第79章

``I AM an old woman,'' said Cyrilla.And, with a tightening at the heart Mildred saw, deep in the depths of her eyes, the look of old age.``I've found that I'm too old for love--for man-and-woman love--and that means I'm an old woman.''

Mildred felt that there was only a thin barrier of reserve between her and some sad secret of this strange, shy, loving woman's--a barrier so thin that she could almost hear the stifled moan of a broken heart.But the barrier remained; it would have been impossible for Cyrilla Brindley to talk frankly about herself.

When Mildred came out of her room the next morning, Cyrilla had gone, leaving a note:

I can't bear good-bys.Besides, we'll see each other very soon.Forgive me for shrinking, but really I can't.

Before night Mildred was settled in the new place and the new room, with no sense of strangeness.She was reproaching herself for hardness, for not caring about Cyrilla, the best and truest friend she had ever had.

But the truth lay in quite a different direction.The house, the surroundings, where she had lived luxuriously, dreaming her foolish and fatuous dreams, was not the place for such a struggle as was now upon her.

And for that struggle she preferred, to sensitive, sober, refined, impractical Cyrilla Brindley, the companionship and the sympathy, the practical sympathy, of Agnes Belloc.No one need be ashamed or nervous before Agnes Belloc about being poor or unsuccessful or having to resort to shabby makeshifts or having to endure coarse contacts.Cyrilla represented refinement, appreciation of the finished work--luxurious and sterile appreciation and enjoyment.Agnes represented the workshop--where all the doers of all that is done live and work.Mildred was descending from the heights where live those who have graduated from the lot of the human race and have lost all that superficial or casual resemblance to that race.She was going down to live with the race, to share in its lot.She was glad Agnes Belloc was to be there.

Generalizing about such a haphazard conglomerate as human nature is highly unsatisfactory, but it may be cautiously ventured that in New England, as in old England, there is a curiously contradictory way of dealing with conventionality.Nowhere is conventionality more in reverence; yet when a New-Englander, man or woman, happens to elect to break with it, nowhere is the break so utter and so defiant.If Agnes Belloc, cut loose from the conventions that had bound her from childhood to well into middle life, had remained at home, no doubt she would have spent a large part of her nights in thinking out ways of employing her days in outraging the conventionalities before her horrified and infuriated neighbors.But of what use in New York to cuff and spit upon deities revered by only an insignificant class--and only officially revered by that class?

Agnes had soon seen that there was no amusement or interest whatever in an enterprise which in her New England home would have filled her life to the brim with excitement.Also, she saw that she was well into that time of life where the absence of reputation in a woman endangers her comfort, makes her liable to be left alone --not despised and denounced, but simply avoided and ignored.So she was telling Mildred the exact truth.

She had laid down the arms she had taken up against the social system, and had come in--and was fighting it from the safer and wiser inside.She still insisted that a woman had the same rights as a man; but she took care to make it clear that she claimed those rights only for others, that she neither exercised them nor cared for them for herself.And to make her propaganda the more effective, she was not only circumspect herself, but was exceedingly careful to be surrounded by circumspect people.No one could cite her case as proof that woman would expand liberty into license.In theory there was nothing lively that she did not look upon at least with tolerance; in practice, more and more she disliked seeing one of her sex do anything that might cause the world to say ``woman would abuse liberty if she had it.'' ``Sensible people,'' she now said, ``do as they like.But they don't give fools a chance to titter and chatter.''

Agnes Belloc was typical--certainly of a large and growing class in this day--of the decay of ancient temples and the decline of the old-fashioned idealism that made men fancy they lived nobly because they professed and believed nobly.She had no ethical standards.She simply met each situation as it arose and dealt with it as common sense seemed in that particular instance to dictate.For a thousand years genius has been striving with the human race to induce it to abandon its superstitions and hypocrisies and to defy common sense, so adaptable, so tolerant, so conducive to long and healthy and happy life.Grossly materialistic, but alluringly comfortable.Whether for good or for evil or for both good and evil, the geniuses seem in a fair way at last to prevail over the idealists, religious and political.

And Mrs.Belloc, without in the least realizing it, was a most significant sign of the times.

``Your throat seems to be better to-day,'' said she to Mildred at breakfast.``Those simple house-remedies I tried on you last night seem to have done some good.

Nothing like heat--hot water--and no eating.The main thing was doing without dinner last night.''

``My nerves are quieter,'' advanced Mildred as the likelier explanation of the return of the soul of music to its seat.``And my mind's at rest.''

``Yes, that's good,'' said plain Agnes Belloc.``But getting the stomach straight and keeping it straight's the main thing.My old grandmother could eat anything and do anything.I've seen her put in a glass of milk or a saucer of ice-cream on top of a tomato-salad.

The way she kept well was, whenever she began to feel the least bit off, she stopped eating.Not a bite would she touch till she felt well again.''