XVI. MRS. LESLIE BRAITHWAITE’S HUSBAND
MRS. BRAITHWAITE WAS superb; — at least, that was Mr. Dodge’s impersonal conception of her. Never before had he seen sainthood so suavely combined with a piquant beauty, nor an evening gown of dull red silk and black lace so exquisitely invested with an angelic presence. For to-night this lady looked not only noble, she looked charming; and either his wife had made a grotesque mistake or he stood before an actress unmatched in his experience. She began talking at once, in her serene and sweet contralto voice — a beautiful voice, delicately hushed and almost imperceptibly precise in its pronunciation. “It seemed to us really rather absurd, Mrs. Dodge, that you and your husband should be our next-door neighbours for so long without even having set foot in our house or we in yours. And as Mr. Dodge has lately been so generous to my poor little Workers’
Welfare League — the unhappy creatures do need help so, and the ladies of the committee were so touched by your kindness, Mr. Dodge — we thought we’d just make that an excuse to call, even thus informally and for only a few minutes. We wanted to express the thanks of the League, of course, and we thought it was about time to say we aren’t really so unneighbourly as we may have seemed — and we hope you aren’t, either!”
“No, indeed,” Mr. Dodge responded with a hasty glance of sidelong uneasiness at his wife. Her large face was red and rather dismayingly fierce as she sat stiffly in the stiffest chair in the Dodges’ white-walled, cold, and rigidly symmetrical drawing-room; but she said, “No, indeed,” too, though not so heartily as her husband did. In fact, she said it grimly; yet he was relieved, for her expression made him fear that she would say nothing at all.
“One of the things I find to regret about modern existence,” Mrs. Braithwaite continued, in her beautiful voice, “is the disappearance of neighbourliness even in a quiet suburban life like yours and ours. Of course, this is anything but a new thought, yet how concretely our two houses have illustrated it! So it did seem time, at last, to break the ice, especially as I have good reason to think that just these last few days you must have been thinking of me as quite a naughty person, Mrs. Dodge.”
Mrs. Dodge stared at her; appeared to stare not only with astounded eyes but with a slowly opening mouth. “What? What did you say?” she asked, huskily.
“I’m afraid you’ve been thinking of me as rather naughty,” the serene caller said, and her ever promised smile seemed a little more emphatically promised than it had been. “I ought to confess to you that as a collector for my poor little Workers’ League I’m terribly unscrupulous. It’s such a struggling little organization, and the need of help is so frightfully pressing, I may as well admit I haven’t any scruples at all how I get money for it. Yet, of course, I know I ought to apologize for asking Mr. Dodge to contribute to a cause that you didn’t feel particularly interested in yourself.”
“Oh!” Mrs. Dodge said, and to her husband’s consternation she added formidably: “Is that what you’re talking about!”
No disastrous effect was visible, however. Mrs. Braithwaite nodded sunnily. “I’m sure you’ll forgive me for the sake of the happiness the money brought to a pitiful little family — the father hasn’t had any work for eight months; there are four young children and one just born. If you could see their joy when—”
“I dare say!” Mrs. Dodge interrupted. “I’m glad it did some good!”
“I was sure you’d feel so.” Mrs. Braithwaite glanced gently at her host, whose face was a remarkable study of geniality in conflict with apprehension; — then her gaze returned to her hostess. “I wanted to make my peace not only for myself,” she added, “but for your husband. I’m sure you’re going to forgive him, Mrs. Dodge.”
Innocently, Mr. Dodge supposed this to be intended as a kindly effort on his behalf and in the general interests of amiability. He was surprised, therefore, and his apprehensions of an outbreak on the part of his wife were little abated, when he perceived that its effect upon her was far from placative. Her ample figure seemed to swell; she was red but grew redder; her action in breathing became not only visible but noticeable; to his appalled vision she seemed about to snort forth sparks. For several perilous moments she did not speak; — then, after compressing her lips tightly, she said: “Mr. Dodge sent you his check upon my direction, of course. Naturally, he consulted me. I told him that since you had twice solicited me for a subscription it would be best for us to send you some money and be done with it.”
Mrs. Braithwaite uttered a soothing sound as of amused relief. “That’s so much nicer,” she said. “I was afraid you might have been annoyed with both of us — with both poor Mr. Dodge and myself — but that exculpates us. I’m so very glad.” She turned to the perturbed host. “I was so afraid I’d involved you, Mr. Dodge — perhaps quite beyond forgiveness.”
“Not at all — not at all,” he said, removing his gaze with difficulty from his wife’s face. “Oh, no. Everything — everything’s been perfectly pleasant,” he floundered, and Mrs. Dodge’s expression did not reassure him that he was saying the right thing. “Perfectly — pleasant,” he repeated, feebly.
“I so hoped it would be,” Mrs. Braithwaite said. “I hoped Mrs. Dodge wouldn’t be very hard on you for aiding in such a good cause.”
“No,” he returned, nervously. “No, she — she wasn’t. She proved to be entirely — ah — amiable, of course.” And again he was dismayed by Mrs. Dodge’s expression.
“Of course,” Mrs. Braithwaite agreed, sunnily, with only the quickest and sweetest little fling of a glance at her hostess, “I was sure she’d forgive you. Well, at any rate, we’ve both made our peace with her now and established the entente cordiale, I hope.” She turned toward her husband and spoke his name gently, in the tone that is none the less a command to the obedient follower: “Leslie.” It was apparently her permission for him to prepare himself for departure; but it may also have been a signal or command for him to do something else; — Mr. Dodge noticed that it brought an oddly plaintive look into the eyes of the small and dark Braithwaite.
Throughout the brief but strained interview he had been sitting in one of the Dodges’ rigid chairs as quietly as if he had been a well-behaved little son of Mrs. Braithwaite’s, brought along to make a call upon grown people. He was slender as well as short; of a delicate, almost fragile, appearance; and in company habitually so silent, so self-obliterative that it might well have been a matter of doubt whether he was profoundly secretive or of an overwhelming timidity. But as he sat in the Dodges’ slim black chair, himself rather like that chair, with his trim, thin little black legs primly uncrossed and his small black back straight and stiff, there were suggestions that he was more secretive than timid. Under his eyes were semicircles of darkness, as if part of what he secreted might have been a recent anguish, either physical or mental. Moreover, if he had been in reality the well-trained little boy his manners during this short evening call had suggested, those semicircles under his eyes would have told of anguish so acute that the little boy had wept.
When his wife said “Leslie,” he swallowed; there came into his eyes the odd and plaintive look his host had noticed — it was the look now not of a good little boy but of a good little dog, obedient in a painful task set by the adored master — and he stood up immediately.
“We really must be running,” his wife said, rising, too. “This was just our funny little effort to break the ice. I do hope it has, and that you’ll both come in to see us some evening. I do hope you’ll both come.” She put an almost imperceptible stress on the word “both” as she moved toward the door; then said “Leslie” again. He was still standing beside his chair.
“Ah—” he said; then paused and coughed. “I — I wonder—”
“Yes?” his host said, encouragingly.
“I — that is, I was going to say, by the way, I wonder if you happen to know of a good chauffeur, Mr. Dodge.”
At this, Mrs. Dodge’s breathing became audible as well as visible, the
re fell a moment of such silence.
“A — a chauffeur? No,” Mr. Dodge said. “No, I don’t think I do. We haven’t one ourselves; we do our own driving. A chauffeur? No. I’m afraid I don’t know of any.”
“I see,” Braithwaite returned. “I just happened to ask. We’ve — ah — lost the man we’ve had lately. He was a very good driver and we haven’t anybody to take his place.”
Mrs. Dodge spoke sepulchrally as she rose from her chair. “That’s too bad,” she said, and, to her husband’s relief, stopped there, adding nothing.
“Yes,” Braithwaite assented. “He was a very good driver indeed; but he was a college graduate and only yesterday he found another position, tutoring, and left us. He was a very good man — Dolling.”
“What?” Mr. Dodge said. “Who?”
“Dolling,” Braithwaite replied; and followed his wife to the door. “I just happened to mention his name: Dolling. I — I didn’t address you as ‘darling,’ Mr. Dodge, though I see how you might easily have thought I did. The man’s name was Dolling. I shouldn’t like you to think I’d take the liberty of calling you—”
But here he was interrupted by such an uproarious shout of laughter from his host that his final words were lost. Mr. Dodge’s laughter continued, though it was interspersed with hearty expressions of hospitality and parting cheer, until the callers had passed the outer threshold and the door had closed behind them. Then the hilarious gentleman returned from the hall to face a wife who found nothing in the world, just then, a laughing matter.
“The worst thing you did,” she assured him, “was to be so fascinated that you told her I’d been amiable to you about your sending that check — just after I said I knew all about it before you sent it and had told you to send it! That was a pleasant position to put your wife in, wasn’t it?”
“Lydia!” he shouted, still outrageous in his mirth. “Let’s forget that part of it and remember only Dolling!”
“All right,” she said, and her angry eyes flashed. “Suppose his name was Dolling. What was she talking to him about rosemary and remembrance for?”
“I don’t know, and it doesn’t seem important. The only thing I can get my mind on is your keeping to yourself so solemnly the scandalous romance of Dolling!” And becoming more respectably sober, for a time, he asked her: “Don’t you really see a little fun in it, Lydia?”
“What!” she cried. “Do you? After you saw that wretched little man of hers stand up there and recite his lesson like a trained monkey? Did you look at her while he was performing? She stood in the doorway and held the whip-lash over him till he finished! And if this idol of yours is so innocent and pure, why did she go all to pieces the way she did when she saw me that morning by the hedge?”
“Why, don’t you see?” he cried. “Of course she saw you thought she’d called the man ‘darling’! She knew you didn’t know his name was Dolling. Isn’t it plain to you yet,?”
“No!” his wife said, vehemently. “It isn’t plain to me and it never will be!”
XVII. “DOLLING”
AGAINST ALL REASON she persisted in a sinister interpretation of her lovely neighbour’s conduct; — never would Mrs. Dodge admit that Mr. Dodge had the right of the matter, and after a time she complained that she found his continued interest in it “pretty tiresome.”
“You keep bringing it up,” she said, “because you think you’ve had a wretched little triumph over me. It’s one of those things that never can be settled either way, and I don’t care to talk of it any more. If you want to occupy your spare thoughts I have a topic to offer you.”
“What topic?”
Mrs. Dodge shook her head in a certain way. “Lily.”
“Oh, dear me!” he said. “It isn’t happening again?”
She informed him that it was, indeed. Lily’s extreme affections were once more engaged. “We’re in for it!” was the mother’s preface, as she began the revelation; and, when she concluded, her husband sorrowfully agreed with her.
“It’s awful now and will be worse,” he said; and thus his “spare thoughts” became but too thoroughly occupied. In his growing anxiety over his daughter, he ceased to think of his neighbours; — the handsome chauffeur passed from his mind. Then abruptly, one day, as the wandering searchlight of a harboured ship may startlingly clarify some obscure thing upon the shore, a chance conjuncture illuminated for him most strangely the episode of Dolling.
He was lunching with a younger member of his firm in a canyon restaurant downtown, and his attention happened to become concentrated upon a debonair young man who had finished his lunch and was now engaged in affable discussion with the pretty cashier. He was one of those young men, sometimes encountered, who have not only a strong masculine beauty, but the look of talent, with both the beauty and the talent belittled by an irresponsible twinkle of the eye. Standing below the level of the cashier’s desk, which was upon a platform, there was something about him that suggested a laughing Romeo; and, in response, the cashier was evidently not unwilling to play a flippant Juliet. She tossed her head at him, tapped his cheek with a pencil, chattering eagerly; she blushed, laughed, and at last looked yearningly after him as he went away. Mr. Dodge also looked; for the young man was Dolling, once Mrs. Leslie Braithwaite’s chauffeur.
“Fine little bit of comedy, that,” the junior member of Mr. Dodge’s firm remarked, across their small table. “Talked her into giving him credit for his lunch. She’ll have to make it up out of her own pocket until he pays her. Of course, he’s done it before, and she knows him. Characteristic of that fellow; — he’s a great hand to put it over with the girls!”
“Do you know him, Williams?” Mr. Dodge asked, a little interested.
“Know him? Lord, yes! He was in my class at college till he got fired in sophomore year. Every now and then he comes to me and I have to stake him. He’s a reporter just now; but it’s always the same — whether he’s working or not, he never has any money. He can do anything: act, sing, break horses, drive an airplane, any kind of newspaper work — publishes poetry in the papers sometimes, and he’s not such a bad poet, either, at that. But he’s just one of these natural-born drifters — too good looking and too restless. He never holds a job more than a couple of months.”
“I suppose not,” Mr. Dodge said, absently. “I suppose he’s tried a good many.”
“Rather!” Williams exclaimed. “I’ve got him I don’t know how many, myself. The last time I did he was pretty well down and out, and the best I could get for him was a chauffeur’s job for a little cuss I happened to know in the brass trade — Braithwaite. Lives out your way somewhere, I think. O’Boyle took it all right; it was chauff or starve!”
“I beg your pardon. Who took what?”
“O’Boyle,” said Williams. “Charlie O’Boyle, the man we’re talking about — the chap that was just conning the cashier yonder. I was telling you he took a job as chauffeur for a family out your way in the suburbs.”
“Yes, I understood,” Mr. Dodge returned, with more gravity than Williams expected as a tribute to this casual narrative. “You said this O’Boyle became a chauffeur to some people named Braithwaite and that you obtained the position for him. I merely wondered — I suppose when you recommended this O’Boyle to Mr. Braithwaite you — ah — you mentioned his name? I mean to say: you introduced O’Boyle as O’Boyle.”
“Well, naturally,” Williams replied, surprised and a little nettled. “Why wouldn’t I? I wouldn’t expect people to take on a man for a family job like that and not tell ’em his name, would I? I don’t see what you—”
“Nothing,” Mr. Dodge said, hurriedly. “Nothing at all. It was a ridiculous question. My mind was wandering to other things, or I shouldn’t have asked it. We’d better get down to business, I suppose.”
But that was something his wandering mind refused to do; nor would it under any consideration or pressure “get down to business” during the rest of that afternoon. He went home early, and, walking from his
suburban station in the first twilight of a gray but rainless November day, arrived at his own gate just as the Braithwaites’ closed car drew up at the curb before the next house.
An elderly negro chauffeur climbed down rustily from his seat at the wheel and opened the shining door; Mrs. Braithwaite stepped gracefully down, and, with her lovely saint’s face uplifted above dark furs, she crossed the pavement, entered the low iron gateway, and walked up the wide stone path that led through the lawn to the house. On the opposite side of the street a group of impressed women stopped to stare, grateful for the favouring chance that gave them this glimpse of the great lady.
Mr. Braithwaite descended from the car and followed his wife toward the house. He did not overtake her and walk beside her; but his insignificant legs beneath his overcoat kept his small feet moving in neat short steps a little way behind her.
Meanwhile, the pausing neighbour gazed at them and his open mouth showed how he pondered. It was not upon this strange woman, a little of whose strangeness had so lately been revealed to him, that he pondered most, nor about her that he most profoundly wondered. For, strange as the woman seemed to him, far stranger seemed the little creature pattering so faithfully behind her up the walk.
In so helpless a fidelity Mr. Dodge felt something touching; and perhaps, too, he felt that men must keep men’s secrets. At all events, he made a high resolve. It would be hard on Mrs. Dodge, even unfair to her; but then and there he made up his mind that for the sake of Mrs. Leslie Braithwaite’s husband he would never tell anybody — and of all the world he would never tell Mrs. Dodge — what he had learned that day about Mrs. Leslie Braithwaite’s husband’s loyalty.
XVIII. LILY’S FRIEND ADA
INDOORS MR. DODGE too quickly found other matter to occupy his mind. Mrs. Dodge hurried down the stairs to set before him an account of a new phase in Lily’s present romance, and they began their daily discussion of their daughter’s beglamoured condition. In a way this was a strange thing for them to do, because, like many other fathers and mothers in such parental mazes, they realized that they struggled with a mystery beyond their comprehension. Lily’s condition was something about which they really knew nothing, and least of all did they guess what part her dearest girl-friend had in it.
Collected Works of Booth Tarkington Page 373