The Asburys have built a fine house since Alice’s father died, and go about a great deal, but seldom together. Asbury lives at the club, and Alice has her mother with her. Alice has embraced Theosophy and spells her name “Alys.” She always is interested in something new and advanced, and whenever I meet her I am prepared to go into ecstasies over a plan to save men’s souls by electricity, or something equally speedy in the moral line. She is daft on spiritual rapid transit.
She does these things because she is a disappointed, clever, ambitious woman, who would have made a noble character if she had been surrounded by right influences.
What would have been the result if Alice had taken as her creed: “The situation that has not its duty, its ideals, was never yet occupied by man. Yes, here in this poor, miserable, hampered, despicable Actual, wherein thou even now standest, here or nowhere is thy Ideal; work it out therefrom, and working, live, be free. Fool! the Ideal is in thyself; thy condition is but the stuff thou art to shape that same ideal out of; what matters whether such stuff be of this sort or that, so the form thou give it be heroic, be poetic? Oh, thou that pinest in the imprisonment of the Actual and criest bitterly to the gods for a kingdom wherein to rule and create, know this of a truth: the thing thou seekest is already with thee, ‘here or nowhere,’ couldst thou only see”?
Ah, well, she could not. She still is crying to the gods and spelling her name “Alys.” Her cleverness must have an outlet, and, with worse than no husband to lavish it upon, she scatters it to the four winds of heaven and gets herself talked about as “queer.”
May Brandt has bitten into her apples of Sodom, and the taste of ashes is bitter indeed to her. She knows now that Brandt never loved her, and did love Alice. I do not know whether she thinks he still cares for Alice or not. May never had much beauty to lose, but she looks worn and unhappy, and watches Alice with a degree of feeling which would appear vulgar to me if I did not know just how miserable she is. She is hopelessly plain now, and Alice is still like a tall, stately lily. Brandt devours her with his eyes, but Alice makes him keep his distance.
Sallie Cox has been diplomatic and harmless enough to make Alice forgive her, and they are quite good friends; but Alice is magnificent in her scorn of Brandt’s wife, who almost cowers in her presence.
Poor May! I wish I could take that look of suffering from her little pinched, three-cornered face for just one hour. But how could I? How could anybody who knew all about it?
She does not understand Alice in all her moods and vagaries, and Alice does not condescend to explain herself even to her friends. I do not believe that Alice and Brandt have ever spoken on the subject which occupies three minds whenever they two are thrown together. Yet I imagine it would be a relief to May if she were told that. However, she is scarcely noble enough to believe it, even if Alice herself should tell her. But Alice never will. She never gives it a thought. Brandt, too, has honor, though, even if he had not, Alice would have it for him and forbid a word.
It is a fortunate thing for some people’s chances for a future life that there are a reasonable number of consciences distributed through the world, although it would be an Old Maid’s suggestion that sometimes they be allowed to drive instead of being used as a liveried tiger—for ornament and always behind. It is a great pity that people who are supplied with them—and well-cultivated consciences too—have not the courage to live up to them, but allow themselves to be gently and feebly miserable all their lives.
Now, Charlie Hardy has periods of being the most miserable man I ever knew. His last interview with Louise must have been as serious a thing as he ever experienced. He has married Frankie Taliaferro, and she makes the sweetest little kitten of a wife you ever saw. In Louise he would have been protected by a coat of mail. In Frankie he finds it turned into a pale-blue eider-down quilt, which suits his temperament much better.