Grace turned to a waiting customer with a kindlier feeling for all the world. She was uncertain whether in like circumstances she would have been capable of the kindness and generosity Evelyn had manifested. It pleased her to believe that her education in the ways of the changing, baffling world was progressing.
Evelyn Cummings was evidently a young woman without illusions; she knew exactly how to manage a temperamental husband. Marriage, as Grace viewed it with the three different illustrations afforded by Kemp, Trenton and Cummings, was of the realm of insubstantial things. Even the spectacle offered in her own home by her father and mother, between whom disappointment and adversity had reared a wall no less grim because of their steadfast loyalty, was hardly convincing on the other side of the picture. Stephen Durland and his wife were held together by habit, by a deeply implanted sense of duty to their children. Grace could not remember when her father had kissed her mother, or in any way manifested any affection for her. And yet in the beginning they must have loved each other. She wondered whether it was always like that!
She had given up all hope of hearing again from Trenton when on the tenth day she received a note postmarked New York, that set her heart fluttering.
My Dear Little Girl:
What must you think of me! I think pretty poorly of myself, I can tell you. Picked up a cold on my way East. Pretended it didn’t amount to anything; motored down into New Jersey for a week-end with some old friends. Got chilled on the drive; pneumonia almost. My host was afraid I’d die on his hands and made a frightful row—couple of doctors, nurse and all the other frills.... I had no way of letting you know. Found your letter when I came into town this morning. I’m away behind on my jobs.... The great thing is that I want to see you and look into those dear, dark eyes again.... One day at twilight down there in the country, I thought of you so intently that I really brought you into the room! The nurse was sitting beside the bed, then suddenly you were there, your dark head clearly outlined in the dusk. You lifted your hand to touch your hair—that’s a pretty trick you have! You have so many dear ways—and you smiled—another sweet way you have!—the smile coming slowly, like a dawn, until it brightened all the world. The illusion was so perfect that it wasn’t an illusion at all, but really you! I was terribly indignant at the nurse when she turned on the light and I lost you.... The doctor says I may travel in three or four days and my thoughts carry me in only one direction. You haven’t sent me the telegram I hoped for; never mind about that. Please wire me that you are well. And if you put in a word to say that you want to see me I shall be the happiest man alive. Be assured of my love always.
He hadn’t forgotten her; he really cared! She moved with a quicker step; her work had never gone so smoothly. While she had been doubting him, trying to put him out of her heart he had been ill. She was unsparing in self-accusation for what now seemed the basest disloyalty. She tried to picture the room to which his longing had summoned her. Those lines in his letter moved her deeply and set her to speculating whether such a thing might not be possible in the case of two beings who loved each other greatly.
There was no intimation in the letter that his wife had been with him in his illness. Grace grew bitter as she thought of Mrs. Trenton, who was probably roaming the world preaching a new social order to the neglect of her husband. In countenancing Trenton as a lover Grace found Mrs. Trenton’s conduct her most consoling justification. It came down to this, that if Ward Trenton’s wife failed in her marital obligations there was no justice in forbidding him to seek happiness elsewhere.
This view was in fact advanced in Mary Graham Trenton’s “Clues to a New Social Order.” It seemed a fair assumption that Mrs. Trenton wouldn’t advocate ideas for all mankind that she wouldn’t tolerate in her own husband.
At her lunch hour Grace went to the telegraph office and sent this message:
“Greatly troubled by your illness. Please take good care of yourself. You may be sure I shall be glad to see you.”