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

II

Mrs. Gunnison’s dinners, like all else of the establishment, were always large. The classic limits authoritatively imposed she would have scorned – if she had ever heard of them. If she could have timed it, the greater the number of minutes required by the procession to the dining room in passing a given point, the better she would have been satisfied. She only felt that she “entertained” when she beheld serried ranks of guests stretching away from her on either hand. Therefore, when Miriam turned and discovered Leeds at her right, they found themselves in such semi-isolation as only exists at a very large dinner table.

“I am sorry,” he said, pleadingly.

“So am I,” she answered. “Very – oh, you think I mean that to be pleasant in that way, too – ”

She hastily averted her face, and engaged vigorously in conversation with the man on the other side. Leeds stared moodily before him. During the passing of the many courses which Mrs. Gunnison’s idea of fitting ceremony demanded, the lady whom he had taken in found him neither communicative nor responsive. The dinner dragged on. Miss Whiting’s soft right shoulder remained constantly turned on him. Her discourses, which he could not help hearing, continued actively and unceasingly. At last Mrs. Gunnison darted restless glances about. She had already begun to stir uneasily in her chair.

Miriam suddenly veered round upon him.

“I want to tell you something,” she almost whispered. “What I said – what I tried to say this afternoon was true.”

He looked at her with fixed earnestness.

“Oh!” she cried, passionately. “I can’t bear to have you study me as if I were a specimen of something – of mendacity, you think. But no matter about that. You must believe me. Don’t you?”

“How can I,” he answered, slowly, “with – ”

“With my reputation,” she caught up, quickly, as he paused. “Do not try to spare me – now. Can’t you hear – can’t you see, now, that I am speaking the truth?”

He gazed at her without answering.

“Oh, I can read in your eyes that you do not. I want you to believe me. Can’t you believe – even that?”

He shook his head half smilingly.

“You do not know all that I have heard,” he answered.

“Who can have been so unfair – so cruel? I – I never wanted to be believed so before. Oh, you think that is only a part of it; that the habit is so strong with me – that I am only flattering.”

“If I have been – warned,” Leeds continued.

“As if I were a peril – an evil – ”

“Perhaps you might be,” he muttered.

“I will not bear it. You shall believe me. I am not flattering.”

“At least, that you should have been willing to take the trouble to try was in itself a distinction.”

“You are hard on me.”

“I must protect myself.”

Mrs. Gunnison had arisen, and a rustling stir was spreading down the table.

“I am not a harpy,” she cried.

“A siren was a bird more beautiful, but not less dangerous,” he said.

She rose straightly and swiftly.

“You feel that you can speak to me like that because you believe I am what you think. Very well. There may be satisfaction for you to know it. I am, then, everything that you have implied. More – more than you have said. I am false. I do flatter people – cajole them – deceive. I do it for my own interest. Now are you satisfied? Could anything be worse? I confess, even, that I have deserved the way you have treated me.”

“Believe me – ” he began, hastily.

But she had swept from him, and, amid the group of retreating women, he found no chance to finish the sentence.

III

Miriam Whiting said “good-night” very early. A greater accuracy might demand the statement that the time at which she had “gone upstairs” was relatively not late – for the hours of the house were expansive, and not only had morning a way of extending into afternoon, but midnight into morning. As a general thing, she had only disappeared with her hostess, but on this particular evening she pleaded weariness – sleepiness – had even hinted at a headache, which no one had ever known her to have. Thereupon she departed, followed by the reproaches of the rest. Once in her room, she hurried her maid, and, finally, abruptly dismissed her. When she was alone, she went to the window and threw wide both the shutters. She leaned with her elbows on the sill, gazing out at the moonlit country.

Perfectly round, with a burnished sky about it, such as may sometimes be seen when the circle is absolutely full, the white disk hung in the heavens. Below, about the quiet edges of the fountain, the light lay with silken sheen. Only, where the drops fell tremulously, the water was broken into glittering sparks. All was very still. Far off a dog barked fitfully. That was the one sound which broke the silence, with the exception of the occasional distant laughter of some men on the terrace at the end of the spreading wing. With her fingers buried in her thick hair, carefully gathered for the night, she looked straight before her, although she was wholly unconscious of the scene.

A light knock at the door was repeated twice before she heard it and spoke.

“It’s I,” the voice said, insistently. “May I come in?”

“Of course,” Miriam answered, without moving.

The door opened quickly, and a small figure darted into the room.

“There was some one coming,” said Mrs. Brough, as she glanced down at the voluminous silken folds in which her little body was lost. “I am not in a condition to be seen – generally.”

She came forward slowly.

“My room is near yours. I saw your light. I thought that you had not gone to sleep. I wanted to come to speak to you.” She put her hands on Miriam’s shoulder. “You have been crying.”

“Yes,” said Miriam, quietly.

“I saw at dinner that you were not yourself – and I am troubled, too. I have a confession to make.”

Miriam looked at her curiously.

“You know that I am your friend – now,” the other went on. “Since we have been here together, we have come to know each other as I never thought that we should. There was a time before, though, when I did not understand so well. I had watched you, and I did not like you. I distrusted you – or, rather, did not trust you – ”

“I understand. You were clever enough to see through me – ”

“I thought that with your – insincerities that you were all false. I should have been wise enough to know differently. But what will you? – to assume evil is easy, and always gives one a proud sense of superior perspicacity. I condemned you, Miriam, without a hearing, and I told Arthur Leeds.”

“You did it?” the girl murmured, dully.

“Yes, I warned him.”

“Why?”

“Because I like him and admire him, and I thought you – dangerous.”

“That is why he has said the things he has.”

“He has said something?”

“He has told me that I am not worthy of regard or consideration or respect.”

“Impossible!”

“Perhaps not directly – but he has implied that and more – by word and action. And – and – I love him.”

Mrs. Brough sat down quickly in the chair which she had drawn up, and took Miriam’s hands.

“I know you so well now,” she said, “that at dinner I saw something was wrong. I did not realize that it was as bad as that.”

“I think I loved him even last winter, when I only saw him – heard who he was – and did not know him. I admired and respected and reverenced him. But he seemed different to me. And to-day when I met him I wanted to tell him a little – as much as I could – of what I thought. I wanted him to know something of the feeling that I had. I wanted to please him. I wanted him to be nice to me – because I pleased him. What I said to him was true – true.”

She sprang to her feet, and spoke in deep, tragic tones.

“True!” she repeated. “And I have lost the power of being thought true. My words can only be considered so many counterfeits. I have so often debased the true metal of sincerity that anything I say must ring false – that anything I may give cannot be taken. What I said sounded fraudulently in my own ears. I could not forget the many, many times when I had spoken so nearly in the same way without meaning or belief, and each speech seemed to me a mockery. Though I longed with all of me to speak simply and sincerely – knowing that I spoke the truth – I hardly seemed to myself to be doing it. All appeared a part, but a repetition of the many times before when I had played a part – when what I did was a comedy – a farce – a tragedy!”

She broke off with a sob.

“You have cried wolf pretty often,” avowed Mrs. Brough.

“I am a Cassandra,” said the girl, instantly. “When I wish to be believed I cannot. When all that is most precious and dearest to me depends on it I cannot be trusted. I may speak, but I shall not be heard – when all my life is in being heard – I know it.”

“You see,” said Mrs. Brough, “when I told him I thought of you as you seemed – ”

“As I was. I don’t blame you,” Miriam cried, bitterly. “What I had become! Let me tell you.” She sat down again, and, with her elbows on her knees and her chin on her hands, gazed fixedly at the other. “I think I began innocently enough. I wanted to be liked – and I fell into the way of saying pleasant little things. I tried to make everybody contented and pleased with me. That was when I came out. Indeed, I may say for myself that I had a sympathetic nature. I could not bear to see anyone uncomfortable or doubtful about themselves or anything, without trying to help them. Surely that was not bad?”

“No,” said Mrs. Brough, slowly.

“I really wished to help every one,” she continued. “And the best way that I found to do it was to say pleasant things. It was easy – too fatally easy. When I discovered how popular this made me I kept on. I continued for myself what I had really begun for others. Insensibly I acquired skill. I was not stupid. I had rather a gift for character – and could say exactly the thing to each one to flatter them the most. I found that I took pleasure in the exercise of such cleverness. There was a feeling of power in it – playing with the foibles and weaknesses of men and women. I did not see that I was often trafficking in unworthiness and baseness.”

“I’ve no doubt you did harm,” concluded Mrs. Brough. “People are only too willing to be encouraged in their vanities. I don’t think, Miriam, that you were really very good for a person’s character.”

“I was not very good for my own,” Miriam went on, grimly. “I retrograded. I can see it now. In playing on the follies and faults of others, I grew less careful – less critical myself. Then the family lost its money. Oh, I haven’t the poor excuse that I was in want – that what I did was done from any lack of anything essential for myself or others. Ours was just a commonplace, undramatic loss – with only need for saving and retrenchment. Without the deprivation of a single necessity, or comfort, even. Merely the absence of the luxuries. The luxuries, though, in a way, had become necessities to me – and – I found, by exercising my power, I could get much that I wished. I flattered and cajoled to please people, so that they would do things for me, give me things. That is ended – ”

She pointed dramatically to a table.

“There is the fan from Bengy Wade in a package. To-morrow it goes back to him. There is a note to Mrs. Grayson, declining her invitation. If I go to Westbrook I shall not ride Persiflage. I have turned over a new leaf. But the degradation of thinking of the record on the old ones! If I could only tear them out instead of trying to fold them down. I see it all now. He has made me see it all. He has made me despise myself until I see the way I look in his eyes; until I seem the same in my own. Janet, what can I do?”

The girl’s head bent on the arm of the chair, as her body was shaken with sobs. The other put out her hand and gently stroked her heavy hair.

“Don’t you exaggerate?”

“Did you,” Miriam panted, “when you said what you did to Mr. Leeds? Did you make my blackness less black than it should be – did you concede to me any saving light?”

“I did not know. If I can do anything now – ”

“You must not speak to him,” Miriam cried, sitting up abruptly. “There would be no use. When the seeds of distrust have been sown they will grow, even if the weeds crowd out everything else.”

“But weeds can be dug up.”

“That must be my part,” Miriam answered, more calmly. “Only one course is left. It’s funny,” she smiled, swiftly, through her tears. “There is poetic justice in it. I can do only one thing. It is my retribution.”

IV

The announcement which Mrs. Gunnison made on the following morning came as a surprise to Miriam. She had some difficulty in not displaying an undue excitement. The habit of containment, which had come with worldly experience, however, did not fail her. She heard her hostess state that Arthur Leeds was coming to stay in the house without any exhibition of visible emotion. Mrs. Gunnison said that, as the Barlows had other people coming, he was going to transfer himself to “Highlands,” and that he would arrive in time for luncheon. Any fears which Miriam experienced were wholly offset by a devout thankfulness. The event offered such an occasion for the carrying out of her plan as she had not hoped to have given her. In the promise of such an admirable opportunity for the execution of her purpose, she found a melancholy satisfaction. If, as she thought to herself, the iron was to enter her soul, the sooner the affair was accomplished the better. The process of self-sacrifice was not pleasant in the execution, however glorious it might appear in the conception. Self-immolation might be a duty, but, as every martyrdom, it was more satisfactory as an ideal than as a fact.

The first opportunity which came to execute what she had laboriously planned was during the aimless inoccupation of after luncheon idleness. The arrangements for the afternoon had not yet been concluded, but were in the careless making. Who should ride; who should drive; who should walk; who should go and who should stay; the what and whither had not been settled: Leeds strolled to her side.

“I have been trying to speak to you, but you have avoided me.”

“Yes,” she said.

“Why?” he asked; “I am going to tell you the truth, now – ” she paused, and looked at him.

“Why?” he repeated.

“Because I think that you are the most detestable man I ever saw,” she answered, gazing squarely at him.

He started slightly – glanced at her in surprise, and abruptly sat down on the divan beside her.

“You have really come to that conclusion?” he asked.

“I have always believed it,” she answered, firmly.

“But you said – ”

“You told me that I was a flatterer. I shall not be with you any longer. You wish the truth. You shall have it.”

“That is what you thought from the first?” he said, slowly.

“Yes,” she answered, less clearly. “I have always understood that you were most absurdly self-satisfied. That you are deluded by a pose as to which you are so weak as to deceive yourself. That you take yourself with a seriousness which leads you to believe that you are preaching a crusade when you are only blowing a penny whistle. That you assume that you have made for yourself a position and a reputation which were made for you.”

“What do you mean?” he asked, quietly.

“You have an old name and a large fortune which rendered you conspicuous and made everything easy. The newspapers have talked of you only as they would anyway. Indeed, they would have given more space to you if you had a liking for conducting an automobile painted like a barber’s pole than they have because you went into politics. They would have preferred the striped automobile, but they had to be content with the ‘reform politics’ as the freak of one in your place.”

“Then you think I am – nothing?”

“You are a rich young man of assured position – spoiled by the world.”

“I thought I had, at least, ordinary common sense.”

“Probably – but still you have unduly lost your head. You would not know if people were laughing at you – ”

Leeds flushed slightly. Miriam caught her breath sharply, and reached forward to take up a fan which lay within her reach.

“I am altogether a monster?”

“No,” she replied, calmly. “A very ordinary young man, I should say.”

“I’d be kind to dumb animals and not kick a baby – ”

“I am quite serious,” she answered. “You objected to any little pleasantness on my part because what I said might not be altogether sincere. Now we are going to have facts. Indeed, you are the type of man I dislike.”

“At least, we know where we are now,” he responded.

“Yes. And as we are staying in the same house it may be as well.”

Miriam rose slowly. She walked decidedly across the room, and ostentatiously placed herself beside Mrs. Gunnison. Leeds, deserted, did not move. He sat staring at the floor, as he softly drummed with his fingers on the couch’s leather arm.

As well as in certain other particulars, the life of a country house is microcosmical in this – escape from the requirements of human relationship is impossible. Indeed, the demands are made greater, the bonds more firmly fixed. In fact, the condition of all may be more fitly described as the condition of two united in matrimony – they take each other for better or worse. Constantly through the day they must meet. The terms on which they are thrown together impose intimacy. If latent antipathy exists with the revealing conditions of constant companionship it must be discovered. If inherent sympathy is to be found the two gravitate toward each other with inevitable certainty. As the birthplace of aversion quickly reaching a maturity of detestation and hate; as the hothouse of interest growing speedily into full bloom of liking and love, there is no place like a country house. All existence there, in its condensed form, is a forcing process. Without any awkwardly abrupt transition or disconnecting jolts, those who begin to talk about mutual friends in the morning may easily reach a discussion of their own souls in the afternoon, and be far on the broad and easy path of sentiment by evening. Like or dislike, more or less strong, must surely and quickly follow. There is in the social chemistry a certainty of repulsion or attraction, out of which the most unexpected combinations result – of a surprisingly lasting nature.

In the daily routine Miriam saw Leeds constantly. Though she might come down late for breakfast, she always found him. Even if she breakfasted in her room, when she descended he was always smoking in the hall.

“I did not expect to stay so long,” he explained to her on one occasion, rising as she paused at the foot of the stairs.

“Then why do you?” she asked, coldly.

“Don’t you know?” he demanded. “Should you feel it pleasanter if I went away?”

“Really – as I have undertaken to be perfectly frank with you – how can your going or staying make the least difference in the world to me?”

“Still,” he said, looking at her curiously, “there must be something tiresome in having to be scorning somebody all the time.”

“I think,” she said, briefly, “I hear voices in the billiard room. I am going in there.”

If at dinner Leeds found himself next to her he discovered that she spoke to him no more than the strict letter of the law governing the conduct of guests in the same house demanded. What she said was of the most indifferent nature. If he sought to reach a more personal basis he found himself checked.

“Miss Whiting,” he said, suddenly, on the third evening, “I am going away to-morrow morning.”

Miriam swung about swiftly.

“To-morrow!” she exclaimed, with a catch in her voice.

“Yes, I think I had better go, though there is something I want to tell you before I do. I have thought of all that you have said. I have profited by the new light that you have thrown upon myself – my actions – my life.”

“What do you mean?” she murmured.

“I have realized that very likely I am a prig. I understand the futility of what I am trying to do. I see that I have been mistaken in my power. I’m going to give up.”

“Give up?” she replied.

“You have shown that I was attempting more than I was able to do. The Donaldsons have asked me to go in their yacht round the world. The Vierna starts on Thursday. I am going away to be lazy and careless, and live the life for which you think I’m fitted.”

“You are going to give up everything?” she exclaimed.

“Yes,” he answered. “It is your doing. You must take the responsibility of it.”

“But what I say – what I think, can make no difference,” she almost entreated. “I am not of enough importance to you – you cannot consider me enough – ”

“All that is something of which you know nothing,” he answered, gravely. “Something of which I have told you nothing. I am going away – with the Donaldsons.”

“People like that!” she interrupted.

“People like that. I am going with them to lead their life – to be gone for a year, unless one thing happens. As I said, you are responsible.”

“But I can’t be,” she implored. “It isn’t possible. I can’t count for anything.”

“Let me assure you that you do.”

“Then I can’t take the responsibility. I won’t.”

“Unless one thing happens I am going,” he went on, inflexibly. “There are some, I think, who believe in me – who will think I am making a mistake.”

“But your future – your career,” she began, and paused abashed, as she saw the way he watched her.