A Coward

"My daughter Irene," said Mrs. Carstyle (she made it rhyme with _tureen_),
"has had no social advantages; but if Mr. Carstyle had chosen--" she
paused significantly and looked at the shabby sofa on the opposite side of
the fire-place as though it had been Mr. Carstyle. Vibart was glad that it
was not.

Mrs. Carstyle was one of the women who make refinement vulgar. She
invariably spoke of her husband as _Mr. Carstyle_ and, though she had but
one daughter, was always careful to designate the young lady by name. At
luncheon she had talked a great deal of elevating influences and ideals,
and had fluctuated between apologies for the overdone mutton and affected
surprise that the bewildered maid-servant should have forgotten to serve
the coffee and liqueurs _as usual_.

Vibart was almost sorry that he had come. Miss Carstyle was still
beautiful--almost as beautiful as when, two days earlier, against the
leafy background of a June garden-party, he had seen her for the first
time--but her mother's expositions and elucidations cheapened her beauty
as sign-posts vulgarize a woodland solitude. Mrs. Carstyle's eye was
perpetually plying between her daughter and Vibart, like an empty cab in
quest of a fare. Miss Carstyle, the young man decided, was the kind of
girl whose surroundings rub off on her; or was it rather that Mrs.
Carstyle's idiosyncrasies were of a nature to color every one within
reach? Vibart, looking across the table as this consolatory alternative
occurred to him, was sure that they had not colored Mr. Carstyle; but
that, perhaps, was only because they had bleached him instead. Mr.
Carstyle was quite colorless; it would have been impossible to guess his
native tint. His wife's qualities, if they had affected him at all, had
acted negatively. He did not apologize for the mutton, and he wandered off
after luncheon without pretending to wait for the diurnal coffee and
liqueurs; while the few remarks that he had contributed to the
conversation during the meal had not been in the direction of abstract
conceptions of life. As he strayed away, with his vague oblique step, and
the stoop that suggested the habit of dodging missiles, Vibart, who was
still in the age of formulas, found himself wondering what life could be
worth to a man who had evidently resigned himself to travelling with his
back to the wind; so that Mrs. Carstyle's allusion to her daughter's lack
of advantages (imparted while Irene searched the house for an
undiscoverable cigarette) had an appositeness unintended by the speaker.

"If Mr. Carstyle had chosen," that lady repeated, "we might have had our
city home" (she never used so small a word as town) "and Ireen could have
mixed in the society to