III
"WON'T you own yourself a beast, dear boy?" Halidon asked me gently,
one afternoon of the following spring.
I had escaped for a six weeks' holiday, and was lying outstretched
beside him in a willow chair on the terrace of their villa above
Florence.
My eyes turned from the happy vale at our feet to the illuminated
face beside me. A little way off, at the other end of the terrace,
Mrs. Halidon was bending over a pot of carnations on the balustrade.
"Oh, cheerfully," I assented.
"You see," he continued, glowing, "living here costs us next to
nothing, and it was quite _her_ idea, our founding that fourth
scholarship in memory of Paul."
I had already heard of the fourth scholarship, but I may have
betrayed my surprise at the plural pronoun, for the blood rose under
Ned's sensitive skin, and he said with an embarrassed laugh: "Ah,
she so completely makes me forget that it's not mine too."
"Well, the great thing is that you both think of it chiefly as his."
"Oh, chiefly--altogether. I should be no more than a wretched
parasite if I didn't live first of all for that!"
Mrs. Halidon had turned and was advancing toward us with the slow
step of leisurely enjoyment. The bud of her beauty had at last
unfolded: her vague enigmatical gaze had given way to the clear look
of the woman whose hand is on the clue of life.
"_She's_ not living for anything but her own happiness," I mused,
"and why in heaven's name should she? But Ned--"
"My wife," Halidon continued, his eyes following mine, "my wife
feels it too, even more strongly. You know a woman's sensitiveness.
She's--there's nothing she wouldn't do for his memory--because--in
other ways. . . . You understand," he added, lowering his tone as
she drew nearer, "that as soon as the child is born we mean to go
home for good, and take up his work--Paul's work."
Mrs. Halidon recovered slowly after the birth of her child: the
return to America was deferred for six months, and then again for a
whole year. I heard of the Halidons as established first at
Biarritz, then in Rome. The second summer Ned wrote me a line from
St. Moritz. He said the place agreed so well with his wife--who was
still delicate--that they were "thinking of building a house there:
a mere cleft in the rocks, to hide our happiness in when it becomes
too exuberant"--and the rest of the letter, very properly, was
filled with a rhapsody upon his little daughter. He spoke of her as
Paula.
The following year the Halidons reappeared in New York, and I heard
with surprise that they had taken the Brereton house for the winter.
"Well, why not?" I argued with myself. "After all, the money is
hers: as far as I know the will didn't even hint at a restriction.
Why should I expect a pretty woman with two children" (for now there
was an heir) "to spend her fortune on a visionary scheme that its
originator hadn't the heart to carry out?"
"Yes," cried the devil's advocate--"but Ned?"
My first impression of Halidon was that he had thickened--thickened
all through. He was heavier, physically, with the ruddiness of good
living rather than of hard training; he spoke more deliberately, and
had less frequent bursts of subversive enthusiasm. Well, he was a
father, a householder--yes, and a capitalist now. It was fitting
that his manner should show a sense of these responsibilities. As
for Mrs. Halidon, it was evident that the only responsibilities she
was conscious of were those of the handsome woman and the
accomplished hostess. She was handsomer than ever, with her two
babies at her knee--perfect mother as she was perfect wife. Poor
Paul! I wonder if he ever dreamed what a flower was hidden in the
folded bud?
Not long after their arrival, I dined alone with the Halidons, and
lingered on to smoke with Ned while his wife went alone to the
opera. He seemed dull and out of sorts, and complained of a twinge
of gout.
"Fact is, I don't get enough exercise--I must look about for a
horse."
He had gone afoot for a good many years, and kept his clear skin and
quick eye on that homely regimen--but I had to remind myself that,
after all, we were both older; and also that the Halidons had
champagne every evening.
"How do you like these cigars? They're some I've just got out from
London, but I'm not quite satisfied with them myself," he grumbled,
pushing toward me the silver box and its attendant taper.
I leaned to the flame, and our eyes met as I lit my cigar. Ned
flushed and laughed uneasily. "Poor Paul! Were you thinking of those
execrable weeds of his?--I wonder how I knew you were? Probably
because I have been wanting to talk to you of our plan--I sent Daisy
off alone so that we might have a quiet evening. Not that she isn't
interested, only the technical details bore her."
I hesitated. "Are there many technical details left to settle?"
Halidon pushed his armchair back from the fire-light, and twirled
his cigar between his fingers. "I didn't suppose there were till I
began to look into things a little more closely. You know I never
had much of a head for business, and it was chiefly with you that
Paul used to go over the figures."
"The figures--?"
"There it is, you see." He paused. "Have you any idea how much this
thing is going to cost?"
"Approximately, yes."
"And have you any idea how much we--how much Daisy's fortune amounts
to?"
"None whatever," I hastened to assert.
He looked relieved. "Well, we simply can't do it--and live."
"Live?"
"Paul didn't _live_," he said impatiently. "I can't ask a woman with
two children to think of--hang it, she's under no actual
obligation--" He rose and began to walk the floor. Presently he
paused and halted in front of me, defensively, as Paul had once done
years before. "It's not that I've lost the sense of _my_
obligation--it grows keener with the growth of my happiness; but my
position's a delicate one--"
"Ah, my dear fellow--"
"You _do_ see it? I knew you would." (Yes, he was duller!) "That's
the point. I can't strip my wife and children to carry out a plan--a
plan so nebulous that even its inventor. . . . The long and short of
it is that the whole scheme must be re-studied, reorganized. Paul
lived in a world of dreams."
I rose and tossed my cigar into the fire. "There were some things he
never dreamed of," I said.
Halidon rose too, facing me uneasily. "You mean--?"
"That _you_ would taunt him with not having spent that money."
He pulled himself up with darkening brows; then the muscles of his
forehead relaxed, a flush suffused it, and he held out his hand in
boyish penitence.
"I stand a good deal from you," he said.
He kept up his idea of going over the Academy question--threshing it
out once for all, as he expressed it; but my suggestion that we
should provisionally resuscitate the extinct board did not meet with
his approval.
"Not till the whole business is settled. I shouldn't have the
face--Wait till I can go to them and say: 'We're laying the
foundation-stone on such a day.'"
We had one or two conferences, and Ned speedily lost himself in a
maze of figures. His nimble fancy was recalcitrant to mental
discipline, and he excused his inattention with the plea that he had
no head for business.
"All I know is that it's a colossal undertaking, and that short of
living on bread and water--" and then we turned anew to the hard
problem of retrenchment.
At the close of the second conference we fixed a date for a third,
when Ned's business adviser was to be called in; but before the day
came, I learned casually that the Halidons had gone south. Some
weeks later Ned wrote me from Florida, apologizing for his
remissness. They had rushed off suddenly--his wife had a cough, he
explained.
When they returned in the spring, I heard that they had bought the
Brereton house, for what seemed to my inexperienced ears a very
large sum. But Ned, whom I met one day at the club, explained to me
convincingly that it was really the most economical thing they could
do. "You don't understand about such things, dear boy, living in
your Diogenes tub; but wait till there's a Mrs. Diogenes. I can
assure you it's a lot cheaper than building, which is what Daisy
would have preferred, and of course," he added, his color rising as
our eyes met, "of course, once the Academy's going, I shall have to
make my head-quarters here; and I suppose even you won't grudge me a
roof over my head."
The Brereton roof was a vast one, with a marble balustrade about it;
and I could quite understand, without Ned's halting explanation,
that "under the circumstances" it would be necessary to defer what
he called "our work--" "Of course, after we've rallied from this
amputation, we shall grow fresh supplies--I mean my wife's
investments will," he laughingly corrected, "and then we'll have no
big outlays ahead and shall know exactly where we stand. After all,
my dear fellow, charity begins at home!"
