Don’t blame him for such thoughts; for every woman he knew was up to these tricks, and despite all envy, hatred, and malice they aided one another. All good women were busy finding wives for the unattached men of their acquaintance. Lanny had wondered, was it because they felt that men must have wives, or the other way around, that women must have husbands? Perhaps it was a reciprocal need, of which women were fundamentally, biologically aware. It was no second-class matter to them; it took precedence over all other matters, even a man’s duty to the world, even his duty to God. They justified this by declaring that if a man could not be true to a good wife he could not be true to God. Psychologists called this “rationalizing,” but the women considered it entirely rational, and apparently God was with them—for women managed to live longer, and to inherit the money. Lanny had read that they now controlled seventy per cent of the property in America, and certainly it was true that a majority of the clients on Lanny’s list were rich elderly widows, who lived their own lives and had no doubts about the irresponsibility of the male animal.
IX
Did some obscure sixth sense warn the woman there in the sunlit corner that someone was gazing at her? She looked up from her book, and at the same instant Lanny realized who she was—the librarian whom he had taken for an automobile ride on a moonlit midsummer’s night a little more than a year ago! Miss Priscilla Hoyle, of the Newcastle Public Library, daughter of the Puritans and prim official of a proper small town—but what a change in her! When last he had seen her, in an ancient and rather dingy place of employment, she had been pale and bloodless, or so he had thought; subdued and unobtrusive, a virgin in the temple of Minerva, goddess of wisdom; a lady of an age, or appearance of age, which had not changed for a decade and might not change for another. Or so he had thought.
But now she had color in her cheeks, or at any rate on them; now she wore a delightful little toque of red roses, and a dress to harmonize with the saucy headpiece. To Lanny’s expert eye it was apparent that the dress had been made at home; but even so, it was somewhat elegant and decidedly gay; he wondered, was that the way the town librarian was supposed to get herself up for the monthly meetings of the Board? Or was it only for special occasions, when the meeting took place at the home of the town’s “first lady”?
This was a woman whom Lanny had kissed and wished he hadn’t; but he was much too well bred to show any trace of embarrassment. “Why, Miss Hoyle!” he exclaimed. “A pleasure!” When she answered by speaking his name, he inquired: “May I join you?” Since it was his father’s home, she couldn’t say less than “Of course.” She closed her book, as a sign that she was prepared to give him her attention.
Drawing up a chair, he inquired, pleasantly: “Doesn’t the Board require your advice?”
“Just now they are discussing the appropriation for new books, and I fear they will not give me what I have asked. I didn’t want to embarrass them by my presence.”
“You are far too polite,” he countered, with a smile. “You should’ stay there and shame them.”
“I am saving my credit for the more important purpose—the new building.”
“I promised to help you with that, dear lady, and I talked to my stepmother very earnestly about it.”
“No doubt that was the reason she invited me to lunch some time ago. She gave me a full hour of her time and was very gracious. Our book-reading public is in your debt.”
All very conventional and proper, here in bright afternoon sunshine—and with the Board members in the next room. Quite different from the privacy of a motorcar on a moonlit midsummer’s night, when fairies and witches and other creatures are abroad and strange impulses stir in the hearts of men and women. It had been on the banks of the Newcastle River, at a spot favored by picnickers in the daytime and by petting parties at night. Almost exactly twenty years previously Lanny had kissed another girl there, and at that age it had’ been easier to excuse himself.
What was going on in the minds of this pair while they chatted politely about cultural conditions in the city of the merchants of death? Lanny’s mind was pervaded by surprise. He couldn’t take his eyes off his companion. He kept thinking: “Why she’s really a lovely woman!” And then: “What a difference it makes when they use their arts!” Then, horrid thought: “I wonder if she knew I was expected this afternoon! She must have known that I was likely to show up.” And so there started a panic in the breast of this much-sought widower. “Good Lord, is she expecting me to follow it up?” A truly distressing idea, to a man who was just congratulating himself upon having escaped from one entanglement! Wasn’t there any part of the world where a man could be safe from women?
X
What was going on in her mind? It was something she was going to allow him to guess about—that being the way of a maid with a man. Suddenly she surprised him with a question: “Tell me, Mr. Budd, do you believe in God?”
There had been a time in old New England when this question had been widely discussed in the best social circles, but nowadays God had been replaced by sex as a topic of polite conversation. Lanny felt it necessary to fence. “You mean the Old Testament God? Jehovah of the thunders, Lord God of battles?”
“I mean a purposive, creative Intelligence,” said the librarian.
Lanny stayed on the defensive. “Why do you ask me that?”
“I have been impressed by the books which you donated to the library—those of Jeans and Eddington.”
“Oh, I see. Those books surely give one a lot to think about.”
“I should be interested to hear your thoughts, Mr. Budd.”
Lanny ventured: “Whenever I try to think about God I run into contradictions, and begin to suspect the limitations of my own mind. You know the argument of John Stuart Mill, that God cannot be both all-powerful and all-good, or why would He permit evil in the world. This war, for example.”
“But this war is made by men, Mr. Budd.”
“Yes, but the men were made by God; and surely, if you or I had been consulted in the making, we would have put less hatred into their hearts.”
“You and I can choose between hate and love in our own hearts, can we not? Without this right to choose we would be mere cogs in a wheel. Without evil we could have no freedom. Until recently modern science has required me to believe that the universe had been wound up like a clock and would go on running mechanically, regardless of anything I might do. But now modern physics permits me, even encourages me, to believe that this is a mental universe, and that my choosing between good and evil may be a part of the process which constitutes God.”
“I see that you have really read those books,” remarked the man. He added, gallantly: “I feel sure you are much better equipped than I to understand them.”
XI
This highbrow conversation was interrupted by the breaking up of the Board meeting. The door from the library was opened, and Esther Remsen Budd came in. Did she feel any surprise at the tête-à-tête which she discovered in her sunroom? Had she felt any trace of suspicion some time ago when Lanny had suggested that she ought to cultivate the acquaintance of the librarian of her home town whom, naturally, she would know more about than her migratory stepson? She was the most self-contained of women and would never reveal an emotion unless she had weighed it and decided to do so. She invited the couple into the library to have tea, and presented her stepson to the members of the Board, several of whom he already knew.
Lanny found himself seated next to a magnificent stoutish lady, Mrs. Archibald Fleury, wife of the leading surgeon of the town, who had been known to charge members of the Budd family as much as a thousand dollars a shot. Both husband and wife belonged to the country club, and Mrs. Fleury was a past-president of the Clionian Society, and considered herself an authority on many subjects. Said she: “Miss Hoyle, I notice that your list of proposed purchases include a work on ‘hypnotherapy.’ We were all puzzled as to why you should think such a book needed in our library.”
; “We have had a number of applications for it,” replied the librarian, with proper meekness; “I suppose for the reason that there have been articles in the magazines about the use of hypnotism in the treatment of various mental ailments.”
“My husband says that the idea was given a very thorough trial a generation or more ago, and has been discarded.”
“That may be, Mrs. Fleury; but sometimes it happens that old ideas are revived in the light of new knowledge.”
“The Board decided to strike that item from the list,” announced the great lady, and the humble employee bowed her head and held her peace.
It really wasn’t any of Lanny’s business, and no one had asked him to butt in; but he had been inclined toward self-assertiveness from boyhood up, and the years had not tamed him. “You have brought up an interesting subject, Mrs. Fleury,” he remarked. “I should be glad to buy the book for my own reading and then donate it to the library, if there would be no objection.”
“Certainly not, Lanny”—she had known him from his youth. “We are not exercising any censorship. It is merely a question of the wise use of our limited funds.”
“My stepfather in France has quite a library of books on subjects having to do with the subconscious mind,” persisted the interloper. “I read several books by English and French physicians dealing with hypnotism. They may have been discarded and forgotten, but they ought to be of especial interest to your husband, for they contain weliauthenticated cases of the use of hypnotism as a substitute for anaesthetics in surgery. I remember one extraordinary case of an operation performed by Dr. Esdaile, an English surgeon in a government hospital in India—the removal of a tumor from a man; it weighed more than a hundred pounds and had to be lifted out with a sort of improvised derrick; yet the hypnotized patient felt no pain whatever.”
The wife of Newcastle’s great surgeon did not take kindly to the idea of receiving instructions from a layman. Said she: “People were more credulous in those days—even members of the medical profession. Nowadays we should find it hard to believe that a man could carry a hundred-pound tumor.”
“He didn’t carry it, Mrs. Fleury—he just lay still with it. He was an ignorant peasant and had no idea what else to do. His relatives brought him food, and of course they fed the tumor at the same time.”
“I never knew that you were interested in hypnotism,” put in Lanny’s stepmother, bringing a few drops of oil to these troubled waters.
“I have watched many experiments with it, and learned to practice it—not as a parlor trick, but as an important aid to the study of the subconscious mind. I can understand why the doctors have dropped the technique, because it requires special training and takes a lot of time and patience; giving pills is much simpler. But really, Mrs. Fleury, you would be astonished if you could see what can be done, and how many problems can be solved. I could hypnotize the members of this Board, with their consent, and tell them that they would accept the judgment of their librarian about books, and they would do it with entire contentment of mind.”
Nothing could have been more amiable than the manner of this offer, but for some reason it failed to appeal to a fashionable surgeon’s wife. “No, thank you,” she said. “I doubt if any of the Board would be interested in giving up their own judgment.”
“We do cherish our egos,” laughed Lanny; “even when they are opposed to proven facts.”
“Never mind,” interposed the librarian, hastily. “It’s my ego that’s out of order in this instance.”
“Well then, we might try it the other way,” suggested the visitor from outre mer. “I might hypnotize Miss Hoyle and tell her that she would always be pleased with the decisions of her Board.”
“That would be much better,” agreed the surgeon’s lady, forced to smile.
XII
The guests were taking their departure, one by one; and Lanny stood with Miss Hoyle in the music room, showing two paintings by Arnold Böcklin which he had sent his stepmother from Germany many years ago. They were the kind of art which. Esther appreciated because they dealt with ethical concepts, and she was an ethical person; they were symbolical, and while she wasn’t sure what the symbolism meant, she was certain that it must be profound. A woman’s figure with bowed head and long black veils, with Italian cypresses in the background painted very dark and mysterious—that might mean any kind of sorrow, and you could take it for your own. On the opposite side of the room was a youth, with face uplifted in a shaft of sunlight, and about him were meadows full of flowers; that was joy, or perhaps it was young acceptance of life, while the other was the regrets of maturity. You could have it your own way, for no “book” had been provided.
Lanny had discovered that his present companion was another ethical person, and he guessed that she would begin speculating about these paintings. While they were in the midst of it, Esther came and they agreed that since they were beautiful, it didn’t matter so much what they meant. Lanny decided that the two ladies had much the same kind of minds, and that his was different; which was only natural, since they had been raised in a grown-up Puritan village and he in the playground of aged and corrupt Europe.
When the librarian was ready to leave, the hostess remarked: “My husband has just telephoned that he is tied up in a business conference and will not be home for dinner. Wouldn’t you like to stay and take his place, Miss Hoyle?”
The librarian made no effort to conceal her pleasure. “Oh, thank you, Mrs. Budd!” she said. “You are too kind!” Lanny didn’t say anything; but his thought was: “What the devil!”
A suspicious and much-hunted male, he didn’t for a moment believe that Esther was concerned about an empty place at her dinner table. Could it possibly be that she was interested to throw her stepson together with an employee of her Library Board? Through Lanny’s mind flowed a whole stream of imaginings about what could be flowing through Esther’s. She had given up hope of ever interesting him in any of the town’s best “catches,” and said to herself: “All right, maybe it’s a bluestocking he wants. After all, he earns enough money for two. It would rather shock people, but they’d get over it; she has fine manners—and everybody’s talking about ‘democracy’ these days. We could easily get another librarian.”
Something of that sort; and Lanny had the feeling of being nudged and ever so gently guided. He had seen a motion picture of the trapping of a herd of wild elephants in a great stockade. Two well-trained female elephants were introduced among the terrified captives, and they would single out one of them and place themselves on each side of him, then shove him and impel him to a place where ropes were ready to bind his legs and render him helpless. These trained ones were always females; and he could imagine that the sounds they made were elephant language, and bore a close resemblance to the words he had heard from his mother and his stepmother, from Emily, Sophie, Margy, Nina, Bess, Rosemary, and other ladies elderly or middle-aged.
XIII
At the dinner table Lanny told the story of his recent travels. An interesting story, for, after all, who was there in the town of Newcastle, or for that matter in the state of Connecticut, who could say that he had talked with the masters of Europe on the verge of war? His audience was all of one sex: the mistress of this home, her secretary, and an elderly cousin who relieved her of the burdens of housekeeping; also, two visiting Budd ladies, and the librarian of the Newcastle Public Library. Of the half-dozen, none was more obviously absorbed than the last; she missed no word, and her questions were to the point, with the result that Lanny said to himself: “This is a really intelligent woman!”
And of course he didn’t fail to tell himself again that she was surprisingly pretty. Had she gone and got herself a “permanent,” or were the soft waves of her dark brown hair really permanent? Her neck showed no trace of those cords which betray age in women, and which caused our grandmothers to invent the band of soft velvet known as a “dog collar,” often weighted down with costly jewels, telling the world that if we’re n
o longer young, at least we have got the stuff, the mazuma, the spondulix, and that is what talks, and makes the mare go, and pays the piper and calls the tune.
Lanny had had this pretty woman on his conscience; not heavily, but enough to register in the scales. Now, while the others expressed their ideas about the war, and how wicked it was, and how it ought to have been prevented, Lanny thought: “Of course I shouldn’t have laid my hand on hers in the car; but how the devil was I to guess that she would lean her head on my shoulder? Maybe she had never been kissed before in her life; and maybe she thought I would come back—but, good Lord, doesn’t she know that I’ve been traveling?” So it goes in the minds of much-hunted widowers; and most of them say, let the woman look out for herself; but Lanny was tenderhearted, a regular softshell crab, who thought that women get a harsh deal from life and he didn’t want to make it any worse.
Esther had put him in his father’s seat at the head of the table, and this lady as the guest of honor at his right. He had every chance to look at her, and she behaved with the utmost decorum, not flashing him any signals, but really concerned with the history of the world, now being manufactured so rapidly and coming to all thinking people by radio and the newspaper page. It was something transcending in importance the fate of any individual, and to realize that was a matter of propriety. At the foot of the table sat the serious-minded mistress of this elegant but slightly austere home, and Lanny addressed her most of the time, and so did her town librarian—not forgetting the new building.
It was the same in the drawing-room, for a polite hour or so. Then, after the other ladies had withdrawn, Esther said: “Lanny, will you drive Miss Hoyle home?” That could mean only one thing, the world being what it is and ladies and gentlemen being what nature has made them. Esther might with propriety have said: “The chauffeur will take you home, Miss Hoyle.” Instead, she chose to say: “You may have your chance”—and to Lanny: “If it’s what you want, it’s all right with me.” Of course she didn’t speak either of those sentences, but they were what her action meant; and neither of the two would fail to know it.