Part 32 (1/2)

”So you came to me,” she said, with a kind of measured apathy.

”Yes,” said Courtlandt. ”I obeyed the message that you sent me.”

Pauline impetuously turned and looked at him. The fire-light struck her face as she did so, and he saw that her gray eyes were swimming in tears.

She made no attempt to master her broken voice. ”O Court,” she said, ”it was ever so good of you to come! I almost doubted if you would! I should have remembered that you--well, that you cared for me in another than a merely cousinly way. But there was no one else--that is, no one near me in blood. It is wonderful how we think of that blood-kins.h.i.+p when something dreadful happens to us. We may not recall it for years, until the blow comes. Then we feel its force, its bond, its claim.... I want you to sit down beside me, Court, and quietly listen. You were always good at listening. Besides, you will have an immense satisfaction, presently; you will learn that your prophecies regarding _him_ were correct. My eyes are open--and in time. I shall never marry him. I shall never marry any one again. And now, listen....”

For a long time, after this, Courtlandt showed himself the most patient of auditors. But he was silent for a good s.p.a.ce after his cousin had at length ended, while the fire sputtered and fumed behind the silver filigrees that bordered its hearth, as though it were delivering some adverse, exasperated commentary upon poor Pauline's late disclosures.

But presently Courtlandt spoke. ”I think you have had a very fortunate escape,” he said. ”And I hope you mean, now, to come back and be one of us, again.”

”What a way of putting it!” she exclaimed, with a great quivering sigh.

”There's no other way to put it. Theory's one thing and practice another. As long as the world lasts there will be a lot of people in every land who are better and hold themselves better than a huge lot of other people. One can argue about this matter till he or she is black in the face; it's no use, though; the best way to get along is to take things as you find them. You and I didn't make society, so we'd better not try to alter it.”

Pauline gave a weary little smile. Her tears had ceased; she was staring into the fire with hard, dry, bright eyes.

”O Court,” she said, with a pathetic little touch of her old cruelty, ”I'm afraid you don't s.h.i.+ne as a philosopher. You are better as a prophet; what do you say of Cora Dares and _him_? Will they marry?”

”Yes,” returned Courtlandt unhesitatingly. ”And I dare say he will make her an excellent husband. Didn't you tell me that she was an artist?...

Well, he's an editor, a sort of general scribbler, so they will be on a delightful equality. They'll marry. You say I'm a prophet; depend upon it, they'll marry sooner or later.”

”You make me recall that you are Aunt Cynthia's nephew,” said Pauline, with another weary smile. She was in a very miserable mood. Her wound still bled, and would bleed, as she knew, for many a day.

Courtlandt's preposterously trite and commonplace little axiom had already begun to echo itself in a kind of rhythmical mockery through her distressed brain: ”The best way to get along is to take things as you find them.”

_Was_ it the best way, after all? Was thinking for one's self and living after one's own chosen fas.h.i.+on nothing but a forlorn folly? Was pa.s.sivity wisdom, and individualism a snare?

The fire crackled on. There was more silence between the two cousins.

The hour was growing late; outside, in the streets, you heard only the occasional rolling of carriage-wheels.

”By the way, speaking of Aunt Cynthia, Court,--will she ever notice me again?”

”Certainly she will.”

”Isn't she furious?”

”That newspaper article has repressed her fury. She's enormously sorry for you. Aunt Cynthia would never find it hard, you know, to be enormously sorry for a Van Corlear; she came so near to being one herself; a Schenectady is next door to it.”