It was all too much for Ernestine, whose headache had returned with renewed ferocity. She wanted to console Joseph, but Franz had been displeased with him, so she restrained herself, trying to eye him admonishingly. She did not look at Sigmund, whom she incontinently blamed for all this confusion and noise. She rang the bell, sank back exhaustedly in her chair, and closed her eyes.
Her maid entered. She held her handkerchief to her face, and waved helplessly at the children. “Do take them away,” she implored. Long after the children had gone, she lay in her chair, shivering a little, the fire hot on her feet.
The immense gray stillness of the morning, the sterile and arid cold, penetrated into the mansion, and into this pleasant room with the fire and the gay draperies. Ernestine’s febrile and confused mind began to feel itself lost in the center of a huge gaseous world, full of loneliness and fear and vague things which she refused to face. I am so tired, she whimpered to herself. And so afraid, said something sharp and involuntary in her. At this, her heart leapt like a bird in ambush at the approach of the hunter, and she sat upright in her chair, trembling. She reached a shaking hand for the bell, and pulled it violently. She began to gasp slightly, and to breathe uneasily, staring about her as though fearful of pouncing enemies. When her maid came, she asked that Mrs. Trenchard be requested to come to the morning-room. Waiting for her aunt, she was obliged to wipe away cool moisture from her brow and her upper lip.
Mrs. Trenchard came in with a hard short step, very brisk and competent. She was a little woman, with a remarkable facial resemblance to her late sister, Ernestine’s mother. She was withered of flesh and face, and very dark, but she wore an expression of spinsterish determination and primness and chronic disapproval. She dressed her thin hair, black and heavily streaked with white, in a chignon. Her straight bangs, cut severely across a sallow and narrow forehead, were an absurdly childish fringe, which enhanced the sharp boniness of her nose, the straight hard line of her puckered lips, and the cold suspicion of her small black eyes. Though it was still early in the morning, she never allowed herself the luxury of casual attire. Her black bombazine dress, tight of basque, and scantily draped, was in perfect and austere order, the prime white lace at her throat fastened with an opal broach set in old gold. Everything was dry and trim and unlovely about her, and she carried herself with a sharp egotism and uncompromising agility, as though she was always alert for softness and weakness and incompetence.
“Good morning,” she said, coldly. “My dear Ernestine! You are not dressed?” She knew that Ernestine never dressed before noon, but she delivered this little reproachful tirade every morning, invariably. She stood near Ernestine, and stared down at her without compassion, and even with annoyed disdain. Ernestine was afraid of her, but her coming always reassured the poor sick woman. She stammered a faint incoherent apology, and then murmured an invitation to sit down.
Mrs. Trenchard shook her head with hard vigor. “Certainly not, Ernestine. I have a lot to do, as you very well know. You look ill,” she added, almost as though she felt some vindication for her attack on Ernestine’s state of undress.
Ernestine’s lip trembled, and she sighed. “I am ill, truly,” she replied. “But Franz and the doctor say it is my condition.”
Mrs. Trenchard’s lips tightened. “It does you no good, my dear, to lounge before the fire all day. A little walk—exercise. Some interest in your establishment. You indulge yourself.”
Nevertheless, she finally sat down on the edge of a chair, and immediately another aspect of her character manifested itself. Her face took on a look of dolorous melancholy, not compassionate, but even slightly vindictive. “Our family is known for its frail constitution. Remember your poor mother. But she would take no advice from any one. I would recommend barley water for the kidneys, and iron for the blood, and would regularly send her medical books. She ignored it all. I hope you are not so obstinate.”
Ernestine touched her eyes with her handkerchief. Mrs. Trenchard settled in her chair. Her eyes and lips became even more disapproving and somber.
“You are not just to your husband, my dear girl,” she said. “Gentlemen feel aversion for female illnesses. They prefer a cheerful disposition, and a light though decorous manner. Sometimes I am astonished at Franz’s patience and kindness. He has an excellent character, and you are very blessed—”
“Oh, I know that!” exclaimed Ernestine, with pathetic self-reproach and eagerness. She regarded her aunt with imploring eyes.
Mrs. Trenchard shook her head. “But you do not allow him to see this. You are always ill. I do not condemn you too much, remembering our family’s constitution.” She cocked her head in a valorous and martyred attitude. “But Mr. Trenchard had nothing to complain of in me, though only Heaven knows how I suffered for years. There was never a morning that I did not have a fever, or a headache, or some indisposition. But I maintained a cheerful air, and did my duty to him and the children. Women must be patient martyrs, smiling over their female sufferings. You do not even try, Ernestine.”
Ernestine whimpered, but said nothing.
Mrs. Trenchard, through whose sententious character ran a broad red streak of sadism, tossed her head. “Your children are undisciplined and ill-mannered,” she said, accusingly, watching her crushed niece with a sharp thrill of pleasure. “I have never seen such naughty boys. Sigmund is worse than Joseph, though Joseph is very spoiled, too. Sigmund is rude and silent, and unresponsive to everything that is done for him—”
“But your own Dick is very fond of him,” said Ernestine, timidly.
Mrs. Trenchard bit her lip with annoyance. “Dick is an angel, Ernestine. He finds good in every one. Your own brother is partial to Dick. Not that I consider Baldur an excellent judge of character, and considering everything, I cannot imagine why your Mama and Papa left him such an enormous fortune. It was not fair.” Nevertheless, remembering Baldur’s partiality for his young cousin, she smiled a little. She had a high respect for wealth, and revered it. She was an extremely wealthy woman herself, and very avaricious.
Her smile suddenly faded, and her eyes pointed with curiosity and interest, for Ernestine’s thin sallow face had flushed crimson. She was sitting up in her chair, and the hand that held the handkerchief had clenched. She was extremely agitated, and her breath came short and quick in a sudden fit of hysterical anger. What else Franz and the years had made of her, they had not succeeded in making her a hypocrite.
“I can’t understand Papa!” she exclaimed, thinly, incoherently. “It was very terrible! At first, I was broken-hearted, when he died. He has only been dead a little while, but I just can’t feel grieved, Auntie Elizabeth. Not after his will—I can’t understand it! To treat poor Franz so! It was inexcusable!”
Mrs. Trenchard, inwardly aroused, excited and pleased, pressed her lips disapprovingly together and eyed Ernestine coldly. “It is wrong to speak badly of the dead, Ernestine. Let them rest in peace. Whatever your poor Papa did, for unknown reasons, he must not be condemned for it. I agree with you that it is very puzzling. But let him rest peacefully in his grave.” She paused, hitched herself a little nearer to Ernestine, regarded her avidly. “Have you any idea, Ernestine, why he did it?” Her voice dropped into a conspirator’s hush.
Ernestine’s agitation increased. “How could I know? Papa always seemed so fond of Franz—I know now that he brought us together. He was so proud of him. And then, this—this horrible injustice, after all Franz has done for the mills. He has given all his life—!” She stopped abruptly, and into her dark eyes there came a hard and vicious glint. “It must have been Baldur! I’ve often thought it. But Baldur wasn’t Papa’s favorite at all. Towards the last though, poor Papa was not himself. He seemed ill, and hardly aware of anything. Baldur must have influenced him—” She halted, frightened but defiant, and glared challengingly at her aunt.
Mrs. Trenchard, thrilling, nodded mysteriously. “One never knows,” she said. “One must always be prepared for the unexpected. P
eople are so strange. But why should Baldur want the mills, and the money? He never takes any interest in anything. But there are some queer people who love money for its own sake,” she added with conviction, out of her own knowledge.
Ernestine’s feverish and sick excitement grew. “No one ever understood Franz but me! Such a wonderful character, Auntie Elizabeth. So forbearing and just and kind. He—he has made me so happy—no tongue can tell. I thought at first that he wouldn’t be able to endure it, the way Papa treated him. He was so pale and quiet, and grew so thin, though he was always so considerate of me. Think what a blow to his pride it was when Baldur made him president of the mills—at a salary! Franz, a paid employee of the mills, when they were justly his! That shows how tolerant and broadminded he was, though I know his heart was broken! And then when I just couldn’t refrain from criticizing and reproaching Baldur to him, he became very annoyed, and was stern with me. He forbade me to criticize Baldur even in the slightest. And when I complained that Baldur was spoiling Sigmund,” her eyes sharpened now, with augmented vindictiveness, “he told me that I was hard on the child. My own child!” she cried, shrilly.
Mrs. Trenchard’s lips pursed with uncharitable shrewdness, as she drove a blow home. “Perhaps Franz has to be—polite—to Baldur, considering that Baldur pays his salary.”
Ernestine’s anger now turned with thin fury upon her aunt. “Auntie, how can you say that! Franz needn’t have stayed. The Sessions Steel Company offered him an enormous salary. They appreciated him. They offered him much more than Baldur offered. Franz is just loyal; that is why he is staying!”
Mrs. Trenchard had no high regard for the human species’ tendency to loyalty, and merely looked knowing. This tantalizing expression enhanced Ernestine’s agitation. “You don’t understand Franz!” she cried, wringing her hands. “He told me only yesterday that it would have been cruel to leave Baldur in the lurch, with the mills on his hands, and all alone in this horrible house. The mills would have failed—”
“And with them, your own income,” interposed Mrs. Trenchard, deftly.
Ernestine was silent. Suddenly she began to sob, putting her hands over her convulsed face. “Franz! Franz!” she cried, in a muffled voice. “Every one is so cruel to you, my darling!”
Mrs. Trenchard rose briskly. “There, there, Ernestine, you upset yourself. That is your condition, and your poor constitution. But you must learn self-control. Learn to smile when things are most disagreeable. A brave face must always be put upon things. One must never give way. One must learn to march onwards, like a soldier. That was a lesson I had to learn, myself, but I learned it, and did not flinch.”
She brought Ernestine her smelling-salts, but the poor woman waved them away distractedly. She allowed herself, however, to be helped to her chaise-longue, where she collapsed. Mrs. Trenchard called her maid, gave orders for ministration. Finally Ernestine was calm. Mrs. Trenchard delivered herself of a few more sanctimonious platitudes, then remarking that after all, household management called her in spite of her own indisposition, she marched away, invigorated. Ernestine watched her leave, her eyes dull and bemused, clouded over with the opaqueness of heavy misery.
When she was alone, she broke out into fresh sobbing, then was suddenly silent. She fell into an uneasy sleep, which was penetrated with large and frightening half-visions. When she awoke, it was to pain and anguish of body and mind.
CHAPTER 14
The afternoons, two hours before dinner, were pleasant occasions for Baldur.
He would have a big fire built in his rooms, and the curtains would be drawn against the iron twilight of the winter day. A table would be spread with a white cloth, and set with a pitcher of milk, fresh hot tea, spicy sandwiches and little cakes. Then he would wait, reading placidly, or playing softly on his piano. Shortly afterwards, there would come a knock on his door, and Richard and Marcia Trenchard, his young cousins, and Sigmund, would come in, suddenly smiling at the sight of him, waiting for them.
“I had just about given you rascals up,” he would say, and they would laugh, coming eagerly towards him, and seating themselves about him, Sigmund on the hearth rug near his feet, Marcia primly on his right hand on a small stiff chair, and Richard at his left. Richard, being of a restless disposition, hardly remained in the chair for more than a few minutes at a time, and with sandwich or glass or cake in his hand, he would rush about the room, talking rapidly and incontinently, with a kind of frenzied vehemence, his eyes sparkling like those of a fanatic’s.
He was seventeen years old, and tall, thin and weedy. He had a dark triangular face, with wide sharp cheekbones, delicate aquiline nose, and a vivid passionate mouth, always mobile, and sometimes too expressive of his intense emotions, which were always reflected in fierce gray eyes set deeply under heavy and frowning black brows. His hair, cut in the longish mode affected by young men of his class and age, was thick, black and curling, and had a habit of standing upright as though forced into that position by the blast of an inward flame. His wrists hung far below his white cuffs, and his hands were always in motion, angrily, passionately, or impatiently. His voice was always a subdued shout, even when he was comparatively still, and when aroused, he bellowed. His dress, despite his mother’s rigid efforts, was untidy, even disorderly, his cravat having a tendency to slide under his left ear, however firmly pinned. His pantaloons were always baggy and wrinkled, his boots perpetually dusty. A wind seemed to blow about him always, so that he had an air of being surrounded by rushing gales, and whipped by them. He literally crackled with vitality and ardor and youthful violence.
His sister, Marcia, on the other hand, was quiet and still as a forest pool lying deeply under dark cool ferns. Like that pool, she had a dim sparkle and mystery. She was small, slender and fragile, and her breath hardly moved her virginal young breast. Yet, there seemed a flame in her, like her brother’s, but a motionless flame, which rose sometimes to her sweet and smiling blue eyes and stood reflected there in a gentle warmth. She had no color, but her skin possessed a luminous pallor, and her young mouth was tender and pensive. Her hair was a soft rippling light brown, rolled into a chignon so glossy and so heavy that it seemed too weighted for her slender white neck. Her dress was always precise and dainty, and today she wore a gown of dark blue silk, exquisitely fitted to her tiny figure, and draped gracefully. The delicate lace at her throat was white and frothy, and in its folds, despite Mrs. Trenchard’s cold disapproval, hung a simple gold “Papish” cross. Her hands were never in motion, like Richard’s, but lay folded quietly in her lap. They were of the texture and delicacy of porcelain, and she wore no rings. About her was the quality of a nun, secluded, cloistered and calm. She had a nun’s beauty, also, immaculate and perpetually untouched and asexual. One could never imagine her as a wife, though, paradoxically, she could be visualized as a mother.
Sigmund, nine years old now, resembled his second cousin, Richard, remarkably, if only physically. There was the same triangular face, but the eyes, though the same color, were still and contemplative and very large. He did not possess Richard’s vehemence and crackling ardor; rather, he was more like Marcia in his character, nor was his hair, smooth, dark and gleaming, like Richard’s. But the formation of his features, the turn of his head, his body, his sudden quick smile, betrayed the relationship between Richard and himself. And between them, despite their unlikeness of character, was a deep and silent sympathy and understanding.
The young people helped themselves to the little repast prepared for them. Richard ate ravenously, but with abstraction. He did everything ravenously, and always with that curious aloofness and impatience, as though his mind objected to anything that distracted it. Marcia sipped daintily at her milk, ate a small cake. Sigmund, who had no interest in food, pretended to eat a little, out of politeness. Baldur watched them, smiling, drinking tea. He had no particular love for young people, but he loved these three, who loved him. He gave them flattering attention, this seventeen-year-old boy, this eighteen-
year-old girl, and this nine-year-old child, and the attention was not affected.
“What have you been doing today?” he asked Richard.
Richard flung his half-eaten sandwich violently on the table. “Oh, that accursed school!” he cried, loudly. “That stupid Scofield! That abominable Walters! That contemptible Blanchard! Such ninnies! Such nincompoops! Such dried-up rulers and chalk-covered fools! What do they know? Nothing!” He glared fiercely at the sandwich, snatched it up, crammed it into his mouth. Through the bread and jam he mumbled furiously: “I’ll never get through school! And Ma set on Harvard for me!” He snorted, and crumbs flew from his lips in a small shower.
“You might try studying, you know,” Baldur reminded him, mildly.
This infuriated Richard. “Studying what?” He choked, coughed, turned scarlet, caught his breath, and swallowed, gulping. “Latin? Greek? What for? Am I going to be a damned school-master?” Marcia murmured protestingly, and received a glare in return. “Am I going to be a school-master? No! So why should I study that rot?”
“Just to learn,” said Baldur, smiling. He lifted a hand. “Now then, we’ve been over all that before. Learning never hurt any man.”
“What have Latin and Greek got to do with living?” demanded Richard, vehemently. “And I’m interested in living. In life. Everything,” and he flung his arms wide with an embracing gesture.
“You’re vague,” said Baldur. “I’ve always complained of that. I’ve been advising you to try to decide what you want to do. And you always say ‘everything.’ That means nothing. First, you wanted to be a painter, and you wangled paints and a teacher from your mother. Then you threw that away. Then you had an idea you were a composer, and you made the days and nights hideous around here with your pounding on the piano downstairs, and on mine. Until you put them both out of tune. Then you were going to be an architect, or a bridge-builder, with subsequent confusion. You abandoned everything. What is it now?”