To give exhaustive reasons for the impulse which brought Miss Mary Davis to Bainbridge at this particular time would be to delve too deeply into the complex psychology of that lady. But we shall not be far wrong if we sum up the determining impulse in one word—curiosity.
The news of Benis Spence's unexpected marriage had been something of a shock to more than one of his friends. But especially so to Mary Davis. Upon a certain interesting list, which Miss Davis kept in her well-ordered mind, the name of this agreeable bachelor had been distinctly labelled "possible." To have a possibility snatched from under one's nose without warning is annoying, especially if the season in possibilities threatens to be poor. The war had sadly depleted Miss Davis' once lengthy list. And she, herself, was five years older. It would be interesting, and perhaps instructive, to see the young person from nowhere who had still further narrowed her personal territory.
"It does seem rather a shame," she confided to a select friend or two, "that clever men who have escaped the perils of early matrimony should in maturity turn back to the very thing which constituted that peril."
"You mean men like them young?" said a select friend with brutal candor.
"I mean they like them too young. In the case I'm thinking of, the girl is a mere child. And quite uncultured. What possibility of intellectual companionship could the most sanguine man expect?"
"None. But they don't want intellectual companionship." Another select friend spoke bitterly. "I used to think they did. It seemed reasonable. As the basis for a whole lifetime, it seemed the only possible thing. But what's the use of insisting on a theory, no matter how abstractly sound, if it is disproved in practice every day? Remember Bobby Wells? He is quite famous now; knows more about biology than any man on this side of the water. He married last week. His wife is a pretty little creature who thinks protoplasm another name for appendicitis."
There was a sympathetic pause.
"And biology was always such a fad of yours," sighed Mary thoughtfully. "Never mind! They are sure to be frightfully unhappy."
"No, they won't. That's it. That's the point I am making. They'll be as cozy as possible."
Miss Davis thought this point over after the select friend who made it had gone. She did not wish to believe that its implication was a true one. But, if it were, if youth, just youth, were the thing of power, then it were wise that she should realize it before it was too late. Her own share of the magic thing was swiftly passing.
From a drawer of her desk she took a recent letter from a Bainbridge correspondent and re-read the part referring to the Spence reception.
"Really, it was quite well done," she read. "Old Miss Campion has a 'flair' for the suitabilities, and now that so many are trying to be smart or bizarre, it is a relief to come back to the old pleasant suitable things—you know what I mean. And the old lady has an air. How she gets it, I don't know, for the dear Queen is her idea of style. Perhaps there is something in the 'aura' theory. If so, Miss Campion's aura is the very glass of fashion.
"And the bride! But I hear you are coming down, so you will see the bride for yourself. There was a silly rumor about her being part Indian. Well, if Indian blood can give one a skin like hers, I could do with an off-side ancestor myself! She is even younger than report predicted. But not sweet or coy (Heavens, how one wearies of that type!) And Benis Spence, as a bride-groom, has lost something of his 'moony' air. He is quite attractive in an odd way. All the same, I can't help feeling (and others agree with me) that there is something odd about that marriage. My dear, they do not act like married people. The girl is as cool as a princess (I suppose princesses are). And the professor's attitude is so—so casual. Even John Rogers' manner to the bride is more marked than the bridegroom's. But you know I never repeat gossip. It isn't kind. And any-way it may not be true that he drops in for tea nearly every day."
Miss Davis replaced the letter with a musing smile. And the next morning she called up on long distance. A visit to Bainbridge, she felt, might be quite stimulating....
Observe her, then, on the morning of her arrival having breakfast in bed. Breakfast in bed is always offered to travellers at the Spence home—a courtesy based upon the tradition of an age which travelled hard and seldom. Miss Davis quite approved of the custom. She had not neglected to bring "matinees" in which she looked most charming. Negligee became her. She openly envied Margot Asquith her bedroom receptions.
Young Mrs. Spence, inquiring with true western hospitality, whether the breakfast had been all that could be desired, was conscious of a pang, successfully repressed, at the sight of that matinee. She saw at once that she had never realized possibilities in this direction. Her night-gowns (even the new ones) were merely night-gowns and her kimonas were garments which could still be recognized under that name.
"It is rather a duck," said Mary, reading Desire's admiring glance. "Quite French, I think. But of course, as a bride, you will have oceans of lovely things. I adore trousseaux. Perhaps you will show me some of your pretties?" (The bride's gowns, she admitted, might be passable but what really tells the tale is the underneaths.)
"Oh, with pleasure." Desire's assent was instant and warm. "I shall love to let you see my things."
It was risky—but effective. Mary's desire to see the trousseau evaporated on the instant. No girl would be so eager to show things which were not worth showing. And Mary was no altruist to rejoice over other people's Paris follies.
After all, she really knew very little about Benis's wife. And you never can tell. She began to wish that she had brought down with her some very special glories—things she had decided not to waste on Bainbridge. Her young hostess had eyes which were coolly, almost humorously, critical. "Absurd in a girl who simply can't have any proper criteria!" thought Miss Davis crossly.
"When you are quite rested," said Desire kindly, "you will find us on the west lawn. The sun is never too hot there in the morning."
"Yes—I remember that." The faintest sigh disturbed the laces of Mary's matinee. Her faun-like eyes looked wistful. "But if you do not mind, I think I shall be really lazy—these colds do leave one so wretched."
Desire agreed that colds were annoying. She had not missed the sigh which accompanied Mary's memory of the west lawn and very naturally misread it. Mary's regretful decision to challenge no morning comparison in the sunlight on any lawn was interpreted as regret of a much more tender nature. Desire's eyes grew cold and dark with shadow as she left her charming visitor to her wistful rest.
That Mary Davis was the lady of her husband's one romance, she had no longer any doubt. Anyone, that is, any man, might love deeply and hopelessly a woman of such rare and subtle charm. Possessing youth in glorious measure herself, Desire naturally discounted her rival's lack of it. With her, the slight blurring of Mary's carefully tended "lines," the tired look around her eyes, the somewhat cold-creamy texture of her delicate skin, weighed nothing against the exquisite finish and fine sophistication which had been the gift of the added years.
In age, she thought, Mary and Benis would rank each other. They were also essentially of the same world. Neither had ever gazed through windows. Both had been free of life from its beginning. Love between them might well have been a fitting progression.
The one fact which did not fit in here was this—in the story as told by Benis the affair had been one of unreciprocated affection. This presupposed a blindness on the lady's part which Desire began increasingly to doubt. She had already reached the point when it seemed impossible that anyone should not admire what to her was entirely admirable. Even the explanation of a prior attachment (the "Someone Else" of the professor's story), did not carry conviction. Who else could there be—compared with Benis?
No. It looked, upon the face of it, as if there had been a mistake somewhere. Benis had despaired too soon!
This fateful thought had been crouching at the door of Desire's mind ever since Mary had ceased to be an abstraction. She had kept it out. She had refused to know that it was there. She had been happy in spite of it. But now, when its time was fully come, it made small work of her frail barriers. It blundered in, leering and triumphant.
Men have been mistaken before now. Men have turned aside in the very moment of victory. And Benis Spence was not a man who would beg or importune. How easily he might have taken for refusal what was, in effect, mere withdrawal. Had Mary retreated only that he might pursue? And had the Someone Else been No One Else at all?
If this were so, and it seemed at least possible, the retreating lady had been smartly punished. Serve her right—oh, serve her right a thousand times for having dared to trifle! Desire wasted no pity on her. But what of him? With merciless lucidity Desire's busy brain created the missing acts which might have brought the professor's tragedy of errors to a happy ending. It would have been so simple—if Benis had only waited. Even pursuit would not have been required of him. Mary, unpursued, would have come back; unasked, she might have offered. But Benis had not waited.
Desire saw all this in the time that it took her to go down-stairs. At the bottom of the stairs she faced its unescapable logic: if he were free now, he might be happy yet.
How blind they had both been! He to believe that love had passed; she to believe that love would never come. Desire paused with her hand upon the library door. He was there. She could hear him talking to Yorick. She had only to open the door ... but she did not open it. Yesterday the library had been her kingdom, the heart of her widening world. Now it was only a room in someone else's house. Yesterday she would have gone in swiftly—hiding her gladness in a little net of everyday words. But today she had no gladness and no words.
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