“To be sure I will,” he interrupted, eagerly, “and what is a great deal stronger proof of friendship, I’ll tell you what I think, even if my opinion is nihilistic.”
He followed her into the study, and she laid her manuscript on the table and left him without a word.
The story was the usual magazine length, about five thousand words, and Deena’s handwriting was as clear and direct as her character. At the end of half an hour she heard his voice calling her name, and she joined him.
“It is very creditable,” he said. “It fairly glows with vitality. Without minute description, you have conveyed your story in pictures which lodge in the imagination; but in construction it is poor – your presentment of the plot is amateurish, and you have missed making your points tell by too uniform a value to each.”
“I understand you,” said Deena, looking puzzled, “and yet, somehow, fail to apply what you say to what I have written.”
He drew a chair for her beside his own, and began making a rapid synopsis of her story, to which he applied his criticism, showing her what should be accentuated, what only hinted, what descriptions were valuable, what clogged the narrative. She was discouraged but grateful.
“You advise me to destroy it?” she asked.
“I advise you to rewrite it,” he answered. Then, after a pause, he asked: “Why do you want to write?”
“For money,” she answered.
“But Simeon told me,” French remonstrated, “that he had left you the rent of this house as well as part of his salary, and a power of attorney that makes you free of all he possesses. Why add this kind of labor to a life that is sober enough already? Amuse yourself; look the way you did that day at Wolfshead; be young!”
“Simeon is very generous,” she said, loyally, silent as to the restrictions put upon his provisions for her maintenance, as well as the fact that his salary only covered the letter of credit he took with him for such expenses as he might incur outside the expedition. “In spite of his kindness, can’t you understand that I am proud to be a worker? Have you lived so long in the companionship of New England women without appreciating their reserves of energy? I have to make use of mine!”
“Then use it in having ‘a good time.’ I conjure you, in the name, as well as the language, of young America.”
Deena shook her head, and French stood hesitating near the door, wondering what he could do to reawaken the spirit of enjoyment that had danced in her eyes the day at Wolfshead.
“Will you dine with me to-morrow if I can get Mrs. McLean to chaperon us?” he asked.
The phrase “chaperon us” was pleasant to him; it implied they had a common interest in being together, and her companionship meant much to him. He smiled persuasively – waiting, hat in hand, for her answer.
Deena felt an almost irresistible desire to say yes – to follow the suggestions of this overmastering delightful companion who seemed to make her happiness his care, but she managed to refuse.
“Thank you very much,” she murmured, “it is quite impossible.”
It was not at all impossible, as Stephen knew, and he turned away with a short good-night. He wondered whether his friend’s wife were a prude.
Undoubtedly the refusal was prudent, whether Mrs. Ponsonby were a prude or no, but it had its rise in quite a different cause. She had no dress she considered suitable for such an occasion. Her wedding dress still hung in ghostly splendor in a closet all by itself, but that was too grand, and the others of her trousseau had been few in number and plain in make, and would now have been consigned to the rag bag had she seen any means of supplying their place. They were certainly too shabby to grace one of Stephen’s beautiful little dinners, which were the pride of Harmouth.
Deena’s ideas of French in his own entourage as opposed to him in hers were amusing. Viewed in the light of Simeon’s friend, voluntarily seeking their companionship and sharing their modest hospitality, they met on terms of perfect equality; but when associated with his own surroundings he seemed transformed into a person of fashion, haughty and aloof. It was quite absurd. Stephen was as simple and straightforward in one relation as the other, but perhaps the truth was that Deena was afraid of his servants.
The house was the most attractive in the town, and stood in the midst of well-kept grounds with smooth lawns and conservatories, and Deena felt oppressed by so much prosperity. On the few occasions when Simeon had taken her there to lunch on Sunday – the only dissipation he allowed himself – she had thought the butler supercilious, and the maid who came to help her off with her wraps, snippy. She had suspected the woman of turning her little coat inside out after it was confided to her care, and sneering at its common lining.
Deena was too superior a woman not to be ashamed of such thoughts, but the repression of her married life had developed a morbid sensitiveness, and she was always trying to adjust the unadjustable – Simeon’s small economies to her own ideas of personal dignity; she hardly realized how much the desire to live fittingly in their position had to do with her wish to earn an income.
While Stephen’s criticisms were still fresh in her mind she rewrote her story, and when she read it again – which was not till several days had passed – she felt she had made large strides in the art she so coveted.
CHAPTER IV
When affairs of a family once begin to stir, they seem unable to settle till a flurry takes place quite bewildering to the stagnant ideas of the easy-going. The fact that Deena was coming back to her old quarters in the third story was the first event to excite a flutter of interest in the Shelton home circle; with Mr. Shelton, because she was his favorite child; with Mrs. Shelton, because Deena would both pay and help; with the children, because they could count upon her kindness no matter how outrageous their demands. The next thing that happened, while it hastened her coming, entirely eclipsed it. Fortunately it was delayed until the day before the Ponsonby house was to be handed over to its new tenant, Mrs. Barnes.
Mrs. Shelton was busy clearing a closet for her daughter’s use when she heard her husband calling to her from below.
“Mary,” he said, “here is a telegram.”
They were not of everyday occurrence, and Mrs. Shelton’s fears were for Polly, her one absent child, as she joined her husband and stretched out her hand for the yellow envelope.
The magnetic heart of a mother is almost as invariably set to the prosperous daughter as to the good-for-nothing son; there is a subtle philosophy in it, but quite aside from the interest of this story.
The telegram said:
Mrs. Thomas Beck’s funeral will take place on Thursday at 11 A. M.
It was dated Chicago, and signed “Herbert Beck.”
“Who is Mrs. Beck?” asked Mr. Shelton, crossly; the morning was not his happiest time.
“She is my first cousin, once removed,” Mrs. Shelton answered, with painstaking accuracy. “You must remember her, John. She was my bridesmaid, and we corresponded for years after she married and moved to Chicago until” – here Mrs. Shelton’s pale face flushed – “I once asked her to lend me some money, and told her how badly things were going with us, and she refused – very unkindly, I thought at the time; but perhaps it was just as well – we might never have paid it back.”
It was Mr. Shelton’s turn to flush, but he only said, irritably:
“And why the devil should they think you want to go to her funeral?”
Mrs. Shelton professed herself unable to guess, unless the fact that the family was nearly extinct had led her cousin to remember her on her deathbed.
“Well, they might have saved themselves the expense of the telegram,” Mr. Shelton grumbled, adding, sarcastically, “unless