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Empty Sack

<h2>CHAPTER III</h2> Marillo Park, N. Y., is more than a park; it is a life. When a social correspondent registers the fact that Mr. and Mrs. Robert Bradley Collingham, Miss Edith Collingham, and Mr. Robert Bradley Collingham, Junior, have arrived at Collingham Lodge, Marillo Park, from their camp in the Adirondacks, their farm in Dutchess County, or their apartment in Fifth Avenue, the implications are beyond any that can be set forth in cold print. Cold print will tell you that a man has died, but it can convey no adequate notion of the haven of peace into which presumably he has entered. Cold print might describe Marillo Park as it might describe Warwick Castle or the Château of Chenonceau, with a catalogue of landscapes and architectural minutiæ. It could tell you of charming houses set in artfully laid-out grounds, of gardens, shrubberies, and tennis courts, of the club, the swimming pool, the riding school, the golf links; but only experience could give you that sense of being beyond contact with outside vulgarity which is Marillo's specialty. Against its high stone wall outside vulgarity breaks as the sea against a cliff; before its beautiful grille gate it swirls like a river at the foot of a lawn with no possibility of overflow. As nearly as may be on earth, the resident of Marillo Park can be barricaded against the sordid, and withdrawn from all things inharmonious with his own high thought. But every Eden has its serpent, and at Collingham Lodge on that October afternoon this Satan had taken the form of a not very good-looking young man who was pacing the flagged terrace side by side with Miss Edith Collingham. I emphasize the fact that he was not good-looking for the reason that, in his role of Satan, it was an added touch of the diabolic. Tall, thin, and stormy eyed, his knifelike features were streaked with dark shadows which seemed to fall in the wrong places in his face. When it is further said that he was a young professor of political economy in a near-by university, without a penny or much prospect in the world, it will easily be seen how devilish a creature he was to have crept into such a paradise. He had crept in by means of being occasionally invited by young Sidebottom, whose family had the next estate to Collingham Lodge. Walls and hedges being unknown at Marillo, the lawns melted into one another with no other hint of demarcation than could be sketched by clumps of shrubs or skillfully scattered trees. You could be off the Collingham grounds and on to those of the Sidebottoms without knowing you had crossed a boundary. Between trees and shrubs you could slip from the one place to the other and not be seen from either. "She might meet him a thousand times and you or I wouldn't know it," Mrs. Collingham had pointed out to her husband when her suspicions were first roused. "All she's got to do is to go round that lilac bush and she might do anything." True; besides which, the mere chances of that hospitality without which Marillo could not be Marillo would throw together any two young people minded so to come. In such spacious freedom, an ineligible young professor could touch the hem of the garment of a banker's daughter without forcing the issue in any way. With the conversation between Miss Edith Collingham and Professor Ernest Ayling we have almost nothing to do. It is enough to say that, from the rapidity of the young pair's movements and the animation of their gestures, Mrs. Collingham judged that they were very much in earnest. Looking out from what was known as the terrace drawing-room, she was convinced that no two young people could talk like that without an understanding between them. She had been led to the terrace drawing-room by the sound of voices and the fact that it was the end of the house toward the Sidebottoms' premises. Against a background of cannas, dahlias, and gladioli, with maples flinging their flame and crimson up into a golden sky, the two figures passing and repassing the long French windows were little more than silhouettes. Such scraps of their phrases as drifted her way told her that they were up to nothing more criminal than settling the affairs of a distracted universe, but she had no intention that they should settle anything. At the appropriate moment she decided to make her presence felt. In doing this she was supported by the knowledge that her presence was a presence to be felt impressively. Of her profile, it was mere economy of effort to say that it was like a cameo, aristocratically regular and clear-cut. Her hair, prematurely white, lent itself to the simplest dressing, too classic to be a mode. A figure, of which it would have been vulgar to use the word "plump," carried the most sumptuous costumes with regal suitability. Studied, polished, and perfected, she wore her finish as a mask that concealed the lioness mother which she was. It was the lioness mother who confronted the young couple as they turned in their promenade. Edith alone came forward. Her professor being given a bow so cold that it was tantamount to a dismissal, as a dismissal was obliged to take it. Within a minute, he was down both the flowered terraces and out of sight behind the lilac bush. Mrs. Collingham's enunciation had the exquisite precision of the rest of her personality. "I thought I asked you, dear, not to encourage that impossible young man to come here." "But I can't stop his coming without encouragement, can I, mother darling?" Mother darling moved to the edge of the flagged pavement, looking down on the blaze of summer's final fireworks. On each of the two lower terraces fountains played, their back drops falling on the water lillies in the basins. It being the moment for a strong appeal, she sounded the first note without turning round. "Edith, I wonder if you have the faintest idea of a mother's ambitions for her children?" Instinct had taken her to the root of the whole difference between the two generations in the family. Instinct took Edith to the same spot in her reply. "I think I have. But, on the other hand, I wonder if a mother has the faintest idea of her children's ambitions for themselves." Following an outflanking movement, Mrs. Collingham threw her line a little farther. "It's curious how, as your father and I approach middle age, we feel that you and Bob are going to disappoint us." "I'm sure I speak for Bob as well as for myself when I say that we wouldn't disappoint you willingly. It's only that the things we want are so different." "Ours—your father's and mine—are simple and natural." "That's the way Bob's and mine seem to us." She was in a tennis costume carelessly worn and not very fresh. A weatherbeaten Panama pulled down to shade her eyes gave a touch of cowboy picturesqueness to an ensemble already picturesque rather than pretty or beautiful. Leaning nonchalantly against the high, carved back of a teakwood chair, the figure had a leopard grace to which the owner seemed indifferent. Indifference, boredom, dissatisfaction focused the expression of the delicate, irregular features to a wistful longing as far as possible from the mother's brisk self-approval. All this was emphasized by a pair of restless, intelligent eyes, of which one was blue and the other brown. The mother turned round with an air of expostulation. "I'm sure I can't see what you want to make of your life. You seem to have no ideals, not any more than Bob. You're not pretty, but you're not ugly; and you've a kind of witchiness most pretty girls have to do without. If you'd only dress with some decency and make the best of yourself, you could take as well as any other girl." "Yes; if the game was worth the candle." "But surely some game is worth the candle." "Oh, certainly; only, not this one, of taking—in the way you seem to think girls want to take." "Some girls do." "Oh, some girls, of course—only, not—not my kind." "But what is your kind? That's what I can't understand." The girl smiled—a dim, distant, rather wistful smile that merely fluttered on the lips and died like a feeble light. "And that's what I can't explain to you, mother darling." "Are we so far apart as that?" "We're not far apart at all. It's only that I'm myself, while you want me to be a continuation of you." "I don't want anything but what will make for your happiness." "My happiness as you see it for me—not as I see it for myself." "But you're my child, Edith. I can't be without hopes for you." Another dim, quickly dying smile was the only answer to this as Edith picked up her racket from the teakwood chair and moved toward the house. On a note that would have been plaintive had it not been so restrained, Mrs. Collingham continued: "Edith darling, I don't think there's been a moment since you were born when I haven't dreamed of a brilliant future for you, and now—" "But, oh, mother dear, what's the use of a brilliant future, as you call it, when your whole soul is set on something else?" The lioness mother was roused. "But it shouldn't be set on something else. That's what I resent. Don't think for a minute that your father and I mean to stand by and see you throw yourself away." "I didn't know there was any question of my doing that." "That boy will never be anything better than a university professor—never in this world; and if it comes to our forbidding it, forbid it we shall without hesitation." The girl's head was flung up. Boredom and indifference passed out of the strange eyes. For an instant the conflict of wills seemed about to break out into mutual challenge. It was Edith who first regained enough mastery of self to say, quietly. "You surely wouldn't take that responsibility—whatever I did." The soft answer having warned the mother of the danger of collision, she subsided to an easier, if a more fretful, tone. "And Bob's such a worry, too. If your father knew about this Follett girl, I think he would go wild." "But we don't know anything ourselves—beyond the few hints dropped by Hubert Wray which I'm sure he didn't mean." "Well, I'm worried. It's the war, I suppose. If he'd only settle down to work—" "He won't settle down till he marries; and if he marries, it will have to be some girl he's in love with." "If he were to marry a girl of that class—" "Girl of what class? What's the good word?" Mrs. Collingham turned on her son, who stood on the threshold of one of the French windows. "We're talking about men and women marrying outside of their own class, Bob, and I was trying to say how fatal it was." "Good Lord! mother, do people still think things like that? I thought they'd rung the bells on them even at Marillo. Wasn't it one of the things we fought for in the war—to wipe out the lines of caste?" "But not to wipe out ideals, Bob. What fathers and mothers have worked to build up their sons fought to maintain." Max, the police-dog puppy, who had been poking his nose between Bob's legs, now squeezed his vigorous person through the opening and came out on the terrace joyously. Wagging his powerful tail and sniffing about each of the ladies in turn, he seemed to be saying: "Don't you see that I'm here? Now cheer up, everybody, and let's have a good time." Bob made a feint at seconding this invitation. Going up to his mother, he slipped an arm round her waist and kissed her. "Old lady, you're years behind the times. What fathers and mothers built turned out to be a rotten old world which they've handed to us to bolster up. We're tackling the job as well as we can, but you must give us a free hand." Releasing herself from his embrace, she stood with an air of authority. "If giving you a free hand means looking on at the frustration of our hopes, you'll have to learn, Bob, that your father and mother still have some of the energy that placed you where you are." "Of course you've placed us where we are, mother dear," Edith agreed, pacifically, "but that's just the point. Because we are where you've placed us, we're crazy to go on to something else. Isn't that the way of life—the perpetual struggle for what we haven't got? Because you and father didn't have a big house and a big position to begin with, you worked till you got them. Bob and I were born to them, and so—" "It's this way, old lady," Bob broke in. "All your generation had bigness on the brain. It was a kind of disease like the water that swells a baby's head. They used to think it was a specially American disease till they found out it was English, French, German, and every other old thing. The whole lot of you puffed up till the earth hadn't room for you, and you made the war to push one another off." "I didn't make the war, Bob. I've never been anything but a poor mother, striving and praying for her children." "Well, you did push one another off—to the tune of ten or twelve millions, mostly the young. Since then, the universal disease of swelled head is being got under control, as they say of epidemics. Only the left-overs catch it still, and Edith and I aren't that. Hardly anyone of our age is. We just don't take the germ. Not that we blame you and your lot, old lady—" "Thanks, Bob." "Oh, don't thank me. I'm just telling you." "And the point of your homily is—" "That our generation all over the world has got out of Marillo Park. Marillo Park is a back number. It's as out of date as the hat you wore five years ago. You couldn't give it away to the poor, because the poor don't wear that kind of thing, and the rich have gone on to a new fashion. Listen, old lady. The thing I'd hate worst of all for dad and you is to see you left behind, trying to put over the footlights a lot of old gags that the audience swallowed in its time, but which don't get a laugh any more. The actor who tries to do that is pass-ay forever—" "If you'd keep to English, Bob, I should understand you a little better." Bob grew excited, laying down the law on the palm of his left hand with the forefinger of the right, while Max, all aquiver, scored the points with his terrific tail. "I'll not only keep to English, but I'll tell you the line to take if you want to remain the up-to-date, bright-as-a-button old lady you are." "I should be grateful." "Then here goes. Take a long breath. Keep your wig on. Put your feet in plaster casts so as not to kick." He summoned his forces to speak strongly. "If Edith was to pick out a man she wanted to marry—and I was to pick out a girl—no matter who—it would be the chic new stuff for father and you—" But the chic new stuff for father and her was not laid down on the palm of the hand for the reason that a portly shadow was seen to move within the dimness of the drawing-room. At the same time, Max's joy was stifled by the appearance on the terrace of Dauphin, the Irish setter, who was consciously the dog en tître of the master of the house. Mrs. Collingham composed herself. Edith picked up a tennis ball from the flags and jumped it on her racket. Bob put a cigarette in his mouth and struck a match. It was the unwritten law of the family not to risk intimate discussion before a tribunal too august. Once he had reached the terrace, it was plain that Collingham was tired. His shoulders were hunched; his walk had no spring in it. "I'm all in," he sighed, sinking into the teakwood chair. "Poor father!" Edith dropped a hand on his shoulder. He drew it down to his lips and kissed it. "You'd like your tea, wouldn't you?" The solicitude was his wife's. "We were just going to have it. Bob, do find Gossip and tell him to bring it here." Bob limped into the house and out again. By the time he had returned, his father was saying: "Yes; it's been a trying day. Among other things I've had to dismiss old Follett." "The devil you have!" The exclamation was so heartfelt as to turn all eyes on the young man. "Why, Bob dear," his mother asked, craftily, "what difference does it make to you?" Bob did his best to recapture a position he was not yet ready to abandon. "It may not make any difference to me, but—but how is he going to live?" "Is that your responsibility?" Edith came to her brother's rescue. "It's some one's responsibility, mother." "Then let some one shoulder it. Bob doesn't have to saddle himself with it, unless—" Convinced that, in the presence of his father, his mother wouldn't speak too openly, Bob felt safe in a challenge. "Yes, mother? Unless—what?" Mother and son exchanged a long look. "Unless you go—very far out of your way." "Well, suppose I did go—very far out of my way?" "I should have to leave it with your father to deal with that." "Well, it wouldn't be the first time dad's been philanthropic." Collingham looked up wearily. He was sitting with one leg thrown across the other, his left hand stroking Dauphin's silky head. "You can be as philanthropic as you like outside business, Bob," he said, with schooled, hopeless conviction. "Inside, it's no go. Once you admit the principle of treating your employees philanthropically, business methods are at an end." "I don't think modern economics would agree with you, daddy," Edith objected. "Aren't we beginning to realize that the well-being of employees, even when they're no longer of much use—" Collingham looked up with a kind of longing in his eyes. "I wish I could believe that, Edie, but an efficiency expert wouldn't bear you out." "An efficiency expert doesn't know everything. He studies nothing but the individual private, whereas a political economist knows what's going on all up and down the line." To Collingham this was like the doctrine of universal salvation to a Calvinist theologian. He would have seized it had he dared, but for daring it was too late. He had trained himself otherwise. On a basis of expert advice and individual efficiency Collingham & Law's had been built up. All he could do was to grasp at the personal. "Where did you hear that?" "You can read all about it in Mr. Ayling's last book, The Economic Value of Good Will." As she passed through the French window into the house, her mother turned with a gesture of both outspread hands. "There! You see! What did I tell you? She has the effrontery to read his books and name him openly." But too dispirited to take up the gauntlet, Collingham looked, with welcome, toward Gossip, who appeared in the doorway with the tea. <div style="break-after:column;"></div>

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