Page:Harper's New Monthly Magazine - v109.djvu/920

852 circle. Besides, Mrs. Lang was the latest Muse.

Exactly what happened there Gertrude never asked. When, after midnight, Ned was still not in, she grew restless, and waiting on and on, slept not at all that night. After breakfast-time she rang up the office. He had not come down. Then she 'phoned Mrs. Lang's,—Mr. Darcy had left early the evening before, she was told with puzzling curtness. She hung up the receiver with trembling hands, and leaned against the wall to plan further.

The porch creaked; the front door complainingly admitted Mrs. Harold Darcy.

"I came straight to you, child, the moment I heard."

"Heard? What?"

"You haven't?"

"What?"

"There, don't look so. He's not hurt, you may be sure,—more's the pity. You haven't seen the paper? It's even there, without names. A little confusion as to the sources of inspiration, it calls it. Unfortunately easy it was, for there was only rum frappé; and unfortunately public; the Beauty prefers printed to spoken poetry, the lyric to the dramatic. Our dear relative left, on suggestion. There, there, child, don't take it like that. Learn to laugh, and nothing can hurt you. It's horrid, of course, but you must have known him this long time—if you ever were fooled. Of course the publicity's odious, but everybody knew it, anyway, and it gives you an excuse to pull out; you've stood by him longer than most women would as it is."

"Where—is—he?"

"In Tom Gray's rooms. He wouldn't come home. They couldn't make him. Tom says he said, 'What a virago your wife must be!' And Ed groaned: 'She? Virago? Oh, that would be easy. I'd take a whipping any time in preference!

"My poor boy! my poor boy!" Gertrude was searching the room blindly for her hat, sobbing like one who has run far.

"Where are you going now?"

"To him, of course."

"Well," Mrs. Darcy surveyed her placidly, "people have pitied you for years as a blind fool; now they will smile."

"And no one, I suppose, to do him common justice!" Gertrude turned on her in a kind of rage of grief. "If it took so little to upset him, doesn't it show how he's lived—almost an ascetic?"

"With the imagination of a Sybarite! and the weak intemperance of the total abstainer! What is the real man? Do your intelligence common justice! Have the courage to be honest." Mrs. Darcy's voice hardly rose or hurried.

Gertrude was not given to retorts, but she had felt vaguely before this that Ned was not, after all, wholly his father's son; the texture of his mind was like his mother's family—without its vigor. Now she was rummaging in a drawer that looked like a grab-bag, until she extracted two gloves, not mates, and fairly ran toward the door.

"Oh, very well," Mrs. Darcy said, flatly. "I'll wait for you."

"You needn't."

"You'll probably need me." She hitched her chair around with a thump to watch the window for the return.

She was right, Gertrude brought him home in a cab. What slight intoxication there had been was fully past, but he was prostrated, overwhelmed. Who could scold this clinging, pitiful, self-accusing creature? Even Mrs. Darcy only set her lips straight; it was like him to take the last advantage of the offender to escape consequences! But Gertrude, laughing and crying, petted, comforted, encouraged, as they undressed him like a child and put him to bed.

Mrs. Darcy watched her with something like artistic appreciation. "Why haven't you children of your own?" she wondered, abruptly, and as suddenly added, remembering, "Blessed thing you haven't, though,—they couldn't be just yours."

To the porch, as she left, Gertrude followed her. "I'm sure you're fair enough to realize that this will never occur again."

"Never? Oh, probably not for a time, I admit. He'll stay close for a while. He's all right when your hand's on him, child; but you'll always have to take care that no one gets the best of you. Now what value is there to anybody in that kind of morality? It strikes me a man who requires so much saving and can't do any of it himself isn't worth it."

What had that to do with it? Gertrude turned indoors.