Read Ebook: The Wheel of Life by Glasgow Ellen Anderson Gholson

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Ebook has 1885 lines and 124345 words, and 38 pages

"But you're twice as dangerous," he retorted gaily.

For an instant the pleasant humour in his eyes held her speechless.

"Ah, well, you aren't a coward," she answered coolly enough at last. Then her tone changed, and as she settled herself under her fur rugs she made a cordial inviting gesture. "Come in with me and I'll take you to Laura Wilde's," she said; "she's a genius, and you ought to know her before the world finds her out."

With a protesting laugh Kemper held up his gloved finger.

"God forbid!" he exclaimed with a shrug which struck her as a slightly foreign affectation. "The lady may be a female Milton, but Perry tells me that she isn't pretty."

He touched her hand again, met her indignant defence of Laura with a nod of smiling irony, and then, as her carriage started, he turned rapidly down Sixty-ninth Street in the direction of the Park.

In Gerty the chance meeting had awakened a slumbering interest which she had half forgotten, and as she drove down Fifth Avenue toward Laura's distant home she found herself wondering idly if he would let many days go by before he came again. The thought was still in her mind when the carriage turned into Gramercy Park and stopped before the old brown house hidden in creepers in which Laura lived. So changed by this time, however, was Gerty's mood that, after leaving her carriage, she stood hesitating from indecision upon the sidewalk. The few bared trees in the snow, the solemn, almost ghostly, quiet of the quaint old houses and the deserted streets, in which a flock of sparrows quarrelled under the faint sunshine, produced in her an odd and almost mysterious sense of unreality--as if the place, herself, the waiting carriage, and Laura buried away in the dull brown house, were all creations of some gossamer and dream-like quality of mind. She felt suddenly that the sorrows which had oppressed her in the morning belonged no more to any existence in which she herself had a part. Then, looking up, she saw her husband crossing the street between the two men with whom he had lunched, and even the impressive solidity of Perry Bridewell appeared to her strangely altered and out of place.

He came up, a little breathless from his rapid walk, and it was a minute before he could summon voice to introduce the cheerful, fresh-coloured youth on his right hand.

"I've already told Mrs. Bridewell about you, Mr. Trent," he said at last, "but I'm willing to confess that I haven't told her half the truth."

Gerty met Trent's embarrassed glance with the protecting smile with which she favoured the young who combined his sex with his attractions. Then, when he was quite at ease again, she turned to speak to Roger Adams, for whom, in spite, as she laughingly said, of the distinction between a bookworm and a butterfly, she was accustomed to admit a more than ordinary liking.

"Perry tells me that Mr. Trent has really read Laura's poems," she said now to Adams with an almost unconscious abandonment of her cynical manner. "Have you examined him and is it really true?"

"Read them!" exclaimed Trent eagerly, while his blue eyes ran entirely to sparkles. "Why, I've learned them every one by heart."

"Then she'll let you in," responded Gerty reassuringly, "there's no doubt whatever of your welcome."

"But there is of mine," said Perry gravely, "so I guess I'd better quit."

He made a movement to turn away, but Gerty placing her gloved hand on his arm, detained him by a reproachful look.

"That reminds me of the mischief you have done to-day," she said. "I met Arnold Kemper as I left the house, and when I asked him to come with me what do you suppose was the excuse he gave?"

"The dentist or a twinge of rheumatism?" suggested Adams gravely.

"Neither." Her voice rose indignantly, and she enforced her reprimand by a light stroke on Perry's sleeve. "He actually said that Perry had told him Laura wasn't pretty."

"Well, I take back my words and eat 'em, too," cried Perry.

He broke away in affected terror before Trent's angry eyes, while Gerty gave a joyful little exclamation and waved her hand toward one of the lower windows in the house before which they stood. The head of a woman, framed in brown creepers, appeared there for an instant, and then, almost before Trent had caught a glimpse of the small dark eager figure, melted again into the warm firelight of the interior. A moment later the outer door opened quickly, and Laura stood there with impulsive outstretched hands and the cordial smile which was her priceless inheritance from a Southern mother.

"I knew that you were there even before I looked out of the window," she exclaimed to Gerty, in what Adams had once called her "Creole voice." Then she paused, laughing happily, as she looked, with her animated glance, from Gerty to Trent and from Trent to Adams. To the younger man, full of his enthusiasm and his ignorance, the physical details of her appearance seemed suddenly of no larger significance than the pale bronze gown she wore or the old coffee-coloured lace knotted upon her bosom in some personal caprice of dress. What she gave to him as she stood there, looking from Adams to himself with her ardent friendly glance, was an impression of radiant energy, of abundant life.

She turned back after the first greeting, leading the way into the pleasant firelit room, where a white haired old gentleman with an interesting blanched face rose to receive them.

"I have just proved to Mr. Wilberforce that I could 'feel' you coming," said Laura with a smile as she unfastened Gerty's furs.

"And I have argued that she could quite as well surmise it," returned Mr. Wilberforce, as he fell back into his chair before the wood fire.

"Well, you may know in either way that my coming may be counted on," said Gerty, "for I have sacrificed for you the society of the most interesting man I know."

"What! Is it possible that Perry has been forsaken?" enquired Adams in his voice of quiet humor. In the midst of her flippant laughter, Gerty turned on him the open cynicism of her smile.

"Now is it possible that Perry has that effect on you?" she asked with curiosity. "For I find him decidedly depressing."

"Then if it isn't Perry I demand the name," persisted Adams gayly, "though I'm perfectly ready to wager that it's Arnold Kemper."

"Kemper," repeated Laura curiously, as if the name arrested her almost against her will. "Wasn't there a little novel once by an Arnold Kemper--a slight but striking thing with very little grammar and a great deal of audacity?"

"Oh, that was done in his early days," replied Adams, "as a kind of outlet to the energy he now expends in racing motors. I asked Funsten, who does our literary notices, if there was any chance for him again in fiction, and he answered that the only favourable thing he could say of him was to say nothing."

"But he's gone in for automobiles now," said Gerty, "they're so much bigger, after all, he thinks, than books."

"I haven't seen him for fifteen years," remarked Adams, "but I recognise his speech."

"One always recognises his speeches," admitted Gerty, "there's a stamp on them, I suppose, for somehow he himself is great even if his career isn't--and, after all," she concluded seriously, "it is--what shall I call it--the personal quantity that he insists on."

"The personal quantity," repeated Laura laughing, and, as if the description of Kemper had failed to interest her, she turned the conversation upon the subject of Trent's play.

TREATS OF AN ECCENTRIC FAMILY

When the last caller had gone Laura slid back the folding doors which opened into the library and spoke to a little old gentleman, with a very bald head, who sat in a big armchair holding a flute in his wrinkled and trembling hand. He had a simple, moonlike face, to which his baldness lent a deceptive appearance of intellect, and his expression was of such bland and smiling goodness that it was impossible to resent the tedious garrulity of his conversation. In the midst of his shrivelled countenance his eyes looked like little round blue buttons which had been set there in order to keep his features from entirely slipping away. He was the oldest member of the Wilde family, and he had lived in the house in Gramercy Park since it was built by his father some sixty years or more ago.

"Tired waiting, Uncle Percival?" asked Laura, raising her voice a little that it might penetrate his deafened hearing.

As he turned upon her his smile of perfect patience the old gentleman nodded his head quickly several times in succession. "I waited to play until after the people went," he responded in a voice that sounded like a cracked silver bell. "Your Aunt Angela has a headache, so she couldn't stand the noise. I went out to get her some flowers and offered to sit with her, but this is one of her bad days, poor girl." He fell silent for a minute and then added, wistfully, "I'm wondering if you would like to hear 'Ye Banks and Braes o' Bonnie Doon'? It used to be your mother's favourite air."

Though he was an inoffensively amiable and eagerly obliging old man, by some ironic contradiction of his intentions his life had become a series of blunders through which he endeavoured to add his share to the general happiness. His soul was overflowing with humanity, and he spent sleepless nights evolving innocent pleasures for those about him, but his excess of goodness invariably resulted in producing petty annoyances if not serious inconveniences. So his virtues had come to be regarded with timidity, and there was an ever present anxiety in the air as to what Uncle Percival was "doing" in his mind. The fear of inopportune benefits was in its way as oppressive as the dread of unmerited misfortune.

Laura shook her head impatiently as she threw herself into a chair on the other side of the tall bronze lamp upon the writing table. On the stem of an eccentric family tree she was felt to be the perfect flower of artistic impulses, and her enclosed life in the sombre old house had not succeeded in cultivating in her the slightest resemblance to an artificial variety. She was obviously, inevitably, impulsively the original product, and Uncle Percival never realised this more hopelessly than in that unresponsive headshake of dismissal. Laura could be kind, he knew, but she was kind, as she was a poet, when the mood prompted.

"Presently--not now," she said, "I want to talk to you awhile. Do you know, Aunt Rosa was here again to-day and she still tries to persuade us to sell the house and move uptown. It is so far for her to come from Seventieth Street, she says, but as for me I'd positively hate the change and Aunt Angela can't even stand the mention of it." She leaned forward and stroked his arm with one of her earnest gestures. "What would you do uptown, dear Uncle Percival?" she inquired gently.

The old man laid the flute on his knees, where his shrunken little hands still caressed it. "Do? why I'd die if you dragged me away from my roots," he answered.

Laura smiled, still smoothing him down as if he were an amiable dog. "Well, the Park is very pleasant, you know," she returned, "and it is full of walks, too. You wouldn't lack space for exercise."

"The Park? Pooh!" piped Uncle Percival, raising his voice; "I wouldn't give these streets for the whole of Central Park together. Why, I've seen these pavements laid and relaid for seventy years and I remember all the men who walked over them. Did I ever tell you of the time I strolled through Irving Place with Thackeray? As for Central Park, it hasn't an ounce--not an ounce of atmosphere."

"I'm sure Angela would never hear of it," pursued Uncle Percival, "and in her affliction how could one expect it?"

For a moment Laura looked at him in a compassionate pause before she made her spring. "There's nothing in the world the matter with Aunt Angela," she said; "she's perfectly well."

Blank wonder crept into the old gentleman's little blue eyes and he shook his head several times in solemn if voiceless protest. Forty years ago Angela Wilde, as a girl of twenty, had in the accustomed family phrase "brought lasting disgrace upon them," and she had dwelt, as it were, in the shadow of the pillory ever since. Unmarried she had yielded herself to a lover, and afterward when the full scandal had burst upon her head, though she had not then reached the fulfilment of a singularly charming beauty, she had condemned herself to the life of a solitary prisoner within four walls. She had never since the day of her awakening mentioned the name of her faithless or unfortunate lover, but her silent magnanimity had become the expression of a reproach too deep for words, and her bitter scorn of men had so grown upon her in her cloistral existence that there were hours together when she could not endure even the inoffensive Percival. Cold, white, and spectral as one of the long slim candles on an altar, still beautiful with an indignant and wounded loveliness, she had become in the end at once the shame and the romance of her family.

"There is no reason under the sun why Aunt Angela shouldn't come down to dinner with us to-night," persisted Laura. "Don't you see that by encouraging her as you did in her foolish attitude, you have given her past power over her for life and death. It is wrong--it is ignoble to bow down and worship anything--man, woman, child, or event, as she bows down and worships her trouble."

The flute shook on Uncle Percival's knees. "Ah, Laura, would you have her face the world again?" he asked.

"The world? Nonsense! The world doesn't know there's such a person in it. She was forgotten forty years ago, only she has grown so selfish in her grief that she can never believe it."

The old man sighed and shook his head. "The women of this generation have had the dew brushed off them," he lamented, "but your mother understood. She felt for Angela."

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