Part 15 (2/2)
Mr. Carstyle rose slowly, with a certain stiffness.
”Shall we turn toward home? Perhaps I'm keeping you.”
They walked on a few steps in silence; then he spoke again.
”That business altered my whole life. Of course I oughtn't to have allowed it to--that was another form of cowardice. But I saw myself only with Meriton's eyes--it is one of the worst miseries of youth that one is always trying to be somebody else. I had meant to be a Meriton--I saw I'd better go home and study law....
”It's a childish fancy, a survival of the primitive savage, if you like; but from that hour to this I've hankered day and night for a chance to retrieve myself, to set myself right with the man I meant to be. I want to prove to that man that it was all an accident--an unaccountable deviation from my normal instincts; that having once been a coward doesn't mean that a man's cowardly... and I can't, I can't!”
Mr. Carstyle's tone had pa.s.sed insensibly from agitation to irony. He had got back to his usual objective stand-point.
”Why, I'm a perfect olive-branch,” he concluded, with his dry indulgent laugh; ”the very babies stop crying at my approach--I carry a sort of millennium about with me--I'd make my fortune as an agent of the Peace Society. I shall go to the grave leaving that other man unconvinced!”
Vibart walked back with him to Millbrook. On her doorstep they met Mrs.
Carstyle, flushed and feathered, with a card-case and dusty boots.
”I don't ask you in,” she said plaintively, to Vibart, ”because I can't answer for the food this evening. My maid-of-all-work tells me that she's going to a ball--which is more than I've done in years! And besides, it would be cruel to ask you to spend such a hot evening in our stuffy little house--the air is so much cooler at Mrs. Vance's. Remember me to Mrs. Vance, please, and tell her how sorry I am that I can no longer include her in my round of visits. When I had my carriage I saw the people I liked, but now that I have to walk, my social opportunities are more limited. I was not obliged to do my visiting on foot when I was younger, and my doctor tells me that to persons accustomed to a carriage no exercise is more injurious than walking.”
She glanced at her husband with a smile of unforgiving sweetness.
”Fortunately,” she concluded, ”it agrees with Mr. Carstyle.”
THE TWILIGHT OF THE G.o.d
I
_A Newport drawing-room. Tapestries, flowers, bric-a-brac. Through the windows, a geranium-edged lawn, the cliffs and the sea_. Isabel Warland _sits reading_. Lucius Warland _enters in flannels and a yachting-cap_.
_Isabel_. Back already?
_Warland_. The wind dropped--it turned into a drifting race. Langham took me off the yacht on his launch. What time is it? Two o'clock?
Where's Mrs. Raynor?
_Isabel_. On her way to New York.
_Warland_. To New York?
_Isabel_. Precisely. The boat must be just leaving; she started an hour ago and took Laura with her. In fact I'm alone in the house--that is, until this evening. Some people are coming then.
_Warland_. But what in the world--
_Isabel_. Her aunt, Mrs. Griscom, has had a fit. She has them constantly. They're not serious--at least they wouldn't be, if Mrs. Griscom were not so rich--and childless. Naturally, under the circ.u.mstances, Marian feels a peculiar sympathy for her; her position is such a sad one; there's positively no one to care whether she lives or dies--except her heirs. Of course they all rush to Newburgh whenever she has a fit. It's hard on Marian, for she lives the farthest away; but she has come to an understanding with the housekeeper, who always telegraphs her first, so that she gets a start of several hours. She will be at Newburgh to-night at ten, and she has calculated that the others can't possibly arrive before midnight.
_Warland_. You have a delightful way of putting things. I suppose you'd talk of me like that.
_Isabel_. Oh, no. It's too humiliating to doubt one's husband's disinterestedness.
<script>