Day after day he watched, his hopes rising as the vane veered now toward the north, now toward the south, and falling again as, with a jerk, it flirted back into the eye of the east. That vane was the last thing he saw as the darkness closed down in the late afternoon; it was the first thing he looked at in the morning, dashing to the window the instant he awakened. The change came in the night, when it finally did come. As he awakened, the difference in the light, in the feel of the air told him that all was well once more. But he made sure; he hurried to one of his windows, turned the slats of a blind, looked at the vane. Then, with a shout, he darted to her door, beat upon it, crying: "Mamma! Mamma Courtney! The wind's west—the wind's west!"
She understood, opened the door. She had made her face bright. "Thank you—thank you," she said, with a catch in her voice, as she knelt and took him in her arms. He put one of his small hands on each of her cheeks, kissed her, then looked into her eyes. His face fell. She could not deceive him; it had not been the rain.
The wind was in the west; her mood veered—but to another futility. She watched for the postman. She startled and ran to the window at every crunch of wheels on the drive. She was agitated whenever the telephone bell rang. At night every suggestion of sound from the direction of the window made her lift her head from the pillow to listen; and often she would fly to open a shutter and lean out into the darkness. She would not go to Wenona, lest he should come while she was away. She never left the house for a walk without telling the servants just where she was going—"and if anyone comes, send for me."
Never before had she surrendered to the somber mood; she had always met it by taking up some one of the things at hand that interested her, and working at it until health and youth and hope reasserted themselves. But this time she could find nothing to build upon; it was all quicksand, slipping away and leaving her to sink. She no longer cared about her surroundings. She had always seen to it that the servants she had so thoroughly trained in a modern system she had carefully worked out did their duties, and did them well. Now she let the servants do as they pleased—and they soon pleased to do very poorly—as poorly as the average human being does, unless held rigidly from his natural tendencies to slovenliness and shirking. She had always done the buying for the kitchen, and had herself selected at the farm the things to be sent over. Now the good old days of Aunt Eudosia returned, with the farmer sending whatever gave him or one of "the hands" the least trouble, and with Nanny accepting from the storekeepers what they chose at their own price. The bills went up; yet the meat was often tough, the chickens and game inferior, the butter and eggs only fair, instead of the very best. Canned vegetables appeared on the table when fresh vegetables were still to be had. The coffee was capricious. The table itself was carelessly set; napkins were used several times, instead of only once; tablecloths did not always go into the wash with the first spot. Lizzie and Mazie lost no opportunity to cut down the amount of work they would have to do on wash and ironing days.
In the living rooms, upstairs as well as down, there was no longer the beautiful order that had made the interior a pleasure to the eye and so comfortable. A chair had only three casters; a door was losing its knob. A window curtain had broken away from its rod at one corner and was hanging down. Several cushions had rips in them that would soon be rents. Winchie's ravages remained unrepaired—and unrebuked. The flowers in the vases were not fresh every day, and were arranged by a servant's heavy hands. Window gardens and baskets and hothouse suffered from alterations of drought and deluge, and showed it. The red spider was rarely interrupted in his ruinous feasts. Where order has been perfect, brief neglect produces unsightly disorder. The house was becoming like most houses—indifferently looked after by women who know little about housekeeping as an art and feel "above" the endless petty details that must be attended to, no matter what the enterprise, if there is to be success. The work of changing the library to a winter conservatory had, like the vegetable greenhouse, been begun, and abandoned midway.
From the house the blight spread to herself. It is well-nigh impossible for a person who has been bred from birth in personal order and cleanliness to become really slovenly and dirty, unless beaten down into the hopeless wretchedness of extreme poverty. But Courtney had lost interest in herself, just as she had lost interest in the house. She got herself together "any old way" in the mornings, took to breakfasting in bed. Sometimes she dressed for supper, and sometimes she came in working or walking clothes or in the négligée she had been wearing all day. Sometimes her blouse was buttoned in the back, oftener it was partly open. Wrinkled stockings had been her especial abhorrence, as she was proud of her slim tapering legs; now she habitually went the whole day without garters. She read much, and always novels. Formerly their pandering to "spirituality," to "culture," to all the silly and enfeebling sentimentalisms had bored her. They had offended her sense of what was truly ideal—for, even thus early in her development, she had a strong suspicion that "idealism" was not a mode of life but a strut, and that "idealists" were not above but beneath usefulness. Now she took novels as a drug fiend his dope. Anything to escape reality—the ugly facts which her negligence was making uglier day by day.
She was in the way trod by so many women who, married and safe, cease to compete and deteriorate physically, morally, and mentally. And she knew it. She had too much intelligence to delude herself, as some women do. Instead of being angered when evidence of her plight thrust at her, she found bitter satisfaction in it. "I'll soon be down to the level of those 'good' women Dick regards as models," thought she. And she read on at her novels.
And still she continued to hope, though she constantly assured herself that hope was dead and buried. It was nearly Christmas; he had been gone more than four months—a hundred and thirty days. No word from him, no sign. "It's over," declared she. "It was just physical attraction, nothing more. And he got enough." This lash upon pride and vanity stung. But the pain seemed to ease another and fiercer pain, and she scourged on. "He got enough. In New York he found fresh attraction—not hard for a man with money and free." Yes, he had used her, despising her the while—how she writhed as she rubbed the coarse salt of these taunts into her wounds!—had used her, despising her the while, had cast her away, like the butt of a smoked cigarette. "And why shouldn't he use and despise and drop me? Could anyone have been 'easier' than I was—I, poor fool, with my dreams of love, and my loneliness and credulity? Well, anyhow he ought to be grateful to fate for having given him a distraction in this dull hole." ... What vanity had been hers, to imagine she could win and hold such a man as he—man of the world, experienced, clever. What colossal vanity! "Really, I deserve all I've got. I'm just like the rest of the women—a vanity box, a mirror and a powder puff, silly and empty—a fool for men to flatter and wheedle and laugh at.... What a poor, dependent thing a woman is! Dick's right; we're worthless except as pastimes. Don't we always despise and trample on a man who takes us seriously? We feel he has dropped down to our level."
She dissected, one by one, the "good" women over in the town and in the big houses along the south shore—their inane lives, their inane pastimes, their inane conversation. What animal grossness concealed by manners and a thin veneer of education, just as their costly clothes concealed the truth about their neglected bodies. What lazy ignorance beneath those pretentious fads for "culture" or religion or charity. And the men, too—through their passions dominated by these women. Not an idea—not an aspiration—just hunting and money-making and eating and drinking—catering to crude appetites. Slavish conformity to the soddening, mind-suffocating routine prescribed by custom for the comfortable classes. Fit associates, these men and their women. The nauseating hypocrisies and self-cheating about virtue and piety and "pure family life!" A pigsty of a world, if one looked at it as it was, instead of at its professions and pretenses. "I'd rather be the dupe of my own honest folly than the dupe of the world's cheap frauds. At least, I aspired. And now that I've fallen back into the muck, all bruised and broken, I don't lie to myself about its being muck.... And what can I do for Winchie? If I teach him what he ought to be, I'll unfit him for life in the world. If I fit him for life in the world, I must teach him to pretend, to cheat, to lie, to trample and cringe. If I teach him the truth about women, he'll become a rake. If I don't, he'll become their dupe. If I teach him the truth about men, he'll shun them. If I don't, they will debauch him."
A wound always constructs a cover, to protect itself while it is healing. The wounded heart of an intelligent man or woman usually protects itself with the scab of cynicism. For the last few years Courtney had shared with Wenona's few progressive, restless young married women that reputation for thinking and saying startling things which anyone at all free in thought and speech soon gets among conventional people. Now she became a mild scandal. Wenona appreciated that it was the fashion in these degenerate days, the mark of the "upper class," to indulge in audacities of every kind. Also, whatever a Benedict and a Vaughan did must be just about right. But sometimes, when she was in a particularly insurgent mood, her callers went away dazed.