Maud had a deft way of talking trousseau too. Whether she was trying to show Horatia certain impossibilities in life with Langley or whether her sister’s availability for marriage brought out all the woman in her, Horatia could not decide. But Maud had a way of showing her trousseau linen and discussing ways of furnishing, and though Horatia laughed her to scorn and said she would buy a dozen pequot sheets, half a dozen pillow cases and two table cloths and let it go at that, none the less the shimmer of damask and the alluring silks of window draperies insinuated themselves into her consciousness and made her yearn just a little sometimes for a little more ability to expand her own plans.
Not when she was with Jim. Then everything faded except the vast depths of life with him. She told Mrs. Clapp something about Jim—subtly enough as far as words go, if her eyes and the cadences of her voice had not been absolutely revealing. They talked about love.
“There’s love—and love—and love,” said Marjorie, “and each of us loves his or her own kind of love. I’ve known people who found greatest delight in giving up things for the people they care about. I’ve known others whose joy was in possession of the person loved—and there are people who love by sharing and having children and people who think that they are enough to one another in themselves and that children would be an interference and a hindrance. Some people want one thing and some another and some people want enduring things and some want the fun of transitory things. I’ve never been one of the people who like roses just because they are perishable. I’m all for things that last, myself. But I’m willing to admit the other kind of people.
“Peter and I,” went on Marjorie, “just looked at each other and saw babies—as the old women say—in each other’s eyes. I don’t mean that we married to have babies, you know. Not as crude as that. But that was the end of our love. We wanted to see each other in little new bodies and we wanted to make a home for the babies and to give them everything good and lovely. Because we loved each other. If we hadn’t happened to meet each other we might have gone on forever without finding the right thing. I think there is a right thing, you know, a thing for everyone. Some people are born to be perpetually esthetic and some to keep the great tide of emotion flowing strong through the world—and some are meant to see babies and some to be good mental companions. The point is to find out what you are suited for and to carry out your own job with the right person. I was lucky.”
“Yes. And I’m going to be.”
“It would be an outrage if you weren’t,” said the older woman admiringly.
She asked Jim out for the Sunday afternoon while Horatia was there, and he came, but curiously, the visit seemed to bring out a vein of cynicism in him that Horatia thought was permanently overlaid. He was brilliant in his talk and gayer than Horatia had ever seen him in anyone’s company, but in spite of his gayety she felt in him criticism of everything he saw about him. He rallied Marjorie on having spread the “flesh-pots of Egypt” before him, but he said it with a kind of laughing scorn that angered Horatia though it made no apparent impression on Marjorie. And Horatia found herself a little hurt and chilled that he did not seem to appreciate the things which had been charming her so much.
“Poor Jim,” said Marjorie astutely, to her husband, after their guests had left and they sat together on the dusky terrace, “so terribly in love with that girl and so awfully afraid that he won’t be able to give her what she wants.”
“Are you playing a game for Anthony?” asked her husband.
“No—I’m not playing for Anthony. I’m playing for that girl. I’m not sure where she belongs. And it’s tremendously important to get in the right niche these days. Maybe it is Jim—but it would be tragic if it weren’t. And Anthony cares such a lot. He has never cared before and this is all in the right way. It’s so hard to see——”