I was just beginning, “Why should you assume that we are thinking of any such thing—?”
But before I could finish the sentence the door opened gently and a maid’s voice announced, “Mrs. Barry.”
Of all the people in the world, this lady was the last I wanted to meet at that moment. Knowing how I must have figured in her eyes in the past, I was planning for the future to figure in a worse light still. I had thrown her kindness back in her face and never given her an explanation. She must have known that my seeming flight from Long Island after that last Sunday in June, 1914, had left her daughter unhappy; and the reason had remained a mystery.
She gave me the first glance as she entered, and only the second to our hostess. The awful severity of those who are temperamentally gentle and unjudging was in the very coldness of her eye.
She was a charming, delicate, semi-invalid woman who seemed to have been spun, like the clothes she wore, out of the least durable materials in life. Regina had the same traits, but harder, stronger, and more lasting. It was difficult to think of the latter as an invalid; while you couldn’t see the mother as anything else.
Prettily old-fashioned, she seemed not to have changed her style of dressing since the eighteen-seventies. The small bonnet might have dated from the epoch of professional beauties when Mrs. Langtry was a girl. The long fur pelisse with loose hanging sleeves was of no period at all. I think she wore a train. In her own house she habitually did, and she seemed to have just flung on the pelisse and driven down the Avenue in her motor.
She greeted me politely, without enthusiasm, but with due regard to the fact that I was a wounded hero home from the wars. Talking of the invasion of Rumania, she showed herself much more alive to America’s international duty than any of the few men I had met since my landing.
“I wish we could get my husband and Stephen to see things that way,” she continued, sweetly, over her tea-cup. “They’re so pacifist, both of them. My husband feels that we’ve nothing to do with it, and Stephen is opposed to war on any ground. You must talk to him, Mr.—or captain, isn’t it? Oh, major? You must talk to him, Major Melbury. He’ll listen to you.” She turned to Annette. “You know, Annette, I just ran in to share our good news with you. Regina and Stephen—they’ve made it up again—and they’re so happy!” An oblique glance included me. She was getting the satisfaction that women receive from a certain kind of revenge. “Poor darling! You don’t know how hard she’s tried, Annette. People haven’t understood her. All she’s wanted was to be sure of herself—and now she is. She’s really been in love with Stephen all these years, only she didn’t know it. That is, she knew it; and yet—But I’m sure you see it. You’re one of the few who’ve never been unkind to her. She wanted me to tell you. She’ll be so glad to have you know it, too, Major Melbury. Perhaps she told you on the boat. I think she said she did. I don’t quite remember. There’s been so much to say in the last few hours. There always is at such a time, don’t you think?... No; they’re not going to announce an engagement. It would only make more talk, after all the talk there’s been. One of these days they’ll be married—without saying anything about it. And, oh!—I know you’ll be interested, Annette, though it may bore Major Melbury—Stephen has bought that very nice house—the Endsleigh Jarrotts lived in it for a little while—on Park Avenue near Sixty-sixth Street. Ralph Coningsby is going to remodel it for them, and I’m sure it will be awfully attractive. That’s where they’ll live.”
It was my opportunity. I could have shouted out there and then and made a scene.