The Price She Paid [74]
to each other until you're on the stage and arrived. I'd not have it otherwise, if I could. For I want YOU, and I'd never believe I had you unless you were free.''
The color was fading from her cheeks. At this it flushed deeper than before. She must speak. Not to speak was to lie, was to play the hypocrite. Yet speak she dared not. At least Stanley Baird was better than Siddall. Anyhow, who was she, that had been the wife of Siddall, to be so finicky?
``You don't believe me?'' he said miserably. ``You think I'll forget myself sometime again?''
``I hope not,'' she said gently. ``I believe not. I trust you, Stanley.''
And she went into the house. He looked after her, in admiration of the sweet and pure calm of this quiet rebuke. She tried to take the same exalted view of it herself, but she could not fool herself just then with the familiar ``good woman'' fake. She knew that she had struck the flag of self-respect. She knew what she would really have done had he been less delicate, less in love, and more ``practical.'' And she found a small and poor consolation in reflecting, ``I wonder how many women there are who take high ground because it costs nothing.'' We are prone to suspect everybody of any weakness we find in ourselves--and perhaps we are not so far wrong as are those who accept without question the noisy protestations of a world of self-deceivers.
Thenceforth she and Stanley got on better than ever --apparently. But though she ignored it, she knew the truth--knew her new and deep content was due to her not having challenged his assertion that she loved him. He, believing her honest and high minded, assumed that the failure to challenge was a good woman's way of admitting. But with the day of reckoning-- not only with him but also with her own self- respect--put off until that vague and remote time when she should be a successful prima donna, she gave herself up to enjoyment. That was a summer of rarely fine weather, particularly fine along the Jersey coast. They --always in gay parties--motored up and down the coast and inland. Several of the ``musical'' men-- notably Richardson of Elberon--had plenty of money; Stanley, stopping with his cousins, the Frasers, on the Rumson Road, brought several of his friends, all rich and more or less free. As every moment of Mildred's day was full and as it was impossible not to sleep and sleep well in that ocean air, with the surf soothing the nerves as the lullaby of a nurse soothes a baby, she was able to put everything unpleasant out of mind. She was resting her voice, was building up her health; therefore the career was being steadily advanced and no time was being wasted. She felt sorry for those who had to do unpleasant or disagreeable things in making their careers. She told herself that she did not deserve her good fortune in being able to advance to a brilliant career not through hardship but over the most delightful road imaginable--amusing herself, wearing charming and satisfactory clothes, swimming and dancing, motoring and feasting. Without realizing it, she was strongly under the delusion that she was herself already rich--the inevitable delusion with a woman when she moves easily and freely and luxuriously about, never bothered for money, always in the company of rich people. The rich are fated to demoralize those around them. The stingy rich fill their satellites with envy and hatred. The generous rich fill them with the feeling that the light by which they shine and the heat with which they are warm are not reflected light and heat but their own.
Never had she been so happy. She even did not especially mind Donald Keith, a friend of Stanley's and of Mrs. Brindley's, who, much too often to suit her, made one of the party. She had tried in vain to discover what there was in Keith that inspired such intense liking in two people so widely different as expansive and emotional Stanley Baird and reserved and distinctly cold Cyrilla Brindley. Keith talked little, not only seemed not to listen well, but showed plainly,
The color was fading from her cheeks. At this it flushed deeper than before. She must speak. Not to speak was to lie, was to play the hypocrite. Yet speak she dared not. At least Stanley Baird was better than Siddall. Anyhow, who was she, that had been the wife of Siddall, to be so finicky?
``You don't believe me?'' he said miserably. ``You think I'll forget myself sometime again?''
``I hope not,'' she said gently. ``I believe not. I trust you, Stanley.''
And she went into the house. He looked after her, in admiration of the sweet and pure calm of this quiet rebuke. She tried to take the same exalted view of it herself, but she could not fool herself just then with the familiar ``good woman'' fake. She knew that she had struck the flag of self-respect. She knew what she would really have done had he been less delicate, less in love, and more ``practical.'' And she found a small and poor consolation in reflecting, ``I wonder how many women there are who take high ground because it costs nothing.'' We are prone to suspect everybody of any weakness we find in ourselves--and perhaps we are not so far wrong as are those who accept without question the noisy protestations of a world of self-deceivers.
Thenceforth she and Stanley got on better than ever --apparently. But though she ignored it, she knew the truth--knew her new and deep content was due to her not having challenged his assertion that she loved him. He, believing her honest and high minded, assumed that the failure to challenge was a good woman's way of admitting. But with the day of reckoning-- not only with him but also with her own self- respect--put off until that vague and remote time when she should be a successful prima donna, she gave herself up to enjoyment. That was a summer of rarely fine weather, particularly fine along the Jersey coast. They --always in gay parties--motored up and down the coast and inland. Several of the ``musical'' men-- notably Richardson of Elberon--had plenty of money; Stanley, stopping with his cousins, the Frasers, on the Rumson Road, brought several of his friends, all rich and more or less free. As every moment of Mildred's day was full and as it was impossible not to sleep and sleep well in that ocean air, with the surf soothing the nerves as the lullaby of a nurse soothes a baby, she was able to put everything unpleasant out of mind. She was resting her voice, was building up her health; therefore the career was being steadily advanced and no time was being wasted. She felt sorry for those who had to do unpleasant or disagreeable things in making their careers. She told herself that she did not deserve her good fortune in being able to advance to a brilliant career not through hardship but over the most delightful road imaginable--amusing herself, wearing charming and satisfactory clothes, swimming and dancing, motoring and feasting. Without realizing it, she was strongly under the delusion that she was herself already rich--the inevitable delusion with a woman when she moves easily and freely and luxuriously about, never bothered for money, always in the company of rich people. The rich are fated to demoralize those around them. The stingy rich fill their satellites with envy and hatred. The generous rich fill them with the feeling that the light by which they shine and the heat with which they are warm are not reflected light and heat but their own.
Never had she been so happy. She even did not especially mind Donald Keith, a friend of Stanley's and of Mrs. Brindley's, who, much too often to suit her, made one of the party. She had tried in vain to discover what there was in Keith that inspired such intense liking in two people so widely different as expansive and emotional Stanley Baird and reserved and distinctly cold Cyrilla Brindley. Keith talked little, not only seemed not to listen well, but showed plainly,