These same friends were endeavoring to do their best for her, pricked by sympathy with her evident need. If it had not been for a cheque for two thousand dollars, which Clive Reinhard sent her, "in payment for your husband's work on the new contract," Milly would soon have been without a dollar in her purse. She took Reinhard's cheque thankfully, without suspecting her right to it. Others might suspect. For there was no contract, no illustrations made—nothing but the novelist's recognition of a need. The cheque was merely one of the ways he took of squaring himself with his world.
When Milly's women friends heard of it, they said with one voice,—"Thank heaven! If Clive Reinhard would only marry Milly—he ought to!"
Which merely meant that, as he was a rich bachelor who had amassed money by exploiting the sentimental side of their sex, there would be a poetic justice in his chivalrously stepping into the breach and looking after his dead friend's helpless widow. It would make up for "the others," they said, and were enthusiastic over their sentimental plan.
"Milly would make a charming hostess in that big country place of Clive's. It would give her a free hand. What Milly has always wanted is a free hand—she has the ability. And Clive is getting pudgy and set. He ought to marry—he's too dreadfully selfish and self-centred," etc.
Mrs. Montgomery Billman took the affair specially in charge. Of course a decent time must elapse after poor Jack's death, but meanwhile there was no harm in bringing the two together. The masterful wife of the Responsible Editor conceived the scheme of having a private exhibition and sale of Bragdon's work, and that took many interviews and much discussion on Sunday evenings when the hostess tactfully left the two to themselves before the fire, while she retired "to finish my letters." When she returned, however, she found them dry-eyed and silent or chatting about some irrelevant commonplace. The private exhibition came off during the winter in the "Bunker's Barn," as they called the big Riverside Drive house. A good many cards were scattered about in literary and artistic and moneyed circles; tea was poured by the ladies interested; Milly appeared in her widow's black, young and charming. A number of people came and a few bought. Mrs. Billman contented herself with the sketch of a magazine cover representing a handsome woman and a young boy, which was said to resemble herself and her son. On the whole the sale would have been a dreary failure if it had not been for Bunker's liberal purchases and Reinhard's taking all that was unsold "to dispose of privately among Jack's friends."
The hard truth was that Jack Bragdon had not shaken the New York firmament, certainly had not knocked a gilt star from its zenith. At thirty-two he was just a promising failure, one of the grist that the large city eats annually. And his friends were not powerful enough to make up for his lack of réclame. "He had a gift—slight though. Nothing much done—charming fellow—died just as he was starting, poor chap!" so the words went. If the portrait of the Russian had been there, the tone might have been less patronizing; but Milly had already sent this off on its long journey.
The practical result was fifteen hundred dollars, of which Bunker contributed a thousand, and various convenient sums that dribbled in opportunely from the novelist, "whenever he was able to make a sale." (A good many of Jack Bragdon's things ultimately will come under the hammer when the Reinhard house is broken up.)
And that romance which Milly's friends had staged came to nothing. Reinhard called on her often, was very kind to her, and really solicitous for her welfare; he also was charming to little Virginia, who called him Uncle Clive; and he had both at his country place for long visits,—abundantly chaperoned. Nothing could have been "nicer" than the novelist's attitude to his friend's widow, all the women declared, and it must have been her fault—or else that "other affair" had gone deeper with him than any one supposed.
Milly herself was not averse to entertaining a new "hope." Her marriage seemed so utterly dead that she felt free to indulge in a new sentiment. But the novelist looked at her out of his beady, black eyes,—indulgently, kindly,—but through and through, as if he had known her before she was born and knew the worth of every heart-beat in her.... Gradually beneath that scalping gaze she grew to dislike him, almost to hate him for his indifference. "He must be horrid with women," she said to Hazel, who admitted that "there have been stories—a man living by himself, as he does!"
And so this solution came to naught.