A Modern Madonna. Caroline Abbot Stanley
very unforgiving—Richard has proved himself so. Yes, the boys were raised by the father and a negro nurse. They have a beautiful estate out here in Maryland—Elmhurst. Richard keeps it up and stays out there in the summer, or at least he did when I had an interest in him, which was ages ago."
"How old is Victor De Jarnette?"
"Twenty-one. He just came into his money last winter. He is two years older than Margaret."
Mrs. Pennybacker shook her head. "Too young entirely."
"Richard is ten years older than Victor. If she could have got him now—but—" Mrs. Van Dorn tossed her pretty head—"I don't believe anybody will ever capture Richard De Jarnette, unless—"
The sentence was unfinished, but she looked demurely at the lavender reflection in the mirror opposite. It is hard for a woman to forget a man who has once been at her feet.
After a long silence Mrs. Pennybacker, who had evidently been pondering something, said abruptly, "Maria, where did you say Margaret's new home was? I think I shall go to see her this afternoon."
"Why, Aunt Mary, you can't. She isn't at home until September."
"But I am going away tomorrow. I can't hang around here till September. And I am an old, old friend of her mother's. Don't you think she would excuse the informality under the circumstances?"
"Certainly not. You oughtn't to think of going."
"Very well," said Mrs. Pennybacker, "perhaps you are right. What did you say was her number? I may want to write to her some time."
She acquiesced in the proposed restriction of her movements without further remonstrance and an hour later sallied forth, address in hand, to find Margaret De Jarnette.
"That's always the best way to conduct a discussion with Maria," she said to herself. "It saves time and temper."
A fairer sight than Washington in May it would be hard to find. Too many of our great cities are but stupendous aggregations of brick and mortar, of flagstones and concrete, of elevators that climb to dizzy heights, and dark stairways which lead to a teeming under-world. Most of them, if called upon to give their own biographies, could do it as tersely and as truthfully as did Topsy, and in her immortal words—"I jes growed."
But fortunately the nation's capital was planned, and wisely planned, by a far-seeing brain, which beheld with the eye of faith while yet they were not, broad-shaded avenues flung out across the checkerboard of streets like green-bordered ribbons radiating in all directions from that massive pile which is to all good Americans (in spite of Dr. Holmes and Boston's claims) the true hub of our special universe. It is these transverse avenues which make the special beauty and distinction of the capital city—not in themselves alone, but in the miniature parks and triangular bits of greenery that they leave in their wake.
It was up Massachusetts Avenue, one of the most beautiful of them all, that Mrs. Pennybacker wended her way, consulting from time to time a card she held in her hand. She stopped at last at the door of a gray stone house, shaded by a row of elms. The "parking," as they call it, is rather wide on Massachusetts Avenue, and the lawn was green and well kept. There was an air of quiet elegance about the place that pleased Mrs. Pennybacker. "The exterior is all that can be desired, at any rate," she commented.
She sent up her card and waited in the parlor. The boy returned to say that Mrs. De Jarnette would be down immediately. When he was gone, Mrs. Pennybacker began a close perusal, so to speak, of her surroundings.
"A beautiful room," she announced to herself at length, "a beautiful room. For myself, I don't know that I like this Persian rug as well as I would a good body brussels that covered the whole floor, but that is only my taste. You have to get used to bare spots on a floor before you really appreciate them, I suppose. … Well, if happiness lies in things (and I am not surer of anything in this world than that it doesn't) Margaret will be very happy here. I wish I felt sure of—"
The sentence was unfinished. At this moment a slight lithe figure ran swiftly down the stairs and fell upon her in the most unceremonious manner.
"I am so glad to see you! You are the Mrs. Pennybacker from Missouri who was my mother's old friend, aren't you? I have heard my father speak of you so often."
"You take a different view of it from my niece, Mrs. Van Dorn," said Mrs. Pennybacker, after the greetings were over. "She said it wouldn't do at all for me to come. In fact, I ran off to do it."
"I am so glad you did," laughed Margaret. "I wouldn't have missed your visit for anything. I wish you could have been at my wedding."
"I was. I have made it a point in a long life never to miss anything that I can see legitimately and respectably. My niece secured an invitation for me. I supposed you knew."
"Was that for you? I remember Mrs. Van Dorn's asking permission to bring a friend, but I did not dream that it was anybody I ought to know."
"I live in an obscure place," Mrs. Pennybacker explained, "and Maria seems to associate obscurity with disreputableness. It is one of her little peculiarities not to wish it known that she has friends in Missouri. Oh, no, I don't mind." Then, dismissing Mrs. Van Dorn and her peculiarities, "You are very much like your mother, my dear."
"Oh, do you think so? I am always glad to be told that—although I know so little about her myself. Do you think I look like her or is it my manner?"
Mrs. Pennybacker scanned critically the bright face opposite.
"Both. You are taller, I think, but you have her supple grace—I noticed it as you ran down the stairs—and her animation. I am glad of that, for it was one of her greatest charms."
Margaret laughed. "I'm afraid I have too much animation—but I can't help it. You see I feel things rather intensely. My enjoyment is so real that I don't know how to keep from showing it."
"I hope you will never learn. A fresh enthusiasm about everything as it comes, and a capacity to enjoy, are among God's best gifts to us. They have but one drawback."
"And that is—?"
"A corresponding capacity for suffering," said Mrs. Pennybacker, with sudden gravity, as she looked into the young face. "Those two characteristics often go together. But don't be afraid to enjoy with intensity, my dear. It is about that as it is with brilliant color. You often hear girls bewail their pink cheeks, but time almost always tones it down, Margaret. I may call you that, may I not? It almost seems to me that the years have been obliterated and that your mother is beside me."
"Oh, I want you to call me that. It is so lovely to see somebody that knew my mother. You always continued friends, didn't you? Nothing ever came between you?"
"Nothing—not even death. She seems close to me now, as I sit looking at you."
Impulsively Margaret threw her arms around her mother's friend. "Oh, you bring her closer to me than she has ever been in all my life. Tell me about her."
They sat long together, the older woman living over for the girl the life of the mother she had never known—her girlhood, the marriage, the brief wedded life, and its untimely close.
"I love to hear you tell about it," Margaret said, a tender light in her eyes. "I have known so little of my mother. Somehow father never talked with me much about her. I think it hurt him to remember."
"He was very fond of her," Mrs. Pennybacker said, "and she of him. I never knew a purer love match, nor a happier married life."
"And yet she had to give it up so soon. Oh, Mrs. Pennybacker, it seems to me the saddest thing to want to live and have to die! I don't think anything could be harder than that."
"Yes. There is something harder than that, Margaret. It is to want to die and have to live."
Margaret's face expressed incredulity.
Her head was thrown back with a gesture that was habitual with her, and her eyes shining.
"You are very happy, Margaret?" said Mrs. Pennybacker, softly.
"I