Wentworth snapped the conversation off there. Perhaps he had heard enough. He went home—not to his sister’s house but to the half-closed house of his father, and sat in his own room before his fire, musing. The fire made his fine profile unusually handsome. He looked about the room appreciatively. These were the deep chairs that had welcomed him on vacations and furloughs—the Remington that his father had given him—his few books, his pipes and the big windows that almost made up one wall.
“Why should I leave it?” he murmured, and fell to smoking luxuriously.
And so the winter slipped into spring, with Horatia revelling in the work of the office and in the thrills which shot through her at the mere presence of Langley; enjoying, too, the friendliness of Anthony Wentworth and the pleasant things he devised for them to do; enjoying everything all the more because of the flashes of wonder and fear and depression with which she was touched sometimes; with Langley working and watching Horatia; with Maud making plans and buying spring clothes with morbid carefulness; with Mrs. Hubbell buying clothes too and planning little entertainments and pressing people to attend them; with the chains which bound them all together being drawn tighter and tighter, and the web of their drama being spun on the vast frame of life. Each of them undoubtedly dreamed that the pattern was different from what it was and each of them must have had a pattern clearly in mind; while Nature, the scene-painter, began to change her set and shaking the white burdens from the trees, helped them to bud again.
With the spring, too, Aunt Caroline and Uncle George came back from the South, Aunt Caroline laden with little bronze alligators and pictures of herself picking oranges and Uncle George frankly rejoicing in getting back and with a tendency to disparage everything Southern. They took Langley and the news of the engagement, which Horatia felt they should know, rather more quietly than either of the nieces had expected, but as they thought about it they realized that these two West Parkians were, after all, too far out of the world to understand all its ways and meanings. Perhaps if Aunt Caroline had discussed it at the Ladies’ Guild she might have heard disturbing things, but since it was a secret and couldn’t be discussed she formed her opinions on the impression Langley made on her, which was pleasant enough. He knew how to listen interminably and defer properly and that was enough for Aunt Caroline. For those hours of listening to her over a heavy Sunday dinner, Langley was paid by Sunday afternoons with Horatia, long walks out by the lake through the mists or the winds when everything evil and unhappy seemed to drop away from him and the world was all life and energy and Horatia. The tediums of Aunt Caroline were a very little thing to bear.
Horatia kept her apartment in the city, pleading an unbreakable lease to her aunt, but she liked to get back to West Park once in a while, just for the “clean, fresh dullness” of it, she said. She had not yet learned what she was to learn, that dullness is one of the most beautiful things in the world for an harassed spirit to come back to, and that dullness is not always stupidity, but sometimes safety. So she patronized West Park mentally and laughed at herself for looking forward to Sundays there. It was natural enough that she should look forward to them as a respite from the existence about her. She was seeing a great deal of very concentrated life. When a woman shoots a man, a newspaper office has the real facts of the case very quickly. When a man suddenly retires from politics and his wife leaves town for a few months and a fatherless child is reported in the “Birth” columns, the public may not connect the three events. But often enough the newspaper knows that there is a link. It knows, too, how so many fortunes are made and it connects them with queer obscurities. They did not reveal ugliness to Horatia willingly in that little office, but she saw and heard it because she was there and could not always be well shielded. Some of the worst of it never reached her but she saw enough. She began to know that the things that happened in the world were not based on justice and she saw that pain can not always be healed and that the wages of sin were sometimes opulence and public respect. She, who had crusaded out into the world, loving its beauty and its freshness and yearning for all it had to offer, began to see that it offered a selection of things which had to be looked over very carefully.
None of this saddened her, because it had not touched her yet, but it aroused her pity and her wonder and her scorn. With the assurance of her age, it never frightened her to see and hear of trouble. These tragedies might happen to others, but not to her—not to her who had work and love. If she ever thought of her future she admitted that she would have “her share of trouble,” but that trouble was so delightfully in the distance as to be merely a romantic ingredient of life—a spice—and not a thing to be afraid of. But there began to be a complexity of thoughts back of her clear eyes, where once there had been only curiosity and eagerness. Day by day it deepened and day by day she loved her work more. It brought many a chance to do interesting things—to render little services to all kinds of people. There was beginning to be an increasing number of women in politics and many of these came to make use of the “woman on The Journal.” If they came merely to make use of her they usually departed without accomplishing anything. Horatia understood them very easily and disconcertingly. It was very obvious to her who had no axe of her own to grind, that some of these women had. If they came to ask her advocacy of something decent and necessary, it was easy to explain and easy to get support. But if they came to barter or exchange favors, as so many of them did, they went away empty-handed, simply because they had nothing to give Horatia and because she desired no favors—or offices—or social advancement.
She made enemies. When Mrs. Perry Hill, president of the City Symphony Society, came down to The Journal office one day, she came with an air of concession and as one descended from a pedestal. She explained her purpose lengthily to Horatia. The City Symphony wanted to raise a hundred thousand dollars to put up a musical studio building as a memorial for soldiers and sailors who had been killed during the war. She told enthusiastically of the struggle of the Symphony to raise itself from a little club into a great organization which brought the artists of America to the city to play and to sing. She outlined the tremendous need for a studio building and told of the music-students and teachers who would bless the city and the City Symphony for a place to study and teach. She touched upon the needs of a commercial age and the general low level of musical appreciation. And she ended by telling of the other great lack—the lack of a suitable Soldiers’ and Sailors’ Memorial. “Nothing could be a more fitting tribute to those noble lads.”
Horatia frowned. “I’m afraid I don’t understand.”
She stopped Mrs. Hill, who was just about to repeat her entire speech. “I understand, of course, that the Symphony is a worthy organization—of course—and it has given its members much pleasure—but why should a studio building be a tribute to soldiers and sailors? What good will it do them, living or dead?”
“Only by upholding the highest ideals can we be worthy of those noble boys,” answered Mrs. Hill sententiously.