The Forbidden Way

Mrs. Wray had made it known that she was not at home except to the chosen few. The General came on certain days for his "toddy," Gladys on the way home from "teaing it," Mrs. Rumsen, Dolly Haviland, and Rita Cheyne, each for a peep behind the curtain.

Rita Cheyne came oftenest and stayed longest. She had no social responsibilities, she claimed, except that of seeing the small garments in Camilla's lap made successfully. She was hopelessly bored, more demurely cheerful, more buoyantly pessimistic than ever.

"What a joy it must be," she sighed, "to have an object in life. My objects are all subjective. I have a dreadful fear that I'm getting to be a philosopher."

Camilla bit off her thread and smiled.

"Platonic?" she asked.

"I'm afraid so. I used to take such desperate fancies to people. I used to want to make people like me whether they wanted to or not. Now I'm really indifferent. I actually don't care whether my hat is on straight or not. It's such a pity. I used to like to be svelte, fluffy, and smartly groomed. I didn't mind suffering the tortures of the rack if I knew I was effective. Now – I'm positively dowdy. I don't care what I wear so long as I'm comfortable – and I'm actually getting fat, Camilla! The horror of it!"

Camilla looked up at the exquisite afternoon frock, which fitted her slender figure as only one made by Patrain could, and smiled.

"Yes, Rita, positively corpulent. It's a pity. You really had a good figure once."

"The worst of it is that I don't seem to care," she went on, oblivious. "I used to love to dress for moods – for my moods and for other people's. I thought that Art could solve every problem that came to me. Art!" she sniffed contemptuously. "Art in a woman is merely a confession of inefficiency. I used to think that Art was immortal. Now I find that only Nature is."

Camilla lifted the tiny sacque with its absurd blue silk cuffs and examined it with a satisfied air. When she had finished she leaned over to Rita and whispered with the air of an oracle:

"Nature is– immortal."

"It is. You're right," she sighed. "But it's my nature to be merely mortal – and I'm going to die very hard. I must continue to hide my inefficiencies – by Art."

"You're not inefficient," Camilla corrected. "You're merely feminine – extravagantly feminine – "

"Yes, feminine – but not womanly. Oh, I know what I am!" she concluded fiercely.

"You're a darling!" said Camilla softly. "You're very much more womanly than you want people to think you are. Why should you take such a delight in these?" Camilla laid a hand on the wicker basket beside her.

Rita took up one of the tiny garments and examined it with minute interest.

"It's very pretty, isn't it? But quite silly. Imagine anything so tiny! What a lot of trouble you take. And you've made them all yourself. They're really exquisite."

"They're Art's tribute to Nature, Rita," said Camilla with an air of finality.

Mrs. Cheyne sighed.

"My mission in life is ended, Camilla. I'm quite sure of it now. You've convinced me. I'm actually envious of a woman who sits by the fire and sews baby-clothes. Your industry is a reproach – your smile a reproof and your happiness a condemnation. I know you're right. You've really solved the problem, and I haven't. I never will. I'm past that now. I'm going to grow old ungracefully, yielding the smallest fraction of an inch at a time to the inevitable. I'm going to be stout, I know it – and probably dumpy. I could weep, Camilla."

"Who's talking of weeping here?" said a voice. And General Bent, with his stick, came thumping in. "Oh – you, Rita?" he laughed. "Women never cry unless there's something to be gained by it." Rita offered him her cheek, and Camilla rang for tea. In a moment Mrs. Rumsen came in.

"I knew you were here, Rita," she said, bending her tall figure for a caress.

"How?"

"Teddy Wetherby's machine – at the corner – and Teddy."

"Is he waiting still? Such a nice boy – but absolutely oblivious of the passage of time."

"I thought you'd given up your kindergarten, Rita," put in Camilla, laughing.

"I have. But Teddy is my prize pupil. He's taking a post-graduate course." And, when they all laughed at her, she turned on them severely. "I won't have you laughing at Teddy. He's really an angel."

"I'm going to tell his mother," said Mrs. Rumsen.

Rita took her tea cup and sank back in her chair absently. "Oh, well – perhaps you'd better," she said. "I'm going in for square-toed shoes and settlement meetings."

The General grunted and sipped his Scotch, but when Jeff and Cortland came in the women were still laughing at Mrs. Cheyne. Jeff walked across the room to his wife and kissed her.

"Father – Aunt Caroline – Hello! Rita."

"Well, sir – " from Camilla, "please give an account of yourself."

"You'll have to speak to Cort. We stopped in at the Club for a minute. Cheyne was there and Hal Dulaney, Perot, Steve Gillis, Douglas Warrington, and two or three others. They wanted us to stay for dinner. But we didn't."

"Of course not," said Camilla so decisively that Rita Cheyne laughed.

"There!" she said pityingly. "Oh, Jeff! a subject and a slave as well! Aren't you really going to let him go, Camilla?"

Camilla looked up into Jeff's face with a heavenly smile.

"Of course – if he wants to."

"But I don't want to," said Jeff, sinking into a chair with a comfortable sigh. "This is good enough for me. Besides," he added mischievously, "it looked like a meeting."

"What kind of a meeting?"

"Of the Rita Cheyne Protective Association."

"Jeff, you're horrid!" said Rita, but she laughed.

"I'm not," he said calmly. "They have my full sympathy and support. I told 'em so."

"Your sins are finding you out, my dear cousin," chuckled the General. "They always do in the end."

"Oh, you're hopeless —all of you," sighed the culprit, setting down her tea cup.

Cortland finished his drink in leisurely fashion and dropped into the vacant chair beside his father. "Well, we put it over," he said quietly.

"The bond issue?"

"Yes, sir – we had a fight in the board, but we got McIntyre's vote at last and jammed it through – that was all we needed."

"I didn't think it was possible," the old man exclaimed.

"It wasn't easy, but Jeff managed it."

"I didn't sir," Jeff interposed. "Cort did the whole thing. We've made him president. We made it unanimous in the end."

"By George, Cort, I'm proud of you. I always knew you had the stuff in you if we ever woke you up."

"Oh, I guess I'm awake all right. A fellow has to be down there." He leaned forward and picked up an article on the work basket.

"Where's His Majesty?" he asked of Mrs. Wray.

Camilla glanced at the clock.

"Asleep, I hope. He's been very dissipated lately. He was up yesterday until seven."

"Takes after his father," said Mrs. Cheyne scornfully.

At that moment a small cry was heard upstairs, and Camilla flew. "The lamb!" she cried, and from the hall they heard her telling the trained nurse to bring the infant down. At the bottom of the steps she met them and bore him triumphantly in. He was a very small person with large round blue eyes that stared like Jeff's. They looked at nobody in particular, and yet they were filled with the wisdom of the ages.

"What a little owl he is!" said Rita, but when she jangled her gold purse before his eyes he seized it with both hands and gurgled exultantly.

"He knows a good thing when he sees it," laughed Cort. "Got the gold fever, too."

"What a shame!" said Camilla indignantly. "He hasn't any kind of a fever, have you, Cornelius?"

The child said, "Da!"

"Didn't I tell you? He knows."

"He has such fuzzy pink hair!" said Cort, rubbing it the wrong way. "Do you think it will stay pink?"

"You sha'n't be godfather to my son if you say another word, Cortland. Here, nurse, take him. They sha'n't abuse him any longer." She pressed her lips rapturously against his rosy cheek and released him. Mrs. Rumsen gazed through her lorgnon, while the infant, with a cry of delight, pulled the glasses from the General's nose.

"No respect for age! None at all!" said Mrs. Rumsen.

After a while they all went away – Rita Cheyne to her post-graduate pupil, Mrs. Rumsen to her brougham, and Cort and his father to the walk downtown, leaving Camilla and Jeff sitting at the fireside alone. One armchair was big enough for them both. She sat on his knees and leaned back against him, close in the shelter of his arms.

"You didn't want to stay out to dinner, did you, Jeff?" she asked.

"Oh, yes," he said, "of course I did. I'm very fond of dining out."

She laughed contentedly. They had dined out only once this winter, and that was at his father's house. There was a long silence.

"Poor Rita," she sighed at last, "what's to become of her? She's not really happy, Jeff. I sometimes think – " she paused.

"What?"

"That she still thinks of you."

Jeff laughed. "I hope she does. Why, silly?"

"Simply because she never gives me the slightest reason to think that she does."

Jeff rubbed his nose thoughtfully.

"That's one too many for me."

"Don't you know that a woman always judges another woman by the thoughts she suppresses?"

"That's nonsense."

"No, it isn't. I won't have you say that what I think is nonsense."

She turned her head toward him and looked down into his eyes.

"Are you sure you never cared for Rita? Not a little?"

"Sure."

"It was the Forbidden Way, Jeff. Do you like this way —our way – better?"

He held her closer in his arms and that reply seemed adequate. She asked him no more questions until some moments later, and she asked him that one because she always liked the way he answered it.

A sudden loud rasping of the dining-room hangings on their brass rod, and Camilla sprang up hurriedly. She even had time to go to the mantel mirror and rearrange the disorder of her hair before the butler came in to announce dinner.

He was a well-trained servant.

THE END