Part 17 (1/2)

”No,” Linda told him, ”they won't do that.” Her obscure excitement was communicated to him. ”Why not?” he demanded.

”Because,” she paused to steady her voice, ”because I am going to take a very great responsibility. If it fails, if you let it fail, you'll ruin ever so much. Yes, Mr. Hallet, I am sure, will consent to your marrying Vigne.” She escaped at the first opening from his incoherent grat.i.tude.

Arnaud was in the library, and she stopped in the hall, busy with the loosening of her veil. Perhaps it would be better to speak to him after dinner; she ought to question Vigne first; but, as she stood debating, her daughter pa.s.sed her tempestuously, blurred with crying, and Arnaud angrily demanded her presence.

x.x.xIII

”You were quite right,” he cried; ”this young idiot Sandby has been telling Vigne that he loves her; and now Vigne a.s.sures me, with tears, that she likes it! They want to get married--next week, tomorrow, this evening.” Linda stood by the window; soon the magnolia-tree would be again laden with flowers. She gathered her courage into a determined composure of tone. ”I saw Bailey outside,” she admitted. ”He told me. It seems excellent to me.”

Arnaud Hallet incredulously challenged her. ”What do you mean--that you gave him a trace of encouragement!” Linda replied:

”I said that I was certain you would consent.” She halted his exasperated gesture. ”You think Vigne is nothing but a child, and yet she is as old as I was at our wedding. My mother was no older when Bartram Lowrie married her. I think Vigne is very fortunate, Bailey is as nice as possible; and, as he said, it isn't as if you knew nothing of the Sandbys; they are as dignified as the Lowries.”

An expression she had never before seen hardened his countenance into a sarcasm that travestied his customary humor. ”You realize, of course, that except for what his father gives him young Sandby is wretchedly poor. He's nice enough but what has that to do with it? And, in particular, how does it touch you, Linda Condon? Do you suppose I can ever forget your answer that time I first asked you to marry me? You wouldn't consider a poor man; you were worth, really, a hundred thousand a year; but, if nothing better came along, you might sacrifice yourself for fifty.”

”I remember very well,” she answered; ”and, curiously enough, I am not ashamed. I was very sensible then, in a horrible position with extravagant habits. They were me. I couldn't change myself. Without money I should have made you, any man, entirely miserable. Arnaud, I hadn't--I haven't now--the ability to see everything important through the affections, like so many many women. You often told me that; who hasn't? I have always admitted it wasn't pleasant nor praiseworthy. But how, to use your own words, does all that affect Vigne? She isn't cold but very warm-hearted; and, instead of my experience, she has her own so much better feeling.”

”I absolutely refuse to allow anything of the sort,” he declared sharply. ”I won't even discuss it--for three years. Tell this Sandby infant, if you like, to come back then.”

”In three years, or in one year, Vigne may be quite different, yes-less lovable. Happiness, too, is queer, Arnaud; there isn't a great deal of it. Not an overwhelming amount. If it appears for an instant it must be held as tightly as possible. It doesn't come back, you know. Don't turn to your book yet--you can't get rid of us, of Vigne and me, like that; and then it's rude; the first time, I believe, you have ever been impolite to me.”

”Forgive me,” he spoke formally. ”You seem to think that I am as indifferent as yourself. You might be asking the day of the week to judge from your calm appearance. The emotion of a father, or even of a mother, perhaps, you have never explored. On the whole you are fortunate. And you are always protected by your celebrated honesty.” She said:

”I promised Bailey your consent.”

”Why bother about that? It isn't necessary for your new romantic mood.

An elopement, with you to steady the ladder, would be more appropriate.”

She repeated the fact of her engagement. Her dread for him had vanished, its place now taken by a distrust of what, in her merged detachment and suffering, she might blunderingly do. At the back of this she realized that his case, his position, was hopeless. Without warning, keen and undimmed, his love for her flashed through his resentful misery. There was no spoken acknowledgement of surrender; he sank into his chair dejected and pitiable, infinitely gray. His shoes, on the brightness of the hooked rug, were dingy, his coat drawn and wrinkled.

Linda saw herself on her knees before him, before his patience and generosity, sobbing her contrition into his forgiving hands. She longed with every nerve--as she had so often before--to lose herself in pa.s.sionate emotion. She had never been more erect or withdrawn, never essentially less touched. After a little, waiting for him to speak, she saw that he, too, had retreated into the profound depths of his own illusions and despairs.

x.x.xIV

For a surprising while--even in the face of Vigne's radiance--Arnaud was as still and shadowed as the inert surface of a dammed stream. Then slowly, the slenderest trickle at first, his wit revived his spirit; and he opened an unending mock-solemn attack on Bailey Sandby's eminently serious acceptance of the responsibilities of his allowed love.

The boy had left the university, and his father--a striking replica of Arnaud's prejudices, impatience and fundamental kindness--exchanged with Vigne's male parent the most dismal prophecies together with concrete plans for their children's future security. This, inevitably, resulted in Vigne's marriage; a ceremony unattended by Pleydon except by the presence of a very liberal check.

The life-size version of his Simon Downige was again under way--it had been torn down, Linda knew, more than once--and he was in a fever of composition. Nor was this, she decided with Arnaud, his only oppression: the Asiatic fever clung to him with disquieting persistence. Pleydon himself admitted he had a degree or two in the evening.

Linda was seated in his studio near Central Park West, perhaps a year later, and she observed aloud that so much wet clay around was bad for him. He laughed: nothing now could happen to him, he was forever beyond accident, sickness, death--his statue for the monument in Hesperia was finished. It stood revealed before them, practically as Linda had first seen it, but enlarged, towering, as if the vision it portrayed had grown, would continue to grow eternally, because of the dignity of its hope, the necessity of its realization.

”Now,” she said, ”it will go to the foundry and be cast.” He corrected her. ”You will go to the foundry and be cast ... in bronze.” A distinct graceful happiness possessed her at the knowledge that his love for her was as constant as though it, too, were metal. Not flesh but bronze, spirit, he insisted.

The multiplying years made that no more comprehensible than when, a child, she had thrilled in a waking dream. Love, spirit, death. Three mysteries. But only one, she thought, was inevitably hers, the last. To be loved was not love itself, but only the edge of its cloak; response was an indivisible part of realization. No, sterility was the measure--of its absence. And she was, Linda felt, in spite of Vigne and Lowrie, the latter a specially vigorous contradiction, the most sterile woman alive. There were always Dodge's a.s.surances, but clay, stone, metal, were cold for a belief to embrace. And she was, she knew, lovelier now than she had ever been before, than she would ever be again.