The Cords of Vanity. A Comedy of Shirking

'Good-bye, Stella,' said I; and I kissed her.

'And I don't think you are a mess. And I don't hate you.' She was smiling very strangely. 'Yes, I remember that first time. And no matter what they said, I always cared heaps more about you, Rob, than I dared let you know. And if only you had been as dependable as Peter—But, you see, you weren't—'

'No, dear, you did the right thing—what was best for all of us—'

'Then don't mind so much. Oh, Bob, it hurts me to see you mind so much! You aren't—being dependable, like Peter, even now,' she said, reproachfully….

Heine was right; there is an Aristophanes in heaven.

15. He Decides to Amuse Himself

1

I came to Fairhaven half-bedrugged with memories of Stella's funeral, —say, of how lightly she had lain, all white and gold, in the grotesque and horrid box, and of Peter's vacant red-rimmed eyes that seemed to wonder why this decorous company should have assembled about the deep and white-lined cavity at his feet and find no answer. Nor, for that matter, could I.

'But it was flagrant, flagrant!' my heart screeched in a grill of impotent wrath. 'Eh, You gave me power to reason, so they say! and will You slay me, too, if I presume to use that power? I say, then, it was flagrant and tyrannical and absurd! 'Let twenty pass, and stone the twenty-first, Loving not, hating not, just choosing so!' O Setebos, it wasn't worthy of omnipotence. You know it wasn't!' In such a frame of mind I came again to Bettie Hamlyn. 

2

It was very odd to see Bettie again. I had been sublimely confident, though, that we would pick up our intercourse precisely where we had left off; and this, as I now know, is something which can never happen to anybody. So I was vaguely irritated before we had finished shaking hands, and became so resolutely boyish and effusive in my delight at seeing her that anyone in the world but Bettie Hamlyn would have been quite touched. And my conversational gambit, I protest, was masterly, and would have made anybody else think, 'Oh how candid is the egotism of this child!' and would have moved that person, metaphorically anyhow, to pat me upon the head.

But Bettie only smiled, a little sadly, and answered:

'Your book?—Why, dear me, did I forget to write you a nice little letter about how wonderful it was?'

'You wrote the letter all right. I think you copied it out of The Complete Letter Writer. There was not a bit of you in it.' 

'Well, that is why I dislike your book—because there was not a bit of you in it. Of course I am glad it was the big noise of the month, and also a little jealous of it, if you can understand that phase of the feminine mind. I doubt it, because you write about women as though they were pterodactyls or some other extinct animal, which you had never seen, but had read a lot about.'

'Which attests, in any event, my morals to be above reproach. You should be pleased.'

'To roll it into a pill, your book seems pretty much like any other book; and it has made me hold my own particular boy's picture more than once against my cheek and say, 'You didn't write books, did you, dear? —You did nicer things than write books'—and he did …. I hear many things of you….'

'Oh, well!' I brilliantly retorted, 'you mustn't believe all you hear.' 

And I felt that matters were going very badly indeed. 

'Robin, do you not know that your mess of pottage must be eaten with you by the people who care for you?—and one of them dislikes pottage. Indeed, I would have liked the book, had anybody else written it. I almost like it as it is, in spots, and sometimes I even go to the great length of liking you, —because 'if only for old sake's sake, dear, you're the loveliest doll in the world.' There might be a better reason, if you could only make up your mind to dispense with pottage….'

The odd part of it, even to-day, is that Bettie was saying precisely what I had been thinking, and that to hear her say it made me just twice as petulant as I was already.

'Now, please don't preach,' I said. 'I've heard so much preaching lately—dear,' I added, though I am afraid the word was rather obviously an afterthought.

'Oh, I forgot you stayed over for Stella Blagden's funeral. You were quite right. Stella was a dear child, and I was really sorry to hear of her death.'

'Really!' It was the lightest possible additional flick upon the raw, but it served.

'Yes,—I, too, was rather sorry, Bettie, because I have loved Stella all my life. She was the first, you see, and, somehow, the others have been different. And—she disliked dying. I tell you, it is unfair, Bettie,—it is hideously unfair!'

'Robin—' she began.

'And why should you be living,' I said, in half-conscious absurdity, 'when she is dead? Why, look, Bettie! even that fly yonder is alive. Setebos accords an insect what He grudges Stella! Her dying is not even particularly important. The big news of the day is that the President has started his Pacific tour, and that the Harvard graduates object to his being given an honorary degree, and are sending out seven thousand protests to be signed. And you're alive, and I'm alive, and Peter Blagden is alive, and only Stella is dead. I suppose she is an angel by this. But I don't care for angels. I want just the silly little Stella that I loved,—the Stella that was the first and will always be the first with me. For I want her—just Stella—! Oh, it is an excellent jest; and I will cap it with another now. For the true joke is, I came to Fairhaven, across half the world, with an insane notion of asking you to marry me,—you who are 'really' sorry that Stella is dead!' And I laughed as pleasantly as one may do in anger.

But the girl, too, was angry. 'Marry you!' she said. 'Why, Robin, you were wonderful once; and now you are simply not a bad sort of fellow, who imagines himself to be the hit of the entire piece. And whether she's dead or not, she never had two grains of sense, but just enough to make a spectacle of you, even now.'

'I regret that I should have sailed so far into the north of your opinion,' said I. 'Though, as I dare assert, you are quite probably in the right. So I'll be off to my husks again, Bettie.' And I kissed her hand. 'And that too is only for old sake's sake, dear,' I said.

Then I returned to the railway station in time for the afternoon train. And I spoke with no one else in Fairhaven, except to grunt 'Good evening, gentlemen,' as I passed Clarriker's Emporium, where Colonel Snawley and Dr. Jeal were sitting in arm chairs, very much as I had left them there two years ago.

3

It was a long while afterward I discovered that 'some damned good-natured friend,' as Sir Fretful has immortally phrased it, had told Bettie Hamlyn of seeing me at the theatre in Lichfield, with Stella and her marvellous dinner-company. It was by an odd quirk the once Aurelia Minns, in Lichfield for the 'summer's shopping,' who had told Bettie. And the fact is that I had written Bettie upon the day of Stella's death and, without explicitly saying so, had certainly conveyed the impression I had reached Lichfield that very morning, and was simply stopping over for Stella's funeral. And, in addition, I cannot say that Bettie and Stella were particularly fond of each other.

As it was, I left Fairhaven the same day I reached it, and in some dissatisfaction with the universe. And I