第33章

By this time the household of the former rectory was running smoothly; everything was in place, the Dearborns were "settled," and a routine had begun.Her first month in her new surroundings had been to Laura an unbroken series of little delights.For formal social distractions she had but little taste.She left those to Page, who, as soon as Lent was over, promptly became involved in a bewildering round of teas, "dancing clubs," dinners, and theatre parties.Mrs.

Wessels was her chaperone, and the little middle-aged lady found the satisfaction of a belated youth in conveying her pretty niece to the various functions that occupied her time.Each Friday night saw her in the gallery of a certain smart dancing school of the south side, where she watched Page dance her way from the "first waltz" to the last figure of the german.

She counted the couples carefully, and on the way home was always able to say how the attendance of that particular evening compared with that of the former occasion, and also to inform Laura how many times Page had danced with the same young man.

Laura herself was more serious.She had begun a course of reading; no novels, but solemn works full of allusions to "Man" and "Destiny," which she underlined and annotated.Twice a week--on Mondays and Thursdays--she took a French lesson.Corthell managed to enlist the good services of Mrs.Wessels and escorted her to numerous piano and 'cello recitals, to lectures, to concerts.He even succeeded in achieving the consecration of a specified afternoon once a week, spent in his studio in the Fine Arts' Building on the Lake Front, where he read to them "Saint Agnes Eve,""Sordello," " The Light of Asia"--poems which, with their inversions, obscurities, and astonishing arabesques of rhetoric, left Aunt Wess' bewildered, breathless, all but stupefied.

Laura found these readings charming.The studio was beautiful, lofty, the light dim; the sound of Corthell's voice returned from the thick hangings of velvet and tapestry in a subdued murmur.The air was full of the odor of pastilles.

Laura could not fail to be impressed with the artist's tact, his delicacy.In words he never referred to their conversation in the foyer of the Auditorium; only by some unexplained subtlety of attitude he managed to convey to her the distinct impression that he loved her always.That he was patient, waiting for some indefinite, unexpressed development.

Landry Court called upon her as often as she would allow.Once he had prevailed upon her and Page to accompany him to the matinee to see a comic opera.He had pronounced it "bully," unable to see that Laura evinced only a mild interest in the performance.On each propitious occasion he had made love to her extravagantly.He continually protested his profound respect with a volubility and earnestness that was quite uncalled for.

But, meanwhile, the situation had speedily become more complicated by the entrance upon the scene of an unexpected personage.This was Curtis Jadwin.It was impossible to deny the fact that "J." was in love with Mrs.Cressler's _protegee._ The business man had none of Corthell's talent for significant reticence, none of his tact, and older than she, a man-of-the-world, accustomed to deal with situations with unswerving directness, he, unlike Landry Court, was not in the least afraid of her.From the very first she found herself upon the defensive.Jadwin was aggressive, assertive, and his addresses had all the persistence and vehemence of veritable attack.Landry she could manage with the lifting of a finger, Corthell disturbed her only upon those rare occasions when he made love to her.But Jadwin gave her no time to so much as think of _finesse._ She was not even allowed to choose her own time and place for fencing, and to parry his invasion upon those intimate personal grounds which she pleased herself to keep secluded called upon her every feminine art of procrastination and strategy.

He contrived to meet her everywhere.He impressed Mrs.

Cressler as auxiliary into his campaign, and a series of _rencontres_ followed one another with astonishing rapidity.Now it was another opera party, now a box at McVicker's, now a dinner, or more often a drive through Lincoln Park behind Jadwin's trotters.He even had the Cresslers and Laura over to his mission Sunday-school for the Easter festival, an occasion of which Laura carried away a confused recollection of enormous canvas mottoes, that looked more like campaign banners than texts from the Scriptures, sheaves of calla lilies, imitation bells of tin-foil, revival hymns vociferated with deafening vehemence from seven hundred distended mouths, and through it all the disagreeable smell of poverty, the odor of uncleanliness that mingled strangely with the perfume of the lilies and the aromatic whiffs from the festoons of evergreen.

Thus the first month of her new life had passed Laura did not trouble herself to look very far into the future.She was too much amused with her emancipation from the narrow horizon of her New England environment.

She did not concern herself about consequences.Things would go on for themselves, and consequences develop without effort on her part.She never asked herself whether or not she was in love with any of the three men who strove for her favor.She was quite sure she was not ready--yet--to be married.There was even something distasteful in the idea of marriage.She liked Landry Court immensely; she found the afternoons in Corthell's studio delightful; she loved the rides in the park behind Jadwin's horses.She had no desire that any one of these affairs should exclude the other two.She wished nothing to be consummated.As for love, she never let slip an occasion to shock Aunt Wess' by declaring:

"I love--nobody.I shall never marry."