III
It was an unseasonably hot June that year, and Wilder suffered from it. He was tired to the bottom of his soul. A competition for a model house was organized by a popular magazine, and he had been working in the evenings on a set of plans, and had sent them in.[Pg 489]
He knew he would not win, for his house was much too good. Nobody would appreciate that roof line, that staircase. He had done it to please himself, as a relief from the love nests, and to divert his mind from the sickening state of affairs at home, where Aunt Jean was now installed in the house, an honored guest.
The hot weather had brought on a boom in love nests. His firm advertised that “every house will be built according to your ideas. The home we build for you will be your Home o’ Dreams;” and clients came in with all sorts of queer ideas.
Basically, the love nests were strangely alike, but it was Wilder’s task to give each one a mendacious air of individuality.
“Seems to me that sort o’ cupola effect isn’t so artistic as the others,” said Connolly, the senior partner.
“Oh, yes, it is!” said Wilder. “More so, if possible. That cupola is the most arty thing I’ve ever done. It makes the love nest a perfect little hencoop.”
Connolly glanced at his genius with a shade of anxiety.
“Wilder,” he said, “you’re all wore out.”
“No,” said Wilder, “I’m a man of iron.” He took off his eye shade and got up. “And now,” he said, “peace and rest at length have come, all the day’s long toil is past.” He stopped to light his pipe. “And now,” he continued, “each heart is whispering ‘Home—home at last!’”
“I’ll say you got the right idea,” said Connolly.
“Just think of that to-night, as you’re going uptown in the subway,” said Wilder. “Try to realize that all the hearts crammed in there with you are whispering, ‘Home—home at last!’ Good night!”
He took his hat and stepped out of the office; and there, in the arcade of the big building, he saw Violet. She was looking at the window where small models of the love nests were displayed.
He had not seen Violet for some weeks, and it seemed to him that she had improved during that time. He had seen her wearing the same hat and dress before; but she had not looked like this in them. No—formerly she had appeared serious and competent, and now she looked a gentle, an appealing figure. You could imagine her waiting for a man, and glancing up when he came, with a charming blush.
“Hello, Violet!” he said.
She glanced up, but she did not blush. On the contrary, the hot weather had made her unusually pale.
“Hello, Leonard!” she replied in her usual serious and friendly way.
But he was not quite as usual. He could not help thinking that if she had been waiting for him, it would be a curiously agreeable thing.
“I haven’t seen you for a long time,” he said.
“I’ve been to the house for dinner two or three times,” said Violet; “but you weren’t home, and I can’t stay overnight any more, on account of Aunt Jean having the spare room.”
Violet lived in a furnished room on West Twelfth Street, and she had been in the habit of spending the week-ends with her sister; but not any more. She had been sacrificed. Compared with Aunt Jean’s million, all Violet’s kindnesses, her loyal assistance in family crises, didn’t count at all. She looked pale and jaded, and she had grown so extraordinarily pretty in these last weeks! Leonard had been missing her—that was what was the matter with him.
Over her shoulder, he looked at the model love nests in the window. One of them was lighted now; there were curtains in its tiny windows, through which shone a mellow pink glow. Wilder knew that there was nothing inside except an electric bulb with a crape paper shade, and yet—
Somewhere there was a real house just like it, softly lighted in the summer dusk, with flowers in a little garden. He could imagine that a tired man, coming home to a house like that—to a smile, a kiss, to quiet and tenderness—might find even one of Connolly’s love nests not without beauty.
“Vi!” he said.
This time she did blush, and glanced away.
“They are sweet little houses!” she said defiantly.
“Vi, let’s have dinner together! I’ll telephone to Marian.”
“Well—” said Violet. “I should like it awfully. I get so lonely, sometimes!”
She had never talked like this before. She had never looked like this before.
“I’ll get a taxi,” said Leonard, “and we’ll go up to Claremont. I only ask you not to come across with the usual family line about its being an extravagance.”
“I wasn’t going to,” said Violet. They[Pg 490] had come out into the street now, where a wan daylight lingered. “I’ve been thinking about that a lot—about being extravagant. I’ve been—just afraid. I could do ever so many things; but I’ve been afraid to get the thing I want to-day, because then I might not be able to get something else to-morrow.”
“That’s thrift, my dear girl—keeping your cake until you haven’t any teeth to eat it with.”
“Well, I—there’s a cab, Leonard.”
He hailed it, and the driver slid up to the curb. Wilder opened the door and took Violet’s arm, to help her in. Somehow it was such a young sort of arm, firm and sturdy enough, but very slender—too slender. She herself was altogether too slender and too young. It worried him.
“I’m going to stop being afraid,” she said. “I’m going to trust life.”
Wilder was silent. They were going up Broadway in an endless procession of cabs and cars. Out of every building more and more people were pouring, going home. Perhaps, for some of them, home was not a joke.
Trust life? Just go ahead, and take the things that belong to youth? Not to be so bitterly afraid of being disillusioned and disappointed, but to trust life—and trust this girl? Didn’t he know by this time how faithful, honest, and kind she was?
“Could you rent one of those love nests?” she asked.
His heart stood still for a moment.
“I could buy one, on easy terms,” he said.
“I mean could any one—could I rent one?”
“You?”
“Yes,” she said. “You see, Leonard, I’ve been thinking. I’d like a little house.”
He reached out for her hand, and took it, and she did not draw it away.
“Vi!” he said.
“I want to get a house for the summer, where I can take Aunt Jean,” she said. “I think I can afford it. She’s nearly sixty, Leonard. Don’t you think she’s—pathetic?”
“Pathetic?” said Leonard.
The most pathetic thing, he thought, was a man’s unconquerable longing for the sort of girl who didn’t exist—a gentle young thing who waited for him, who would be happy with him, in one of Connolly’s houses.
Violet was a practical girl. She was perfectly willing to be sacrificed for Aunt Jean’s million. She was sensible, and he was a fool.
He could not very well push the girl’s hand away, but his clasp became so limp that she withdrew it. She looked at him, but he did not look at her. She tried to talk to him, but he answered with marked indifference.
“If you can’t be a little more agreeable,” said Vi, a trifle unsteadily, “I don’t see much use in our having dinner together.”
“It wasn’t intended as a useful thing,” said Leonard. “Simply a diversion.”
“Well, I’m not diverted,” said Vi. “You’re being very—trying, Leonard!”
“I’m sorry,” said he; “but I didn’t think you’d be able to stand me very long.”
“If you’d try—”
“Didn’t you say I was trying?”
“I think—” said Violet. “Please stop the cab! I’ll take a bus home.”
Very well, he was not going to argue with her. He stopped the cab, and they both got out. He put Violet on a bus, and then he walked uptown along the Drive. There were lights in almost every window, now, and across the river other lights shone out—from homes.
“She was crying,” Leonard mused.
Was he to be held responsible for that? Hardly. He had been on the point of offering her all he had, but he had discovered in time that she was after bigger game. Life in a love nest—with Aunt Jean and her million, not with him! It was funny, in a way.
And in another way it was not so very funny. He knew all about human nature, but for a long time he had thought that Violet was different. Well, she wasn’t. She had reproached him for being disagreeable. All right! He reproached her, in his heart, for something a good deal worse than that.
It hurt—he would admit it. It hurt like the devil!