Lanice

“ I thought I could judge Mamma, but...'
Pauline, seemingly intent on giving cause for her hoard of handkerchiefs, said bluntly, 'How can one judge such mischievous conduct but in one way? What was evil two years ago still is evil.'
'But now I don't know good from bad.'
'Lanice! To think you can say such a thing at such a moment! Your mother is dead!'
Stifled love turned in the girl's heart like a knife. The mocking, pretty face that age could not dim, the alluring mouth, the small, dimpled hands, so unlike Lanice's scholarly ones, the pretty graces. ”

“ Lanice broke it by saying, 'I think I had best drink my tea now, and then why couldn't we walk over the town?...' She hid the quiver of her lip against the edge of the teacup. 'The town, they say, is most worth while.'
'What would you like to see?' he asked humbly.
He knew that she did not care to see anything really, but admired the brave face she showed the world. Poor child! Most women would have been wistful—overcome with grief—prostrated, offended. ”

“ Lanice began to blush slowly, furiously, until tears of mortification stood in her downcast eyes. She was suddenly, overwhelmingly conscious of Mr. Jones's physical presence. The back of his hand touched her wrist.
'Lovely hands,' he said quietly, 'and neck and face. I've never seen another face that could...at odd moments...move me more. How can the rest be only whalebone and buckram? Lanice, you could be a...beauty, and love as women loved a thousand years ago. You prefer to be a dressmaker's dummy and a lady editoress. ”

“ Lanice thanked the girl and listlessly sat upon the edge of the bed and stared at the round dent in the pillow his head had made.
To her feverish hands it seemed that some of his bodily warmth still lingered in the tumbled linen of his bed. She shut her eyes and rocked her narrow body, opened them and looked again upon the pillow marked by the shape of his head. She stared, striving vainly to conjure up the true and living memory of his face. ”

“ Lanice had no answer, and Pauline continued: 'But I suppose you are unable to see the fine quality of a man like Professor Ripley. You like loose-living young rakes like that terrible Jones man or even Smith Scollay. Well, such men seem to drop you quickly enough.'
Lanice waved a graceful hand clad to the wrist in an uncompromising cambric robe de nuit. ”

“ There was a pause and Lanice, although by no means bored, feared that perhaps her companion was, and quickly suggested that they return to the house called Paradise.
'No, no—I beg of you. We will never be in so strange a place again—never so far removed from all the world. And I may never again have a live pixie for a companion.'
He settled himself rather obstinately on his stone. The conversation drifted to the tin mines of Cornwall and the Phoenicians and how they taught the Cornishmen the exquisite arts of clotted cream and saffron cake. ”

“ Lanice put her slender arms over her head and laced her long fingers back of her neck. She answered this gibe seriously.
'And men—I don't know why it is that I really love men—and trust them...They have never shown any real reason why I should. Some people might think that I had been treated badly by them—but the way I feel towards them is deeper than experience.'
'I know what it is,' blazed Pauline, 'at heart you are a slave-woman—you are the true product of generations of women whom men ruled with a whip! ”

“ Think, Lanice, how many have lain among the spring flowers and wondered about death and immortality, and life and love—just as you do now. Then they have gotten up and gone home and quite forgotten—just as you will. It is like a great wind blowing by,' he said, 'first you feel it blowing upon you—and in a moment it is gone, or rather you are gone. The wind of human experience keeps on blowing. It is Godhood. It gives us in passing something of its own immutability. ”

“ Andrews had protected the furniture loomed ghostly by the washstand. The room smelled of damp plaster and of paste, slightly of tobacco, too. Lanice looked at herself questioningly in the familiar glass. Had Anthony Jones marked her face as surely as her soul? She looked tired and years older than she had ever seen herself before. ”

“ When Lanice herself drew Venus, Calypso, or Ariadne, it was with difficulty that she kept the telltale hoop from under their skirts. She arranged their hair exactly as she did her own, nor might their freer spirits escape her tight stays. ”

“ She the centre of it all, and so soon to be but one more name cut in slate for the lazy to ponder over. 'Lanice Ripley.'
What clothes she had had as a girl, and lovers enough—perhaps too many! She shut her eyes and saw herself in brown velvet that looked like a Spanish portrait, and coral earrings to her shoulders. Could see herself wipe her mouth like a greedy child, shake her earrings, and fall asleep, deep in the furs of the Russian sleigh. ”

“ They walked the park all Friday afternoon in the melting sweetness of a premature spring day. He told her how spring, to him, always was personified by a dainty lady with ruffled skirts, silk mits, and flowered bonnet. Instantly before Lanice's eyes came the picture of a gay hoyden with bare, muddy feet, draggled petticoats, tousled hair, roguish eyes, beguiling but slightly vulgar voice. She tried to tell Augustus of this muddy primavera, but the idea vaguely hurt him and he began to protest that none of her own qualities more greatly engaged him than her exquisite tidiness. ”

“ Now and then in Philadelphia or New York, and sometimes nearer home, one of these fine ladies would catch fire. The yards and yards of material spread upon the hoops burned like tinder. The lady was instantly enveloped in a rising curtain of fire, and no adoring elegant beau in plaid waistcoat and pantaloons could save her. Lanice knew that once your skirt brushed across the lighted hearth you were doomed to die cruelly. ”

“ She had never smirked at Anthony Jones, except on the first day.
'Lanice, it is so warm. If I spread my ulster upon this bench may we not sit for a little in the sunshine? If you are cold...'
'If I am cold I'll fasten up my cloak. Oh, you can smell Spring to-day, although it is months away! Oh, delicious!'
'I think,' said Augustus cunningly, 'Spring keeps her handkerchiefs in sachet. That is why the air is so sweet.'
Lanice had not thought about Spring and her handkerchiefs. Perhaps Spring merely snuffled.
'It is not to tell you of Spring, ma'am, that I am come to New York.'
'I know. ”

“ Lanice in her turn studied him slyly. The sunlight gilded Mr. Jones, and she noticed how it coarsened the skin of his face and showed every pore on his nose. It gilded his hair, too, which was like dark, half-pulled molasses. The two inches of beard before either ear was rough and metallic in comparison. Towards the eyes beyond the sweep of the razor was a delicate fruit-like down, almost white. This carnal discovery shocked her, and she blushed at her own powers of observation. Surely no woman before had ever examined a man with such morbid care. ”

“ Lanice preferred to take it as a statement.
'Indeed,' she murmured, 'and where now is—where now is she?'
'Back here in England again, poor soul.'
She thought to herself cleverly, 'In a minute I will ask him where Anthony himself is.'
'Professor Ripley,' she began abruptly, 'may there not be something—oh, just a little truth in Captain Jones's indelicate remarks? I mean, isn't there such a thing as too great a purity even for women? After all, we are not merely souls.'
He laughed approvingly. 'You are, as always, almost incredibly right. ”

“ Then he found Lanice, white and heavy-eyed, huddled in her furs as an owl huddles in his feathers, holding the black cat in her lap. The great moon on the snow made a new and colder day. The shadow of trees lay like black lace. Mr. Jones drove with his left hand; with his right arm he clasped the long, delicate body of the sleeping girl. He hoped she would not be too hard to forget; he hoped he could some time forgive himself for his treatment of her. Nothing hurts for long, thank God. ”

“ Lanice...you once let me call you that...tell me this, will you be satisfied to go on, always looking back towards a love—I suppose you'd call it—that's gone, never expecting anything from the future?'
She cast down her eyes, partly because she was afraid that he might read there the fact that what he supposed she called love was indeed gone. It hurt her because the pain of the memory was now almost a pleasure. She sat calm and collected close beside Sears Ripley and could hardly remember how such proximity to Mr. Jones had made her heart race within her breast. ”

“ I could never speak so to you, my angel. Come. Let me protect you in the future from the lusts common to my own sex, protect you from a certain weakness one might expect from your mother's child. Lanice, I will care for you. No temptation or need ever will come near you. We will carry this to God together, on our knees, strength for us both.'
'No.'
'Tell me who it was you loved; I demand it.'
'You can't demand, Augustus. But it was...' her quickened breathing choked her words, but her lips formed the name of Anthony Jones. ”

“ To all who had met Captain Jones in European garb and in the daily walks of life, his appearance on the rostrum was sensational. Lanice could not believe that this young man, who entered, swathed in white and banded with gold, aloof, speaking with the dignity and beauty of a prophet, could ever seem ill at ease or boyish. Now it was possible that he was a leader among savage men and that his courage, justice, and intelligence had taught them to respect the English nation. His face looked ruddy beneath the drooping white headgear bound about by rolls of camels' hair. ”

“ Lanice felt slightly dizzy and sat upon the edge of the broad bed. 'Is there time for me to get to Southampton by noon?'
'Indeed, yes. One gentleman has left for there already—a big ship sailed early.' it would not be the Lux Benigna. She would not go out for three more days.
With a senseless childish cunning Lanice asked—'Is his name—ah, Pontifex—quite a large family—called Pontifex? Red face and white whiskers?'
'Indeed, they must have lodged at the George. There are always a certain number for the George. They who don't know Winchester. ”

“ You simply have a low feminine desire to force him to propose so that you may'—Pauline waved her rusty arm in imitation of Lanice's graceful genture—'turn him down, and say with a shrug you can get a better one.'
'No,' said Lanice with a sudden angry defiance, 'there is no better...' She stopped, surprised that she had said so much. 'I think he is the best man in the world. ”

“ Then the red drawing-room, and gentle, tired little Mrs. Tennyson rising nervously from her sofa. A soft grey gown, a soft, beseeching, wedge-like face, a woman who would give her life to protect the great man entrusted to her keeping, the woman who did more than any one else to build up the vast legend of his name. The two women fluttered towards each other. Lanice managed a few comments on the trip from Yarmouth Pier, a remark or two about the luxuriant verdure of the island. ”

“ So completely did she come under the spell of this new art she did not leave the inn for five days, and ate and slept but little. She was dark about the eyes, her face white, drawn, and luminous. The kindly landlady was afraid she was ill. Miss Champion came in person. From her bedroom window Lanice indifferently watched a meagre, hatchet-faced old lady, who twitched her bonnet strings and ruffled her black silks as a turkey cock rustles his burnished feathers.
She never again found the sheep path through the furze, and she never again wrote a story of the Salem witches. ”

“ Lanice, unassisted, found a small chamber where she could divest herself of her hoops and crinoline and pull on the odd straight garments. There were at least five layers, and they had been so folded, presumably by Miss Bigley and Mr. Jones's Hindoo servant that she could not mistake the order. Saffron first, then ivory, then cherry stuck all over with gold stars. White gauze next, and over it a reptilian coppery thing that suddenly gave out cold blue lights. Everything was exquisitely made, sewn with gold and seed pearls. ”

“ Lanice had recently gone to see Louisa and the two girls crept to the attic for privacy and seated on the rag-bag exchanged ambitions.
'I must make money. I will teach, act, write stories. Lanice, I'll even sell my one beauty, my hair. ”

“ Pauline hastily outlined a plan. Lanice was to live with the Poggys and study with any half-dozen artists of established reputations who conducted informal classes. Little by little she was to realize that in her artistic career she worked, not merely for Art, but for the Freedom of Women. She should serve Minerva, not Apollo. She would, during her training, attend many lectures, conversations, meetings, unions, and institutes with Pauline. Social life, except an occasional soirée at the home of a Harvard professor, was forbidden. For all these good things Lanice was not to pay a cent. ”

“ I cannot see how a ladylike girl like yourself can want the whole world gaping at her name. And then, Lanice, this is a heavy book for you to have written. Why were you not content with those pretty romances you used to write? I must confess that that seems to me much more in keeping with your character—and gender. Why, people are saying you were actually sarcastic about the Tennysons.'
'Oh, no, I loved the Tennysons—but he frightened me so much.'
Lydia, who had accompanied her handsome young uncle to the Poggy Mansion, crossed over and kissed Lanice's sleek hair. 'It's a lovely book. ”