What gave most truly the colour of a masquerade was the unmasking. This, of course, was never general, nor at any time simultaneous, except with two or three; yet, here and there, withdrawn a little to the side of a room, or near a corner, ladies might be seen who wore no expression at all, or else looked jaded or even frostily observant of the show. Sometimes clubs of two seemed to form temporarily, the members unmasking to each other, exhibiting their real faces in confidence, and joining in criticism of the maskers about them. At such times, if a third lady approached, the two would immediately resume their masks and bob and beam; then they might seem to elect her to membership; whereupon all three would drop their masks, shout gravely, close to one another’s ears, then presently separate, masking again in facial shapings designed to picture universal love and jaunty humour.
But among the hundred merrymakers there was one of whom it could not be said that she was masked; yet, strange to tell, neither could it be said of her that she was not masked; for either she wore no mask at all or wore one always. Her face at Mrs. Cromwell’s was precisely as it was when seen anywhere else; though where it seemed most appropriately surrounded was in church.
Calm, pale, the chin uplifted a little, with the slant of the head always more toward heaven than earth, this angelic face was borne high by the straight throat and slender figure like the oriflamme upon its staff; and so it passed through the crowd of shouting women, seeming to move in a spiritual light that fell upon them and illuminated them, yet illuminated most the uplifted face that was its source. Moreover, upon the lips the exquisite promise of a smile was continuously hinted; and the hint foreshadowed how fine the smile would be: how gentle, though a little martyred by life, and how bravely tolerant.
The beholder waited for this promised heavenly smile, but waited in vain. “You always think she’s just going to until you see her often enough to find she never does,” a broad-shouldered matron explained to two of her friends at Mrs. Cromwell’s. The three had formed one of the little clubs for a temporary unmasking and were lookers-on for the moment. “It’s an old worn-out kind of thing to say,” the sturdy matron continued; “but I never can resist applying it to her. Nobody can ever possibly be so good as Mrs. Leslie Braithwaite looks. I’ll even risk saying that nobody can ever possibly be so good as she seems to behave!”
“Oh, Mrs. Dodge!” one of the others exclaimed. “But isn’t behaviour the final proof? My husband says conduct is the only test of character.”
“He doesn’t know what he’s talking about,” the brusque Mrs. Dodge returned. “When we do anything noble, it’s in spite of our true character; that’s what makes it a noble thing to do. I’ve lived next door to that woman for five years, and, though I seldom exchange more than a word with her, I can’t help having her in my sight pretty often. She always looks noble and she always sounds noble. Even when she says, ‘Isn’t it a lovely day,’ she sounds noble — and, for my part, I’m sick and tired of her nobility!”
“But my husband says—”
“I don’t care what Mr. Battle says,” Mrs. Dodge interrupted. “The woman’s a nuisance!”
“To me,” said the third of the group, gravely, “that sounds almost like sacrilege. I’ve always felt that even though Mrs. Leslie Braithwaite is still quite a young woman, she’s the focus of spiritual life for this whole community. I think the people here generally look upon her as the finest inspiration we have among us.”
“I know they do,” Mrs. Dodge said, irritably. “That’s one reason I think she’s a pest. People are always trying to live up to her, and it makes cowards and hypocrites of ’em. Look at her now!” Mrs. Braithwaite had reached the hostess, who was shouting in concert with several new arrivals; but when Mrs. Braithwaite appeared, the voices of all this group were somewhat lowered (though they could not be lowered much and hope to be audible) and, what was more remarkable, Mrs. Cromwell’s expression and her manner were instantly altered perceptibly: — so were the expressions and manners of the others about her, as Mrs. Dodge vindictively pointed out.
“Look at that!” she said. “Every one of those poor geese is trying to look like her; — they feel they have to seem as noble as she is! Instinctively they’re all trying to take on her hushed sweetness. Nobody dares be natural anywhere near her.”
“But that’s because of the affection people feel for her,” Mrs. Battle explained. “Don’t you feel—”
“Affection your grandmother!” the brusque lady interrupted. “What are you talking about?”
I “Well, reverence, then. Perhaps that’s the better word for the feeling people have about her. They know how much of her life she gives to good works.
She’s at the head of—”
“Yes, she certainly is!” Mrs. Dodge agreed, bitterly. “She’s the head and front of every up-lifting movement among us. You can’t open your mail without finding benefit tickets you have to buy for some good cause she’s chairman of. She’s always the girl that passes the hat: she’s the one that makes us feel like selfish dogs if we don’t give till it hurts! She’s the star collector, all right!”
“Well, oughtn’t we to be grateful that she takes such duties upon herself?”
“Do we ever omit any of our gratitude? Why, the papers are full of it: ‘It is the sense of this committee that, except for the noble, unflagging, and self-sacrificing devotion of Mrs. Leslie Braithwaite, this fund could never have reached the generous dimensions necessary for the carrying on of this work. Therefore, be it resolved that the thanks of this entire organization’ — and so forth. And, as a matter by the way, you never hear whether she gave any of the fund herself.”
“She gives time. She gives energy. Mr. Battle says, ‘Who gives himself gives all.’ Mrs. Braithwaite gives herself.”
“Yes, she does,” Mrs. Dodge agreed. “It’s her form of recreation!”
Her two auditors stared at her incredulously, so that she could plainly see how shocked they were; but, before either of them spoke, a beautiful change in look and manner came upon them. Both of them elevated their chins a little, so that their faces slanted more toward heaven than toward earth; both of them seemed about to smile angelically, but stopped just short of smiling; a purified softness came into their eyes; and, altogether, by means of various other subtle little manifestations, the two ladies began to look noble.
Mrs. Dodge had turned her back toward the group about the hostess, but without looking round she understood what the change in her two companions portended. “Good-bye, ladies of Shalott,” she said. “The curse has come upon you!” And she moved away, just as the ennobled two stepped forward to meet Mrs. Leslie Braithwaite in her approach to them.
“Clever of me!” Mrs. Dodge thought, with some bitterness. “Getting myself the reputation of a ‘dangerous woman’!” For she understood well enough that she would do no injury to Mrs. Braithwaite in attacking her; — on the contrary, the injury would inevitably be to the assailant; and yet Mrs. Dodge could not forbear from a little boomerang practice at this shining and impervious mark. The reason, unfortunately, was personal, as most reasons are: Mrs. Dodge had come to the “tea” in an acute state of irritation that had been increasing since morning. In fact, she had begun the day with a breakfast-table argument of which Mrs. Braithwaite was the subject.
Mr. Dodge made the unfortunate admission that he had recently sent Mrs. Braithwaite a check for a hundred dollars, his subscription to the Workers’ Welfare League; and he was forced into subsequent admissions: he had no interest in the Workers’ Welfare League, and could give no reason for sending a check to it except that Mrs. Braithwaite had written him appealing for a subscription. She was sure he wouldn’t like to miss the chance to aid in so splendid a movement, she said. Now, as Mrs. Braithwaite had previously written twice to Mrs. Dodge in almost the same words, and as Mrs. Dodge had twice replied declining to make a donation, the argument (so to call it) on Mrs. Dodge’s part was a heated one. It availed her husband little to protest that he had n
ever heard of Mrs. Braithwaite’s appeals to his wife; Mrs. Dodge was too greatly incensed to be reasonable.
Later in the day she was remorseful, realizing that she had taken poor Mr. Dodge for her anvil because he was within reach, and what she really wanted to hammer wasn’t. Her remorse applied itself strictly to her husband, however, and she had none for her feeling toward the lady next door. Mrs. Dodge and her neighbour had never discovered any point of congeniality: Mrs. Braithwaite’s high serenity, which Mrs. Dodge called suavity, was of so paradoxical a smoothness that Mrs. Dodge said it “fibbed the wrong way from the start.” The uncongeniality had increased with time until it became a settled dislike, so far as Mrs. Dodge was concerned; and now, after Mrs. Leslie Braithwaite’s successful appeal to Mr. Dodge for what Mr. Dodge’s wife had refused, the dislike was rankling itself into a culmination not unlike an actual and lusty hatred.
Mrs. Dodge realized her own condition; — she knew hatred is bad for the hater; but she could not master the continuous anger within her. Fascinated, she watched Mrs. Leslie Braithwaite at the “tea”; could not help watching her, although, as the victim of this fascination admitted to herself in so many words, the sight was “poison” to her. Nor was the poison alleviated by the effect of Mrs. Braithwaite upon the other guests: everywhere the angelic presence moved about the capacious rooms it was preceded and followed by deference. And when Mrs. Braithwaite joined a woman or a group of women, Mrs. Dodge marked with a hot eye how that woman or group of women straightway hushed a little and looked noble.
XV. MRS. DODGE DECLINES TO TELL
MS. DODGE WENT home early. “I oughtn’t to have come,” she told her hostess, confidentially, in parting. “I try to be a Christian sometimes, but this is one of the days when I think Nero was right.”
“But what—”
“I may tell you — some day,” Mrs. Dodge promised, and gloomily went her way.
At dinner that evening she was grim, softening little when her husband plaintively resumed his defence. Lily inquired why her mother was of so dread a countenance.
“Me,” Mr. Dodge explained. “It began at breakfast before you were up, and it’s the old culprit, Lily.”
“I guessed that much,” Lily said, cheerfully. “I haven’t been falling in love with anybody foolish for three or four months now; and that’s the only thing I ever do to make her look like this, so I knew it must be you. What you been up to?”
“Aiding in good causes,” he answered, sighing. “She hates me for helping the Workers, Lily. Our next-door neighbour appealed to Cæsar, over your mother’s head. I’ve explained two or three hundred times that I didn’t know there’d been any previous request to her; but she hates my wicked plotting just the same.”
“No. I only hate your weakness,” Mrs. Dodge said, not relaxing her severity. “You were so eager to please that woman you couldn’t even wait to consult your wife. Her writing to you and ignoring what I’d twice written her was the rudest thing I’ve ever had done to me, and your donation puts you in the position of approving of it. She did it because she’s furious with me, and so—”
But Lily interrupted her. “Mamma!” she exclaimed. “Why, you’re talking just ridiculously! Everybody knows Mrs. Braithwaite couldn’t be ‘furious.’ Not with anybody!”
“Couldn’t she? Then why did she do such an insulting thing to me? Don’t you suppose she knows it’s insulting to show she can get a poor silly husband to do something his wife has declined to do? Is there a cattier trick in the whole cattish repertoire? She did it because she’s the slyest puss in this community and she knows I know it, and hates me for it!”
Lily stared in the blankest surprise. “Why, it just sounds like anarchy!” she cried. “I never heard you break out like that before except when you were talking about some boy I liked! When did you get this way about Mrs. Leslie Braithwaite?”
“I’ve never liked her,” Mrs. Dodge said. “Never! I’ve always suspected she was a whited sepulchre, and now I’ve got proof of it.”
“Proof? That’s quite a strong word, Lydia,” Mr. Dodge reminded her.
“Thank you!” she said. “I mean exactly what I’m saying. Mrs. Braithwaite did this thing to me out of deliberate spitefulness; and she did it because she knows what I think of her.”
“But you said you had ‘proof’ that she’s a ‘whited sepulchre,’” he said. “The word ‘proof’—”
“May we assume that it means reliable evidence reliably confirmed?” Mrs. Dodge asked, with satirical politeness. “Suppose you’ve done something disgraceful and another person happens to know you did it. Then suppose you play a nasty trick on this other person. Wouldn’t it be proof that you hate him because he knows you did the disgraceful thing?”
“I’m afraid I don’t follow you,” Mr. Dodge said, uncomfortably. “When did I ever do this disgraceful thing you’re talking about? If it’s actually disgraceful to subscribe a hundred dollars to the Workers—”
“I’m not talking of that,” his wife said. “I’ll try to put it within reach of your intellect. Suppose I know Mrs. Braithwaite to be a whited sepulchre; then if she does an insulting thing to me, isn’t that proof she’s furious with me for finding her out?”
“No,” he answered. “It might incline one to think that she resented your poor opinion of her, but it doesn’t prove anything at all.”
“Doesn’t it? You wouldn’t say so if you knew what I know!”
Lily’s eyes widened in hopeful eagerness.
“How exciting!” she cried. “Mamma, what do you know about Mrs. Braithwaite?”
“Never mind!”
“But you said—”
“I said, ‘Never mind’!”
“But I do mind!” Lily insisted. “You haven’t got any right to get a person’s interest all worked up like that and then just say, ‘Never mind’!”
“That’s all I shall say, however,” Mrs. Dodge informed her stubbornly, and kept to her word, though Lily continued to press her until the meal was over. Mr. Dodge made no effort to aid his daughter in obtaining the revelation she sought; — he appeared to be superior to the curiosity that impelled her; but this appearance of superiority may have been only an appearance: he may have foreseen that his wife would presently be a little more explicit about what she had implied against their neighbour.
In fact, Lily had no sooner gone forth upon some youthful junketing, immediately after dinner, than symptoms of forthcoming revelation were manifested. Mr. Dodge’s physician allowed him one cigar a day, and it had just begun to scent the library.
“I suppose, of course, you’re condemning me for a reckless talker,” Mrs. Dodge said. “You assume that I’m willing to hint slander against a woman with only my own injury for a basis, instead of facts.”
“On the contrary, Lydia,” he returned, mildly, “I know you wouldn’t have said what you did unless you have something serious to found it on.”
Probably she was a little mollified, but she did not show it. “So you give me that much credit?” she asked, sourly. “I imagine it’s because you’re just as curious as Lily and hope to hear what I wouldn’t tell her. Well, I’m not going to gratify your curiosity.”
“No?” He picked up a magazine from the table beside his chair, and began to turn over the pages. “Oh, very well!”
“I am going to tell you something, though,” she said. “It’s because I think you ought to be told at least part of what I know. It may be good for you.”
“For me?” he inquired, calmly, though he well understood what she was going to say next.
“Yes; you might find it wiser to consult your wife next time, even when you’re dealing with people you think are saints.”
“Why, I don’t think Mrs. Braithwaite’s a saint,” he protested. “She looks rather like one — a pretty one, too — and the general report is that she is one; but I don’t know anything more than that about her. She happens to be a neighbour; but we’ve never had the slightest intimacy with her
and her husband. We’ve never been in their house or they in ours; I bow to her when I see her and sometimes exchange a few words with her across the hedge between our two yards, usually about the weather.
I don’t think anything about her at all.”
“Then it’s time you did,” Mrs. Dodge said with prompt inconsistency.
“All right. What do you want me to think about her, Lydia?”
“Nothing!” she said, sharply. “Oh, laugh if you want to! I’ll tell you just this much: I found out something about her by pure accident; and I decided I’d never tell anybody in the world — not even you. I’m not the kind of person to wreck anybody’s life exactly; and I decided just to bury what I happened to find out. What’s more, I’d have kept it all buried if she’d had sense enough to let me alone. I wouldn’t even have told you that I know something about her.”
“It’s something really serious?”
“‘Serious’?” she said. “No, it’s not ‘serious.’ It’s ruinous.”
Mr. Dodge released a sound from his mouth. “Whee-ew!” Whistled, not spoken, it was his characteristic token that he found himself impressed. “You’ve certainly followed the right course, Lydia. Mrs. Leslie Braithwaite’s standing isn’t just a high one; it’s lofty. I shouldn’t care to be the person who blasts that statue off its pedestal; — sometimes statues crush the blasters when they fall. I’m glad you kept your information to yourself.” He paused, and then, being morally but an ordinary man, he added, “Not — not that I see any particular harm in your confiding in my discretion in such a matter.”
“Didn’t I explain I’m not confiding in your discretion?” Mrs. Dodge returned. “Lately, I don’t believe you have any. I’ve told you this much so that next time you won’t be so hasty in sending checks to women who are merely using you to annoy your wife.”
Collected Works of Booth Tarkington Page 371