Mrs. Larrabbee was suddenly, at sea. And she prided herself on a lack of that vagueness generally attributed to her sex.
“On--on everything. On what we were talking about,--the carnival feeling, the levity, on the unbelief of the age. Isn't it because the control has been taken off?”
He saw an opportunity to slip into smoother waters.
“Exactly!” cried Mrs. Larrabbee. “What a clever simile!”
“It is Mr. Pares,” said Hodder. “Only he was speaking of other symptoms, Socialism, and its opposite, individualism,--not carnivalism.”
“Poor man,” said Mrs. Larrabbee, accepting the new ground as safer, yet with a baffled feeling that Hodder had evaded her once more, “he has had his share of individualism and carnivalism. His son Preston was here last month, and was taken out to the yacht every night in an unspeakable state. And Alison hasn't been what might be called a blessing.”
“She must be unusual,” said the rector, musingly.
“Oh, Alison is a Person. She has become quite the fashion, and has more work than she can possibly attend to. Very few women with her good looks could have done what she has without severe criticism, and something worse, perhaps. The most extraordinary thing about her is her contempt for what her father has gained, and for conventionalities. It always amuses me when I think that she might have been the wife of Gordon Atterbury. The Goddess of Liberty linked to--what?”
Hodder thought instinctively of the Church. But he remained silent.
“As a rule, men are such fools about the women they wish to marry,” she continued. “She would have led him a dance for a year or two, and then calmly and inexorably left him. And there was her father, with all his ability and genius, couldn't see it either, but fondly imagined that Alison as Gordon Atterbury's wife, would magically become an Atterbury and a bourgeoise, see that the corners were dusted in the big house, sew underwear for the poor, and fast in Lent.”
“And she is happy--where she is?” he inquired somewhat naively.
“She is self-sufficient,” said Mrs. Larrabbee, with unusual feeling, “and that is just what most women are not, in these days. Oh, why has life become such a problem? Sometimes I think, with all that I have, I'm not, so well off as one of those salesgirls in Ferguson's, at home. I'm always searching for things to do--nothing is thrust on me. There are the charities--Galt House, and all that, but I never seem to get at anything, at the people I'd like to help. It's like sending money to China. There is no direct touch any more. It's like seeing one's opportunities through an iron grating.”