Читать книгу They Stooped to Folly - Ellen Glasgow - Страница 9

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Forty years ago, the Brooke mansion, as it was respectfully called, embodied all the culture to be derived from a fortune safely invested in Northern securities. Built by old Silas Woolley, who had died in the comfort of his shirt-sleeves, the dwelling had passed to his granddaughter, Victoria Brooke. As a young husband, Mr. Littlepage had been proud of living in a house that was pointed out to visitors as "the finest example of improved Colonial." After all, "improved Colonial" may mean anything, even Victorian gloom, if one is sufficiently liberal in one's ideas. Unhappily, the malice of the years, which is so often diverted by architecture, had subdued the innocent pleasure with which Virginius had once regarded the imposing façade. Nothing, however, could impair his respect for the refined taste and unerring tact of his wife, who appeared to have inherited only her fortune and her house from her grandfather. "It is nonsense to pretend that blood is a match for money in the second generation," Mr. Littlepage mused. "Notwithstanding an ancestor in the Susan Constant, to say nothing of a Colonial governor and a British general thrown in, I am raw material when you compare me with old Silas Woolley's granddaughter."

In the spacious hall, which he never entered without the feeling that he comprised a whole invading army, he found his elder son, Duncan, a dark, morose, and inscrutable young man. In France, where he had served with ardour in the last year of the war, Duncan had lost not only his health, but all the amiable pretences which had made life supportable. Even the armistice, which had left so many relief workers unsatisfied, had come too late to save him from that singular French decadence which only the Latin mind is able to find piquant. At thirty, he was as cynical as Marmaduke, and far more depressing. For Marmaduke's cynicism, however unwholesome, preserved the Attic salt that imparts a relish to the stalest philosophy. But, after all, Marmaduke was past sixty, and at sixty it is possible to disbelieve in life and love and yet find them amusing. Though Duncan was as trying in the house as other philosophers, Mr. Littlepage preferred her nocturnal moods to the morning brightness of Curle. Even as a baby Curle had annoyed him by his inordinate zest for living. Nothing, not even his first tooth, had been able to dampen his spirits; and he had actually appeared to enjoy teething almost as much as he enjoyed a world war some twenty-odd years later.

"Have you seen your mother?" Mr. Littlepage inquired with an anxious frown.

Duncan turned on him a long sallow face, which was good-looking in a saturnine fashion. "You look as if you'd heard of Mary Victoria's final reform."

"I am very much distressed, my son."

"What did you expect? We can't have a world war every day."

"If you take that tone, Duncan, I cannot discuss it."

"I am sorry, sir." There were occasions when Duncan dropped back, whether from reverence or ridicule his father had never discovered, into the ceremonial usages of the past. "I was hoping you would look at it philosophically. After all, as Curle remarks so accurately, everything might have been worse. It might have been, considering Mary Victoria's thoroughness, a whole asylum instead of a husband."

"I cannot understand why she married him."

"Perhaps she wanted to make an honest man of him."

"I must repeat, my son, that your tone is offensive."

"Oh, I beg your pardon, Dad. I didn't mean to be offensive. I was merely trying to be cheerful."

"You needn't. God knows I get enough of that from Curle."

"Mother had had a little too much of it, I imagine, over the telephone. Poor Mother! If only she could realise that life isn't spent either in Heaven or Hell, but in the sultry isthmus of Purgatory!"

"I am sorry she took the message. Do you know what Curle told her?"

"She was too agitated to repeat it, but it seems to have been hopeful enough to depress her."

"Yes, it will go hard with her. She expected so much of Mary Victoria."

Duncan smiled in derision. "Well, she got a little more than she expected."

"All of us aren't so cynical, my son. You must remember that your mother, like most good women, is an idealist. My father used to say there is only one thing more incorrigible than an idealist, and that is a predestinarian."

"You'd think the war would have cured anybody, even those who were so unfortunate as to be left out of it."

Mr. Littlepage smiled sadly. "Well, you must try to pity rather than censure the old fogies who still believe that anything makes a difference. After all, as Marmaduke will tell you, if there were no ideals there would be nothing left for us to kill each other about."

"There's no need to tell me. You'd better tell Mother and Aunt Louisa." The children had been brought up to call Louisa "aunt."

"Well, we needn't argue about that. What we must do now is to help your mother bear a great disappointment."

This time it was Duncan who smiled, though he was, as his father said to himself, in no smiling mood. "It seems to me, sir, that the one who really needs help is this poor devil of a husband. Do you know anything of him?"

"Very little, and that little, I am sorry to say, is not to his credit. But we must try to suspend judgment."

"Well, that sounds encouraging. I didn't know Mary Victoria had so much human nature."

"Your jesting is in bad taste. Where is your mother?"

"I left her in her bedroom a few minutes ago. Poor Mother! She would find life so much more livable if she could only give up being happy."

"She couldn't, Duncan, even if she wanted to. It is more than her religion, it is her very nature to keep hoping for the best and trying to make the world better. Think of all she must have suffered with you in the army, Curle in a training camp, and Mary Victoria in the Balkans. That must have tried not only her faith but her cheerfulness."

"Yes, I suppose that turned her optimism into a nervous habit. I sometimes think the muscles of her face have never relaxed since the war."

"You can't blame her for that. It wasn't easy to keep smiling."

"But why the devil did you have to keep smiling? What is there so heroic in pretending the world is what it isn't. It's like the everlasting Holy Rolling of American politics. That's what makes me sick about Curle."

"Don't be too hard on your brother. The noise he makes may be only a whistling to keep up his courage."

There was a sneering note in Duncan's rejoinder. "Well, if he doesn't look out, he will whistle himself into office. He is as average as a President."

"Curle keeps up with the procession, my son, and we do not. Even though we may object to his special brand of democracy, we cannot deny that he is one of the men who are responsible for our whole march of progress."

Duncan laughed almost naturally. "Yes, I'm ready to admit that. By the way, Mother doesn't wish us to drink anything more cheering than grape juice at dinner. She hopes, for the first night, anyway, until she has had a chance to inform herself about the habits of Mary Victoria's husband, that you will follow Curle's example and turn your back when you drink."

A cloud passed without settling over Mr. Littlepage's genial features. "Well, join me in the library before dinner," he responded gloomily; and reflected that he could forgive Victoria all the good she had ever done him if only she would occasionally appear to be in the wrong.

"Thank you, sir, but it seems to me a trifle hard on the poor devil. All I can hope is that he has been prudent enough to provide against our habit of reforming everybody but ourselves."

Turning away, with the uncomfortable sensation that Duncan was more than a match for him, Mr. Littlepage ascended the wide staircase and entered the very simple and expensive bedroom he shared with Victoria. From the portrait of one of his least prudish ancestresses by Sir Peter Lely, which hung over the Adam mantelpiece, to the delicate acanthus leaves on the fluted posts of the twin beds, and the flowered brocade of the Duncan Phyfe sewing-stand, the room had always impressed him as being, in some extraordinary fashion, less real than it appeared on the surface.

When he entered, Victoria, who had slipped into a tea-gown of violet velvet, turned her cheek for his kiss with her usual wifely composure. Though she had lost long ago her virginal loveliness, she had ripened at middle age into a handsome and fruitful-looking woman. Her complexion was still fine in texture, but she flushed easily and there were tiny clusters of veins in her smooth round cheeks. In the last year, after her severe illness, her brown hair had begun to turn grey in patches, while her limpid eyes had been ruffled by a look of apprehension--or was it merely a startled wonder at life? What she had never lost, what she could never lose, he felt, as long as she remained herself, was the expression of unselfish goodness that quivered in an edge of light about her pale full lips and imparted firmness and nobility to her features.

"I suppose Louisa told you," she began, while she lifted her arms to fasten a necklace of amethysts. Her hair, which was thick and soft but without lustre, was piled high on the crown of her head, after a fashion of the early 'nineties.

"Yes, she told me, but I could scarcely believe my ears," he answered in a discouraged tone. He saw at once that she had been weeping, and though, like most other men, he resented tears when they were shed in earnest, he was touched by the sight of Victoria's reddened eyelids. "It must have been a shock to you," he continued, kissing her again with deeper tenderness but diminished enthusiasm. "Curle ought to have telephoned me first."

"He tried to, but you were in that conference. I wish you could have met them."

"I am not sure that I do. It seems to me just a little too much."

A sob quivered in Victoria's voice. "I could have believed it of anybody sooner than of Mary Victoria."

"Well, what was her excuse?" he broke out indignantly. "Why did she do it?"

"We'll never know unless she tells us. In another girl I should call it an infatuation. But Mary Victoria! Can you imagine Mary Victoria infatuated?"

"Things happen every day that I cannot imagine."

"Not things like this. Not to girls like Mary Victoria."

"Don't you suppose every parent must feel that way?"

"It isn't feeling only, Virginius. Think of Mary Victoria's record for world service. Think of her independent work in the Balkans. Think of the way she refused to desert those friendless orphans after the war."

"Oh, world service!" he groaned, and felt that the syllables smacked of hypocrisy. "After all, even the best war records do not make good peace programmes," he continued presently. "And I prefer, on the whole, not to think of the Balkans."

"You don't mean to imply that Mary Victoria has been unsettled in--in . . ." The question, which had begun bravely enough, trailed off to a whisper.

"Well, I shouldn't be too sure of anything to-day, not even of your own daughter. I don't mean, of course, that her moral principle has been undermined. It would take more than an idea, it would take an axe, to undermine Mary Victoria's principles. Still she has been subjected to long contact with the Balkan temperament . . ."

"I am positive," Victoria insisted gently, "that no amount of immorality could shake Mary Victoria's ideals. What disturbs me is the thought that this young man may have worked upon the child's noble impulses."

"Yes, I've thought of that." He appeared anxious and distressed, as indeed he was. "But it seems fairer to suspend judgment."

At this Victoria beamed upon him with more than wifely sweetness. "You couldn't be unfair, Virginius, if you tried," she responded, which was, Mr. Littlepage felt, as much as any husband has a right to expect. "Yes, it is more charitable to suspend judgment. And we must remember," she concluded in a brighter tone, "that whatever his past has been, he will have a wonderful influence in Mary Victoria."

In the severe discipline of marriage Mr. Littlepage had cultivated the habit of looking at his wife without seeing her. It was only in those rare intervals when his evasive idealism was transfixed by the sharp flash of reality that he perceived how time--or was it marriage?--had altered his vision. The wonder of it, he felt, while the actual Victoria stood imprisoned between the pointed beams of fancy and fact, was that he could ever, even in the flower of her girlhood, have found her exciting. That he had fallen in love with her features was less astonishing to-day than that he was once interested in her opinions. Even now he could see that she was one of those women who might still be beautiful if they had less confidence in the fidelity of their husbands. But her mind, which must have matured with years, could scarcely have been more interesting at twenty than it was at fifty. To be sure, he found himself insisting, she had been a perfect wife to him, and as a husband rather than a human being, he was still faithful, he was even devoted. Was it merely, he asked himself, that he had grown older and more settled in spirit? Yet there were moments in spring and autumn, when he was still young enough to feel that a thwarted buccaneer ranged in his soul, while the quiet air about him was charged with the bloom of the wild grape or the magic of drying vines. And in these moments, before this frail rapture broke, he would grasp again the perilous illusion of desire without end.

"I've had the two guest rooms put in order," Victoria was saying, for her practical mind could always find comfort in the details of living. "I couldn't bear the idea of putting a strange man in Mary Victoria's room."

He remembered the care with which she had just had her daughter's room papered and painted in ivory. Only yesterday she had shown him the yellow organdie curtains and the sea-blue glazed chintz for the furniture. After all, it was harder on Victoria, he told himself, because she had no outside profession into which she could retreat.

"Well, perhaps she is used to him by now," he remarked with gentle derision. "We are in danger of forgetting that he is her husband, not ours."

On her dressing-table, in an oval frame of ivory, there was a miniature of Mary Victoria, which her mother had had painted in Florence. Crossing the room, he studied the prim little features and the tight auburn curls gathered back above the delicately arched eyebrows and fastened by the familiar bow of blue ribbon. The nose and chin were firm for a child, and the lovely slate-coloured eyes were too serious for laughter. Yes, it was impossible to deny that Mary Victoria's character was as humourless as her war record. "Marmaduke is right," Mr. Littlepage thought dejectedly, "our lack of genuine gaiety was proved even before we invented the pompous farce of prohibition. No civilization with a true sense of humour could afford to take so seriously the feminine instinct and throw to the winds the gay masculine devil of compromise."

"This is the hardest blow we've ever had from one of our children," Victoria was saying. "Even Duncan, with his unsound views, has never distressed me so much."

"What did Curle say to you?"

"Oh, he spoke as if it were a pleasant surprise. You know how Curle is."

"Yes, I know," he assented with weariness. "I asked him how it had happened, and he said that Mary Victoria had saved this young man's life. As if that were a sufficient reason for marrying him."

"It might be for Mary Victoria. Most women seem to feel that way; but it is unfortunate that there are so many worthless lives to be saved. It is nothing less than a criminal assault upon the law of the Survival of the Fittest."

"Don't be flippant, Virginius. It isn't a laughing matter."

"I was never more serious, my dear."

"Your tone doesn't sound like it. Curle said that Martin Welding called her his good angel. I suppose he was speaking the truth."

"No doubt. Gordon Crabbe, you remember, called her that also. Think how desperately we opposed that marriage; yet God may have known best if only we had not interfered."

"Even disappointment, Virginius, will not excuse levity. Besides, that marriage would have taken Mary Victoria to Africa. Anything, it seems to me, is better than that."

"I am not sure. At least Gordon Crabbe had a fine character and came of good stock."

"Well, she never cared about family."

"I know. She is like Curle." If he had uttered his entire thought, he might have added, "After all, what are the Woolleys?" but it was not for nothing, he reflected, that he had bridled his inquiring mind in the early days of the Browning class. Moreover, prudence warned him that no American stock is common enough to be plebian to its descendants. So he said merely, "Louisa went to the station."

"I sometimes wonder what we should do without her. She is so helpful in trouble."

He looked with distrust at the ornamental clock on the mantelpiece, and then drew out his watch. "They ought to be here now any minute. If you have nothing more to suggest, I think I'll brace myself with a highball. Duncan has warned me that there will be grape juice for dinner. It's a pity that I happen to be expecting my bootlegger this evening."

"Oh, Virginius, can't you manage to put him off?"

"It isn't easy to catch him, you know. But there isn't the slightest cause for anxiety. Socially, you must remember, he is more presentable than a parson. Have you forgotten that he is both a college graduate and a member of one of the oldest families in the Tidewater?"

Victoria gazed at him sadly but without reproach. All the more prominent pillars of the society in which she lived supported the institution of bootlegging; and custom, which breaks laws and makes morality, had reconciled her law-abiding instincts to this ubiquitous lawlessness.

"I must have an opportunity to talk to Mary Victoria. If drinking should be his weakness, surely you would not wish to subject him to temptation?"

"Surely not. But in that case we'd be prudent to turn him over to Marmaduke."

"If only you would treat serious subjects seriously, Virginius! Of course what I said was merely a surmise. Only--only--"

"I know, my dear, and after Marmaduke there must be the deluge. However, this young man isn't expected to live with us, is he?"

"I hope not, but we must consider Mary Victoria. I can't tell anything until I have had a long talk with her."

"Then the best thing I can do is to keep out of it." Turning away with a sigh, he was enveloped immediately, it seemed to him, in the colourless atmosphere of an existence that he led without desire, without even volition.