Booth Tarkington

“ Anne asked, and she added, with a desolate laugh, “I just said that, myself. But men do things when they feel like this, don’t they, Mamma? Why is it a girl can’t? Why do I have to sit still and see men I’ve respected and looked up to and thought so wise and fine—why do I have to sit still and see them hoodwinked and played upon and carried off their feet by such silly little barefaced tricks, Mamma? And why don’t they see what it is, themselves, Mamma? Any girl or woman—the very stupidest—can see it, Mamma, so why doesn’t the cleverest man? Are men all just idiots, Mamma? ”

“ Lily gasped. She ran out of the door and up to her own room.
She felt that she could not live. No one could live, she thought, and bear such agony. The dimensions of her anger, too great to be contained, were what agonized her.
“To think of their daring to make me a mere blind!” she cried out to her mother, when Mrs. Dodge followed her. “To think they dared! It’s the treachery of it—the insolence of it! I can’t live and be made a mere blind! I can’t, Mamma!” ”

“ Mr. Dodge sat waggling his head and muttering in wonder. “Of all the curious things!” he said. “Human nature is so everlastingly full of oddities it’s always turning up new ones that you sit and stare at and can’t believe are real. There they are, right before your eyes, and yet they’re incredible. What did she say to the chauffeur?”
“No, no,” Mrs. Dodge said, reprovingly. “That’s what I can’t tell you.” And she added, “I should think you could guess it, anyhow.”
“Was there——” He paused a moment, pondering. “Did she use any specially marked terms of endearment in addressing him?” ”

“ I’m not, Mamma.”
Mrs. Dodge’s eyes suddenly filled with tears. “I know you’re not,” she said, simply, out of much experience.
But at this Lily threw her arms about her. “Mamma!” she cried. “I wish I could be like Ada! I know how I trouble you, and I’d give anything to be a steady, philosophical, obedient, comfortable daughter! Oh, I do wish I could!”
“Then why can’t you do as she did about this young man, dear? Why can’t you see the truth about him as everybody else sees it? There aren’t any fathers and mothers of girls in the whole place that don’t feel the same way about him. ”

“ To Lily herself the word she used was not extravagant at all; it was merely her definition of Crabbe Osborne. As he went toward the door Lily saw a brightness moving with him, an effulgence that would depart with him and leave but darkness when he had passed the threshold. No doubt the true being of young Crabbe was neither as Mrs. Dodge conceived it nor as Lily saw it;—no earthly intellect could have defined just what he was: nor, for that matter, can any earthly intellect say what anything is, since all of our descriptive words express nothing more than how the things appear to ourselves ”

“ Cromwell upon one of those summer nights so exquisite that we call them “unreal,” because they belong to perished romance, and we have learned to imagine that what is real must be unlovely. Only the relics of a discredited sentimental epoch could go forth under the gold-pointed canopy of such a night, and sigh because the stars are ineffable. Mrs. Cromwell was such a relic, and, being in remote attendance upon her daughter at the country club, she had gone after dinner to walk alone upon the links in the starlight. ”

“ They were brilliantly dark, and at times seemed to hold little dancing lights within them, as if they gave glimpses of secret laughter. All in all, she was a cheery companion for an outdoor afternoon, but by no manner of means a tricky witch, Mr. Hobart Simms decided, as he looked down smilingly upon her and upon that odd man, his brother-in-law and junior partner, old John Tower.
“Old John,” of an age not more than Hobart’s, was queer, Hobart thought; but his queerness did not alter the simple steadiness of character that made his intimates think and speak of him as “old John.” ”

“ Elsie had tried it; she had tried it until her face ached; but she remained only an echo outside the walls. Nobody paid any attention to her.
Therefore she had no resource but to infer what she had inferred to-day, when the merry impromptu party whirled away without a thought of including her, and when Paul Reamer had so carelessly evaded her urgency—her shameless urgency, as she thought, weeping upon her coverlet. This inference of hers could be only that she had some mysterious ugliness, some strange stupidity, and it was this she sought in her mirror, as she had sought it before. ”

“ Don’t you know that’s the way everybody thinks of you? Everybody knows you’re dependable;—you’re what they call ‘so satisfactory,’ Ada. Your family and everybody else know you’ll never do anything reckless or susceptible or dreamy. Nobody on earth knows what I’ll do, because I don’t myself. Just look at the difference between us!”
With that, as if the bodily contrast of the two expressed the contrast in character she had in mind, Lily extended her arms sidewise from her in an emotional gesture inviting an inspection of herself foredoomed to be damning; then pointed dramatically at Ada. ”

“ Mrs. Cromwell exclaimed, enlightened. “Anne, didn’t you dance with him at all?”
“With Harrison?” the girl asked, indifferently. “No; I don’t believe I did, now I come to think of it.”
“Didn’t he ask you at all?”
Anne turned upon her with one of those little gasps that express the exasperated weariness of a person who makes the same explanation for the hundreth time. “Mother! If he didn’t ask me, isn’t that the same as not asking me ‘at all’? What’s the difference between not dancing with a person and not dancing with him ‘at all’? ”

“ At the Green Hills Country Club the eye of a stranger, watching the dancing on a summer night, would not immediately distinguish an individual from the mass. As the dancers went lightly interweaving over the floor of a roofless pavilion, where the foliage of great beech trees hung trembling above white balustrades and Venetian lamps, the spectator’s first glance from the adjoining veranda caught only the general aspect of carnival: the dancers were like a confusion of gaily coloured feathers blowing and whirlpooling across a dim tapestry. ”

“ Dodge interposed, “he’s not done anything that proves it. Battle’s a good architect, certainly, but there are others as good, and he’s not a bit better as an architect than Mr. Cromwell is as a lawyer or than my husband is as a consulting engineer.”
“Not a bit,” Mrs. Cromwell echoed, carrying on the thought she had been following. “But Mr. Dodge and Mr. Cromwell haven’t had anybody to go about, day after day for years, proclaiming them and building up a legend about them. Nobody has any idea that they’re great men, poor things! Don’t you see where that puts you and me, Lydia?” ”

“ Anne said, and her tears were heavier. “Mamma, what can I do? It’s so unfair!”
“You mean this girl is unfair?”
“No; she only does what she thinks will give her a good time.” There was sturdiness in Anne’s character; she was able to be just even in this crisis of feeling. “You can’t blame her, and it wouldn’t do any good if you did. I mean it’s unfair of human nature, I guess. I honestly never knew that men were so stupid and so—so soft! I mean it’s unfair that a girl like this Sallie Ealing can turn their heads.”
“I just caught a glimpse of her,” Mrs. Cromwell said. “What is she like?” ”

“ Lily almost shouted.
“Won’t I?” Ada returned, her gravity not relaxing. “What makes you so sure?”
“Why, you simply couldn’t! My life is just one long eternal succession of queernesses. I never do anything rational; I don’t seem to know how; but you’re never anything but sensible, Ada. You’ll fall in love sensibly some day—not like me, but with just one man at a time—and he’ll be exactly the person your family’ll think you ought to be in love with. ”

“ She always looks noble and she always sounds noble. Even when she says, ‘Isn’t it a lovely day,’ she sounds noble—and, for my part, I’m sick and tired of her nobility!”
“But my husband says——”
“I don’t care what Mr. Battle says,” Mrs. Dodge interrupted. “The woman’s a nuisance!”
“To me,” said the third of the group, gravely, “that sounds almost like sacrilege. I’ve always felt that even though Mrs. Leslie Braithwaite is still quite a young woman, she’s the focus of spiritual life for this whole community. ”

“ Mildred asked, unhappily. “If John were any other kind of man, it might be ridiculous.” Tears came into her eyes that had been dry until now; but she struggled with herself and kept more from coming. “Isn’t it ironical?” she said. “The very goodness of such a man as John, his simple kindness, his idealizing—the very things I’ve cared for most in him—that they should be his weakness and just what leaves him open to the easy cajoling of a crude trespasser like Julietta Voss! Don’t you understand, Hobart? I know you didn’t understand this afternoon, but don’t you now? ”

“ Bromley felt a strange little embarrassment, this time not an annoyed embarrassment. Who can know what is in a young girl’s heart? Suddenly, to his own surprise, he felt a slight, inexplicable emotion;—something in Cornelia’s look pleased him and even touched him. ”

“ Thus, after a painful evening of argument, they went unhappily to their uneasy beds, but woke in the morning determined to be thoroughbreds in the manner of their acceptance of Oswald Crabbe Osborne as their daughter’s betrothed.
Their encounter with him, when he came to dinner that evening in this recognized capacity, was an almost overwhelming trial of their gameness; but they succeeded in presenting the semblance of a somewhat strained beaming upon him, and were rewarded by the sight of a fading daughter blossoming again.
For Lily was radiant: her eyes and cheeks glowed; her feet danced ”

“ Bromley—the stub of the pencil he had used, the worn shoe-lace he had broken and carelessly tossed aside, the rosebud she had once asked him to smell, the violets that had dropped from his coat lapel, and the fragment of the amber mouthpiece of his pipe, broken when it fell from his pocket upon the stone steps of the school building. Dreamily, she put them all in a row, touching them gently, one after the other; then she leaned her elbows upon the desk and, with her chin in her hands, thought about life and books in a general way for several minutes. ”

“ She looked down at her plate, appeared surprised to find it occupied, and uttered a courtesy laughter with such grace it seemed almost that she sang the diatonic scale. This effect was so pronounced, indeed, that several people at other tables turned—again—to look at her, and Mr. Bromley reddened. “Oh, yes,” she said. “You mean these waffles. Yes, indeed!” And here she repeated her too musical laughter, accompanying it with several excited gestures of amazement as she exclaimed, “Imagine my not noticing them when they’re absolutely my favourite food! ”

“ Her father and mother told her the truth about Price Gleason and declined to let her see him. That was enough for Ada. She just quietly gave him up.”
“I know—I know,” Mr. Dodge admitted; but clung to his point. “Ada isn’t like most girls of her age. I understand her, because she’s sensible, and I don’t understand most of ’em—particularly my own daughter; but I’ve grown pretty sure of one thing and that is this: If we want to throw Lily into this bounder’s arms, we’ll keep on telling her the truth about him. Our one chance is to let her alone and see if she won’t find it out for herself.” ”

“ Elsie cried.
“I know you didn’t; that’s just what I’m pointing out. Maybe it was something they call ‘magnetism’; but anyhow it was more than just being a beauty. Of course you’re that——”
“Nobody ever told me so; not before——”
“Nonsense!” Cornelia interrupted; then she went on: “It seemed to lie in not only being a beauty, but in being a beauty with a kind of glow. I don’t know just how else to express it, because it’s better than having what they call the ‘come hither’ look. It was—well, charm, I suppose. People might never notice that a beauty is a beauty if she doesn’t have something of it. ”

“ Here was an Italian episode most romantic in its elements: a Renaissance terrace for the trysting place of a Renaissance widow and a great man, two who met and made love under the spying eyes of female sbirri lurking in a window opposite; but it was Amelia Battle who made the romantic episode into a realistic coincidence. In a vehicle needful of cleansing and polish she appeared from down the long street, sitting in the attentive attitude necessary for the proper guidance of what bore her, and wearing (as Mrs. Cromwell hoarsely informed Mrs. Dodge) “her market clothes.” ”

“ Hobart’s intelligent forehead became lined with the effort to solve the puzzle before him. “You say she’s terribly hurt and she’s angry and she’s disgusted because she thinks her husband is letting another woman carry on with him; but she’s not jealous. How would you define jealousy, Anne?”
“As nothing that a girl like Julietta Voss could make a lady feel,” Anne returned, with no little heat. “Mildred is a lady—and I’m going back to her. Be kind enough to hurry with your ablutions, if you intend any.” ”

“ Mildred sobbed, for her struggle to control herself was lost now, and her weeping became convulsive. “Don’t you see I couldn’t? You can’t protect anybody that’s tired of you. If he’s tired of you, how can you protect him against someone he’s in love with?”
“My dear sister!” Hobart begged her, deeply moved. “Don’t think it. Old John isn’t in love with Julietta Voss any more than I am!” ”

“ Cromwell was not anxious to see Anne married; she wished her to prolong the pretty time of girlhood; but any mother must have been pleased to see so splendid a young man place himself at her daughter’s disposal. Mrs. Cromwell wondered where he was this evening, and she had just begun to look for him among the dancers when strangers intruded upon her retreat.
She heard unfamiliar voices behind her, and then a small group of middle-aged people drew up wicker chairs to the veranda railing that overlooked the dancing-floor. ”

“ They don’t know what a cheap bait she’s caught ’em with, Mamma;—they don’t even guess she’s used bait! That’s why I don’t feel as if I could ever respect a man again. And the unfairness of it is so strange! The rest of us could use those tricks if we were willing to be that cheap and that childish; but we can’t even tell the men that we wouldn’t stoop to do it! We can’t do anything because they’d think we’re jealous of her. What can we do, Mamma?”
Mrs. Cromwell sighed and shook her head. “I’m afraid a good many generations of girls have had their Sallie Ealings, dear.” ”