Part 8 (1/2)
”Yes? And what part of Christendom will you live in? Such things are possible everywhere in our conditions.”
”Then we must change the conditions--”
”Oh no; we must go to the theatre and forget them. We can stop at Brentano's for our tickets as we pa.s.s through Union Square.”
”I am not going to the theatre, Basil. I am going home to Boston to-night. You can stay and find a flat.”
He convinced her of the absurdity of her position, and even of its selfishness; but she said that her mind was quite made up irrespective of what had happened, that she had been away from the children long enough; that she ought to be at home to finish up the work of leaving it. The word brought a sigh. ”Ah, I don't know why we should see nothing but sad and ugly things now. When we were young--”
”Younger,” he put in. ”We're still young.”
”That's what we pretend, but we know better. But I was thinking how pretty and pleasant things used to be turning up all the time on our travels in the old days. Why, when we were in New York here on our wedding journey the place didn't seem half so dirty as it does now, and none of these dismal things happened.”
”It was a good deal dirtier,” he answered; ”and I fancy worse in every way-hungrier, raggeder, more wretchedly housed. But that wasn't the period of life for us to notice it. Don't you remember, when we started to Niagara the last time, how everybody seemed middle-aged and commonplace; and when we got there there were no evident brides; nothing but elderly married people?”
”At least they weren't starving,” she rebelled.
”No, you don't starve in parlor-cars and first-cla.s.s hotels; but if you step out of them you run your chance of seeing those who do, if you're getting on pretty well in the forties. If it's the unhappy who see unhappiness, think what misery must be revealed to people who pa.s.s their lives in the really squalid tenement-house streets--I don't mean picturesque avenues like that we pa.s.sed through.”
”But we are not unhappy,” she protested, bringing the talk back to the personal base again, as women must to get any good out of talk. ”We're really no unhappier than we were when we were young.”
”We're more serious.”
”Well, I hate it; and I wish you wouldn't be so serious, if that's what it brings us to.”
”I will be trivial from this on,” said March. ”Shall we go to the Hole in the Ground to-night?”
”I am going to Boston.”
”It's much the same thing. How do you like that for triviality? It's a little blasphemous, I'll allow.”
”It's very silly,” she said.
At the hotel they found a letter from the agent who had sent them the permit to see Mrs. Grosvenor Green's apartment. He wrote that she had heard they were pleased with her apartment, and that she thought she could make the terms to suit. She had taken her pa.s.sage for Europe, and was very anxious to let the flat before she sailed. She would call that evening at seven.
”Mrs. Grosvenor Green!” said Mrs. March. ”Which of the ten thousand flats is it, Basil?”
”The gimcrackery,” he answered. ”In the Xenophon, you know.”
”Well, she may save herself the trouble. I shall not see her. Or yes--I must. I couldn't go away without seeing what sort of creature could have planned that fly-away flat. She must be a perfect--”
”Parachute,” March suggested.
”No! anybody so light as that couldn't come down.”
”Well, toy balloon.”
”Toy balloon will do for the present,” Mrs. March admitted. ”But I feel that naught but herself can be her parallel for volatility.”
When Mrs. Grosvenor-Green's card came up they both descended to the hotel parlor, which March said looked like the saloon of a Moorish day-boat; not that he knew of any such craft, but the decorations were so Saracenic and the architecture so Hudson Riverish. They found there on the grand central divan a large lady whose vast smoothness, placidity, and plumpness set at defiance all their preconceptions of Mrs. Grosvenor Green, so that Mrs. March distinctly paused with her card in her hand before venturing even tentatively to address her. Then she was astonished at the low, calm voice in which Mrs. Green acknowledged herself, and slowly proceeded to apologize for calling. It was not quite true that she had taken her pa.s.sage for Europe, but she hoped soon to do so, and she confessed that in the mean time she was anxious to let her flat. She was a little worn out with the care of housekeeping--Mrs. March breathed, ”Oh yes!” in the sigh with which ladies recognize one another's martyrdom--and Mrs. Green had business abroad, and she was going to pursue her art studies in Paris; she drew in Mr. Ilcomb's cla.s.s now, but the instruction was so much better in Paris; and as the superintendent seemed to think the price was the only objection, she had ventured to call.