The Grain of Dust Part 4

"Spoiled child--that's all. No self-control."

"You despise everyone who isn't as strong as you." She looked at him intently. "I wonder if you _are_ as self-controlled as you imagine.

Sometimes I wish you'd get a lesson. Then you'd be more sympathetic. But it isn't likely you will--not through a woman. Oh, they're such pitifully easy game for a man like you. But then men are the same way with you--quite as easy. You get anything you want. . . . You're really going to stick to Josephine?"

He nodded. "It's time for me to settle down."

"Yes--I think it is," she went on thoughtfully. "I can hardly believe you're to marry. Of course, she's the grand prize. Still--I never imagined you'd come in and surrender. I guess you _do_ care for her."

"Why else should I marry?" argued he. "She's got nothing I need--except herself, Ursula."

"What _is_ it you see in her?"

"What you see--what everyone sees," replied Fred, with quiet, convincing enthusiasm. "What no one could help seeing. As you say, she's the grand prize."

"Yes, she is sweet and handsome--and intelligent--very superior, without making others feel that they're outcla.s.sed. Still--there's something lacking--not in her perhaps, but in you. You have it for her--she's crazy about you. But she hasn't it for you."

"What?"

"I can't tell you. It isn't a thing that can be put into words."

"Then it doesn't exist."

"Oh, yes it does," cried Ursula. "If the engagement were to be broken--or if anything were to happen to her--why, you'd get over it--would go on as if nothing had happened. If she didn't fit in with your plans and ambitions, she'd be sacrificed so quick she'd not know what had taken off her head. But if you felt what I mean--then you'd give up everything--do the wildest, craziest things."

"What nonsense!" scoffed Norman. "I can imagine myself making a fool of myself about a woman as easily as about anything else. But I can't imagine myself playing the fool for anything whatsoever."

There was mysterious fire in Ursula's absent eyes. "You remember me as a girl--how mercenary I was--how near I came to marrying Cousin Jake?"

"I saved you from that."

"Yes--and for what? I fell in love."

"And out again."

"I was deceived in Clayton--deceived myself--naturally. How is a woman to know, without experience?"

"Oh, I'm not criticising," said the brother.

"Besides, a love marriage that fails is different from a mercenary marriage that fails."

"Very--very," agreed he. "Just the difference between an honorable and a dishonorable bankruptcy."

"Anyhow--it's bankrupt--my marriage. But I've learned what love is--that there is such a thing--and that it's valuable. Yes, Fred, I've got the taste for that wine--the habit of it. Could I go back to water or milk?"

"Spoiled baby--that's the whole story. If you had a nursery full of children--or did the heavy housework--you'd never think of these foolish moons.h.i.+ny things."

"Yet you say you love!"

"Clayton is as good as any you're likely to run across--is better than _some_ I've seen about."

"How can _you_ say?" cried she. "It's for me to judge."

"If you would only _judge_!"

Ursula sighed. "It's useless to talk to you. Let's go down."

Norman, following her from the room, stopped her in the doorway to give her a brotherly hug and kiss. "You won't make an out-and-out idiot of yourself, will you, Ursula?" he said, in his winning manner.

The expression of her eyes as she looked at him showed how strong was his influence over her. "You know I'll come to you for advice before I do anything final," said she. "Oh, I don't know what I want! I only know what I don't want. I wish I were well balanced--as you are, Fred."

[Ill.u.s.tration: "'You won't make an out-and-out idiot of yourself, will you Ursula?'"]

III

The brother and sister dined alone. Clayton was, finding his club a more comfortable place than his home, in those days of his wife's disillusionment and hesitation about the future. Many weak creatures are curiously armed for the unequal conflict of existence--some with fleetness of foot, some with a pole-cat weapon of malignance, some with porcupine quills, some with a 'possumlike instinct for "playing dead."

Of these last was Fitzhugh. He knew when to be silent, when to keep out of the way, when to "sit tight" and wait. His wife had discovered that he was a fool--that he perhaps owed more to his tailor than to any other single factor for the success of his splendid pose of the thorough gentleman. Yet she did not realize what an utter fool he was, so clever had he been in the use of the art of discreet silence. Norman suspected him, but could not believe a human being capable of such fathomless vacuity as he found whenever he tried to explore his brother-in-law's brain.

After dinner Norman took Ursula to the opera, to join the Seldins, and after the first act went to Josephine, who had come with only a deaf old aunt. Josephine loved music, and to hear an opera from a box one must be alone. Norman entered as the lights went up. It always gave him a feeling of dilation, this spectacle of material splendor--the women, whose part it is throughout civilization to-day to wear for public admiration and envy the evidences of the prowess of the males to whom they belong. A truer version of Dr. Holmes's aphorism would be that it takes several generations in oil to make a deep-dyed sn.o.b--wholly to destroy a man's or a woman's point of view, sense of the kins.h.i.+p of all flesh, and to make him or her over into the genuine believer in caste and wors.h.i.+per of it. For all his keenness of mind, of humor, Norman had the fast-dyed sn.o.bbishness of his family and friends. He knew that caste was silly, that such displays as this vulgar flaunting of jewels and costly dresses were in atrocious bad taste. But it is one thing to know, another thing to feel; and his feeling was delight in the spectacle, pride in his own high rank in the aristocracy.

His eyes rested with radiant pleasure on the girl he was to marry. And she was indeed a person to appeal to the pa.s.sion of pride. Simply and most expensively dressed in pearl satin, with only a little jewelry, she sat in the front of her parterre box, a queen by right of her father's wealth, her family's position, her own beauty. She was a large woman--tall, a big frame but not ungainly. She had brilliant dark eyes, a small proud head set upon shoulders that were slenderly young now and, even when they should became matronly, would still be beautiful. She had good teeth, an exquisite smile, the gentle good humor of those who, comfortable themselves, would not have the slightest objection to all others being equally so. Because she laughed appreciatively and repeated amusingly she had great reputation for wit. Because she industriously picked up from men a plausible smatter of small talk about politics, religion, art and the like, she was renowned as clever verging on profound. And she believed herself both witty and wise--as do thousands, male and female, with far less excuse.

She had selected Norman for the same reason that he had selected her; each recognized the other as the "grand prize." Pity is not nearly so close kin to love as is the feeling that the other person satisfies to the uttermost all one's pet vanities. It would have been next door to impossible for two people so well matched not to find themselves drawn to each other and filled with sympathy and the sense of comrades.h.i.+p, so far as there can be comrades.h.i.+p where two are driving luxuriously along the way of life, with not a serious cause for worry. People without half the general fitness of these two for each other have gone through to the end, regarding themselves and regarded as the most devoted of lovers.

Indeed, they were lovers. Only one of those savage tests, to which in all probability they would never be exposed, would or could reveal just how much, or how little, that vague, variable word lovers meant when applied to them.

As their eyes met, into each pair leaped the fine, exalted light of pride in possession. "This wonderful woman is mine!" his eyes said. And her eyes answered, "And you--you most wonderful of men--you are mine!"

It always gave each of them a thrill like intoxication to meet, after a day's separation. All the joy of their dazzling good fortune burst upon them afresh.

"I'll venture you haven't thought of me the whole day," said she as he dropped to the chair behind her.

It was a remark she often made--to give him the opportunity to say, "I've thought of little else, I'm sorry to say--I, who have a career to look after." He made the usual answer, and they smiled happily at each other. "And you?" he said.

"Oh, I? What else has a woman to think about?"

Her statement was as true as his was false. He was indeed all she had to think about--all worth wasting the effort of thought upon. But he--though he did not realize it--had thought of her only in the incidental way in which an ambition-possessed man must force himself to think of a woman. The best of his mind was commandeered to his career.

An amiable but shakily founded theory that it was "our" career enabled him to say without sense of lying that his chief thought had been she.

"How those men down town would poke fun at you," said she, "if they knew you had me with you all the time, right beside you."

This amused him. "Still, I suspect there are lots of men who'd be exposed in the same way if there were a general and complete show-down."

"Sometimes I wish I really were with you--working with you--helping you.

You have girls--a girl--to be your secretary--or whatever you call it--don't you?"

"You should have seen the one I had to-day. But there's always something pathetic about every girl who has to make her own living."