Alice Duer Miller

“ I dare say he is happy."
"I dare say he is, poor Joe." Adelaide paused. "Well, my dear, that was the reason of our parting. One can pity a son or a brother, but not a husband. Weakness kills love. A woman cannot be the leader, the guide, and keep any romance. O Mathilde, I never want you to feel the humiliation of finding yourself stronger than the man you love. That is why I left your father, and my justification is his present happiness. This inferior little person he has married, she does as well. ”

“ O Grandfather, can't you remember what it was like to be in love?"
A complete silence followed this little speech—a silence that went on and on and seemed to be stronger than human power. Perhaps for the first time in his life Lanley felt hostile toward the girl beside him. "Oh, dear," Mathilde was thinking, "I suppose I've made him remember my grandmother and his youth!" "Can love be remembered," Pete was saying to himself, "or is it like a perfume that can be recognized, but not recalled?"
Lanley turned at last to Wayne. ”

“ The tone of the question gave him no clue to the speaker's own thoughts.
"Yes, I do," he said; and then blurted out hastily, "Don't you believe in treating a woman as an equal?"
"I believe in treating her exactly as she wants to be treated."
"But every one wants to be treated as an equal, if they're any good." Farron smiled, showing those blue-white teeth for an instant, and Wayne, feeling he was not quite doing himself justice, added, "I call that just ordinary respect, you know, and I could not love any one I didn't respect. ”

“ Pete shook his head.
"She can never make up for one thing."
"O Pete!"
"She can never give me back my first instinctive, egotistical, divine conviction that there was every reason why you should love me. I shall always hear her voice saying, 'But why should Mathilde love you?' And I shall never know a good answer."
"What," cried Mathilde, "don't you know the answer to that! I do. Mama doesn't, of course. Mama loves people for reasons outside themselves: she loves me because I'm her child, and Grandpapa because he's her father, and Mr. Farron because she thinks he's strong. ”

“ She turned to Adelaide, "O Mrs. Farron, I've heard of you from Pete Wayne. Isn't he perfectly delightful? But, then, he ought to be with such a mother."
Adelaide had a very useful smile, which could maintain a long, but somewhat meaningless, brilliance. She employed it now, and it lasted until Lily had gone.
"That's a very remarkable girl," said Farron, remembrances of smiles still on his lips.
"Does she think every one perfect?"
"Almost every one; that's how she keeps going at such a rate." ”

“ This was candid, and Adelaide pressed on.
"Well is it wise or kind to make such a demand on a young creature when we know marriage is difficult at the best?" she asked.
Mrs. Wayne hesitated.
"You see, I have never seen your daughter, and I don't know what her feeling for Pete may be."
"I'll answer both questions. She has a pleasant, romantic sentiment for Mr. Wayne—you know how one feels to one's first lover. She is a sweet, kind, unformed little girl, not heroic. But think of your own spirited son. Do you want this persistent, cruel responsibility for him?" ”

“ The two groups were sufficiently separated for distinct conversations.
"Is this a conference?" asked Farron.
Mrs. Wayne made it so by her reply.
"The whole question is, Are they really in love? At least, that's my view."
"In love!" Adelaide twisted her shoulders. "What can they know of it for another ten years? You must have some character, some knowledge to fall in love. And these babes—"
"No," said Mr. Lanley, stoutly; "you're all wrong, Adelaide. It's first love that matters—Romeo and Juliet, you know. Afterward we all get hardened and world-worn and cynical and material." ”

“ Pete fought down his panic, reminding himself that no man living could hear such words without terror. His egotism, never colossal, stood feebly between him and Mrs. Farron's estimate of him. He seemed to sink back into the general human species. If he had felt inclined to detail his own qualities, he could not have thought of one. There was a long silence, while Adelaide sat with a look of docile teachableness upon her expectant face.
At last Wayne stood up.
"It's no use, Mrs. Farron," he said "That question of yours can't be answered. I believe she loves me. It's my bet against yours." ”

“ I am considered harsh because I insist that a young man without an income who has just come near to running off with my child on money that was almost a bribe is not a person in whom I have unlimited confidence. I ask—it seems a tolerably mild request—that they do not see each other for six months."
"I cannot agree to that," said Wayne decidedly.
"Really, Mr. Wayne, do you feel yourself in a position to agree or disagree? We have never consented to your engagement. We have never thought the marriage a suitable one, have we, Papa?"
"No," said Mr. Lanley in a tone strangely dead. ”

“ She could imagine suffering privations very happily in a Venetian palace or on a tropical island. It was an esthetic, not a moral, problem; it was a question of that profound and essential thing in the life of any woman who was a woman—her charm. She wished to tell Mrs. Wayne that her son wouldn't really like it, that he would hate to see Mathilde going out in overshoes; that the background that she, Adelaide, had so expertly provided for her child was part of the very attraction that made him want to take her out of it. ”

“ That was one of Adelaide's assets, on which she perhaps unconsciously counted, that her mere appearance made nine people out of ten aware of their own physical imperfections. But Mrs. Wayne was aware of nothing but Adelaide's great beauty as she sank into one of the armchairs with hardly a hint of exhaustion.
"Your son is a very charming person, Mrs. Wayne," she said.
Mrs. Wayne was standing by the mantelpiece, looking boyish and friendly; but now she suddenly grew grave, as if something serious had been said.
"Pete has something more unusual than charm," she said. ”

“ The impersonality of Vincent's manner was an armor against such attacks, but this armor, as Adelaide knew, was more apparent than real. If one could get beyond that, one was at the very heart of the man. If some fortuitous circumstance had brought a sudden accidental intimacy between him and another woman—What woman loving strength and power could resist the sight of Vincent in action, Vincent as she saw him? ”

“ She had, he thought, every virtue that a mother could have, and she combined them with a gaiety of spirit that made her take her virtues as if they were the most delightful amusements. It was of this gaiety that he had first thought until Mathilde had pointed out to him that there was tragedy in the situation. "What will your mother do without you?" the girl kept saying. There was indeed nothing in his mother's life that could fill the vacancy he would leave. She had few intimate relationships. For all her devotion to her drunkards, he was the only personal happiness in her life. ”

“ When he had gone, Lanley dipped the spoon in his oyster stew with not a little pleasure. Nothing, apparently, could have raised his spirits more than the knowledge that old Josiah Wilsey had not signed the Declaration. He actually chuckled a little. "So like Wilsey himself," he thought. "No moral courage; calls it conservatism." Then his joy abated. Just so, he thought, must he himself appear to Mrs. Wayne. Yet his self-respect insisted that his case was different. Loyalty had been responsible not for his conservatism, but for the pig-headedness with which he had acted upon it. ”

“ That isn't the way one wants people to feel about one's husband, is it? And as to going to China with him, you know that's impossible, don't you?"
"It would be impossible to let him go without me."
"Really, Mathilde!" said Mrs. Farron, gently, as if she, so willing to play fair, were being put off with fantasies. "I don't understand you," she added.
"No, Mama; you don't."
The motor stopped at the door, and they went in silence to Mrs. Farron's room, where for a bitter hour they talked, neither yielding an inch. At last Adelaide sent the girl to bed. ”

“ The question was an oratorical one, and Adelaide was astonished to find that Mrs. Wayne was answering it.
"Oh, yes," she said; "I want responsibility for Pete. It's exactly what he needs."
Adelaide stared at her in horror; she seemed the most unnatural mother in the world. She herself would fight to protect her daughter from the passive wear and tear of poverty; but she would have died to keep a son, if she had had one, from being driven into the active warfare of the support of a family. ”

“ Poor little Mathilde! You know I wouldn't hurt her if I could help it. It's not her fault. But what a terrible system it is, and how money does blind people! They can't see you at all as you are, and yet if you had fifty thousand dollars a year, they'd be more aware of your good points than I am. They can't see that you have resolution and charm and a sense of honor. They don't see the person, they just see the lack of income. ”

“ Poor Vincent! A good deal more to live for than I have, most people would say; but I don't know that he enjoys it any more than I do." Turning his head a little, he shouted over his shoulder to Pete, "Sorry your mother couldn't come."
Mathilde made a hasty effort to withdraw her hands; but Wayne, more practical, understanding better the limits put upon a driver, held them tightly as he answered in a civil tone: "Yes, she would have enjoyed this."
"She must come some other time," shouted Mr. Lanley, and reflected that it was not always necessary to bring the young people with you. ”

“ He prided himself on having emancipated himself from the ideas of his own generation. It bored him to listen to his cousins lamenting the vulgarities of modern life, the lack of elegance in present-day English, or to hear them explain as they borrowed money from him the sort of thing a gentleman could or could not do for a living. But on the subject of what a lady might do he still held fixed and unalterable notions; nor did he ever find it tiresome to hear his own daughter expound the axioms of this subject with a finality he had taught her in her youth. ”

“ Really, lovers are the only people you can depend on. I wish I had a lover."
"Adelaide," said her father with some sternness, "even in fun you should not say such a thing. If Mathilde heard you—"
"Mathilde is the person who made me see it. Her boy is here all the time, trying to think of something to please her. And who have I? Vincent has his nurses; and you have your old upholstered lady. I can't help wishing I had a lover. They are the only people who, as the Wayne boy would say, 'stick around.' But don't worry, Papa, I have a loyal nature." ”