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Ashley: "On general principles, I shouldn't know, but in this particular instance I happen to know that she is engaged to Owen Brooks. They were a great deal more together last summer."
Miss Garnett, with conviction: "So they were!" With returning doubt: "But why didn't she say so?"
Ashley: "I can't tell you; she may have had her reasons, or she may not. Can you possibly tell me, in return for my ignorance, why the fact of her engagement should involve me in the strange way it seems to have done with Miss Ramsey?"
Miss Garnett, with a burst of involuntary candor: "Why, I did that. Or, no! What's she been doing?"
Ashley: "Really, Miss Garnett – "
Miss Garnett: "How can I tell you anything, if you don't tell me everything? You wouldn't wish me to betray confidence?"
Ashley: "No, certainly not. What was the confidence?"
Miss Garnett: "Well – But I shall have to know first what she's been doing. You must see that yourself, Mr. Ashley." He is silent. "Has she – has Isobel – been behaving – well, out of character?"
Ashley: "Very much indeed."
Miss Garnett: "I expected she would." She fetches a thoughtful sigh, and for her greater emotional convenience she sinks into an easy-chair and leans forward. "Oh dear! It is a scrape." Suddenly and imperatively: "Tell me exactly what she did, if you hope for any help whatever."
Ashley: "Why, she offered me a cocktail – "
Miss Garnett: "Oh, how good! I didn't suppose she would dare! Well?"
Ashley: "And she smoked cigarettes – "
Miss Garnett: "How perfectly divine! And what else?"
Ashley, coldly: "May I ask why you admire Miss Ramsey's behaving out of character so much? I think the smoking made her rather faint, and – "
Miss Garnett: "She would have let it kill her! Never tell me that girls have no moral courage!"
Ashley: "But what – what was the meaning of it all?"
Miss Garnett, thoughtfully: "I suppose if I got her in for it, I ought to get her out, even if I betray confidence."
Ashley: "It depends upon the confidence. What is it?"
Miss Garnett: "Why – But you're sure it's my duty?"
Ashley: "If you care what I think of her – "
Miss Garnett: "Oh, Mr. Ashley, you mustn't think it strange of Isobel, on my bended knees you mustn't! Why, don't you see? She was just doing it to disgust you!"
Ashley: "Disgust me?"
Miss Garnett: "Yes, and drive you back to Emily Fray."
Ashley: "Drive me ba – "
Miss Garnett: "If she thought you were engaged to Emily, when you were coming here all the time, and she wasn't quite sure that she hated to have you, don't you see it would be her duty to sacrifice herself, and – Oh, I suppose she's heard everything up there, and – " She catches herself up and runs out of the room, leaving Ashley to await the retarded descent of skirts which he hears on the stairs after the crash of the street door has announced Miss Garnett's escape. He stands with his back to the mantel, and faces Miss Ramsey as she enters the room.
VII
MISS RAMSEY, ASHLEY
Miss Ramsey, with the effect of cold surprise: "Mr. Ashley? I thought I heard – Wasn't Miss Garnett – "
Ashley: "She was. Did you think it was the street door closing on me?"
Miss Ramsey: "How should I know?" Then, courageously: "No, I didn't think it was. Why do you ask?" She moves uneasily about the room, with an air of studied inattention.
Ashley: "Because if you did, I can put you in the right, though I can't restore Miss Garnett's presence by my absence."
Miss Ramsey: "You're rather – enigmatical." A ring is heard; the maid pauses at the doorway. "I'm not at home, Nora." To Mr. Ashley: "It seems to be very close – "
Ashley: "It's my having been smoking."
Miss Ramsey: "Your having?" She goes to the window and tries to lift it.
Ashley: "Let me." He follows her to the window, where he stands beside her.
Miss Ramsey: "Now, she's seen me! And you here with me. Of course – "
Ashley: "I shouldn't mind. But I'm so sorry if – and I will go."
Miss Ramsey: "You can't go now – till she's round the corner. She'll keep looking back, and she'll think I made you."
Ashley: "But haven't you? Aren't you sending me back to Miss Fray to tell her that I must keep my engagement, though I care nothing for her, and care all the world for you? Isn't that what you want me to do?"
Miss Ramsey: "But you're not engaged to her! You just – "
Ashley: "Just what?"
Miss Ramsey, desperately: "You wish me to disgrace myself forever in your eyes. Well, I will; what does it matter now? I heard you telling Esther you were not engaged. I overheard you."
Ashley: "I fancied you must."
Miss Ramsey: "I tried to overhear! I eavesdropped! I wish you to know that."
Ashley: "And what do you wish me to do about it?"
Miss Ramsey: "I should think any self-respecting person would know. I'm not a self-respecting person." Her wandering gaze seems to fall for the first time upon the tray with the cocktails and glasses and cigarettes; she flies at the bell-button and presses it impetuously. As the maid appears: "Take these things away, Nora, please!" To Ashley when the maid has left the room: "Don't be afraid to say what you think of me!"
Ashley: "I think all the world of you. But I should merely like to ask – "
Miss Ramsey: "Oh, you can ask anything of me now!"
Ashley, with palpable insincerity: "I should like to ask why you don't respect yourself?"
Miss Ramsey: "Was that what you were going to ask? I know it wasn't. But I will tell you. Because I have been a fool."
Ashley: "Thank you. Now I will tell you what I was really going to ask. Why did you wish to drive me back to Miss Fray when you knew that I would be false to her a thousand times if I could only once be true to you?"
Miss Ramsey: "Now you are insulting me! And that is just the point. You may be a very clever lawyer, Mr. Ashley, and everybody says you are – very able, and talented, and all that, but you can't get round that point. You may torture any meaning you please out of my words, but I shall always say you brought it on yourself."
Ashley: "Brought what on?"
Miss Ramsey: "Mr. Ashley! I won't be cross-questioned."
Ashley: "Was that why you smoked, and poured cocktails out of an unopened bottle? Was it because you wished me to hate you, and remember my duty, and go back to Miss Fray? Well, it was a dead failure. It made me love you more than ever. I am a fool too, as you call it."
Miss Ramsey: "Say anything you please. I have given you the right. I shall not resent it. Go on."
Ashley: "I should only repeat myself. You must have known how much I care for you, Isobel. Do you mind my calling you Isobel?"
Miss Ramsey: "Not in the least if you wish to humiliate me by it. I should like you to trample on me in every way you can."
Ashley: "Trample on you? I would rather be run over by a steam-roller than tread on the least of your outlying feelings, dearest. Do you mind my saying dearest?"
Miss Ramsey: "I have told you that you can say anything you like. I deserve it. But oh, if you have a spark of pity – "
Ashley: "I'm a perfect conflagration of compassion, darling. Do you object to darling?"
Miss Ramsey, with starting tears: "It doesn't matter now." She has let her lovely length trail into the corner of the sofa, where she desperately reclines, supporting her elbow on the arm of it, and resting her drooping head on her hand. He draws a hassock up in front of her, and sits on it.
Ashley: "This represents kneeling at your feet. One doesn't do it literally any more, you know."
Miss Ramsey, in a hollow voice: "I should despise you if you did, and" – deeply murmurous – "I don't wish to despise you."
Ashley: "No, I understand that. You merely wish me to despise you. But why?"
Miss Ramsey, nervously: "You know."
Ashley: "But I don't know – Isobel, dearest, darling, if you will allow me to express myself so fully. How should I know?"
Miss Ramsey: "I've told you."
Ashley: "May I take your hand? For good-by!" He possesses himself of it. "It seems to go along with those expressions."
Miss Ramsey, self-contemptuously: "Oh yes."
Ashley: "Thank you. Where were we?"
Miss Ramsey, sitting up and recovering her hand: "You were saying good-by – "
Ashley: "Was I? But not before I had told you that I knew you were doing all that for my best good, and I wish – I wish you could have seen how exemplary you looked when you were trying to pour a cocktail out of a corked bottle, between your remarks on passionate fiction and puffs of the insidious cigarette! When the venomous tobacco began to get in its deadly work, and you turned pale and reeled a little, and called for air, it made me mentally vow to go back to Miss Fray instantly, whether I was engaged to her or not, and cut out poor old Brooks – "
Miss Ramsey: "Was it Mr. Brooks? I didn't hear the name exactly."
Ashley: "When I was telling Miss Garnett? I ought to have spoken louder, but I wasn't sure at the time you were listening. Though as you were saying, what does it matter now?"
Miss Ramsey: "Did I say that?"
Ashley: "Words to that effect. And they have made me feel how unworthy of you I am. I'm not heroic – by nature. But I could be, if you made me – by art – "
Miss Ramsey, springing to her feet indignantly: "Now, you are ridiculing me – you are making fun of me."
Ashley, gathering himself up from his hassock with difficulty, and confronting her: "Do I look like a man who would dare to make fun of you? I am half a head shorter than you, and in moral grandeur you overtop me so that I would always have to wear a high hat when I was with you."
Miss Ramsey, thoughtfully: "Plenty of girls are that way, now. But if you are ashamed of my being tall – " Flashingly, and with starting tears.
Ashley: "Ashamed! I can always look up to you, you can always stoop to me!" He stretches his arms toward her.
Miss Ramsey, recoiling bewildered: "Wait! We haven't got to that yet."
Ashley: "Oh, Isobel – dearest – darling! We've got past it! We're on the home stretch, now."
XIX
THE NIGHT BEFORE CHRISTMAS
A MORALITY
I
MR. AND MRS. CLARENCE FOUNTAIN
Mrs. Clarence Fountain, backing into the room, and closing the door noiselessly before looking round: "Oh, you poor thing! I can see that you are dead, at the first glance. I'm dead myself, for that matter." She is speaking to her husband, who clings with one hand to the chimney-piece, and supports his back with the other; from this hand a little girl's long stocking lumpily dangles; Mrs. Fountain, turning round, observes it. "Not finished yet? But I don't wonder! I wonder you've even begun. Well, now, I will take hold with you." In token of the aid she is going to give, Mrs. Fountain sinks into a chair and rolls a distracted eye over the littered and tumbled room. "It's worse than I thought it would be. You ought to have smoothed the papers out and laid them in a pile as fast as you unwrapped the things; that is the way I always do; and wound the strings up and put them one side. Then you wouldn't have had to wade round in them. I suppose I oughtn't to have left it to you, but if I had let you put the children to bed you know you'd have told them stories and kept them all night over their prayers. And as it was each of them wanted to put in a special Christmas clause; I know what kind of Christmas clause I should have put in if I'd been frank! I'm not sure it's right to keep up the deception. One comfort, the oldest ones don't believe in it any more than we do. Dear! I did think at one time this afternoon I should have to be brought home in an ambulance; it would have been a convenience, with all the packages. I simply marvel at their delivery wagons getting them here."
Fountain, coming to the table, where she sits, and taking up one of the toys with which it is strewn: "They haven't all of them."
Mrs. Fountain: "What do you mean by all of them?"
Fountain: "I mean half." He takes up a mechanical locomotive and stuffs it into the stocking he holds.
Mrs. Fountain, staying his hand: "What are you doing? Putting Jimmy's engine into Susy's stocking! She'll be perfectly insulted when she finds it, for she'll know you weren't paying the least attention, and you can't blame Santa Claus for it with her. If that's what you've been doing with the other stockings – But there aren't any others. Don't tell me you've just begun! Well, I could simply cry."
Fountain, dropping into the chair on the other side of the table, under the shelter of a tall Christmas tree standing on it: "Do you call unwrapping a whole car-load of truck and getting it sorted, just beginning? I've been slaving here from the dawn of time, and I had to have some leisure for the ghosts of my own Christmases when I was little. I didn't have to wade round in the wrappings of my presents in those days. But it isn't the sad memories that take it out of you; it's the happy ones. I've never had a ghastlier half-hour than I've just spent in the humiliating multiplicity of these gifts. All the old birthdays and wedding-days and Fourth of Julys and home-comings and children's christenings I've ever had came trooping back. There oughtn't to be any gay anniversaries; they should be forbidden by law. If I could only have recalled a few dangerous fevers and funerals!"
Mrs. Fountain: "Clarence! Don't say such a thing; you'll be punished for it. I know how you suffer from those gloomy feelings, and I pity you. You ought to bear up against them. If I gave way! You must think about something cheerful in the future when the happiness of the past afflicts you, and set one against the other; life isn't all a vale of tears. You must keep your mind fixed on the work before you. I don't believe it's the number of the packages here that's broken you down. It's the shopping that's worn you out; I'm sure I'm a mere thread. And I had been at it from immediately after breakfast; and I lunched in one of the stores with ten thousand suburbans who had come pouring in with the first of their unnatural trains: I did hope I should have some of the places to myself; but they were every one jammed. And you came up from your office about four, perfectly fresh."
Fountain: "Fresh! Yes, quite dewy from a day's fight with the beasts at Ephesus on the eve of Christmas week."
Mrs. Fountain: "Well, don't be cynical, Clarence, on this, of all nights of the year. You know how sorry I always am for what you have to go through down there, and I suppose it's worse, as you say, at this season than any other time of year. It's the terrible concentration of everything just before Christmas that makes it so killing. I really don't know which of the places was the worst; the big department stores or the separate places for jewelry and toys and books and stationery and antiques; they were all alike, and all maddening. And the rain outside, and everybody coming in reeking; though I don't believe that sunshine would have been any better; there'd have been more of them. I declare, it made my heart ache for those poor creatures behind the counters, and I don't know whether I suffered most for them when they kept up a ghastly cheerfulness in their attention or were simply insulting in their indifference. I know they must be all dead by this time. 'Going up?' 'Going down?' 'Ca-ish!' 'Here, boy!' I believe it will ring in my ears as long as I live. And the whiz of those overhead wire things, and having to wait ages for your change, and then drag your tatters out of the stores into the streets! If I hadn't had you with me at the last I should certainly have dropped."
Fountain: "Yes, and what had become of your good resolutions about doing all your Christmas shopping in July?"
Mrs. Fountain: "My good resolutions? Really, Clarence, sometimes if it were not cruelty to animals I should like to hit you. My good – You know that you suggested that plan, and it wasn't even original with you. The papers have been talking about it for years; but when you brought it up as such a new idea, I fell in with it to please you – "
Fountain: "Now, look out, Lucy!"
Mrs. Fountain: "Yes, to please you, and to help you forget the Christmas worry, just as I've been doing to-night. You never spare me."
Fountain: "Stick to the record. Why didn't you do your Christmas shopping in July?"
Mrs. Fountain: "Why didn't I? Did you expect me to do my Christmas shopping down at Sculpin Beach, where I spent the whole time from the middle of June till the middle of September? Why didn't you do the Christmas shopping in July? You had the stores under your nose here from the beginning till the end of summer, with nothing in the world to hinder you, and not a chick or a child to look after."
Fountain: "Oh, I like that. You think I was leading a life of complete leisure here, with the thermometer among the nineties nine-tenths of the time?"
Mrs. Fountain: "I only know you were bragging in all your letters about your bath and your club, and the folly of any one going away from the cool, comfortable town in the summer. I suppose you'll say that was to keep me from feeling badly at leaving you. When it was only for the children's sake! I will let you take them the next time."
Fountain: "While you look after my office? And you think the stores are full of Christmas things in July, I suppose."
Mrs. Fountain: "I never thought so; and now I hope you see the folly of that idea. No, Clarence. We must be logical in everything. You can't get rid of Christmas shopping at Christmas-time."
Fountain, shouting wrathfully: "Then I say get rid of Christmas!"
II
MR. FRANK WATKINS, MRS. FOUNTAIN, FOUNTAIN
Watkins, opening the door for himself and struggling into the room with an armful of parcels: "I'm with you there, Clarence. Christmas is at the root of Christmas shopping, and Christmas giving, and all the rest of it. Oh, you needn't be afraid, Lucy. I didn't hear any epithets; just caught the drift of your argument through the keyhole. I've been kicking at the door ever since you began. Where shall I dump these things?"
Mrs. Fountain: "Oh, you poor boy! Here – anywhere – on the floor – on the sofa – on the table." She clears several spaces and helps Watkins unload. "Clarence! I'm surprised at you. What are you thinking of?"
Fountain: "I'm thinking that if this goes on, I'll let somebody else arrange the presents."
Watkins: "If I saw a man coming into my house with a load like this to-night, I'd throw him into the street. But living in a ninth-story flat like you, it might hurt him."
Mrs. Fountain, reading the inscriptions on the packages: "'For Benny from his uncle Frank.' Oh, how sweet of you, Frank! And here's a kiss for his uncle Frank." She embraces him with as little interruption as possible. "'From Uncle Frank to Jim.' Oh, I know what that is!" She feels the package over. "And this is for 'Susy from her aunt Sue.' Oh, I knew she would remember her namesake. 'For Maggie. Merry Christmas from Mrs. Watkins.' 'Bridget, with Mrs. Watkins's best wishes for a Merry Christmas.' Both the girls! But it's like Sue; she never forgets anybody. And what's this for Clarence? I must know! Not a bath-gown?" Undoing it: "I simply must see it. Blue! His very color!" Holding it up: "From you, Frank?" He nods. "Clarence!"
Watkins: "If Fountain tries to kiss me, I'll – "
Fountain: "I wouldn't kiss you for a dozen bath-gowns." Lifting it up from the floor where Mrs. Fountain has dropped it: "It is rather nice."
Watkins: "Don't overwhelm me."
Mrs. Fountain, dancing about with a long, soft roll in her hand: "Oh, oh, oh! She saw me gloating on it at Shumaker's! I do wonder if it is."
Fountain, reaching for it: "Why, open it – "
Mrs. Fountain: "You dare! No, it shall be opened the very last thing in the morning, now, to punish you! How is poor Sue? I saw her literally dropping by the way at Shumaker's."
Watkins, making for the door: "Well, she must have got up again. I left her registering a vow that if ever she lived to see another Christmas she would leave the country months before the shopping began. She called down maledictions on all the recipients of her gifts and wished them the worst harm that can befall the wicked."
Mrs. Fountain: "Poor Sue! She simply lives to do people good, and I can understand exactly how she feels toward them. I'll be round bright and early to-morrow to thank her. Why do you go?"
Watkins: "Well, I can't stay here all night, and I'd better let you and Clarence finish up." He escapes from her detaining embrace and runs out.
III
MRS. FOUNTAIN, FOUNTAIN
Mrs. Fountain, intent upon her roll: "How funny he is! I wonder if he did hear anything but our scolding voices? Where were we?"
Fountain: "I had just called you a serpent."
Mrs. Fountain, with amusement: "No, really?" Feeling the parcel: "If it's that Spanish lace scarf I can tell her it was machine lace. I saw it at the first glance. But poor Sue has no taste. I suppose I must stand it. But I can't bear to think what she's given the girls and children. She means well. Did you really say serpent, Clarence? You never called me just that before."
Fountain: "No, but you called me a laughing hyena, and said I scoffed at everything sacred."
Mrs. Fountain: "I can't remember using the word hyena, exactly, though I do think the way you talk about Christmas is dreadful. But I take back the laughing hyena."
Fountain: "And I take back the serpent. I meant dove, anyway. But it's this Christmas-time when a man gets so tired he doesn't know what he's saying."
Mrs. Fountain: "Well, you're good, anyway, dearest, whatever you say; and now I'm going to help you arrange the things. I suppose there'll be lots more to-morrow, but we must get rid of these now. Don't you wish nobody would do anything for us? Just the children – dear little souls! I don't believe but what we can make Jim and Susy believe in Santa Claus again; Benny is firm in the faith; he put him into his prayer. I declare, his sweetness almost broke my heart." At a knock: "Who's that, I wonder? Come in! Oh, it's you, Maggie. Well?"
IV
THE FOUNTAINS, FOUNTAIN'S SISTERS
Maggie: "It's Mr. Fountain's sisters just telephoned up."
Mrs. Fountain: "Have them come up at once, Maggie, of course." As Maggie goes out: "Another interruption! If it's going to keep on like this! Shouldn't you have thought they might have sent their presents?"
Fountain: "I thought something like it in Frank's case; but I didn't say it."
Mrs. Fountain: "And I don't know why I say it, now. It's because I'm so tired I don't know what I am saying. Do forgive me! It's this terrible Christmas spirit that gets into me. But now you'll see how nice I can be to them." At a tap on the door: "Come in! Come in! Don't mind our being in all this mess. So darling of you to come! You can help cheer Clarence up; you know his Christmas Eve dumps." She runs to them and clasps them in her arms with several half-open packages dangling from her hands and contrasting their disarray with the neatness of their silk-ribboned and tissue-papered parcels which their embrace makes meet at her back. "Minnie! Aggie! To lug here, when you ought to be at home in bed dying of fatigue! But it's just like you, both of you. Did you ever see anything like the stores to-day? Do sit down, or swoon on the floor, or anything. Let me have those wretched bundles which are simply killing you." She looks at the different packages. "'For Benny from Grandpa.' 'For a good girl, from Susy's grandmother.' 'Jim, from Aunt Minnie and Aunt Aggie.' 'Lucy, with love from Aggie and Minnie.' And Clarence! What hearts you have got! Well, I always say there never were such thoughtful girls, and you always show such taste and such originality. I long to get at the things." She keeps fingering the large bundle marked with her husband's name. "Not – not – a – "