Part 12 (1/2)
Isabel was overjoyed at his light reference to the visit to the old church.
”To dance will limber me, beyond doubt,” she declared, with a wave of her hand. She watched him pa.s.s down the hall to the elevator; then she went back to her sitting-room.
At last she felt the glad sense of partners.h.i.+p. Ambition for the man she loved threatened to become more absorbing than all else in her life.
Suddenly her boy seemed to reproach her. On the table his lifelike portrait begged for notice. She caught up the silver frame.
”Darling little son!” she murmured, ”mother will soon be at home--more than ever your playmate, your companion.” She put the picture down and sat with her head resting between her hands. Her thoughts were now all with Reginald. What was he doing? Was he out in his pony cart? Was dainty baby Elizabeth along, giving the dolls an airing? Then, above all, did the boy miss his ”mother dear”? She drew a crumpled half sheet of paper from an envelope. ”Bless his dear little heart,” she again murmured. Reginald's zigzag message, together with round spots wonderfully colored to represent kisses, drew her lips. She responded to a realistic fancy, smiling above her son's confident masterpiece. Then she re-read a letter from madame. All were moving along, and the child was happy.
Her old friend's idiomatic expression kept her smiling to the end, while she realized anew the good fortune which had brought the French woman to California. In future Reginald might have every chance with his French.
The mother decided to make luncheon, with the boy at table, a time set apart for French conversation. Philip, too, spoke the foreign tongue; and again Isabel planned for Reginald's liberal education. And she meant to study herself, by the side of a talented husband. How full life promised to become. But with every consistent hope her own ambition was subordinate to love. To love, to be loved by Philip, by Reginald, by friends, const.i.tuted the little world she longed to conquer. And to-night, she wished to s.h.i.+ne at the ball, not as a woman evoking admiration from the crowd, but as Philip's wife. If she might help to bring him fresh power she was satisfied. Nor did Isabel deny her own evident advantage. She was too familiar with standards of beauty not to be glad of a rich inheritance; yet in all her life she had never been vain. For to be vain is to be selfish, pinned upon a revolving, personal pivot. Isabel had always thought first of others. To-day her mind was full of schemes for Philip, for Reginald, and for old madame. If Philip agreed she wished to live permanently in California. She had already put her closed house in the West on the market. The city which had once been home no longer claimed her interest. And Philip must never go back to the scene of his past humiliation. She reached for a traveling portfolio and began to write to Reginald. Here and there she pasted bright pictures to ill.u.s.trate a little story which would be sure to delight her boy. When she had finished she dashed off a letter in French to madame; then, fearing that Philip might be late, she laid out his dinner clothes. She was not in need of companions.h.i.+p, and a couch close to the wide window facing the sea lured her. She would rest. Waves splashed a rhythm of contentment. Out beyond the breakers a buoy creaked in vain, for her nerves were as sound as her boy's. She did not mind the incessant grind. She was happy--satisfied.
CHAPTER XXIV
The Sat.u.r.day evening hop, which so often was a perfunctory recurrence, blossomed into an occasion, when a score of United States naval officers entered the hotel. The great fleet had not then made the gallant dash around the Horn; but for several years preceding this noted achievement stray battles.h.i.+ps had touched along the Western coast. The s.h.i.+p in question bound for Manila was now anch.o.r.ed over night outside the breakers of St. Barnabas. Corridors of the hotel palpitated when privileged men off the man-of-war burst upon the scene. In less than a minute maneuvers in the ballroom eclipsed those of the outlying battles.h.i.+p, as anxious mammas steered young daughters to open port.
Lines drew taut and merciless for all untouched by the accolade of station, while on every side sat groups of elderly onlookers.
Officers in immaculate evening dress, ready for change, eager to dance with pretty women, moved easily about, and soon surcharged conditions were overcome by general satisfaction.
By Isabel's side Gay Lewis shone with reflected prominence. Nor did the girl deny the evident truth when flocking ensigns marked her for second choice.
”You are a dear!” she reiterated after each opportunity due to her friend. ”I have not had a chaperone for a long time. Now I see my blunder.” For Philip Barry's wife was the undoubted toast of the navy men.
In a day when dancing has degenerated into pathetic uncertainty the advent of willing ensigns might well be put down as something new and exhilarating. Isabel forgot her strenuous climb to the mission roof. She had not enjoyed a ball for full five years; and she was like a girl surrounded by a swarm of admirers. To-night the great publisher had no chance, with epaulets to right and left. But the afternoon at golf had been successful. Philip and his new friend stood together on the outskirts, each duly conscious of his own inadequate worth.
”It behooves us to tread modestly--we fellows who have adopted a sober career,” the editor declared. ”I never could learn. My mother kept me at dancing school until I had tramped the toes of every little girl in the cla.s.s, then one day she gave me up.” He laughed drolly, while his eyes took in the swift, unconscious movement of Mrs. Barry and her partner, a tall young ensign.
”We are not in China, and fortunately I may speak to you of your wife,”
he went on. ”As a comparatively new acquaintance, I beg to congratulate you. You are too fortunate in a world where many are not.”
Barry stiffened. The other sensed misapprehension.
”I have never been married,” he explained. ”I am denied the pleasure of admiring my own wife. Those days at dancing school took away all possible hope. For years I could hardly shake hands with a girl of my own age; then you see I got wedded to single life--spent my days pa.s.sing upon loves of fict.i.tious heroes and heroines.”
”Too bad,” said Philip, deeply interested.
”Sometimes I think I should have made a much better judge of literature if I had only asked a woman to share my criticisms and bear my remorse when I turn down very readable things. You see a man who has not married can never be quite as sure as one who knows the taste of both good and evil. 'The woman which thou gavest me' may do a lot of mischief, but when the crash comes she generally compensates. For my part I doubt if Adam would have gone back into the garden with any interest whatever after Eve found 'pastures new' outside.”
”And you believe that a married man is capable of better work than a single one?” Philip was growing curious.
”Undoubtedly,” the editor answered. ”I have in my mind a certain writer of note, one who but for persistent bachelorhood might have risen to highest rank in fiction. As it is, he has always fallen short of the real emotion. A certain cla.s.s reading his books fail to detect mere description in supposedly pa.s.sionate episodes, but to those of deeper consciousness and experience he has counterfeit feeling. This particular novelist works from matrimonial patterns--traces all that he draws. I am older than yourself, and you will pardon me for saying it, but your wife should help you to achieve almost anything.”
Philip flushed. The pride of possession came over him afresh when Isabel whirled past, with a smile which he knew could never be untrue. Above her radiance, beauty, he felt her exquisite womanhood. To-night he believed that she would lead him to ”pastures new--outside.” Throughout the evening Philip stayed by the editor, gradually making his way into the man's confidence, while adhering to a first determination which withheld the fact of his own unprinted book. Then at midnight, Isabel, Miss Lewis, and three young officers captured the onlookers and forced them away to supper.
It was a gay little party. The round table at which all sat became an excuse for a full hour's enjoyment; and as Isabel had promised, she did her best to make the editor, who might possibly help Philip, her own friend also. The undertaking was not difficult. If dancing school trials had left an eternal scar on the bachelor's unclaimed heart to-night he showed no unwillingness to devote himself to Isabel. Philip was amused.
Then he remembered his wife's unfailing charm. He had never seen her unsympathetic or rude. When she really cared to please, she could not be soon forgotten by any one selected for her favor. And to-night, as usual, the elderly publisher and the young ensigns from the s.h.i.+p all went under to a woman's gracious way. Nor was Miss Lewis annoyed.
”Of course,” she said afterward, ”no one ever attempts to eclipse Isabel; for don't you see she would not care in the least, and that being the case, no other woman would be foolish enough to try--and then fail.” And Gay was at her best during supper. Philip had never liked her as well as when the party broke up. There was, after all, something fine and straightforward about the girl, who appeared to drift with the tide of hotel pastimes. Philip told himself that as a priest he had been narrow in many of his judgments. The evening had stimulated his respect for the world. His emotional nature went out again to things he had once given up. Isabel's beauty held him in pa.s.sionate bonds; and he felt incentive for new work. His book, which came next to his wife--for no one writes seriously without the sense of humanized accomplishment--suddenly went up in his own estimation. The evening with a real publisher had stiffened his confidence; and for the first time since his marriage he merged love for Isabel with the success of ”The Spirit of the Cathedral.” But his personal undercurrent pa.s.sed unnoticed. To his wife he seemed detached from all but the present. As she drew him away from the s.h.i.+ning ballroom she exulted to herself.
Unusual and lighter opportunity seemed to be what her husband most needed.