Twilight Sleep (17 page)

She got up, and her glance fell on the telegram which she had
pushed aside when her brother entered. She still had her hat on,
her feet were turned toward the door. But the door seemed to open
into a gray unpeopled world suddenly shorn of its magic. She moved
back into the room and tore up the telegram.

"Lita? But of course I'll talk to Lita—" Mrs. Manford, resting
one elbow on her littered desk, smiled up encouragingly at her
daughter. On the desk lay the final version of the Birth Control
speech, mastered and canalized by the skilful Maisie. The result
was so pleasing that Pauline would have liked to read it aloud to
Nona, had the latter not worn her look of concentrated care. It
was a pity, Pauline thought, that Nona should let herself go at her
age to these moods of anxiety and discouragement.

Pauline herself, fortified by her morning exercises, and by a
"double treatment" ($50) from Alvah Loft, had soared once more
above her own perplexities. She had not had time for a word alone
with her husband since their strange talk of the previous evening;
but already the doubts and uncertainties produced by that talk had
been dispelled. Of course Dexter had been moody and irritable:
wasn't her family always piling up one worry on him after another?
He had always loved Jim as much as he did Nona; and now this menace
to Jim's happiness, and the unpleasantness about Lita, combined
with Amalasuntha's barefaced demands, and the threatened arrival of
the troublesome Michelangelo—such a weight of domestic problems
was enough to unnerve a man already overburdened with professional
cares.

"But of course I'll talk to Lita, dear; I always meant to. The
silly goose! I've waited only because your father—"

Nona's heavy eyebrows ran together like Manford's. "Father?"

"Oh, he's helping us so splendidly about it. And he asked me to
wait; to do nothing in a hurry…"

Nona seemed to turn this over. "All the same—I think you ought to
hear what Lita has to say. She's trying to persuade Jim to let her
divorce him; and he thinks he ought to, if he can't make her
happy."

"But he MUST make her happy! I'll talk to Jim too," cried Pauline
with a gay determination.

"I'd try Lita first, mother. Ask her to postpone her decision. If
we can get her to come to Cedarledge for a few weeks' rest—"

"Yes; that's what your father says."

"But I don't think father ought to give up his fishing to join us.
Haven't you noticed how tired he looks? He ought to get away from
all of us for a few weeks. Why shouldn't you and I look after
Lita?"

Pauline's enthusiasm drooped. It was really no business of Nona's
to give her mother advice about the management of her father.
These modern girls—pity Nona didn't marry, and try managing a
husband of her own!

"Your father loves Cedarledge. It's quite his own idea to go
there. He thinks Easter in the country with us all will be more
restful than California. I haven't influenced him in the least to
give up his fishing."

"Oh, I didn't suppose you had." Nona seemed to lose interest in
the discussion, and her mother took advantage of the fact to add,
with a gentle side–glance at her watch: "Is there anything else,
dear? Because I've got to go over my Birth Control speech, and at
eleven there's a delegation from—"

Nona's eyes had followed her glance to the scattered pages on the
desk. "Are you really going to preside at that Birth Control
dinner, mother?"

"Preside? Why not? I happen to be chairman," Pauline answered
with a faint touch of acerbity.

"I know. Only—the other day you were preaching unlimited
families. Don't the two speeches come rather close together? You
might expose yourself to some newspaper chaff if any one put you in
parallel columns."

Pauline felt herself turning pale. Her lips tightened, and for a
moment she was conscious of a sort of blur in her brain. This
girl … it was preposterous that she shouldn't understand! And
always wanting reasons and explanations at a moment's notice! To
be subjected, under one's own roof, to such a perpetual
inquisition… There was nothing she disliked so much as
questions to which she had not had time to prepare the answers.

"I don't think you always grasp things, Nona." The words were
feeble, but they were the first that came.

"I'm afraid I don't, mother."

"Then, perhaps—I just suggest it—you oughtn't to be quite so
ready to criticize. You seem to imagine there is a contradiction
in my belonging to these two groups of … of thought…"

"They do seem to contradict each other."

"Not in reality. The principles are different, of course; but, you
see, they are meant to apply to—to different categories of people.
It's all a little difficult to explain to any one as young as you
are … a girl naturally can't be expected to know…"

"Oh, what we girls don't know, mother!"

"Well, dear, I've always approved of outspokenness on such matters.
The real nastiness is in covering things up. But all the same, age
and experience DO teach one… You children mustn't hope to get
at all your elders' reasons…" That sounded firm yet friendly,
and as she spoke she felt herself on safer ground. "I wish there
were time to go into it all with you now; but if I'm to keep up
with today's engagements, and crowd in a talk with Lita besides—
Maisie! Will you call up Mrs. Jim?"

Maisie answered from the other room: "The delegation of the League
For Discovering Genius is waiting downstairs, Mrs. Manford—"

"Oh, to be sure! This is rather an important movement, Nona; a new
thing. I do believe there's something helpful to be done for
genius. They're just organizing their first drive: I heard of it
through that wonderful Mrs. Swoffer. You wouldn't care to come
down and see the delegation with me? No … I sometimes think
you'd be happier if you interested yourself a little more in other
people … in all the big humanitarian movements that make one so
proud to be an American. Don't you think it's glorious to belong
to the only country where everybody is absolutely free, and yet
we're all made to do exactly what is best for us? I say that
somewhere in my speech… Well, I promise to have my talk with
Lita before dinner; whatever happens, I'll squeeze her in. And you
and Jim needn't be afraid of my saying anything to set her against
us. Your father has impressed that on me already. After all, I've
always preached the respect of every one's personality; only Lita
must begin by respecting Jim's."

Fresh from a stimulating encounter with Mrs. Swoffer and the
encouragers of genius, Pauline was able to face with a smiling
composure her meeting with her daughter–in–law. Every contact with
the humanitarian movements distinguishing her native country from
the selfish laissez faire and cynical indifference of Europe filled
her with a new optimism, and shed a reassuring light on all her
private cares. America really seemed to have an immediate answer
for everything, from the treatment of the mentally deficient to the
elucidation of the profoundest religious mysteries. In such an
atmosphere of universal simplification, how could one's personal
problems not be solved? "The great thing is to believe that they
WILL be," as Mrs. Swoffer said, à propos of the finding of funds
for the new League For Discovering Genius. The remark was so
stimulating to Pauline that she immediately drew a large cheque,
and accepted the chairmanship of the committee; and it was on the
favouring breeze of the League's applause that she sailed, at the
tea–hour, into Lita's boudoir.

"It seems simpler just to ask her for a cup of tea—as if I were
dropping in to see the baby," Pauline had reflected; and as Lita
was not yet at home, there was time to turn her pretext into a
reality. Upstairs, in the blue and silver nursery, her sharp eye
detected many small negligences under the artistic surface: soiled
towels lying about, a half–empty glass of milk with a drowned fly
in it, dead and decaying flowers in the æsthetic flowerpots, and
not a single ventilator open in the upper window–panes. She made a
mental note of these items, but resolved not to touch on them in
her talk with Lita. At Cedarledge, where the nurse would be under
her own eye, nursery hygiene could be more tactfully imparted…

The black boudoir was still empty when Pauline returned to it, but
she was armed with patience, and sat down to wait. The armchairs
were much too low to be comfortable and she hated the semi–
obscurity of the veiled lamps. How could one possibly occupy one's
time in a pitch–dark room with seats that one had to sprawl in as
if they were deck–chairs? She thought the room so ugly and dreary
that she could hardly blame Lita for wanting to do it over. "I'll
give her a cheque for it at once," she reflected indulgently. "All
young people begin by making mistakes of this kind." She
remembered with a little shiver the set of imitation tapestry
armchairs that she had insisted on buying for her drawing–room when
she had married Wyant. Perhaps it would be a good move to greet
Lita with the offer of the cheque…

Somehow Lita's appearance, when she at length arrived, made the
idea seem less happy. Lita had a way of looking as if she didn't
much care what one did to please her; for a young woman who spent
so much money she made very little effort to cajole it out of her
benefactors. "Hullo," she said; "I didn't know you were here. Am
I late, I wonder?"

Pauline greeted her with a light kiss. "How can you ever tell if
you are? I don't believe there's a clock in the house."

"Yes, there is; in the nursery," said Lita.

"Well, my dear, that one's stopped," rejoined her mother–in–law,
smiling.

"You've been seeing the boy? Oh, then you haven't missed me," Lita
smiled back as she loosened her furs and tossed off her hat. She
ran her hands through her goldfish–coloured hair, and flung herself
down on a pile of cushions. "Tea's coming sooner or later, I
suppose. Unless—a cocktail? No? Wouldn't you be more
comfortable on the floor?" she suggested to her mother–in–law.

Every whalebone in Pauline's perfectly fitting elastic girdle
contracted apprehensively. "Thank you; I'm very well here." She
assumed as willowy an attitude as the treacherous seat permitted,
and added: "I'm so glad to have the chance of a little talk. In
this rushing life we all tend to lose sight of each other, don't
we? But I hear about you so constantly from Nona that I feel we're
very close even when we don't meet. Nona's devoted to you—we all
are."

"That's awfully sweet of you," said Lita with her air of radiant
indifference.

"Well, my dear, we hope you reciprocate," Pauline sparkled,
stretching a maternal hand to the young shoulder at her knee.

Lita slanted her head backward with a slight laugh. Mrs. Manford
had never thought her pretty, but today the mere freshness of her
parted lips, their rosy lining, the unspoilt curves of her cheek
and long white throat, stung the older woman to reluctant
admiration.

"Am I expected to be devoted to you ALL?" Lita questioned.

"No, dear; only to Jim."

"Oh—" said Jim's wife, her smile contracting to a faint grimace.

Pauline leaned forward earnestly. "I won't pretend not to know
something of what's been happening. I came here today to talk
things over with you, quietly and affectionately—like an older
sister. Try not to think of me as a mother–in–law!"

Lita's slim eyebrows went up ironically. "Oh, I'm not afraid of
mothers–in–law; they're not as permanent as they used to be."

Pauline took a quick breath; she caught the impertinence under the
banter, but she called her famous tact to the rescue.

"I'm glad you're not afraid of me, because I want you to tell me
perfectly frankly what it is that's bothering you … you and
Jim…"

"Nothing is bothering me particularly; but I suppose I'm bothering
Jim," said Lita lightly.

"You're doing more than that, dear; you're making him desperately
unhappy. This talk of wanting to separate—"

Lita rose on her elbow among the cushions, and levelled her eyes on
Mrs. Manford. They looked as clear and shallow as the most
expensive topazes.

"Separations are idiotic. What I want is a hundred per cent New
York divorce. And he could let me have it just as easily…"

"Lita! You don't know how wretched it makes me to hear you say
such things."

"Does it? Sorry! But it's Jim's own fault. Heaps of other girls
would jump at him if he was free. And if I'm bored, what's the use
of trying to keep me? What on earth can we do about it, either of
us? You can't take out an insurance against boredom."

"But why should you be bored? With everything on earth…"
Pauline waved a hand at the circumjacent luxuries.

"Well; that's it, I suppose. Always the same old everything!"

The mother–in–law softened her voice to murmur temptingly: "Of
course, if it's this house you're tired of… Nona told me
something about your wanting to redecorate some of the rooms; and I
can understand, for instance, that this one…"

"Oh, this is the only one I don't utterly loathe. But I'm not
divorcing Jim on account of the house," Lita answered, with a faint
smile which seemed perverse to Pauline.

"Then what is the reason? I don't understand."

"I'm not much good at reasons. I want a new deal, that's all."

Pauline struggled against her rising indignation. To sit and hear
this chit of a Cliffe girl speak of husband and home as if it were
a matter of course to discard them like last year's fashions! But
she was determined not to allow her feelings to master her. "If
you had only yourself to think of, what should you do?" she asked.

"Do? Be myself, I suppose! I can't be, here. I'm a sort of all–
round fake. I—"

"We none of us want you to be that—Jim least of all. He wants you
to feel perfectly free to express your personality."

"Here—in this house?" Her contemptuous gesture seemed to tumble
it down like a pack of cards. "And looking at him across the
dinner–table every night of my life?"