There were times in the next month when Roger seriously considered
going back into the law. He even went so far as looking up Walter
Marsh, an old college chum with whom he had rather grown out of touch,
now a very successful corporation lawyer. But at Marsh's hints that
there was an opening with him if Roger cared to consider it, Roger
always hurried away from further discussion. Nor did he tell Anne of
these visits.
Anne never referred to his leaving Wainwright, nor did she ever again
serve pot-roast. Apparently their method of life was unchanged. Roger
could not put his finger on any one incident, recall a single allusion
of Anne's, but he now felt encased in an atmosphere of watching, of
tight guardedness, and of economical maneuverings. Outwardly Anne
seemed as cheerful as ever, but Roger could feel unexpressed criticism
moving shadow-like about him, and his nerves tightened. He often grew
irritable and then desperately contrite. Irritation at this time
was brutal, but Roger could not shake off the feeling of breathing
imperceptible particles of objection. Sometimes he started to talk
out their situation frankly, but it always ended in a fog. He felt as
if he were beating with exaggerated violence in a cloud of dust. The
air was full of minute, subtle differences, sudden closings of Anne's
lips, sentences caught and deftly turned from their first intention;
and of Anne's patience. This patience was the hardest to stand without
reference.
Again and again Roger tried to explain this growing tensity between
them by Anne's nervous condition. But Anne had never felt better in her
life. Always pretty in a cool, silvery way, there were moments now when
Anne seemed to send from within a living, golden flame. Often, in the
evenings, when Anne sat, her head bent above the small, white sewing in
her lap, Roger trembled, awed and a little frightened before the marvel
of this thing that was happening to Anne.
It was after a sudden, stabbing vision of Anne like this, that Roger
went to Walter Marsh's office for the second time in one week.
"Hello." Walter Marsh put away some important work to greet Roger.
"Well, what's the decision?"
Up to the very door, Roger had intended to accept the good opening
Marsh had definitely offered him at the last visit, but, now, as he
looked about the beautifully furnished office, the hard processes of
the law softened by the tinted walls, the thick rugs, the great bunch
of chrysanthemums in the old-blue, China vase, he sparred for time.
"Haven't made one yet."
Marsh frowned. His genuine admiration for Roger's ability was scarcely
proof against a certain quality in Roger that he had always felt might,
and now feared had already, swamped Roger's sense of proportion. As
he put it to his wife, Helen: "Roger's got that dog-goned idealist
sophistry in his bean, that nothing can be right or just or fine--if
you make a decent living at it. And the joke of it, or the tragedy for
men like Roger, is that it's only outsiders like him who feel that way.
You can't get a real radical to do a thing without paying him up to the
hilt. I'll wager that Labor god, O'Connell himself, has a pile salted
down safely." For, like all financially successful men, Walter Marsh
had a fixed belief that no able, sane person worked long for an ideal
alone.
"Well, it's up to you," he said shortly.
For, although he was willing to talk the matter over with Roger for the
rest of the afternoon if it would lead anywhere, he was not willing to
waste more time even on Roger, who, after seven days' consideration
of a decidedly advantageous opening, still announced that he had
reached no decision. He picked up his pen, not quite indicating the
interview over, but very clearly expressing his feeling toward Roger.
Years after, Roger used to wonder what he would have done, if Walter
Marsh had not picked up his pen in just that way, at just that moment.
He looked quietly at Marsh, only a few years older than himself, but
already with the fine lines of nervous concentration about his eyes,
blue eyes glazed in assurance of their owner's mental processes; the
eyes of a very successful man who realizes the uselessness of fretting
his conscience over conditions beyond his personal power to change.
"But I don't think I'll take you up," Roger went on as if no interval
had intervened. "I've grown too far away from the law. I can't go back."
"Or ahead," Walter almost snapped in his honest disappointment.
"Perhaps not." For a moment Roger felt very much alone.
"Well, I can't change you and I won't try. I hope you'll make a go of
anything you settle to." Unconsciously Marsh intimated his doubt of
Roger's ever settling to anything worth while.
Roger smiled, his momentary sadness dissolved in Marsh's solicitude.
Walter Marsh might have been an elderly uncle, washing his hands of a
wild nephew.
"Thanks, just the same, old chap. Your offer was certainly generous."
For a moment the other felt inclined to tell him that it would remain
open, changed his mind, and took Roger's out-stretched hand.
"When you get settled, let me know. And come over to dinner some night,
you and Anne. Helen's always asking me why I don't make you."
"We will."
Roger left the office, glad that he had not told Anne where he was
going.
Dinner was ready when he reached home and they sat down at the daintily
set table on the porch. Now that spring was come they had gone back
to the pleasant custom. To-night, in his relief at having put the
possibility of Walter Marsh behind him, Roger was gayer than he had
been for weeks. Anne noticed and wondered and tried to edge the talk
around to discovery, and finally, to Roger's astonishment, mentioned
Marsh.
"I see Walter Marsh's been engaged for that big Southern Pacific case."
"Yes, he's getting ahead wonderfully. He'll end way up yet."
"Do you think he's honest?" Anne asked after a moment filled with
pouring the black coffee into the small cups.
"Y-e-s, in a way. Personally, he's as straight as a die. But he's
divided his life into sections, private and public. He'll do as
corporation lawyer for the Southern Pacific what he would never dream
of doing for himself."
Anne drank her coffee slowly. "I suppose he compromises by being 'a
mild progressive' and making things better 'along the line they are.'"
Roger leaned back in his chair and laughed until Anne joined him.
"Princess, you'd make a first class lawyer yourself. Walter calls
himself a liberal already."
"And you're--a Socialist, I suppose?"