Virginia Part 27

To the amazement of Mrs. Pendleton (who reflected that you really never knew what to expect of children), this appeal produced an immediate and extraordinary result. Lucy, who had been fidgeting about and trying to help with the packing, became suddenly solemn and dignified, while an enn.o.bling excitement mounted to Harry's face. Never particularly obedient before, they became, as soon as the words were uttered, as amenable as angels. Even Jenny stopped feeding long enough to raise herself and pat her mother's cheek with ten caressing, milky fingers.

"Mother's going away," said Lucy in a solemn voice, and a hush fell on the three of them.

"And grandma's coming here to live," added Harry after the silence had grown so depressing that Virginia had started to cry.

"Not to live, precious," corrected Mrs. Pendleton quickly. "Just to spend two days with you. Mother will be home in two days."

"Mother will be home in two days," repeated Lucy. "May I stay away from school while you're away, mamma?"

"And may I stop learning my letters?" asked Harry.

"No, darlings, you must do just as if I were here. Grandma will take care of you. Now promise me that you will be good."

They promised obediently, awed to submission by the stupendous importance of the change. It is probable that they would have observed with less surprise any miraculous upheaval in the orderly phenomena of nature.

"I don't see how I can possibly leave them--they are so good, and they behave exactly as if they realized how anxious I am," wept Virginia, breaking down when Marthy came to announce that the rector had come and the carriage was at the door.

"Suppose you give it up, Jinny. I--I'll send your father," pleaded Mrs.

Pendleton, in desperation as she watched the tragedy of the parting.

But that strange force which the situation had developed in Virginia yielded neither to her mother's prayers nor to the last despairing wails of the children, who realized, at the sight of the black bag in Marthy's hands, that their providence was actually deserting them. The deepest of her instincts--the instinct that was at the root of all her mother love--was threatened, and she rose to battle. The thing she loved best, she had learned, was neither husband nor child, but the one that needed her.

CHAPTER V

FAILURE

She had lain down in her clothes, impelled by the feeling that if there were to be a wreck she should prefer to appear completely dressed; so when the chill dawn came at last and the train pulled into Jersey City, she had nothing to do except to adjust her veil and wait patiently until the porter came for her bag. His colour, which was black, inspired her with confidence, and she followed him trustfully to the platform, where he delivered her to another smiling member of his race. The cold was so penetrating that her teeth began to chatter as she turned to obey the orders of the dusky official who had a.s.sumed command of her. Never had she felt anything so bleak as the atmosphere of the station. Never in her life had she been so lonely as she was while she hurried down the long dim platform in the direction of a gate which looked as if it led into a prison. She was chilled through; her skin felt as if it had turned to india rubber; there was a sickening terror in her soul; and she longed above all things to sit down on one of the inhospitable tracks and burst into tears; but something stronger than impulse urged her s.h.i.+vering body onward and controlled the twitching muscles about her mouth. "In a few minutes I shall see Oliver. Oliver is ill and I am going to him," she repeated over and over to herself as if she were reciting a prayer.

Inside the station she declined the offer of breakfast, and was conducted to the ferry, where she was obliged to run in order to catch the boat that was just leaving. Seated on one of the long benches in the saloon, with her bag at her feet and her umbrella grasped tightly in her hand, she gazed helplessly at the other pa.s.sengers and wondered if any one of them would tell her what to do when she reached the opposite side. The women, she thought, looked hard and hara.s.sed, and the men she could not see because of the rows of newspapers behind which they were hidden. Once her wandering gaze caught the eyes of a middle-aged woman in rusty black, who smiled at her above the head of a sleeping child.

"That's a pretty woman," said a man carelessly, as he put down his paper, and she realized that he was talking about her to his companion.

Then, as the terrible outlines of the city grew more distinct on the horizon, he got up and strolled as carelessly past her to the deck. He had spoken of her as indifferently as he might have spoken of the weather.

As the tremendous battlements (which were not tremendous to any of the other pa.s.sengers) emerged slowly from the mist and cleft the sombre low-hanging clouds, from which a few flakes of snow fell, her terror vanished suddenly before the excitement which ran through her body. She forgot her hunger, her loneliness, her s.h.i.+vering flesh, her benumbed and aching feet. A sensation not unlike the one with which the rector had marched into his first battle, fortified and exhilarated her. The fighting blood of of her ancestors grew warm in her veins. New York developed suddenly from a mere spot on a map into a romance made into brick; and when a ray of sunlight pierced the heavy fog, and lay like a white wing aslant the few falling snowflakes, it seemed to her that the shadowy buildings lost their sinister aspect and softened into a haunting and mysterious beauty. Somewhere in that place of mystery and adventure Oliver was waiting for her! He was a part of that vast movement of life into which she was going. Then, youth, from which hope is never long absent, flamed up in her, and she was glad that she was still beautiful enough to cause strangers to turn and look at her.

But this mood, also, pa.s.sed quickly, and a little later, while she rolled through the grey streets, into which the slant sunbeams could bring no colour, she surrendered again to that terror of the unknown which had seized her when she stood in the station. The beauty had departed from the buildings; the pavements were dirty; the little discoloured piles of snow made the crossings slippery and dangerous; and she held her breath as they pa.s.sed through the crowded streets on the west side, overcome by the fear of "catching" some malign malady from the smells and the filth. The negro quarters in Dinwiddie were dirty enough, but not, she thought with a kind of triumph, quite so dirty as New York. When the cab turned into Fifth Avenue, she took her handkerchief from her nostrils; but this imposing street, which had not yet emerged from its evil dream of Victorian brownstone, impressed her chiefly as a place of a thousand prisons. It was impossible to believe that those frowning walls, undecorated by a creeper or the shadow of a tree, could really be homes where people lived and children were born.

At first she had gazed with a childish interest and curiosity on the houses she was pa.s.sing; then the sense of strangeness gave place presently to the exigent necessity of reaching Oliver as soon as possible. But the driver appeared indifferent to her timid taps on the gla.s.s at his back, while the horse progressed with the feeble activity of one who had spent a quarter of a century ineffectually making an effort. Her impatience, which she had at first kept under control, began to run in quivers of nervousness through her limbs. The very richness of her personal life, which had condensed all experience into a single emotional centre, and restricted her vision of the universe to that solitary window of the soul through which she looked, prevented her now from seeing in the city anything except the dreary background of Oliver's illness and failure. The nave wonder with which she had watched the gigantic outlines shape themselves out of the white fog, had faded utterly from her mind. She ached with longing to reach Oliver and to find him well enough to take the first train back to Dinwiddie.

At the hotel her bag and umbrella were wrested from her by an imperious uniformed attendant, and in what seemed to her an incredibly short s.p.a.ce of time, she was following him along a velvet lined corridor on the tenth floor. The swift ascent in the elevator had made her dizzy, and the physical sensation reminded her that she was weak for food. Then the attendant rapped imperatively at a door just beyond a s.h.i.+ning staircase, and she forgot herself as completely as it had been her habit to do since her marriage.

"Come in!" responded a m.u.f.fled voice on the inside, and as the door swung open, she saw Oliver, in his dressing-gown, and with an unshaved face, reading a newspaper beside a table on which stood an untasted cup of coffee.

"I didn't ring," he began impatiently, and then starting to his feet, he uttered her name in a voice which held her standing as if she were suddenly paralyzed on the threshold. "Virginia!"

A sob rose in her throat, and her faltering gaze pa.s.sed from him to the hotel attendant, who responded to her unspoken appeal as readily as if it were a part of his regular business. Pus.h.i.+ng her gently inside, he placed her bag and umbrella on an empty chair, took up the breakfast tray from the table, and inquired, with a kindness which strangely humbled her, if she wished to give an order. When she had helplessly shaken her head, he bowed and went out, closing the door softly upon their meeting.

"What in thunder, Virginia?" began Oliver, and she realized that he was angry.

"I heard you were sick--that the play had failed. I was so sorry I hadn't come with you--" she explained; and then, understanding for the first time the utter foolishness of what she had done, she put her hands up to her face and burst into tears.

He had risen from his chair, but he made no movement to come nearer to her, and when she took down her hands in order to wipe her eyes, she saw an expression in his face which frightened her by its strangeness. She had caught him when that guard which every human being--even a husband--wears, had fallen away, though in her ignorance it seemed to her that he had become suddenly another person. That she had entered into one of those awful hours of self-realization, when the soul must face its limitations alone and make its readjustments in silence, did not occur to her, because she, who had lived every minute of her life under the eyes of her parents or her children, could have no comprehension of the hunger for solitude which was devouring Oliver's heart. She saw merely that he did not want her--that she had not only startled, but angered him by coming; and the bitterness of that instant seemed to her more than she was able to bear. Something had changed him; he was older, he was harder, he was embittered.

"I--I am so sorry," she stammered; and because even in the agony of this moment she could not think long of herself, she added almost humbly, "Would you rather that I should go back again?" Then, by the haggard look of his face as he turned away from her towards the window, she saw that he, also, was suffering, and her soul yearned over him as it had yearned over Harry when he had had the toothache. "Oh, Oliver!" she cried, and again, "Oh, Oliver, won't you let me help you?"

But he was in the mood of despairing humiliation when one may support abuse better than pity. His failure, he knew, had been undeserved, and he was still smarting from the injustice of it as from the blows of a whip. For twenty-four hours his nerves had been on the rack, and his one desire had been to hide himself in the spiritual nakedness to which he was stripped. Had he been obliged to choose a witness to his suffering, it is probable that he would have selected a stranger from the street rather than his wife. The one thing that could have helped him, an intelligent justification of his work, she was powerless to give. In his need she had nothing except love to offer; and love, she felt instinctively, was not the balm for his wound.

Afraid and yet pa.s.sionately longing to meet his eyes, she let her gaze fall away from him and wander timidly, as if uncertain where to rest, about the disordered room, with its dull red walls, its cheap Nottingham lace curtains tied back with cords, its elaborately carved walnut furniture, and its litter of days old newspapers upon the bed. She saw his neckties hanging in an uneven row over the oblong mirror, and she controlled a nervous impulse to straighten them out and put them away.

"Why didn't you telegraph me?" he asked, after a pause in which she had struggled vainly to look as if it were the most natural thing in the world that he should receive her in this way. "If I had known you were coming, I should have met you."

"Father wanted to, but I wouldn't let him," she answered. "I--I thought you were sick."

In spite of his despair, it is probable that at the moment she was suffering more than he was--since a wound to love strikes deeper, after all, than a wound to ambition. Where she had expected to find her husband, she felt vaguely that she had encountered a stranger, and she was overwhelmed by that sense of irremediable loss which follows the discovery of terrible and unfamiliar qualities in those whom we have known and loved intimately for years. The fact that he was plainly struggling to disguise his annoyance, that he was trying as hard as she to a.s.sume a manner he did not feel, only added a sardonic humour to poignant tragedy.

"Have you had anything to eat?" he asked abruptly, and remembering that he had not kissed her when she entered, he put his arm about her and brushed her cheek with his lips.

"No, I waited to breakfast with you. I was in such a hurry to get here."

"By Jove!" he exclaimed, and going over to the bell, he touched it with the manner of a man who is delighted that anything so perfectly practical as food exists in the world.

While he was speaking to the waiter, she took off her hat, and washed the stains of smoke and tears from her face. Her hair was a sight, she thought, but while she gazed back at her stricken eyes in the little mirror over the washstand, she recalled with a throb of grat.i.tude that the stranger on the boat had said she was pretty. She felt so humble that she clung almost with desperation to the thought that Oliver always liked to have people admire her.

When she turned from the washstand, he was reading the newspaper again, and he put it aside with a forced cheerfulness to arrange the table for breakfast.

"Aren't you going to have something too?" she asked, looking disconsolately at the tray, for all her hunger had departed. If he would only be natural she felt that she could bear anything! If he would only stop trying to pretend that he was not miserable and that nothing had happened! After all, it couldn't be so very bad, could it? It wasn't in the least as if one of the children were ill.

She poured out a cup of coffee for him before drinking her own, and putting it down on the table at his side, waited patiently until he should look up again from his paper. A lump as hard as lead had risen in her throat and was choking her.

"Are the children well?" he asked presently, and she answered with an affected brightness more harrowing than tears, "Yes, mother is taking care of them. Lucy still has the little cough, but I'm giving her cod-liver oil. And, what do you think? I have a surprise for you. Harry can read the first lesson in his reader."

He smiled kindly back at her, but from the vacancy in his face, she realized that he had not taken in a word that she had said. His trouble, whatever it was, could absorb him so utterly that he had ceased even to be interested in his children. He, who had borne so calmly the loss of that day-old baby for whom she had grieved herself to a shadow, was plunged into this condition of abject hopelessness merely because his play was a failure! It was not only impossible for her to share his suffering; she realized, while she watched him, that she could not so much as comprehend it. Her limitations, of which she had never been acutely conscious until to-day, appeared suddenly insurmountable. Love, which had seemed to her to solve all problems and to smooth all difficulties, was helpless to enlighten her. It was not love--it was something else that she needed now, and of this something else she knew not even so much as the name.

She drank her coffee quickly, fearing that if she did not take food she should lose control of herself and anger him by a display of hysterics.

"I don't wonder you couldn't drink your coffee," she said with a quivering little laugh. "It must have been made yesterday." Then, unable to bear the strain any longer, she cried out sharply: "Oh, Oliver, won't you tell me what is the matter?"

His look grew hard, while a spasm of irritation contracted his mouth.

"There's nothing you need worry about--except that I've borrowed money, and I'm afraid we'll have to cut down things a bit until I manage to pay it back."

"Why, of course we'll cut down things," she almost laughed in her relief. "We can live on a great deal less, and I'll market so carefully that you will hardly know the difference. I'll put Marthy in the kitchen and take care of the children myself. It won't be the least bit of trouble."

She knew by his face that he was grateful to her, though he said merely: "I'm a little knocked up, I suppose, so you mustn't mind. I've got a beast of a headache. Martin is going to take 'The Beaten Road' off at the end of the week, you know, and he doesn't think now that he will produce the other. There wasn't a good word for me from the critics, and yet, d.a.m.n them, I know that the play is the best one that's ever come out of America. But it's real--that's why they fell foul of it--it isn't stuffed with sugar plums."