The Adventures of a Widow: A Novel

"To-morrow, then, if you choose."

"You mean it? You promise it?"

"I mean it – and I promise it, since you seem so doubtful."

"I am doubtful," he exclaimed, kissing her, "because I can scarcely dream that this sudden happiness has fallen to me from the stars!.."

When he had left her, and she was quite alone, Pauline found her lips murmuring over the words, in a sort of mechanical repetition: "I have promised to marry him to-morrow."

She had indeed made this vow, and as a very sacred one. And the more that she reflected upon it the more thoroughly praiseworthy a course it seemed. Her nearest living relations were the Poughkeepsies and Courtlandt. She had quarrelled with both – or it meant nearly the same thing. There was no one left to consult. Besides, even if there had been, why should she consult any third party in this affair, momentous though it was? She loved; she was beloved. She was a widow with a great personal, worldly independence. She had already been assailed; what mattered a little more assailance? For most of those who would gossip and sneer she had a profound and durable contempt… Why, then, should she regret her spoken word?

And yet she found herself not so much regretting it as fearing lest she might regret it. She suddenly felt the need, and in keenest way, of a near confidential, trustworthy friend. But her long residence abroad had acted alienatingly enough toward all earlier American friendships. She could think of twenty women – married, or widows like herself – who would have received her solicited counsel with every apparent sign of sympathy. But with all these she had lost the old intimate sense; new ground must be broken in dealing with them; their views and creeds were what her own had been when she had known and prattled platitudes with them before her dolorous marriage: or at least she so chose to think, so chose to decide.

"There is one whom I could seek, and with whom I could seriously discuss the advisability of such a speedy marriage," at length ran Pauline's reflections. "That one is Mrs. Dares. Her large, sweet, just mind would be quite equal to telling me if I am really wrong or right… Still, there is an obstacle – her daughter, Cora. Yet that would make no difference with Mrs. Dares. She would be above even a maternal prejudice. She is all gentle equity and disinterested kindliness. I might see her alone – quite alone – this evening. Neither Cora nor the sister, Martha, need know anything. I would pledge her to secrecy before I spoke a word … I will go to her! I will go to Mrs. Dares, and will ask her just what I ought to do."

This resolve strengthened with Pauline after she had once made it. The hour was now somewhat late in the afternoon. She distrusted the time of Mrs. Dares's arrival up-town from her work, and decided that the visit had best be paid at about seven o'clock that same evening.

A little later she was amazed to receive the card of Mr. Barrowe. She went into her reception-room to see this gentleman, with mingled amusement and awkwardness; she was so ignorant what fatality had landed him within her dwelling.

"I scarcely know how to greet you, Mr. Barrowe," she said, after giving a hand to her guest. "You and I parted by no means peacefully last night, and I – I am (yes, I confess it!) somewhat unprepared…"

At this point Mr. Barrowe made voluble interruption. His little twinkling eyes looked smaller and acuter than before, and his gaunt, spheroidal nose had an unusual pallor as it rose from his somewhat depressed cheeks.

"You needn't say you are unprepared, Mrs. Varick!" he exclaimed. "I am unprepared myself. I had no idea of visiting you this afternoon. I had no idea that you would again give me the pleasure of receiving me. Handicapped as I am, myself, by visits, letters, applications, mercantile matters, I have insisted, however, on getting rid of all – yes, all trammels."

Here Mr. Barrowe paused, and Pauline gently inclined her head, saying, —

"That is very good of you. Pray proceed."

"Proceed!" cried Mr. Barrowe. He had already seated himself, but he now rose, approached Pauline, took her hand, and with an extravagant gallantry which his lank body caused closely to verge upon the ludicrous, lifted this hand ceremoniously to his pale lips. Immediately afterward he resumed his seat. And at once he recommenced speaking.

"I feel that I – I owe you the most profound of apologies," he declared, with a hesitation that seemed to have a sincere emotional origin. "Handicapped as I am by a hundred other matters, besieged as I am by bores who want my autograph, by people who desire me to write for this or that journal, by people who desire consultation with me on countless literary or even commercial subjects, I nevertheless have felt it a question of conscience to pay you this visit."

"A question of conscience?" said Pauline, suavely.

"Yes, Mrs. Varick. I – I have seen that stringently objectionable article in the … ahem … the 'Morning Monitor.' May I ask if you also have seen it? And pray be sure that when I thus ask I feel confident you must have seen it, since bad tidings travel quickly, and…"

"Yes, Mr. Barrowe, I have seen it," said Pauline, interrupting another thin, diplomatic sort of cough on the part of her visitor. "And I should be glad if you could tell me what devoted foe wrote it."

Mr. Barrowe now trembled with eagerness. "I – I can tell you!" he exclaimed. "It – it was that unhappy Miss Cragge! I had no sooner read it, in my office this morning, than I was attacked by a conviction – an absolute conviction – that she wrote it. Handicapped, besieged as I am … but let that pass…"

"Yes – let that pass," softly cried Pauline, meaning no discourtesy, yet bent upon reaching the bare fact and proof. "You say that you are sure that Miss Cragge wrote the article?"

"Positively certain," asseverated Mr. Barrowe. "I went to the lady at once. I found her at her desk in the office of – well, let us not mind what newspaper. I upbraided her with having written it! I was very presumptuous, perhaps – very dictatorial, but I did not care. I had stood up for the lady, not many evenings ago, at the risk of your displeasure."

"The lady!" repeated Pauline, half under her breath, and with a distinct sneer. "Go on, please, Mr. Barrowe. Did Miss Cragge confess?"

"Miss Cragge did not confess. But she showed such a defiant tendency not to confess – she treated me with such an overbearing pugnaciousness and disdain, that before I had been five minutes in her society I had no doubts whatever as to the real authorship of the shocking article. And now, Mrs. Varick, I wish to offer you my most humble and deferential apologies. I wish to tell you how deeply and sincerely sorry I am for ever having entered into the least controversy with you regarding that most aggressive and venomous female! For, my dear madam, besieged and handicapped though I may be by countless…"

"Don't offer me a word of apology, Mr. Barrowe!" here struck in Pauline, jumping up from her seat and seizing the hand of her guest. "It is quite needless! I owe you more than you owe me! You have told me the name of my enemy, of which I was nearly certain all along." And here Pauline gave the gentleman's bony and cadaverous face one of those glances which those who liked her best thought the most charming.

"I had been told," she went on, with a very winning intonation, "that you have a large, warm heart!"

"Who – who told you that?" murmured Mr. Barrowe, evidently under the spell of his hostess's beauty and grace.

"Mr. Kindelon," Pauline said, gently.

"Kindelon!" exclaimed Mr. Barrowe, "why he is my worst enemy, as – as I fear, my dear madam, that Miss Cragge is yours!"

"Oh, never mind Miss Cragge," said Pauline, with a sweet, quick laugh; "and never mind Mr. Kindelon, either. I have only to talk about you, Mr. Barrowe, and to tell you that I have never yet met a good, true man (for I am certain that you are such) who stood in his own light so persistently as you do. You have an immense talent for quarrelling," she went on, with pretty seriousness. "Neglect it – crush it down – be yourself! Yourself is a very honest and agreeable self to be. I am always on the side of people with good intentions, and I am sure that yours are of the best. A really bitter-hearted man ruffles people, and so do you. But your motives for it are as different from his as malice is different from dyspepsia. I am sure you are going to reform from this hour."

"Reform?" echoed Mr. Barrowe.

Pauline gave a laugh of silver clearness and heartiest mirth. As often happens with us when we are most assailed by care, she forgot all present misery for at least the space of a minute or so.

"Yes," she cried, with a bewitching glee quite her own and by no means lost upon her somewhat susceptible listener, "you are going to conform the Mr. Barrowe of real life to the Mr. Barrowe who writes those brilliant, judicial, and trenchant essays. Oh, I have read them! You need not fancy that I am talking mere foundationless flattery such as you doubtless get from many of those people who … well, who handicap you, you know… And your reformation is to begin at once. I am to be your master. I have a lot of lessons to teach!"

"When are your instructions to begin?" said Mr. Barrowe, with a certain awkward yet positive gallantry. "I am very anxious to receive them."

"Your first intimation of them will be a request to dine with me. Will you accept? – you and your wife of course."

"But my wife is an invalid. She never goes anywhere."

"I hope, however, that she sometimes dines."

"Yes, she dines, poor woman … incidentally."

"Then she will perhaps give me an incidental invitation to break bread… Oh, my dear Mr. Barrowe, what I mean is simply that I want to know you better, and so acquire the right to tell you of a few superficial faults which prevent all the world from recognizing your kindly soul. I…"

But here Pauline paused, for a servant entered with a card. She glanced at the card, and made an actually doleful grimace.

"Mr. Leander Prawle is here," she said to her visitor.

Mr. Barrowe gave a start. "In that case I must go," he said. "I once spoke ill of that young gentleman's most revered poem, and since then he has never deigned to notice me."

"But you will not forget the dinner, and what is to follow," said Pauline, as she shook hands.

"No," Mr. Barrowe protested. "If you cleave my heart in twain I shall try to live the better with the other half of it."

"I should not like to cleave it in twain," said Pauline. "It is too capable and healthy a heart for that. I should only try to make it beat with more temperate strokes… Au revoir, then. If you should meet Mr. Prawle outside, tell him that you are sorry."

"Sorry? But his poem was abominable!"

"All the more reason for you to be magnanimously sorry… Ah, here he is!"

Here Mr. Leander Prawle indeed was, but as he entered the room Mr. Barrowe slipped past him, and with a suddenness that almost prevented his identification on the part of the new-comer…

"Mrs. Varick," exclaimed Leander Prawle, while he pressed the hand of his hostess. "I came here because duty prompted me to come."

"I hope pleasure had a little to do with the matter, Mr. Prawle," said Pauline, while indicating a lounge on which they were both presently seated.

Mr. Prawle looked just as pale as when Pauline had last seen him, just as dark-haired, and just as dark-eyed; but the ironical fatigue had somehow left his visage; there was a totally new expression there.

"I suppose," he began, with his black eyes very fixedly directed upon Pauline's face, "that you have heard of the … the 'Morning Monitor's' outrageous…"

"Yes, Mr. Prawle," Pauline broke in. "I have heard all about it."

"And it has pained you beyond expression!" murmured the young poet. "It must have done so!"

"Naturally," replied Pauline.

"It … it has made me suffer!" asserted the new visitor, laying one slim, white hand upon the region of his heart.

"Really?" was the answer. "That is very nice and sympathetic of you."

Mr. Prawle regarded her with an unrelaxed and very fervid scrutiny. He now spoke in lowered and emotional tones, leaning toward his hearer so that his slender body made quite an exaggerated curve.

"My whole soul," he said, "is brimming with sympathy!"

Pauline conquered her amazement at this entirely unforeseen outburst.

"Thanks very much," she returned. "Sympathy is always a pleasant thing to receive."

Mr. Prawle, still describing his physical curve, gave a great sigh. "Oh, Mrs. Varick," he murmured, "I should like to kill the man who wrote that horrible article."

"Suppose it were a woman," said Pauline.

"Then I should like to kill the woman!.. Mrs. Varick, will you pardon me if I read you … a few lines which indignation com – yes, combined with reverence – actual reverence – inspired me to write after reading those disgraceful statements? The lines are – are addressed to yourself. With – with your permission, I – I will draw them forth."

Without any permission on Pauline's part, however, Mr. Prawle now drew forth the manuscript to which he had referred. His long pale fingers underwent a distinct tremor as he unrolled a large crackling sheet of foolscap. And then, when all, so to speak, was ready, he swept his dark eyes over Pauline's attentive countenance. "Have I your permission?" he falteringly inquired.

"It is granted, certainly, Mr. Prawle."

After a slight pause, and in a tone of sepulchrally monotonous quality, the young gentleman read these lines: —

"White soul, what impious voice hath dared to blameWith virulent slander thine unsullied life?Methinks that now the very stars should blushIn their chaste silver stateliness aloft!Methinks the immaculate lilies should droop lowFor very shame at this coarse obloquy.The unquarried marble of PentelicusDeny its hue of snow, and even the dawnForget her stainless birthright for thy sake!Curséd the hand that wrote of thee such wrong;Curséd the pen such hand hath basely clasped;Curséd the actual ink whose…"

"My dear Mr. Prawle!" exclaimed Pauline, at this point; "I must beg you not to make me the cause of so terrible a curse! Indeed, I cannot sanction it. I must ask you to read no more."

She was wholly serious. She forgot to look upon the humorous side of Mr. Prawle's action; his poem, so called, addressed her jarred nerves and wounded spirit as a piece of aggravating impudence. The whole event of his visit seemed like a final jeer from the sarcastic episode recently ended.

He regarded her now with a sorrowful astonishment. "You – you wish me to read no more!" he exclaimed.

"Yes, if you please," said Pauline, controlling her impatience as best she could.

"But I – I wrote it especially for you!" he proceeded. "I have put my soul into it! I consider it in many ways the most perfect thing that I have ever done. I intended to include it in my forthcoming volume, 'Moonbeams and Mountain-Peaks,' under the title of 'Her Vindication.' Even the grossly material poetic mind of Arthur Trevor, to whom I read it a few hours ago, admitted its sublimity, its spirituality!"

"I will admit both, also," said Pauline, whose mood grew less and less tolerant of this self-poised fatuity. "Only, I must add, Mr. Prawle, that it would have been better taste for you to have left this exasperating affair untouched by your somewhat saintly muse. And I shall furthermore request that you do not include the lines in your 'Moonbeams and Hill-Tops,' or" —

"Mountain-Peaks!" corrected Mr. Prawle, rising with a visible shudder. "Oh, Mrs. Varick," he went on, "I see with great pain that you are a most haughty and ungenerous lady! You – you have smitten me with a fearful disappointment! I came here brimming with the loftiest human sympathy! I believed that to-day would be a turning-point in my existence. I confidently trusted that after hearing my poem there would be no further obstacle in my career of greatness!"

Pauline now slowly left her seat. Unhappy as she was, there could be no resisting such magnificent opportunities of amusement as were now presented to her.

"Your career of greatness?" she quietly repeated. "Did I hear you properly, Mr. Prawle?"

Her guest was refolding his manuscript with an aggrieved and perturbed air. As he put the paper within a breast-pocket he rolled his dark eyes toward Pauline with infinite solemnity.

"You doubt, then," he exclaimed, "that I am born to be great – supremely great? Ah, there is no need for me to put that question now! I had thought otherwise before … when you smiled upon me, when you seemed to have read my poems, to be familiar with my growing fame!"

"You mistake," said Pauline: "I never meant to show you that I had read your poems. If I smiled upon you, Mr. Prawle, it was from courtesy only."

"Horrible!" ejaculated the young poet. He clasped his hands together in a somewhat theatrically despairing way, and for an instant lowered his head. "I – I thought that you were prepared to indorse, to assist my genius!" he soon proceeded, levelling a look of strong appeal at Pauline. "I thought that you had separated my poetic veracity from the sham of Trevor and Corson! I – I thought, Mrs. Varick, that in you I had found a true worshipper!"

Pauline was at last amused. "I usually reserve my worship for divinities, Mr. Prawle," she said, "and I have found but a few of these in all the history of literature."

"I see!" cried her companion, "you mean that I am not a genius!"

"I did not say so. But you have given me no proof of it."

"No proof of it! What was the poem I have just read?"

"It was … well, it was resonant. But I objected to it, as I have told you, on personal grounds." As she went on, Pauline tried to deal with a rather insubordinate smile of keen, sarcastic enjoyment.

"So you really think," she continued, "that you possess absolute genius?"

"I am certain of it!" cried Mr. Prawle.

"That is a very pleasant mental condition."

"Do you doubt it?.. Ah! I see but too plainly that you do!"

"Frankly," said Pauline, "I do."

Mr. Prawle flung both his hands towards the ceiling. "It is Kindelon's work," he cried, with an effect of very plaintive lamentation. "Kindelon is among those who yet oppose me."

"Mr. Kindelon is not responsible for my opinions," said Pauline. "However, you probably have other opponents?"

"Their name is legion! But why should I care? Do you join their ranks?.. Well, Shelley almost died because of being misunderstood! I had hoped that you would assist me in – yes, in the publication of my book of poems, Mrs. Varick. I do not mean that I wrote to you, for this reason, the poem which you have just refused to hear me read. Far from it! I only mean that I have cherished the idea of securing in you a patron. Yes, a patron! I am without means to bring forth 'Moonbeams and Mountain-Peaks.' And I had hoped that after hearing me read what I have already told you is my most nobly able creation, you would … consent, as a lover of art, of genius, of…"

"I understand," said Pauline. "You wish me to assist you in the publication of your volume." She was smiling, though a trifle wearily. "Well, Mr. Prawle, I will do it."

"You will do it!"

"Yes. You shall have whatever cheque you write me for…" She approached Prawle and laid her hand upon his arm. "But you must promise me to destroy 'Her Vindication' – not even to think of publishing it. Do you?"

"Yes … if you insist."

"I do insist… Well, as I said, write to me for the amount required."

Prawle momentarily smiled, as if from extreme gratitude. And then the smile abruptly faded from his pale face. "I will promise!" he declared. "But … oh, it is so horrible to think that you help me from no real appreciation of my great gifts – that you do so only from charity!"

"Charity is not by any means a despicable virtue."

"From a great millionaire to a poor poet – yes! The poet has a sensitive soul! He wants to be loved for his verses, for his inspiration, if he is a true poet like myself!"

"And you believe yourself a true poet, Mr. Prawle?"

"I?"

It is impossible to portray the majesty of Mr. Prawle's monosyllabic pronoun. "If I am not great," he enunciated slowly, "then no one has been or ever will be great. I have a divine mission. A truly and positively divine mission."

Pauline gave a little inscrutable nod. "A divine mission is a very nice thing to have. I hope you will execute it."

"I shall execute it!" cried Mr. Prawle. "All the poets, on every side of me, are singing about The Past. I, and I alone, sing of The Future. I set evolution to music … what other poet has done that? I wrest from Buckle, Spencer, Tyndall, Huxley – from all the grand modern thinkers, in fact – their poetic and yet rationalistic elements! If you had heard my poem to yourself through– if you had had the patience, I – I may add, the kindliness, to hear it through, you would have seen that my terminus was in accord with the prevailing theories of Herbert Spencer's noble philosophy…"

"Shall I ever cling to or love Herbert Spencer again?" thought Pauline, "when I see him made the shibboleth of such intellectual charlatans as this?"

"In accord," continued Mr. Prawle, "with everything that is progressive and unbigoted. I finished with an allusion to the Religion of Humanity. I usually do, in all my poems. That is what makes them so unique, so incomparable!"

Pauline held out her hand in distinct token of farewell.

"Belief in one's self is a very saving quality," she said. "I congratulate you upon it."

Mr. Prawle shrank offendedly toward the door. "You dismiss me!" he burst forth. "After I have bared my inmost soul to you, you dismiss me!"

Pauline tossed her head, either from irritation or semi-diversion. "Ah, you take too much for granted!" she said, withdrawing her hand.

Mr. Prawle had raised himself to his full height. "I refuse your assistance!" he ejaculated. "You offer it as you would offer it to a pensioner – a beggar! And you —you, have assumed the right of entertaining and fostering literary talent! I scarcely addressed you at your last reception … I waited. I supposed that in spite of Kindelon's known enmity, some of your guests must have told you how immense were my deserts – how they transcended the morbid horrors of Rufus Corson, and the glaring superficialities of Arthur Trevor. But I discover, plainly enough, that you are impervious to all intellectual greatness of claim. I will accept no aid from you! – none whatever! But one day, when the name of Leander Prawle is a shining and a regnant one, you will perhaps remember how miserably you failed to value his merits, and shrink with shame at the thought of your own pitiable misjudgment!.."

"Thank Heaven that monstrosity of literary vanity has removed itself!" thought Pauline, a little later, when Leander Prawle had been heard very decisively to close the outer hall-door. "And now I must dwell no longer on trifles – I must concern myself with far weightier matters."

The coming marriage to Kindelon on the morrow seemed to her fraught with untold incentive for reflection. "But I will not reflect," she soon determined. "I will at once try to see Mrs. Dares, and let her reflect for me. She is so wise, so capable, so admirable! I have consented because I love! Let her, if she shall so decide, dissuade me because of experiences weightier than even my own past bitter ones!"

The hour of her resolved visit to Mrs. Dares had now arrived. In a certain way she congratulated herself upon the distracting tendency of both Mr. Barrowe's and Mr. Prawle's visits. "They have prevented me," she mused, "from dwelling too much upon my own unhappy situation. Mr. Barrowe is a very sensible fool, and Mr. Prawle is a very foolish fool. They are both, in their way, taunting and satiric radiations from the dying bonfire of my own rash ambition. They are both reminders to me that I, after all, am the greatest and most conspicuous fool. Some other woman, more sensible and clever than I, will perhaps seek to establish in New York a social movement where intellect and education are held above the last Anglomaniac coaching-drive to Central Park, or the last vulgarly-select cotillon at Delmonico's. But it will be decades hence. I don't know how many … but it will be decades… All is over, now. I face a new life; I have ended with my salon. Only one result has come of it – Ralph Kindelon. Thank Heaven, he is a substantial result, though all the rest are shadow and illusion!"