XII.
ANNE’S sojourn in Washington prolonged itself for a fortnight. Her letters to her mother, though punctual, were inexpressive; but that was not her fault, Kate knew. She had inherited from her father a certain heaviness of pen, an inability to convey on paper shades of meaning or of feeling, and having said: “Isn’t it splendid about Lilla?” had evidently exhausted the subject, or rather her power of developing it.
At length she returned, bringing with her some studies of magnolias that were freer and more vigorous than any of her previous work. She greeted her mother with her usual tenderness, and to Kate her coming was like a lifting of clouds and opening of windows; the mother had never supposed that anything in her life could ever again strike such deep roots as this passion for her daughter. Perfect love casteth out fear! “Does it? How does any one know?” she had often incredulously asked herself. But now, for the first time, love and security dwelt together in her in a kind of millennial quiet.
She grudged having to dine out on the evening of Anne’s return; but Mrs. Porter Lanfrey was celebrating Lilla’s betrothal by a big dinner, with music afterward, and Anne, arriving by a late train, had barely time to dress before the motor was announced. There was no way of avoiding the festivity; its social significance was immeasurable. Mrs. Lanfrey was one of the hostesses who had dropped Lilla from their lists after the divorce, and Mrs. Lanfrey’s yea or nay was almost the last survival of the old social code in New York. Those she invited, at any rate, said that hers was the only house where there was a “tradition” left; and though Lilla, at this, used to growl: “Yes, the tradition of how to bore people,” her reinstatement visibly elated her as much as it did her family. To Enid Drover—resplendent in all her jewels—the event had already reversed the parts in her daughter’s matrimonial drama, and relegated all the obloquy to the outraged Gates. “Of course this evening shows what Jessie Lanfrey really thinks of Phil Gates,” Enid whispered to Mrs. Clephane as the sisters-in-law took off their cloaks in the marble hall; and Kate inwardly emended, with a faint smile: “Or what she really thinks of Horace Maclew.”
Mrs. Clephane had entered the vast Lanfrey drawing-room with a shrinking not produced by the presence of most of her own former censors and judges—now transformed into staunch champions or carelessly benevolent acquaintances—but by the dread of seeing, behind Mr. Maclew’s momentous bulk, a slighter figure and more vivid face. But the moment of suspense was not long; Chris was not there; nor was his name announced after her arrival. The guests were all assembled; the dining-room doors were thrown open, and Mrs. Lanfrey, taking Mr. Maclew’s arm, majestically closed the procession from walnut-and-gold to gold-and-marble—for the Lanfrey house was “tradition” made visible, and even the menu was exactly what a previous transmitter of the faith had thought a menu ought to be when Mrs. Lanfrey gave her first dinner.
For a moment Kate Clephane felt herself in the faint bewildered world, between waking and sleeping. There they all were, the faces that had walled in her youth; she was not sure, at first, if they belonged to the same persons, or had been handed on, as part of the tradition, to a new generation. It even occurred to her that, by the mere act of entering Mrs. Lanfrey’s drawing-room, the latter’s guests acquired a facial conformity that belonged to the Lanfrey plan as much as the fat prima-donna islanded in a sea of Aubusson who warbled an air from La Tosca exactly as a previous fat prima-donna had warbled it on the same spot years before. It seemed as if even Lilla, seated on a gilt sofa beside her betrothed, had smoothed her rebellious countenance to an official smirk. Only Anne and Nollie Tresselton resisted the enveloping conformity; Kate wondered if she herself were not stealthily beginning to resemble Enid Drover. “This is what I ran away from,” she thought; and found more reasons than ever for her flight. “And after all, I have Anne back,” she murmured blissfully ... for that still justified the rest. Ah, how fate, in creating Anne, had baffled its own designs against Anne’s mother!
On the way home the girl was unusually silent. She leaned back against the cushions and let her lids drop. Was it because she was tired after her long day, or only because she was holding in her vision? Kate could not tell. In the passing flashes of the arc-lights the head at her side, bound about with dark braids, looked as firm and young as a Greek marble; Anne was still at the age when neither weariness nor anxiety mars the surface.
Kate Clephane always respected her daughter’s silences, and never felt herself excluded from them; but she was glad when, as they neared their door, Anne’s hand stole out to her. How many old breaches the touch healed! It was almost as if the girl had guessed how often Kate had driven up to that door inertly huddled in her corner, with her husband’s profile like a wall between her and the world beyond the windows.
“Dear! You seem to have been gone for months,” the mother said as they reached her sitting-room.