrenches themselves didn't do it--the Frenches themselves didn't dareit. It was as strange as one would: she recognized it when it came,but anything might have come rather--and it was coming by (of allpeople in the world) Murray Brush! It overwhelmed her; still she couldspeak, with however faint a quaver and however sick a smile. "You'lllie for me like a gentleman?"
"As far as that goes till I'm black in the face!" And then while heglowed at her and she wondered if he would pointedly look his liesthat way, and if, in fine, his florid, gallant, knowing, almostwinking intelligence, _common_ as she had never seen the commonvivified, would represent his notion of "blackness": "See here, Julia;I'll do more."
"'More'--?"
"Everything. I'll take it right in hand. I'll fling over you--"
"Fling over me--?" she continued to echo as he fascinatingly fixedher.
"Well, the biggest _kind_ of rose-colored mantle!" And this time, oh,he did wink: it _would_ be the way he was going to wink (and in thegrandest good faith in the world) when indignantly denying, underinquisition, that there had been "a sign or a scrap" between them. Butthere was more to come; he decided she should have it all. "Julia,you've got to know now." He hung fire but an instant more. "Julia,I'm going to be married." His "Julias" were somehow death to her; shecould feel that even _through_ all the rest. "Julia, I announce myengagement."
"Oh, lordy, lordy!" she wailed: it might have been addressed to Mr.Pitman.
The force of it had brought her to her feet, but he sat there smilingup as at the natural tribute of her interest. "I tell you before anyone else; it's not to be 'out' for a day or two yet. But we want youto know; _she_ said that as soon as I mentioned to her that I hadheard from you. I mention to her everything, you see!"--and he almostsimpered while, still in his seat, he held the end of his cigarette,all delicately and as for a form of gentle emphasis, with the tipsof his fine fingers. "You've not met her, Mary Lindeck, I think: shetells me she hasn't the pleasure of knowing you, but she desires it somuch--particularly longs for it. She'll take an interest too," he wenton; "you must let me immediately bring her to you. She has heard somuch about you and she really wants to see you."
"Oh mercy _me_!" poor Julia gasped again--so strangely did historyrepeat itself and so did this appear the echo, on Murray Brush's lips,and quite to drollery, of that sympathetic curiosity of Mrs. Drack'swhich Mr. Pitman had, as they said, voiced. Well, there had playedbefore her the vision of a ledge of safety in face of a rising tide;but this deepened quickly to a sense more forlorn, the cold swish ofwaters already up to her waist and that would soon be up to her chin.It came really but from the air of her friend, from the perfectbenevolence and high unconsciousness with which he kept hisposture--as if to show he could patronize her from below upward quiteas well as from above down. And as she took it all in, as it spread toa flood, with the great lumps and masses of truth it was floating, sheknew inevitable submission, not to say submersion, as she had neverknown it in her life; going down and down before it, not even puttingout her hands to resist or cling by the way, only reading into theyoung man's very face an immense fatality and, for all his brightnobleness his absence of rancor or of protesting pride, the great grayblankness of her doom. It was as if the earnest Miss Lindeck, tall andmild, high and lean, with eye-glasses and a big nose, but "marked" ina noticeable way, elegant and distinguished and refined, as you couldsee from a mile off, and as graceful, for common despair of imitation,as the curves of the "copy" set of old by one's writing-master--it wasas if this stately well-wisher, whom indeed she had never exchangeda word with, but whom she had recognized and placed and winced atas soon as he spoke of her, figured there beside him now as also inportentous charge of her case.
He had ushered her into it in that way as if his mere right wordsufficed; and Julia could see them throne together, beautifully at onein all the interests they now shared, and regard her as an object ofalmost tender solicitude. It was positively as if they had becomeengaged for her good--in such a happy light as it shed. That was theway people you had known, known a bit intimately, looked at you assoon as they took on the high matrimonial propriety that sponged overthe more or less wild past to which you belonged, and of which, all ofa sudden, they were aware only through some suggestion it made themfor reminding you definitely that you still had a place. On herhaving had a day or two before to meet Mrs. Drack and to rise to herexpectation she had seen and felt herself act, had above all admiredherself, and had at any rate known what she said, even though losing,at her altitude, any distinctness in the others. She could haverepeated later on the detail of her performance--if she hadn'tpreferred to keep it with her as a mere locked-up, a mere unhandledtreasure. At present, however, as everything was for her at firstdeadened and vague, true to the general effect of sounds and motionsin water, she couldn't have said afterward what words she spoke, whatface she showed, what impression she made--at least till she hadpulled herself round to precautions. She only knew she had turnedaway, and that this movement must have sooner or later determinedhis rising to join her, his deciding to accept it, gracefully andcondoningly--condoningly in respect to her natural emotion, herinevitable little pang--for an intimation that they would be better ontheir feet.
They trod then afresh their ancient paths; and though it pressed uponher hatefully that he must have taken her abruptness for a smotheredshock, the flare-up of her old feeling at the breath of his news, shehad still to see herself condemned to allow him this, condemnedreally to encourage him in the mistake of believing her suspicious offeminine spite and doubtful of Miss Lindeck's zeal. She was so farfrom doubtful that she was but too appalled at it and at the officiousmass in which it loomed, and this instinct of dread, before their walkwas over, before she had guided him round to one of the smaller gates,there to slip off again by herself, was positively to find on thebosom of her flood a plank by the aid of which she kept in a mannerand for the time afloat. She took ten minutes to pant, to blow gently,to paddle disguisedly, to accommodate herself, in a word, to theelements she had let loose; but as a reward of her effort at least shethen saw how her determined vision accounted for everything. Besideher friend on the bench she had truly felt all his cables cut, trulyswallowed down the fact that if he still perceived she was pretty--and_how_ pretty!--it had ceased appreciably to matter to him. It hadlighted the folly of her preliminary fear, the fear of his even yet tosome effect of confusion or other inconvenience for her, provingmore alive to the quotable in her, as she had called it, than to theinexpressible. She had reckoned with the awkwardness of that possiblefailure of his measure of her charm, by which his renewed apprehensionof her grosser ornaments, those with which he had most affinity, mighttoo much profit; but she need have concerned herself as little for hissensibility on one head as on the other. She had ceased personally,ceased materially--in respect, as who should say, to any optical ortactile advantage--to exist for him, and the whole office of hismanner had been the more piously and gallantly to dress the deadpresence with flowers. This was all to his credit and his honor, butwhat it clearly certified was that their case was at last not even oneof spirit reaching out to spirit. _He_ had plenty of spirit--had allthe spirit required for his having engaged himself to Miss Lindeck,into which result, once she had got her head well up again, she read,as they proceeded, one sharp meaning after another. It was thereforetoward the subtler essence of that mature young woman alone that hewas occupied in stretching; what was definite to him about JuliaBride being merely, being entirely--which was indeed thereby quiteenough--that she _might_ end by scaling her worldly height. They wouldpush, they would shove, they would "boost," they would arch both theirstraight backs as pedestals for her tiptoe; and at the same time, bysome sweet prodigy of mechanics, she would pull them up and up withher.
Wondrous things hovered before her in the course of this walk; herconsciousness had become, by an extraordinary turn, a music-box inwhich, its lid well down, the most remarkable tunes were sounding. Itplayed for her ear alone, and the lid, as she might have figured, washer firm plan of holding out till she got home, of not betraying--toher companion at least--the extent to which she was demoralized. Tosee him think her demoralized by mistrust of the sincerity of theservice to be meddlesomely rendered her by his future wife--she wouldhave hurled herself publicly into the lake there at their side, wouldhave splashed, in her beautiful clothes, among the frightened swans,rather than invite him to that ineptitude. Oh, her sincerity, MaryLindeck's--she would be drenched with her sincerity, and she wouldbe drenched, yes, with _his_; so that, from inward convulsion toconvulsion, she had, before they reached their gate, pulled up in thepath. There was something her head had been full of these three orfour minutes, the intensest little tune of the music-box, and it madeits way to her lips now; belonging--for all the good it could doher!--to the two or three sorts of solicitude she might properlyexpress.
"I hope _she_ has a fortune, if you don't mind my speaking of it:I mean some of the money we didn't in _our_ time have--and that wemissed, after all, in our poor way and for what we then wanted of it,so quite dreadfully."
She had been able to wreathe it in a grace quite equal to any hehimself had employed; and it was to be said for him also that he keptup, on this, the standard. "Oh, she's not, thank goodness, at allbadly off, poor dear. We shall do very well. How sweet of you to havethought of it! May I tell her that too?" he splendidly glared. Yes, heglared--how couldn't he, with what his mind was really full of? But,all the same, he came just here, by her vision, nearer than at anyother point to being a gentleman. He came quite within an ace ofit--with his taking from her thus the prescription of humility ofservice, his consenting to act in the interest of her avidity, hisletting her mount that way, on his bowed shoulders, to the success inwhich he could suppose she still believed. He couldn't know, he wouldnever know, that she had then and there ceased to believe in it--thatshe saw as clear as the sun in the sky the exact manner in which,between them, before they had done, the Murray Brushes, all zeal andsincerity, all interest in her interesting case, would dish, wouldruin, would utterly destroy her. He wouldn't have needed to go on, forthe force and truth of this; but he did go on--he was as crashinglyconsistent as a motorcar without a brake. He was visibly in lovewith the idea of what they might do for her and of the rare "social"opportunity that they would, by the same stroke, embrace. How he hadbeen offhand with it, how he had made it parenthetic, that he didn'thappen "personally" to know Basil French--as if it would have been atall likely he _should_ know him, even _im_ personally, and as if hecould conceal from her the fact that, since she had made him heroverture, this gentleman's name supremely baited her hook! Oh, theywould help Julia Bride if they could--they would do their remarkablebest; but they would at any rate have made his acquaintance over it,and she might indeed leave the rest to their thoroughness. He wouldalready have known, he would already have heard; her appeal, she wasmore and more sure, wouldn't have come to him as a revelation. He hadalready talked it over with _her_, with Miss Lindeck, to whom theFrenches, in their fortress, had never been accessible, and his wholeattitude bristled, to Julia's eyes, with the betrayal of her hand, hervoice, her pressure, her calculation. His tone, in fact, as he talked,fairly thrust these things into her face. "But you must see her foryourself. You'll judge her. You'll love her. My dear child"--hebrought it all out, and if he spoke of children he might, in hiscandor, have been himself infantine--"my dear child, she's the personto do it for you. Make it over to her; but," he laughed, "of coursesee her first! Couldn't you," he wound up--for they were now neartheir gate, where she was to leave him--"couldn't you just simply makeus meet him, at tea say, informally; just _us_ alone, as pleasant oldfriends of whom you'd have so naturally and frankly spoken to him: andthen see what we'd _make_ of that?"
It was all in his expression; he couldn't keep it out of that, and hisshining good looks couldn't: ah, he was so fatally much too handsomefor her! So the gap showed just there, in his admirable mask andhis admirable eagerness; the yawning little chasm showed where thegentleman fell short. But she took this in, she took everything in,she felt herself do it, she heard herself say, while they pausedbefore separation, that she quite saw the point of the meeting, as hesuggested, at her tea. She would propose it to Mr. French and wouldlet them know; and he must assuredly bring Miss Lindeck, bring her"right away," bring her soon, bring _them_, his fiance and her,together somehow, and as quickly as possible--so that they _should_be old friends before the tea. She would propose it to Mr. French,propose it to Mr. French: that hummed in her ears as she went--aftershe had really got away; hummed as if she were repeating it over,giving it out to the passers, to the pavement, to the sky, and all asin wild discord with the intense little concert of her music-box. Theextraordinary thing too was that she quite believed she should do it,and fully meant to; desperately, fantastically passive--since shealmost reeled with it as she proceeded--she was capable of proposinganything to any one: capable too of thinking it likely Mr. Frenchwould come, for he had never on her previous proposals declinedanything. Yes, she would keep it up to the end, this pretence of owingthem salvation, and might even live to take comfort in having done forthem what they wanted. What they wanted _couldn't_ but be to get atthe Frenches, and what Miss Lindeck above all wanted, baffled of itotherwise, with so many others of the baffled, was to get at Mr.French--for all Mr. French would want of either of them!--still morethan Murray did. It was not till after she had got home, got straightinto her own room and flung herself on her face, that she yielded tothe full taste of the bitterness of missing a connection, missing theman himself, with power to create such a social appetite, such a grabat what might be gained by them. He could make people, even peoplelike these two and whom there were still other people to envy, hecould make them push and snatch and scramble like that--and thenremain as incapable of taking her from the hands of such patrons as ofreceiving her straight, say, from those of Mrs. Drack. It was a highnote, too, of Julia's wonderful composition that, even in the long,lonely moan of her conviction of her now certain ruin, all this grimlucidity, the perfect clearance of passion, but made her supremelyproud of him.
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