Imogen went to fetch Arthur to play his accompaniments. Hamilton
rose with an annoyed look and placed his cigarette on the mantel.
"Why yes, Flavia, I'll accompany him, provided he sings something
with a melody, Italian arias or ballads, and provided the recital
is not interminable."
"You will join us, M. Roux?"
"Thank you, but I have some letters to write," replied the
novelist, bowing.
As Flavia had remarked to Imogen, "Arthur really played
accompaniments remarkably well." To hear him recalled vividly the
days of her childhood, when he always used to spend his business
vacations at her mother's home in Maine. He had possessed for
her that almost hypnotic influence which young men sometimes
exert upon little girls. It was a sort of phantom love affair,
subjective and fanciful, a precocity of instinct, like that
tender and maternal concern which some little girls feel for
their dolls. Yet this childish infatuation is capable of all the
depressions and exaltations of love itself, it has its bitter
jealousies, cruel disappointments, its exacting caprices.
Summer after summer she had awaited his coming and wept at his
departure, indifferent to the gayer young men who had called her
their sweetheart and laughed at everything she said. Although
Hamilton never said so, she had been always quite sure that he was
fond of her. When he pulled her up the river to hunt for fairy
knolls shut about by low, hanging willows, he was often silent for
an hour at a time, yet she never felt he was bored or was
neglecting her. He would lie in the sand smoking, his eyes
half-closed, watching her play, and she was always conscious that
she was entertaining him. Sometimes he would take a copy of "Alice
in Wonderland" in his pocket, and no one could read it as he could,
laughing at her with his dark eyes, when anything amused him. No
one else could laugh so, with just their eyes, and without moving
a muscle of their face. Though he usually smiled at passages that
seemed not at all funny to the child, she always laughed gleefully,
because he was so seldom moved to mirth that any such demonstration
delighted her and she took the credit of it entirely to herself Her
own inclination had been for serious stories, with sad endings,
like the Little Mermaid, which he had once told her in an unguarded
moment when she had a cold, and was put to bed early on her
birthday night and cried because she could not have her party. But
he highly disapproved of this preference, and had called it a
morbid taste, and always shook his finger at her when she asked for
the story. When she had been particularly good, or particularly
neglected by other people, then he would sometimes melt and tell
her the story, and never laugh at her if she enjoyed the "sad
ending" even to tears. When Flavia had taken him away and he came
no more, she wept inconsolably for the space of two weeks, and
refused to learn her lessons. Then she found the story of the
Little Mermaid herself, and forgot him.
Imogen had discovered at dinner that he could still smile at
one secretly, out of his eyes, and that he had the old manner of
outwardly seeming bored, but letting you know that he was not.
She was intensely curious about his exact state of feeling toward
his wife, and more curious still to catch a sense of his final
adjustment to the conditions of life in general. This, she could
not help feeling, she might get again--if she could have him alone
for an hour, in some place where there was a little river and a
sandy cove bordered by drooping willows, and a blue sky seen
through white sycamore boughs.
That evening, before retiring, Flavia entered her husband's
room, where be sat in his smoking jacket, in one of his favorite
low chairs.
"I suppose it's a grave responsibility to bring an ardent,
serious young thing like Imogen here among all these fascinating
personages," she remarked reflectively. "But, after all, one can
never tell. These grave, silent girls have their own charm, even
for facile people."
"Oh, so that is your plan?" queried her husband dryly. "I
was wondering why you got her up here. She doesn't seem to mix
well with the faciles. At least, so it struck me."
Flavia paid no heed to this jeering remark, but repeated, "No,
after all, it may not be a bad thing."
"Then do consign her to that shaken reed, the tenor," said
her husband yawning. "I remember she used to have a taste for
the pathetic."
"And then," remarked Flavia coquettishly, "after all, I owe her
mother a return in kind. She was not afraid to trifle with
destiny."
But Hamilton was asleep in his chair.
Next morning Imogen found only Miss Broadwood in the breakfast
room.
"Good morning, my dear girl, whatever are you doing up so
early? They never breakfast before eleven. Most of them take
their coffee in their room. Take this place by me."
Miss Broadwood looked particularly fresh and encouraging in
her blue serge walking skirt, her open jacket displaying an
expanse of stiff, white shirt bosom, dotted with some almost
imperceptible figure, and a dark blue-and-white necktie, neatly
knotted under her wide, rolling collar. She wore a white rosebud
in the lapel of her coat, and decidedly she seemed more than ever
like a nice, clean boy on his holiday. Imogen was just hoping
that they would breakfast alone when Miss Broadwood exclaimed,
"Ah, there comes Arthur with the children. That's the reward of
early rising in this house; you never get to see the youngsters
at any other time."
Hamilton entered, followed by two dark, handsome little
boys. The girl, who was very tiny, blonde like her mother, and
exceedingly frail, he carried in his arms. The boys came up and
said good morning with an ease and cheerfulness uncommon, even in
well-bred children, but the little girl hid her face on her
father's shoulder.
"She's a shy little lady," he explained as he put her gently
down in her chair. "I'm afraid she's like her father; she can't
seem to get used to meeting people. And you, Miss Willard, did
you dream of the White Rabbit or the Little Mermaid?"
"Oh, I dreamed of them all! All the personages of that
buried civilization," cried Imogen, delighted that his estranged
manner of the night before had entirely vanished and feeling
that, somehow, the old confidential relations had been restored
during the night.
"Come, William," said Miss Broadwood, turning to the younger
of the two boys, "and what did you dream about?"
"We dreamed," said William gravely--he was the more assertive of
the two and always spoke for both--"we dreamed that there were
fireworks hidden in the basement of the carriage house; lots and
lots of fireworks."
His elder brother looked up at him with apprehensive
astonishment, while Miss Broadwood hastily put her napkin
to her
lips and Hamilton dropped his eyes. "If little boys dream
things, they are so apt not to come true," he reflected sadly.
This shook even the redoubtable William, and he glanced nervously
at his brother. "But do things vanish just because they have
been dreamed?" he objected.
"Generally that is the very best reason for their vanishing,"
said Arthur gravely.
"But, Father, people can't help what they dream,"
remonstrated Edward gently.
"Oh, come! You're making these children talk like a
Maeterlinck dialogue," laughed Miss Broadwood.
Flavia presently entered, a book in her hand, and bade them all
good morning. "Come, little people, which story shall it be this
morning?" she asked winningly. Greatly excited, the children
followed her into the garden. "She does then, sometimes," murmured
Imogen as they left the breakfast room.
"Oh, yes, to be sure," said Miss Broadwood cheerfully. "She
reads a story to them every morning in the most picturesque part
of the garden. The mother of the Gracchi, you know. She does so
long, she says, for the time when they will be intellectual
companions for her. What do you say to a walk over the hills?"
As they left the house they met Frau Lichtenfeld and the
bushy Herr Schotte--the professor cut an astonishing figure in
golf stockings--returning from a walk and engaged in an animated
conversation on the tendencies of German fiction.
"Aren't they the most attractive little children," exclaimed
Imogen as they wound down the road toward the river.
"Yes, and you must not fail to tell Flavia that you think
so. She will look at you in a sort of startled way and say,
'Yes, aren't they?' and maybe she will go off and hunt them up
and have tea with them, to fully appreciate them. She is awfully
afraid of missing anything good, is Flavia. The way those
youngsters manage to conceal their guilty presence in the House
of Song is a wonder."
"But don't any of the artist-folk fancy children?" asked Imogen.
"Yes, they just fancy them and no more. The chemist remarked the
other day that children are like certain salts which need not be
actualized because the formulae are quite sufficient for practical
purposes. I don't see how even Flavia can endure to have that man
about."
"I have always been rather curious to know what Arthur
thinks of it all," remarked Imogen cautiously.
"Thinks of it!" ejaculated Miss Broadwood. "Why, my dear,
what would any man think of having his house turned into an
hotel, habited by freaks who discharge his servants, borrow his
money, and insult his neighbors? This place is shunned like a
lazaretto!"
Well, then, why does he--why does he--" persisted Imogen.
"Bah!" interrupted Miss Broadwood impatiently, "why did he
in the first place? That's the question."
"Marry her, you mean?" said Imogen coloring.
"Exactly so," said Miss Broadwood sharply, as she snapped
the lid of her matchbox.
"I suppose that is a question rather beyond us, and
certainly one which we cannot discuss," said Imogen. "But his
toleration on this one point puzzles me, quite apart from other
complications."
"Toleration? Why this point, as you call it, simply is
Flavia. Who could conceive of her without it? I don't know where
it's all going to end, I'm sure, and I'm equally sure that, if it
were not for Arthur, I shouldn't care," declared Miss Broadwood,
drawing her shoulders together.
"But will it end at all, now?"
"Such an absurd state of things can't go on indefinitely. A
man isn't going to see his wife make a guy of herself forever, is
he? Chaos has already begun in the servants' quarters. There are
six different languages spoken there now. You see, it's all on
an entirely false basis. Flavia hasn't the slightest notion of
what these people are really like, their good and their bad alike
escape her. They, on the other hand, can't imagine what she is
driving at. Now, Arthur is worse off than either faction; he is
not in the fairy story in that he sees these people exactly as
they are, but he is utterly unable to see Flavia as they see
her. There you have the situation. Why can't he see her as we do?
My dear, that has kept me awake o' nights. This man who has
thought so much and lived so much, who is naturally a critic,
really takes Flavia at very nearly her own estimate. But now I am
entering upon a wilderness. From a brief acquaintance with her
you can know nothing of the icy fastnesses of Flavia's self-
esteem. It's like St. Peter's; you can't realize its magnitude
at once. You have to grow into a sense of it by living under its
shadow. It has perplexed even Emile Roux, that merciless
dissector of egoism. She has puzzled him the more because be saw
at a glance what some of them do not perceive at once, and what
will be mercifully concealed from Arthur until the trump sounds;
namely, that all Flavia's artists have done or ever will do means
exactly as much to her as a symphony means to an oyster; that
there is no bridge by which the significance of any work of art
could be conveyed to her."
"Then, in the name of goodness, why does she bother?" gasped
Imogen. "She is pretty, wealthy, well-established; why should
she bother?"
"That's what M. Roux has kept asking himself. I can't pretend to
analyze it. She reads papers on the Literary Landmarks of Paris,
the Loves of the Poets, and that sort of thing, to clubs out in
Chicago. To Flavia it is more necessary to be called clever than
to breathe. I would give a good deal to know that glum Frenchman's
diagnosis. He has been watching her out of those fishy eyes of his
as a biologist watches a hemisphereless frog."
For several days after M. Roux's departure Flavia gave an
embarrassing share of her attention to Imogen. Embarrassing,
because Imogen had the feeling of being energetically and
futilely explored, she knew not for what. She felt herself under
the globe of an air pump, expected to yield up something. When
she confined the conversation to matters of general interest
Flavia conveyed to her with some pique that her one endeavor in
life had been to fit herself to converse with her friends upon
those things which vitally interested them. "One has no right to
accept their best from people unless one gives, isn't it so? I
want to be able to give--!" she declared vaguely. Yet whenever
Imogen strove to pay her tithes and plunged bravely into her
plans for study next winter, Flavia grew absent-minded and
interrupted her by amazing generalizations or by such
embarrassing questions as, "And these grim studies really have
charm for you; you are quite buried in them; they make other
things seem light and ephemeral?"
"I rather feel as though I had got in here under false
pretenses," Imogen confided to Miss Broadwood. "I'm sure I don
't
know what it is that she wants of me."
"Ah," chuckled Jemima, "you are not equal to these heart to
heart talks with Flavia. You utterly fail to communicate to her
the atmosphere of that untroubled joy in which you dwell. You
must remember that she gets no feeling out of things
herself, and she demands that you impart yours to her by some
process of psychic transmission. I once met a blind girl, blind
from birth, who could discuss the peculiarities of the Barbizon
school with just Flavia's glibness and enthusiasm. Ordinarily
Flavia knows how to get what she wants from people, and her
memory is wonderful. One evening I heard her giving Frau
Lichtenfeld some random impressions about Hedda Gabler which she
extracted from me five years ago; giving them with an impassioned
conviction of which I was never guilty. But I have known other
people who could appropriate your stories and opinions; Flavia
is infinitely more subtle than that; she can soak up the very
thrash and drift of your daydreams, and take the very thrills
off your back, as it were."
After some days of unsuccessful effort, Flavia withdrew
herself, and Imogen found Hamilton ready to catch her when she
was tossed afield. He seemed only to have been awaiting this
crisis, and at once their old intimacy reestablished itself as a
thing inevitable and beautifully prepared for. She convinced
herself that she had not been mistaken in him, despite all the
doubts that had come up in later years, and this renewal of faith
set more than one question thumping in her brain. "How did he,
how can he?" she kept repeating with a tinge of her childish
resentment, "what right had he to waste anything so fine?"
When Imogen and Arthur were returning from a walk before
luncheon one morning about a week after M. Roux's departure, they
noticed an absorbed group before one of the hall windows. Herr
Schotte and Restzhoff sat on the window seat with a newspaper
between them, while Wellington, Schemetzkin, and Will Maidenwood
looked over their shoulders. They seemed intensely interested,
Herr Schotte occasionally pounding his knees with his fists in
ebullitions of barbaric glee. When imogen entered the hall,
however, the men were all sauntering toward the breakfast room
and the paper was lying innocently on the divan. During luncheon
the personnel of that window group were unwontedly animated and
agreeable all save Schemetzkin, whose stare was blanker than
ever, as though Roux's mantle of insulting indifference
had fallen upon him, in addition to his own oblivious self-
absorption. Will Maidenwood seemed embarrassed and annoyed; the
chemist employed himself with making polite speeches to Hamilton.
Flavia did not come down to lunch--and there was a malicious
gleam under Herr Schotte's eyebrows. Frank Wellington announced
nervously that an imperative letter from his protecting syndicate
summoned him to the city.
After luncheon the men went to the golf links, and Imogen,
at the first opportunity, possessed herself of the newspaper
which had been left on the divan. One of the first things that
caught her eye was an article headed "Roux on Tuft Hunters; The
Advanced American Woman as He Sees Her; Aggressive, Superficial,
and Insincere." The entire interview was nothing more nor less
than a satiric characterization of Flavia, aquiver with
irritation and vitriolic malice. No one could mistake it; it was
done with all his deftness of portraiture. Imogen had not finished
the article when she heard a footstep, and clutching the paper she
started precipitately toward the stairway as Arthur entered. He
put out his hand, looking critically at her distressed face.
"Wait a moment, Miss Willard," he said peremptorily, "I want
to see whether we can find what it was that so interested our
friends this morning. Give me the paper, please."
Imogen grew quite white as he opened the journal. She
reached forward and crumpled it with her hands. "Please don't,