The Adventures of a Widow: A Novel

X

By nine o'clock on Thursday evening all her guests had arrived. They comfortably filled her two smart and brilliant drawing-rooms, but quite failed to produce the crowded effect noticeable in Mrs. Dares's less ample quarters.

Pauline saw with pleasure that the fine pictures, bronzes, and bric-à-brac which she had brought from Europe were most admiringly noticed. Small groups were constantly being formed before this canvas or that cabinet, table, and pedestal. She had kept for some time quite close to Mrs. Dares, having a practical sense of the little lady's valuable social assistance on an occasion like the present, apart from all personal feelings of liking.

"You make it much easier for me," she said at length, after the assemblage appeared complete and no new arrivals had occurred for at least ten minutes. "It was so kind of you to come, when I know that you make a rule of not going anywhere."

"This was a very exceptional invitation, my dear," answered Mrs. Dares. "It was something wholly out of the common, you know."

"I understand," said Pauline, with her sweetest laugh. "You wanted to see your mantle descend, after a manner, upon my younger shoulders. You wanted to observe whether I should wear it gracefully or not."

"I had few doubts on that point," was the slow, soft reply.

"So you really think me a worthy pupil?" continued Pauline, glancing about her with an air of pretty and very pardonable pride.

"You have a most lovely home," said Mrs. Dares, "and one exquisitely designed for the species of entertainment which you are generous enough to have resolved upon."

"Ah, don't say 'generous,'" broke in Pauline. "You give me a twinge of conscience. I am afraid my motive has been quite a selfishly ambitious one. At least, I sometimes fancy so. How many human motives are thoroughly disinterested? But if I succeed with my salon– which before long I hope to make as fixed and inevitable a matter as the day of the week on which it is held – the result must surely be a most salutary and even reformatory one. In securing my guerdon for work accomplished I shall have done society a solid benefit; and when I wear my little crown I shall feel, unlike most royal personages, that it is blessed by friends and not stained by the blood of enemies."

Her tone was one of airy jest, but a voice at her side instantly said, as she finished, —

"Do not be too sure of that. Very few crowns are ever won without some sort of bloodshed."

She turned and saw Kindelon, who had overheard nearly all her last speech to Mrs. Dares. Something in his manner lessened the full smile on Pauline's lips without actually putting it to flight.

"You speak as if you bore gloomy tidings," she said.

Kindelon's eyes twinkled, though his mouth preserved perfect sobriety. "You have done precisely what I expected you would do," he said, "in undertaking an arbitrary selection of certain guests and an arbitrary exclusion of certain others. You have raised a growl."

"A growl!" murmured Mrs. Dares, with a slight dismayed gesture.

Pauline's face grew serious. "Who, pray, are the growlers?" she asked.

"Well, the chief one is that incorrigible and irrepressible Barrowe. He has his revolutionary opinions, of course. He is always having revolutionary opinions. He makes me think of the Frenchman who declared that if he ever found himself in Heaven his first impulse would be to throw up barricades."

Pauline bit her lip. "Barricades are usually thrown up in streets," she said, with a faint, ired ring of the voice. "Mr. Barrowe probably forgets that fact."

"Do you mean that you would like to show him the street now?" asked Kindelon.

"I have not heard of what his alleged growl consists."

"I warned you against him, but you thought it best that he should be invited. Since you had decided upon weeding, there was no one whom you could more profitably weed."

"Mr. Barrowe has a very kind heart," here asserted Mrs. Dares, with tone and mien at their gentlest and sweetest. "He is clad with bristles, if you please, but the longer you know him the more clearly you recognize that his savage irritability is external and superficial."

"I think it very appropriate to say that he is clad with bristles," retorted Kindelon. "It makes me wish that I had reported him as grunting instead of growling. In that case the simile would be perfect."

Mrs. Dares shook her head remonstratingly. "Don't try to misrepresent your own good heart by sarcasm," she replied. She spoke with her unchangeable gravity; she had no lightsome moments, and the perpetually serious views which she took of everything made you sometimes wonder how and why it was that she managed to make her smileless repose miss the austere note and sound the winsome one.

"I am certain of not losing your esteem," exclaimed Kindelon, with all his most characteristic warmth. "Your own heart is so large and kind that everybody who has got to know it can feel secure in drawing recklessly upon its charity."

Mrs. Dares made him no answer, for just then a gentleman who had approached claimed her attention. And Pauline, now feeling that she and Kindelon were virtually alone together, said with abrupt speed, —

"You told me that this Mr. Barrowe had a kind heart, in spite of his gruff, unreasonable manners. You admitted as much, and so, remembering how clever his writings are, I decided to retain him on the list. But please tell me just what he has been saying."

"Oh, he's tempestuous on the subject of your having done any weeding at all. He thinks it arrogant and patronizing of you. He thinks that I am at the bottom of it; he always delights in blaming me for something. He positively revels, I suppose, in his present opportunity."

"But if he is indignant and condemnatory," said Pauline, "why does he not remain away? He has the right of discountenancing my conduct by his absence."

"Ah, you don't know him! He never neglects a chance for being turbulent. I heard him assert, just now, that Miss Cragge had received a most cruel insult from you."

"Miss Cragge!" exclaimed Pauline, with a flash of her gray eyes. "I would not have such a creature as that in my drawing-rooms for a very great deal! Upon my word," she went on, with a sudden laugh that had considerable cold bitterness, "this irascible personage needs a piece of my mind. I don't say that I intend giving it to him, for I am at home, and the requirements of the hostess mark imperative limits. But I have ways left me of showing distinct disfavor, for all that. Are there any other acts of mine which Mr. Barrowe does me the honor to disapprove?"

"Oh, yes. I hear that he considers you have acted most unfairly toward the triad of poets, Leander Prawle, Arthur Trevor, and Rufus Corson."

Pauline gave a smile that was really but a curl of the lip. "Indeed!" she murmured. "I was rather amused by Mr. Prawle's poetic prophecy of a divine future race; it may be bad poetry, as he puts it, but I thought it rather good evolution. Then the Quartier Latin floridity of Mr. Trevor amused me as well: I have always liked fervor of expression in verse, and I am not prepared to say that Mr. Trevor has always written ludicrous exaggeration – especially since he reveres Théophile Gautier, who is an enchanting singer. But when it comes to treating with that morbid poseur, Mr. Corson, who affects to see beauty in decay and corruption, and who makes a silly attempt to deify indecency, I draw my line, and shut my doors."

"Of course you do," said Kindelon. "No doubt if you had opened them to Mr. Corson, Barrowe would have been scandalized at your doing so. As it is, he chooses to championize Mr. Corson and Miss Cragge. He is a natural grumbler, a constitutional fighter. By the way, he is coming in our direction. Do you see him approaching?"

"Oh, yes, I see him," said Pauline resolutely, "and I am quite prepared for him."

Mr. Barrowe presented himself at her side in another minute or two. His tall frame accomplished a very awkward bow, while his little eyes twinkled above his beak-like nose, with a suggestion of restrained belligerence.

"Your entertainment is very successful, Mrs. Varick," he began, ignoring Kindelon, who had already receded a step or two.

"Have you found it so?" returned Pauline coolly. "I had fancied otherwise."

Mr. Barrowe shrugged his frail shoulders. "Your rooms are beautiful," he said, "and of course you must know that I like the assemblage; it contains so many of my good friends."

"I hope you miss nobody," said Pauline, after a slight pause.

Mr. Barrowe gave a thin, acid cough. "Yes," he declared, "I miss more than one. I miss them, and I hear that you have not invited them. I am very sorry that you have not. It is going to cause ill-feeling. Everybody knows that you took Mrs. Dares's list – my dear, worthy friend's list. It is too bad, Mrs. Varick; I assure you that it is too bad."

"I do not think that it is too bad," said Pauline freezingly, with the edges of her lips. "I do not think that it is bad at all. I have invited those whom I wished to invite."

"Precisely!" cried Mr. Barrowe, with a shrill, snapping sound in the utterance of the word. "You have been wrongly advised, however – horribly advised. I don't pretend to state who has advised you, but if you had consulted me – well, handicapped as I am by a hundred other duties, bored to death as I am by people applying for all sorts of favors, I would nevertheless, in so good a cause, have willingly spared you some of my valuable time. I would have told you by no means to exclude so excellent a person as poor, hard-working Miss Cragge. To slight her like that was a very unkind cut. You must excuse my speaking plainly."

"I must either excuse it or resent it," said Pauline, meeting the glitter of Mr. Barrowe's small eyes with the very calm and direct gaze of her own. "But suppose I do the latter? It has usually been my custom, thus far through life, to resent interference of any sort."

"Interference!" echoed Mr. Barrowe, with querulous asperity. "Ah, madam, I think I recognize just who has been advising you, now; you make my suspicion a certainty." He glanced irately enough toward Kindelon as he spoke the last words.

Kindelon took a step or two forward, reaching Pauline's side and pausing there. His manner, as he began to speak, showed no anger, but rather that blending of decision and carelessness roused by an adversary from whom we have slight fear of defeat.

"Come, Barrowe," he said, "if you mean me you had better state so plainly. As it happens, Mrs. Varick was advised, in the matter of not sending Miss Cragge an invitation, solely by herself. But if she had asked my counsel it would entirely have agreed with her present course."

"No doubt," almost snarled Mr. Barrowe. "The ill turn comes to the same thing. We need not split hairs. I made no personal reference to you, Kindelon; but if the cap fits you can wear it."

"I should like to hand it back to you with a bunch of bells on it," said Kindelon.

"Is that what you call Irish wit?" replied Mr. Barrowe, while his lips grew pale. "If so, you should save it for the columns of the 'Asteroid,' which sadly needs a little."

"The 'Asteroid' never prints personalities," returned Kindelon, with nonchalant mockery. "It leaves that kind of journalism to your friend Miss Cragge."

"Miss Cragge, sir," muttered Barrowe, "is a lady."

"I did not say she was a gentleman," retorted Kindelon, "though her general deportment has more than once cast a doubt upon her sex."

Mr. Barrowe gave a faint shiver. "I'm glad I haven't it on my conscience," he declared, "that I injured an honest girl to gratify a mere spite." He at once turned to Pauline, now. "Madam," he pursued, "I must warn you that your project will prove a dire failure if you attempt to develop it on a system of despotic preferences. We were all glad to come to you, in a liberal, democratic, intellectual spirit. But the very moment you undertake the establishment of a society formed on a basis of capricious likes and dislikes, I assure you that you are building on sand and that your structure will fall."

"In that case, Mr. Barrowe," said Pauline, stung by his unwarranted officiousness into the employment of biting irony, "you can have no excuse if you allow yourself to be buried in my ruins."

She passed rapidly away, while Kindelon accompanied her. "You were quite right," came his speedy encouragement, as they moved onward together. "You showed that insufferable egotist the door in the politest and firmest manner possible."

"I was in my own house, though," said Pauline, with an intonation that betokened the dawn of repentance. "He was very exasperating, truly, but – I was in my own house, you know."

"Of course you were," exclaimed Kindelon, "and he treated you as if it belonged to somebody else. We are all apt to assert a proprietary right when a fellow-citizen ventures to relieve us of our purse, and I think a similar claim holds good with regard to our self-respect."

Pauline presently came to a standstill. She looked troubled, and her gaze remained downcast for a little while. But soon she lifted it and met Kindelon's eyes steadily watching her.

"You don't think I was unjustifiably rude?" she asked.

"No; indeed I do not. I don't think you were rude at all."

She was silent for a brief interval. Then she said, without taking her eyes in the least from her companion's face, —

"Do you believe that most women would have acted the same?"

"No," he said, with a quick, slight laugh, "because most women have neither your brains nor your independence."

"And you like both in a woman?"

"I like both in you," he said, lowering his handsome head a little as he uttered the words.

"Do you think Cora Dares would have acted as I have done?" Pauline asked.

He made an impatient gesture; he appeared for a moment distressed and embarrassed.

"You and Cora Dares are – are not the same," he said, almost stammeringly.

"Oh, I know that very well," answered Pauline. "I have had very good reason to know that we are not the same. We are extremely different. By the way, she is not here to-night."

"Not here?" he repeated interrogatively, but with a suggestion of drolly helpless duplicity.

Pauline raised one finger, shaking it at him for an instant and no more. The gesture, transient as it was, seemed to convey a world of significance. No doubt Kindelon tacitly admitted this, though his face preserved both its ordinary color and composure.

"You are well aware that she is not here," Pauline said.

"Why do you say that?" he asked.

"I think so."

"But perhaps you may be mistaken. Perhaps you have merely fancied that I have noticed Miss Cora's non-appearance."

"Perhaps," Pauline repeated. She seemed to be saying the word to her own thoughts. But suddenly her manner became far less absent. "Mrs. Dares told me that Miss Cora had a headache to-night," she said, with brisk activity. "We can all have headaches, you know," she went on, "when we choose."

Kindelon nodded slowly. "I have heard that it is an accommodating malady," he said, in tones that were singularly lifeless and neutral.

Pauline put forth her hand, and let it rest on his broad, strong arm for a second or two.

"Did Miss Cora have a headache?" she asked.

He threw back his head, and shook it with a sudden sound of his breath which resembled a sigh of irritation, and yet was not quite that.

"Upon my word, I don't know!" he cried softly.

Just then Pauline found herself confronted by Mr. Howe, the novelist. His stoop was very apparent; it seemed even more consumptive than usual; his slim hand was incessantly touching and retouching his blue spectacles, which gleamed opaque and with a goblin suggestion from the smooth-shaven, scholarly pallor of his visage.

"Excuse me, Mrs. Varick," he began, "but I – I wish to speak a word with you."

Pauline smiled and assumed an affable demeanor. It cost her an effort to do so, for certain acute reasons; but she nevertheless achieved good results.

"A great many words, Mr. Howe," she answered, "if you wish."

Mr. Howe gave a sickly smile. "Oh, I don't ask a great many," he faltered; and it at once became evident that he was for some reason ill at ease, disconsolate, abysmally depressed.

"You are annoyed," said Pauline, chiefly because she found nothing else, as a would-be courteous hostess, to say.

"Annoyed?" came the hesitant reply, while Mr. Howe rearranged his blue spectacles with a hand that seemed to assume a new momentary decisiveness. "I am grieved, Mrs. Varick. I am grieved because a friend of mine has received a slight from you, and I hope that it is an unintentional slight. I – I want to ask you whether it cannot be corrected. I allude to Mr. Bedlowe."

"Mr. Bedlowe!" repeated Pauline amazedly. She turned to Kindelon as she spoke.

"Oh, yes," came Kindelon's ready answer; "you remember Bedlowe, of course."

"I remember Mr. Bedlowe," said Pauline, sedately.

"Ah! you seem to have forgotten him!" exclaimed Mr. Howe, with a great deal of gentlemanly distress. He had discontinued all manual connection with his blue glasses; he had even pressed both hands together, in a rotatory, nervous way, while he went on speaking. "I hope you did not mean to leave poor Bedlowe out," he proceeded, with quite a funereal pathos. "The poor fellow feels it dreadfully. I promised him I would say nothing about the matter, and yet (as you see) I have broken my promise."

"I think Mrs. Varick is sorry to see that you have broken your promise," said Kindelon, shortly and tepidly.

Mr. Howe glanced at Kindelon through his glasses. He was obliged to raise his head as he did so, on account of their differing statures.

"Kindelon!" he cried, in reproach, "I thought you were one of my friends."

"So I am," came Kindelon's reply, "and that is why I don't like the pietistic novelist, Bedlowe, who wrote 'The Christian Knight in Armor' and the 'Doubtful Soul Satisfied.'"

If there could be the ghost of a cough, Mr. Howe gave it. He again lifted his wan, lank hand toward his spectacles.

"Oh, Kindelon," he remonstrated, "you must not be as uncharitable as that. Bedlowe does the best he can – and really, between ourselves, his best is remarkably good. Think of his great popularity. Think of the way he appeals to the large masses. Think" —

But here Pauline broke in, with the merriest laugh that had left her lips that night.

"My dear Mr. Howe!" she exclaimed, "you forget that I heard a bitter wrangle between you and Mr. Bedlowe only a few days ago. You had a great many hard things to say of him then. I hope you have not so easily altered your convictions."

"I – I haven't altered my convictions at all," stammered Mr. Howe, quite miserably. "But between Bedlowe as a literary man, and – and Bedlowe as a social companion – I draw a very marked line."

Kindelon here put his big hand on Mr. Howe's slight shoulder, jovially and amicably, while he said, —

"Come, now, my dear Howe, you mean that the analytical and agnostic novelist wants the romantic and pietistic novelist, only for the purpose of breaking a lance with him. You want him for that reason and no other."

Mr. Howe removed his spectacles, and while he performed this act it was evident that he was extremely agitated. The removal of his spectacles revealed two very red-rimmed eyes, whose color escaped all note because of their smallness.

"I – I want Mr. Bedlowe for no such reason," he asserted. "But I – I do not want to attend a – so-called salon at which mere fashionable fancy takes the place of solid hospitality."

"You forget," said Pauline, with rapid coolness, "that you are speaking in the presence of your hostess."

"He remembers only," came the fleet words of Kindelon, "that he speaks at the prompting of Barrowe."

Pauline tossed her head; she was angry again. "I don't care anything about Mr. Barrowe," she asserted, with a very positive glance at the unspectacled Mr. Howe. "I should prefer to believe that Mr. Howe expresses his own opinions. Even if they are very rude ones, I should prefer having them original."

"They are original," said Mr. Howe feebly, but somehow with the manner of a man who possesses a reserve of strength which he is unable to readily command. "I do not borrow my opinions. I – I think nearly all people must know this."

"I know it," said Pauline very tranquilly, and with an accent suave yet sincere. "I have read your novels, Mr. Howe, and I have liked them very much. I don't say that this is the reason why I have asked you here to-night, and I don't say that my dislike of Mr. Bedlowe's novels is the reason why I have not asked Mr. Bedlowe here to-night. But I hope you will let my admiration of your talent cover all delinquencies, and permit me to be the judge of whom I shall choose and whom I shall not choose for my guests."

Mr. Howe put on his spectacles. While he was putting them on, he said in a voice that had a choked and also mournfully reproachful sound, —

"I have no social gifts, Mrs. Varick. I can't measure swords with you. I can only measure pens. That is the trouble with so many of us writers. We can only write; we can't talk. I – I think it grows worse with us, in these days when one has to write with the most careful selection of words, so as to escape what is now called commonplace diction. We get into the habit of striving after novelty of expression – we have to use our 'Thesaurus,' and search for synonyms – we have to smoke excessively (a good many of us) in order to keep our nerves at the proper literary pitch – we have to take stimulants (a good many of us – though I don't understand that, for I never touch wine) in order to drag up the words and ideas from an underlying stagnancy. Frankly, for myself, I talk quite ill. But I don't want to have you think that I am talking in another voice than my own. I don't want, in spite of my failure as a man of words, that you should suppose" —

"I suppose nothing, Mr. Howe," broke in Pauline, while she caught the speaker's hand in hers, gloved modishly up to the elbow with soft, tawny kid. "I insist upon supposing nothing except that you are glad to come here and will be glad to come again. I know three or four of your novels very well, and I know them so well that I love them, and have read them twice or thrice, which is a great deal to say of a novel, as even you, a novelist, will admit. But I don't like Mr. Bedlowe's novels any more than you do; and if Mr. Barrowe has tried to set you on fire with his incendiary feelings, I shall be excessively sorry. You have written lovely and brilliant things; you know the human soul, and you have shown that you know it. You may not have sold seventy thousand copies, as the commercial phrase goes, but I don't care whether you have sold seventy thousand or only a plain seventy; you are a true artist, all the same… And now I am going to leave you, for my other guests claim me. But I hope you will not care for anything severe and bitter which that dyspeptic Mr. Barrowe may say; for, depend upon it, he only wins your adherence because he is a clever man on paper, and not because he is even tolerable in the stern operations of real life. Frankly, between ourselves, I am sure that he makes a very bad husband, though he is always talking of being handicapped by autograph-bores and interviewers who keep him away from Mrs. Barrowe. I suspect that Mrs. Barrowe must be a very unhappy lady. And I'm sure, on the other hand, that Mrs. Howe is very happy – for I know there is a Mrs. Howe, or you couldn't describe the American women as ably as you do…" Pauline passed onward as she ended her final sentence. Kindelon, still at her side, soon said to her, —

"What a clever farewell you made: you have won Howe. You flattered him very adroitly. It's an open secret that his wife helps him in those exquisite novels of his. She is his one type of woman. I think that is why Howe will never be great; he will always be exquisite instead. He adores his wife, who hates society and always stays at home. If Howe had once committed a genuine fault it might have served posterity as a crystallized masterpiece."

Pauline shook her head with negative emphasis. "I like him just as he is," she murmured. She was silent for a moment, and then added, almost plaintively: "My entertainment looks pleasant enough, but I fear that it is all a disastrous failure."

"A failure?" echoed Kindelon, with no sympathy in the interrogation.

"Yes, everybody is grumbling. I distinctly feel it. It is not only that Barrowe has infected everybody; it is that everybody has a latent hostility towards anything like harmonious reunion."

"Isn't there a bit of pure imagination in your verdict?" Kindelon asked.

"Premonition," answered Pauline, "if you choose to call it by that name." She stood, while she thus spoke, under an effulgent chandelier, whose jets, wrought in the semblance of candles, dispersed from ornate metallic sconces a truly splendid glow.

"We have a new arrival," he said. He was glancing toward a near doorway while he spoke. Pauline's eyes had followed his own.

"My aunt!" she exclaimed. "And Sallie – and Courtlandt, too!"

"Yes, Courtlandt, too – my friend, Courtlandt," said Kindelon oddly.

"I told Aunt Cynthia she had best not come," murmured Pauline.

"And your cousin, Courtlandt?" said Kindelon. "Did you tell him not to come?"

"I am sorry that they came – I somehow can't help but be sorry!" exclaimed Pauline, while she moved towards the door by which she had seen her kindred enter.

"Sorry? So am I," said Kindelon. He spoke below his breath, but Pauline heard him.