FullReads

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.