Poor dear Theodora!

Chapter I

THEODORA stood in the centre of the high-ceiled old drawing-room and looked about her with an abhorrence born of long-smothered irritation. How she detested the task before her! How often in past years had she already performed it, till the accumulated essence of her bitterness had entered as iron into her soul!

Makeshift! That was what life meant to her. That was what it had always meant. That, as far as she could see, was what it must always mean. Some people knew how to get the things they wanted; Theodora knew only how to do without them. A useful knowledge perhaps — at least, so she had always been taught — but a makeshift, at that. How much better to possess gloriously, than to lack gracefully!

The sunshine of an August morning streamed into the shabby room; when the solemn rite of dusting is in progress, blinds and shades must be thrown open and the protecting veil of halflights abandoned for the time being.

Theodora knew every worn spot in the rug, and just how it must be covered with a chair or a card table. (Aunt Augusta was entertaining at Bridge this afternoon.) She knew how a vase of flowers must be carefully disposed so as to hide the crack in the long mirror that surmounted the hideous brown slate mantel. The mirror, in .spite of its chipped and tarnished frame, was a beautiful heirloom, a relic of a day when taste was so clean and pure (albeit a trifle cold) as to make one gasp in wonder at the later transition to horsehair, and plush, and slate mantels outlined in gilt, and hideous brown-and-gold wall-paper, and atrocious hanging cabinets with glass doors and irregularly placed shelves, and "patent" rockers upholstered in art stuffs.

All of these things abounded in the room where Theodora stood, duster in hand, kitchen apron reducing her figure to a shapeless mass. But the room held better things as well. One of them was Theodora herself. In spite of the disfiguring chrysalis which shrouded her, it was abundantly evident that Theodora was a very good thing indeed.

Nor was she the only one. There were some beautiful pieces of old mahogany, left by deadand-gone ancestors. Portraits of certain of these ancestors smiled, or simpered, or frowned from the walls, their canvas surfaces and massive gilt frames blotting out much of the objectionable wall-paper. Dainty miniatures and lovely old-time trinkets — scent bottles, Crown Derby bowls so ancient as to lack marking, painted fans, silver and gold snuff-boxes — filled the terrible semimodern cabinets. On the ugly mantel stood a wonderful old pair of candlesticks almost too heavy to lift. One of them, indeed, would not bear lifting; it broke into three pieces when one tried. Some day, when eight dollars could be spared from the family coffers, it was to be mended. Then the chairs! Those of them that lacked castors must be pushed into corners. The good ones must be carefully disposed with regard to the insufficiencies of the rug. Being too few in number to surround three card tables, they must be eked out by others carried from the library or from upstairs. The tables themselves must be brought from rooms that the guests would not enter. Aunt Augusta did not possess the green baize tables so indispensable to most card hostesses — those convenient things which can be folded and stood away betweenwhiles. Every table around which her guests would cluster must first be cleared of its every-day load, then dusted and carried into the drawing-room; and all this, with the pleasant assurance that when the party was over the process must be repeated in reversed order.

Theodora gave a vicious little kick to an upturned corner of the rug. Why did people insist on wasting time on such labored festivities? Why didn't they just say, "It's no use. We're too poor. Let's stop straining," and let it go at that?

A voice spoke from the doorway. It was a cool, mocking, rather contemptuous voice, and it always raised a thousand little black devils in Theodora's heart. It belonged to her cousin Elise, the beauty of the household.

"When you've finished here, Theodora," said the voice, " Meta wants you in the kitchen. She's making the sandwiches and the cakes."

Theodora wheeled sharply. "Why don't you help her?" she demanded.

Elise raised arched brows of amusement; a smile parted her thin scarlet lips, revealing a row of even little teeth. There was nothing she loved better than to rouse irritation, and then meet it with complacence.

"I'm attending to the flowers," she answered. "That is always my work, as you very well know. Meta said to ask you to hurry. Her icing will soon be ready."

Elise walked through the French window to the verandah and on down to the green lawn below, her ornamental garden-basket swinging from one arm, a pair of scissors suspended from a ribbon at her waist. She was a perfect model of summer daintiness, slender and white-robed, consciously picturesque from the crown of her broad hat to the toes of her snowy slippers. She walked buoyantly, happy to have left a sting in her wake. Being ineffably bored with her life, she found her palliative in making others smart.

Theodora glanced at the clock. It was half-past ten, and Elise was just making her first appearance for the day. She never ate breakfast — that dreary eight o'clock function which Meta and Theodora dared not miss. Aunt Augusta was particularly sensitive on the subject of tardy breakfast appearances, classing them with feminine smoking and gambling and like modern evils. No one, save her younger daughter and her only son, ever attempted to infringe her rules.

With the rankling picture of Elise' s loveliness still fresh in her mind, Theodora walked over to the mantel mirror and stood gazing moodily into its depths — though for the moodiness there would seem to have been small cause. Theodora must have been very far up front indeed, when good looks were given out. Her beauty, being structural, was of the sort that would outlive youth. Its chief point was an exquisitely shaped head, wonderfully set on strong boyish shoulders — shoulders that would stand small chance of being relieved of the weight of their own burdens, for the very reason that they looked so thoroughly competent to assume any load. Of quite a different type were the shoulders of Elise; they were sensuous, consciously appealing. It was a safe guess that they would slip from under every yoke, would shift every burden onto some gladly proffered masculine back. Theodora's shoulders asserted independence and pride; those of her cousin demanded worship.

Elise had a thin-lipped little mouth, as scarlet as a pomegranate flower; Theodora's mouth was larger and more generous — but alas, no whit less stubborn. Elise had hair of dead gold, while Theodora's was as red-brown and as glossy as a horse-chestnut just out of its burr. Her hazel eyes were deep and clear and honest. On that one count she admitted her superiority over her beautiful cousin. If Elise had a weak point it was her eyes; they were small and pointed and shallow. When she talked to a woman her eyes gazed straight — but they narrowed to agate points; when she talked to a man (no matter what his age or station), her look was oblique, or downcast, or momentarily revealing. Her natural attitude toward men was that of the cocette, while Theodora's was that of a pal, or a chum.

The subject of beauty bothered Theodora no little. ' ' What, ' ' she often thought angrily, ' ' what is it that counts, about looks? I used to think that if you were pretty, you'd be attactive; I used to believe that good looks were the thing that made the difference. But they're not. In some ways, Elise is prettier than I; in others,

I'm certainly prettier than she. Yet she'll go a thousand miles where I can't go an inch — and I don't even know the reason. It doesn't matter that she's tricky, while I'm not; it doesn't matter that I love honesty while she hates it. I believe that people actually like to be cheated. I believe that good looks don't matter one iota, after all. It's the kind of looks you have, and the way you use them. And if that's so, I think life's a perfect mess."

Theodora said truly that she loved honesty. It was her passion. Where she failed to find it she turned adamant. In one sense she had a right to demand it, in that she most certainly gave it. She was as honest as sunlight — and as uncompromising; as wholesome, but often as trying. A hardness as of steel possessed her whenever she overtook deceit in any form — and like many another worthy trait, her honesty was sometimes unattractive. Compromise is a shifty and a dangerous thing, but a thing, nevertheless, that few of us escape. To Theodora Winthrop, compromise was still anathema, and she faced the hard problem which conscientious youth must always face. Being youth, it possesses neither philosophy nor patience, and at considerable pains and cost it strives to achieve worth — only to watch careless lightness reap the harvest of practically universal admiration. The result is generally one of three things : compromise, jealousy, io Poor Dear Theodora!

hardness. Unfortunately, compromise eventually honeycombs character, while jealousy engenders bitterness and spite. Hardness, however, may be but a passing phase, and not a permanent trait.

To Theodora had fallen this hardness — but it was of the conscience only. So tender a heart had she that pity never knocked vainly and sympathy often became an ache. Theodora honestly considered herself mushily soft; she felt that, figuratively speaking, she lacked spine, and that her constant effort must be to acquire it. And, in the meantime, everyone else admired Theodora's splendid honesty and self-reliance, but prayed that her hardness might prove to be merely the hardness of youth. Poor dear Theodora!

On this particular summer morning, her task completed in the drawing-room, she betook herself to the kitchen — only to be once more reminded of the subject of personal beauty. By the table in the hot kitchen stood Theodora's oldest cousin, Meta, the picture of anxiety and unattratuiveness. Meta was twenty-five and looked thirty. She had a long nose and a poor complexion. Though she was the soul of goodness, in all her life no jot of real joy had ever fallen to her lot. Like Carlyle's wife, if no one upbraided her she considered herself praised. She was born to the r61e of meek drudge — and a necessary r61e it must be, unless nature errs a prodigious number of times!

At Meta's side sat a faded pretty woman, busily

Poor Dear Theodora! n

icing small cakes. At sight of her, Theodora stood stock-still.

"Mother," she cried sharply, "what are you doing here? You go straight upstairs, and I'll ice those cakes. This is no place for you, with that headache." (It was one of Theodora's misfortunes that when she was most tingling with love and protectiveness, she sometimes sounded sharpest.)

"Now, my dear," deprecated Mrs. Winthrop, "don't get excited. This isn't hurting me in the least. I'm feeling much better anyhow."

" You're as white as a sheet," insisted the daughter. "Isn't she, Meta? And just look at those circles under her eyes! She ought to be in bed."

"I begged her not to come down," answered Meta in a tired voice. " Do go up and rest, Aunt Mollie. Theodora will help me now."

"No, it does me good to have a little something to do," replied her aunt, meekly but obstinately. Mrs. W: ithrop always insisted that her daughter's stubbornness was a paternal inheritance. "Had your dear father lived to see you grow up," she was wont to say, "I fear you might have clashed sadly!" Theodora, barely able to remember her father, could form no judgment as to his disposition and was therefore unable to gainsay the charge. But she knew from experience that the obstinacy of meekness can be at least as great as that of assertiveness.

"What is Aunt Augusta doing?" she now demanded aggressively and unnecessarily. She well knew what her aunt was doing — slave-driving, relegating to herself the easy tasks and the dominant position, while she turned her elder daughter into a cook, her sister into a scullery-maid, and her niece into a charwoman.

"She's up in her room, tying up the prizes and writing the place-cards, ' ' responded Mrs. Winthrop.

''Why don't you go and help her, then?"

"I am more useful here, my dear. Permit me to be the judge of my own tasks."

Seeing that the case was hopeless, Theodora left her mother with the cakes and herself took over the sandwiches. She sat in tight-lipped disapproving silence, and her mother sat in hurt meekness — so that these two who adored each other and who would have died without question one for the other, were once more in disaccord. Meta, for her part, was much too abstracted to talk; she well knew that any flaw in the culinary end of her mother's party would reflect on her own devoted head. It was therefore a very silent trio that worked on until lunch time.

Luncheon was a hurried and meagre meal. The party was to begin at three, so that the guests might be expected at any time after half-past two. In a community where festivities are few, punctuality ceases to be a virtue and becomes a self-indulgence.

"Mollie," said Mrs. Charrington, turning to her youngest sister (Aunt Augusta took no small pride in her name. "Augusta Charrington," she was wont to say, "is a name of which no one need be ashamed,") — "Mollie, I shall not need you at the tables this afternoon, after all. The Misses Duncan sent their chauffeur over with a note. They have had a guest arrive unexpectedly. Miss Janet wrote that, with my permission, the guest would take her place here, as they could hardly leave her at home alone. I replied that I had a vacant place at one of my tables and would certainly expect all three of them. So you needn't play, after all."

Theodora bridled. She knew that the party was virtually given for those queens, the Misses Duncan. In a community where everyone else was living on the traditions of past grandeur, they alone possessed present wealth as well,— present wealth and fashion and ancestry that reached back unimpeachably into the dim dark ages. In the matter of ancestry, they were no whit ahead of the rest of the sons and daughters of old Waverly . The place bristled with ancestors ; it demanded them; it hugged them to its cold heart. Like the ogres of old, it lived on blood.

But apart from blood and with the exception of the Misses Duncan, Waverly had little else of which to boast — which probably made it only the more appreciative of its pair of prosperous spinsters. There may be those to \vhom an atmosphere of luxury is offensive, but certainly none of them lived in Waverly. While the rest of Waverlyites trudged afoot on roads that were muddy or dusty as the case might be, or rode over them in rarely hired hacks, Miss Duncan and Miss Janet Duncan dashed around in motors and victorias. They accepted invitations to afternoon tea, and responded with invitations to dinners and luncheons where the food was truly epicurean and where even champagne flowed — albeit in perfectly respectable quantities. They reigned like veritable sovereigns for seven months of the year, and then at the end of each November they fared away to the gay city, leaving Waverly plunged in gloom and mud and snow, to doze until they should reawaken it the following May — wealth being able to migrate, while poverty must hibernate.

Therefore, Theodora Winthrop realized full well that it was sheer idiocy to attempt to champion her own mother against the Misses Duncan. But Theodora was well used to butting her head against the stone wall of tradition. She proceeded to do it once more.

"I don't see why Mother has to be at the beck and call of an unknown guest of the Misses Duncan," she began aggressively. At her tone Elise, who had been looking very bored, brightened perceptibly. Mrs. Winthrop, however, rushed to the rescue. It was strange how with all her meekness, she could always be sharply assertive with her daughter — the one being whom she loved devotedly. She now frowned and coughed.

"I'm only too glad to be released from playing," she said. "As you know, Augusta, I care nothing for it, and I shall be delighted to lie down — that is, unless you want me to help receive your guests? "

"No, that won't be necessary. You will appear at tea time, of course?"

' ' Oh certainly. What shall I wear ? ' '

"That grenadine. Meta, I have put out a lace scarf of mine for you. It will cover that blue muslin very nicely. Be careful not to get anything on it; cleaning is so expensive now. What will you wear, darling?" (This to Elise.)

"My black-and-white."

Mrs. Charrington's face clouded.

"I quite hoped you would choose that pretty pink," she said suggestively. "It is so very becoming and makes such a sweet contrast with Meta's blue. You seem so very young for black." (Elise was twenty-three — two years the senior of Theodora.)

"No, Mother," she answered decisively, "I hate that pink, as you know. And I can't be expected to match up my clothes with Meta's. The black-and-white is the only thing I own that is fit to put on. Heaven knows, my wardrobe is not overstocked."

"Just as you like, dear," rejoined her mother hastily. Being no fool, she knew when she was worsted. She turned to Theodora.

"And you?" she asked icily, remembering her niece's late lack of respect.

Now Theodora possessed exactly one muslin frock that was eligible for an afternoon function; but family tradition demanded that poverty be airily disregarded in conversation. Before the girl could reply, her mother rushed to the breach.

"Don't you think she might wear that pretty plaid muslin, Augusta?" she smiled.

"Yes. And let her wear the white ribbons. I like them better than the yellow."

Fate had been kind after all. One thing Theodora could do to assert her independence. She could wear the yellow ribbons.

Poor dear Theodora!

The pleasant meal ended. Everyone went to dress. Elise and Theodora were expected to be on the porch, picturesquely interested in books or fancy work, before the possible arrival of any guest. Thus could all comers be conducted into the house without the services of the door-bell and the slatternly negress who was the only servant the establishment afforded. Meta's place was in the kitchen ; from there she would dispense the food, which was to be daintily carried in by her sister and cousin. Only at the very end would Meta appear — just in time to give the impression that she was entirely a person of leisure.

The party proved hardly more of a success than the luncheon. Of course, everyone said it was quite lovely, but there remained an inward consciousness of failure.

In the first place, the Misses Duncan and their guest won none of the prizes — those beautiful centrepieces so daintily embroidered by Meta, whose handiwork converted the most inexpensive of linen and floss into gems of real worth. Upon this occasion, however, the gems had been carried away by the least attractive of the guests. Aunt Augusta was naturally nettled. Her idea was to give to those who already had the most.

Then Miss Duncan's guest, Mrs. Neilson, had been almost rude. In a person of less importance it would have amounted to absolute rudeness. She had quite frankly expressed her surprise to find people still absorbed in Bridge in August, 1915; she had been shocked that Waverly boasted no Red Cross chapter, and that it had not taken madly to knitting; in fact, she talked almost exclusively about the European War, a subject in which Waverly was but faintly interested. It was so very disgusting, and so expensive, and so far away.

Miss Janet Duncan had complimented Theodora on her yellow ribbons, which the girl had had the temerity to don. They had been pronounced particularly becoming by the great local criterion; and on top of that, Mrs. Neilson had added insult to injury by taking a noticeably marked interest in the stubborn niece of her hostess.

Theodora, on her part, had been disgusted by the very evident efforts of Elise to ingratiate herself with Miss Duncan and Miss Janet. Well did she understand her cousin's motive. The two spinsters made a long motor tour each September, and Elise regarded herself as a desirable guest for the approaching one.

With all Meta's care, her ices had been a little soft. Fewer than usual had been eaten, and in a spirit of deep depression she had put the remainder back into the freezer to harden.

And last but not least, Ned Charrington had not come home to supper — making the third time in less than ten days. There were two deep lines of worry between his mother's eyes, and her lesser annoyances were seemingly forgotten.

"Did Ned say anything to any of you about staying late tonight?" she asked. But at the universal negative, she hastened to excuse him.

" I know they're keeping him very hard at work," she said. "Miss Janet Duncan said she thought it was perfectly splendid for the boy to put in his vacation this way."

As a matter of fact, Ned Charrington's college course was a financial burden which his widowed mother could ill afford to bear; and when in addition to its legitimate expenses there came others which nearly trebled them, the matter became of really grave moment. Ned insisted that it would be better to forego college entirely than to forfeit fraternity life, and it was to that that he attributed his bills. Finally, on his own initiative, he had procured a position in a banking house in the near-by city, thus rendering his present vacation a source of income. There was nothing to make a summer in Waverly attractive to him anyhow, and he said that he got more fun working, going and coming by train each day, than by sitting around in the "dead hole" in which Fate had seen fit to place his home.

As the family rose from the supper table, Meta seemed to pluck her courage in both hands.

"Mother," she said, "Dr. Sewall thought he might drop in for a moment this evening. Would it be all right for me to serve the rest of the ice-cream? I don't believe it will keep till tomorrow."

There was so odd a note in her voice that Theodora glanced up quickly. She was surprised to see a vivid blush overspreading M eta's sallow face.

"Good gracious," she thought in amazement, "is that the way the wind blows?" The idea of Meta being interested in any man was absolutely incongruous. Everyone knew that she had been faithfully helping this new physician with his poor patients, ever since his arrival in Waverly, but that was entirely natural. Meta lived for others; she had a great gift at charity, and had always donetas much as her limited means allowed. Such a thing as a love motive, however, was a totally new development.

Mrs. Charrington gave the desired permission, and then said she thought she would go to her room — an example which her sister speedily followed. It had been a trying day.

The three younger women betook themselves to the wide verandah where they were presently jpined by Dr. Sewall. It was his first social call at the house, and Theodora looked at him with new eyes. In spite of Waverly's almost total lack of eligible young men, she could not at all see him in the light of a desirable, or even a possible, suitor. He was tall and angular and serious and quiet, and even a little awkward. But Waverly had been assured on the subject of his ancestry, so that if Meta should choose to grow fond of him there could be no legitimate objection. Nevertheless, it was difficult to imagine those two as the principals in a love affair.

Elise was unusually silent. She sat in profile to the rest of the group and scarcely even replied to direct questions. During her sister's absence on a quest for ices and cakes, she turned a little more directly to the guest and murmured a sentence or two. It so happened that her scarf slipped from her shoulders and that she stooped to regain it at the same moment that the doctor sprang to restore it. There was a confused moment of intermingled heads and hands, of laughter and apologies, and then the lacy trifle was once more properly adjusted over those shoulders of Elise.

Soon she rose, saying that she felt the dampness. Just as she passed Dr. Sewall's chair her ankle turned, and it was only by dint of grasping his shoulder that she escaped a fall. However, she was very brave about it and refused all help, though she limped perceptibly as she disappeared through the long window and into the dim-lit drawing-room. Then there floated out upon the night the sounds of soft music; Elise was playing some plaintive old Scotch ballads — those simple and compelling airs that seem never to lose their appeal.

Theodora detested ballads, having had an overdose of them all her life; but she could not help admiring the tactful way in which Elise had effaced herself. It had been done, of course, in order to give Meta her chance of a tete-d-tete. Theodora must not linger and spoil everything. Murmuring something about "letters to write," she said good-night — but not without a feeling of awkwardness and self-consciousness. Any man must see through such a ruse. Even though he liked it, it was surely an insult to his intelligence.

What was Theodora's astonishment, as she passed a turn in the dark old stairway, to see Meta and her guest enter the drawing-room and to hear the doctor say something about his fondness for music. Rather constrainedly, he took a seat near the piano. Elise went on playing; she never even turned her head. Yet for some unknown reason Theodora was assailed with a sudden desire to murder her. But after all, what had Elise done? Nothing but get out of the way. Her most severe critic could not have accused her of trying to attract attention or monopolize the conversation. At all events, the doctor soon went home and the house grew silent. Meta stopped at Theodora's door to say that Ned must have decided to spend the night in town, as he had done once or twice before. There was but one more train and that was not due till nearly two. He surely would not come at that hour. So his sister had locked the house and put out the lights. She looked pale and weary as she mounted to her hot little room on the third floor. Tired, as she was, Theodora could not sleep. She lay staring into the darkness, going over in memory the petty events of the day just passed, detesting them vehemently, wondering how many more such days her life must hold. (A desperate plan had been forming of late in the back of Theodora's brain, but it was too wild and impossible to give rise to much real hope. Of course, they'd never let her do it.)

Suddenly she raised herself on her elbow, alert, listening intently. Surely that was a whistle under her window!

Theodora's room was a small one at the back of the house — the four main second-story bedrooms being used by Mrs. Charrington, Mrs. Winthrop, Elise, and Ned. Meta was upstairs and front. So, too, was the servant — on the other side of the front. Theodora alone occupied the back wing. Beneath her were the kitchen and pantry, above her the huge storeroom.

As she listened, the sound which had roused her was repeated. It was certainly a whistle. She hurried to her window and looked out.

"Brownie," said a hoarse whisper ("Brownie" was Ned Charrington' s pet name for the cousin of whom he was so fond), "Brownie, tha' you? You 'wake?"

"Is it you, Ned?"

"Yes. Come down 'n'open door."

How oddly he spoke! "Are you sick?" she demanded in fright.

"No. Not sick. Come down 'n'open door, I say."

Trembling violently, Theodora donned a dressing-gown and crept down the back stairs. How they creaked and groaned! Surely the whole household must soon be roused.

As she opened the door, Ned lurched through and almost fell on her. Regaining his balance with an effort, he propped himself against the wall and stood grinning inanely at her. He looked ghastly and unnatural.

"Kep' askin' you come down 'n'open door," he repeated foolishly. And at that moment, Theodora became conscious of a horrid odour and realized in a flash what was the trouble. To her mind, murder could have been no worse. Never before in the entire course of her narrow and sheltered life had she had speech with a drunken man.

"Ned," she said wildly in a voice that was low and tense, "Ned, look at me. Look straight in my eyes. You must come upstairs quietly. Do you understand? They're all asleep —

"All 'sleep? Tha's good. Tha's fine."