O Genteel Lady!/Chapter 7

by Esther Louise Forbes

Chapter VII

And Hears More About Mamma

1

She thought she had seen a ghost. It was Pauline standing in the sad dusk of dawn telling her to quiet herself.

'You mean something terrible has happened? Oh, do be quick! I cannot bear suspense, Pauline.'

'From your Papa.'

'Then he is not dead. Tell me quickly, Pauline.'

'I beg you to relax. I am trying to tell you. A letter to me from your Papa tells me to break the news to you—that...' she consulted her letter—'on the ninth of February in Florence...your mamma...perished...fever...very sudden.'

'You mean Mamma is dead?'

'Yes...that is, her mortal body...'

It seemed as incredible as the diminishment of the sun, or the glutting of the moon. Mamma was so alive, she doubted if anything could subdue her, not even the angel of death. Lanice did not cry. She was too stunned, but her stoniness baffled Pauline, who had stuffed the pocket of her grey wrapper full of handkerchiefs after Mrs. Andrews had given over to her the letter.

'You must not take it too hard.'

'No.'

'I will send up some coffee—tea—chocolate?'

'Oh, no.'

'Will you journey to Amherst?'

'I don't know.'

Her mother was dead in Italy. What good to travel to Amherst? What good that she and Horace Bardeen shut themselves up together and talk of...what?

Mamma, who always could hurt her, now pierced her through with love and regret.

'I was such a child, Pauline, when I left home. I did not understand things very well. I thought I could judge Mamma, but...'

Pauline, seemingly intent on giving cause for her hoard of handkerchiefs, said bluntly, 'How can one judge such mischievous conduct but in one way? What was evil two years ago still is evil.'

'But now I don't know good from bad.'

'Lanice! To think you can say such a thing at such a moment! Your mother is dead!'

Stifled love turned in the girl's heart like a knife. The mocking, pretty face that age could not dim, the alluring mouth, the small, dimpled hands, so unlike Lanice's scholarly ones, the pretty graces. Her thousand distracting tricks that hurt if you loved her more than they gratified. All this treasury of loveliness was cast into the oblivion of earth. She could not bear that Mamma should lie so far from home.

'I am going over, Pauline. I'm going to bring her back, poor, darling Hitty. Oh, how pretty she was!'

'I imagine her...this Mr. Cuncliffe has attended to everything.'

'I am going over.'

'Lanice, her soul is now free from her...entangling body. Can you not think of her soul and forget the corruption of the flesh?'

'No.'

2

Lanice had automatically begun to dress and the tears that Pauline had awaited trickled upon her clean linen and splashed upon her ugly brown merino dress. Not until the last button was fastened would Pauline give her the letter. As she read it, she saw her father, and pitied him. How strangely was her life sprung from these two people who of all the world understood her least. Physically she resembled her father. Augustus had thought she might have something of her mother's wantonness and Anthony had proved it. But at least she had a touch, a spark of her father's scholarly tendencies.

'I cannot imagine,' Pauline whipped out, 'where you are going.'

Then Lanice noticed with amazement that she had her bonnet in her hand and had pulled on her heavy walking-boots with elastic sides.

'Oh, just to walk, along the Mill Dam, anywhere...'

'Nonsense! I'll order breakfast.'

With one of her odd little bursts of tact Pauline suggested consulting an atlas and the two young women pored over it and located Florence, and Pauline led the conversation away from tragic Florence to the congenial subject of European tours.

But Mamma was dead. Lanice could see her grow sleepy in church under the long periods of the Reverend Mr. Goochey, see her yawn behind her palm-leaf fan which was always kept in the pew, and, as she caught her daughter's eye, turn the yawn into a little grimace. She would move restlessly within her fine clothes and try to whisper to Papa, who frowned and looked straight ahead. A lovely, heedless woman. How could she be dead? There had always been a sweet scent to her clothing and a leafy rustle of silk. Why had she run off with Cuncliffe? Who was he? Why had he run off with her?

And now she was dead, and somewhere the foreign soil held her pleasurable body. Perhaps young Cuncliffe wore black upon his arm and on his hat, the way Papa ought to...or should Papa? What does a widower of his type do? Professor Ripley was also a widower. If it had not been for Mamma there would never have been a drop of bad blood in her to answer when Mr. Jones had cried to it. One drop of bad blood...Who and what was Mamma? Who was Roger Cuncliffe, and why?

3

'Papa, I want to go to Italy.'

'You always did.'

'But now I must go. I stay awake so much wondering...about everything...at the end. I must go. I can't leave her so far away buried in a foreign land. I want her to be buried here in Amherst.'

'She never liked Amherst especially.'

'Would you mind if I went, Papa?'

'No, suit yourself.'

'But you are not in sympathy?'

'Of course not. I even profess to Christianity which, I believe, tells us that the body is not the soul.'

(True of some, but how could it be of Mamma?)

'I have money enough, haven't I?'

'Enough to go around the world.'

'Then if there's nothing more to say, I'll be going back to Boston, Papa.'

'Wait.' He wrote upon the back of a student's translation of an Horatian Ode, and gave it to her. 'Tell him that you are coming. You will find him an agreeable and considerate...young gentleman.'

'Why, Papa! I don't want to even see him...ever.'

'You will find it difficult to move the body without him. And here's another man you must see.'

He took back the paper and wrote again. 'The American Consul in Florence, also a gentleman,' he explained.

'Good-bye, Papa.'

'Good-bye, Lanice. I'll write you details of the financial end.'

'Thank you, and good-bye again, Papa.'

4

'Mr. Fox, I want to go to Italy.'

'I've noticed that something was coming on. So it's Italy, is it? Well, go by all means, and we'll scrape along here in some miserable fashion. Who are you going with and how long will you be gone?'

'I'm going alone, and I'd like to be gone all spring and summer.'

'You are pretty young to travel about Europe, too young. But luckily you know French and Italian enough for food and hot baths, and you have a steady head, haven't you?'

He was surprised that she answered this rhetorical question with a seriously considered 'I really don't know.'

'As for the length of your stay, we'll arrange it some way, and of course when you come back again you will be much more valuable to us. You will have seen Paris, and perhaps at a distance Empress Eugenie, queen of fashion, and that should help you with your fashion plates and make you more respected by the dressmakers who do the designing. You will have seen the wonders of the world.'

He looked at her quizzically for a moment. He knew that she was beginning to feel a distaste for the literary work she did for Miss Bigley and was casting envious eyes towards his 'Journal.' in his own mind he determined that when she came back he would take her as an assistant and release her from all the duties of 'Hearth and Home' except the congenial task of drawing clothes, which she did exquisitely and happily.

'I have a proposition for you. Would you like to call upon all the greatest of the literary celebrities? A letter from Redcliffe & Fox would be sufficient introduction. Then you could write a series of articles about them for the 'Journal,' half critical and half biographical. You can make them slightly funny if you do it so subtly that no one but you and I know it, and I'd like a careless sketch-book picture of each, or a drawing of the house. They'll treat you very nicely, invite you to have tea, and ask whether or not the Indians are bothersome in your part of the States. You will flatter them sagaciously and listen to their stories, and if they tell you that your land is uncultured, you will not go to the mat with them over it. Of course, you must be well up on their works.'

'Whom shall I see?'

'The Brownings first, if you sail direct to Italy. Perhaps you haven't heard of Mr. Browning. He is Elizabeth Barrett's husband, and a coming man, in his own devious way. Then, of course, England.'

'England!' Her heart stood still, and she thought of Anthony Jones.

'Yes, of course. Tennyson and Dickens, and Harriet Martineau and Maria Champion and Thackeray surely, and a dozen others. We'll pay part of your expenses.'

He laughed at the pleasure he saw awaken in her face that had of late been so thoughtful, perhaps a little sad. It was not her mother's death; though she had evidently felt this keenly, something had happened earlier. For some reason her days of storm and stress had come upon her and because he, in a more passionate decade of his life, had also known these pains, he sympathized with her. Why they had come he could not say. He had often seen her with Jones, and it had amused him to notice how indifferent or even slightly contemptuous she was of this handsome animal. He was glad that she had the intelligence not to be fooled by Jones's sweet voice and lingering eyes. Sears Ripley kept his own counsel.

5

A triple hammer beat within her. Her mother's death, the trip abroad, and the ache of Anthony.

To go to Marseilles you sail from New York. She engaged passage on the swift Diana, preferring a white-winged and buoyant sailing ship to the grime of steam. In such had Captain Poggy laced the globe. Through him she got a deck stateroom at half price. He would have gone to New York to see her off, but his bad leg prevented, and so Pauline alone went with her that far. For some hidden reason Pauline, who showed a certain spite towards Hitty now that she was dead, criticized Lanice that she was not in black.

'I'll tell you the true reason,' said Lanice at last. 'Black is too becoming to me. When I wear all black, it is because I feel romantic and I think it makes me look mysterious. I can't wear black now that my mother is dead.'

Pauline's conversation on the train was filled with warnings as to Lanice's conduct.

'I'm twenty-five.'

'Will this Captain Jones, if he really is a captain, will he be in England?'

'I don't know. I don't care, really.' As she spoke she pressed her face against the window-pane, gazing upon the backward-reeling landscape, and wondered if this were true. Jones had been like celluloid, a spurt of flame and all was over. This was not love, and suddenly her heart ached for it, the love that Anthony had refused her, and had refused to take from her, although she knew herself capable of giving it.

6

Something of love she might have learned from Augustus's anxious face and staring china eyes. He made elaborate pretence of being in New York on business and happening to hear of the ladies' arrival at Mrs. Gower's Fashionable Boarding House, where they would stay for a few days pending the Diana's loading and sailing.

They walked the park all Friday afternoon in the melting sweetness of a premature spring day. He told her how spring, to him, always was personified by a dainty lady with ruffled skirts, silk mits, and flowered bonnet. Instantly before Lanice's eyes came the picture of a gay hoyden with bare, muddy feet, draggled petticoats, tousled hair, roguish eyes, beguiling but slightly vulgar voice. She tried to tell Augustus of this muddy primavera, but the idea vaguely hurt him and he began to protest that none of her own qualities more greatly engaged him than her exquisite tidiness. 'Oh, dear,' she thought, 'he's off again,' and smirked at him so he would keep it up. She had never smirked at Anthony Jones, except on the first day.

'Lanice, it is so warm. If I spread my ulster upon this bench may we not sit for a little in the sunshine? If you are cold...'

'If I am cold I'll fasten up my cloak. Oh, you can smell Spring to-day, although it is months away! Oh, delicious!'

'I think,' said Augustus cunningly, 'Spring keeps her handkerchiefs in sachet. That is why the air is so sweet.'

Lanice had not thought about Spring and her handkerchiefs. Perhaps Spring merely snuffled.

'It is not to tell you of Spring, ma'am, that I am come to New York.'

'I know. You are here on pressing business.'

'Indeed, yes. The most important business of a man's life.'

Lanice gazed at him innocently. She had taken off her bonnet and the sunshine reflected on her sleek black head and, as Mr. Trainer noticed, bathed her pure brow.

'Mr. Trainer, I cannot imagine what you mean.'

'Once again I beg of you to consider me as your contracted husband.'

'But you could love any one. I want to be loved for myself. You only love a fancy portrait of me, sir. The truth is, I've had this so-called love of yours for years and never could find any earthly use to put such a thing to. Perhaps I do not want love.'

'I know...nothing carnal...'

She squared her light jaw. 'I'd rather have that,' she said with an ungirlish stolidity, 'than the imagined passion that you affect.'

'You would prefer vulgarity?'

'I'd prefer anything.'

'My dear young woman, you are so innocent you do not understand how your words strike the cruder masculine ear.'

'But why must you always harp upon my innocence?'

'But that is why I love you. And it is apparent in all your motions, in your modest responses to my kisses. How many times I have pressed my lips to your cheek and met only maidenly shrinking. Come, Lanice...' and he endeavored to bend her to his arms.

'You do not kiss me,' she said, 'you have never kissed me, but only pecked at me like a bird at a rotten cherry. When you go courting again, some other girl, remember this.'

She took his face between her hands and pressed her shiny, tight red lips against his dull mouth. Both recoiled like released springs. Jumping to their feet, facing each other, gaping in amazement that a pure young woman could act thus and thus. She stammered—

'I didn't want to kiss you! It was unintentional. Please believe me. How could I kiss you?'

'How could you, indeed?'

She saw that he was oddly excited and there was something hateful in his white-lashed eyes.

'Can you teach me some more of these tricks, ma'am?' he inquired in a voice of elaborate and dangerous unction.

The girl grew defiant, and her long black eyes snapped.

'Yes.'

'I am much interested.' His thick hands were shaking. 'Lanice, I love you.'

'But it is impossible, considering the way I feel towards you.'

'Would you, would any innocent unmarried woman so kiss one of the opposite sex...if she did not love...was not swept off her feet?'

'I did it by mistake.'

'Ah, but your innermost heart dictated this action.'

'No. I was simply tired of hearing you call me innocent. Because,' she said, 'I am not, Augustus.'

He looked at her and slowly realized that perhaps she was, as he had sometimes feared, spiritually as well as physically her mother's child.

'Not innocent? Why, that is the quality I have always adored in you.'

'What do you know of me? You've never cared to find out what I think or how I feel.'

'Come, sarcasm is not a woman's weapon, especially the woman who is to become my wife.'

There was a touch of rather crude vitality in the poise of his thick body and a threat in the lowered thrust of his head. She almost could have loved him if he had always been like that. She ceased playing with him, and turned towards him fairly.

'I tried to tell you by actions that I am not, never was, and hope I never will be the ambling nun you have always insisted in considering me to be, and I...and...' her voice trailed away and she dropped her shining head. He heard her say 'some one else' and something that 'love was not.'

'Some one else, Lanice?'

'Some one else.'

'You mean you love...you will marry?'

'I can't define love any more, except that it wasn't at all like what I thought it would be. I can't marry him. He is married already, and, anyhow, he didn't really want me. I mean, permanently.'

Her voice wavered...'anything...die for him' he thought she said. She twisted her hands and gazed upon the basket of fingers that she had made. She was pale and sad to look upon.

'Tell me plainly about this rascal. Lanice, you mean you love such a man?'

'Yes, I think so. I would have died for him, if he had asked me. I'd have torn out my throat.'

'And he was married?'

'Yes.'

'Such a wicked philanderer should be boiled in oil.'

'No, he was just made that way. If God had not wanted him to behave as he did, he would have made him differently.'

'And you, ma'am, may I ask how you behaved?'

'Yes.'

'Well, then, how did you?'

'There is nothing in the world I would not have done for him.' Her voice shook.

'My God!' he cried, the perspiration making his greyed face ugly, 'not that. Oh, Lanice! You are merely concocting lies so as to make me go away and molest you no more. Come, I'll go away without your desecrating yourself to this sinful extent.'

He looked at her through sick, staring eyes.

'I'd rather die than believe your implications. No, no, I cannot.'

'But what if what you believe is the truth?'

'Like your mother. A hussy like your mother. My God! and all this time I have been looking up to you as one too holy to possess, even in wedlock, and you, you have squandered yourself on the first man to make improper advances to you.'

'Yes'—her voice was flat and hard—'he was, as you say, the first to love me and not offer marriage.'

Augustus flew into a difficult, heart-breaking rage. He mouthed at her, his hands, his lips shook, but without unison. His words fell like blows from dull weapons. Tears rolled unnoticed from his eyes. He was at once grotesque, pitiful, and terrible.

'If I am all that you say, beginning with a slut, and I'm sorry my vocabulary does not take me to the end, I cannot, of course, complain of your disgusting language. But...' and her voice broke—'I wish we might have parted friends.'

'Lanice, darling, darling, forgive me. It was not I that spoke so brutally. I could never speak so to you, my angel. Come. Let me protect you in the future from the lusts common to my own sex, protect you from a certain weakness one might expect from your mother's child. Lanice, I will care for you. No temptation or need ever will come near you. We will carry this to God together, on our knees, strength for us both.'

'No.'

'Tell me who it was you loved; I demand it.'

'You can't demand, Augustus. But it was...' her quickened breathing choked her words, but her lips formed the name of Anthony Jones.

'May God punish him for robbing a woman of her most precious possession.'

She neither denied nor admitted. 'I cared for him so much, I would have died for him,' she said, and Augustus bending his head, thought he heard her again use the ugly phrase 'tear out my throat.'

'In a moment of foolish passion. No, no, I cannot connect that word with you even in my thoughts. In a moment of weakness you forgot your womanhood. You succumbed. But even so, Lanice, miserable and fallen as you are, I will take you. Abandoned by your wicked seducer. Come, tell me one thing more. Is that the real reason for your trip to Europe? Are you following him abroad?'

'I don't know where he is. He may be in England with his wife, or in Arabia with his concubines.'

'Lanice!'

The silence became ominous. Mr. Trainor leaned heavily upon his cane and the young woman melted down upon the bench. She felt like an actress in a play, reciting a memorized part. Her ears were alert to receive her next cue from the lips of Augustus.

'I would have rather believed,' he said at last, 'that the Virgin Mary was a woman of the streets and our Saviour...' he stopped nervously. His temper had cooled a little and his language had grown less interesting. 'I'd rather believe anything,' he continued lamely, 'than that you are the dissolute woman you admit yourself to be.' This was not her cue. Lanice still waited. 'I don't see how I can still love you,' he cried out miserably, 'What is more ridiculous than to love a woman for a chastity that she lacks?' He paused before adding, 'This is a lesson to me. I will never again believe in your sex as I did.'

Lanice looked up.

'I hope you never will. I hope you'll see we are not made of cambric and sawdust, with porcelain heads, but of flesh and blood, Augustus.'

The way she said 'flesh and blood' fired him. He lunged towards her and would have grasped her roughly in his arms. His ideals and his body were at war, and for the moment it was his body that had the ascendancy. His temper was up and his language grew coarse.

'No, no!' she cried out, as once she had cried to Mr. Jones. His sweating face and raging strength frightened her.

'You are not too fine to lie with a notorious rake, ma'am. Are you so delicate as to refuse me a kiss?'

'I am much too delicate,' she replied in a high, angry voice.

'You sneer at me when I propose marriage, as I weakly did a few moments ago. Come! Women, as all the world knows, are either good or bad. You choose to league yourself with the latter. Then, for Heaven's sake, act it and give me now some of the kindness you lavish on other men. You've made your bed. God, now you shall lie in it.'

She struck him a cruel blow on the mouth. Her sleek hair was loosened in the brief struggle and fell unruffled about her. From between the folds of this black tent she gazed at him with a look of utter and abysmal hatred. The blow hurt, and Augustus gingerly fingered his swelling lip.

'You might have killed me. If you had had a knife, I believe you would have killed me.'

'I wish I had. Go away.'

'And you the woman I dreamed of...'

'Go away. I never wanted your dreams.'

Slowly the anger died from her eyes and her face grew childish and wistful. The man's heart smote him. She was indeed clay-footed, but his idol still.

'Yes, I will leave you. "Go away" as you beg. Lanice, my poor child, my dear child, you may trust me. Your secret shall go no further.'

He wanted to take his leave, but could not manage it. He seemed to have forgotten his lines, and poked at the gravel with his yellow cane as nervous as a tongue-tied actor.

'Forgive what I have said. But it was a heavy blow. I hope God understands you; I cannot. All that I have loved, adieu.'

'Good-bye.'

She sat on the lonely park bench with her black hair a silk veil about her, and she shivered with the terror she had endured. How vulgar and ugly he had been, this good man who worshipped purity. Anthony, the earthy, sensual animal, had never been either. She cringed from the memory of Augustus. Yet if it had not been for Mamma she would by now have been married to him. She had given, she knew, a death-blow to his idealism. Never again would she listen to his prattle of purity. Her heart hardened against him, but within its adamant was a trembling pain of pity.