“I’ve thought so often,” the girl went on precipitately, “of what you said that day you came to see me last autumn. I think I understand now what you meant—what you tried to make me see…. Oh, Mrs. Quentin,” she broke out, “I didn’t mean to tell you this—I never dreamed of it till this moment—but you do remember what you said, don’t you? You must remember it! And now that I’ve met you in this way, I can’t help telling you that I believe—I begin to believe—that you were right, after all.”
Mrs. Quentin had listened without moving; but now she raised her eyes with a slight smile. “Do you wish me to say this to Alan?” she asked.
The girl flushed, but her glance braved the smile. “Would he still care to hear it?” she said fearlessly.
Mrs. Quentin took momentary refuge in a renewed inspection of the Beltraffio; then, turning, she said, with a kind of reluctance: “He would still care.”
“Ah!” broke from the girl.
During this exchange of words the two speakers had drifted unconsciously toward one of the benches. Mrs. Quentin glanced about her: a custodian who had been hovering in the doorway sauntered into the adjoining gallery, and they remained alone among the silvery Vandykes and flushed bituminous Halses. Mrs. Quentin sank down on the bench and reached a hand to the girl.
“Sit by me,” she said.
Miss Fenno dropped beside her. In both women the stress of emotion was too strong for speech. The girl was still trembling, and Mrs. Quentin was the first to regain her composure.
“You say you’ve suffered,” she began at last. “Do you suppose I haven’t?”
“I knew you had. That made it so much worse for me—that I should have been the cause of your suffering for Alan!”
Mrs. Quentin drew a deep breath. “Not for Alan only,” she said. Miss Fenno turned on her a wondering glance. “Not for Alan only. That pain every woman expects—and knows how to bear. We all know our children must have such disappointments, and to suffer with them is not the deepest pain. It’s the suffering apart—in ways they don’t understand.” She breathed deeply. “I want you to know what I mean. You were right—that day—and I was wrong.”
“Oh,” the girl faltered.
Mrs. Quentin went on in a voice of passionate lucidity. “I knew it then—I knew it even while I was trying to argue with you—I’ve always known it! I didn’t want my son to marry you till I heard your reasons for refusing him; and then—then I longed to see you his wife!”
“Oh, Mrs. Quentin!”
“I longed for it; but I knew it mustn’t be.”
“Mustn’t be?”
Mrs. Quentin shook her head sadly, and the girl, gaining courage from this mute negation, cried with an uncontrollable escape of feeling:
“It’s because you thought me hard, obstinate narrow-minded? Oh, I understand that so well! My self-righteousness must have seemed so petty! A girl who could sacrifice a man’s future to her own moral vanity—for it was a form of vanity; you showed me that plainly enough—how you must have despised me! But I am not that girl now—indeed I’m not. I’m not impulsive—I think things out. I’ve thought this out. I know Alan loves me—I know how he loves me—and I believe I can help him—oh, not in the ways I had fancied before—but just merely by loving him.” She paused, but Mrs. Quentin made no sign. “I see it all so differently now. I see what an influence love itself may be—how my believing in him, loving him, accepting him just as he is, might help him more than any theories, any arguments. I might have seen this long ago in looking at you—as he often told me—in seeing how you’d kept yourself apart from—from—Mr. Quentin’s work and his—been always the beautiful side of life to them—kept their faith alive in spite of themselves—not by interfering, preaching, reforming, but by—just loving them and being there—” She looked at Mrs. Quentin with a simple nobleness. “It isn’t as if I cared for the money, you know; if I cared for that, I should be afraid—”
“You will care for it in time,” Mrs. Quentin said suddenly.
Miss Fenno drew back, releasing her hand. “In time?”
“Yes; when there’s nothing else left.” She stared a moment at the pictures. “My poor child,” she broke out, “I’ve heard all you say so often before!”
“You’ve heard it?”
“Yes—from myself. I felt as you do, I argued as you do, I acted as I mean to prevent your doing, when I married Alan’s father.”
The long empty gallery seemed to reverberate with the girl’s startled exclamation—“Oh, Mrs. Quentin—”
“Hush; let me speak. Do you suppose I’d do this if you were the kind of pink-and-white idiot he ought to have married? It’s because I see you’re alive, as I was, tingling with beliefs, ambitions, energies, as I was—that I can’t see you walled up alive, as I was, without stretching out a hand to save you!” She sat gazing rigidly forward, her eyes on the pictures, speaking in the low precipitate tone of one who tries to press the meaning of a lifetime into a few breathless sentences.
“When I met Alan’s father,” she went on, “I knew nothing of his—his work. We met abroad, where I had been living with my mother. That was twenty-six years ago, when the Radiator was less—less notorious than it is now. I knew my husband owned a newspaper—a great newspaper—and nothing more. I had never seen a copy of the Radiator; I had no notion what it stood for, in politics—or in other ways. We were married in Europe, and a few months afterward we came to live here. People were already beginning to talk about the Radiator. My husband, on leaving college, had bought it with some money an old uncle had left him, and the public at first was merely curious to see what an ambitious, stirring young man without any experience of journalism was going to make out of his experiment. They found first of all that he was going to make a great deal of money out of it. I found that out too. I was so happy in other ways that it didn’t make much difference at first; though it was pleasant to be able to help my mother, to be generous and charitable, to live in a nice house, and wear the handsome gowns he liked to see me in. But still it didn’t really count—it counted so little that when, one day, I learned what the Radiator was, I would have gone out into the streets barefooted rather than live another hour on the money it brought in….” Her voice sank, and she paused to steady it. The girl at her side did not speak or move. “I shall never forget that day,” she began again. “The paper had stripped bare some family scandal—some miserable bleeding secret that a dozen unhappy people had been struggling to keep out of print—that would have been kept out if my husband had not—Oh, you must guess the rest! I can’t go on!”
She felt a hand on hers. “You mustn’t go on, Mrs. Quentin,” the girl whispered.
“Yes, I must—I must! You must be made to understand.” She drew a deep breath. “My husband was not like Alan. When he found out how I felt about it he was surprised at first—but gradually he began to see—or at least I fancied he saw—the hatefulness of it. At any rate he saw how I suffered, and he offered to give up the whole thing—to sell the paper. It couldn’t be done all of a sudden, of course—he made me see that—for he had put all his money in it, and he had no special aptitude for any other kind of work. He was a born journalist—like Alan. It was a great sacrifice for him to give up the paper, but he promised to do it—in time—when a good opportunity offered. Meanwhile, of course, he wanted to build it up, to increase the circulation—and to do that he had to keep on in the same way—he made that clear to me. I saw that we were in a vicious circle. The paper, to sell well, had to be made more and more detestable and disgraceful. At first I rebelled—but somehow—I can’t tell you how it was—after that first concession the ground seemed to give under me: with every struggle I sank deeper. And then—then Alan was born. He was such a delicate baby that there was very little hope of saving him. But money did it—the money from the paper. I took him abroad to see the best physicians—I took him to a warm climate every winter. In hot weather the doctors recommended sea air, and we had a yacht and cruised every summer. I owed his life to the Radiator. And when he began to grow stronger the habit was formed—the habit of luxury. He could not get on without the things he had always been used to. He pined in bad air; he drooped under monotony and discomfort; he throve on variety, amusement, travel, every kind of novelty and excitement. And all I wanted for him his inexhaustible foster-mother was there to give!