Читать книгу They Stooped to Folly - Ellen Glasgow - Страница 8

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The wind whipped a spray of rain in his face, and through the scattering mist he distinguished the fine presence of Louisa Goddard in the back of the car. A handsome woman, notwithstanding her years, with stiffly waved grey hair, a high flush in her thin cheeks, and the sharpened nose that so often accompanies virginity. Why, he speculated idly as he made his way to the car, could not virginity preserve the figures of spinsters without sharpening their noses? Yet, in spite of her aquiline features, Louisa was more attractive, he admitted, than she had been as a girl. She was one of those rare women who improve with age and become active instead of apathetic as they grow older. Grey hair, which he disliked as heartily as most men, had done a great deal, he acknowledged reluctantly, for her appearance, while the lecture platform, which he disliked even more than most men, had done quite as much for her manner. Behind the footlights she had acquired the courage of an evangelist and the attitudes of a Shakespearian actress.

As he entered the car she leaned forward, and he met her lively hazel eyes behind the rimless glasses which, he had decided, were becoming as long as she did not expect him to kiss her.

"Where is Victoria?" he asked when he had taken her gloved hand. "Has anything happened?"

Louisa shook her head, and the light flickered from her glasses to the reddened tip of her nose. "She was not feeling well. She has gone home to lie down before Mary Victoria comes."

"Not well? I am sorry. She overtaxes her strength."

"Yes, she never considers herself. It is impossible to make her remember that she isn't so strong as she used to be. She has never been the same since that attack of pneumonia."

While Louisa responded, he looked at her gravely and wondered where her conversation was leading. Like so many women who have missed romantic happiness, she was extravagantly fond, he felt indulgently, of minor mysteries. With her bright flush, which had come with middle age, her lively glance, and her vivacious expression, she appeared to carry her years bravely. Beneath her small black velvet hat, with the new high crown, which she wore slightly tilted, the scalloped line of her hair gleamed like polished silver. She dressed better than Victoria did and on less money; but, then, he had long ago decided that unattached women or widows, however afflicted, always managed to dress better than matrons. Singular as it was, he had noticed that the less reason women have for keeping up an appearance, the more time and energy they lavish upon the effort. Take widow's weeds, for example. What garments, especially what bonnets, could be more fetching, more coquettish even, than the ones Mrs. Dalrymple had worn in her bereavement? Yet she had been genuinely distressed, he knew. Her heart, as she had so often assured him, was buried in Peter Dalrymple's grave. Only she had not buried her dark eyes and her amber hair behind the flowing crape of her veil. He could still see the way her widow's ruche had intensified the brightness of her hair, the velvet dusk of her eyes, and the bloom of her lips. Twelve years ago, and yet--and yet--Well, she was back in Queenborough again for the first time since the war. A little tarnished, perhaps. Not ruined, of course, like poor Aunt Agatha (we were not living in the 'seventies, thank God!), but still a trifle damaged by the unsavoury, or at least indelicate, character of her past. . . .

Sadly but firmly dismissing the subject, he turned back to Louisa, who was still occupied, he could see, with her mystery. Whatever it was, he decided after a minute, she was equally competent to discuss or dispose of it. Had it anything to do, he asked anxiously, with Victoria? Or was it merely one of those unpleasant moral dilemmas that beset the slippery paths of philanthropists? In Louisa's youth, while Marmaduke courted her with all the ardour exacted by that romantic period, Virginius had wondered at the fascination she exercised. There was, he had thought, and his mother had agreed with him, something masculine in her prominent features and her pronounced opinions upon public affairs. Thirty-one years ago, he meditated sorrowfully, neither prominent features nor pronounced opinions in women commanded admiration from the opposite sex. How much of Marmaduke's long faithfulness was owing, Mr. Littlepage had once asked himself, to that truculent temperament which keeps the artist in perpetual conflict with destiny? But in the last few years, and especially in the years since the war, he had realized that, after all, there are attractions more enduring, if less delightful, than physical charm. There is, he admitted, with all the distaste of a chivalrous mind, the pleasure afforded by an intelligent interest in life. Though he was inclined to regard any spinster as a being blighted by fate, he was obliged to acknowledge that Louisa had attained the perfect sophistication which finds social misdemeanours less exciting than the imponderable sins of psychology. He glanced at her composed features (it was a pity that the tip of her nose reddened so easily in cold weather), and from her features to her flat bosom, firmly encased, beneath her sealskin coat, in moral principle. Yes, decidedly a sterling character. A trifle dictatorial, to be sure, and frigid, no doubt, in temperament. Only by regarding Louisa as frigid in temperament could he explain her old rejection of Marmaduke, who had been a promising suitor in the 'nineties, before he lost his leg and adopted the French view of sex. Yet, in her case at least, frigidity had not, apparently, interfered with enjoyment of life. At fifty-odd (he was sure of her exact age) she was the happiest and the most industrious woman of his acquaintance. Turning suddenly, she leaned toward him with an alert birdlike movement, as if she were about to peck at a succulent morsel. While he waited patiently enough he hoped that she was not occupied with the mouldy problems of Babylon; for, though he preferred ancient history to modern, he disliked and resented the platform manner in women. Victoria, the perfect wife, reformed by inspiration alone; but Louisa, who possessed a more active mind, undertook to do so by both example and precept.

"I hope I didn't keep you waiting," she began crisply, as if she were determined to overlook anything that he had said.

"Well, a little while, but I left off working earlier than usual. I dare say I am impatient. Mary Victoria doesn't come home every day from the Balkans."

Louisa smiled. "Victoria says that Mary Victoria is the romance of your life."

"That is because Victoria forgets herself," he returned gallantly.

"Yes, that is just what I said to her. I told her also that she ought to be the one to prepare you."

"To prepare me?" From the bottom of his masculine soul he hated mysteries and disliked having them broken to him.

"Victoria was not feeling well, but the real reason she went home straight from the club was to have the blue guest room put in order."

"The blue guest room? Isn't Mary Victoria's old room big enough to held her and her Balkan decorations?"

"We thought so yesterday. But while Victoria was at the club, she talked over the telephone with Curle in New York. It seems that Mary Victoria is bringing a surprise with her. She is not alone."

"Not alone? Has she adopted a war orphan?" Though he spoke in stolid tones, he wondered if Louisa could fail to hear the fluttering sound of his heart. For the war, as he assured himself, was well over, and even in Queenborough, war orphans had diminished in public esteem. It was, of course, conceivable that Mary Victoria's orphan was not only indigent but of royal descent. Such a combination, he had heard, was far from unusual in the countries in which she had exercised her benevolence. But, even so, he was inclined to think that the blue guest room, which Victoria had recently had done over at great expense, was too good for a refugee.

Louisa raised her lashes and studied him with her sympathetic, amused, and faintly ironic expression.

"It isn't an orphan, Virginius," she answered slowly, while the lively hazel of her eyes softened and darkened, "though I confess that would have astonished me less when you consider all the thousands of them she must have held in her arms. You never," she added reproachfully, "did justice to Mary Victoria's wonderful work with her orphanage."

"If it isn't an orphan, then--well--" He looked at her imploringly. "It isn't a Russian, Louisa?" For it seemed to him that, whatever the sex or parentage of Mary Victoria's surprise, he could bear anything better than its being a Russian.

"Oh, no, Virginius." Louisa, who had a masculine sense of humour, was actually laughing. "What an imagination you have! No, it isn't any kind of orphan, my dear friend, though I am not sure that mightn't be better. It is a husband."

"A husband!" As he gasped out the word he felt that the worst he had expected would have been better than this. "A husband and a refugee?"

Louisa shook her head. Her manner was as composed as ever, and it occurred to him resentfully that she was enjoying the sensation she created. "There isn't but one, and I didn't say he was a refugee, even a left-over one. No, Mary Victoria might sympathize with refugees, but she is hardly the kind of girl to marry one."

"Tell me all." The words were swept out on a sigh of relief. "Don't break anything to me. Nothing can be so bad as suspense."

Though he could see that she was disappointed, she was too human at the core to resist his appeal. "As well as I can understand she has been interested in this young man for several years. It was all very confused over the telephone, and you can imagine what a shock it was to Victoria. But she is quite positive that Curle said it wasn't a recent affair. It seems they were married five, or maybe it was four, months ago."

"Four months ago, and she never told us a word of it!"

"I suppose there must have been what seemed to her a good reason. Anyhow, Curle says he is not at all bad-looking and seems to have a mind of his own. Mary Victoria met him first, several years ago, in a hospital. He was, Curle said, in a terrible state when she found him, though he had not apparently lost his appearance. Besides, Mary Victoria feels that she saved his life--and you can understand what that would mean to a high-minded girl."

"You haven't told me his name." Fear was crawling round his thoughts like a caterpillar on the edge of a leaf.

"Well, Victoria took that more to heart than anything else. I mean his coming from Queenborough and our never having heard of him. However, as I told her, that makes very little difference to-day when few people can afford to marry into the best families because they are all so impoverished. Blood is the last thing I'd think about, and, after all, he is so obscure that he may have descended from a Colonial governor."

"You haven't told me his name," he repeated, and there was the rasping sound of suspense in his voice.

"Welding, Martin Welding." She paused to drive it in, and then added brightly, "I am sure it has a very distinguished sound. There used to be a family of that name in the Northern Neck, and even if he doesn't belong to them--well, sound is really more important to-day than anything else, except, of course, money, which he doesn't appear to possess."

Mr. Littlepage breathed with difficulty. Was it possible, he wondered, collecting his faculties, that he was on the point of having a stroke? "I don't care about the family," he rejoined presently. "I don't care about the money--damn it! I beg your pardon, Louisa, I must have forgotten myself. But--but this is worse than anything I imagined. Mary Victoria had no right. She must have known, or at least suspected the truth--"

He broke off and choked back his words, arrested by the thought that. Louisa was ignorant, unless Victoria had told her, of poor Milly's disaster. "The truth, Virginius?"

A feeling of prostration, of inexpressible futility, rushed over him. What an unfair advantage life could take of the young, of the poor, of the generous in heart! That Mary Victoria, his own daughter, his noble, earnest, high-minded daughter, so eager to sacrifice herself in [what now appeared to him as an inaccurate and abominable phrase], world service--that Mary Victoria should have been involved in this moral catastrophe! "That is the young man I asked her to make inquiries about in Paris," he said thickly. "I know very little about him, but the little I know I dislike."

"You mean that there is something to his discredit?"

"Decidedly." He felt that mute rage would strangle him.

"I hope it is nothing about a woman," Louisa observed, with a competent air. "I hate discreditable things in connection with women."

For a moment Mr. Littlepage hesitated; then indignation triumphed over prudence. "I happen to know that he was--well, deeply interested in another young woman before he was sent to France."

"Not a girl we know."

"Well, not a girl you know."

"But a good girl?"

"That depends upon what you mean." There were moments when Louisa exasperated him.

"I mean a moral one."

"I take that for granted." He hesitated, and then added firmly, "Yes, she is a good girl."

Though he knew that Louisa had one of the kindest hearts in the world, he resented her unaffected enjoyment of picturesque scandal. "I suppose I oughtn't to have told her," his legal instinct admonished, "but I can't help it if my temper gets the better of my caution once in a blue moon." Horror had fastened upon him, and not horror alone, but an anguish of indignation and pity. He knew now that Victoria was right when she said that his daughter had been the romance of his life. In his misery he heard the beating of the rain on the closed windows of the car, and it seemed to him that it was the sound of an inward desolation which flooded his soul. Through the November dusk there flashed now and then, like a sinister warning, the headlights of a car, or the wet gleam on the rubber coat of a policeman. He had almost forgotten that Louisa was still beside him when she broke into his reverie with one of her pointed questions.

"Do you mean that he was engaged to her?"

"I couldn't mean anything less."

As she leaned toward him with an emphatic gesture, her rimless glasses dropped from her nose and he looked straight into the unsullied depths of her eyes. "Virginius, this is very serious," she said in an urgent voice.

"Yes, I suppose it is--or it would have been considered so when I was young."

"At all costs we must keep it from Mary Victoria. After all, she is my godchild and I feel that I share your responsibility."

"Perhaps she knows." He didn't mean that, not really, he told himself, but Louisa's suppressed excitement ruffled his nerves.

"Not Mary Victoria! Can you imagine her taking a man away from another woman?"

"No, I cannot. But you must remember that she has spent five years in Europe. They do things differently in Europe."

Louisa assented brightly as if she enjoyed it. "You can't go over every summer without discovering that." Holding her glasses in the tips of her fingers, she firmly replaced them on her nose. "I feel, however," she continued presently, while she straightened the platinum chain studded with seed pearls which she wore attached by a gold safety pin to her bosom, "that Mary Victoria is superior to any temptation."

With this he was in sympathetic accord. "Yes, she takes after her mother."

Louisa's face softened and flushed, as it always did when she spoke of Victoria. Even as children they had been inseparable, and marriage, which destroys so many earnest friendships, had only sealed their devotion into an indestructible bond. While most of Mr. Littlepage's intimate associations with men had gradually weakened and melted away, it seemed to him at times that Louisa had been drawn into his marriage and had become a central part of his placid life with Victoria. Though he had always admired rather than enjoyed her, he respected her talent for making herself indispensable in a crisis. At the birth of every child Louisa had sat all night, without unfastening a button, near the foot of Victoria's bed, ready, at the nurse's fateful whisper, to fetch whatever was needed or telephone for the physician. It was Louisa who had brought him the news of his first son, and it was Louisa who had murmured to him the inspiring name "Mary Victoria." She had been near at birth, and she was nearer still when death had taken, first two of his children, and then his father, whom he had worshipped, and Victoria's mother, whom he had esteemed and disliked. It was impossible to think of his children without remembering the mornings when, still erect and trim in appearance, Louisa had poured his coffee, while Victoria looked more virginal than ever beneath the sky-blue canopy over her bed. It was impossible even to recall the house of mourning without a grateful memory of Louisa's capable dealing with funerals. As she grew older, it is true, her interest in what she called "the new psychology" became tedious to his imperfect sophistication. "Poor Louisa," he had once sighed to Victoria. "If she ever falls from virtue how disappointed she will be to find that there is so little in it."

The car had reached his door, and Louisa, thrilled by the secret between them, was urging him to let her go alone to the station while he remained at home with Victoria. "Victoria needs you," she reminded him impressively. "There are things that you ought to talk over together before you see Mary Victoria. After all," she repeated in a faintly sepulchral tone, "I am her godmother, and she is almost as dear to me as she is to you."

In the beginning he had resisted; but it was useless to oppose Louisa when she had definitely made up her mind. "Perhaps you are right," he admitted at last. "I confess it has been a blow to me. Maybe I'd better get braced up a bit."

"You are very sensible, Virginius." From her manner no one would have suspected that the suggestion had come from her. "It is much better to accustom yourself to the idea before you see Mary Victoria with her husband. If I go alone to meet them, you and Victoria will have time to collect yourselves and arrange your plans. Since you have confided to me what you know of this young man, I feel more strongly than ever that you should have time for discussion."

He looked at her keenly. "Is it necessary to tell Victoria this? I spoke imprudently to you."

She looked hurt but magnanimous. "Not to me, Virginius. You could not speak imprudently to me." Then, after a thoughtful pause, she added with gentle sagacity, "No, it is not necessary to tell Victoria, but it will be natural."

"You mean I can't keep a secret?"

"I mean you can't keep that kind of secret."

"Victoria has high ideals."

"All of us have high ideals, my dear friend. There aren't any low ones."

Cool, composed, mistress of herself and her destiny, she drove on and left him gazing after her more in respect than admiration. Yes, Louisa was a brick; and if like all other bricks, whether they are composed of baked clay or valiant dust, she was deficient in charm, he could not, he decided, as he ascended the baronial steps of his house, imagine a well-regulated world that existed without her.