Published, May, 1913
THE COLONIAL PRESS
C.H. SIMONDS & CO., BOSTON, U.S.A.
TO
LADY HELEN
THE LONG WAY
I
Rachel Leven stopped on the landing and laid both hands on the banister. She was experiencing a new and curious sensation of unreality, and her impulse to touch something solid was rather to assure herself that her own personality had survived unchanged, than from any physical need of support.
The contact of her sensitive fingers with the polished wood was almost a relief; it convinced her that her sensations, so vague that they were like a nebulous mist before her spiritual vision, were not actualities at all, but only a fleeting deflection from a commonplace mood, that the uneasiness she had felt all the evening was a mere figment of her imagination, a shadowy specter which had no place in this charming mise-en-scène. For she was poignantly aware of the heavy perfume of flowers, of the vivid gleam of electric lights that hung, like huge, quivering dewdrops, in the midst of the tall fern fronds and giant palms of the conservatory; while through the vista of greenery, festooned with scarlet blooms of a climbing passion flower, she caught a glimpse of the flashing wings of Johnstone Astry's parrots.
Looking at this exotic scene, Rachel told herself that it was no wonder that her sensations were at once so varied and so unreal, since the very air she breathed was fevered and artificial. The conservatory, the imposing dining-room, the spacious hall, with its Doric columns, and the long, really beautiful drawing-rooms, that opened on the terrace, were all perfect in their way, yet none of them appealed to her but the last. The paved terrace, with its white balustrade and its wide and dignified prospect of the distant city and the classic, faintly bluish dome of the Capitol, brought her a feeling of pleasure, the freedom of space and the larger purposes of life; especially at sunset, when the white shaft of the Monument pierced the pink mist like the uplifted finger of a prostrate giant, admonishing the world.
But the luxury of the beautiful Georgian house, flagrantly extravagant and yet perfectly harmonious in detail, was precisely the setting for Rachel's sister, Eva Astry; some said—for rumor in Washington is pungent—that she had married the house with Johnstone Astry and the parrots thrown in. At least it interpreted her as houses seldom interpret their owners, though it did not even suggest Astry the student, the traveler, the millionaire. Yet the lavishness of the place, its aimless, beautiful extravagance, a country house just outside of Washington that was more costly than two town houses would have been, furnished Rachel with an explanation of her impressions. She argued to herself that it must be this very element of financial exuberance, this thoughtless expenditure of millions, that seemed so unreal to her; for the Levens had not been wealthy, only comfortably off, and Eva had amazed a limited but critical circle by her successful marriage. She had—to use the words of her paternal aunt, Drusilla Leven—landed a millionaire "as easily as old Josh Sterrit used to land carp." Rachel, more intimately acquainted with Eva's mental attitude at the time of her coup d'état, had remained determinedly silent. Even now she did not admit to herself her own feeling in regard to her sister's marriage. From her vantage-ground on the landing, appraising the beauty and luxury of her surroundings, she was still keenly aware that the price would have been too heavy for her to pay. Shut in, as she was to-night, by the warm and perfumed atmosphere of the house, oppressed by the littleness of that curiously complex social world that made up her sister's life, Rachel felt more than her usual repugnance to her task of entertaining the Astrys' guests.