Under favourable circumstances the blow Cora dealt him might have been physically more violent. “Good-morning,” she laughed, gayly. “I’m not bothering much about Mr. Corliss’s oil in Italy. I had a bet with Laura I could keep you from saying `I beg to differ,’ or talking about the weather for five minutes. She’ll have to pay me!”
Then, still laughing, she lowered her parasol, and with superb impudence, brushed it smartly across his face; turned on her heel, and, red with fury, joined her mother and sister, and went into the church.
The service failed to occupy her attention: she had much in her thoughts to distract her. Nevertheless, she bestowed some wonderment upon the devotion with which her brother observed each ceremonial rite. He joined in prayer with real fervour; he sang earnestly and loudly; a great appeal sounded in his changing voice; and during the sermon he sat with his eyes upon the minister in a stricken fixity. All this was so remarkable that Cora could not choose but ponder upon it, and, observing Hedrick furtively, she caught, if not a clue itself, at least a glimpse of one. She saw Laura’s clear profile becoming subtly agitated; then noticed a shimmer of Laura’s dark eye as it wandered to Hedrick and so swiftly away it seemed not to dare to remain. Cora was quick: she perceived that Laura was repressing a constant desire to laugh and that she feared to look at Hedrick lest it overwhelm her. So Laura knew what had wrought the miracle. Cora made up her mind to explore this secret passage.
When the service was over and the people were placidly buzzing their way up the aisles, Cora felt herself drawn to look across the church, and following the telepathic impulse, turned her head to encounter the gaze of Ray Vilas. He was ascending the opposite aisle, walking beside Richard Lindley. He looked less pale than usual, though his thinness was so extreme it was like emaciation; but his eyes were clear and quiet, and the look he gave her was strangely gentle. Cora frowned and turned away her head with an air of annoyance. They came near each other in the convergence at the doors; but he made no effort to address her, and, moving away through the crowd as quickly as possible, disappeared.
Valentine Corliss was disclosed in the vestibule. He reached her an instant in advance of Mr. Lindley, who had suffered himself to be impeded; and Cora quickly handed the former her parasol, lightly taking his arm. Thus the slow Richard found himself walking beside Laura in a scattered group, its detached portion consisting of his near-betrothed and Corliss; for although the dexterous pair were first to leave the church, they contrived to be passed almost at once, and, assuming the position of trailers, lagged far behind on the homeward way.
Laura and Richard walked in the unmitigated glare of the sun; he had taken her black umbrella and conscientiously held it aloft, but over nobody. They walked in silence: they were quiet people, both of them; and Richard, not “talkative” under any circumstances, never had anything whatever to say to Laura Madison. He had known her for many years, ever since her childhood; seldom indeed formulating or expressing a definite thought about her, though sometimes it was vaguely of his consciousness that she played the piano nicely, and even then her music had taken its place as but a colour of Cora’s background. For to him, as to every one else (including Laura), Laura was in nothing her sister’s competitor. She was a neutral-tinted figure, taken-for-granted, obscured, and so near being nobody at all, that, as Richard Lindley walked beside her this morning, he glanced back at the lagging couple and uttered a long and almost sonorous sigh, which he would have been ashamed for anybody to hear; and then actually proceeded on his way without the slightest realization that anybody had heard it.
She understood. And she did not disturb the trance; she did nothing to make him observe that she was there. She walked on with head, shoulders, and back scorching in the fierce sun, and allowed him to continue shading the pavement before them with her umbrella. When they reached the house she gently took the umbrella from him and thanked him; and he mechanically raised his hat.
They had walked more than a mile together; he had not spoken a word, and he did not even know it.
CHAPTER TEN
DINNER ON SUNDAY, the most elaborate feast of the week for the Madisons, was always set for one o’clock in the afternoon, and sometimes began before two, but not to-day: the escorts of both daughters remained, and a change of costume by Cora occasioned a long postponement. Justice demands the admission that her reappearance in a glamour of lilac was reward for the delay; nothing more ravishing was ever seen, she was warrantably informed by the quicker of the two guests, in a moment’s whispered tete-a-tete across the banisters as she descended. Another wait followed while she prettily arranged upon the table some dozens of asters from a small garden-bed, tilled, planted, and tended by Laura. Meanwhile, Mrs. Madison constantly turned the other cheek to the cook. Laura assisted in the pacification; Hedrick froze the ice-cream to an impenetrable solidity; and the nominal head of the family sat upon the front porch with the two young men, and wiped his wrists and rambled politically till they were summoned to the dining-room.
Cora did the talking for the table. She was in high spirits; no trace remained of a haggard night: there was a bloom upon her — she was radiant. Her gayety may have had some inspiration in her daring, for round her throat she wore a miraculously slender chain of gold and enamel, with a pendant of minute pale sapphires scrolled about a rather large and very white diamond. Laura started when she saw it, and involuntarily threw a glance almost of terror at Richard Lindley. But that melancholy and absent-minded gentleman observed neither the glance nor the jewel. He saw Cora’s eyes, when they were vouchsafed to his vision, and when they were not he apparently saw nothing at all.
With the general exodus from the table, Cora asked Laura to come to the piano and play, a request which brought a snort from Hedrick, who was taken off his guard. Catching Laura’s eye, he applied a handkerchief with renewed presence of mind, affecting to have sneezed, and stared searchingly over it at Corliss. He perceived that the man remained unmoved, evidently already informed that it was Laura who was the musician. Cora must be going it pretty fast this time: such was the form of her brother’s deduction.
When Laura opened the piano, Richard had taken a seat beside Cora, and Corliss stood leaning in the doorway. The player lost herself in a wandering medley, echoes from “Boheme” and “Pagliacci”; then drifted into improvisation and played her heart into it magnificently — a heart released to happiness. The still air of the room filled with wonderful, golden sound: a song like the song of a mother flying from earth to a child in the stars, a torrential tenderness, unpent and glorying in freedom. The flooding, triumphant chords rose, crashed — stopped with a shattering abruptness. Laura’s hands fell to her sides, then were raised to her glowing face and concealed it for a moment. She shivered; a quick, deep sigh heaved her breast; and she came back to herself like a prisoner leaving a window at the warden’s voice.
She turned. Cora and Corliss had left the room. Richard was sitting beside a vacant chair, staring helplessly at the open door.
If he had been vaguely conscious of Laura’s playing, which is possible, certainly he was unaware that it had ceased.
“The others have gone out to the porch,” she said composedly, and rose. “Shan’t we join them?”
“What?” he returned, blankly. “I beg your pardon — —”
“Let’s go out on the porch with the others.”
“No, I — —” He got to his feet confusedly. “I was thinking —— I believe I’d best be going home.”
“Not `best,’ I think,” she said. “Not even better!”
“I don’t see,” he said, his perplexity only increased.
“Mr. Corliss would,” she retorted quickly. “Come on: we’ll go and sit with them.” And she compelled his obedience by preceding him with such a confident assumption that he would follow that he did.
The fugitive pair were not upon the porch, however; they were discovered in the shade of a tree behind the house, seated upon a rug, and occupied in a conversat
ion which would not have disturbed a sick-room. The pursuers came upon them, boldly sat beside them; and Laura began to talk with unwonted fluency to Corliss, but within five minutes found herself alone with Richard Lindley upon the rug. Cora had promised to show Mr. Corliss an “old print” in the library — so Cora said.
Lindley gave the remaining lady a desolate and faintly reproachful look. He was kind, but he was a man; and Laura saw that this last abandonment was being attributed in part to her.
She reddened, and, being not an angel, observed with crispness: “Certainly. You’re quite right: it’s my fault!”
“What did you say?” he asked vacantly.
She looked at him rather fixedly; his own gaze had returned to the angle of the house beyond which the other couple had just disappeared. “I said,” she answered, slowly, “I thought it wouldn’t rain this, afternoon.”
His wistful eyes absently swept the serene sky which had been cloudless for several days. “No, I suppose not,” he murmured.
“Richard,” she said with a little sharpness, “will you please listen to me for a moment?”
“Oh — what?” He was like a diver coming up out of deep water. “What did you say?” He laughed apologetically. “Wasn’t I listening? I beg your pardon. What is it, Laura?”
“Why do you let Mr. Corliss take Cora away from you like that?” she asked gravely.
“He doesn’t,” the young man returned with a rueful shake of the head. “Don’t you see? It’s Cora that goes.”
“Why do you let her, then?”
He sighed. “I don’t seem to be able to keep up with Cora, especially when she’s punishing me. I couldn’t do something she asked me to, last night — —”
“Invest with Mr. Corliss?” asked Laura quickly.
“Yes. It seemed to trouble her that I couldn’t. She’s convinced it’s a good thing: she thinks it would make a great fortune for us — —”
“`Us’?” repeated Laura gently. “You mean for you and her? When you’re — —”
“When we’re married. Yes,” he said thoughtfully, “that’s the way she stated it. She wanted me to put in all I have — —”
“Don’t do it!” said Laura decidedly.
He glanced at her with sharp inquiry. “Do you mean you would distrust Mr. Corliss?”
“I wasn’t thinking of that: I don’t know whether I’d trust him or not — I think I wouldn’t; there’s something veiled about him, and I don’t believe he is an easy man to know. What I meant was that I don’t believe it would really be a good thing for you with Cora.”
“It would please her, of course — thinking I deferred so much to her judgment.”
“Don’t do it!” she said again, impulsively.
“I don’t see how I can,” he returned sorrowfully.
“It’s my work for all the years since I got out of college, and if I lost it I’d have to begin all over again. It would mean postponing everything. Cora isn’t a girl you can ask to share a little salary, and if it were a question of years, perhaps — perhaps Cora might not feel she could wait for me, you see.”
He made this explanation with plaintive and boyish sincerity, hesitatingly, and as if pleading a cause. And Laura, after a long look at him, turned away, and in her eyes were actual tears of compassion for the incredible simpleton.
“I see,” she said. “Perhaps she might not.”
“Of course,” he went on, “she’s fond of having nice things, and she thinks this is a great chance for us to be millionaires; and then, too, I think she may feel that it would please Mr. Corliss and help to save him from disappointment. She seems to have taken a great fancy to him.”
Laura glanced at him, but did not speak.
“He is attractive,” continued Richard feebly. “I think he has a great deal of what people call `magnetism’: he’s the kind of man who somehow makes you want to do what he wants you to. He seems a manly, straightforward sort, too — so far as one can tell — and when he came to me with his scheme I was strongly inclined to go into it. But it is too big a gamble, and I can’t, though I was sorry to disappoint him myself. He was perfectly cheerful about it and so pleasant it made me feel small. I don’t wonder at all that Cora likes him so much. Besides, he seems to understand her.”
Laura looked very grave. “I think he does,” she said slowly.
“And then he’s `different,’” said Richard. “He’s more a `man of the world’ than most of us here: she never saw anything just like him before, and she’s seen us all her life. She likes change, of course. That’s natural,” he said gently. “Poor Vilas says she wants a man to be different every day, and if he isn’t, then she wants a different man every day.”
“You’ve rather taken Ray Vilas under your wing, haven’t you?” asked Laura.
“Oh, no,” he answered deprecatingly. “I only try to keep him with me so he’ll stay away from downtown as much as possible.”
“Does he talk much of Cora?”
“All the time. There’s no stopping him. I suppose he can’t help it, because he thinks of nothing else.”
“Isn’t that rather — rather queer for you?”
“`Queer’?” he repeated.
“No, I suppose not!” She laughed impatiently. “And probably you don’t think it’s `queer’ of you to sit here helplessly, and let another man take your place — —”
“But I don’t `let’ him, Laura,” he protested.
“No, he just does it!”
“Well,” he smiled, “you must admit my efforts to supplant him haven’t — —”
“It won’t take any effort now,” she said, rising quickly. Valentine Corliss came into their view upon the sidewalk in front, taking his departure. Seeing that they observed him, he lifted his hat to Laura and nodded a cordial good-day to Lindley. Then he went on.
Just before he reached the corner of the lot, he encountered upon the pavement a citizen of elderly and plain appearance, strolling with a grandchild. The two men met and passed, each upon his opposite way, without pausing and without salutation, and neither Richard nor Laura, whose eyes were upon the meeting, perceived that they had taken cognizance of each other. But one had asked a question and the other had answered.
Mr. Pryor spoke in a low monotone, with a rapidity as singular as the restrained but perceptible emphasis he put upon one word of his question.
“I got you in the park,” he said; and it is to be deduced that “got” was argot. “You’re not doing anything here, are you?”
“No!” answered Corliss with condensed venom, his back already to the other. He fanned himself with his hat as he went on. Mr. Pryor strolled up the street with imperturbable benevolence.
“Your coast is cleared,” said Laura, “since you wouldn’t clear it yourself.”
“Wish me luck,” said Richard as he left her.
She nodded brightly.
Before he disappeared, he looked back to her again (which profoundly surprised her) and smiled rather disconsolately, shaking his head as in prophecy of no very encouraging reception indoors. The manner of this glance recalled to Laura what his mother had once said of him. “Richard is one of those sweet, helpless men that some women adore and others despise. They fall in love with the ones that despise them.”
An ostentatious cough made her face about, being obviously designed to that effect; and she beheld her brother in the act of walking slowly across the yard with his back to her. He halted upon the border of her small garden of asters, regarded it anxiously, then spread his handkerchief upon the ground, knelt upon it, and with thoughtful care uprooted a few weeds which were beginning to sprout, and also such vagrant blades of grass as encroached upon the floral territory. He had the air of a virtuous man performing a good action which would never become known. Plainly, he thought himself in solitude and all unobserved.
It was a touching picture, pious and humble. Done into coloured glass, the kneeling boy and the asters — submerged in ardent sunshine — would h
ave appropriately enriched a cathedral: Boyhood of Saint Florus the Gardener.
Laura heartlessly turned her back, and, affecting an interest in her sleeve, very soon experienced the sensation of being stared at with some poignancy from behind. Unchanged in attitude, she unravelled an imaginary thread, whereupon the cough reached her again, shrill and loud, its insistence not lacking in pathos.
She approached him, driftingly. No sign that he was aware came from the busied boy, though he coughed again, hollowly now — a proof that he was an artist. “All right, Hedrick,” she said kindly. “I heard you the first time.”
He looked up with utter incomprehension. “I’m afraid I’ve caught cold,” he said, simply. “I got a good many weeds out before breakfast, and the ground was damp.”
Hedrick was of the New School: everything direct, real, no striving for effect, no pressure on the stroke. He did his work: you could take it or leave it.
“You mustn’t strain so, dear,” returned his sister, shaking her head. “It won’t last if you do. You see this is only the first day.”
Struck to the heart by so brutal a misconception, he put all his wrongs into one look, rose in manly dignity, picked up his handkerchief, and left her.
Her eyes followed him, not without remorse: it was an exit which would have moved the bass-violist of a theatre orchestra. Sighing, she went to her own room by way of the kitchen and the back-stairs, and, having locked her door, brought the padlocked book from its hiding-place.
“I think I should not have played as I did, an hour ago,” she wrote. “It stirs me too greatly and I am afraid it makes me inclined to self-pity afterward, and I must never let myself feel that! If I once begin to feel sorry for myself. . . . But I will not! No. You are here in the world. You exist. You are! That is the great thing to know and it must be enough for me. It is. I played to You. I played just love to you — all the yearning tenderness — all the supreme kindness I want to give you. Isn’t love really just glorified kindness? No, there is something more. . . . I feel it, though I do not know how to say it. But it was in my playing — I played it and played it. Suddenly I felt that in my playing I had shouted it from the housetops, that I had told the secret to all the world and everybody knew. I stopped, and for a moment it seemed to me that I was dying of shame. But no one understood. No one had even listened. . . . Sometimes it seems to me that I am like Cora, that I am very deeply her sister in some things. My heart goes all to You — my revelation of it, my release of it, my outlet of it is all here in these pages (except when I play as I did to-day and as I shall not play again) and perhaps the writing keeps me quiet. Cora scatters her own releasings: she is looking for the You she may never find; and perhaps the penalty for scattering is never finding. Sometimes I think the seeking has reacted and that now she seeks only what will make her feel. I hope she has not found it: I am afraid of this new man — not only for your sake, dear. I felt repelled by his glance at me the first time I saw him. I did not like it — I cannot say just why, unless that it seemed too intimate. I am afraid of him for her, which is a queer sort of feeling because she has alw — —”
Collected Works of Booth Tarkington Page 126