IV
The front door had closed after the last of the guests. Mrs. Holland stood in the hall for a long moment, staring blankly at the closed door, and turned toward the stairs. The caterer’s men were busy in the dining room. She stopped to look at them,[Pg 413] glad that they were here, glad of any bustle or stir that postponed the hour when ordinary daily life should begin. After all, Joyce’s going away was not the intolerable moment. That would come when she would have to take up her life without Joyce.
At the foot of the stairs she met Hilda.
“Go up in the sewing room, ma’am,” said Hilda in a stern, almost threatening voice. “I’ll bring you up a nice hot cup of tea. You never ate a mouthful of all that fancy stuff, and you need something.”
“I really should like a cup of tea,” Mrs. Holland replied gratefully.
She climbed the stairs slowly, not because she was weary, but because there was so much time before her. The door of the sewing room was open, and Hilda had drawn up a chair to the folding table. It looked comfortable there in the ugly, familiar little room, with the sun pouring in across the faded carpet. As she went in, she saw a pin on the floor, glinting silvery bright in the sun’s path, and she stooped to pick it up.
“See a pin and pick it up, and all the day you’ll have good luck”—that was what Miss Brown, the dressmaker, used to say to Joyce, and Joyce, as a tiny girl, used to trot about the room, her head bent, her hair falling over her eyes, earnestly looking for pins.
Mrs. Holland smiled, remembering a shocking episode. She had promised the child five cents a dozen for all the pins she picked up, and so many, many dozens had been recovered from the floor that day—an abnormal quantity. Before she went to sleep that night, Joyce had confessed her crime. She had secretly emptied Miss Brown’s papers of pins upon the floor. Poor, contrite little Joyce!
Over in the corner stood a dress form—a pompous thing with a marvelously rounded figure. “Aunt Sarah,” Joyce used to call it, very disrespectfully. Only yesterday a skirt of Joyce’s had hung on it. No Joyce now, no more of her laughter, no more of her dear voice!
A heavy and deliberate tread was coming along the hall. It was Frank. Madeline did not want to talk to him, or to any one, just then, but of course he would come. Whenever he was at home in the daytime, away from his beloved office, he was always a little forlorn, inclined to follow her about from room to room.
“Hello!” he said from the doorway. “So here you are, eh? Resting?”
“Come in, Frank,” she invited. “Hilda’s going to bring up tea.”
“Tea!” he repeated, with his big, hearty laugh. “Why, my dear girl, I’m full of pâté de foie gras, and lobster salad, and café parfait, and all the rest of it! Caterer did pretty well, don’t you think?”
He came in and sat down in a queer, old-fashioned rocking-chair, with an antimacassar tied to its back with faded ribbons. Such an incongruous figure he was in a sewing room, this big, handsome man in his morning coat, with spats, and a white gardenia in his buttonhole! He was smoking a cigar, and was enjoying it. He crossed his legs and leaned back, and Mrs. Holland smiled at the sight of the scarlet ribbons of the antimacassar peeping coyly over his broad shoulder.
He was glad to see her smile.
“That’s the idea!” he said. “Thing is, not to mope. First day or two—pretty hard, without the little girl. Thing is, to distract your mind. It’s early. Plenty of time for a matinée. I’ll telephone for a couple of seats at the Palace. You drink your tea and then get your hat on. That’s right, Hilda! Tea—that’s what Mrs. Holland needs!”
But Hilda was not responsive to his good humor just now. Her eyes and nose were red, and her blunt face wore an expression of angry defiance. She poured out a cup of tea and set it before Mrs. Holland in stony silence. She was suffering, this faithful heart, and it was her own grief that she defied. She had loved Joyce so, and she missed her so greatly!
Holland watched his wife in silence for a time.
“By the way,” he said, “that Johnson girl, you know—”
Mrs. Holland glanced up, in nowise deceived by his casual tone.
“Who? Stella’s daughter?”
“Yes. Er—pathetic case, don’t you think?”
“I don’t know much about her,” replied Mrs. Holland dryly.
“Well, it seems to me—I was talking to her—as far as I can see, a very pathetic case.”
He paused, and Mrs. Holland regarded him with a faint smile. His manner was apologetic, but he was pleased with himself. His hand was raised to his mustache,[Pg 414] and he was looking down at the floor with a modest air.
“Thing is,” he went on, “she wants to be a musician. She’s studied, but—present circumstances—family had to sell their piano last month. That’s pretty hard, isn’t it, my dear?”
“Oh, very,” murmured Mrs. Holland.
“She said that when she saw the piano here, she couldn’t keep her hands off it. That’s hard luck, isn’t it?”
“I suppose so.”
Again he paused for some time.
“I’m afraid,” he said, “that I—well, that perhaps you won’t approve—”
“Why? What did you do?”
“On the spur of the moment, my dear—”
“What was it, Frank?” Madeline demanded, with a trace of impatience.
“Well,” he said, “I told her—said she could come here and practice—arrange with you—when it wouldn’t bother you.”
“What?” she cried. “You—”
Then she stopped short, because of the look she saw on his face—a little guilty, but pleased.
“I was afraid you wouldn’t like it,” he said.
If she said she didn’t like it, he would be still more pleased. He would think she was jealous.
“I don’t mind at all, Frank,” she told him pleasantly.
“Oh!” said he, somewhat taken aback. “Very good of you, my dear!” He rose and went toward the door. “As long as we’re going out this afternoon,” he added, “why not—well, why not let her begin to-day, eh?”
Mrs. Holland had also risen.
“I suppose you told her she could come this afternoon?”
Frank was not very happy now.
“Simply mentioned that we’d be out, and that—well, I didn’t think her practicing would bother any one, you see.”
“Yes—I see!” said Mrs. Holland.
He lingered in the doorway, as if there were something else he wanted to say; but whatever it may have been, he decided against voicing it.
“Then you’ll get on your bonnet and shawl, eh?” he suggested.
She smiled affably, and off he went.
Mrs. Holland sat very still, listening to his footsteps going down the hall. Her heart was filled with anger.
“On his own daughter’s wedding day!” she thought. “A girl younger than Joyce—a silly, artful little thing like that! Of course, she’s laughing at him. Very well—let her! I shan’t try to stop him. He can make himself just as ridiculous as he likes!”
She poured herself another cup of tea, and ate the toast that Hilda had brought with her. Anger had given her an appetite and a sort of energy. Mope? Not she!
As she went to dress, she passed the closed door of Joyce’s room, with only a strange little qualm that was like the warning of a neuralgic pain. Later would come the moment for the full realization of her loss. Just now she had an important task to perform. She had to dress so that she would look her best. She had to appear before Frank in the most nonchalant and pleasant humor. She had to show him that she wasn’t at all angry, and didn’t care in the least how absurd he was about poor Stella’s daughter.
She succeeded. That is, she was so very, very polite and casual that Frank was somewhat dismayed. His intention had been to cheer her up, and she gave him no chance for that. She never mentioned Joyce, she never once looked downcast, but kept her eyes fixed upon the stage, showing a lively interest even in the trained poodles.
He was in nowise deluded by all this. He knew that she was angry, and she could tell that he knew it by his anxious sidelong glances.