CHAPTER III
Heloise's intentional noisiness in rearranging the toilet articles onthe dressing table aroused Louise. The brilliant sunlight of a sparklingwinter morning was pouring into the room. Half-awake and the brightnessof the room filtering through her still-closed eyelids, she was obsessedfor an instant with the fear that, over-sleeping, she was late for theexercises attending the beginning of a day at Miss Mayhew's school. Shesmiled at the thought, in spite of a brooding, indefinable trouble thathad burdened her sleep, when, with wide eyes, she quickly sensed thelavishness of the room and saw the invincibly trig Heloise moving about.
"Mademoiselle is awake at last?" said Heloise in French, a trace ofirritation in her tone. "One considered that Mademoiselle contemplatedsleeping until the end of time."
Louise disarmed her with a laugh.
"Perhaps I should have," she said, lightly, but on her guard with herFrench in the presence of so meticulous a critic, "had I not just thismoment dreamt of coffee. Am I too late for breakfast?"
Of course Mademoiselle should have her coffee instantly, said theappeased Heloise, ringing. The maid mentally pronounced that Louise'sfinishing-school French was almost intelligible to one understandingthat language.
Mrs. Treharne had sent Heloise to look after Louise until a maid shouldbe obtained for her. Louise, sitting up in bed, her fresh, clear-coloredface aureoled by her agreeably awry mass of bronzed hair, the nocturnalbraids of which she already had begun to unplait, laughed again at thethought of being attended by a maid.
"I shall have to be trained for that," she said to the mollifiedHeloise. "I never had a maid. I doubt if I should know how to behavewith a maid doing my hair. I think I should find myself tempted to dothe maid's instead; especially if her hair were as pretty as yours."
Heloise was Louise's sworn, voluble, tooth-and-nail, right-or-wrong,everlasting friend from that moment. She 'phoned to the butler,demanding to know why Mademoiselle's coffee had not been sent, althoughshe had only called for it three minutes before, and she buzzed aboutthe tractable Louise, arranging her hair with expert fingers, cheerfuland chirpful, nothing whatever like the austere, croaking Heloise whoscowled so threateningly over the slightest unruliness of her actualmistress. Heloise was prepared to give an enthusiastic recommendation ofLouise to the maid who should be engaged to attend her mistress'sdaughter. And she began already to be envious of Louise's unobtainedmaid.
When Heloise had finished with her Louise, inspecting herself in theglass with frank approval, decided that never before had she looked soastonishingly well at that hour of the morning. But, when the garrulousmaid had gone, Louise, sipping her coffee, sat in the streaming sunlightof the bowed window, watching the sparkling ice floes drift down thebleak Hudson, and the trouble that had weighted her sleep returned uponher, slowly taking shape with her consciousness. She had been too tiredthe night before to engage in much reflection, before losing herself insleep, upon the incidents--one incident particularly--of the previousnight. Now she was face to face with the gravamen of her depression,with an alert morning mind to sift over its elements. It wascharacteristic of her that she did not seek to thrust aside herconsciousness of conditions which she imperfectly understood. Sheunderstood them, however, sufficiently to grasp at least the essentialsof the situation.
Louise, whose native shrewdness was tempered by an innate andunconquerable tendency to look upon the bright side of the world and ofsuch of the world's people as she came into contact with, was far betteracquainted with her mother than her mother was with her; which wasnatural enough, considering that she had the receptive mind of youth,and that her mother's major trait was a sort of all-inclusiveindifference. Many things in connection with her mother's manner oflife, her almost hysterical love of admiration, her restlessness and herhabitual secretiveness with Louise during the girl's early girlhoodyears, had become all too plain to the daughter as she developed intowomanhood at the finishing school. Perhaps it may be added that atwentieth century finishing school for young women commonly is aninstitution wherein all of the pupils' deductions are not made fromtheir text books nor from the eminently safe premises laid down by theirinstructors. The young woman who has spent four years at such a schooldoes not step through a nimbus of juvenile dreams when she enters intothe world that is waiting for her. It is true that, when she takes herplace in the uncloistered world, she has a great deal to unlearn; butthis is balanced by the indubitable fact she has not very much to learn.Those who expect her to be utterly surprised over the departures thatshe sees from the rules of the social game are merely wasting theirsurprise. It is mere futility to suppose that several hundreds of youngwomen of the highly intelligent and eager type who attend exclusiveschools of the so-termed finishing kind, thrust constantly upon eachother for companionship and the comparison of notes, are going to occupyall of their leisure in discussing the return of Halley's comet, or theprofounder meaning of Wagner, or even the relative starchiness of theirhair ribbons.
Louise, participating in the whispered precocities of the school, hadoften caught herself on the defensive in her mother's behalf. To seek tobrush away imputations that seemed to fit her mother's personality andway of life had become almost a habit with her.
The habit, however, was availing her little on this her first morningafter leaving school in her mother's sumptuous home--"that is, if it ismother's home." She flushed when she found herself saying that. But thedoubt propelled itself through her consciousness, and she resolutelyrefused to expel it, once it had found lodgment in her mind, merelybecause it caused her cheeks to burn. Her mother's favorite word, incontemptuously denominating people who lived in accordance withconvention, was "smug;" Mrs. Treharne considered that she had pilloried,for the world's derision, persons to whom she had adverted as "smug." Ofthe smugness of the kind Mrs. Treharne meant when she employed the word,there was not an atom in Louise's composition. Her nature, herupbringing, were opposed to the thought of a narrow, restrained,buckram social rule.
But here was a situation--the investiture of almost garish splendor inwhich she found her mother living, considered in connection withsubconscious doubts as to certain quite visible flaws in her mother'scharacter which had been forming themselves in the girl's mind foryears--here, indeed, was a situation with respect to which Louise'sunquietude had no need of being based upon mere smugness.
The girl knew quite well that, up to the time of her going away toschool at any rate, her mother's income had been a limited one--somethree thousand a year voluntarily contributed by the father for hisdaughter's support and education. It had not been, in fact, her mother'sincome at all, but Louise's; and it had been voluntarily contributed bythe father because, as he had been the plaintiff in the divorce suit,the decree had not required him to aid his detached wife or his daughterat all; the court had given him the custody of the child, and he hadsurrendered that custody to the mother out of sheer pity for her.
How, then, had her mother provided herself, on an income which, with adaughter to educate, called for frugality, if not positive scrimping,with such a sheerly extravagant setting?
And Judd! Louise flushed again when she remembered Judd. She did notknow his name. She had never seen or even heard of him before. She onlyremembered him--and the thought caused her to draw her negligee moreclosely about her, for she experienced a sudden chill--as the girthy,red-eyed individual who, with the proprietary arrogance of anintoxicated man who seemed perfectly to know his position under thatroof, had lurched into her mother's apartments on the previous nightwithout the least attempt at announcing himself.
How would her mother explain these things? Would she, indeed, explain toher daughter at all? In any case, Louise formed the resolve not toquestion her mother. She possessed, what is unusual in woman, aninstinctive appreciation of the rights of others, even when such rightsare perversely altered to wrongs. She considered that her mother'saffairs were her own, in so far as they did not involve herself, LouiseTreharne, in any tacit copartnership; and as to
this point she purposedascertaining, before very long, to just what extent she had become orwas expected to become involved. For the rest, she was conscious of adistinct sympathy for and a yearning toward her mother. In herreflections she gave her mother the benefit of every mitigatingcircumstance.
Turning from the window, Louise saw her mother standing before thedresser glass studying her haggard morning face, now lacking all of thesorely-required aids to the merely pretty regularity of her features,with a head-shaking lugubriousness that might have had its comic appealto an unconcerned onlooker. Louise, however, was scarcely in a mood ofmirth.
"I knocked, my dear, but you were too much absorbed," said Mrs.Treharne, offering her daughter her cheek. "You were in a veritabletrance. Did you get enough sleep, child? Was Heloise in a scoldinghumor? She makes my life a misery to me with her tongue. What beautifulhair you have! And what a perfect skin! A powder puff would mar thatwonderful pallor. Yet you are not too white. It becomes you, with yourhair. Appreciate these things while you have them, dear; look at yourmother, a hag, a witch, at thirty-nine! But, then, you will keep yourlooks longer than I; you pattern after the women of your----"
She came perilously close to saying "your father's family," but adroitlyturned the phrase when she caught herself in time. Louise, putting on acheerful mask, replied to her mother's trivialities and devised some ofher own. Her mother had not lost her banting-killed bloom when Louisehad last seen her at such an hour in the morning; and the girl wasinwardly pained to note how all but the mere vestiges of her rememberedprettiness had disappeared. Mrs. Treharne caught her looking at her witha certain scrutinizing reflectiveness, and she broke out petulantly:
"Don't pick me apart with your eyes in that way, Louise! I know that Iam hideous, but for heaven's sake don't remind me of it with yourcriticizing, transfixing gazes!"
She was of the increasing type of women who, long after they have thenatural right to expect adulation on account of their looks, still hateto surrender. Louise quickly perceived this and provided unguents forher mother's sensitiveness.
They chatted upon little matters, Mrs. Treharne so ill at ease (yetstriving to hide her restlessness) that she found it impossible to sitstill for more than a minute; she fluttered incessantly about the room,her wonderful negligee of embroidered turquoise sailing after her likethe outspread wings of a moth. After many pantheress-like rounds of theroom, during which Louise somehow felt her old diffidence in hermother's presence returning upon her, Mrs. Treharne, after her evidentcasting about for an opening, stopped before Louise and pinched hercheek between dry fingers.
"At any rate, my dear," she said with a trace of her old amiability andanimation, "you are not a frump or a bluestocking! There was a timewhen I had two fears: that you would not grow up pretty and that youwould become bookish. And here I find myself towered over by a youngprincess, and you don't talk in the least like a girl with crazy notionsof keeping up her inane school studies." Then, after a slight pause:"Are you religious, my dear, or--er--well, broad-minded?"
Louise smothered her mounting laugh, for fear of offending her mother inher mood of amiability; but her smile was eloquent enough.
"Is there any incompatibility between those two states of mind, mother?"she asked.
"Don't dissect my words, child; you quite understand what I mean," saidthe mother, with a slight reversion to peevishness. "Your father, youknow, was--no doubt still is--shockingly narrow; he hadn't the slightestconception of the broad, big view; he belonged in this respect, I think,in the Middle Ages; and I have been tortured by the fear that youmight--might--"
She hesitated. She had not meant to mention Louise's father, much lessto speak of him even in mild derogation; and she suddenly recalled how,years before, there had been a tacit agreement between them thatLouise's father was not to be mentioned. The agreement had been enteredinto after an occasion when Louise, then a child of eleven, with thememory of her vanished father still very keen in her mind, had rushedfrom the room, in blinding tears, upon hearing her mother speak of himin terms of dispraise.
"I did not have much time at school for self-analysis, mother," saidLouise, coming to her mother's aid. "I suppose I am normal and neutralenough. I am not conscious of any particular leaning." She flushed,swept by a sudden sense of the difficulty, the incongruity, of such aconversation with her mother amid such surroundings. "Mother," sheresumed, hastily, "I am so keen to see New York again that I am hardlycapable of thinking of anything else just now. Are we to go out?"
"The car is yours when you wish it, Louise," said Mrs. Treharne,absently. "I rarely go out until late in the afternoon."
"The car?" said Louise. "You have a car, then?"
Her mother glanced at her sharply. It was sufficiently obvious that shewas on the lookout for symptoms of inquisitiveness on Louise's part;though Louise had not meant her question to be in the least inquisitive.
"I have the use of a car," said Mrs. Treharne, a little frigidly. "Itbelongs to Mr. Judd."
Instinctively Louise felt that "Mr. Judd" was the sealskinned Falstaffwhose unceremonious appearance the night before had startled her. Butshe remained silent. Nothing could have induced her to ask her motherabout Mr. Judd. Her mother did not fail to notice her silence, which ofcourse put her on the defensive.
"Mr. Judd," she said, "is--a--" she hesitated painfully--"my businessadviser. He has been very good and kind in making some investmentsin--in mining stocks for me; investments that have proved veryprofitable. He is alert in my interest. It was Mr. Judd, my dear, whomyou saw last night. He was not quite himself, I fear, or he would nothave made his appearance as he did. He has helped me so much that ofcourse it would be ungrateful of me not to permit him the run of theplace." She rambled on, as persons will who feel themselves to be on thedefensive. "In fact, he--he--But of course, if you have formed aprejudice against him on account of last night, there will be nooccasion for you to meet him except occasionally."
Louise caught the hollowness, the evasiveness, of the explanation. Notone word of it had rung true. Louise had never felt sorrier for hermother than she did at that moment. She noticed a certain huntedexpression in her mother's face, and it cut her to the quick. She placeda long, finely-chiselled arm, from which the sleeve of the negligee hadslipped back to the shoulder, around her mother's neck.
"But I haven't the least use for a car, dearie," she said. It was notwith deliberation that she ignored altogether what her mother had beensaying as to Judd; it was simply that she could not bring herself tooffer any comment on that subject. "I am a walker; every day at MissMayhew's I did ten miles--even in rain and snow, and it is clouding forsnow now, I think. You will not mind my going out for a long walk? I amwild for air and exercise."
Mrs. Treharne was grateful to the girl for turning it off in that wayeven if, by so doing, Louise indicated that she was of more than onemind with respect to what had been told her regarding Judd. And Mrs.Treharne, careless and indifferent as she was, could not visualize herdaughter in the gigantic yellow-bodied Judd car without being swept by afeeling that was distinctly to her credit.
* * * * *
Laura Stedham, over her cocoa, was weaving with careless rapiditythrough her morning mail when John Blythe arrived shortly before noon.Laura's apartment overlooked the west side of the Park. Its dominantcolor scheme now was based upon a robin's egg blue; but there was a jestamong Laura's friends that they never had seen her apartment look thesame on two visits running; they declared that every time Laura left thecity for as long a period as a fortnight, she left orders with herdecorator to have her apartment completely done over so that even sheherself quite failed to recognize it when she returned.
Blythe, throwing his snow-sprinkled stormcoat over the extended arm ofLaura's brisk maid, strolled over to a window and watched the still,unflurried flakes sift through the bare branches of the Park trees. Hishands were thrust deep into his pockets and his eyes were so unusuallymeditative that Laura, used to his absor
ption as she was, laughedquietly as she turned from her escritoire.
"Yes, John, it is snowing," she said, thrusting away a heap ofstill-unopened letters.
Blythe turned to her with a twinkling look of inquiry.
"I thought perhaps you might not have noticed it," chaffed Laura,"seeing that you were looking right at it. You require an excessiveamount of forgiveness from your friends. I believe you have not evenseen me yet, although I've employed a good hour that I might have spentin bed in devising additional fascinations in anticipation of yourcoming."
"Meaning, for one thing, I suppose," said Blythe with rather an absorbedsmile, "that--that--"
"Don't you dare call it a kimono," interrupted Laura. "It's a mandarin'scoat--a part of the Peking loot. Of course you are crazy over it?"
It was a magnificent pale blue, ermine-padded garment, with a dragon ofheavy gold embroidery extending from nape to hem down the loose back.
Blythe studied it for a moment and then glanced significantly at thefaint-blue walls and ceiling of the room.
"I presume," he said, solemnly, "you had your rooms done this last timeto match the Mother Hub--I mean the mandarin's coat?"
They did not need thus to spar, for they were (what, unhappily, is sounusual between men and women in a world devoid of mid-paths) closefriends; even comrades, in so far as Blythe's hard work permitted him toassume his share of such a relationship; and they understood each otherthoroughly, with no complication differing from a genuine mutual esteemto mar their understanding. Nevertheless, both of them found it a trifledifficult to undertake the lead on the subject that was uppermost intheir minds and the occasion of Blythe's forenoon visit.
Laura with her customary helpfulness, finally gave him an opening.
"She told us of having met you on the train," said Laura, as if incontinuation of a conversation already begun on the theme. "An oddchance, wasn't it? I wonder if you were so enormously struck with her asI was?"
"You met her at the station, did you not?" said Blythe, quietly. "Thatwas like you; like your all-around fineness."
"Thanks," said Laura, appreciatively. "But you evade my question. Isn'tshe a perfect apparition of loveliness?"
"I wish she were less so," said Blythe, not convincingly.
"No, you don't wish that," said Laura. "I know what you wish; but it isnot that."
Blythe was silent for a space and then he fell to striding up and downthe room.
"Did you ever come upon such an unspeakable situation, Laura?" he brokeout, stopping to face her. "What is Antoinette Treharne thinking of? Isshe utterly lost to any sense of--"
"I wouldn't say that, John," put in Laura, holding up a staying hand."It is natural enough, I know, for you to reach such a conclusion; on acursory view the case seems to be against her; but you must rememberthat Louise came home without warning. Antoinette had no opportunity todevise a plan. She is horribly humiliated. I know that."
"Your usual method of defending everybody--and you know how I like youfor that as for so many other things," said Blythe. "But, Laura,Louise's mother knew that the girl must leave school in half a year atall events. She must have considered some way out of the hideous mess?"
"None that she ever mentioned to me," said Laura. "You know her habit ofprocrastination. I grazed the subject two or three times in talking withher. She dodged, or was downright brusque. She has no plan, I am sure.But she is sorely distressed over it all, now that the situation hascome to a head. I am very sorry for her."
"But the girl?" said Blythe, a slight note of irritation in his tone."How about her?"
"I should be more worried if I were not so entirely confident thatLouise is amply competent to take care of herself," said Laura. "She isno longer a girl, John. She is a woman, and a woman with more than hershare of plain sense. Her position, of course, is positively outrageous,heartrending. But I am at a loss to suggest a single thing that herfriends--that you or I, or both of us--could do just now to better it."
"That," said Blythe, a little hoarsely, "is just the devil of it."
"I should like to have Louise with me," Laura went on, "but I doubt ifshe would come, although I believe she is fond of me. Not just yet, atany rate. She would not care to leave her mother after her longseparation from her. Louise will find out the situation herself. Nodoubt she already has sensed a part of its sinister aspect. I amhorribly sorry for her. But, as I say, she is a woman of character. Shewill know what to do. All that we can do, for the present at any rate,is to be on guard for her, without seeming to be. Of course she shallknow that we are her friends. She already knows that I am her friend.Did you, on the train--"
"Yes," put in Blythe, apprehending what Laura was going to ask. "I toldher that I knew her father. The matter came about in an odd way. I wish,Laura, that you'd make it clear to her, if you have the chance, thatshe--that I--"
He halted embarrassedly.
"I quite understand," Laura aided him, smiling. "That you mean to be herfriend, too--of course I shall tell her that," and Laura lookedreflective when she observed how Blythe's face brightened. It soonclouded again, however, when he broke out:
"She will find out, of course, sooner or later, that she has been takencare of and educated for the past five years and odd with Judd's money,"he said, worriedly. "You can imagine how intense her mortification willbe over that discovery. Judd, you know, in contempt of George Treharne,forced Mrs. Treharne to return to me the quarterly checks that Treharnesent me from Hawaii for Louise--for of course I sent the checks toAntoinette. I explained this to Treharne when I saw him in Honolulu afew years ago. He was badly cut up over it But of course he waspowerless to do anything about it. He refused to take the checks back,though, and directed me to deposit the money to Louise's account. I havenearly fifteen thousand dollars--five years' accrued checks, forTreharne has never stopped sending them--on deposit for Louise now.Don't you think she had better be told this?"
"Wait a while," advised Laura. "Wait until she discovers how the landlies. Then she will be coming to you. If you told her now it wouldinvolve your telling her also that she had been educated with Judd'smoney. I think it better that she discover that for herself--if she mustdiscover it. Then she will know what to do. She will be seeking you outthen," and Laura smiled inwardly when again she noted how Blythe's facecleared at her last words.
"There is only one thing to do, of course, and that is to follow youradvice and let the matter stand as it is for the present," said Blythe,preparing to go. "But the thing is going to sit pretty heavily upon me.I have been Treharne's legal man ever since my senior partner died, asyou know, and, although it isn't of course expected of me, I can't helpbut feel a certain responsibility for his daughter when she is thrustinto such a miserable situation as this. I wonder," catching at a newand disturbing idea, "if her mother will expect Louise to meetthe wretched crew of near-poets, maybe-musicians and otherrag-tag-and-bobtail that assemble at what Antoinette calls her Sundayevening 'salon?'"
"Antoinette's 'zoo,' I call it," laughed Laura. "What if Louise doesmeet them? They can't harm her. They, the unfortunate make-believes,will only appeal to her risibles, if I mistake not. Louise must have gother sense of humor from her father. Antoinette hasn't a particle ofhumor in her composition. If she had how long do you suppose she wouldcontinue her absurd 'salon?"
Laura, in extending her hand to Blythe, who had resumed his stormcoat,gazed quizzically into his rugged face.
"John," she said, "is your solicitude for Louise solely on account ofthe--er--sense of responsibility you feel toward her father?"
Blythe caught the twinkle in her eyes.
"Humbug!" he ejaculated, striding out to the obligato of Laura's laugh.
* * * * *
When they were settled in the car for their snowy ride that afternoon,Mrs. Treharne turned in her seat to face Judd.
"You will understand," she said in a tone quite as hard as it was meantto be, "that I am not wasting words. If you repeat yo
ur grossness oflast night in my daughter's presence, our--our friendship is at an end.That is understood?"
"Now, now, shush, shush, Tony," said the Gargantuan Judd, soothingly,and resorting to his habit of patting her hands, "not so severe, not soterrifically severe, you know. How did I know that your daughter wouldbe there? Didn't know the least thing about it--forgot, I mean, that shewas coming. Got a bit screwed at the club, and--"
"I don't elect to listen to that sort of an explanation," interruptedMrs. Treharne, with cold deliberation. "I am unutterably weary of yourporcine manners. It is bad enough that I have permitted myself to endurethem. You are not imbecile enough to suppose that my daughter is toendure them, too? You are to meet her only when it is absolutelynecessary; be good enough to remember that. While she is with me--Idon't now know how long that is to be--you are to curtail your visits;and if you come even once again in the sodden condition that you were inlast night, I am done with you from that instant. I make myself plain, Ihope?"
"'Pon honor, Tony, you are horribly severe," blurted Judd, whiningly."You know very well that if you were to cut and run I'd blow my headoff." He felt that he meant it, too; for Judd was tremendously fond ofthe fading woman seated beside him, as he had been for years. He wasblind to her departing prettiness; to him she was the one woman in theworld--his prim, elderly wife, the mother of his family of grownchildren, being utterly negligible in his view; and Mrs. Treharne knewher complete power over him as well as she knew the lines of her face.
"I wish," she said, with a cutting way of dwelling upon each word, "thatyou had blown your head off before ever I met you. I might then havebeen able to cling to at least the shreds of self-respect."
Judd had no reply to make to that, and they rode the rest of the way insilence.