CHAPTER IX
Laura, her face flushed from sleep and a cheerful awakening, herburnished black hair in two great plaits that fell forward on hershoulders far below the waist of her negligee, tiptoed early nextmorning into the room, next to her own, where she had put Louise. Buther tiptoeing was a considerateness wasted. Louise was wide awake. Shehad scarcely slept at all. The shock of her experience had been heavierthan her ensuing weariness, so that, for the greater part of the night,she had lain wide-eyed, gazing into the darkness; dozing once, she hadbeen gripped by a hideous dream, in which she had stood paralyzed byterror, awaiting the approach, from opposite directions, of two giganticreptiles, wearing the faces of Judd and Jesse. Laura noticed the darkrings under the girl's feverishly bright eyes, and her heart glowed atthe thought that Louise, quite as a matter of course, had sought asylumwith her.
When the girl had arrived at her apartment on the previous night Laura,far from questioning her, had pantomimed, finger at lip, that Louise wasnot to tell her anything then; and Louise had been grateful for the finedelicacy of the remission.
Finding Louise awake, Laura, smiling to match the sunlight that streamedthrough the curtains, and exhibiting none of the curiosity or jarringglumness of manner with which a woman of less tact might easily haveintensified the misery of such a situation, sat on the edge of Louise'sbed and began to chatter as gaily as if her listener's world had beenswimming in rose.
"My dear," she said, stretching her satin-smooth arms high above herhead in an abandonment of waking enjoyment, "I feel as chirpful thismorning as a sparrow in a wistaria vine. Let's talk until we get hungry.Let's make plans and things. Plan number one: we are going abroad nextweek, instead of early in May. I can't wait for May. I need things towear at once. I am positively in rags and tatters, the Cinderella ofCentral Park West. How is that for one gorgeous plan?" It might easilyhave been thought, listening to her and studying her enthusiasm, thatshe was the girl and Louise the woman. But Louise, for all of her stillthrobbing memory of the night before, was infected with the olderwoman's unquenchable cheerfulness.
"You talk of going to Europe as if it were a run out to the Bronx inyour car, dear," she said, smiling. "And am I really to go with you? Atany rate, of course I must ask----" She had meant to say that she mustask her mother's permission; but the thought rushed to her mind that inall likelihood her mother would be only too willing to let her go. Lauradivined her thought and rushed to her aid.
"Oh, I shall do all the asking," she interposed. "That's another of myglittering specialties--asking. I'm the most immoderately successfulasker, I think, in all North America; yes, and getter, too, I verilybelieve. Really, I can't remember when I was refused anything that Iout-and-out asked for. So I'll arrange that. But with this stipulation:you'll have to ask Mr. Blythe yourself."
"Mr. Blythe?" said Louise, wonderingly. The sound of his name somehowgave her an immediate sense of uplift; but for the moment she failed tocatch Laura's meaning. "What is it that I must ask Mr. Blythe about,dear?"
Laura gazed at her with skeptical eyes.
"What is it we were talking about, Louise?" she asked, mischievously."The Relation of the Cosmic Forces to--er--Mental Healing? The Real Nubof the Suffragettes' Cause? Child, you don't really suppose that youcould gallumph off to the continent of Europe with a frivolous,irresponsible, happy-go-lucky person like me without first asking theconsent of your guardian--or, at any rate, your guardian-to-be?"
Louise's flush shone through her amused smile.
"That is true, isn't it?" she said simply. "Of course I must ask him."
"I am in a frenzy of fear, though," went on Laura, affecting anexaggerated solemnity, "that the ogre will flatly put his foot down andrefuse to let you go. I know that I should if I were he."
"Why, Laura?" asked Louise with such genuine wide-eyed innocence thatLaura laughed outright.
"Why?" she repeated in Louise's tone. "Well, I haven't the least doubtthat I should be a great deal more selfish about it than he will be.Just because a man has to be such a horridly legal, dry-as-dust creatureas a guardian, is that any particular reason why he should becomeincapable of experiencing the entirely human misery calledlonesomeness?"
Louise had no reply for that except a little gesture of deprecation thatquite failed to convince.
"How could we possibly get ready to go abroad in a week, Laura?" shecovered her confusion by asking.
"My dear," replied Laura, convincingly, "I could and would start for theStraits of Sunda inside of twenty minutes if there were any possiblereason why I should want to go there--if, for example, there happenedto be a dressmaker or milliner there whose creations I particularlyfancied. The voyage to Europe is now a mere ferry trip. You speak as ifwe were still living in the Victorian period. In those days folks 'madepreparations' to go abroad--the dear, fussy, old-fashioned creatures!Now it is like riding to Staten Island, with the exception of the sleepsand meals in between. One of the most delightful men I know goes toEurope every year with no other impedimenta than a walking stick--he isso used to a cane that he must have it for his constitutionals ondeck--and a toothbrush; he gets his changes of linen from the headsteward--I believe he knows every head steward afloat; and he is such acheerful steamer companion, because he is unhampered by luggage, that itis a delight to be his fellow voyager. Once, when I was a young woman("You are so aged and decrepit now, aren't you?" murmured Louise.) Iwent on board a steamer to wish some friends _bon voyage_. It was rathera cheerless day in New York, with overcast skies. I thought of sunnyItaly. And so I went along with them, in the clothes I was standing in,and I had the most enjoyable voyage of my life."
Thus Laura chattered on, eager to take Louise's mind off the previousnight's experience which, even without having heard any of the details,she well knew must have been a trying one. During the night Laura haddecided to start within the week on the trip to Europe which she madeevery year. The climactic turn in Louise's affairs, which had by nomeans been unexpected by Laura, had prodded her to this decision. Shehad meant to take Louise abroad with her early in May at any rate; now,however, that her young friend, whom she had come to regard with anencompassing affection, was in obvious distressing straits, an almostimmediate withdrawal of her from painful scenes would, Laura felt, be atleast an attempt at a solution. A few months abroad would enable Louiseto shake off the bravely-borne but none the less wearing depressionwhich had taken possession of her when she found herself so unexpectedlythrust into a horribly difficult situation--a situation which Laura nowblamed herself for not having actively sought to terminate before theinterposition of the incident, whatever had been its nature, which hadcaused the girl to leave the house on the Drive in the middle of thenight. And Laura, meditating these things as she lay awake, declared inher heart that Louise should never again be subjected to a renewal ofthat ordeal.
Without any questioning, Louise, after a little actual planning withLaura for the early trip abroad, told the older woman what had happenedat the house on the Drive on the previous night. She went over thedetails calmly enough, grouping Judd's brutal utterances into a fewphrases which presented the picture almost as plainly to Laura's mentalvision as if she had been actually present at what she knew must havebeen a scene sufficiently searing in its effect upon a girl yet undertwenty and fresh from school. It was only when she came to her mother'sflaccid, vacillating part in the affair that Louise's voice weakened alittle.
"She disappointed me, Laura," said Louise, feelingly. "I would not saythat to anybody else but you. But she did. I don't know just what tothink. I thought that, having returned in time to hear at least some ofthe things that were said to me, she would come with me when she saw howimpossible it was for me to stay there. I can't even guess why she didnot. That was the worst part of it--her remaining there. And now I amafraid that I did wrong in leaving her. Perhaps there was something toprevent her leaving. It may be that if I had stayed on with her for awhile longer she might have----"
Laura interrupte
d her with a gesture.
"Don't say that, Louise," she put in, earnestly. "You must not doyourself injustice. That wouldn't be fair. Your mother is one of myoldest friends; we were girls together. But right is right. Your mothershould never have permitted you to so much as set foot in that house. Iam not disloyal to her in saying that. She herself knows in her heartthat it is true. But, having been allowed to go there, you did yourpart; you played the game, as one says, without complaint; and youstayed as long as you could. You have nothing to reproach yourself for.Your mother herself, I think, will be fair enough to acknowledge that.And you are never to go back there. That, of course, is settled. Thesituation must work itself out in some other way. I feel perfectlyconfident that your mother will see it all in the right light, andbefore very long; probably while you are abroad with me. She will missyou. And it is right that she should miss you. Missing you, she willcome to a realization of what she is sacrificing for--what? That, dear,is my prediction as to the way it will all come out. But you must notthink of reproaching yourself for the step you have taken, nor evendream of retracing that step."
During the forenoon Laura telephoned Blythe, giving him an outline ofwhat had happened.
"It was inevitable, of course," was Blythe's brief comment over the'phone. "Since it had to come, I am glad that it is over with--betternow than later. May I come up to see you?"
"To see _me_--hypocrite!" Laura answered, laughing--and she could hearBlythe hastily and rather fumbling hanging up the receiver.
Blythe arrived at Laura's early in the afternoon and his arrival was asignal for Laura to profess burdensome housekeeping cares in a distantpart of the apartment.
This time Louise's feeling in Blythe's presence was not a mere vagueshyness, but genuine embarrassment. She had thought of him a great dealduring the night, particularly of that which had passed between themduring the ride in the Park. Now she flushed at the thought that she hadeven passively permitted such a thing, much less have seemed to inviteit. Her mother's position, and the stigma which, she could not but feel,that position placed upon herself, now seemed, with the humiliatingincident of the night before fresh in her mind, to forbid thecontinuation of any relationship between Blythe and herself other thanthat of guardian and ward. It was purely from a sense of considerationfor Blythe, a man who had won his way in the world in the teeth ofalmost insuperable obstacles, that Louise resolved that there must be anabridgement of their gradually growing intimacy. She had sighed inmaking that mental decision, for the relationship had been veryagreeable and--and something else which she could not quite analyze; butshe shrank from certain intuitive forecastings involving Blythe'sprogress toward the goal he had set for himself, which she feared acontinuation of their closer relationship might develop.
Blythe was quick to notice her altered manner, expressed by a reservewhich, with the penetration of an alert mind, he could not but see wasstudied. He was puzzled by it; but he attributed it, after a moment ofrapid pondering, to the effect of the shock from which he knew she muststill be suffering. Nevertheless he was conscious of a sudden depressionwhich for a while he found it difficult to throw off.
Louise spared him the difficulty of making the first adversion to thatwhich she knew was uppermost in his mind--her course, that is, now thatshe had voluntarily, but under the press of circumstance, detachedherself from an impossible environment. More guardedly than she hadrelated the incident to Laura, Louise told him of the affair; but he wasmore than able to fill in the grisly details.
"What I cannot understand," she said, not in any tone of reproach, butearnestly enough, "is the fact that I was not told, particularly after Ileft school, that I was so intolerably indebted to--to that man. Myimpression always was so different. I never doubted that my father wasproviding for me. I was given to understand that when I was a younggirl, and I never thought anything different. It would have beendifficult, of course I know, to tell me any such a thing while I was atschool; but I can't help but believe that I should have been told when Iwent to live in that house. I doubt if I could have stayed there had Iknown, even to be near my mother; I should have found some other way ofmeeting her. It is unthinkable that I should be in that man's debt. Ishall not remain in his debt, at any rate, to the extent of the amountmy father sent me recently. I shall use that, at all events, to help ridmyself of such an intolerable obligation."
Blythe then explained it all to her: how her father had never ceased tomake provision for her, even after Blythe had informed him that hisremittances were being rejected; how, when he had seen her father inHonolulu, he had been instructed to deposit the remittances as a fundfor Louise's future use, and he named the amount which he was holdingfor her. Louise's eyes lighted up when she heard this.
"I shall send the entire amount to that man," she said, in precipitatedecision, "to reimburse him for what he has expended for me."
Blythe was forced to repress a smile.
"That decision does you credit, Louise," he said quietly. "But it is outof the question. The man not only would not accept the reimbursement,but, in offering it, you would simply give him another opportunity tomortify you by returning it. That is what he would do. He is very rich,and he has the porcine pride of riches. He would keenly enjoy theflourish of thrusting back at you the offered reimbursement, just enjoyas he enjoyed--I hate to say it, but I must to make mattersclear--thrusting back the quarterly remittances of your father."
"But why did you not tell me these things when my father asked you tobecome my guardian?" Louise asked him. A natural curiosity, but noreproof, marked her tone.
"Because I did not feel up to it," Blythe replied plainly enough. "Thatwould have involved telling you the whole miserable story. I could notdo that. Nor could Laura. We talked it over and we found that neither ofus was equal to so gruelling a task. It seemed better to let yougradually grasp the facts yourself. Our telling you would not havehelped matters. Moreover, so far as I was concerned, I did not feel thatI had the right to touch upon matters so intimate. It is differentnow--today. The proscription has been removed. I am now your guardian."
Louise gave a little start at his last words, and Blythe, trained inobservation, did not fail to notice the increased lustre of her wideeyes, any more than he neglected to see that she was at some pains toquell words which he felt assured would have been phrases of gladnesshad she permitted herself to utter them. Why was she thus repressing herimpulses? Blythe immediately concentrated an acute mentality upon theproblem. The answer, and the right one, came to him in a flash, as if bytelepathic revelation: he understood the reason underlying her newrestraint, which he perceived, not without pleasure, she was havingdifficulty in maintaining. It was from a keener realization of hermother's position: Blythe felt so sure of it that he smiled inwardly andwas comforted. Her mother's position was nothing to him! But how toconvince Louise of that? He made poor progress of this factor of theproblem in trying to study it while talking with Louise. He told herthat he had only been notified that morning that the court had appointedhim her guardian.
"Are you prepared to be severely disciplined?" he asked her. He felt invastly better spirits since arriving at what he felt assured was thecorrect solution as to Louise's manifestly changed manner toward him. "Irather believe I shall insist upon your permitting me to pick out yourfrocks and hats. I think I shall have you change at once to Quakergarb."
Louise could not repress a smile at that. She caught herself longing tobe on her former plane with him. But her fancied ineligibility, hersomewhat morbid consciousness that she was hedged in by circumstanceswhich she had no right even to tacitly ask him to share with her, put adamper upon her temptation to resume her former manner with him.
Blythe walked to the window and looked out over the Park for a silentmoment. Then he thrust his hand into his breast pocket, brought out aphotograph, and handed it to her.
"I came upon the picture this morning in rummaging through my safe," hesaid to her.
Louise gazed puzzledly at the photo
graph. It was that of a tall,distinguished-looking man with silvered hair and mustache, dressed inwhite linen; he was shown standing on the porch of a squat, wide,comfortable-looking bungalow, the open space in front of which was ariot of tropical verdure.
Louise glanced up at Blythe, and her eyes filled.
"You must not think it odd that I did not give it to you before this,"said Blythe, fighting a bit of a lump in his throat. "I've been spendingat least two hours every day searching for it ever since--well, eversince I met you on the train," he admitted, his cheeks tingling with theconfession.
"When was it taken? And is he so--so glorious-looking as this?" askedLouise, her enthusiasm over her father's photograph--the first she hadever seen of him, for her mother had resentfully destroyed the earlierones--overcoming her hardly-maintained restraint.
Blythe sat down beside her and told her about the picture. He had gottenit from her father upon the occasion of his visit to Honolulu nearlythree years before. Blythe had been summoned to California on some legalbusiness, and, a bit run down from over work, he had made the six-daycruise down to Honolulu, partly for recuperation and partly to go oversome affairs with George Treharne. Treharne had come from hisplantations on the Island of Maui to meet him in Honolulu. Louise satrapt for more than half an hour while Blythe answered her eagerquestions about her father. He had felt a delicacy about expanding onthat subject so long as the girl was domiciled with her mother; now,however, that Louise had been literally forced to the severance of atleast her constant propinquity to her mother, and, now, too, that he washer guardian in fact instead of in prospect, he felt at liberty to throwoff that reserve; and he keenly enjoyed the absorption with which shelistened to his account of her father, nearly every detail of which wasabsolutely new to her.
"How I should love to see him!" Louise exclaimed, sighing, when atlength Blythe rose to leave.
"I am promising myself the intense satisfaction and pleasure of takingyou to see him, Louise--some day," Blythe said, tacking on the last twowords when he caught her scarlet flush. It was not until after he hadspoken that he reflected that what he had said might easily be open toone very lucid and palpable interpretation; but that interpretation sofitted in with what he meant to encompass, all conditions being fair andequal, that he refused to stultify himself by modifying or withdrawinghis words. And Louise's beauty was heightened when she flushed in thatway, anyhow!
Laura, with the skillfully-assumed air of one who had been excessivelybusy, came in at that moment.
"Well, Mr. Ogre-Guardian, are you going to be at the pier to wish us_bon voyage_?" she asked Blythe.
Blythe stared at her. Laura stared back at him.
"Do you mean to tell me," exclaimed Laura, laughing, "that, after you'vebeen here more than a solid hour, Louise has not told you? In heaven'sname, what else could you two have been talking about?"
"Don't keep me oscillating on this--thisten-thousand-revolutions-to-the-minute fly-wheel, please, Laura," saidBlythe, blankly. "What are you talking about?"
"Then it is true that Louise hasn't told you we are going abroad nextweek?"
"Next week?" Blythe's jaw fell.
"Why, I thought surely she would have finished asking your guardianlypermission--and everything by this time," said Laura, shaking a fingerat Louise. "But I can see how it is going to be: she means to wheedle meinto asking her guardian all the terribly difficult things."
"But are you really going so--so scandalously soon?" inquired Blythe,for a moment genuinely glum. "Why, New York will seem like somemiserable tank town plunged in Stygian darkness without you and----"
"Oh, finish it!" dared Laura when he came to a sudden halt. But Blythedid not, for already his mind was grasping the fact that the plan was agood one, as Laura's plans generally were. He did not try to convincehimself that he would not miss them both sorely; Laura for her cordial,unexacting friendship and _camaraderie_ and Louise because----He knewequally well why he should miss Louise, but there was a shyness aboutthis man even in his self-communings, and so he did not go to the bottomof that in his summary reflection on the project. Laura's keen eyedetected that there was something distrait in Louise's manner withBlythe, and, wondering, she made another escape in order to permitBlythe to make his devoirs to one instead of to two. Blythe tookLouise's hands in his and gradually, by mere silent compulsion, drew heraverted eyes into a direct line with his own, which were smiling andalight with an utter frankness.
"Louise," he said, going straight to the point, "I know what is in yourmind and why you are holding me at a little more than arm's length. I amglad to say, although I am a little sorry that you do not already knowit, that you are absolutely wrong; not hopelessly wrong, because youare going to see the matter differently when you are less troubled inmind than you now are. I wish such an idea had not entered your mind. Ibelieve it would not have entered your mind had you known me better."
Louise, startled that he should have read her so clearly as his wordsdenoted, replied, with no great conviction that what she said wasexactly true:
"Does not the very fact that you seem to understand so clearly furnishthe best evidence?" But that sounded rather inconsequential to her, andshe went on flurriedly: "I don't mean just that. Perhaps I do not knowprecisely what I do mean," averting her head again in her confusion,"now that you----" and she came to a futile end.
"Now that I read you aright, you were about to say," said Blythe,smiling gravely. "Well, I am not going to be ungenerous enough totriumph over you because you have virtually admitted that you werewrong--for you have so admitted, haven't you?"
Louise remained silent, her head still averted; but her hands stillrested in Blythe's.
"Haven't you?" said Blythe; and she was conscious that his grasp uponher hands was tightening.
Blythe peered around to catch a view of her face, and he saw that shewas faintly smiling. He did not let go of her hands, nor did she appearat all eager to have him do so.
"I have an appointment for which I am already late, and I am keen tohave a look at my watch," went on Blythe, quite cheerfully, without inthe least relaxing his possession of her hands. "But of course I can'tlook at it--I can't do anything but remain here for a week, say--untilyou tell me that you are wrong."
Louise turned her natural face upon him and nodded brightly--conquered,and willing to be; there was, she noticed, an inviting little hollow inhis coat, between his left shoulder and the rise of his chest, which shevaguely imagined would be a very inviting spot upon which to rest, ifeven for a transitory moment, a tired head; Blythe was conscious of adecided response when he pressed her hands just before releasing them;and when he went out she felt that the room, somehow, had become alittle darker than it had been. She knew that he had understood, and sheappraised his fineness in telling her that she had been wrong at itstrue value; but she was not entirely convinced, and she recoiled fromthe thought of permitting him to make any sacrifice for her sake. Butshe was glad that he had divined what had been in her mind, and herheart gave a little leap when she thought that, if ever there was to beany computation of or allusion to a sacrifice, it would be on her side,and not on his; she knew now that he was above even the thought ofentertaining, much less measuring, such a consideration.
Her mother came to Laura's late in the afternoon, very downcast, veryplaintive on the subject of how terribly she already had missed Louise.Judd, with his customary morning penitence, had seen her at noon andmade his usual abject apology; and he had endured the lash of herscornful tongue with a shaky consciousness that his conduct had beenpretty outrageous even for him. He did not acknowledge how set back hewas, however, when Mrs. Treharne, a tirade over, let fall the fact thatLouise had gone to Laura's, and the additional fact that Louise, havingbeen placed under John Blythe's guardianship at her father's direction,would be very well looked after and provided for. But Judd wondered,nevertheless, just how these facts would dovetail with Langdon Jesse'ssweet scheme to have Louise relegated, under Judd's provision, to thedepre
ssing and chastening surroundings of a "five-by-eight flat."
Louise's heart went out to her mother when Mrs. Treharne, in an effusionof tears, told her how hideously lonesome the house on the Drive was andwould continue to be without her; but the girl had difficulty inmatching this with the undeniable fact that, when she told her motherthat she would be sailing for Europe within a week, Mrs. Treharne,drying her tears, offhandedly pronounced that the plan was a very wiseone and would be the best imaginable thing for Louise.
Louise, as often before, was stunned by the palpable contradictionafforded by her mother's tears over what she called her lonesomenessand, in the next moment, her dry-eyed approval of a trip that wouldplace an ocean between them. She wanted to go with Laura and she meantto go; but she was conscious of a sinking of the heart when she foundthat, far from seeking to deter her, her mother appeared not onlywilling but anxious to have her go. Mrs. Treharne's one thought, ofcourse, was that the trip would give her a breathing spell, "give her achance to think," as she futilely expressed it to herself; for her lifehad become one continuous procrastination. Louise, she considered, wouldbe "broadened by travel" and sheared of some of her "old-fashionednotions." And, while Louise was gone, she herself could "think thingsover" and block out a course. A misty, intangible idea of abandoningJudd already had crept into her mind, in her self-searching,self-contemning moments; perhaps, while Louise was across the sea, shemight be able to evolve some plan whereby----And here her musings haltedwhen she came plumb upon the thought of the surrender of luxuries thather abandonment of Judd would involve, the scrimping and saving of a"narrow, smug existence with smug, narrow people." Anyhow, Louise'sabsence from the scene would "give her time to think." That was themain point.
But Louise, who had been lonesome for her mother, now found herselflonesome in her mother's presence.
* * * * *
Judd met Langdon Jesse at the club a few nights later.
"Judd," Jesse sneered, "you are, all in all, about the most accomplisheddamned blunderer in the Western Hemisphere, aren't you?"
"That will be about all of that from you," growled Judd in reply. He hadgot out of the cotton market with, as he put it, an "unpunctured pelt,"so that he had no present fear of the vindictive machinations of theyounger man. "A civil tongue between your teeth henceforth in yourdealings with me, or we don't deal. Do you get that?"
"Oh!" said Jesse, eloquently. He surrendered the whip hand with hiscustomary deftness. "But you'll remember, I suppose," going on suavely,"that you told me that Miss Treharne was a virtual dependent of yours?"
"Well," snarled Judd, "supposing I really thought so? How about that?"
"Oh, if you really thought so, why of course that's different," saidJesse, graciously. "But you were pretty wrong, weren't you? Youseparated her from her mother on that presumption by bawling at her asif she had been a chambermaid; and all the time she was virtually, asshe is now in fact, under the guardianship of that toploftical Blythefellow; she is living with Mrs. Stedham, with whom she starts for Europein a few days, and she is more than amply provided for by her father. Inall candor, and between man and man, could you possibly have botchedthings worse than you did upon your mistaken premise?"
"You mean botched the thing so far as you are concerned, eh?" growledJudd. "Well, things were botched for you in that direction before youever started. You've been kicking around long enough to know when you'releft at the post; but you don't know it, all the same. Anyhow, count meout of your confounded woman-hunting schemes in future, understand? I'vegot enough to do to attend to my own game. Play your own hand. Butyou're butting your head against a stone wall in this one instance, letme tell you that."
"Is that so?" inquired Jesse, with no sign of perturbation ordiscouragement. "Well, to adopt your somewhat crude metaphor, I'll playthe hand out, and I'll show you the cards after I've finished. Will youwant to see them?"
"Oh, go to the devil," virtuously replied Judd.
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