Twilight Sleep (19 page)

At the gates of Cedarledge Pauline lifted her head from a last
hurried study of the letters and papers Maisie Bruss had thrust
into the motor.

The departure from town had been tumultuous. Up to the last minute
there had been the usual rush and trepidation, Maisie hanging on
the footboard, Powder and the maid hurrying down with final
messages and recommendations.

"Here's another batch of bills passed by the architect, Mrs.
Manford. And he asks if you'd mind—"

"Yes, yes; draw another cheque for five thousand, Maisie, and send
it to me with the others to be signed."

"And the estimates for the new orchid–house. The contractor says
building–materials are going up again next week, and he can't
guarantee, unless you telephone at once—"

"Has madame the jewel–box? I put it under the rug myself, with
madame's motor–bag."

"Thank you, Cécile. Yes, it's here."

"And is the Maison Herminie to deliver the green and gold teagown
here or—"

"Here are the proofs of the Birth Control speech, Mrs. Manford. If
you could just glance over them in the motor, and let me have them
back tonight—"

"The Marchesa, madam, has called up to ask if you and Mr. Manford
can receive her at Cedarledge for the next week–end—"

"No, Powder; say no. I'm dreadfully sorry…"

"Very good, madam. I understand it was to bring a favourable
answer from the Cardinal—"

"Oh; very well. I'll see. I'll telephone from Cedarledge."

"Please, madam, Mr. Wyant's just telephoned—"

"Mr. Wyant, Powder?"

"Mr. Arthur Wyant, madam. To ask—"

"But Mr. Wyant and Mr. James were to have started for Georgia last
night."

"Yes, madam; but Mr. James was detained by business, and now Mr.
Arthur Wyant asks if you'll please ring up before they leave
tonight."

"Very well. (What can have happened, Nona? You don't know?) Say
I've started for Cedarledge, Powder; I'll ring up from there. Yes;
that's all."

"Mrs. Manford, wait! Here are two more telegrams, and a special—"

"Take care, Maisie; you'll slip and break your leg…"

"Yes; but Mrs. Manford! The special is from Mrs. Swoffer. She
says the committee have just discovered a new genius, and they're
calling an emergency meeting for tomorrow afternoon at three, and
couldn't you possibly—"

"No, no, Maisie—I can't! Say I've LEFT—"

The waves of agitation were slow in subsiding. A glimpse, down a
side street, of the Marchesa's cheap boarding–house–hotel, revived
them; and so did the flash past the inscrutable "Dawnside," aloof
on its height above the Hudson. But as the motor slid over the
wide suburban Boulevards, and out into the budding country, with
the roar and menace of the city fading harmlessly away on the
horizon, Pauline's serenity gradually stole back.

Nona, at her side, sat silent; and the mother was grateful for that
silence. She had noticed that the girl had looked pale and drawn
for the last fortnight; but that was just another proof of how much
they all needed the quiet of Cedarledge.

"You don't know why Jim and his father have put off starting,
Nona?"

"No idea, mother. Probably business of Jim's, as Powder said."

"Do you know why his father wants to telephone me?"

"Not a bit. Probably it's not important. I'll call up this
evening."

"Oh, if you would, dear! I'm really tired."

There was a pause, and then Nona questioned: "Have you noticed
Maisie, mother? She's pretty tired too."

"Yes; poor Maisie! Preparing Cedarledge has been rather a rush for
her, I'm afraid—"

"It's not only that. She's just been told that her mother has a
cancer."

"Oh, poor child! How dreadful! She never said a word to me—"

"No, she wouldn't."

"But, Nona, have you told her to see Disterman AT ONCE? Perhaps an
immediate operation … you must call her up as soon as we
arrive. Tell her, of course, that I'll bear all the expenses—"

After that they both relapsed into silence.

These domestic tragedies happened now and then. One would have
given the world to avert them; but when one couldn't one was
always ready to foot the bill… Pauline wished that she had
known … had had time to say a kindly word to poor Maisie…
Perhaps she would have to give her a week off; or at least a couple
of days, while she settled her mother in the hospital. At least,
if Disterman advised an operation…

It was dreadful, how rushed one always was. Pauline would have
liked to go and see poor Mrs. Bruss herself. But there were Dexter
and Lita and the baby all arriving the day after tomorrow, and only
just time to put the last touches to Cedarledge before they came.
And Pauline herself was desperately tired, though she had taken a
"triple treatment" from Alvah Loft ($100) that very morning.

She always meant to be kind to every one dependent on her; it was
only time that lacked—always time! Dependents and all, they were
swept away with her in the same ceaseless rush. When now and then
one of them dropped by the way she was sorry, and sent back first
aid, and did all she could; but the rush never stopped; it couldn't
stop; when one did a kindness one could only fling it at its object
and whirl by.

The blessèd peace of the country! Pauline drew a deep breath of
content. Never before had she approached Cedarledge with so
complete a sense of possessorship. The place was really of her own
making, for though the house had been built and the grounds laid
out years before she had acquired the property, she had stamped her
will and her wealth on every feature. Pauline was persuaded that
she was fond of the country—but what she was really fond of was
doing things to the country, and owning, with this object, as many
acres of it as possible. And so it had come about that every year
the Cedarledge estate had pushed the encircling landscape farther
back, and substituted for its miles of golden–rod and birch and
maple more acres of glossy lawn, and more specimen limes and oaks
and cut–leaved beeches, domed over more and more windings of
expensive shrubbery.

From the farthest gate it was now a drive of two miles to the
house, and Pauline found even this too short for her minutely
detailed appreciation of what lay between her and her threshold.
In the village, the glint of the gilt weathercock on the new half–
timbered engine–house; under a rich slope of pasture–land the
recently enlarged dairy–farm; then woods of hemlock and dogwood;
acres of rhododendron, azalea and mountain laurel acclimatized
about a hidden lake; a glimpse of Japanese water–gardens fringed
with cherry bloom and catkins; open lawns, spreading trees, the
long brick house–front and its terraces, and through a sculptured
archway the Dutch garden with dwarf topiary work and endless files
of bulbs about the commander's baton of a stately sundial.

To Pauline each tree, shrub, water–course, herbaceous border, meant
not only itself, but the surveying of grades, transporting of soil,
tunnelling for drainage, conducting of water, the business
correspondence and paying of bills, which had preceded its
existence; and she would have cared for it far less—perhaps not at
all—had it sprung into being unassisted, like the random
shadbushes and wild cherry trees beyond the gates.

The faint spring loveliness reached her somehow, in long washes of
pale green, and the blurred mauve of budding vegetation; but her
eyes could not linger on any particular beauty without its
dissolving into soil, manure, nurserymen's catalogues, and bills
again—bills. It had all cost a terrible lot of money; but she was
proud of that too—to her it was part of the beauty, part of the
exquisite order and suitability which reigned as much in the
simulated wildness of the rhododendron glen as in the geometrical
lines of the Dutch garden.

"Seventy–five thousand bulbs this year!" she thought, as the motor
swept by the sculptured gateway, just giving and withdrawing a
flash of turf sheeted with amber and lilac, in a setting of twisted
and scalloped evergreens.

Twenty–five thousand more bulbs than last year … that was how
she liked it to be. It was exhilarating to spend more money each
year, to be always enlarging and improving, in small ways as well
as great, to face unexpected demands with promptness and energy,
beat down exorbitant charges, struggle through difficult moments,
and come out at the end of the year tired but victorious, with
improvements made, bills paid, and a reassuring balance in the
bank. To Pauline that was "life."

And how her expenditure at Cedarledge was justifying itself! Her
husband, drawn by its fresh loveliness, had voluntarily given up
his annual trip to California, the excitement of tarpon–fishing,
the independence of bachelorhood—all to spend a quiet month in the
country with his wife and children. Pauline felt that even the
twenty–five thousand additional bulbs had had a part in shaping his
decision. And what would he say when he saw the new bathrooms,
assisted at the village fire–drill, and plunged into the
artificially warmed waters of the new swimming pool? A mist of
happiness rose to her eyes as she looked out on the spring–misted
landscape.

Nona had not followed her mother into the house. Her dogs at her
heels, she plunged down hill to the woods and lake. She knew
nothing of what Cedarledge had cost, but little of the labour of
its making. It was simply the world of her childhood, and she
could see it from no other angle, nor imagine it as ever having
been different. To her it had always worn the same enchantment,
stretched to the same remote distances. At nineteen it was almost
the last illusion she had left.

In the path by the lake she felt herself drawn back under the old
spell. Those budding branches, the smell of black peaty soil
quivering with life, the woodlands faintly starred with dogwood,
all were the setting of childish adventures, old games with Jim,
Indian camps on the willow–fringed island, and innocent descents
among the rhododendrons to boat or bathe by moonlight.

The old skiff had escaped Mrs. Manford's annual "doing–up" and
still leaked through the same rusty seams. Pushing out upon the
lake, Nona leaned on the oars and let the great mockery of the
spring dilate her heart…

Manford questioned: "All right, eh? Warm enough? Not going too
fast? The air's still sharp up here in the hills;" and Lita
settled down beside him into one of the deep silences that enfolded
her as softly as her furs. By turning his head a little he could
just see the tip of her nose and the curve of her upper lip between
hat–brim and silver fox; and the sense of her, so close and so
still, sunk in that warm animal hush which he always found so
restful, dispelled his last uneasiness, and made her presence at
his side seem as safe and natural as his own daughter's.

"Just as well you sent the boy by train, though—I foresaw I'd get
off too late to suit the young gentleman's hours."

She curled down more deeply at his side, with a contented laugh.

Manford, intent on the steering wheel, restrained the impulse to
lay a hand over hers, and kept his profile steadily turned to her.
It was wonderful, how successfully his plan was working out …
how reasonable she'd been about it in the end. Poor child! No
doubt she would always be reasonable with people who knew how to
treat her. And he flattered himself that he did. It hadn't been
easy, just at first—but now he'd struck the right note and meant
to hold it. Not paternal, exactly: she would have been the first
to laugh at anything as old–fashioned as that. Heavy fathers had
gone out with the rest of the tremolo effects. No; but elder
brotherly. That was it. The same free and friendly relation which
existed, say, between Jim and Nona. Why, he had actually tried
chaffing Lita, and she hadn't minded—he had made fun of that
ridiculous Ardwin, and she had just laughed and shrugged. That
little shrug—when her white shoulder, as the dress slipped from
it, seemed to be pushing up into a wing! There was something
birdlike and floating in all her motions… Poor child, poor
little girl… He really felt like her elder brother; and his
looking–glass told him that he didn't look much too old for the
part…

The sense of having just grazed something dark and lurid, which had
threatened to submerge them, gave him an added feeling of security,
a holiday feeling, as if life stretched before him as safe and open
as his coming fortnight at Cedarledge. How glad he was that he had
given up his tarpon–fishing, managed to pack Jim and Wyant off to
Georgia, and secured this peaceful interval in which to look about
him and take stock of things before the grind began again!

The day before yesterday—just after Pauline's departure—it had
seemed as if all their plans would be wrecked by one of Wyant's
fits of crankiness. Wyant always enjoyed changing his mind after
every one else's was made up; and at the last moment he had
telephoned to say that he wasn't well enough to go south. He had
rung up Pauline first, and being told that she had left had
communicated with Jim; and Jim, distracted, had appealed to Manford.
It was one of his father's usual attacks of "nervousness"; cousin
Eleanor had seen it coming, and tried to cut down the whiskies–and–
sodas; finally Jim begged Manford to drop in and reason with his
predecessor.

These visits always produced a profound impression on Wyant;
Manford himself, for all his professional acuteness, couldn't quite
measure the degree or guess the nature of the effect, but he felt
his power, and preserved it by seeing Wyant as seldom as possible.
This time, however, it seemed as if things might not go as smoothly
as usual. Wyant, who looked gaunt and excited, tried to carry off
the encounter with the jauntiness he always assumed in Manford's
presence. "My dear fellow! Sit down, do. Cigar? Always
delighted to see my successor. Any little hints I can give about
the management of the concern—"