"Awfully sorry!" said Amherst with genuine regret in his voice. "I have an engagement of long standing, so it's impossible. But if you'll only repeat the invitation, I'd love to come. Will you?"
"I will," responded Mrs. Hadwell. "I'll look up my engagement book and see if we can find an evening when we shall all be free. In the meantime, let me ask you what this means, this little wrinkle in my brow? I've puzzled over it for at least ten minutes and I demand to have it explained. If it is copied from life, you must simply paint it out, that's all!"
CHAPTER XII
THE VIEWS OF TWO WOMEN
"Is it your moral of Life?
Such a web, simple and subtle,
Weave we on earth here in impotent strife,
Backward and forward each throwing his shuttle,
Death ending all with a knife."
—Browning.
"The time has come, the Walrus said, to talk of many things," quoted Mrs. Hadwell, settling back in her easy-chair with intense satisfaction. If, as the poet asserts, "a sorrow's crown of sorrow is remembering happier things" certainly a joy's crown of joy may be remembering unhappier things. One principal reason for Mrs. Hadwell's calm and unlimited enjoyment of her life lay in the fact that her youth had been spent in other people's easy-chairs. It is noteworthy that it had been spent in easychairs; women of her type always do spend their lives in easy-chairs, metaphorical and literal; but an easy-chair bestowed upon one by a doting husband, and an easy-chair occupied by sufferance in other people's homes are, as will readily be perceived, two very different pieces of furniture.
"What do you want to talk about in particular?" Lynn asked, regarding her hostess lazily. Dinner was over; Mr. Hadwell had betaken himself to his club; and the two sat at their ease in a softly shaded luxurious library, filled with unread books in half-calf. Polished mahogany, heavy damask curtains, thick, soft carpets, scent of mignonette and roses, all added to its comfort.
"I want to talk about all sorts of things," returned Estelle, in answer to her friend's question. "Interesting things—things that matter—yourself for instance! I wonder why it is that so few people talk interestingly about ordinary things! I believe it must be because they simply will not tell the truth about them; they stick to platitudes for fear of blundering on some thought they feel they oughtn't to have. Don't you think that is it? Now we always look things right in the face and say just what we think about them; and that is why we're so queer—and so nice—and so interesting to one another. And this is such a good opportunity for a talk. We've had such a lovely dinner—wasn't that soup delicious? and, as for that muscatel! Don't you simply dote on things to eat? I do. I never agree with that man—Solomon, wasn't it?—who said that he would rather have a dinner of herbs and peace than a stalled ox and strife therewith. Let him have the herbs! and give me the stalled ox every time. If it were nicely served and properly cooked I wouldn't care if there were seven bad-tempered married couples and sixteen cross cats and twenty squalling parrots all rowing together at my elbow. That's what it is to be practical. Give me things to eat and a good appetite and I don't care much what happens. There's something about a dinner which appeals to me in a way that sunsets and sonatas don't. And yet some one described me the other day as being 'spirituelle.' Fancy!"
"Some one who didn't know you very well, evidently."
"Some one who has called me 'Estelle' all his life except the four years of it when I wasn't born; but, as you say, some one who doesn't know me very well because he happens to be a man and a man who used to be in love with me. Poor thing! And yet he's happy in his way and I'm happy in mine. He has his ideals and I have my dinners. The only really happy people are the people who have the sense to prefer dinners to ideals and who steadily set to work to get them."