Stella Dallas (1923, Houghton Mifflin)/Chapter 23
CHAPTER XXIII
1
The proof that Helen's rainbow was real—no illusion, no mirage—came in the form of a shadow the following fall. It is dark by five o'clock in the afternoon in New York in November. Returning one late afternoon with Laurel from a tea, where with a dozen other girls of her own age she had been assisting (nominally assisting, but really, like the others, simply submitting herself to the demands of a crowd of young men blocking the entrance to the room cleared for dancing), Helen observed, as she left the car and crossed the sidewalk to her own door a shadow, a stationary shadow cast upon the sidewalk.
There was an alley ran down to a rear entrance at the spot where the shadow fell. There was a light a few feet down the alley. The light was dim. But in spite of the unrecognizable shape of the blurred outline of the shadow, it had startled Helen into a sudden suspicion.
Once inside the house she had mounted to an upper room, where there was no light, where she would attract no attention, and raising the drawn shade in a bay-window, gazed down into the alley, just back of the spot where the shadow had lain.
There was no one there now.
Quickly she turned and raised the shade of the window opposite. This window looked toward the rear of the house and commanded a view of the narrow, illy-lighted tunnel, along which towered the high, spiked walls of several scores of rear entrances. Proceeding along this tunnel, closely skirting the high spiked walls, Helen could make out the outline of a woman—a short stocky woman. Twice she stopped and looked back at Helen's roof.
Helen's first impulse was to raise the window—to call. She hesitated. It might not be she. The alley lights were dim and far away. And if it proved to be, was it wise to establish communication with her when she was taking such pains to avoid it? No. Laurel's mother knew best. The minute she became even a recognized shadow in her child's life she ran the risk of defeating the object of her sacrifice.
Laurel believed her mother was somewhere in South America and submitted without protest to the futility of locating her, submitted, too, without protest to the futility of breaking her determined silence. If she even suspected that her mother was near by in hiding somewhere, watching, looking on in the old eager anxious way, she would not be content till she had found her; and if she found her, and if it proved, indeed, that it was as Helen had persuaded her to hope, that her mother had married Alfred Munn for her sake, as likely as not—no, more likely than not—Laurel would insist upon returning to her mother under whatever circumstances. She was capable of it.
Laurel was almost her old self now. She smiled again, laughed again, shone and glowed again over old delights and joys, over new delights and joys. Occasionally the troubled, hurt look would steal across her features. And at such times Helen knew that Laurel was doubting again, suffering again, longing to be brought face to face with actual proof of her mother's high motive. But it was better that the doubts should remain than that her mother's act of self-abnegation should be robbed of its fruit. Helen pulled down the window-shade and went downstairs.
It was not until she was in her own room with her door closed, with the window draperies drawn close, seated before her dressing-table brushing her shining hair, that she thought about the alimony. Stephen had felt just as she had when she first broached the subject to him, that of course Laurel's mother must live as she was accustomed to live whatever had been the terms of the divorce. So far, however, Stephen had failed to establish communication of any sort with Stella. She had left her Boston apartment as a bird a nest, and the route she had taken was as trackless, as scentless as the bird's through the air.
She had left no trace of any kind, anywhere—not even with her lawyer, not even with her bank from which she had withdrawn her account. Since her marriage to Alfred Munn not a single check of Stephen's had been cashed by her. Not a single check had even been received by her. They were returned to Stephen unopened, with the recurring announcement "Not known" in the corner of the envelope.
Helen looked into eyes that were troubled as she gazed into the mirror before her. "It might have been she! She might need money! Should I have called, after all?" Usually Helen could depend upon her first instinct in regard to such matters. Her first instinct had said, "No." By the time Helen's hair was rolled again in its soft knot at the back of her head, her eyes had lost their troubled look. Of what importance was money to a woman who was willing to pay for her child's happiness with the child's love if it menaced that happiness? And communication, even secret communication, would menace it. It was far safer that she, Helen herself, should remain in doubt as to Stella's hiding-place. It was necessary to be so very honest with Laurel. Helen, too, must not know but that Stella was beyond call in some far country. She mustn't allow herself even to look for the shadow again. She mustn't tell any one about it. Oh, Stella should not be defeated, if Helen could help it.
2
But others were not as protective of the shadow. That same evening, a few hundred miles away, in a dainty and exquisite drawing-room in Milhampton, Massachusetts, four women in dainty and exquisite gowns stood before an open fire, stirring black coffee with tiny gold spoons in tiny porcelain cups. Their motions were as dainty and exquisite as the room, as their gowns. So, too, were their voices and their accents.
They chatted lightly, inconsequently, touching now one subject, now another, like humming-birds passing from one flower to another, whiling the time away in as amusing a manner as possible till the men should join them for bridge.
"Oh, yes," sighed Phyllis, "one sees the name of Laurel Dallas in the New York society columns frequently now. The new Mrs. Dallas is doing her best for the child. I call it awfully decent."
"Oh, it shouldn't be difficult," said Myrtle, "with her social position."
"And the child is really very pretty," Mrs. Kay Bird contributed. "That helps. There isn't a suggestion of her mother in her."
"How fortunate! What has become of that dreadful woman, anyhow?" asked Rosamond.
"Oh! Haven't you heard, my dear?" Mrs. Kay Bird raised slim bare shoulders in surprise. "Myrtle, haven't you told Rosamond you saw the poor thing in New York last time you were down?"
"I haven't seen Rosamond. I returned only night before last."
"Oh, well, tell her. Do. Prepare yourself for a choice bit, Rosamond."
Rosamond placed her empty coffee-cup on the mantel and curled up cozily in a corner of the cushioned divan.
"Tell me first, please, about the divorce. You know I was in Europe all last year. I didn't get a bit of the gossip, and there was no account of it in the papers sent me."
"There was no account of it in any of the papers," Mrs. Kay Bird informed her. "Stephen Dallas obtained his divorce without even a flutter of a struggle, which does not surprise any of us who know the facts. We agree with the former Mrs. Dallas, it would have been very unwise for her to contest her husband's charges."
"Oh, did he make charges?"
"That's the usual proceeding, my dear."
"And what were they?"
"Well, he lives in New York. You know the New York laws, I suppose."
Shrugs. Soft laughter.
"And the child," Phyllis added, "was put immediately into the custody of her father."
"Oh, dear! You never can tell what a woman is at the core, can you?" deplored Rosamond. "Why, when we first knew Stella Dallas she didn't seem really bad, though she always was awfully ordinary, of course. Even after that time you saw her at Belcher's Beach, Myrtle, I couldn't believe she'd really fallen as low as that. I thought you must be mistaken."
"Tell Rosamond about New York, Myrtle," said Mrs. Kay Bird.
Myrtle placed her coffee-cup on the mantel; too, and extending a slender hand to a silver box near by, selected a cigarette.
"I saw Stella Dallas in New York, Rosamond," she announced impressively. "I saw her down near Washington Square. I was down that way seeing a friend of mine who has the most fascinating studio in an old stable. I saw Stella Dallas with the Munn man again! They seemed to be on quite familiar terms."
"Did you, really?"
"It was not a pretty sight, I assure you. The Munn man was intoxicated, I think. Anyway, she had to help him walk. I won't say she was intoxicated, too, because I don't know that she was, but she didn't look right. And she has coarsened—oh, terribly, girls! A woman of that sort always does. And has lost her self-respect as to appearances, as is also usual, I believe. Her clothes were really shabby and his were in actual rags. City's dregs—that's all I could think of as I looked at them—city's dregs."
"How unpleasant," shuddered Rosamond.
"Disgusting, was my word," said Phyllis.
"Revolting, was mine," laughed Mrs. Kay Bird. Myrtle extended a languid arm. "Please pass me the matches, Phyllis. Thank you, dear. She's a depraved woman, girls," she announced. "Always was, and always will be. Oh, here come the men." She flipped her match into the open fire. "Let's cut for partners."
3
Miss Laurel Dallas was to be formally presented to New York Society at a tea given at the home of her parents, Mr. and Mrs. Stephen Dallas, on the afternoon of November the twenty-first, from four until seven-thirty o'clock. Several luncheons in her honor were scheduled for the week following the tea; also several dinners. The names of Miss Dallas's various hostesses were mentioned. So was the fact that Brightswood, her parents' summer home at Green Hills, Long Island, was to be opened over the Thanksgiving holiday, and filled with a house-party, including a number of this season's débutantes. One of the most anticipated affairs of the season was the ball to be given for Miss Dallas in early January. So the papers said; so the various society columns repeated and repeated again. "Miss Dallas is one of the most popular débutantes of the season, etc., etc." ("oh, she'll like that," thought Helen to herself), "whose picture is printed below" ("she'll cut that out," she smiled).
Helen avoided newspaper notoriety usually. Stephen wondered at her willingness to allow Laurel's name to appear frequently in print, and in conspicuous print.
He wondered at another sudden oddity of Helen's. The servants wondered at it, too. In fact it was one of the servants who brought it to his attention. Twice, lately, upon arriving home in the late afternoon, he had noticed that the shades in the house were not all drawn. He had been able to look into Helen's room on the second floor, and see Laurel seated under the light, at the piano, playing. He spoke to the parlor-maid.
"I know, sir. It hardly seems safe, sir. But it's Mrs. Dallas's orders, sir."
Later to Stephen Helen explained, "But it looks so pretty from the street. Why shut in all our loveliness? I'll run the risk of burglars."
Even on the afternoon of Laurel's tea, Helen ordered the shades raised. She went even further. With her own hands she pulled back the lace curtains in the bay-window where she and Laurel were going to stand to receive their guests.
"It looks out only on the alley," she shrugged.
4
It rained on the morning of Laurel's tea. It rained in torrents.
"Gracious, don't it pour!" exclaimed Stella for the dozenth time to the woman next to her, and for the dozenth time to herself, "'Twon't make any difference, though. They've all got limousines." Then out loud again, "Gracious, don't it pour!"
Every few minutes she looked up from the machine which she had been feeding with coarse white cambric all the morning, and gazed anxiously out of the streaked window beside her toward the building opposite, against the dark background of which she could see the rain sweeping.
About noon she exclaimed, "Say, it looks lighter! Say, don't it look lighter to you?" Then, "It is letting up. It looks to me as though it was letting up a little." And finally, "Gosh, it's going to clear off!" And it did!
At five o'clock that afternoon, when Stella, with a hundred or so other women, emerged from the big black building through the little opening at the bottom (like the opening cut at the bottom of a big black hogshead; every little while a thin dark stream of humanity would pour out of the building; it housed over a hundred small factories), the air was clear and crisp and cold. Stella stepped out of the little stream, once on the sidewalk, stood still, and gazed straight up. Yes! It was all right! The stars were shining like mad, up there, at the top of the canyon, beyond the dizzy precipices.