XXXII
EVERY one agreed that, on the whole, Mr. Langhope had behaved extremelywell.
He was just beginning to regain his equanimity in the matter of thewill--to perceive that, in the eyes of the public, something importantand distinguished was being done at Westmore, and that the venture,while reducing Cicely's income during her minority, might, in someincredible way, actually make for its ultimate increase. So much Mr.Langhope, always eager to take the easiest view of the inevitable, hadbegun to let fall in his confidential comments on Amherst; when hisnewly-regained balance was rudely shaken by the news of his son-in-law'smarriage.
The free expression of his anger was baffled by the fact that, even bythe farthest stretch of self-extenuating logic, he could find no one toblame for the event but himself.
"Why on earth don't you say so--don't you call me a triple-dyed fool forbringing them together?" he challenged Mrs. Ansell, as they had thematter out together in the small intimate drawing-room of her New Yorkapartment.
Mrs. Ansell, stirring her tea with a pensive hand, met the challengecomposedly.
"At present you're doing it for me," she reminded him; "and after all,I'm not so disposed to agree with you."
"Not agree with me? But you told me not to engage Miss Brent! Didn't youtell me not to engage her?"
She made a hesitating motion of assent.
"But, good Lord, how was I to help myself? No man was ever in such aquandary!" he broke off, leaping back to the other side of the argument.
"No," she said, looking up at him suddenly. "I believe that, for theonly time in your life, you were sorry then that you hadn't married me."
She held his eyes for a moment with a look of gentle malice; then helaughed, and drew forth his cigarette-case.
"Oh, come--you've inverted the formula," he said, reaching out for theenamelled match-box at his elbow. She let the pleasantry pass with aslight smile, and he went on reverting to his grievance: "Why _didn't_you want me to engage Miss Brent?"
"Oh, I don't know...some instinct."
"You won't tell me?"
"I couldn't if I tried; and now, after all----"
"After all--what?"
She reflected. "You'll have Cicely off your mind, I mean."
"Cicely off my mind?" Mr. Langhope was beginning to find his charmingfriend less consolatory than usual. After all, the most magnanimouswoman has her circuitous way of saying _I told you so_. "As if any goodgoverness couldn't have done that for me!" he grumbled.
"Ah--the present care for her. But I was looking ahead," she rejoined.
"To what--if I may ask?"
"The next few years--when Mrs. Amherst may have children of her own."
"Children of her own?" He bounded up, furious at the suggestion.
"Had it never occurred to you?"
"Hardly as a source of consolation!"
"I think a philosophic mind might find it so."
"I should really be interested to know how!"
Mrs. Ansell put down her cup, and again turned her gentle tolerant eyesupon him.
"Mr. Amherst, as a father, will take a more conservative view of hisduties. Every one agrees that, in spite of his theories, he has a goodhead for business; and whatever he does at Westmore for the advantage ofhis children will naturally be for Cicely's advantage too."
Mr. Langhope returned her gaze thoughtfully. "There's something in whatyou say," he admitted after a pause. "But it doesn't alter the factthat, with Amherst unmarried, the whole of the Westmore fortune wouldhave gone back to Cicely--where it belongs."
"Possibly. But it was so unlikely that he would remain unmarried."
"I don't see why! A man of honour would have felt bound to keep themoney for Cicely."
"But you must remember that, from Mr. Amherst's standpoint, the moneybelongs rather to Westmore than to Cicely."
"He's no better than a socialist, then!"
"Well--supposing he isn't: the birth of a son and heir will cure that."
Mr. Langhope winced, but she persisted gently: "It's really safer forCicely as it is--" and before the end of the conference he found himselfconfessing, half against his will: "Well, since he hadn't the decencyto remain single, I'm thankful he hasn't inflicted a stranger on us; andI shall never forget what Miss Brent did for my poor Bessy...."
It was the view she had wished to bring him to, and the view which, indue course, with all his accustomed grace and adaptability, he presentedto the searching gaze of a society profoundly moved by the incident ofAmherst's marriage. "Of course, if Mr. Langhope approves--" societyreluctantly murmured; and that Mr. Langhope did approve was presentlymade manifest by every outward show of consideration toward thenewly-wedded couple.
* * * * *
Amherst and Justine had been married in September; and after a holidayin Canada and the Adirondacks they returned to Hanaford for the winter.Amherst had proposed a short flight to Europe; but his wife preferred tosettle down at once to her new duties.
The announcement of her marriage had been met by Mrs. Dressel with acomment which often afterward returned to her memory. "It's splendid foryou, of course, dear, _in one way_," her friend had murmured, betweendisparagement and envy--"that is, if you can stand talking about theWestmore mill-hands all the rest of your life."
"Oh, but I couldn't--I should hate it!" Justine had energeticallyrejoined; meeting Mrs. Dressel's admonitory "Well, then?" with thelaughing assurance that _she_ meant to lead the conversation.
She knew well enough what the admonition meant. To Amherst, so longthwarted in his chosen work, the subject of Westmore was becoming an_idee fixe_; and it was natural that Hanaford should class him as a manof one topic. But Justine had guessed at his other side; a side as longthwarted, and far less articulate, which she intended to wake into life.She had felt it in him from the first, though their talks had souniformly turned on the subject which palled on Hanaford; and it hadbeen revealed to her during the silent hours among his books, when shehad grown into such close intimacy with his mind.
She did not, assuredly, mean to spend the rest of her days talking aboutthe Westmore mill-hands; but in the arrogance of her joy she wished tobegin her married life in the setting of its habitual duties, and toachieve the victory of evoking the secret unsuspected Amherst out of thepreoccupied business man chained to his task. Dull lovers might have tocall on romantic scenes to wake romantic feelings; but Justine'sglancing imagination leapt to the challenge of extracting poetry fromthe prose of routine.
And this was precisely the triumph that the first months brought her. Tomortal eye, Amherst and Justine seemed to be living at Hanaford: inreality they were voyaging on unmapped seas of adventure. The seas werelimitless, and studded with happy islands: every fresh discovery theymade about each other, every new agreement of ideas and feelings,offered itself to these intrepid explorers as a friendly coast wherethey might beach their keel and take their bearings. Thus, in thethronging hum of metaphor, Justine sometimes pictured their relation;seeing it, again, as a journey through crowded populous cities, whereevery face she met was Amherst's; or, contrarily, as a multiplication ofpoints of perception, so that one became, for the world's contact, asurface so multitudinously alive that the old myth of hearing the grassgrow and walking the rainbow explained itself as the heightening ofpersonality to the utmost pitch of sympathy.
In reality, the work at Westmore became an almost necessary sedativeafter these flights into the blue. She felt sometimes that they wouldhave been bankrupted of sensations if daily hours of drudgery had notprovided a reservoir in which fresh powers of enjoyment could slowlygather. And their duties had the rarer quality of constituting,precisely, the deepest, finest bond between them, the clarifying elementwhich saved their happiness from stagnation, and kept it in the strongmid-current of human feeling.
It was this element in their affection which, in the last days ofNovember, was unexpectedly put on trial. Mr. Langhope, since his returnfrom his annual visit t
o Europe, showed signs of diminishing strengthand elasticity. He had had to give up his nightly dinner parties, todesert his stall at the Opera: to take, in short, as he plaintively putit, his social pleasures homoeopathically. Certain of his friendsexplained the change by saying that he had never been "quite the same"since his daughter's death; while others found its determining cause inthe shock of Amherst's second marriage. But this insinuation Mr.Langhope in due time discredited by writing to ask the Amhersts if theywould not pity his loneliness and spend the winter in town with him. Theproposal came in a letter to Justine, which she handed to her husbandone afternoon on his return from the mills.
She sat behind the tea-table in the Westmore drawing-room, now at lasttransformed, not into Mrs. Dressel's vision of "something lovely inLouis Seize," but into a warm yet sober setting for books, for scatteredflowers, for deep chairs and shaded lamps in pleasant nearness to eachother.
Amherst raised his eyes from the letter, thinking as he did so how wellher bright head, with its flame-like play of meanings, fitted into thebackground she had made for it. Still unobservant of external details,he was beginning to feel a vague well-being of the eye wherever hertouch had passed.
"Well, we must do it," he said simply.
"Oh, must we?" she murmured, holding out his cup.
He smiled at her note of dejection. "Unnatural woman! New York _versus_Hanaford--do you really dislike it so much?"
She tried to bring a tone of consent into her voice. "I shall be veryglad to be with Cicely again--and that, of course," she reflected, "isthe reason why Mr. Langhope wants us."
"Well--if it is, it's a good reason."
"Yes. But how much shall you be with us?"
"If you say so, I'll arrange to get away for a month or two."
"Oh, no: I don't want that!" she said, with a smile that triumphed alittle. "But why should not Cicely come here?"
"If Mr. Langhope is cut off from his usual amusements, I'm afraid thatwould only make him more lonely."
"Yes, I suppose so." She put aside her untasted cup, resting her elbowson her knees, and her chin on her clasped hands, in the attitudehabitual to her in moments of inward debate.
Amherst rose and seated himself on the sofa beside her. "Dear! What isit?" he said, drawing her hands down, so that she had to turn her faceto his.
"Nothing...I don't know...a superstition. I've been so happy here!"
"Is our happiness too perishable to be transplanted?"
She smiled and answered by another question. "You don't mind doing it,then?"
Amherst hesitated. "Shall I tell you? I feel that it's a sort of ring ofPolycrates. It may buy off the jealous gods."
A faint shrinking from some importunate suggestion seemed to press hercloser to him. "Then you feel they _are_ jealous?" she breathed, in ahalf-laugh.
"I pity them if they're not!"
"Yes," she agreed, rallying to his tone. "I only had a fancy that theymight overlook such a dull place as Hanaford."
Amherst drew her to him. "Isn't it, on the contrary, in the ash-heapsthat the rag-pickers prowl?"
* * * * *
There was no disguising it: she was growing afraid of her happiness. Herhusband's analogy of the ring expressed her fear. She seemed to herselfto carry a blazing jewel on her breast--something that singled her outfor human envy and divine pursuit. She had a preposterous longing todress plainly and shabbily, to subdue her voice and gestures, to try toslip through life unnoticed; yet all the while she knew that her jewelwould shoot its rays through every disguise. And from the depths ofancient atavistic instincts came the hope that Amherst was right--thatby sacrificing their precious solitude to Mr. Langhope's conveniencethey might still deceive the gods.
* * * * *
Once pledged to her new task, Justine, as usual, espoused it withardour. It was pleasant, even among greater joys, to see her husbandagain frankly welcomed by Mr. Langhope; to see Cicely bloom intohappiness at their coming; and to overhear Mr. Langhope exclaim, in aconfidential aside to his son-in-law: "It's wonderful, the _bien-etre_that wife of yours diffuses about her!"
The element of _bien-etre_ was the only one in which Mr. Langhope coulddraw breath; and to those who kept him immersed in it he was prodigal ofdelicate attentions. The experiment, in short, was a complete success;and even Amherst's necessary weeks at Hanaford had the merit of giving afiner flavour to his brief appearances.
Of all this Justine was thinking as she drove down Fifth Avenue oneJanuary afternoon to meet her husband at the Grand Central station. Shehad tamed her happiness at last: the quality of fear had left it, and itnestled in her heart like some wild creature subdued to human ways.And, as her inward bliss became more and more a quiet habit of the mind,the longing to help and minister returned, absorbing her more deeply inher husband's work.
She dismissed the carriage at the station, and when his train hadarrived they emerged together into the cold winter twilight and turnedup Madison Avenue. These walks home from the station gave them a littlemore time to themselves than if they had driven; and there was always somuch to tell on both sides. This time the news was all good: the work atWestmore was prospering, and on Justine's side there was a more cheerfulreport of Mr. Langhope's health, and--best of all--his promise to givethem Cicely for the summer. Amherst and Justine were both anxious thatthe child should spend more time at Hanaford, that her youngassociations should begin to gather about Westmore; and Justine exultedin the fact that the suggestion had come from Mr. Langhope himself,while she and Amherst were still planning how to lead him up to it.
They reached the house while this triumph was still engaging them; andin the doorway Amherst turned to her with a smile.
"And of course--dear man!--he believes the idea is all his. There'snothing you can't make people believe, you little Jesuit!"
"I don't think there is!" she boasted, falling gaily into his tone; andthen, as the door opened, and she entered the hall, her eyes fell on ablotted envelope which lay among the letters on the table.
The parlour-maid proffered it with a word of explanation. "A gentlemanleft it for you, madam; he asked to see you, and said he'd call for theanswer in a day or two."
"Another begging letter, I suppose," said Amherst, turning into thedrawing-room, where Mr. Langhope and Cicely awaited them; and Justine,carelessly pushing the envelope into her muff, murmured "I suppose so"as she followed him.
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