VI CHALMERS—CLEARLY A CLUBMAN

“But I can tell you one thing, Claire”—Patsy looked at her stepmother across a sea of chiffon, surging round seven fat red-lettered trunks—“never do I go abroad for six months again! And if the Angel’s education perishes (grimly) it’ll have to perish, that’s all; as long as his father—as long as Warren remains what he is. Of course, I’ve always known Warren was weak, but——”

“I’ve always thought you were rather glad he was weak,” ventured the stepmother, her dainty silvered head half lost in the vastness of the biggest trunk. “You have always said——”

“I’ve said I was glad he wasn’t infallible, certainly,” Patsy cut in a bit shortly. “So I am. I wouldn’t have Warren goody-good—like so many handsome men!—for anything. At the same time, you must admit there’s a difference between—well, ordinary flirtation, and the sort of thing Warren’s just confessed to; it must be a very deep interest in a woman, that would allow one to accept her influence in obtaining a Cabinet appointment! I daresay (carelessly) you’ve seen the woman?”

“Yes.” The stepmother’s head was altogether lost to view, this time. “Yes; I’ve seen her.”

“Warren didn’t tell me her name,” Patsy gazed hard at the lace she was folding. “He started to, but I wouldn’t let him. I told him”—she laughed lightly—“I really took no interest. He knew of course I could find out from you, as you’d been staying here in Washington ever since I went away.”

The stepmother opened her lips, but shut them again—rather tightly. Then, “He lost no time in making a clean breast of it,” she said—as though something forced her to say it. “And really, Patsy, the whole affair—well, Warren certainly did not take the initiative; you know a popular young Congressman——”

“Cannot afford to get himself talked about,” finished Patsy, rising to the full dignity of her five feet five. “There is not the slightest use in your pleading for Warren, Claire,” she said coldly. “Of course he knew I should hear all about this Mrs.—Whatever-her-name-is, the first tea-party I’d go to: his telling me, the first morning I got home, is only a part of his other cowardice—he couldn’t bear to have me hear from some one else. One can always tell one’s story more agreeably than the onlooker, you know. However”—and Patsy’s smile made the little stepmother wince—“we’re not twenty-one this time, are we, dear? And it’s not such a serious case as when Warren caught me sliding down the bannisters!”

“I suppose we all like to slide down the bannisters, once in a while?” The stepmother regarded Patsy rather wistfully. No, she was no longer twenty-one, this beautiful, tawny-eyed little person. The ten years since then—well, was not Patsy unpacking her trunks?—and quite calmly? The stepmother wished—as with unreasonable ardor—that they were back again at that day when she had packed them up and left Warren. One can do so much more with the age that takes things tragically, she reflected.

But, as Patsy said, it was not so serious now. Though the bannisters—in the present case—were more slippery. “I suppose we all like to slide down them?” persisted the stepmother. “When our playfellows are gone—and there’s nothing else to do?”

Patsy kissed her. “You’re a dear, Claire,” she said softly. “It’s very evident you’ve never lived in Washington ten years, and been—Warren’s wife,” she ended suddenly. “Oh, I know well enough they never let him alone,” she added, half under her breath; “women can’t, somehow, if a man’s good-looking—and has influence. But there’s Kent Chalmers—one never hears of Kent like that; and he’s quite as attractive as Warren—well, almost—and if he liked he could have twice Warren’s influence. But somehow Kent just saunters along—nothing in particular happens to him, nothing in particular’s said about him. He’s just an agreeable person—clearly, a clubman pure and simple.” Patsy laughed. “That’s funny, isn’t it, dear? A clubman pure and simple! But” (the lovely tawny eyes grew serious again) “Kent is; and he’s miles too good for his wife—you know that, Claire”—Patsy’s voice came from the depths of a huge cupboard, where she was storing away very small boots—“Farleigh Chalmers is nowhere near good enough for Kent.”

The stepmother gazed at the back of Patsy’s head—a little strangely. “No—I don’t believe she is,” she said. “Patsy, I see the Angel—I see Junior coming up the drive—and—no, my dear! He has not got his rubbers on! That child——!”

Patsy threw an arm around her. “Never mind, grannie dear. What’s it matter, rubbers or not, when one’s ten, and owns a velocipede! Nothing happens then, somehow, does it?” She was peering through the twilight at a sturdy figure trudging up the drive. A very tall figure followed it—rather slowly. “It’s Warren with him,” said Patsy, stiffening; “no it isn’t—why it’s Kent! He’s come to say hello—but how odd of him, when all the men are at the Club—and Kent’s such a very clubman, isn’t he? I think that’s rather sweet of Kent, Claire—I’ll run down right away; he must have wanted to see me especially!”

“Yes,” said the stepmother, smoothing Patsy’s lovely hair, “he must. I—I’ll just wait up here for Junior, dear. His feet, you know——”

Patsy laughed. “Of course. I’ll send him straight to you. I shan’t be long down myself, probably; Kent will want to get on to the Club, you know. It’s his business, Farleigh says—the Club!”

“Well, Patsy?”

“Well, Kent?”

“You’re home?”

“Yes, I’m home. Oh, yes!”—Patsy’s eyes were following two absurd autumn leaves, chasing each other across the wind-swept lawn. “I’m home,” she said again—very quietly; as her eyes came back to the comfort of the fire-lit sitting-room.

“Aren’t you glad, then?” asked Chalmers gently. He had sat down opposite her, by the fire. Patsy admitted again that he was almost as handsome as Warren. Too bad he never did anything, she reflected; he was too good for just the Club. In fact, Patsy decided suddenly, he was good enough to help her.

“Am I glad?” she repeated slowly, while her eyes still measured him. “Well, Kent—you know all about it, of course—would you be? Oh, I suppose I’m a little cad to answer you like that,” she went on swiftly, “even though you are Timothy’s friend—my brother’s friend, and—my husband’s. Because you are, perhaps I should say. But Kent”—she faced him squarely, with that little boyish movement of the shoulders that Patsy would never lose, no matter how many tens of years went by—“you’re my friend too—have been ever since I came to Washington; and that’s a very long time. You know how I’ve worked for Warren, how I’ve hated the work I had to do for him—because of the wires to be pulled and the finesse to be made use of, all the sort of thing a Congressman’s wife has to do, you know, and that was like driving nails into the frankness Timothy and I had always been used to. But you know I did do that work, Kent—for Warren’s sake; nothing else in the world! And (Patsy turned her head away abruptly) my reward was always, that I was everything to Warren.”

“Yes——?” Chalmers’ voice came to her like the strong grip of an understanding hand.

“Well,—that’s all. You know—Warren says every one in Washington knows—I’ve not been everything to him. It was only necessary for me to go away for a very little time and—Warren found some one who was really everything to him.” Patsy looked across at Warren’s friend, but he was shading his eyes, so that she could not see them. “Just put yourself in my place, Kent; suppose Farleigh——”

“That is what I’m trying to do, put myself in your place,” Chalmers interrupted very quietly; “and I admit it’s not a pleasant place, Patsy. Still—Warren told you all this? He came straight to you, and told you everything?”

“Yes. But——”

“He might very easily not have told you,” meditated Chalmers. “People—in such cases, people don’t often tell, you know.”

“He knew, of course, I’d find out,” returned Patsy a bit scornfully. “In this place every one knows everything.”

“Or invents it,” retorted Chalmers. “Tell me truthfully, Patsy, if you had heard that Warren was er—interested in some other woman, that she was using her influence” (Chalmers hesitated), “her husband’s influence to get him a Cabinet appointment—Warren told you that?” he added quickly.

“Yes,” said Patsy, very low.

“Then—truthfully—if any one in Washington had told you this thing about Warren, tell me—would you have believed it? Would you, Patsy?”

There was a moment of rather tense silence; then “Warren sent you here to plead for him,” Patsy broke out, tying her handkerchief in hard little knots; “and you’re doing it—oh, cleverly! But it’s no good, Kent. Of course, I wouldn’t have believed it; you know that. But it’s no good, Kent, Warren——”

“And you don’t credit Warren with the wit to know it too?” Chalmers interrupted, impatiently. “I daresay there have been stories, plenty of them, about Warren, as there are about every politician, that have made your blood boil, Patsy; and yet, with all the experience he’s had with you, and knowing how much importance you’d attach to this story if it were to come to you in the usual way, you think that Warren told you the truth himself because he was afraid? My dear Patsy, you don’t know strength when it’s shown you!”

“My dear Kent,” Patsy’s voice was as cold as the fall wind that whistled to them through the chimney, “I know weakness when I’ve lived with it for ten years. Oh, you don’t need to remind me”—she went on restlessly—“I know I’ve liked Warren’s weakness, I’ve encouraged it, I suppose, by begging him not to be a saint and all that, like his mother and all those Boston aunts had tried to make him. And, secretly, I suppose too, I’ve rather gloried in being the stronger nature: I was willing Warren should have the cleverness, the brains, if I could direct them. I liked feeling myself always the power behind the throne, and all that sort of thing, and—well, you can’t blame me if I resent having the throne usurped in my absence!”

“Is that what you said to Warren, when he told you?” Chalmers had risen and walked over to the window. It was very cold and bleak outside.

“I said to Warren”—Patsy’s friend had never heard quite that note in her voice—oddly hollow it was, and colorless—“that as he had made the decision, he must abide by it. That we were both of us too sensitive to make a scandal, and besides there was the Angel—Junior, I mean; I told Warren we should have to go on living here, of course; but that—as he had already chosen to go his way, I certainly should not interfere. I had no idea of subjecting myself to more confessions like this morning’s.”

“Yes!” Chalmers wheeled round suddenly and came over to her. “And I suppose that while you were saying it, you felt very eloquent and injured and pleased with yourself—that you were able to put it to him so clearly, and convincingly. And you congratulated yourself for not flying into a rage and making a scene, as so many women would have done. The very fact that you were talking down to him gave you a pleasant thrill of self-approbation!—oh, I know you strong people,” he added bitterly. “You’re the weakest people in the world!”

“Kent!” She was too astonished to be furious, even.

“Yes; I mean it. Lord knows I’ve been strong long enough to know, haven’t I? But by Heavens, I’m beginning to fairly long to be weak! Here you have a man (he still stood over her, sternly) whom you have, confessedly, encouraged in his weakness, nay, taught his weakness. You teach him, too, to depend on you utterly, you give him all the complement of sense and practical judgment that his own brains and imagination need; then suddenly, and for the first time, you withdraw all this—not heartlessly, for you had Junior’s welfare to consider; but unrealizingly. You withdraw all this that Warren has depended on for years, and he finds himself all at once alone. A hand is stretched out—and you know as well as I do, Patsy, in Washington it is not a hand, but many hands. He takes one of them—a little doubtfully, yet somehow trustingly, too; and—it’s a very experienced hand, this that he’s caught hold of—he lets it drag him deeper and deeper, till he very nearly drowns. Then, all of a sudden, he comes to the top—with a little gasp of realization. He shakes himself loose—oh, yes, he did, weeks ago!—he puts in a month of the most ghastly shipwreck a man can know. And at the end of that time he has the sublime courage to tell you! And you—what do you do for him?”

“How do you know all this about Warren?” demanded Patsy, irrelevantly. This time it was she who had risen and gone over to the window. “He told me, when I asked about you, that he had scarcely seen you, since I’d been away. How do you know what he’s been through?”

“I know, Patsy—because—I’ve been through shipwreck myself, though of a different sort. Thank God!—a different sort! For I never had to screw my shrinking soul up to the point of baring it to a strong person’s knife!” Chalmers came over to her, and laid both hands on her shoulders. “Patsy, dear little girl, just remember, will you, that I am Timothy’s friend, and your friend, and—Warren’s friend; remember it, will you? For I’ve said some rather harsh things to you. But—don’t you see? Maybe it’s because I envy you—yes” (as Patsy’s eyes opened wide at him), “that may be it. You see, little pal”—Chalmers’ voice was not quite steady—“in spite of everything, Warren hasn’t failed you! Or if he has, it’s been to show himself to you, nearer perfect than he’s ever been before. He was weak, yes; even cheap, perhaps—which is much worse than weak—but through that very weakness somehow he gained strength to climb up and stand beside you—on your level, for the first time in his life. And you—oh, Patsy! you pushed him over the precipice! It’s a way strong natures have—the way of the fittest, I suppose; you didn’t see that for the first time in his life he was strong, worthy of you, worthy of all you had given him before. You saw—isn’t it so, Patsy?—only the woman?”

“Yes,” said Patsy, faintly, “it is so.” She was staring amazedly at the handsome, passionately earnest face of the clubman. “But, Kent—I don’t understand—why do you feel so keenly about all this? You”—she laughed a little nervously—“it’s almost as though you were pleading your own case. But I’m sure such a thing has never happened to you, Kent—it couldn’t somehow: you’re er—too remote, too much of a—what shall I say?—not dreamer, exactly——”

“Yes,”—the lines about the clubman’s mouth hardened—“I think you have hit it exactly, Patsy: I’ve been too much of a dreamer! But”—he slumped down into his chair again—“let all that go; it’s of no consequence anyway, my part. Just say you’ll let Warren see that it’s not going to make any difference, will you?—the—the woman, I mean? You will say that much, Patsy?”

Patsy looked away from him, for a long moment. Then her hand met his with the old impulsive frankness. “Yes, I will, Kent. If you care enough for Warren to come here and plead for him, I surely care enough to forgive him! Though, of course”—she weakened a little—“you’re an outsider in the affair: you can’t really see what it means to——”

“To forgive? Perhaps not,—then again, perhaps I do. You see——”

“Somebody had to forgive the woman, I suppose,” it occurred to Patsy who was intent on her own train of thought; “or not to forgive her. Oh, do you know if I were that woman’s husband, Kent, I just couldn’t forgive her—that’s all! I couldn’t. Why, think——” she broke off suddenly, looking up at him with a little laugh. “Do you know what just came into my mind, Kent?—something perfectly absurd!—that what I ought to do now, is to go beg the woman’s husband to forgive her! Then I’d have conquered my weakness as well as Warren did his, eh?” Patsy stopped abruptly; for there in the door stood Warren.

He still wore his overcoat, and his splendidly built body seemed to have hunched down into it—apathetically. “Well——?” he said, coming over and dropping into a third chair by the fire, “I suppose you’ve talked it all over?”

The big clubman, his friend, got up and began slowly to draw on one glove. “Ye-es,” he said,—and it was with the characteristic Club drawl—“we’ve talked it all over, Warren, and—it’s all right!” His ungloved hand went out to the other man; who stared at it—then up into the face above it—and finally, with a long breath, wrung it nearly off.

“Well, I must be toddling along to the Club,” added Chalmers lightly; “the boys will be missing me, you know; yes, the boys will be missing me. Good-night, Patsy, my dear” (she had gone over to the door with him, and he spoke in an undertone) “and—and don’t worry too much about that—that other person, you know. I daresay her hus—I daresay it’s all right with her, too. Good-night, Warren.”

“It is all right?” Warren asked his wife. In his tired face a little glimmer of vitality showed.

“All right!” echoed Patsy, her eyes meeting his with a something he had never seen in them before. Then, “Take this wet coat off at once, Warren Adams,” she scolded, “and those boots—you’re to go straight upstairs and change them. I declare, it’s certainly a good thing I’ve come home!—you’re worse than Junior, about your rubbers!” She was tugging at his heavy coat, but he caught her hands and drew her about, to face him.

“Yes,” he said—reverently—“it’s a very good thing you’ve come home!”

And for some reason, Patsy had to snatch her hands away and go flying up the stairs ahead of him.

“But do you know, Claire,” she told the little stepmother, after she had finished the story of Chalmers’ visit and his strange zeal on Warren’s behalf, “it’s just as I told Kent: I can’t see how that woman’s husband can forgive her! Why, she——”

“You told Kent that?” asked the stepmother, oddly.

“Why, yes—why not?”

“Nothing. Except that—that woman’s husband is Kent. The woman, you see, was Farleigh.”

“Farleigh!” Patsy covered her face with her hands. “Oh, no—no! Not Farleigh, Claire!—why it couldn’t have touched Kent, a thing like that; it couldn’t, you know—and then you see he came here to plead for Warren. Oh, no, no, Claire—it couldn’t have been Farleigh!”

“The woman was Farleigh,” insisted the little stepmother, with gentle obstinacy.

“And I told him he couldn’t judge—that he was too much of an outsider, too remote——!” Patsy drew her hands down from her face, with a little sob. “I said ‘you’re too much of a dreamer’; and—oh, Claire!—Kent said ‘yes, you’ve hit it exactly! I’ve been too much of a dreamer!’” Patsy had dropped down on one of the big trunks, and was crying bitterly. There is no personal grief in the world as poignant as the pain one feels for a creature who bears his silently.

“But, Patsy—don’t cry so, dear”—into the older woman’s face had come a wonderful understanding sweetness—“don’t you see why Kent came here and talked to you that way? Don’t you see that it’s futile to be sorry for a man who loves as Kent can love?”

“You mean——?” Patsy sat up and dried her eyes.

“I mean—why do you suppose that Kent came here to-day to plead for Warren, Patsy?—to plead for his friend? Never in the world! He came to plead for the injury wrought his friend!—for the person who wrought the injury. Ah, my dear!—to be loved as Kent loves Farleigh——!” The silver-haired woman’s voice had sunk almost to a whisper. “It—it’s worth being wicked, just to find it out. It’s sublime!”

“And he went off to the Club!”—Patsy was talking more to herself than audibly—“he said the boys would be missing him—the boys, that’s all!”

Somewhere a bell rang musically. A child’s voice called “Mumsie!” And a man came and stood in the door, waiting—his eyes fixed yearningly on the tear-stained face within.

Patsy looked at him—looked at the little stepmother; but as she slipped a hand through the arm of each of them, it was not of them she was thinking, but of Chalmers—clearly a clubman, pure and simple.