The Eddy: A Novel of To-day

by Clarence Louis Cullen

  CHAPTER XI

  "American letters!" exclaimed Laura, turning the packet over eagerly."Some rainy afternoon--which means, probably, this afternoon, even ifthe sun _is_ shining smokily now--I am going to write a brief butenthusiastic essay, 'for private distribution,' on how good Americanstamps look on American letters addressed to Americans who are not inAmerica--long may she wave!" and she sorted over the just-broughtletters with fluttering fingers.

  "What a lot of America in one sentence!" said Louise, her own eyesalight at the bulgy little packet of letters from overseas. "I wish,"she added a little wistfully, "America were as near as your patriotismis genuine."

  "Don't _I_!" heartily agreed Laura. "Could anything be better calculatedto inspire patriotism in the American bosom than an occasionalinspection of Europe--and particularly an occasional residence inLondon? All Americans possessed of the steamship fare should be forcedby law to visit Europe--particularly London--at least once. Then therewould be no further trouble in getting soldiers for our army. All ofthe tourists by mandate would become so patriotic that they would_enlist_ just as soon as they got back to the United States!"

  Then they fell upon their United-States-stamped mail as if the envelopeshad contained anxiously awaited reprieves or dispensations, and for thenext quarter of an hour the only sounds in the room were the cracklingof paper and the absorbed, subdued ejaculations to which women giveutterance in perusing letters.

  The murk-modified morning sunshine of early June in London filteredwanly through the windows of their rooms at the Savoy. Very close to theconsciousness of both women was the keen recollection of glorious Junesin the United States, with over-arching skies of sapphire, unstained fordays at a stretch even by the fleeciest of golden clouds. Louise wasconfessedly lonesome. Laura, who had her London almost at her fingers'ends, was lonesome, too, but not confessedly so. It would be too much toask a seasoned Londoner from New York to admit such a departure from theelemental rule of cosmopolitanism. Laura, in London or anywhere else inEurope, was lonesome in the abstract, so to speak. Her method of givingexpression to her feeling was to comment--when no Europeans were of heraudience, of course--upon the superior comforts and joys of life in theUnited States, which, to her, meant New York almost exclusively.

  Louise shared the almost inevitable feeling of genuine lonesomeness andunanalyzable oppression which overcomes, to the point of an afflictivenostalgia, most Americans of whatever degree who find themselves for thefirst time in European capitals. They had spent their first fortnight inLondon; and Louise had only been saved from complete dejection duringthat period by the gayety--somewhat studied and reserved, but stillgayety--of Laura's troops of friends, English and American, in the citythat, for the socially unacclimated American, is the dullest and mosthopeless in all Europe. Paris, whence they had gone from London for amonth's stay, had been made endurable to Louise by her close fellowshipwith Laura in the older woman's incessant battlings with the millinersand makers of dresses. Victory had never failed eventually to perch uponLaura's banners at the termination of these conflicts; but theintervening travail had given her young companion more than enough tothink about and thus to ward off an ever-recurring depression. She didnot call it "homesickness," even to herself; for by this time she hadbecome, if not used, at least reconciled to the thought that she had noreal home.

  One of the least true maxims of all of those having perennial currencyis that which declares that "All good Americans go to Paris when theydie." Most Americans, if the truth could be tabulated, are poignantlydisappointed with Paris. It is a city where American men of a certaintype feel that they have almost a Heaven-bestowed license to "throw offresponsibility." But "the morning after" knows neither latitude norlongitude, and it is just as dismal and conducive to remorse and goodresolutions in Paris as it is in any other quarter of the irresponsibleworld. It takes an American man about a week to become thoroughlydisillusioned as to Paris. The American woman, who, like women the worldover, must preserve her sense of responsibility at all times, even inthe French capital, discovers her disappointment with and her wearinessof the over-lauded Paris in considerably less time than a week. Louisefound it unutterably tiresome, artificial, insincere, absurdlyover-praised. Now they had been back in London for three weeks, and shewas beginning to wonder when Laura would give the "pack-up signal" forthe return to New York. Whenever she circuitously led up to such asuggestion, however, Laura told her how ridiculous it would be to returnto New York in June, at the height of the London season; besides, therewere thousands upon thousands of people in London whom Laura wantedLouise to meet; and Louise (Laura would go on) must fight to overcomeher Londonphobia, because, after all, London probably would be on themap as a sort of meeting place for peripatetic folk for quite a longtime to come; whereupon, with fine feminine inconsistency, Laura wouldround upon London for its primitiveness in the supplying of ordinarycomforts, for its incurable smudginess, for the mediaeval complaisance ofits populace, and for a hundred other matters that made it a mere"widely-spraddled" hamlet in comparison with her beloved New York.

  Additionally, there had been an utter absence of the querulous note, andan unwonted tone of positive sadness, in her mother's letters thatgravely disquieted Louise. Her mother's self-revelations on paperhitherto had been characterized by a sort of acidulous recklessness; herletters to Louise while the girl was at school had been long-drawn outepistolary complaints, the pages running over with the acridness of awoman at variance not only with her world but with herself. But the halfdozen and odd letters which Louise had received from her mother sinceleaving New York had been of an entirely different character. Their tonedenoted, not the indifference which proceeds from the callousness ofsurrender, but the long-deferred awakening of a maternal instinct and amaternal conscience. They were filled with reproaches, not for others,but for herself. In them, too, Louise perceived a vein of hopelessness,as of one who has been aroused all too late to the evils and dangers ofa self-wrought environment, a self-created peril, which sorely disturbedher daughter.

  Louise's parting with her mother had been tender enough on both sides.The girl had said, simply enough, that she was going away for a while inthe hope that there would be an adjustment, a righting, of all thingsawry with her mother before her return. She felt her helplessness, sheadded, even to make herself a helpful instrument toward such anadjustment by remaining near her mother; but she hoped and believed thatbefore she came back--And Louise had been able to progress no further.Nor was there any need. Her mother, troubled even beyond the relief oftears by her daughter's words, had taken Louise in her arms and cuddledher as if she had been again a child; and her last words had been,"Everything will be changed, dear--the slate will be cleansed, and weshall start hand in hand again--before you get back. Depend upon that.It is odd, I suppose, that I am beginning to remember my duty to you asa mother before I have made a start toward seeing my duty to myself as awoman. But the two awakenings go together, Louise, I find--as you shallsee when you return." Louise had been quick to detect the impliedpromise in her mother's words; and her main reason for not beinginsistent with Laura upon an earlier return was that she wanted to giveher mother plenty of time to redeem the tacit pledge bound up in herparting words.

  Her letters from Blythe had been perfervid variations--the effort atrestraint being almost humorously visible between the lines--upon theone theme, the _leit motif_ of which was: "We are to be married: when?"The fact itself, it will be observed, was masterfully taken for granted;the time only remained to be mutually agreed upon, so it appeared toBlythe.

  It was from such a letter as this that Louise now looked up and gazedpensively at the reddish rays of smothered London sunshine flickering,with the movement of the curtains, upon the rug. Laura herself, justhaving finished a far more informative letter from Blythe, caught thepensive expression and not unnaturally associated it with the still openletter on Louise's lap.

  "Of course the man is impatient, dear," she said to Louise, weavingwithout effort
into the subject matter of the girl's reflections. "Butyou must not mind that. Being impatient--at such an interesting junctureof their poor, benighted lives, I mean--is good for them. Really, it isthe best thing that can possibly happen to them. It chastens them,teaches them the benignities, the joys of--er--abnegation andrenunciation and things. By the way, Louise," veering about withdiverting instability, "when do you really and privately mean to getrid of the man by marrying him?"

  Louise, not without an effort, shook herself out of her reverie, foldedher letter from Blythe with an odd sort of deliberation, and lookedfrankly enough at Laura.

  "It is not certain, dear," she replied, with no irresolution of tone,"that I shall ever marry him."

  Laura regarded the girl with a gaze of perfectly unaffectedstupefaction.

  "I wonder," she said, as if to herself, "if the acoustics of theseLondon rooms can be so atrocious, or if I am really becoming so old thatmy hearing already is affected? Say that again, child. It isn't possiblethat I could have heard you correctly."

  Louise was unable to repress a slight smile at the extraordinarybewilderment which was visible on Laura's face, but her tone wasdistinct enough when she repeated:

  "It is far from a certainty that I shall marry him at all, Laura."

  Laura rose from her deep chair, gathered her "getting-up gown" hastilyabout her, crossed over to where Louise was sitting, placed an arm aboutthe girl's shoulder, and gazed wonderingly into her eyes.

  "It is impossible," she said, "that you two are quarrelling across thewide Atlantic? I shall cable John Blythe this very hour! It is hisfault! It must be his fault!" and she rushed to her escritoire andpretended to fumble for her cable blanks.

  "Of course I know you haven't the least idea of doing any such a thing,"said Louise, earnestness showing through her composure. "Won't youplease stop your aimless ransacking and come over and talk with me?"

  "But," said Laura, seating herself by Louise, "I am afraid I am tooanxious to scold somebody--either you, here and now, or John Blythe, bya few stinging words sent under the sea, or--or anybody I can lay mytongue or pen to! Really, I am baffled by what you say, Louise. Ofcourse the man has asked you time and again, since we've been over here,to marry him?"

  "He scarcely writes about anything else," replied Louise, smothering asmile over Laura's intense but uninformed earnestness.

  "And don't I _know_," pursued Laura, with a mystified rapidity ofutterance, "that he made his incoherent, almost unintelligibledeclaration to you on the very day before we sailed--didn't I _see_ himas he left, treading on air, and _hear_ him emit the entranced gibberishthat customarily mounts to a man's lips at such a time? And you receivedhis declaration as if you had been timing its arrival, and you told metwo minutes after he had gone that you loved him. Then what in the wideworld is the--" Laura threw up her hands with a baffled gesture that wasalmost comic. "I confess myself completely daunted, dear. Won't youtell me what it is all about?"

  Louise regarded Laura with steady, reflective eyes.

  "You know how I appreciate your fine, generous impulsiveness, dear," shesaid to the older woman. "But you must have thought, haven't you, thatit would not be fair for me to marry John Blythe?"

  Another film of mystification appeared on Laura's widened eyes.

  "Fair?" she almost whispered in her amazement. "How do you mean--'fair'?Fair to whom--to yourself or to John?"

  "To him," said Louise. "Of course it would not be fair to him. I cannotsee how there could be two views as to that."

  Laura, arms folded, rose and lithely crossed the room several times,knitting her brow. Then she sat down again beside Louise.

  "I think I know what you mean, child," she said. "But of course you arewrong. Utterly, hopelessly, pitiably wrong. He isn't that sort of a man.You should know that, dear."

  "I don't underestimate him--far from that," said Louise. "It is justbecause he isn't that sort of a man, as you say, that I shrink from thethought of being unfair with him--of permitting him to do himself aninjustice."

  "But," said Laura, "he is not a cubbish, haphazard lad. He is a man--areal man. He knows and gauges the world. More and better than that, heknows himself. I should have difficulty in recalling the name of any manwho knows his mind better than John Blythe does his."

  "I know that, Laura," said Louise. "But his unselfishness is too fine athing to be taken advantage of. He has made his way unaided. He has hada long fight. He will never cease to mount. Why should I hamper him?"

  "Hamper him!" exclaimed Laura. "Child, how can the woman a man loveshamper him?"

  "Your partiality causes you to generalize, dear," said Louise. "Mycase--our case, if you will--is entirely different." She took a turn upand down the room and then confronted Laura calmly. "Don't you _know_what the world--_his_ world--would say if he married me?"

  Laura shrugged impatiently.

  "The 'They Sayers'!" she exclaimed. "The 'They Sayers' say this, theysay that, they say the other thing. And what does their 'They-Saying'amount to?"

  "It would amount to nothing at all in his estimation--I am only too sureof that," replied Louise. "But a man who is making his way in the worldmust even take heed of the 'They-Sayers,' as you call them. He cannotignore them. His unselfish impulse would be, not only to ignore them,but to flaunt them; and all on my account. It would, I think, be simplycontemptible for me to permit him to do that."

  Laura studied for a moment, then shook her head despairingly.

  "My dear," she said, "you are the first girl I ever knew deliberately toerect barriers between herself and the happiness that rightfully belongsto her. What, in Heaven's name, has your mother's departure from--fromrule to do with you? How has it, how could it, ever involve you, or comebetween you and the man--the big-minded man--who loves you and whom youlove? Tell me that."

  "It could not come between _us_," replied Louise. "But the world--thevery 'They-Sayers' you mention--could and would use it as a thong topunish him. And that is the one thing I could not have. I am thedaughter of my mother. I am not very experienced, but I know how theworld views these things. The world does not draw lines of demarcationwhere women are concerned. Its ostracism is a very long and heavy whip.Its condemnation does not take the least heed of mitigations. I canspeak plainly to you, dear--you are of course the only living person towhom I would say these things. But, if I were to permit John Blythe tomarry me, can you not hear the gruelling comment--comment that, while itmight not actually reach my husband's ears, he could not fail to beconscious of? They would say that he had married a girl whose motherhad been openly maintained by a man--a man in the public eye--whose wifewas living. They would go farther and say--which of course is the simpletruth--that I had lived for a time under the roof maintained by thatman. And, with such things to go upon, how could the world possiblyreach any other conclusion--granting, as you must, the knack the worldhas for leaping at conclusions--than that John Blythe, a growing man, aman destined for distinction, had made a tremendous mistake in hismarriage? Of course you understand. I have been wanting to say thesethings to you for a long time, but I could not summon the courage. Iwanted to say them to John on the day before we sailed; but I _could_not."

  Her voice broke, and she gazed out of the window to hide the tears thatstood in her eyes. Laura, so strongly moved that she deliberately forcedherself to think of inconsequentialities to keep back her tears, wrappedher arms about the girl.

  "My dear," she said, "I am not, I fear, as religious, as reverent awoman as I should be. But I do not believe that God will keep a womanlike you and a man like John Blythe apart. That would be a deviationfrom His all-discerning rule in which I simply could not believe. Idon't admit that you are right. I don't say now that you are whollywrong. But, through the very nobility of the view you take, a way shallbe found. Never doubt that, child. I know that in some ways--manyways--the world is awry enough. But I know, too, that there is notenough injustice in all the world to keep you from the arms of the manwho loves you and is beloved by
you."

  * * * * *

  There were two topics in John Blythe's letter to Laura that gave hermore than a day's material for reflection. One of them concernedLouise's mother.

  "Mrs. Treharne summoned me a few days ago, and in the evening I went tothe house on the Drive," Blythe wrote. "There seemed to be nothing inparticular as to which she wished to see me--except that she was goodenough to intimate that she had noticed my 'interest' in Louise.(Interest!'--when that very evening I'd been cursing the slow progressof the art of aviation, which made it impossible for me to fly to Londonout of hand--out of wing, I mean.) Really, Laura, I think the depressedlittle woman merely wanted to have a talk with somebody about Louise,which was why she sent for me. She looks in shocking health. If I readaright, I think she is at least at the beginning of some sort of adecline. Better not tell Louise this--just yet. There are reasons why Ithink it would be better for Louise to remain abroad with you for awhile longer. One of the reasons is this: I gather that Mrs. Treharneis pretty nigh through with Judd. She as much as told me so. I wastouched by her lack of reserve in speaking to me of this matter. Louisewas right. Her mother, as Louise prophesied to you, is undergoing themiseries of an awakening--a singularly bitter awakening in her case, Ifear. I felt and feel intensely sorry for her--she was never wrong atheart, but was caught in the eddy of circumstance.

  "She hinted, not vaguely, but quite directly, that she was upon theverge of a complete change in her environment--and the intertwinedremarks denoted that her keenly-felt humiliation in the eyes of herdaughter was at the bottom of the contemplated change, whatever it is tobe. I am very confident that it is to be a withdrawal from theprotection, if one could call it that, of Judd. It is too bad, isn't it,that this did not come just a few months earlier? But (here's abromidiom for you!) better late than never! Think what distress such awithdrawal would have spared Louise if it had happened before the childquit school!

  "But enough of if-it-had-beens. The point is that Louise, I feel verysure, has accomplished a wonderful regeneration--the regeneration of herown mother! Could there be anything more unheard-of, more marvelous,than that? But it is merely of a piece with the influence which Louisehas upon everybody. You know that badly-batted-around modern word,'uplift'? It applies actually, I think, to but one human being in theworld: Louise. I mean that everybody who comes even slightly under herinfluence experiences that sense of 'uplift.' I know that _I_ do! Andeven you, my dear Laura, even you ..."

  ("Of course the dear headlong creature is right," thought Laura when sheread this, "but isn't it hard to picture the self-contained,occasionally even austere John Blythe _raving_ so! But they're allalike. I suppose that even Alexander, Caesar, and Charlemagne privatelyraved the same way over their sweethearts!")

  "So you will see," Blythe went on in his letter, "why it is better thatLouise should remain on the other side with you until matters workthemselves out here--until, in essence, her mother completely clears herskirts of the wretched Judd entanglement; and that, I think, issomething very imminent. It will be a joy for Louise to be freely andunrestrainedly alone with her mother when she comes back. Youunderstand, of course. So stay over there for another month at least,won't you, Petrarch's Laura and the Laura of all of us?...

  "A few forenoons ago I came perilously close to getting a bit of neededexercise by throwing a man bodily out of my office--and this will seemthe more startling to you when you remember my almost lamb-likenon-aggressiveness. I think, though, I should have gone the length ofthrowing him out of the window had I not mentally visualized, in anunaccustomed access of caution, the large, rampageous red headlines inthe afternoon newspapers: 'Struggling Young (?) Lawyer Hurls FamousFinancier From Fifth Story Window,' etc., etc.

  "The man was Langdon Jesse, whom of course you know. (Sometimes I wishyou did not know so many sinister persons, but perhaps you can't helpit.) Probably you are aware that I don't like the Jesse individual. Idon't believe I am a victim of a prejudice as to him, either. He is awaxy, doughy person who makes the pursuit of women a hobby as decentermen make hobbies of golf, billiards, cigars and so on. I do not lean tothe condemnatory tone where men are concerned, but this man's record istoo besmudged and his personality too repulsive even for my amiable,non-Pharisaical (I hope) taste. I have known him in a general sort of away for a number of years, but have always been at some pains to make itclear to him that I preferred the sight of his back.

  "He lounged in upon me the other forenoon, very oily and desirous ofexhibiting to me his somewhat rhino-like brand of _savoir-faire_, and hetold me that, inasmuch as he was leaving for Europe directly, he thoughthe would ask me if I, as the guardian of Miss Treharne, would be willingthat he should extend the tourist's usual civilities and courtesies tothat young lady. Can you imagine a more imbecile question? Naturally, Iwas astonished to find that he had even met Louise, and you may holdyourself in readiness to be very severely spoken to when you returnbecause you did not inform me of it. Seriously, I am inordinately sorrythat Louise ever did meet him. Of course I gave the fellow what thereporters call 'very short shrift.' I can't remember ever having beenmore annoyed. The impudence of this loathly Eden Musee Lothario, knowing(as he certainly must have known) that I was perfectly familiar with hisrecord and character, coming to me on such a mission! He was upon thepin-point of hinting that a note of recommendation from me, submittinghim to the fair opinion of you and Louise, might enable him to offer thetwo of you certain somewhat prized civilities not easilyobtainable--when I, without the least attempt at hinting, indicated thegeneral direction of my door and gave him a view of my back.

  "I haven't the least notion as to what the fellow's actual purpose was,but if, as he claims, he really has met Louise, I am perturbed to thinkthat presently he will be in the same hemisphere with her. (I wouldinclude you in my perturbation, only I know how thoroughly well able youare to crunch such objects with a mere word, if not, indeed, a simplelifting of the eyebrows.) Of course he will not now have the temerity tocall upon you in London. But if he does exhibit such hardihood, and inany way attempts to annoy you or Louise with his 'prized civilities,'you will let me know at once, of course--by cable, if you think itnecessary. I don't know why I have permitted and am permitting myself tobe disturbed by this individual's inexplicable little machinations (hiswhole life, in business and in private, is one huge machination), but Ihave been and I am. Write me just how he contrived to meet Louise, won'tyou?"

  Laura, in reading this, felt considerable compunction over the fact thatshe had not told Blythe of Louise's unavoidable meetings with LangdonJesse and of the attentions which he had attempted to force upon her.She had not done so because she had frankly feared the possibleconsequences of Blythe's quick-blazing anger. While she would have beenwilling enough to commit Jesse to the corporeal handling of a physicallyadept man like John Blythe, she had no means of knowing in advancewhether the story of such a chastisement, if it took place, would becomepublic; and as Louise had come under her own protection very soon afterher final encounter with Jesse, Laura had felt that, as the Jesseincubus probably had been disposed of for good and all, it would bebetter not to disquiet Blythe by telling him anything about it. She knewthat Louise had not mentioned Jesse to Blythe out of a feeling of plainshame that she had been put in the way of meeting a man of his stamp.But Laura, after re-reading that part of Blythe's letter referring toJesse, found herself vaguely uneasy at the thought that even then he wason his way to London. She determined not to say anything about it toLouise. She also determined that London was going to remain large enoughfor Louise and herself and ten thousand Langdon Jesses; which,interpreted, means that she had not the remotest idea of bolting for itbecause of Jesse's impending arrival. Laura also concluded to obeyBlythe's injunction to say nothing to Louise as to her mother's changingaffairs. She longed to tell the girl of Blythe's forecasting of theapproaching dissolution of the relationship between her mother and Judd;but she had learned the time-biding lesson, and she disl
iked to arousehopes within Louise's mind that might not, after all, have fruition.Moreover, she had frequently had occasion to test Blythe's judgment, andshe had always found it sound.

  "But I wish John Blythe would take a vacation of a fortnight or so andrun over here," she caught herself meditating. "He would fit into thesituation beautifully at the present moment and in some moments that Iseem to feel approaching. But there never was a man yet who couldrecognize the psychological moment even when it paraded before hiseyes--much less grasp it by intuition."