THE RETURN TO NORMALCY
Strange, unnatural conventions were growing up about divorce, Cora reflected. The world expected you to appear as completely indifferent to a man when once your decree was granted as it had assumed you to be uniquely devoted to him as long as the marriage tie held. Here she was, sitting at her ease in her little apartment; she had bitten her toast, poured out her coffee, opened her mail—a dinner invitation, a letter from her architect about the plans for her new house, a bill for her brocade slippers, an announcement of a picture exhibition, and— As she moved the last envelope from its position on the morning newspaper her eye fell for the first time on the account of Valentine Bing's illness.
"It was said at the Unitarian Hospital, where Mr. Bing was taken late last night, that his condition was serious."
A sketch—almost obituary—of him followed: "Valentine Bing was born in 1880 at St. Albans, a small town on Lake Erie. He began life as a printer. At twenty-one he became editor of the St. Albans Courier. In 1907 he came to New York." She glanced along rapidly. "Great consolidation of newspaper syndicate features—large fortune—three times married—the last time to Miss Cora Enderby, of the prominent New York family, from whom he was divorced in Paris in October of this year." Nothing was said about the two other wives; that seemed natural enough to Cora. But it did not seem natural that this man, who for two years had made or marred every instant of her life, was ill—dying, perhaps; and that she like any other stranger should read of it casually in her morning paper.
She did not often think kindly of Valentine—she tried not to think of him at all—but now her thoughts went back to their first romance. In those days—she was barely twenty—she had been in conflict with her family, who represented all that was conservative in old New York. She had wanted work, a career. She had gone to see Valentine in his office, armed with a letter of introduction. He was a tall red-haired man, long armed and large fisted, with intense blue eyes, clouded like lapis lazuli; he was either ugly or rather beautiful, according as you liked a sleek or rugged masculinity. For an instant she had had an impression—the only time she ever did have it—that he was a silent being.
She had told her little story. "And as I really don't know much about writing," she ended, "I thought—"
"You thought you'd like to do newspaper work," he interrupted with a sort of shout.
He explained to her how newspaper writing was the most difficult of all—the only kind that mattered. What was the object of writing anyhow? To tell something, wasn't it? Well, in newspaper work— On and on he went, the torrent of his ideas sparkling and leaping like a mountain brook. She was aware that she stimulated him. She learned later that he was grateful for stimulation, particularly from women.
Almost immediately afterward, it seemed to her, he was insisting that she should marry him. At first she refused, and when her own resistance had been broken down her family's stood out all the more firmly.
They regarded two divorces and a vulgar newspaper syndicate as insurmountable obstacles. But a family had very little chance against Bing, and he and Cora were married within a few months of their first meeting.
On looking back at it she felt that she soon lost not his love but his interest. He would always, she thought, have retained a sincere affection for her if she had been content to remain the patient springboard from which he leaped off into space. But she wasn't content with any such rôle. She wanted to be the stimulus—the excitement of his life. And so they had quarreled and quarreled and quarreled for two horrible years which had just ended in their divorce.
And now he, so vital, so egotistical, so dominating, was dying; and she, the pale slim girl whose charm to him had been the joy of conquering her, was alive and well and happy. It would annoy Valentine to know that she was happy—fairly happy—without him.
She wondered whether she should call up the hospital, or go there herself to inquire about him. Wasn't it possible that he would send for her? After all, it was only the other day that she was his wife. And at that instant the telephone rang.
She heard a suave voice saying, "Is that Mrs. Bing? Mrs. Enderby-Bing? This is Doctor Creighton, at the Unitarian."
Half an hour later she was at the hospital. She had expected to be hurried at once to Valentine's bedside. Instead a little reception room was indicated. At the door a figure was standing, head raised, hands clasped behind the back. It was Thorpe, Valentine's servant.
"In here, madam," he said, opened the door for her, and closed it, shutting her in.
The sight of him destroyed the last remnant of Cora's self-control. He seemed like a little bit of Valentine himself. Thorpe had been with them on their honeymoon; she could see him waiting at the gate under the turquoise dome of the Grand Central Station, with their bags about his feet, and their tickets in his hand—so cool and competent in contrast to their own excitement that first day.
She hurried into the room. It is not to be expected that a hospital should waste sun and air on mere visitors, and yet the reception room, painted a cold gray and dimly lighted by a shaft, was depressing. Some logical interior decorator had hung one large Braun photograph on the wall. It was a copy of the Lesson in Anatomy.
Cora sat down and covering her face with her hands began to cry. A kind voice said in her ear, "I'm afraid you've had bad news."
Looking up Cora saw that a middle-aged woman was sitting beside her, a woman with comfortably flowing lines and large soft brown eyes and hair beginning to turn gray.
"I'm afraid my husband is dying," answered Cora simply. She thought it better not to mention divorce to a person who seemed like the very genius of the family.
"Why, you poor child," said the other, "you don't look old enough to have a husband."
"I'm twenty-four," replied Cora. "It's almost three years since I was married."
"Of course," said the other. "It's just because I'm getting old that everyone seems so young to me."
She smiled and Cora found herself smiling too. There was something comforting in the presence of the older woman; Cora felt assured that she knew her way about in all simple human crises like birth and illness and death.
Suddenly as they talked Cora saw the face of her companion stiffen; Thorpe was ushering in another woman, sleek headed, with a skin like white satin, wrapped in a mink cloak. Evidently the newcomer was painfully known to Cora's friend, though the mink-clad lady gave no sign. She sat down, holding the blank beauty of her face unruffled by the least expression; and as she did so Doctor Creighton entered.
"Mrs. Bing," he said. All three women rose. The doctor glanced at a paper held in the palm of his hand.
"Mrs. Johnson-Bing, Mrs. Moore-Bing, Mrs. Enderby-Bing."
Even in her wild eagerness to know what the doctor had to tell them of Valentine's condition Cora was aware of the excitement of at last seeing those two others. Phrases that Valentine had used about them came back to her: "A cold-hearted unfaithful Juno"—she in the mink coat. "She was so relentlessly domestic"—Cora glanced at her new friend. Yes, she was domestic—almost motherly. Cora's friendly feeling toward her remained intact; but toward Hermione—Mrs. Moore-Bing—who had so deceived and embittered Valentine, her hatred flamed as it had flamed when Valentine first told her the story.
How could she stand there, so calm, drooping her thick white eyelids and moving her shoulders about in a way that made you aware that under the mink coat they were as white as blanc mange. "She must know," Cora thought, "that I know everything there is to know about her. Valentine had no reserves about it. And Margaret, from whom she took him; and Thorpe, whose testimony in the divorce case—" Instinctively she took a step nearer to Margaret, as if wishing to form an alliance against Hermione.
Meantime the doctor was speaking rapidly, apologetically: "You must forgive me, ladies. I might have arranged this better, but time is short. You must help me. Mr. Bing's condition is serious—very serious. He keeps demanding that his wife come and nurse him. He believes we are keeping her from him. His temperature is going up, he is exciting himself more and more. We must give him what he wants, but—" The doctor paused and looked inquiringly from one to the other.
Mrs. Johnson-Bing smiled her quiet maternal smile. "Poor Valentine," she said; "he was always like that when he was ill."
There was a pause.
"But you don't help," said the doctor. "You don't tell me which one it is that he wants."
"Well," said Mrs. Moore-Bing in her cool drawl, "as I'm the only one who left him against his will I'm probably the only one he wants back again."
Cora would not even glance in the direction of such a woman. She had been kept silent heretofore by the trembling of her chin, but now she managed to enunciate: "Mr. Bing and I were divorced only a few months ago. Until October, you see, I was his wife."
The logic of this, or perhaps his own individual preference for a slim elegant young woman, evidently influenced the doctor. He nodded quickly.
"If you'll come with me, then—" he began, and turned toward the door, but there Thorpe was standing, and he did not move.
"If you'd excuse me, sir," he said, "am I right in thinking it will be bad for Mr. Bing if we mistake his wish in this matter?"
"Yes, I'd like to get it right," said the doctor.
"Then, sir, may I say it's not Mrs. Enderby-Bing that he wants, sir?"
"What makes you think that?" said Doctor Creighton.
"I could hardly explain it, sir. Twenty years of being with Mr. Bing—"
There was an awkward pause. The obvious thing to do was to ask Thorpe who it was Bing did want, and something in the poise of Thorpe's head suggested that he was just waiting to set the whole matter straight, when hurried footsteps were heard in the hall, and a nurse entered—an eager panting young woman. She beckoned to Creighton and they spoke a few seconds apart. Then he turned back to the group with brightened face.
"At last," he said, "Mr. Bing has spoken the first name. It is Margaret."
Cora caught a glimpse of Thorpe quietly bowing to himself—as much as to say, "Just what I had expected."
Mrs. Johnson-Bing rose.
"My name is Margaret," she said, and left the room with the doctor.
Hermione rose, too, hunching her cape into place. "Well," she said without taking the least notice of Thorpe, who was opening the door for her, "that's one chore you and I don't have to do. He was bad enough healthy—sick he must be the limit."
Cora did not so much ignore Hermione as she conveyed in her manner as she turned to Thorpe that everyone must know that whoever might be the object of Mrs. Moore-Bing's conversation it could not be herself.
"Tell me, Thorpe," she said, "what do you think of Mr. Bing's condition?"
"Mr. Bing is ill, madam—very ill," Thorpe answered immediately; "but not so ill as the doctors think."
"No?" said Cora in some surprise.
"No, madam. Mr. Bing, if I might use the expression, yields himself up to illness; this assists him to recover."
He opened the door for her at this point, and she went out of it.
She returned home not so emotionally upset but more depressed than before. There was a core of bitterness in her feeling that had not been there when she went to the hospital, and at first she found it difficult to discover the reason for this. Was it anxiety at Valentine's illness? No, for he was a little better than she had feared. Was it the realization that those two former wives, who had always seemed to her like shadows, were, in fact, living beings like herself? No, for they had turned out to be more unattractive, more utterably unsuitable to Valentine than she had imagined. It was true that her taste, her sheltered selectiveness—a passion which many well-brought-up women mistake for morality—was outraged at being in the same room with Hermione, but there was a certain satisfaction in finding her to be worse even than Valentine's highly colored descriptions of her. And as for Margaret, she felt no jealousy of her, even though she had been chosen. No one could be jealous of any woman so kind, so old and so badly dressed.
It came to her gradually as she moved about her room, unable to look at her plans, unable to read, unable to do anything but encourage the toothache at her heart, which was like a memory of all her later relations with Valentine. The reason was Thorpe—Thorpe's instant conviction that it was not she whom Valentine wanted. Why was he so sure? He had been right; Thorpe was always right. For twenty years he had made it his business to know what Valentine wanted. That was Thorpe's idea of the function of a good servant. He had always quietly and consistently followed his line, while the wives had followed others. Margaret had been concerned with what was best for Valentine; Hermione had thought entirely of what was most agreeable to herself; Cora had cared only to preserve the romance of her love. Thorpe's specialty was knowing what at the moment Valentine wished for, and then in getting it. Thorpe had survived all three.
Cora could understand a sick man having a fancy to be nursed by Margaret, but Thorpe's conviction that she, Cora, could not be the wife called for had a deeper and more lasting significance. That was the thought that made her heart ache.
She tried to take up her life where she had left it that morning, but everything had paled in interest—even her new house. She had bought a little corner of land, within the city limits but near the river, surrounded by trees. She saw wonderful possibilities—a walled garden and a river view within twenty minutes of the theaters. She recognized certain disadvantages—the proximity of a railroad track, and the fact that the neighborhood was still unkempt; she enjoyed the idea of being a pioneer. But now, though the plans were lying on the table, she did not open them. It was as if that hour in the hospital had married her again to Valentine, and there was no vividness left in the rest of life.
For ten days the bulletins continued to be increasingly favorable, and then—a sign that convalescence had set in—they ceased entirely.
Cora found the silence trying. With the great question of life or death answered there was so much else that she wanted to know—whether he had been permanently weakened by his illness; whether he would now be starting on one of his long-projected trips—to China or the South Seas. China had always fired his imagination. Twice during her short marriage they had had their trunks packed for China. Had he been softened, or frightened, or in any way changed by the great adventure of almost dying?
There was one person who could tell her all these things, and that was Margaret. Without exactly formulating a plan Cora went to the hospital one day and inquired about him. The girl at the desk answered as if Valentine were already a personage of the hospital.
"He's getting along splendidly now. His wife's with him."
"I wonder," Cora heard herself saying, "whether Mrs. Bing would see me for a minute."
She retired, rather frightened at her temerity, to the reception room, where the Lesson in Anatomy still dominated the wall. "Margaret won't mind," she kept telling herself. "She's so kind, and, anyhow, she's more like his mother than his wife." It was on this maternal quality that Cora depended.
There was a footstep in the hall. A statuesque figure molded into blue serge stood in the doorway—bare-headed with shiny bronze-colored hair elaborately looped and curled. It was Hermione.
"You wanted to see me?" she asked in her drawling, reconstructed voice. She did not at once recognize Cora.
"No," said Cora, "I certainly did not want to see you. I thought it was Mrs. Johnson-Bing who was here."
"Margaret?" replied Hermione. She drooped her thick eyelids and smiled, as if the name itself were comic—she never broke her beautiful mask with a laugh.
"No, that didn't last long. He bounced Margaret as soon as he got over being delirious."
"And was it then that he sent for you?" asked Cora with an edge to her voice that a Damascus blade might have envied.
"As a matter of fact he didn't; it was Thorpe who sent for me," said Hermione. "Thorpe had a wholesome recollection that I used to keep Val in order. Nice little job, keeping Val in order. Ever tried it? No, I remember Thorpe said that wasn't your line."
Cora would have given a good deal to know just how Thorpe had characterized her line, but not even curiosity could make her address an unnecessary word to the coarse, cold woman before her. She was not jealous as she understood the word, but the disgust she felt for Hermione included Valentine, too, and made her hate him for the moment with an intimate disturbing warmth.
Hermione went on: "And, after all, as I said to Val yesterday, what does it matter to me whether he gets well or not? It takes too much vitality—making him mind. I'm through. I'm off for Palm Beach to-morrow. Thorpe's taking him home."
"It's amiable of you—to come and go as Thorpe orders."
Hermione moved her eloquent shoulders. "Oh, Thorpe and I understand each other."
"I knew Thorpe understood you," said Cora insolently.
But the woman was insensitive to anything but a bludgeon, for she answered, "I understand Thorpe too. All he objects to is wives. He's like the—whatever it is, you know—that fishes in troubled waters."
Cora merely moved past her and went away. It wasn't until she was outside that she took in how pleasant had been the unconscious suggestion behind Hermione's last words. Thorpe objected to wives. That was why he had not sent for her—she wasn't a mother like Margaret; nor a vice, like Hermione. She was a wife. The story-teller, the magic builder of castles that is in everyone, suddenly made for Cora a splendid scene, in which she, reunited to Valentine, was dismissing Thorpe.
Ten days later she took title to her new property and her architects filed the plans. Both events were announced in the newspapers.
That very morning her telephone rang, and Thorpe's voice—a voice so associated with all her emotional life that her nerves trembled even before her mind recognized it—was heard saying, "I'm telephoning for Mr. Bing, madam. Mr. Bing would be pleased if you could make it convenient to stop in and see him this afternoon."
"Tell Mr. Bing I'm sorry. I can't," answered Cora promptly. She was not a Hermione to come and go at Thorpe's invitation. And then just to show that she was not spiteful she added, "I hope Mr. Bing is better."
"Yes, madam," said Thorpe, "he's better, but he hasn't thoroughly regained his strength. He tests it every day."
Cora hung up the receiver. Her thought was, "He can't test it on me." She was aware of a certain self-satisfaction in having been able so firmly to refuse, to set her will against Valentine's. In old times she had been weak in yielding to every wish and opinion that he had expressed, until she had almost ceased to be a person. Of course in this case her ability to refuse had been strengthened by the incredible impertinence of allowing Thorpe to be the one to communicate Valentine's invitation. A few minutes later the telephone rang again. This time she let the servant answer it, and when the woman came to her with interested eyes and said that Mr. Bing was on the wire Cora answered without a quaver, "Say I'm out."
But she knew Valentine well enough to know she was not going to get off so easily as that. He kept steadily calling until at last, chance, or perhaps Cora's own wish, directed that he should catch her at the telephone.
He must see her; it was about this new house of hers. Her heart beat so she could hardly breathe, while Valentine ran on as of old:
"It's folly, Cora, absolute folly! Why didn't you consult me before you bought? You can't live there—the railroad on one side and a gas tank on the other. Besides, the railroad is going to enlarge its yards; in two years you'll have switching engines in your drawing-room."
On and on, giving her no chance to answer him, during the ten minutes he kept her at the telephone. Yet when she hung up the receiver she found she had spoken one important word: she had promised to come and see him late the following afternoon. She had made him beg; she had refused to come that day, she had put it off; she had, in fact, teased him as much as was consistent with ultimately agreeing to do what he wanted. Before she did agree the impertinence of Thorpe was explained. Valentine had simply told him to get her on the telephone. Of course he had meant to speak to her himself. Thorpe was an idiot—overzealous. Cora had her own view about that, but she let it pass. Thorpe feared her, and Thorpe knew what was to be feared. He knew that if she once entered that house she might never be allowed to leave it.
"No," she said to herself the next day, as she tried various hats, and with hands that shook a little put on the dangling earrings that Valentine had given her in Madrid, "it will be Thorpe who will leave."
If there was fear in Thorpe's heart he did not betray it when he opened the door and led her upstairs to the library. The room was empty.
"Mr. Bing has been expecting you for sometime, madam," he said.
The slight reproach was agreeable to Cora. She had waited long enough for Valentine in old times, and sometimes he had not turned up at all.
The room was familiar to her. They had not been much in New York during their brief marriage, but she had spent part of the previous winter in this house. She had left her own imprint in the decorations. Valentine used his house as he might use a hotel—asking nothing but that it should be convenient for the purposes of his stay. Cora had been greeted on her first arrival by hideous tasseled gold cushions and imitation Japanese lamp shades; remnants, she believed, of Hermione's taste. She had instantly banished them, and now she saw with pleasure that the shades of her own choosing were still on the lamps. Everything had remained as she had arranged it; he had seen that her way was best. A wood fire was burning on the hearth—not the detestable gas logs which Hermione had left behind her. She found herself wondering for the first time what Hermione had found—what Margaret had left. Then she remembered that Valentine had not bought the house in the simple days of Margaret's reign; he had had a small apartment far uptown and at first Margaret had had no servant.
A wish to know if Valentine had kept a paper cutter she had given him—lapis lazuli, the color of his eyes—made her get up and go to the desk. Yes, it was there, but something else was there, too: an unframed photograph propped against a paper weight—the photograph of a woman.
She bent cautiously to look at it, as one bends to examine the spot where the trembling of the grass suggests the presence of a venomous serpent. It was the picture of a slender woman with heavy dark hair and long slanting eyes, the cruelty of her high cheek bones softened by the sweet drooping curve of her mouth. A terrible and fascinating woman. Then as the light struck across the surface of the picture she saw it was a glossy print for reproduction. It might mean business—a feature for the syndicate—not love.
She was sitting far away from the desk when, a minute or two later, Valentine entered—Valentine a little thinner than before, but no less vital. He greeted her as if they had parted yesterday, or rather he did not greet her at all. He simply began to talk to her as he came into the room. He had a roll of blue prints in his hand.
"Now, my dear girl, these plans of yours—have you thought them over at all?... You practically made them? But don't you see what you've done—sacrificed everything to a patio. A patio—only good for hot weather, when you'll never be here anyhow. The whole comfort of the house arranged for the season you'll be away. They are without exception the most ridiculous plans— Oh! Yes, I sent down for a copy of them at once. I'm glad I did. If I hadn't—"
"But, Valentine," she interrupted—she knew by experience that you were forced to interrupt Valentine if you wished to speak at all—"it is my house, you know."
"And that's why I want it to be right for you," he answered. "But we'll get it right—never fear."
"It's exactly what I want as it is," she returned, and she heard with a mixture of disgust and fear that the old tone of false determination was creeping into her voice.
"It isn't at all what you want," he said. "You only imagine it is, Cora."
"Valentine, I've thought it all out with the greatest care."
"But it's absurd—you won't like it. Do listen to reason. Don't be obstinate."
Obstinate—the old accusation.
"That's what you always say when I insist on doing anything my own way."
"But your way is wrong. Now just listen to me, my dear girl—"
It was, to the identical phrases, the quarrel of their whole short turbulent married life. He had always made her feel that she was pig-headed and unreasonable not to yield at once to his superior knowledge of her own inmost wishes. The trouble was that the turmoil and the fighting slowly extinguished her own wishes—they weren't changed, they were killed—so that after a little while she was left gallantly defending a corpse; she ceased to care what happened; whereas Valentine's poignant interest grew with each word he uttered—and he uttered a great many—until he seemed to burn with an almost religious conviction that she must not do the thing in the way she wanted to do it.
It always ended the same way: "Now, my dear girl, don't be so obstinate." Was she obstinate? she wondered; and as she wondered Valentine rushed in like an army through a breach in the wall. He was doing it now.
"All I ask," he was saying, "is that you should look at the set of plans I had my man draw—he's a real architect—not a bungalow wizard like that fellow you employed. Now you might at least do that—it isn't much to ask that you should just look at them. Oh, well, you'll see they call for another piece of land, but honestly, Cora, I cannot let you settle on that switching yard, that you picked out—"
She could not refuse to look at his plans; in fact, she was not a little touched by the idea that he had taken such an infinity of trouble for her.
And at this instant Thorpe entered. Valentine shouted at him to get that other roll of plans from his room.
"Yes, sir," said Thorpe, "directly; but the message has come that the steamer is docking and I've sent for a taxi, sir."
Valentine collected himself. "Oh, yes, the steamer," he said, and then he glanced at Cora. "I don't think I'll go to the steamer, Thorpe."
Cora's heart rose; she knew that look, that tone; he did not want to go. She looked at Thorpe; not a muscle of his face had changed, and yet she knew he was in opposition.
"Yes, sir," he said. "Would you have any objection if I went to the dock? I doubt if the princess will understand the American customs without assistance, sir."
There was a little pause.
"The princess?" said Cora.
Valentine waved toward the photograph on the desk. "She's coming—Hungarian princess. Great stuff, if she's as per invoice. I'm sending her to China for the syndicate. Hun to Hun, you know. Good idea, isn't it? Thorpe told me about her. He lived with her uncle when he was ambassador in London; the uncle, you know, not Thorpe—though why not?"
Valentine rose. The recital of the facts in the case of the princess had revived his interest in her.
"I'll just go and grasp her by the hand. We've got her transportation for the Coast this evening, and she may not relish starting at once, unless it's put just right. I'll show her it's the best thing for her to do. Her last cable suggested she wished to linger in New York, but she would enjoy it more on her way back. I'll explain that to her. It won't take a minute. You'll wait, won't you? Stay and dine with me. I'm alone. Or no; I see by Thorpe's face that I have someone to dinner."
"Indeed, you have, sir.'
"Who is it? I don't remember."
"Mrs. Johnson-Bing, sir."
"Oh, Margaret—good old Margaret—so it is." Thorpe and Cora, a little embarrassed for him, averted their eyes, but Valentine was not embarrassed at all. "You have no idea how good she was to me when I was at the hospital. And I wasn't very grateful—out of my head, you know. I thought I ought to tell her— You'll wait, Cora; just give you time to look over my plans, and when I come back I'll tell you about the land I bought for you. Well, I have an option on it—"
She lost the end of his sentence, for Thorpe, who during the speech had been putting him into his overcoat and handing him his hat and gloves, finally succeeded in hurrying him out of the door, still talking. But Cora did not require the end of the sentence; no woman who has lived two years with a man does. She knew what he was going to say, but even more important, she knew what was in his mind—that her welfare was as important to him as it had ever been. The marriage ceremony, she had always known, did not unite people, but now she was discovering that a decree of divorce did not always separate them. She was as much married to Valentine as she had ever been—no more and no less. How astonishing!
She sank into a chair. Perhaps the really astonishing fact was that they should ever have parted. They parted because they quarreled, but now she saw that their quarreling was the expression of their love. Her relations with everyone in the world except Valentine were suave and untroubled. And she was sure there was no one else with whom Valentine enjoyed the struggle for mastery. The mere notion of attempting to master the docile Margaret was comic, and as for Hermione, she was like a dish of blanc mange—you liked it and ate it or else you let it alone. No, it was useless to evade the truth that she, Cora, of all women was to him unique.
Thorpe returned presently and brought the new plans. She nodded without looking at him and told him to leave them on the table. She had plenty of time. Valentine's few minutes were always an hour.
"If you don't care to wait, madam, I'm sure Mr. Bing would be very glad to have you take them home with you," said Thorpe.
Cora did not trouble to repress a smile. "I shall wait, Thorpe," she said, with the good humor that comes from perfect confidence.
Thorpe bent very slightly from the waist, and left the room.
At last she rose and began to unroll the plans. She became immediately absorbed in them; they were not only beautiful and ingenious but, better to her than any beauty, they showed how he had remembered her tastes, her needs. She had always loved growing plants, and he had arranged a glassed passageway with sun and heat to be a small conservatory for her; there was a place for her piano; a clever arrangement for hanging her dresses. He had remembered, or rather he had never forgotten. The idea came to her that this was not a house for her alone, but for her and him together. How simply that would explain his passionate interest in the prospect of her building. She began to read the plans as if they were a love letter.
She was still bending over them when later—much later—the door opened and closed. She did not immediately look up. It was not her plan to betray that she had guessed what lay behind his actions. She waited with bent head for Valentine's accustomed opening, and then hearing nothing she looked up, to find the newcomer was Margaret.
In their last meeting the shadow of death had obliterated the pattern of convention, but now both women were aware of an awkward moment. Margaret smiled first.
"I suppose, as no one sees us, we may shake hands," she said. Cora looked at her predecessor. Even in the low becoming lights of Valentine's big room she was frankly middle-aged, large waisted and dowdy, and yet glowingly human. Cora held out her hand.
"Is it so late?" she said. "Valentine mentioned that you were coming to dinner. He said he hadn't thanked you for all you did for him when he was ill."
Mrs. Johnson-Bings smiled. "That isn't what he wants," she said. She undid her coat and began to remove stout black gloves. She was in a high dark dress—very different from what Cora would have worn if she had decided to come back and dine with Valentine.
"What does he want?" Cora asked. She was really curious to hear.
"He's heard I'm going into business—supplying food to invalids. He wants me to organize according to his ideas, and not according to mine." Margaret smiled. "But poor Valentine doesn't know anything about invalids; just wants the fun of having everything done his way."
The words for some reason sounded like a knell in Cora's ears. Was that all Valentine really cared about—getting his own way? There was a brief silence; far away in some other part of the house she was dimly aware of a clock striking and a telephone bell ringing. It must be dinnertime, she thought—Margaret's hour. No, they couldn't both stay to dinner. She found herself wondering which of them Val would put at the head of the table. He would sit there himself, of course, with one on each side of him. "I suppose you'll do it all just as he says," she remarked mechanically.
Margaret laughed; she had a pleasant laugh, almost a chuckle. "Indeed I shan't!" she answered. "But I may let him think I'm going to. It saves such a lot of trouble, as I suppose you found out too."
No, Cora had not found that out. She felt shocked and admiring—as a little boy feels who sees another one smoking. How was it that Hermione, the faithless, and Margaret, the maternal, dared to treat Valentine more carelessly than she did? Perhaps they did not understand him as well as she did, with her more subtle reactions.
Before she could answer, Thorpe was in the room. When she thought of that moment afterwards she appreciated the power of the man, for there was no trace of elation or excitement or even hurry about him. He addressed Margaret:
"Mr. Bing is very sorry, madam, he will not be able to get home to dinner tonight."
Cora's mind working with the quickness of lightning waited for a second part of the message—something that would detain her and let Margaret depart in peace. But Thorpe having delivered himself of this one sentence turned to the desk and began collecting various objects—a fountain pen, a package of letters.
"When will Mr. Bing be back?" Cora asked.
"Mr. Bing is obliged to start for China this evening, madam," said Thorpe, and his eye just wavered across hers. "I'm packing for him now as well as I can at such short notice." The reason, his tone suggested, was sufficient excuse for leaving the two ladies to see each other out. He left the room, his eyes still roving about in search of necessary objects.
In this bitter moment Cora felt vaguely envious of Margaret, who, unmoved by the intelligence, was beginning to replace her heavy gloves.
"To China," she observed placidly. "Now I wonder What the reason for that is."
Cora snatched up the glossy photograph and thrust it between Margaret's shapeless black fingers. "That's the reason!" she said passionately. "He left me for just half an hour to meet her steamer—a princess—'great stuff if as per invoice.' Well, evidently she is as 'per invoice,' if he's going to China with her the first time they meet—he and his princess!"
Margaret took the photograph and studied it with irritating calm.
"I don't suppose there ever lived a human male who would not enjoy going to China with a princess," she said, and she almost smiled at the thought of their departure.
Tears were already running down Cora's cheeks. "What does it mean?" she said. "Are men incapable of permanent attachments?"
"Oh, no," replied Margaret. "Valentine's attachments are very permanent—only they're not exclusive. He will always want me when he's sick—and you when he wants to test his will power."
She stopped, for Thorpe had come into the room again. He had come for the photograph, which he now took gently out of Margaret's unresisting hand. She hardly noticed his action, so intently was her mind working upon the question of Valentine's health.
"Thorpe," she said, as if consulting a fellow expert, "do you think Mr. Bing is strong enough to make this journey?"
For the first time Thorpe allowed himself a smile—a faint fleeting lighting of the eyes.
"Oh, yes, madam," he said. "I think now Mr. Bing is quite himself—quite normal. And then, madam, I shall be with him."