Pray You, Sir, Whose Daughter? Part 3

"Think! Think what? I had no idea that Gertrude would be so utterly unreasonable. It is a girl's whim. She'll get over it, but it is deucedly uncomfortable while it lasts."

"Mamma," said Gertrude, when she reached her mother's pretty room on the third floor. "Mamma, do you suppose if a girl really and truly loved a man that she would stop to think whether he had a high or a low estimate of womanhood?"

The girl's mother looked up startled. She was quite familiar with what she had always termed the "superhumanly aged remarks" of her daughter, but the new turn they had taken surprised her.

"I don't believe she would, Gertrude. Why? Are you imagining yourself in love with some man who is not chivalrous toward women?" Mrs. Foster smiled at the mere idea of her daughter caring much for any man. She thought she had observed her too closely to make a mistake in the matter.

Gertrude evaded the first question.

"I once heard a very brilliant man say--what I did not then understand--that chivalry was always the prelude to imposition. I believe I don't care very especially for chivalry. Fair play is better, don't you think so?" She did not pause for a reply, but began taking off her long gloves.

"Which would you like best from papa, flattery or square-toed, honest truth?"

Her mother laughed.

"Gertrude, you are perfectly ridiculous. The inst.i.tution of marriage, as now established, wouldn't hang together ten minutes if your square-toed, honest truth, as you call it, were to be tried between husbands and wives. Most wives are frightened nearly to death for fear they will become acquainted with the truth some day. They don't want it. They were not--built for it." Gertrude began to move about the room impatiently.

Her mother smiled at her and went on: "Don't you look at it that way?

No? Well, you are young yet. Wait until you've been married three years--"

The girl turned upon her with an indignant face. Then suddenly she threw her arms about her mother's neck.

"Poor mamma, poor mamma," she said. "Didn't you find out for three years _after?_ How did you bear it? I should have committed suicide. I--"

"Oh, no you wouldn't!" said her mother, with a bitter little inflection.

"They all talk that way. Girls all feel so, if they know enough to feel at all--to think at all. They rage and wear out their nerves--as you are doing now, heaven knows why--and the beloved husband calls a doctor and buys sweets and travels with the precious invalid, and never once suspects that he is at the bottom of the whole trouble. It never dawns upon him that what she is dying for is a real and loyal companions.h.i.+p, such as she had fondly dreamed of, and not at all for sea air. It doesn't enter his mind that she feels humiliated because she knows that a great part of his life is a sealed book to her, and that he wishes to keep it so."

She paused, and her daughter stroked her cheek. This was indeed a revelation to the girl. She had been wholly deceived by her mother's gay manner all these years. She was taking herself sharply to task now.

"But by and by when she succeeds in killing all her self-respect; when she makes up her mind that the case is hopeless, and that she must expect absolutely no frankness in life beyond the limits of conventional usage prescribed for purblind babies; after she arrives at the point where she discovers that her happiness is a pretty fiction built on air foundation--well, daughter, after that she--she strives to murder all that is in her beyond and above the petty simpleton she pa.s.ses for--and she succeeds fairly well, doesn't she?"

There was a cynical smile on her lips, and she made an elaborate bow to her daughter.

"Oh, mamma, I beg your pardon!" exclaimed the girl, almost frightened.

"I truly beg your pardon! If--you--I--"

Her mother looked steadily out of the window. Then she said, slowly, "How did you come to find all this out _before_ you were married, child?

Have I not done a mother's duty by you in keeping you in ignorance, so far as I could, of all the struggles and facts of life--of--"

The bitter tone was in her voice again. Gertrude was hurt by it, it was so full of self-reproach mingled with self-contempt. She slipped her arm about her mother's waist.

"Don't, mamma," she said. "Don't blame yourself like that. I'm sure you have always done the best possible--the--"

Her mother laughed, but the note was not pleasant.

"Yes, I always did the lady-like thing,--nothing. I floated with the tide. Take my advice, daughter,--float. If you don't, you'll only tire yourself trying to swim against a tide that is too strong for you and--and nothing will come of it. Nothing at all." The girl began to protest with the self-confidence of youth, but her mother went on. She had taken the bit in her teeth to-day and meant to run the whole race.

"Do you suppose I did not know about the Spillini family? About the thousands of Spillini families? Do you suppose I did not know that the rent of ten such families--their whole earnings for a year--would be spent on--on a pretty inlaid prayer-book like this?" She tapped the jeweled cross and turned it over on her lap. The girl's eyes were wide and almost fear-filled as she studied her handsome care-free mother in her new mood.

"Did you really suppose I did not know that this gem on the top of the cross is dyed with the life-blood of some poor wretch, and that this one represents the price of the honor of a starving girl?" She s.h.i.+vered, and the girl drew back. "Did you fancy me as ignorant and as--happy--as I have talked? Don't you know that it is the sole duty of a well-bred woman to be ignorant--and happy? Otherwise she is morbid!" She p.r.o.nounced the word affectedly, and then laughed a bitter little laugh.

"Don't, mamma," said the girl, again. "I quite understand now, quite--"

She laid her head on her mother's bosom and was silent. Presently she felt a tear drop on her hair. She put her hand up to her mother's cheek and stroked it.

"The game went against you, didn't it, mamma?" she said softly. "And you were not to blame." She felt a little s.h.i.+ver run over her mother's frame and a sob crushed back bravely that hurt her like a knife. Presently two hands lifted the girl's face.

"You don't despise me, daughter? In my position the price of a woman's peace is the price of her own self-respect. I did not lose the game. I gave it up!"

Gertrude kissed her on eyes and lips. "Poor mamma, poor mamma," she said softly, "I wonder if I shall do the same!" For the first time since she entered the room, the daughter appeared to appeal for, rather than to offer, sympathy and strength. Her mother was quick to respond.

"If you never learn to love anyone very much, daughter, you may hope to keep your self-respect. If you do you will sell it all--for his.

And--and--"

"Lose both at last?" asked the girl, hoa.r.s.ely. Katherine Foster closed her eyes for a moment to shut out her daughter's face.

"Will you ever have had his?" she asked, with her eyes still closed.

"Do men ever truly respect their dupes or their inferiors? Do you truly respect anyone to whom you are willing to deny truth, honor, dignity?

Is it respect, or only a tender, pitying love we offer an intellectual cripple--one whose mental life we know to be, and desire to keep, distinctly below our own? Do--" She opened her eyes and they rested on an onyx clock. She laughed. "Come, daughter," she said, "it is time to dress for the Historical Club's annual dinner. You know I am one of the guests of honor to-day. They honor me so truly that I am not permitted to join the club or be ranked as a useful member at all. My work they accept--flatter me by praising in a lofty way; but I can have no status with them as an historian--I am a woman!"

Gertrude sprang to her feet. Her eyes flashed fire.

"Don't go! I wouldn't allow them to--" The door opened softly. Mr.

Foster's face appeared.

"Why, dearie, aren't you ready for the Historical Club? I wouldn't have you late for anything. You know I, as the vice-president, am to respond to the toast on, 'Woman: the highest creation, and G.o.d's dearest gift to mankind.' It wouldn't look well if you were not there."

"No, dear," she said, without glancing at Gertrude. "It would not look well. I'll be ready in a minute. Will you help me, Gertrude?"

"Yes," said the girl, and her deft fingers flew at the task. When the door closed behind her mother and the carriage rolled away, she threw herself face down on the bed and ground her teeth. "Shall I float, or try to swim up stream?" she said, to herself. "Will either one pay for what it will cost? Shall--"

"Miss Gertrude, dinner is served," said the maid; and she went to the table alone.

"To think that a visit to the Spillini family should have led to all this," she thought, and felt that life, as it had been, was over for her.

Aloud she said:--

"James, the berries, please, and then you may go."

And James told Susan that in his opinion the man that got Miss Gertrude was going to get the sweetest, simplest, yieldingest girl he ever saw except one, and Susan vowed she could not guess who that one was.

But apparently James did not wholly believe her, for he essayed to sportively poke her under the chin with an index finger that very evidently had seen better days prior to having come into violent contact with a base-ball, which, having a mind and a curve of its own, had incidentally imparted an eccentric crook to the unfortunate member.

"Don't you dast t'touch me with that old pot-hook, er I'll scream,"

exclaimed Susan, dodging the caress. "I don't see no sense in a feller gettin' hisself all broke up that a way," and Susan, from the opposite side of the butler's table, glanced admiringly at her own shapely hand, albeit the wrist might have impressed fastidious taste as of too robust proportions, and the fingers have suggested less of flexibility than is desirable.

But to James the hand was perfect, and Susan, feeling her power, did not scruple to use it with brutal directness. She had that s.h.i.+vering dislike for deformity which, is possessed by the physically perfect, and she took it as a private grievance that James should have taken the liberty to break one of his fingers without her knowledge and consent. Until he had met her, James had carried his distorted member as a badge of honor.

No warrior had worn more proudly his battle scars. For, to James, to be a catcher in a base-ball club was honor enough for one man, and he had never dreamed of a loftier ambition. He had grown to keep that mutilated finger ever to the fore as a retired general might carry an empty sleeve. It gave distinction and told of brave and lofty achievement, so James thought.

Susan had modified his pride in the dislocated digit, but he had not yet learned to keep it always in the background. It had several times before interfered with his love-making, and James was humble.