The Whirligig of Time Part 44

"Yes."

"Inevitably?"

"Yes."

"Even if uselessly?"

"Yes." Her eyes met his squarely enough; there was no sign of flinching in them.

"I'm glad you understand. For that's going to be our life, you know."

"Yes, James; that shall be our life." They got up and took each other's hands for a moment, as though to seal their compact, looking each other steadfastly in the eyes meanwhile. They did not kiss again.

CHAPTER VIII

ONE THING AND ANOTHER

Seldom have we longed for anything so much as for the pen of a Fielding or a Thackeray to come to our aid at the present moment and, by means of just such a delightful detached essay as occurs from time to time in "Tom Jones" or "The Virginians," impart a feeling of the intermission that at this point appears in our story. There is nothing like a digression on human frailty or the condition of footmen in the reign of King George the Second to lift the mind of a reader off any particular moment of a story and, by throwing a few useful hints into the discourse, prepare him ever so gently to be set down at last at the exact point where he is to take it up again. That is making an art of skipping, indeed. We admire it intensely, but realize how impossible it is in this case. Not only is such a thing frankly outside our power, but the prejudice of the times is set against it, so our only course is to confess our weakness and plod along as best we may.

Why on earth every human being who ever knew him should not have known of his engagement as soon as it occurred--or long before, for that matter--Harry could never discover. That they did not, in most cases, was due partly to reasons which could have been best explained by James and partly to the fact that the person who is most careless of concealment in such matters is very often the one who is least suspected. And then so many men had been after Madge! So that when the great news burst upon the world at the dinner that Mrs. Gilson could not decently be prevented from giving, the surprise, in the words of ninety-nine per cent. of their well-meaning friends, was as great as the pleasure.

That occurred about a week after James' sudden departure from Bar Harbor, a phenomenon amply accounted for by business. Trouble in the Balkans--there always was trouble in the Balkans--had resulted, it appeared, in Orders; and Orders demanded James' presence at his post.

This from Beatrice, with impregnable casualness. Beatrice was really rather magnificent, these days. When she received her invitation to Mrs.

Gilson's dinner she vowed that nothing should take her there, but the next moment she knew she would go; that nothing should keep her from going. Obviously the first guiding principle of destiny-fighting was to go on exactly as if nothing had happened.

About a week after the dinner Harry received a note from his brother in New York saying that he was engaged to Beatrice; that the wedding was to take place in London in October and that he hoped Harry would go over with him and act as his best man. "I refrained from mentioning it before," added James, "because I did not want to take the wind out of your sails. We are also enabled by waiting to reap the benefit of your experience; I refer to the Gilsons. We are taking no risks; it will appear in the papers on Wednesday the sixteenth, with Beatrice in Bar Harbor and me in New York. Beatrice sails the following Sat.u.r.day."

That was all very well, if a little hard. James and Beatrice were both undemonstrative, businesslike souls; the arrangement was quite characteristic.

Beatrice in due time sailed for home, and James followed her some three weeks afterward. Harry went with him, returning immediately after the wedding by the fastest s.h.i.+p he could get; he was out of the country just eighteen days, all told. The voyage over was an uneventful one; the s.h.i.+p was nearly empty and Harry worked hard at his new play. He had rather looked forward to enjoying this last week of unmarried companions.h.i.+p with his brother, but somehow they did not seem to have more than usual to say to each other when they were together. Rather less, in fact.

"You're looking low, seems to me," said Harry after they had paced the wet deck in silence for nearly half of a certain evening.

"I've been rather low, lately."

"What--too much work?"

"Oh, I don't know. It's nothing."

"Not seasick, are you?"

"I hope not." Both gave a slight snort expressive of amus.e.m.e.nt. This was occasioned by the fact that Aunt Cecilia had offered James the use of her yacht--or rather the largest and most sumptuous of her yachts--for his wedding trip, and he and Beatrice were going to cruise for two months in the Mediterranean. As for the time--well, he was simply taking it, defying McClellan's to fire him if they dared.

"It's funny, isn't it, our getting engaged at the same time," Harry went on after a moment. It was the first reference he had made to the coincidence.

"Oh, yes," said James, "it's one of the funniest things I can remember."

"And the funniest part of it is that neither of us seems to have suspected about the other. At least I didn't."

"Oh, neither did I; not a thing."

"And practically n.o.body else did either, apparently."

"No. It might have been just the other way round, for all anybody knew--you and Beatrice, and Madge and me."

Harry could not but take away from that conversation and from the whole voyage a vague feeling of disappointment. Since he heard of James'

engagement he had entertained an elusive conviction that love coming into their lives at so nearly the same time should somehow make a difference for the better between them. When he tried to put this idea into words, however, he found his mind mechanically running to such phrases as "deeper sympathy" and "fuller understanding," all of which he dismissed as sentimental cant. It was easy to rea.s.sure himself on all grounds of reason and commonsense; James and he were in no need of fuller understandings. And yet, especially after the above conversation, he could not but be struck by a certain inapproachability in his brother which for some reason he could not construe as natural undemonstrativeness.

The wedding took place in an atmosphere of unconstrained formality.

Harry was not able to get a boat until two days after it, and he could not resist the temptation of writing Madge all about it that very night, though he knew the letter could hardly reach her before he did:--

"It was quite a small wedding, chiefly because, as far as I can make out, there are only some thirty-odd dukes in the kingdom. It occurred at the odd hour of 2:30, but that didn't seem to prevent any one from enjoying the food, and more especially the drink, that was handed around afterward at Lady Archie's. Lord Moville, Beatrice's uncle, was there and seemed greatly taken with James. After he had got outside about a quart of champagne he amused himself by feeling James' biceps and thumping him on the chest and saying that with a fortnight's training he'd back him for anything he wanted against the Somerset c.o.c.kerel, or some one of the sort, most of which left James rather cold, though he bore it smiling. His youngest daughter (Lord M.'s), a child of about eighteen, apparently the only living person who has any control over him, was quite frank about it. 'Fido's drunk again,' she announced pleasantly to all who might hear. 'Oh, so's Ned,' said Jane Twombly, Beatrice's sister; 'there's no use trying to help it at weddings, I find!' Just then Lady Archie came running up in despair. 'Oh, Sibyl,'

she said, 'do try to do something with your father. He's been threatening to take off his coat because he says the room's too hot, and now he wants old Lady Mulford to kiss him!' And off darts Sibyl into the dining-room where her father and Ned Twombly stand arm in arm waving gla.s.ses of champagne and shouting 'John Peel' at the top of their lungs.

'Fido!' she shouted, running straight up to him, 'put down that gla.s.s directly and come home! Instantly! Do you hear? You're disgracing us!

The next time I take you out to a wedding you'll know it!' 'Oh, Sib,'

pleaded the n.o.ble Marquis, 'don't be too hard on us! Only drinkin'

bride's health--must drink bride's health--not good manners not to. Sib shall drink with us; here's a gla.s.s, Sib--for his view, view HALLO!

would awaken the dead--' 'Fido, do you know what you're doing? You're ruining your season's hunting! Gout-stool and Seidlitz powders all the winter for you, if you don't go easy!' But still Fido refused to obey till at last the dauntless child went up and whispered something in his ear, after which he calmed down and presently followed her out of the house, gently as a lamb. 'She threatened to tell her mother about the woman in Wimbledon,' explained Jane to me. 'Of course every one knows all there is to know about her, including Aunt Susan, but he hasn't found that out yet, and it gives Sib rather a strangle-hold on him. Good idea, isn't it? Marjorie--Ned's sister, you know--has promised to work the same trick for me with Ned, when the time comes.' I hope I am not more straight-laced than my neighbors, but do you know, the whole atmosphere struck me as just a teeny-weeny bit decadent...."

After he reached home Harry saw that it would be quite useless, what with Madge and other diverting influences, to try to finish his play in New Haven, so he repaired to the solitudes of the Berks.h.i.+res for the remainder of the autumn. He occupied two rooms in an almost empty inn in Stockbridge, working and living for two months on a strict regime. It was his habit to work from nine till half-past one. He spent most of the afternoon in exercise and the evening in more writing; not the calm, well-balanced writing of the morning, but in feverish and untrammeled scribbling. Each morning he had to write over all that he had done the night before, but he found it well worth while, discovering that reason and inspiration kept separate office hours.

Meanwhile Madge, though freed from the trammels of Miss Snellgrove, was very busy at home with her trousseau and other matters. She was supremely happy these days; happy even in Harry's absence, because she could feel that he was doing better work than he could with her near, and that provided just the element of self-sacrifice that every woman--every woman that is worth anything--yearns to infuse into her love. She had ample opportunity of trying her hand at writing love letters, but, to tell the truth, she was never very good at it. Neither was Harry, for that matter; possibly because he was now putting every ounce of creative power in him into something the result of which justified the effort much better.... But suppose we allow some of the letters to speak for themselves.

Dear Inamorato: (wrote Madge one day in November) "I'm not at all sure that that word exists; it looks so odd in the masculine and just shows how the male s.e.x more or less spoils everything it touches. However! I've been hemming towels all day and am ready to drop, but after I finish with them there will be only the pillow cases to attend to before I am done. By the bye, what do you suppose arrived to-day? _Four_ (heavily underscored) most _exquisite_ (same business) linen sheets, beautifully hemst.i.tched and marked and from who ("Good Heavens, and the woman taught school!" exclaimed Harry) do you think? Miss Snellgrove! Wasn't it sweet of her? That makes ten in all. Everybody has been lovely and we shall do very well for linen, but clothes are much more difficult. In them, you see, I have to please not only myself but Mama and Aunt Tizzy as well.

I went shopping with both of them yesterday, and they were possessed to make me order an evening gown of black satin with yellow tr.i.m.m.i.n.gs which was something like a gown Aunt Tizzy had fascinated people in during the early eighties. It wasn't such a bad idea, but unfortunately it would have made me resemble a rather undersized wasp. We compromised at last on a blue silk that's going to have a Watteau pleat and will fall in nice little straight folds and make me look about seven feet high.

Aunt Tizzy is too perfectly dear and keeps telling me not to scrimp, but her idea of not scrimping is to spend simply _millions_ and always go ahead and get the very best in the _extravagantest_ way, and my conscience rebels. I hope to pick up some things at the January sales in New York; if you are there seeing about your play at that time we can be together, can't we? I still have to get a suit and an afternoon gown and various other things the nature of which I do not care to specify!

I run over and look in on Aunt Selina every time I get a chance. She is _so_ dear and uncomplaining about being left alone and keeps saying that having me in the house will be as good as having Beatrice, which is absurd, though sweet.

Heavens, how I tremble when I think of trying to fill her shoes!

I must stop now, dearest, so good-night. Ever your own,

MADGE.

O O O O O O

Those O's stand for osculations. Do you know how hard it is to kiss in a small s.p.a.ce? Like tying a bow-knot with too short a piece of ribbon."

For Heaven's sake, my good woman (wrote Harry in reply), don't write me another letter like that! How do you think I feel when, fairly thirsting for fire and inspiration and that sort of thing, I tear open an envelope from you and find it contains an unusually chatty Woman's Column? How do you suppose poor old D. Alghieri would have written his Paradiso if Beatrice had held forth on the subject of linen sheets, and do you or do you not suppose it would have improved Petrarch's sonnets if Laura had treated him to a disquisition on the ins and outs of the prices of evening gowns?

Remember your responsibility! If you continue to deny me inspiration my play will fail and you will live in disgrace and misery in the bas.e.m.e.nt of a Harlem tenement in an eternal smell of cabbages and a well-justified fear of c.o.c.kroaches, with one cracked looking-gla.s.s to see your face in and dinner served up in a pudding basin!

The c. of my b. (that was his somewhat flippant abbreviation of child of my brain) "is coming along well enough, considering. The woman is shaping quite well. What was the name you suggested for her the last time I saw you? If it was Hermione, I'm afraid it won't do, because every one in the theater, from Bachmann down to the call-boy, will call it Hermy-one, and I shall have to correct them all, which will be a bad start. I call her Mamie for the present, because I know I can't keep it. What would be the worst possible name, do you think? Hannah? Florrie? Mae? Keren-happuch and Glwadwys also have their points.

Please forgive me for being (a) short-tempered; (b) tedious. I was going to tear up what I have written, only I decided it would not be quite fair, as you have a right to know just how dreadful I can be, in case you want to change your mind about February.--What a discreetly euphemistic phrase!--It has grown fearfully cold here, and we had the first skating of the winter to-day. I got hold of some skates and went out and, fired by the example of two or three people here who skate rather well, I swore I would do a 3-turn or die in the attempt. The latter alternative occurred. I am writing this on the mantelpiece.