CLAIRE'S ABASEMENT.
The following days and even weeks passed quickly, carried on the wave of
light-hearted play which Philip had so wisely started that Christmas
night. February came with clear sun that set the snow glittering like a
field of crystal under the dark pines, and they laughed with exuberance
of spirit as they swept over it on their skis. Even Lawrence became an
adept as long as he had one of their guiding hands to hold. All
speculation was gone for the time being. Lawrence and Claire gave
themselves up to a frank comradeship, in which Philip formed a splendid
third, so that they seemed a trio of happy, healthy animals whose lives
flowed without a break in the mere pleasure of living.
But one morning early in the month, Philip said after breakfast, over
his coffee and cigarette, "I'm going for the day to my farthest traps
across the river. Claire, would you care to go? We'll get back late this
evening."
"I would," she said promptly. "I'll be ready in a few minutes."
Lawrence did not say anything, but to his sudden surprise he felt his
heart sink. An insistent inner voice was saying, "I wish she wouldn't
go."
He heard her, back of the curtain, dressing for the trip, and his little
petulant thought grew into gloom at the prospect of her being away. He
felt irritated at Philip for suggesting that she go.
"You'll have to leave me a good spread, Claire," he said finally when
she emerged into the room.
"I'll fix you up a great meal," she laughed. "You can eat all day, if
you like." In her voice there was an unusual warmth, for at his words
she felt suddenly as though she were thoughtless of him in going. For a
minute she pondered giving up the trip, then concluded that to do so
would seem ridiculous, and set about preparing his lunch.
Philip rose and, putting on his heavy coat, said carelessly, "You can
carve us a new wooden image, Lawrence."
The words were casual and without intention, but they angered. Lawrence
felt as though both of them were trying to make amends to him for their
going, as though, being blind, he must of course stay at home, but ought
to have something to occupy his time. His resentment grew stronger as he
continued to think of their supposed condescension.
When the lunches were ready Claire and Philip started. At the door she
paused and said gaily: "Keep the house warm for our returning,
Lawrence."
He was sullenly angry and made no reply. The frank way in which she
spoke of herself and Philip somehow recalled to his mind other couples,
married lovers starting out somewhere, and his heart tightened
perceptibly. After they were gone he sat thinking for a long time, and
his impulsive feeling clarified into certainty. Claire and Philip were
in love. Perhaps they did not know it yet themselves, and had not
spoken, perhaps they had; at any rate, they were in love. It had grown
between them in his very presence, and he, doubly blind fool, had not
known. If he could have seen, it would have been clear to him, of
course.
He thought of Claire's husband, and grew virtuously angry at Claire.
Howard Barkley would mourn his days out, never knowing that his beloved
wife was living in Bolivia with a Spanish trapper! He saw Claire going
about the cabin as Philip's wife and doing for love the things she now
did out of a desire to be of use, and his rage grew. Was it not for love
that she did them now? But she was just as thoughtful of him as she was
of Philip. "Of course, idiot," he muttered, "she pities you; you poor,
abandoned, blind man, you are to be cared for, don't you see?" He strove
to shake himself into a different mood by self-ridicule. Was this the
philosopher who made life a matter of calm acceptance of circumstances
which he knew to be his master? He laughed at himself, but the laugh was
bitter, and he knew that he was not willing to accept this particular
turn of circumstances.
But what right had he to judge what she did? She was not his wife nor
the woman who would be his wife. She could never be his wife. There was
her husband. No, it was not her husband that counted, but Philip!
Suddenly Lawrence realized the point that he had reached.
He loved Claire Barkley.
The admission of that at last in frank, utter avowal set him dreaming of
the joys she might have been to him. He thought of a thousand little
intimacies, cares, thoughtfulnesses, that she might have given him and
received from him, and they were all made vital, real, by the now ardent
memory of her in his arms, of the hands he had held in his own so often
of late in the open.
In the afternoon he grew disgusted with himself. He had moped all day in
his chair, moving only to replenish the fire or get a cigarette, and he
now shook himself vigorously free from his thoughts. "You love her, yes,
and she obviously does not love you," he told himself. "Why, then, make
the best of it, if you can't do better, and at least don't be a beast in
your treatment of your host when he comes back to his own hearth."
With that he dragged out a block of wood, took his knife, and went to
work. As was his way, he was soon unconscious of everything but the
piece of wood beneath his hand. He had never done wood-carving before,
and he was learning the technique that made it very different from clay.
He had gone at this piece without any special intent and was shaping it
into a cherub merely out of whim, but he was giving to the task every
atom of his skill, and his hands worked with every nerve strained to
detect and keep line and proportion.
Swiftly under his knife the child's body grew in shape, and he caressed
the rough form tenderly. He would polish it later, and then what
pleasure it would represent! It would make a great decoration for the
cabin--for her cabin. He winced--yes, for hers and Philip's cabin.
"Fool!" he ejaculated. "Forget it!" He bent again to his work, but it
did not go so smoothly. Out there she and Philip would be laughing
merrily together, skimming over the snow in long, sweeping strides, hand
in hand. Would they think of him? Probably not, or if they did it would
be to say, "Poor Lawrence! It's a pity he's blind. He has real talent."
He gritted his teeth. Well, he had real talent, and they should know it.
She should know it. He would show her such carving as she had never
thought possible. After all, was her love to him, Lawrence the artist,
the capable, blindness-conquering artist? "I am reconstructing my life,"
he thought, "so that I can still find it valuable without the woman I
want." He again laughed bitterly and said to himself, "You poor, blind,
groveling beast, you, what a poor excuse for life you have, and what a
tawdry substitute you would offer Claire for the vast joy that is hers!
Oh, it is contemptible!"
He bent over his work again, and the door opened.
Claire came across the room and leaned over him, her body radiating a
cool, healthy perfume as she laid her hand on his shoulder.
"Oh, what a splendid piece of work, Lawrence!"
Her voice was joyous, triumphant, and his heart beat desperately against
his chest. "They've declared their love," he thought, and then he said
simply, his voice vibrant with the emotion he did not otherwise show,
"It's been beastly lonesome to-day, Claire."
She laughed gaily, while her eyes clouded. Then she noticed the
untouched food on the table.
"Why, Lawrence, didn't you like the lunch I fixed for you?"
"It was bully, Claire," he answered quickly, "but I wasn't very hungry
to-day--I don't know why."
The emotional coloring in his voice set her whole being atremble. She
had come in, radiant with the day's pleasure, and he had met her with
his need. He had been too blue even to eat. She was suddenly seized with
pity for him, as she thought of his long day alone. But more than that,
over and over in her heart she kept saying, with a joy she could not
conceal from herself, "He loves me! He loves me!"
Philip came in and bent over them both to look at the wooden child.
"_Caramba!_ it is a marvelous thing!" he exclaimed. The unconscious use
of the Spanish word showed the genuineness of his admiration.
Claire laughed joyously. She was glad that Philip knew the power of this
blind man who loved her, and a vague feeling came over her that she was
now somehow safe from Philip. Instantly she wondered at her feeling the
need of safety from him. Glancing back over Lawrence's head, she met
Ortez's eyes and read in their look a tenderness that he did not know
was there. Her heart leaped unsteadily, and her lashes dropped. She was
saying to herself, "How wonderful he is!"
Then she turned and almost ran behind the curtain that walled her room.
On the edge of her bed she sat, her face in her hands, hot tears burning
her eyes, while over and over the blood rushed into her cheeks and out
again.
"Claire! Claire! What sort of a woman are you?" she moaned.
Her heart beat irregularly under the surge of emotion that shook her.
She was glad, glad that Lawrence loved her. She had looked into the eyes
of Philip Ortez, and her own had dropped, while her mind had leaped into
admiration of him, warm, yielding admiration. What was it that had swept
her on the discovery of one man's love to a deep, vibrant gladness--that
another man's eyes had been filled with tenderness for her? Was she so
changed from the Claire of old? Was she utterly degraded? Did she want
both men to love her? Did she love either of them? What of her husband?
She sank down on the bed and wept silently.
They were talking out there in the cabin. She heard Lawrence say
laughingly: "One gets accustomed to hearing your voices around, and to
hearing Claire do things, so that a day alone seems endless."
"Hearing Claire do things"--that was it--and suppose he knew what she
was, would he want to hear her then?
"Oh, I know," Philip was answering. "It gets to be a sort of necessity,
doesn't it, when we have so many associations and memories all among
ourselves? I shall find the place dreary next winter, I am afraid, when
you are back among your friends, and Claire"--he paused slightly--"will
be going about as ever, doing things for her husband somewhere up there
in the States."
Would her husband ever imagine or discover what she was? If he did, he
would leave her. She remembered a girl in the slums at home who had
refused to be uplifted. "Aw, one fellow ain't enough. A plain ham is all
right for some, but I want a club-sandwich." She shuddered now at the
memory of the girl's words, and shrank together on her bed. Was she
another of that sort, abnormal, degenerate, whose life must find its
level at last in the sordid riot of promiscuity, disguising itself as
love? If Claire had never touched the bed-rock of self-abasement before,
she was doing it now, there in that cabin.
She heard Ortez starting to get supper, and she sat up quickly. With
stern control she forced herself to seem composed and quiet, while
within her passions raged like a tornado. Self-contempt, wonder,
amazement, pity for her husband, for Lawrence, and hatred for Philip
Ortez swept round and round in her brain like a maelstrom.
She stepped through her curtain and said gaily: "You're preempting my
privilege, Philip."
He laughed. "I thought perhaps you were tired," he said.
"She ought to be," remarked Lawrence from his chair, and in her present
state she imagined in his voice a tenderness, a worry for her, and a
distrust of her.
She took up the kettle, and hung it on its hook in the fireplace. "I
never in my life imagined myself cooking over an open fire in this way,"
she said as she turned toward the little storeroom adjoining.
"You like it?" Philip asked carelessly.
She felt sure that his eyes had read her heart and that he was looking
toward the future, his future with the wanton mistress he had found.
She could have screamed, "I hate you! I hate you!" but she said only,
"It's great fun for a while; I wouldn't fancy it as a permanent thing."
"It surely must be different from the conveniences of your home."
"Rather," she laughed as she began cutting from the smoked meat that
hung in the storeroom.
Now it was Lawrence who was speaking. "I guess she'd surprise us if we
could supply her with a chafing-dish. I'd like to see her at work over
one in my studio with the bunch around waiting hungrily for results."
Would these men never stop saying things that made her want to scream?
What was the matter, that all at once the beauty of her day should be
smashed into a discolored memory of self-hatred? Was there nothing in
all the world but sordid thoughts of oneself and of men who, causing
them, said things to make them worse?
After they had eaten she went to bed as soon as possible, leaving the
men to smoke before the fire. She had pleaded weariness, and they had
laughingly told her to get to sleep. They were out there now, talking in
subdued tones so as not to disturb her--as if their voices did not ring
through her suffering mind like clarions of evil! What should they say
if she should suddenly spring before them and shout out her mad fancies?
For a moment she had the wildest of impulses to laugh aloud, then
suddenly she turned on her face as she recalled the emotion that had
swept her when she saw Philip looking at her over Lawrence's head. Sleep
finally stopped her tears.
The two men went to bed, and there was silence in the cabin. Lawrence
was smiling, as he felt Philip's body there beside him in the darkness.
"I could kill you now," he was thinking ironically, "and end all
question of your loving Claire."
Philip, too, was awake. He had seen the hot flush that came into
Claire's face that evening, and he knew that she had been troubled
during the supper. He wondered if she were ill. Then suddenly he asked
himself, "Is she in love with one of us?" He immediately tried to
dismiss the thought as unworthy of her. She was not the kind of woman
to forget her marriage vows. But what a home she could make for the man
she loved! If he had only known her in time!
But there was still friendship--yes, surely she could give that.
Complete understanding and perfect sympathy would be the basis of a
lasting attachment. "Who knows?" he pondered. "It may be that fate has
sent her to me to teach me what a great self-denying love can be. In
Claire I may find my dream-star again."