WHAT YELLOW EYES SAW.
Freda was so quiet as she and Mauney drove along the river road and so
unusually unresponsive to his remarks, that he began to wonder if he had
discovered her in another of her unpredictable moods. For some time he,
too, was silent.
“Well, Freda,” he said at length, with forced cheerfulness, “suppose we
both loosen up for a change. That musicale was pretty nearly too much for
me, and I suppose it affected you in the same way. These last two weeks
have been about the least satisfactory passage in my life, so far, and if
I were to give in to my feelings I would be a rare study in despondency.”
“Lockwood blues!” said Freda, dismally, as she slowly stopped the car by
the side of the road. “It’s bound to get you. However, we’ve got to go on
living, and I hear that you’ve been showing some attentions to a married
woman.”
“Indeed,” laughed Mauney, good-naturedly, “and who is the favored lady?”
“This isn’t such a laughing matter as it looks, Mauney,” she replied with
some severity. “My mother’s wild about it.”
“About what?”
For an instant she tugged at her gloves and removed them. “I wish,” she
said, “that I were feeling a little happier than I am. I’ll tell you
what it’s all about. You were said to have been seen on the street with
Mrs. Poynton, and also leaving her house one evening.”
“Well, that’s true enough,” admitted Mauney as he waited for her to
continue.
“Then you _were_ with her?” asked Freda quickly.
“Yes, why not?” he asked with a puzzled frown. “Isn’t she all right?”
“God knows whether she’s all right or not, but she’s got a horrible
reputation.”
“Jean Byrne!” exclaimed Mauney, incredulously.
“Yes,” she nodded impatiently. “Mrs. Poynton has been very injudicious.
I have never really interested myself in the details and I hate saying
such things about anyone, but I simply couldn’t believe that you had
associated yourself with her in any way. But now that you admit it I
suppose I am obliged to tell you more. It’s all over town that you stayed
at her house all night.”
Mauney’s mouth opened to speak. Then his face suddenly grew pale and he
gazed in silence past her head into the woods that rose at the side of
the road.
“Well, aren’t you going to deny it?” she asked in a tone of surprise.
“Surely I don’t need to?” he said a little angrily. “Surely you don’t
believe them?”
“If I were eighteen I’d say no. But I’m twenty-six, unfortunately. And
still more unfortunately, some things are true no matter how much we
don’t believe them. I think,” she added precisely, “it’s only a fair
proposition that you should either deny it or make some intelligent
explanation.”
Mauney’s face, as it lowered slightly towards his breast, was that of a
man for whom the light of the world had suddenly gone out.
“And I’m afraid,” he said calmly, but with clear decision, “that I will
never do either.”
“But, don’t you see,” she asked with perceptible concern, “that I would
not demand it, except that it has been put up to me strongly?”
“I can see nothing,” he replied slowly, “but an unbeautiful lack of
faith.”
Freda had turned her head away, so that Mauney did not see the dawning
light of wide-eyed fear, nor the quiver of infinite regret.
For a moment she remained thus, and when roused by the shuffling of his
feet she turned again, he was stepping from the car.
“I know you will pardon me,” he said. “But under the circumstances, and
with this scandal over my head, I cannot allow you to be seen with me in
public.”
“Oh, don’t!” She tried to speak, but further words would not come. She
saw him lift his hat and, turning away, walk slowly down the road. It had
all happened so quickly that she could scarcely believe her eyes. What
had she done?
For a moment she watched his retreating figure. Then, with decision to
turn the car after him, she settled behind the wheel and adjusted the
spark lever preparatory to starting the engine. But her hands, obeying
some vague instinct, dropped to her lap. His leave-taking had been so
final—and she was a woman! She turned again in the seat and watched
him as he went. How could he leave her so abruptly. Surely the trouble
between them had been entirely upon the surface. Surely he misunderstood
her. This superficial mood of hers, that demanded explanations, was
but a vexatious billow. Underneath lay the sea of her love. She did not
believe a word of the wretched scandal. Neither now, nor before. He was
innocent, of course. What had she done?
A car was approaching and Freda automatically started her engine and
turned her motor to the road. Slowly she moved along the smooth tarvia
surface, crawling like a guilty thing farther away from Lockwood. She
wanted to turn about, drive quickly back, and, drawing up beside him,
make amends. But her car seemed to be possessed of a will of its own.
It kept straight on into the country, while Freda put forth a futile
effort to wring decision from the jumbled thoughts in her mind. Above all
considerations, a new fear was possessing her.
“I know; I know it,” something said within her. He had turned away from
her with an air of finality—that man who was so hard to move. During the
past week he had stubbornly resisted her whimsical tantalizations. Facing
her conscious weapons of provocation, he had remained self-contained.
But to-night, almost without knowing it, she had moved him, indeed. And
Mauney, with his great inertia, once moved, would maintain an irrevocable
motion. It was thus, she felt.
Her knowledge of his personal difficulties had taught her a glorious
admiration that now changed to a quite tender pity; and the thought
of having added to them brought up self-hate that tortured her almost
intolerably.
Yet, although it would be seemingly simple enough now to double back
on her course and assure him of her trust, she realized how strangely
paralyzed her will power had become. One emotion will lead to definite
action. But she was now possessed of a dozen sharp emotions that baffled
her and rendered her uniquely powerless to act. As she drove on very
slowly, unconscious of time, there occurred a gradual balancing and
checking off of these various feelings, until, at length, she knew only
that, by her own words and attitude, she had killed love in the man she
reverenced, and that he was now suffering. Finally, when she turned about
and drove homeward, her mind had clarified her feelings until nothing
remained but a wild regret. Half stupefied she entered her father’s
gateway and ran the car into the garage.
When she walked into the house, she found her father sitting in the
library, reading.
“Where’s Mother?” she asked.
“She’s over at Beecher’s,” he replied. “Why?”
“Oh, nothing.”
She stood in the library door, stupidly looking at him huddled behind his
newspaper. The house was very quiet. He was engrossed with the journal.
She heard the ticking of a clock in a bedroom upstairs. Her father sat
with one foot crossed over the other in such a way that his trouser leg
was pulled to reveal his grey sock. She noticed that the design on the
sock, woven there with black thread, was broken and that some of the
threads were standing at loose ends.
Suddenly the rattle of the newspaper startled her. “What’s wrong?” he
asked, glancing up.
“Nothing, Dad,” she said, turning towards the hallway.
“Did you want your mother?”
“No.”
She walked quickly to the telephone, raised her hand to take down the
receiver, then hesitated. She knew that it would be a simple matter to
telephone to Mauney. It was only ten o’clock. And so much depended, it
seemed, on her telephoning to him just now. Dropping upon the telephone
stool she placed her hand again on the receiver and kept it there. She
was quite unconscious of her father’s presence nearby. The only thought
in her mind was that Mauney was suffering. It would be so easy to say:
“Please come down; I want to see you.” But her hand slowly relaxed and
fell into her lap. Her will power had strangely left her.
“I’m going to bed,” announced her father, coming out into the hallway,
yawning. As he reached the foot of the staircase he paused. “By the way,”
he said. “There were a couple of important people down from Merlton this
evening, Freda!”
“Anything promising?” she asked vacantly.
“Nothing to the public, mind!” he smiled, raising his hand in a gesture
of caution. “But, between friends, I’ll drop a word of cheer. These
gentlemen are looking for a site for a really big concern. They’ve got
a factory in their minds that covers ten acres and I let ’em know that
Lockwood had that much ground for them, too. Aren’t you tickled?”
“Oh, yes,” nodded Freda automatically, although she did not know what
he had said. When he had gone to his bedroom, she rose from the stool
knowing that she was quite incapable of telephoning to Mauney.
The house seemed quieter than it had ever been before. Removing her
sweater-coat, she literally pitched it into a corner and went out on the
verandah. Careless of all but the wild regret that was torturing her she
dropped into a hammock and clasped her head with her hands. Whenever she
glanced between her fingers she saw the lawn with its dismal pines and a
faint mist that curled up over the edge of the cliff nearby. The lights
of the United States shore, usually so bright, were shut out by a fog.
Presently, from the gateway next the street, two pencils of brilliant
light quivered against the pine trunks, and, slowly swerving, illuminated
the house, as a motor car softly approached. The man who drove it saw
the verandah clearly and the form of a woman reclining in the hammock.
She had evidently thrown herself down very carelessly, for her black
stocking stood out in bold contrasts with the yellow hammock. Edward
Courtney followed down the graceful lines to her ankle and to the neat
patent-leather Oxford, whose tip barely rested on the floor. Having
finished his admiring inspection he sounded his horn blatantly and
touched into silence the soft purr of the motor as he drew near and
stopped.
Freda sat quickly up.
“Want a spin?” he asked, turning toward her over the side of the car.
“No, Ted,” she replied, “I don’t feel like it, thanks.”
“What’s the matter?”
“Nothing.”
Courtney got out and came up on the verandah.
“I suppose,” he remarked, helping himself to a chair, “a person has to
speak ahead these days, eh?”
“Oh, I’m not in such demand as all that, Ted,” she replied. “But I’m blue
to-night.”
“Blue! Good Lord, girl, that’s tough. You need cheering. And I’m an
awfully good cheerer, too.”
As he spoke he leaned back in his chair so that the light from the
dining-room window struck fair upon his long, pleasant face. Freda,
whose first wish had been that Courtney might just now find himself in
hell or any other place, but her verandah, suddenly felt that, even in
her present mood, human company was a relief.
“Ted,” she said. “I wonder if you ever have a serious thought in that
head of yours.”
“Very seldom, Freda. This head has never ached with an idea. Why should
it? I’d rather have it ache with sloe gin or curaçoa. An idea is so
liable to turn out to be weak-kneed, or revolutionary, or expensive, and
sloe gin is so simple and reliable.”
“I believe you’ve had some to-night,” she remarked dryly. “Something has
made you unusually bright.”
“I’ve had a thimbleful, I confess.”
“And you have the nerve to come over here to a perfectly dry house
without bringing some with you!”
“How stupid of me,” he smiled, slyly. “I thought drinking was one of your
pet aversions—”
“So it is; but I—”
“I almost hesitated to come on that account,” he interrupted. “Bill
Squires told me I was ‘canned,’ and Betty Doran told me I was
disqualified for polite society. They’re over home, there, now,
discussing the New York theatre season with the mater. She landed in
to-day with a raft of new jazz stuff and a confounded jumping-jack that
won’t jump. Some beggar on Bryant Square stuck her a quarter for it. Did
I understand you to say, Freda, that you would like a drink?”
Courtney produced a bottle from his coat pocket and set it on the table
near him.
“I didn’t bring any glasses,” he ventured.
“Never mind,” she said, rising. “That part is easy. I think a drink will
do me good this evening. I’ve been half sick all day.”
The comfort that Freda derived from both Courtney and the spirits was
very meagre. He rambled on lightly for a time, glass in hand, explaining
how bored he had become with Lockwood, and what a necessity existed for
some excitement or other.
Freda found that his essential vapidity was no solace, but an irritant,
and that her few draughts of sloe gin, so far from wooing her away from
the present woe, seemed to clarify and emphasize it. While he talked,
she constantly reviewed her recent episode with Mauney, and the flush of
her cheeks, so vivid in the glare of Courtney’s matches, depended less
on gin than on a growing mood of expostulation against the nature of
things. He, of course, would have been incapable, even in his soberest
moments, to divine or even recognize her spiritual state, and could,
therefore, be excused, at present, for failing. When she began talking
in a happier-sounding tone, he did not know that a veritable blaze of
irresponsible temper had kindled. Thick of ear, he missed the irony of
her voice. Thicker of brain, he took her words at their face value,
unconscious of the tremendous discount that existed.
“You’re a regular old dear, Ted,” she said. “What would I ever do without
you? You and your sloe gin! You and your nice cars, Ted, and your yachts.
Aren’t you a darling old thing!”
“Glad to get a little appreciation,” he laughed. “Ever since the dance
I’ve been waiting to see you.” He paused a moment. “Have you forgiven me
yet, girl?” he asked more seriously.
“You stupid boy! A woman always forgives a man for falling in love with
her. In fact,” she added thoughtfully, “a woman will forgive anything in
the world, but suppression.”
“I couldn’t suppress it, Freda!” he replied, leaning toward her and
resting his hand on hers. “I _had_ to tell you I loved you.”
“Really, Ted!” she answered flippantly. “Please go on.”
“But you’re such a firebrand I never know how to take you,” he confessed,
“I never know what will please. If I don’t warm up I think your eyes are
despising me, and if I do you suddenly teach me my place. And then you
tell me you’re practically engaged. Ah, well!” he sighed, dropping his
hand reluctantly to his side. “I’ll try to be a platonic friend, though
it’s a damned hopeless business. What do you say to a moonlight trip
among the islands?”
“There’s no moon, Edward.”
“But we have strong imaginations.”
“Yes, too strong, I’m afraid. How would we go?”
“On the launch.”
For an instant Freda sipped from her glass, reflectively.
“You probably think I’m afraid to take you up on that, Ted,” she said
very calmly. “But you’re wrong Go and get your launch and I’ll be waiting
for you on the steps of our boathouse.”
Courtney smoked quietly a moment without speaking. As he rose, stretched
himself, and walked toward his roadster, Freda sat watching him. Not
until he had driven to the gate did she move a muscle. Then, with a
short, spasmodic sigh, she rose from the hammock and entered the house.
She had donned a sweater and a coat and was just coming out again to the
verandah, when her mother’s step was heard crunching the pebble path.
“Where are you going?” she asked, as she came up.
“For a breeze up the river,” Freda said, ill-temperedly.
“With whom?”
“Ted Courtney.”
“Well, are you aware of the time?”
“No, not very much.”
“And it’s a dark, foggy night,” continued Mrs. MacDowell, with a glance
towards the river. “It’s much too late to—”
“Why, Mother,” laughed Freda, “it’s _never_ late. That’s just a
conventional idea. Maybe the fog will blow away in an hour or so, and the
stars come out and even the moon, too, for all we know.”
“But I don’t want you to go, my girl,” she continued, stepping nearer
Freda, and peering critically into her face.
“I haven’t worried much about your consent, Mother, during the past few
years, have I?” she asked crisply. “Do you think I would begin to do so
now—to-night?”
There was almost studied scorn in Freda’s carriage as she stepped widely
past her mother and left the verandah, while Mrs. MacDowell stood
watching her disappear in the direction of the river.
Down at the boathouse, under the high cliff, she presently awaited Ted’s
coming. There were sights and sounds here to beguile her impetuous
thoughts. The night was warm and her prophecy of moonlight came true.
From above the opposite shore the great, yellow orb lifted with delicate
tremblings, as if its sphere were made of elastic substance. Its golden
light caressed the whimsical clouds of mist that scurried like steam
above the dull, green water. The waves lifted and fell, but never broke,
as if, on such a night, they were anxious to be so gentle.
She sat perfectly still, knowing it was all madness, but as determined
as she ever had been about anything. Then she turned her head thinking
she heard the sound of his launch. But she had not heard it. It came with
silent engines, like a sleek, white ghost, long and graceful, emerging
from the fog and slowing down as it bent its course to sidle noiselessly
closer and closer. She stood up, shrinking back, half afraid, as if this
trim craft were not guided by human hands, but was approaching like an
event, exquisite, but inevitable. She sprang then to the landing to clasp
his hands as he drew her aboard. “Freda, you’re wonderful,” she heard him
say, as the boathouse grew smaller, and the nose of the launch bore out
into the broad, grey, depths of river and moon and mist.
No one knows how beautiful Lockwood is until he sees it from a boat on a
bright night. There are broad, grey buildings whose massive stone faces
shine like frost. Lines of glimmering lamps stretch far along the level
thoroughfares and mark the streets that climb steeply upward from the
water. In the midst, clusters of generous trees, motionless and black,
send up, somewhere from their indefinite mass, dark spires into the soft,
grey sky, while a tall clock-tower gazes with its yellow eyes east and
south and west. At midnight, town and river are silent, save for the
mournful chime of the clock marking a new day. And one who hears the
message from the river finds a wistful, unspeakable sadness in its tone.
The mists cleared to reveal a white craft floating aimlessly in
mid-stream. The moon threw into bold sculpture a man and a woman who
lounged in silence there. Both were as still as the becalmed night, their
restlessness appeased as by a magic from the golden moon. There were no
words. In the woman’s heart there was no happiness. It had not been love.
It had been wild regret and mad despair.