The Adventures of a Widow: A Novel

"That was certainly in the days before commerce had seized every yard of these unrivalled water-fronts," laughed Kindelon. "Babylon on its Euphrates, or Nineveh on its Tigris, could not eclipse New York in stately beauty if mansions were built along its North and East rivers. But trade is a tyrant, as you see. She concedes to you Fifth Avenue, but she denies you anything more poetic."

"I wonder who is the belle of Bowling Green now?" said Pauline, looking up at her companion with a serio-comic smile.

He shook his head. "I am afraid your favored progenitress was the last of the dynasty."

"Oh, no," dissented Pauline, appearing to muse a trifle. "I fancy there is still a belle. Perhaps she has a German or an Irish name."

"It may be Kindelon," he suggested.

"No – it is something more usual than that. If she is not a Schmitt I suspect that she is an O'Brien. I picture her as pretty, but somewhat delicate; she works in some dreadful factory, you know, not far away, all through the week. But on Sunday she emerges from her narrow little room in a tenement-house, brave and smart as you please. The beaux fight for her smiles as they join her, and she knows just how to distribute them; she is a most astute little coquette, in her way."

"And the beaux? Are they worthy of her coquetries?"

"Oh, well, she thinks them so. I fear that most of them have soiled finger-nails, and that their Sunday coats fit them very ill… But now let me pursue my little romance. The poor creature is terribly fond of one of them. There is always one, you know, dearer than the rest."

"Is there?" said Kindelon oddly. "You're quite elucidating. I didn't know that."

"Don't be sarcastic," reproved Pauline with mock grimness. "Sarcasm is always the death of romance. I have an idea that the secretly-adored one is more of a convert than all his fellows to the beautifying influences of soap. His Sunday face is bright and fresh; it looks conscientiously washed."

"And his finger-nails? Does your imagination also include those, or do they transcend its limits?"

"I have a vague perception of their relative superiority… Pray let me continue without your prosaic interruptions. Poor little Mary… Did I not say that her first name was Mary, by-the-by?"

"I have been under the impression for several seconds that you called her Bridget."

"Very well. I will call her so, if you insist. Poor little Bridget, who steals forth, endimanchée and expectant, fails for an hour or two to catch a glimpse of her beloved. She is beginning to be sadly bored by the society of her present three, four, or five admirers, when suddenly she sees the Beloved approaching. Then she brightens and becomes quite sparklingly animated. And when her Ideal draws near, twirling a licorice cane – I insist upon having her Ideal twirl a licorice cane – she receives him with an air of the most unconcerned indifference. It is exquisite to observe the calm, careless way in which she asks him…"

"Pardon me," interrupted Kindelon, with a short and almost brusque tone, "but is not this gentleman coming toward us your cousin?"

"My cousin?" faltered Pauline.

"Yes – Mr. Courtlandt Beekman."

Pauline did not answer, for she had already caught sight of Courtlandt, advancing in her own direction from that of the South Ferry, which she and Kindelon were now rather near. She stopped abruptly in her walk, and perceptibly colored.

A moment afterward Courtlandt saw both herself and her escort. He showed great surprise, and then quickly conquered it. As he came forward, Pauline gave a shrill, nervous laugh. "I suppose you feel like asking me what on earth I am doing here," she said, in by no means her natural voice, and with a good deal of fluttered insecurity about her demeanor.

"I shouldn't think that necessary," replied Courtlandt. His sallow face had not quite its usual hue, but nothing could be steadier than the cool light of his eye. "It's very evident that you are taking a stroll with Mr. Kindelon." He then extended his hand, cased in a yellow dogskin glove, to Kindelon. "How are you?" he said to the man whom he entirely disliked, in a tone of neutral civility.

"Very well, this pleasant day," returned Kindelon, jovially imperturbable. "And you, Mr. Beekman?"

"Quite well, thanks." He spoke as if he were stating a series of brief commercial facts. "I had some business with a man over in Brooklyn, and took this way back to my office, which is only a street or two beyond." He turned toward the brilliant expanse of the bay, lifting a big silver-knobbed stick which he carried, waving it right and left. "Very nice down here, isn't it?" he went on. His look now dwelt in the most casual way upon Pauline. "Well, I must be off," he continued. "I've a lot of business to-day."

He had passed them, when Pauline, turning, said composedly but sharply:

"Can't I take you to your office, Court?"

"Thanks, no. I won't trouble you. It's just a step from here." He lifted his hat – an act which he had already performed a second or so previously – and walked onward. He had not betrayed the least sign of annoyance all through this transient and peculiarly awkward interview. He had been precisely the same serene, quiescent, demure Courtlandt as of old.

Pauline stood for some little time watching him as he gradually disappeared. When the curve near Castle Garden hid him, she gave an impatient, irritated sigh.

"You seem vexed," said Kindelon, who had been intently though furtively regarding her.

"I am vexed," she murmured. Her increased color was still a deep rose.

"Is there anything very horrible in walking for a little while on the Battery?" he questioned.

She gave a broken laugh. "Yes," she answered. "I'm afraid there is."

Kindelon shrugged his shoulders. "But surely you are your own mistress?"

"Rather too much so," she said, with lowered eyes. "At least that is what people will say, I suppose."

"I thought you were above idle and aimless comments."

"Let us go back to the carriage."

"By all means, if you prefer it."

They reversed their course, and moved along for some time in silence. "I think you must understand," Pauline suddenly said, lifting her eyes to Kindelon's face.

"I understand," he replied, with hurt seriousness, "that I was having one of the pleasantest hours I have ever spent, until that man accosted us like a grim fate."

"You must not call my cousin Courtlandt 'that man.' I don't like it."

"I am sorry," he said curtly, and a little doggedly. "I might have spoken more ill of him, but I didn't."

Pauline was biting her lips. "You have no right to speak ill of him," she retorted. "He is my cousin."

"That is just the reason why I held my tongue."

"You don't like him, then?"

"I do not."

"I can readily comprehend it."

Kindelon's light-blue eyes fired a little under their black lashes. "You say that in a way I do not understand," he answered.

"You and Courtlandt are of a different world."

"I am not a combination of a fop and a parson, if you mean that."

Pauline felt herself grow pale with anger as she shot a look up into her companion's face.

"You would not dare say that to my cousin himself," she exclaimed defiantly, "though you dare say it to me!"

Kindelon had grown quite pale. His voice trembled as he replied. "I dare do anything that needs the courage of a man," he said. "I thought you knew me well enough to be sure of this."

"Our acquaintance is a recent one," responded Pauline. She felt nearly certain that she had shot a wounding shaft in those few words, but she chose to keep her eyes averted and not see whether wrath or pain had followed its delivery.

A long silence followed. They had nearly reached her carriage when Kindelon spoke.

"You are in love with your cousin," he said.

She threw back her head, laughing ironically. "What a seer you are!" she exclaimed. "How did you guess that?"

"Ah," he answered her, with a melancholy gravity, "you will not deny it!"

She repeated her laugh, though it rang less bitterly than before. She had expected him to meet her irony in a much more rebellious spirit.

"I don't like to have my blood-relations abused in my hearing," she said. "I am in love with all of them, that way, if that is the way you mean."

"That is not the way I mean."

They were now but a few yards from the waiting carriage. The footman, seeing them, descended from his box, and stood beside the opened door.

"I shall not return with you," continued Kindelon, "since I perceive you do not wish my company longer. But I offer you my apologies for having spoken disparagingly of your cousin. I was wrong, and I beg your pardon."

With the last words he extended his hand. Pauline took it.

"I have not said that I did not wish your company," she answered, "but if you choose to infer so, it is your own affair."

"I do infer so, and I infer more… It is best that I – I should not see you often, like this. There is a great difference between you and me. That cousin of yours hated me at sight. Your aunt, Mrs. Poughkeepsie, hated me at sight as well. Perhaps their worldly wisdom was by no means to blame, either… Oh, I understand more than you imagine!"

There was not only real grief in Kindelon's voice, but an under-throb of real passion.

"Understand?" Pauline murmured. "What do you understand?"

"That you are as stanch and loyal as ever to your old traditions. That this idea of change, of amelioration, of casting aside your so-called patrician bondage, has only the meaning of a dainty gentlewoman's dainty caprice … that" —

His voice broke. It almost seemed to her as if his large frame was shaken by some visible tremor. She had no thought of being angry at him now.

She pitied him, and yet with an irresistible impulse her thought flew to Cora Dares, the sweet-faced young painter, and what she herself had of late grown to surmise, to suspect. A sort of involuntary triumph blent itself with her pity, on this account.

She spoke in a kind voice, but also in a firm one. She slightly waved her hand toward the adjacent carriage. "Will you accompany me, then?" she asked.

He looked at her fixedly for an instant. Then he shook his head. "No," he answered. "Good-by." He lifted his hat, and walked swiftly away.

She had seen his eyes just before he went. Their look haunted her. She entered the carriage, and was driven up town. She told herself that he had behaved very badly to her. But she did not really think this. She was inwardly thrilled by a strange, new pleasure, and she had shed many tears before reaching home.

IX

The excitement of Pauline had by no means passed when she regained her home. Kindelon's last words still rang in her ears.

She declared to herself that it was something horrible to have been called a dainty gentlewoman. At the same time, she remembered the impetuosity of his address, and instinctively forgave even while she condemned. Still, there remained with her a certain severe resentful sense. "What right," she asked herself, "has this man to undervalue and contemn my purpose? Is it not based upon a proper and worthy impulse? Is egotism at its root? Is not a wholesome disgust there, instead? Have I not seen, with a radical survey, the aimless folly of the life led by men and women who presume to call themselves social leaders and social grandees? Has Kindelon any shred of excuse for telling me to my face that I am a mere politic trimmer?"

She had scarcely been home an hour before she received a note from Cora Dares. The note was brief, but very accurate in meaning. It informed Pauline that Mrs. Dares had just sent a message to her daughter's studio, and that Cora would be glad to receive Mrs. Varick on that or any succeeding afternoon, with the view of a consultation regarding the proposed list of guests.

Pauline promptly resolved to visit Cora that same day. She ordered her carriage, and then countermanded the order. Not solely because of the pleasant weather, and not solely because she was in a mood for walking, did she thus alter her first design. She reflected that there might be a touch of apparent ostentation in the use of a carriage to call upon this young self-supporting artist. She even made a change of toilet, and robed herself in a street costume much plainer than that which she had previously worn.

Cora Dares's studio was on Fourth Avenue, and one of many others in a large building which artists principally peopled. It was in the top floor of this structure, and was reached, like her mother's sanctum, by that most simplifying of modern conveniences, the elevator. Pauline's knock at a certain rather shadowy door in an obscure passage was at once answered by Cora herself.

The studio was extremely pretty; you saw this at a glance. Its one ample window let in a flood of unrestricted sunlight. Its space was small, and doubtless for this reason a few brilliant draperies and effective though uncostly embellishments had made its interior bloom and glow picturesquely enough. But it contained no ornament of a more alluring pattern than Cora herself, as Pauline soon decided.

"Pray don't let me disturb you in your painting," said the latter, after an exchange of greetings had occurred. "I see that you were busily engaged at your easel. I hope you can talk and paint at the same time."

"Oh, yes," said Cora, with her bright, winsome smile. She was dressed in some dark, soft stuff, whose sombre hue brought into lovely relief the chestnut ripples of her hair and the placid refinement of her clear-chiselled face. "But if I am to give you a list of names," she went on, "that will be quite another matter."

"Oh, never mind the list of names," replied Pauline, who had just seated herself. "I mean, not for the present. It will be more convenient for you, no doubt, to send me this list to-morrow or next day. Meanwhile I shall be willing to wait very patiently. I am in no great hurry, Miss Dares. It was exceedingly kind of you to communicate with me in this expeditious way. And now, if you will only extend your benevolence a little further and give an hour or two of future leisure toward the development of my little plan, I shall feel myself still more in your debt."

Cora nodded amiably. "Perhaps that would be the better arrangement," she said. Her profile was now turned toward Pauline, as she stood in front of her canvas and began to make little touches upon it with her long, slim brush. "I think, Mrs. Varick, that I can easily send you the list to-morrow. I will make it out to-night; I shall not forget anybody; at least I am nearly sure that I shall not."

"You are more than kind," said Pauline. She paused for a slight while, and then added: "You spend all day here, Miss Dares?"

"All day," was Cora's answer; and the face momentarily turned in Pauline's direction, with its glimpse of charming, dimpled chin, with the transitory light from its sweet, blue, lustrous eyes, affected her as a rarity of feminine beauty. "But I often have my hours of stupidity," Cora continued. "It is not so with me to-day. I have somehow seized my idea and mastered it, such as it is. You can see nothing on the canvas as yet. It is all obscure and sketchy."

"It is still very vague," said Pauline. "But have you no finished pictures?"

"Oh, yes, five or six. They are some yonder, if you choose to look at them."

"I do choose," Pauline replied, rising. She went toward the wall which Cora had indicated by a slight wave of her brush.

The pictures were four in number. They were without frames. Pauline examined each attentively. She knew nothing of Art in a technical and professional way; but she had seen scores of good pictures abroad; she knew what she liked without being able to tell why she liked it, and not seldom it befell that she liked what was intrinsically and solidly good.

"You paint figures as if you had studied in foreign schools," she said, quite suddenly, turning toward her hostess.

"I studied in Paris for a year," Cora replied. "That was all mamma could afford for me." And she gave a sad though by no means despondent little laugh.

"You surely studied to advantage," declared Pauline. "Your color makes me think of Henner … and your flesh-tints, too. And as for these two landscapes, they remind me of Daubigny. It is a proof of your remarkable talent that you should paint both landscapes and figure-pieces with so much positive success."

Cora's face was glowing, now. "You have just named two artists," she exclaimed, "whose work I have always specially admired and loved. If I resemble either of them in the least, I am only too happy and thankful!"

Pauline was silent for several minutes. She was watching Cora with great intentness. "Ah! how I envy you!" she at length murmured, and as she thus spoke her voice betrayed excessive feeling.

"I thought you envied nobody," answered Cora, somewhat wonderingly.

Pauline gave a little soft cry. "You mean because I am rich, no doubt!" she said, a kind of melancholy sarcasm tinging her words.

"Riches mean a great deal," said Cora.

"But if you have no special endowment that separates you from the rest of the world, you are still a woman."

"I am not sorry to be a woman."

"No! because you are a living protest against the inferiority of our sex. You can do something; you need not forever have men doing something for you, like the great majority of us!" Pauline's gray eyes had kindled, and her lips were slightly tremulous as they began to shape her next sentence. "Most of us are sorry to be women," she went on, "but I think a great many of us are sorry to be the sort of women fate or circumstance makes us. There is the galling trouble. If we have no gift, like yours, that can compel men's recognition and respect, we must content ourselves with being merged into the big commonplace multitude. And to be merged into the big commonplace multitude is to be more or less despised. This may sound like the worst kind of cynicism, but I assure you, Miss Dares, that it is by no means as flippant as that. I have seen more of life than you … why not? You perhaps have heard a fact or two about my past. I have had a past – and not a pleasant one, either. And experience (which is the name we give our disappointments, very often) has taught me that if we could see down to the innermost depth of any good man's liking for any good woman, we would find there an undercurrent of real contempt."

"Contempt!" echoed Cora. She had slightly thrown back her head, either in dismay or denial.

"Yes – contempt," asseverated Pauline. "I believe, in all honesty, at this hour, that if the charm which our sex exerts over the other – the physical fascination, and the fascination of sentiment, tenderness, idealization – had never existed, we would have been literally crushed out of being long ago. Men have permitted us to live thus far through the centuries, not because we are weaker than they, but because some extraordinary and undiscoverable law has made them bow to our weakness instead of destroying it outright. They always destroy every other thing weaker than themselves, except woman. They have no compunction, no hesitation. History will show you this, if you accept its annals in an unbiased spirit. They either eat the lower animals, or else put them into usages of the most severe labor. They leave woman unharmed because Nature has so commanded them. But here they are the slaves of an edict which they obey more blindly, more instinctively, than even the best of them know."

"I can't believe that these are your actual views!" now exclaimed Cora. "I can't believe that you rate the sacred emotion of love as something to be discussed like a mere scientific problem!"

Pauline went up to the speaker and stood close beside her while she responded, —

"Ah! my dear Miss Dares, the love between man and woman is entitled to no more respect than the law of gravitation. Both belong to the great unknown scheme. We may shake our heads in transcendental disapprobation, but it is quite useless. The loftiest affection of the human heart is no more important and no more mysterious than the question of why Newton's apple fell from the tree or why a plant buds in spring. All causes are unknown, and to seek their solution is to idly grope."

Cora was regarding Pauline, as the latter finished, with a look full of sad interest. "You speak like … like some one whom we both know," she said hesitatingly. "You speak as if you did not believe in God."

"I do not disbelieve in God," quickly answered Pauline. "The carelessly-applied term of 'atheist' is to my thinking a name fit only for some pitiable braggart. He who denies the existence of a God is of no account among people of sense; but he who says, 'I am ignorant of all that concerns the conceivability of a God' has full right to express such ignorance."

Cora slowly inclined her head. "That is the way I have heard him talk," she said, almost musingly. Then she gave a quick glance straight into Pauline's watchful eyes. "I – I mean," she added, confusedly, as if she had betrayed herself into avowing some secret reflection, "that Mr. Kindelon has more than once spoken in a similar way."

"Mr. Kindelon?" replied Pauline, with a gentle, peculiar, interrogative emphasis. "And did you agree with him?"

"No," swiftly answered Cora. "I have a faith that he cannot shake – that no one can shake! But he has not tried to do so; I must render him that justice."

Pauline turned away, with a faint laugh. "The wise men, who have thought and therefore doubted," she returned, "are often fond of orthodoxy in the women whom they like. They think it picturesque."

She laughed again, and Cora's eyes followed her as she moved toward the pictures which she had previously been examining. "Let us change the subject," she went on, with a note of cold composure in her voice. "I see that you don't like rationalism… Well, you are a poet, as your pictures tell me, and few poets like to do more than feel first and think afterward… Are these pictures for sale, Miss Dares?"

Cora's answer came a trifle tardily. "Three of them," she said.

"Which three?" Pauline asked, somewhat carelessly, as it seemed.

"All but that study of a head. As you see, it is scarcely finished."

"It is the one I should like to purchase. You say it is not for sale?"

"No, Mrs. Varick."

"It is very clever," commented Pauline, almost as though she addressed her own thoughts. She turned her face toward Cora's; it wore an indefinite flickering sort of smile. "Has it any name?"

"Oh, no; it is a mere study."

"I like it extremely… By the way, is it a portrait?"

Cora did not reply for several seconds. She had begun to put little touches upon her canvas again – or to seem as if she were so putting them.

"It's not good enough to be called anything," she presently replied.

"I want it," said Pauline. She was looking straight at the picture – a small square of rather recklessly rich color. "I want it very much indeed. I … I will give you a considerable sum for it."

She named the sum that she was willing to give, and in an admirably cool, loitering voice. It was something that surpassed any price ever proposed to Cora Dares for one of her paintings, by several hundreds of dollars.

Cora kept silent. She was touching her canvas. Pauline waited. Suddenly she turned and regarded her companion.

"Well?" she said.

Cora flung aside her brush. The two women faced each other.

"I think you are cruel!" cried Cora. It was evident that she was nearly in straits for speech, and her very lovely blue eyes seemed to sparkle through unshed tears. "I – I told you that I did not wish to sell the picture," she hurried on. "I – I don't call it a picture at all, as I also told you. It – it is far from being worth the price that you have offered me. It … it … And," here Cora paused. Her last words had a choked sound.

Pauline was looking at her fixedly but quite courteously.

"It is Ralph Kindelon's portrait," she said.

Cora started. "Well! and if it is!" she exclaimed.

Instantly, after that, Pauline went over to her and took one of her hands.

"My dear Miss Dares," she said, with that singular sweetness which she could always throw into her voice, "I beg you to forgive me. If you really wish to retain that picture – and I see that you do – why, then I would not take it from you even as a voluntary gift. Let us speak no more on the subject."