Ainslee's, Vol. 15, No. 5, June 1905

“It is bad enough to have food and exercise taken away from the young mothers,” continued Mrs. Star, who was evidently mounted on a hobby, “but when helpless infants are deprived of their natural sustenance and fed from bottles filled in a laboratory and stuffed with cotton, it is time for the Gerry Society to interfere. Cruelty to children is practiced far more by the rich than by the poor, in my opinion, and if you want to see cases of inanition and feeble spines, I’ll show you where to look for them, and it won’t be in the tenements!”

Deena wanted to laugh, but didn’t dare to; the old lady proclaimed her fierce sentiments with such earnest gravity. She managed, however, to say politely:

“You think that science has not improved upon nature in rearing the race, but you must remember that it finds the higher classes existing under unnatural conditions.”

“The conditions would do very well if we could banish the doctors,” said the old lady, testily. “I am out of patience with their incubators and their weighing machines and their charts and their thermometers – yes, and their baby nurses! What do you suppose I heard a mother say to her own servant the other day: ‘Please, nurse, may I take the baby up? He is crying fearfully,’ and the nurse, who had reluctantly put down the morning paper, said: ‘No, m’am, when he cries in that angry way, he must learn that it is useless!’ His age was six weeks.”

Deena burst into a hearty laugh.

“My dear Mrs. Star,” she said, “I am a convert.”

Mrs. Star wagged her head in approbation.

“Just tell your sister what I have said, will you?” she pursued, afraid that so much wisdom might be lost. “And, my dear, since your brother-in-law has gone home, suppose you come along to the opera with me. I sent some tickets to a few stray men, and I must look in before the last act.”

At this point they were joined by the gentlemen, and as soon as decency would permit, Mrs. Star made her adieux, followed by Deena. The Minthrop brougham was dismissed, and the ladies whirled away in Mrs. Star’s electric carriage. She at once took up her parable, but this time the topic was not the care of infants.

“I think a great deal of the scenic effect of an opera box,” she said. “I always dress with respect to the hangings, and I never take a discordant color beside me if I can help it. You happen to please me very much this evening; I like the simplicity of the white dress. Still, it wouldn’t be anything if you didn’t have such a neck – it gives an air to any low gown.”

“It was my wedding dress,” said Deena, frankly, “and my sister’s maid rearranged it for me. I am glad you like it.”

“Your wedding dress,” said Mrs. Star, reflectively. “I think I heard you had married a naturalist – prehistoric bones, is it not? Very interesting subject – so inspiring. Milliken” – to the footman, who opened the door on their arrival at the opera house – “you may keep the carriage here. I shall not be more than half an hour.”

Half an hour for the enjoyment of a pleasure that cost her, yearly, a moderate fortune!

On their way through the foyer to the box, Deena ventured to disclaim for her husband a peculiar interest in fossils.

“My husband is a botanist,” she began, and then desisted when she saw her companion’s attention was barely held by a desire to be civil.

“Ah, indeed!” Mrs. Star vaguely responded. “Delightful topic. I went into it myself quite extensively when I was a girl.”

Deena was not often malicious, but she couldn’t help wishing Simeon could have stood by to hear this announcement of a girlish mastery of his life’s work. She tried to think in what dry words he would have rebuked the levity, but before she could arrange a phrase quite in character, they were in the front of the box, and in the obscurity some one took her hand, and Stephen French’s voice murmured:

“What a piece of luck that I should see you to-night! I have only been in town a few hours, and obeyed my aunt’s summons to the opera as a means of keeping myself from Ben’s house till the morning. You can’t think how eager I have been to see you again, Mrs. Ponsonby.”

There was a strange break in his voice, as if he were trying to restrain the rush of happiness.

All the six mighty artists who made the opera the marvel it was were combining their voices in the closing sextet of the fourth act, and Deena, thrilled by the loveliness of the music and, perhaps, by the surprise of French’s presence, felt she was trembling with excitement.

“Fancy meeting you here!” she kept repeating, the stupid phrase concealing the great joy that was puzzling her conscience.

“What is so wonderful in my being in my aunt’s opera box?” Stephen demanded. “Cannot a professor of zoology like music, or do you object to a bachelor owning an aunt?”

How pleasant it was to hear his kind voice, with its good-natured raillery! But that was sub-conscious pleasure – her immediate attention was busy with the first part of his speech about his aunt’s opera box; she never supposed he had any relations.

“Who is your aunt?” she asked, abruptly.

“Mrs. Star,” he answered. “Don’t you see the family likeness?”

And oddly enough, in the half light, there was a distinct resemblance in the profile of the bewigged old lady to her handsome young kinsman’s. Deena regretted both the likeness and the relationship; it made her uncomfortable to know that Stephen was the nephew of this worldly-minded old lady, with her fictitious standards and her enormous riches; it seemed to place a barrier between them and to lift him out of the simplicity of his college setting.

“Have I become a snob in this Relentless City’?” she exclaimed. “I find my whole idea of you changed by this announcement. It depresses me! You seem to me a different person here, with these affiliations of fashion and grandeur, than when I thought of you simply as Simeon’s friend.”

“Don’t think of me simply as Simeon’s friend,” he pleaded, half in fun, half in sinful earnest.

“I never shall again,” she said, sadly. “Your greatest charm is eclipsed by this luxury – I want you to belong to Harmouth only.”

Stephen’s lips were twitching with suppressed amusement.

“There is a proverb, my dear lady,” he said, “of the pot and the kettle, that you may recall. I am not sure but what I may find a word to say to you upon the cruelty of disturbing associations.”

“To me!” she said, turning to him with the gentle dignity that was her crowning charm. “Surely there are no surprises in me.”

Stephen shook his head in mock disapproval as he allowed his eyes to sweep from the topmost curl of her head to her slipper points, and then he said:

“Go home, Mrs. Ponsonby, and take off that white lace evening dress, and perhaps the wreath of holly might come, too – and that diamond star on your bodice; and put on, instead – let me see – the dark blue frock you wore the evening I told Simeon about the Patagonian expedition, and then you will be in a position to reproach me for any relapse from the simplicity of Harmouth. If you disapprove of me as the nephew of my aunt, how do you suppose I feel about you? And oh! my stars! what would Simeon say?”

“Simeon,” she said, faintly. “You are right; Simeon might not understand – ” and before French had time to protest that he had only been teasing her, the curtain went down, strange men came flocking into the box, Mrs. Star was introducing a Russian grand duke, and Stephen, surrendering his chair, withdrew to the other side of his aunt.

Deena could not but admire the old lady’s admirable manner. She kept up an easy chatter, sometimes in French, sometimes in English, with the Russian and with a Spanish artist; she never allowed Deena to feel out of touch with the conversation, and in the midst of it all she managed to welcome her nephew.

“You are stopping at my house, of course, Stephen? No – at the Savoy? That is uncharitable to a lonely old woman. Where did you know that pretty creature, Mrs. Ponsonby?” she asked, seeing that the two foreigners were absorbing the attention of her beautiful protégée. “You should learn to guard the expression of your face, my dear boy. I begin to understand why you cling so obstinately to Harmouth. I see the place has advantages outside the work of the college.”

Here she wagged her head in self-congratulation at her own astuteness, and Stephen flushed angrily.

“Hush!” he said. “She will hear you. You have little knowledge of Mrs. Ponsonby if you think she would permit the attentions of any man. She is not in the least that kind of person. She is one of the most dignified, self-respecting, high-minded women I ever knew.”

Mrs. Star cut him short with a wave of her fan.

“Spare me the rhapsodies,” she laughed. “You merely mark the stage of the disease you have arrived at. The object of your love sits enthroned! If the husband is wise he will throw his fossils into the sea and come back to look after this pretty possession. Flesh and blood is worth more than dry bones.”

“Ponsonby is a botanist,” Stephen corrected, grimly, while his inward thought was that the dry bones were Simeon’s own; and then, ashamed of the disloyal – though unspoken – sneer, he went back to Deena and began talking volubly of his last letter from her husband.

They had both had letters from Simeon, now safely arrived in the Straits of Magellan. He had written to Deena when they first cast anchor off the Fuegian shore. He described to her the visits of the Indians in their great canoes, containing their entire families and possessions, and the never-dying fire of hemlock on a clay hearth in the middle of the boat; how they would sell their only garment – a fur cloak – for tobacco and rum, and how friendly they seemed to be, in spite of all the stories of cannibalism told by early voyagers.

In the midst of this earnest conversation, Mrs. Star rose to go, escorted by the grand duke, and Stephen, following with Deena, was able to let his enthusiasm rise above a whisper when they gained the corridor.

“Didn’t he tell you that they were all going guanaco hunting?”

“Simeon!” in a tone of incredulity.

“Greatest fun in the world, I am told,” pursued French; “something like stag hunting, only more exciting – done with the bolas. You whirl it round your head and let it fly, and it wraps itself round a beast’s legs and bowls him over before he knows what hit him.”

“Does it kill him?” asked Deena, shrinking from the miseries of the hunted.

“Only knocks him over,” explained Stephen. “You finish him with your knife.”

“Sport is a cruel thing,” she said, shuddering. “I am glad Simeon cannot even ride.”

“Can’t ride!” repeated Stephen. “Indeed, I can tell you he means to. He says the Indians have offered him the best mount they have. They considered him a medicine man, on account of his root-digging propensities, and treated him as the high cockalorum of the whole ship’s company.”

“Surely he is joking,” she said. “Simeon is making game of you.”

“Simeon!” he echoed, mimicking her incredulous tone.

“A joke would be no stranger to him than a horse,” she said, smiling.

They had reached the entrance, and Deena stood shaking with suppressed laughter. “Fancy! Simeon!” she repeated.

“And why not Simeon, pray?” asked Stephen, slightly nettled.

A vision of Simeon with his gold-rimmed spectacles and stooped figure mounted on horseback in the midst of a party of Indians, whirling his bolas over his head and shouting, presented itself to Deena’s imagination. The carriage was waiting, and, obeying Mrs. Star’s motion to get in first, Simeon Ponsonby’s wife fell back on the seat and laughed till the tears ran down her cheeks.

Outside, Stephen was entreating to be allowed to visit her the next morning.

“I haven’t half finished my story, Mrs. Ponsonby,” he protested.

And Deena managed to steady her voice and invite him to lunch the next day.

CHAPTER VII

French’s visit to New York was not the result of any weakening resolution in regard to his neighbor’s wife; the object was business. His property was chiefly in real estate, and the distinguished law firm who managed his affairs had summoned him to confer with a tenant who was desirous of becoming a purchaser. Being in the same town with Deena, he decided that he could not well avoid visiting her, to say nothing of Ben. It was his misfortune that every meeting made his self-discipline harder, for, if they lived, he had got to see her under still more trying circumstances – reunited with a husband who misunderstood her.

These thoughts passed through his mind the morning after their encounter at the opera, as he finished his breakfast at the Savoy. He had an appointment at his lawyers’ at ten o’clock, and at the Minthrops’ for luncheon at half-past one. The first, if properly conducted, might result in a largely increased income; the second in self-repression and a heartache; and yet his one idea was to dispatch the business, so that no precious moments of Deena’s society should be lost to him.

He was hurrying out of the hotel to go downtown, when a telegram was put into his hand. For the detached bachelor such messages have little interest. Stephen opened this one as casually as most people open an advertisement – may the foul fiend fly away with those curses of our daily mail! – and read:

Buenos Ayres, Jan. 30.

Pedro Lopez to the Hon’ble Professor French, Harmouth University.

Tintoretto on its way home. Ponsonby missing.

Stephen read the dispatch several times before he quite understood its significance. Pedro Lopez was his South American friend, who had set on foot the Fuegian expedition and applied to Harmouth for a botanist; the Tintoretto was the vessel furnished by the Argentine Government.

The cable message had gone to Harmouth and been repeated to New York, probably by Stephen’s butler.

The first effect of evil tidings is apt to be superficial. We receive a mental impression rather than a shock to the heart. We are for the moment spectators of our own misfortunes, as if the blow had produced a paralysis to the feelings, leaving the intellect clear.

Stephen went back to his own room conscious of no emotion except intense curiosity as to what had become of Simeon, though, perhaps, far back in his mind anxiety was settling down to its work of torture.

He flung himself into a chair near the window which overlooked the entrance to the park and let his eyes gaze blankly at the busy scene. It had snowed during the night, and sleighs were dashing in and out under the leafless arches of the trees. Bells were tinkling, gay plumes of horsehair floating from the front of the Russian sleighs and the turrets of the horses’ harness, men and women wrapped in costly furs were being whirled along, laughing and chatting, through the crisp morning air.

Stephen didn’t know he was receiving an impression – he thought his mind was at a standstill, but whenever in the future that terrible day came back to his memory, he always saw a picture, as it were, of the brilliant procession dashing into the city’s playground, while Saint Gaudens’ statue of Sherman stood watching, grim and cold, with the snow on his mantle and his Victory in a winding sheet.

It was not very long before French was able to pull himself together and to face the situation. What did it mean? Had Simeon lost himself in the Patagonian wilds or was he drowned? French felt that he couldn’t carry such an uncertain report to Deena, the strain upon her would be too great. It was horrible to have to tell her at all, but he must try to make the news definite – not vague. Gradually he thought out a course of action; he would telegraph to Lopez to send him a detailed account, cabling the answer at his expense, and until this reply came he thought himself justified in concealing the news. Lopez was in constant communication with the expedition, and the letter which had announced Ponsonby’s disappearance must have gone into particulars.

After dispatching this cable he kept his appointment in Wall Street, transacting the business with the dull precision of a person in a hypnotic sleep, and then presented himself at the Minthrops’ a few minutes before the lunch hour. He had not been prepared to find Deena installed as hostess, and her manner of greeting him and presiding at the lunch table was so assured, so different from the timid hospitality she was wont to offer under Simeon’s roof, that her whole personality seemed changed. She more than ever satisfied his admiring affection, but she was so unlike the Mrs. Ponsonby of Harmouth that he felt like confiding to this gracious, sympathetic woman the tragedy that threatened her other self.

Early in the day, before that woeful message came, he had counted the minutes he could spend with her, and now he was timing his visit so as to curtail it to the least possible duration, and taxing his ingenuity as to how best to avoid seeing her alone. It was Saturday, and he trusted to the half holiday for the protection of Ben’s presence; his depression of spirits would be less noticeable in general conversation.

He arrived on the stroke of the hour set for lunch, and to his chagrin was shown to the library, where Deena was sitting alone. His trouble deepened, for, after motioning him to a chair beside her, she resumed her embroidery and said, with a quizzical expression:

“You were in the midst of Simeon’s last letter when we parted last evening, Mr. French; please go on with it. You may remember you left my unfortunate husband pledged to become a horseman.”

Stephen could not respond to her merry mood; his anxiety was to steer the conversation away from Simeon, and he had run against a snag at the start.

“At all events, I left him safely surrounded by friends,” he said – more in answer to his own feelings than her banter.

In thinking over any disaster, the mind loves to dwell on the peaceful moments that preceded it. Stephen found comfort in recalling the gay tone of Simeon’s letter, his delight in his coming adventure, and the good feeling that evidently existed between him and the ship’s company.

Deena took exception to his remark.

“You have strange ideas of safety!” she laughed. “Not content with mounting a confirmed pedestrian on a wild horse of the Pampas, you must needs turn him loose among a horde of savages. The hunt had not taken place when he wrote, had it? It is a pity, for I should like Simeon safely back on shipboard without the loss of spectacles or dignity.”

She would like Simeon back! What wouldn’t French give to know her husband was still alive!

The butler announced lunch, and Ben came dashing downstairs, delighted to see Stephen and full of excuses at having lingered in his wife’s room. He said Polly was feeling rather poorly, and Stephen was glad to see a look of anxiety cross Deena’s face; he rightly judged her thoughts had been diverted from Patagonia to Polly’s sofa, and he breathed once more.

What a pleasant luncheon it was, in spite of the lurking dread. Deena was wearing the old blue dress he had recommended to her the night before. It could not be from coquetry – she was above coquetry – but perhaps she had put it on to recall associations; to remind him of the close bonds of friendship that existed between them in those pleasant autumn days that followed Simeon’s departure. Stephen was not very learned in the make of women’s frocks, but he understood color and could appreciate how that steely-blue made her complexion glow warm as ivory and her hair like copper.

They were pretending to quarrel over a dish of salted almonds; Deena declared that French was getting the lion’s share, and finally covered the little silver basket that held them with her hand. On the third finger flashed old Mrs. Ponsonby’s diamond in its antiquated silver setting, and below it was her wedding ring, the narrow band that symbolized her bondage to Simeon. For the first time since French had received the cable, its possible significance to him took possession of his mind, and he flushed a dull red and fell into a reverie.

In all probability there was no longer any barrier between him and the woman he loved; nothing to prevent his striving to win her, but the period of her mourning – the respect she owed to the memory of a husband who was the palest shadow of a lover, and not even the ghost of a companion. He wondered whether she had ever guessed his feelings – feelings which he had subdued and held under with all the strength of his nature, partly through fear of forfeiting her friendship and partly because her charm was in the simplicity of her goodness. If love had once been named between them, Deena would have been other than herself.

Her voice roused him. She was excusing herself in order to go to her sister, and leave him and Ben to smoke. He held the door open for her to pass with a profound sense of relief – no suspicion of his awful secret had been betrayed. But oh! the comfort of talking it over with Ben, of sharing the burden with another! They discussed the meager announcement till they had exhausted every probability and found nothing to hope and everything to fear.

“I hope to Heaven he is dead!” cried Ben. “Imagine a man physically weak, like Ponsonby, enduring slow starvation in the damp and chill of the Patagonian seacoast. It will be a positive relief if we hear he fell overboard.”

“Anything is better than uncertainty,” said Stephen, and the speech must have been from the new point of view, the hope of Deena’s freedom, for the next moment he was conscious of a wave of shame.

“I ought to get an answer from Lopez before night,” he added, rising to go; “and as soon as I hear I will return and let you know.”

Ben followed him to the front door, whispering like a conspirator and glancing furtively up the stairs. There was a childish streak in the boy’s nature that gloried in a confidence; the joy of the secret nearly made up for the sorrow of the fact. But secrets and sorrows were soon put out of his head, for a crucial moment had come to the young Minthrops – one we anticipate and are never quite prepared for.

As he ran upstairs, after seeing Stephen off, he met Deena, evidently looking for him.

“Oh, Ben,” she said, “Polly is ill, and I have telephoned for – ”

But she got no further, for her big brother-in-law turned white as a frightened girl, and when he tried to speak no sound came from his lips.

“Goose!” said Deena, laying an affectionate hand on his shoulder. “Shall I get a glass of brandy? Do you suppose no one has ever met with this experience before?”

Ben recovered himself with a fit of irritation, which seems the corollary to being frightened.

“Brandy!” he repeated. “Why in thunder should I want brandy? Really, Deena, for a sensible woman, you are given at times to saying the most foolish things I ever heard.”

In the meanwhile, as the afternoon was still early, French was anxious to find some occupation that might distract his thoughts. He decided to visit his aunt, whose conversation was usually startling enough to hold the attention of her hearers in any stress of agitation, and then when he was halfway up her steps repented the intention, on the ground that he needed soothing rather than stimulating; but his retreat was cut off by the good lady coming out of her door and discovering him, and, as she was about to walk round the block for exercise before taking her afternoon drive, she promptly claimed his company for both occasions. The wind blew her dress up to her ankles as she reached the sidewalk, displaying a pair of pointed-toed, high-heeled boots that perforce made walking – even round the block – a torturing task. But Mrs. Star was a brave woman, and walking a matter of conscience, so she tottered along beside her nephew, occasionally laying a hand on his arm when a bit of icy pavement made her footing more than usually uncertain.

“How I hate the late winter in New York!” she exclaimed, when a few minutes later they were seated in her sleigh on their way to the park. “Here we are at the threshold of February, when any self-respecting climate would be making for spring, and we must count on two months more of solid discomfort. Ah, well, this year I do not mean to face it. I have had the yacht put in commission, and she sails next week for the Mediterranean, where I shall overtake her by one of the German boats, and do a little cruising along the African coast. Come with me, Stephen,” she said, coaxingly. “Let this silly school-teaching go. You are a rich man – why under the sun do you want to work? If you are holding on to Harmouth on account of that pretty Mrs. Ponsonby, it can’t do you much good when she is in New York. Besides,” she added, quite as an afterthought, “it is bad morality, and you ought to be ashamed of yourself.”