Mrs. Quentin rose with a sigh. “My child, in my day love was less subtle.” She added, after a moment, “Alan is a perfect son.”
“Ah, that again—that makes it worse!”
“Worse?”
“Just as your goodness does, your sweetness, your immense indulgence in letting me discuss things with you in a way that must seem almost an impertinence.”
Mrs. Quentin’s smile was not without irony. “You must remember that I do it for Alan.”
“That’s what I love you for!” the girl instantly returned; and again her tone touched her listener.
“And yet you’re sacrificing him—and to an idea!”
“Isn’t it to ideas that all the sacrifices that were worth while have been made?”
“One may sacrifice one’s self.”
Miss Fenno’s color rose. “That’s what I’m doing,” she said gently.
Mrs. Quentin took her hand. “I believe you are,” she answered. “And it isn’t true that I speak only for Alan. Perhaps I did when I began; but now I want to plead for you too—against yourself.” She paused, and then went on with a deeper note: “I have let you, as you say, speak your mind to me in terms that some women might have resented, because I wanted to show you how little, as the years go on, theories, ideas, abstract conceptions of life, weigh against the actual, against the particular way in which life presents itself to us—to women especially. To decide beforehand exactly how one ought to behave in given circumstances is like deciding that one will follow a certain direction in crossing an unexplored country. Afterward we find that we must turn out for the obstacles—cross the rivers where they’re shallowest—take the tracks that others have beaten—make all sorts of unexpected concessions. Life is made up of compromises: that is what youth refuses to understand. I’ve lived long enough to doubt whether any real good ever came of sacrificing beautiful facts to even more beautiful theories. Do I seem casuistical? I don’t know—there may be losses either way…but the love of the man one loves…of the child one loves… that makes up for everything….”
She had spoken with a thrill which seemed to communicate itself to the hand her listener had left in hers. Her eyes filled suddenly, but through their dimness she saw the girl’s lips shape a last desperate deniaclass="underline"
“Don’t you see it’s because I feel all this that I mustn’t—that I can’t?”
III
Mrs. Quentin, in the late spring afternoon, had turned in at the doors of the Metropolitan Museum. She had been walking in the Park, in a solitude oppressed by the ever-present sense of her son’s trouble, and had suddenly remembered that some one had added a Beltraffio to the collection. It was an old habit of Mrs. Quentin’s to seek in the enjoyment of the beautiful the distraction that most of her acquaintances appeared to find in each other’s company. She had few friends, and their society was welcome to her only in her more superficial moods; but she could drug anxiety with a picture as some women can soothe it with a bonnet.
During the six months that had elapsed since her visit to Miss Fenno she had been conscious of a pain of which she had supposed herself no longer capable: as a man will continue to feel the ache of an amputated arm. She had fancied that all her centres of feeling had been transferred to Alan; but she now found herself subject to a kind of dual suffering, in which her individual pang was the keener in that it divided her from her son’s. Alan had surprised her: she had not foreseen that he would take a sentimental rebuff so hard. His disappointment took the uncommunicative form of a sterner application to work. He threw himself into the concerns of the Radiator with an aggressiveness that almost betrayed itself in the paper. Mrs. Quentin never read the Radiator, but from the glimpses of it reflected in the other journals she gathered that it was at least not being subjected to the moral reconstruction which had been one of Miss Fenno’s alternatives.
Mrs. Quentin never spoke to her son of what had happened. She was superior to the cheap satisfaction of avenging his injury by depreciating its cause. She knew that in sentimental sorrows such consolations are as salt in the wound. The avoidance of a subject so vividly present to both could not but affect the closeness of their relation. An invisible presence hampered their liberty of speech and thought. The girl was always between them; and to hide the sense of her intrusion they began to be less frequently together. It was then that Mrs. Quentin measured the extent of her isolation. Had she ever dared to forecast such a situation, she would have proceeded on the conventional theory that her son’s suffering must draw her nearer to him; and this was precisely the relief that was denied her. Alan’s uncommunicativeness extended below the level of speech, and his mother, reduced to the helplessness of dead-reckoning, had not even the solace of adapting her sympathy to his needs. She did not know what he felt: his course was incalculable to her. She sometimes wondered if she had become as incomprehensible to him; and it was to find a moment’s refuge from the dogging misery of such conjectures that she had now turned in at the Museum.
The long line of mellow canvases seemed to receive her into the rich calm of an autumn twilight. She might have been walking in an enchanted wood where the footfall of care never sounded. So deep was the sense of seclusion that, as she turned from her prolonged communion with the new Beltraffio, it was a surprise to find she was not alone.
A young lady who had risen from the central ottoman stood in suspended flight as Mrs. Quentin faced her. The older woman was the first to regain her self-possession.
“Miss Fenno!” she said.
The girl advanced with a blush. As it faded, Mrs. Quentin noticed a change in her. There had always been something bright and bannerlike in her aspect, but now her look drooped, and she hung at half-mast, as it were. Mrs. Quentin, in the embarrassment of surprising a secret that its possessor was doubtless unconscious of betraying, reverted hurriedly to the Beltraffio.
“I came to see this,” she said. “It’s very beautiful.”
Miss Fenno’s eye travelled incuriously over the mystic blue reaches of the landscape. “I suppose so,” she assented; adding, after another tentative pause, “You come here often, don’t you?”
“Very often,” Mrs. Quentin answered. “I find pictures a great help.”
“A help?”
“A rest, I mean…if one is tired or out of sorts.”
“Ah,” Miss Fenno murmured, looking down.
“This Beltraffio is new, you know,” Mrs. Quentin continued. “What a wonderful background, isn’t it? Is he a painter who interests you?”
The girl glanced again at the dusky canvas, as though in a final endeavor to extract from it a clue to the consolations of art. “I don’t know,” she said at length; “I’m afraid I don’t understand pictures.” She moved nearer to Mrs. Quentin and held out her hand.
“You’re going?”
“Yes.”
Mrs. Quentin looked at her. “Let me drive you home,” she said, impulsively. She was feeling, with a shock of surprise, that it gave her, after all, no pleasure to see how much the girl had suffered.
Miss Fenno stiffened perceptibly. “Thank you; I shall like the walk.”
Mrs. Quentin dropped her hand with a corresponding movement of withdrawal, and a momentary wave of antagonism seemed to sweep the two women apart. Then, as Mrs. Quentin, bowing slightly, again addressed herself to the picture, she felt a sudden touch on her arm.
“Mrs. Quentin,” the girl faltered, “I really came here because I saw your carriage.” Her eyes sank, and then fluttered back to her hearer’s face. “I’ve been horribly unhappy!” she exclaimed.
Mrs. Quentin was silent. If Hope Fenno had expected an immediate response to her appeal, she was disappointed. The older woman’s face was like a veil dropped before her thoughts.