Street, and he stood with a hand on the wheel. “I had intended to go
this morning.”
He held her gaze steadily, and she felt a swift coldness touch her into
a shiver.
“Tomorrow?” This came in a spirit of perversity against her every other
instinct.
“Shall I?”
“Would you be happier in San Francisco?” Jason Burrage made a hopeless
gesture.
“... for supper,” Honora found herself saying in a rush; “at six
o'clock. If you aren't bound for California.”
She tried to recall afterward if she had indicated a particular evening
for the invitation. There was a vague memory of mentioning Thursday.
This was Tuesday... Herriot Cozzens would be in Boston.
*****
A servant told her that Mr. Burrage had arrived when she was but half
ready. She was, in reality, undecided in her choice of a dress for the
evening; but finally she wore soft white silk, with deep, knotted fringe
on the skirt, a low cut neck, and a narrow mantle of black velvet. Her
hair, severely plain in its net, was drawn back from a bang cut across
her brow. As she entered the room where he was standing a palpable
admiration marked his countenance.
He said nothing, however, beyond a conventional phrase. Such natural
reticence had a large part in her acceptance of him; he did nothing that
actively disturbed her hypercritical being. He was almost distinguished
in appearance. She had a feeling that if it had been different....
Honora distinctly wished for a flamboyant touch about him; it presented
a symbol of her command of any situation between them, a reminder of her
superiority.
The supper went forward smoothly; there were the welcome inevitable
reminiscences of the rough fare of California, laughter at the
prohibitive cost of beans; and when, at her direction, he lighted a
cheroot, and they lingered on at the table, Honora's aloofness was
becoming a thing of the past. The smoke gave her an unexpected thrill,
an extraordinary sense of masculine proximity. There had been no such
blue clouds in the house since her father's death seven years ago.
Settled back contentedly, Jason Burrage seemed--why, actually, he had an
air of occupying a familiar place.
It was bitterly cold without, the room into which they trailed
insufficiently warm, and they were drawn close together at an open
Franklin stove. The lamps on the mantel were distant, and they had not
yet been fully turned up: his face was tinged by the glow of the fire.
An intense face. “What are you thinking about--me?” she added coolly.
“Nothing,” he replied; “I'm too comfortable to think.” There was a note
of surprise in his voice; he looked about as if to find reassurance
of his present position. “But if I did it would be this--that you are
entirely different from any woman I've ever known before. They have
always been one of two kinds. One or the other,” he repeated somberly.
“Now you are both together. I don't know as I ought to say that, if it's
nice. I wouldn't like to try and explain.”
“But you must.”
“It's your clothes and your manner put against what you are. Oh hell,
what I mean is you're elegant to look at and good, too.”
An expression of the deepest concern followed his exclamation. He
commenced an apology. Hardly launched, it died on his lips.
Honora was at once conscious of the need for his contrition and of the
fact that she had never heard a more entertaining statement. It was
evident that he viewed her as a desirable compound of the women of the
El Dorado and Olive Stanes: an adroit and sincere compliment. She wanted
to follow it on and on, unfold its every exposition; but, of course,
that was impossible. All this she concealed behind an indifferent
countenance, her slim white fingers half embedded in the black mantle.
Jason Burrage lighted another cheroot and put his feet up on the
polished brass railing of the iron hearth. This amused her beyond words.
She couldn't remember when she had had another such vitalized evening.
She realized that, through the last years, she had been appallingly
lonely; but with Jason smoking beside her in a tilted chair the solitude
was banished. She got a coal for him in the small burnished tongs, and
he responded with a prodigious puff that set her to coughing.
When he had gone the house was hatefully vacant; as she went up to her
chamber the empty spaciousness, the semi-dark well of the stair, the
high hall with its low-turned lamp, the blackness of the third story
pouring down over her, oppressed her almost beyond endurance. Her Aunt
Herriot, already old, must be dead before very long, there was none
other of her connections who could live with her, and she would have to
depend on perfunctory, hired companionship.
Honora saw that she should never escape from the influence which held
her in Cottarsport.
In her room, the door bolted, it was no better. The interior was large,
uncompromisingly square; and, though every possible light was burning,
still it seemed somber, menacing.
The following day was a lowering void with gusts of rain driving against
the windows. Mrs. Cozzens would be away until tomorrow, and Honora
met the afternoon alone. At times she embroidered, short-lived efforts
broken by despondent and aimless excursions through the echoing halls.
She attempted to read, to compose herself with an elaborate gilt and
embellished volume called “The Garland.” But, at a Lamentation on the
Death of Her Canary, by a Person of Quality, she deliberately dropped
the book into the burning coals of the Franklin stove. The satisfaction
of seeing the pages crisp and burst into flame soon evaporated. The day
was a calamity, the approaching murky evening a horror.
At supper she wondered what Jason Burrage was doing. A trace of the
odor of his cheroot lingered in the dining room. He was an astonishingly
solid, the only, actuality in a nebulous world of lofty, flickering
ceilings and the lash of rain. He might as well smoke in her drawing
room as in the Burrage kitchen. Paret Fifield would have drifted
naturally to the Canderay house, but not Jason, not a native of
Cottarsport.... With an air of determination she sharply pulled the
plush, tasseled bell rope in the corner.
*****
She heard the servant open the front door; there was a pause--Jason
was taking off his greatcoat--after which he entered, calm and without
query.
“I was tired of sitting by myself,” she said with an air of entire
frankness. In a minute or so more it was all as it had been the evening
before--she held a coal for his cheroot as he tilted back beside her
with his feet on the rail. “You are a very comfortable man, Jason,” she
told him.
He made no reply, although a quiver crossed his lips. Then, after a
little, “It's astonishing how soon you get used to things. Seems as if I
had been here for years, and this is only the third time.'”
“Have you thought any more of California?”
He faced her with an expression of surprise. “It had gone clean out of
my mind. I suppose I will shift back, though--nothing here for me. I
can't come to see you every evening.”
She preserved a silence in which they both fell to staring into a
dancing, bluish flame. The gusts of rain were audible like the tearing
of heavy linen. An extraordinary idea had taken possession of Honora--if
the day had been fine, if she had been out in a sparkling air and sun,
a very great deal would have happened differently. But just what
she couldn't then say: the fact alone was all that she curiously
apprehended.
“I suppose not,” she answered, so long after his last statement that he
gazed questioningly at her. “I wonder if it has occurred to you,” she
continued, “how much alike we are? I often think about it.”
“Why, no,” he replied, “it hasn't. Jason Bur-rage and Honora Canderay! I
wouldn't have guessed it, and I don't believe any one else ever has.
I'd have a hard time thinking about two more different. It's--it's
ridiculous.” He became seriously animated. “Here I am--well, you know
all about me--with some money, perhaps, and a little of the world in my
head; but you're Honora Canderay.”
“You said once that I was nothing but a woman,” she reminded him.
“I remember that,” he admitted with evident chagrin. “I was drunk.”
“That's when the truth is often hit on; I am quite an ordinary sort of
woman.”
He laughed indulgently.
“You said last evening I had some of a very common quality.”
“Now you mustn't take that serious,” he protested; “it was just in a way
of speech. I told you I couldn't rightly explain myself.”
“Anyhow,” she asserted bluntly, “I am lonely. What will you do about
it?”
His amazement turned into a consternation which even now she found
almost laughable. “Me?” he stammered. “There's no way I can help you.
You are having a joke.”
She realized, with a feeling that her knowledge came too late, that she
was entirely serious. Jason Burrage was the only being alive who could
give her any assistance, yes, save her from the future. Her hands were
cold, she felt absolutely still, as if she had suddenly turned into
marble, a statue with a heart slightly fluttering.
“You could be here a lot,” she told him, and then paused, glancing at
him swiftly with hard, bright eyes. He had removed his feet from the
stove, and sat with his cheroot in a poised, awkward hand. She was
certain that he would never speak.
“We might get married.”
Honora was startled at the ease with which the words were pronounced,
and conscious of an absurdly trivial curiosity--she wondered just how
much he had been shocked by her proposal? She saw that he was stupefied.
Then:
“So we might,” he pronounced idiotically. “There isn't any real reason
why we shouldn't. That is----.” He stopped. “Where does the laugh
start?” he demanded.
Suddenly Honora was overwhelmed, not by what she had said, but by the
whole difficulty and inner confusion of her existence. She turned away
her head with an unintelligible period. A silence followed, intensified
by the rain flinging against the glass.
“It's a bad night,” he muttered.
The banality saved her. Again practically at her ease, she regarded him
with slightly smiling lips. “I believe I've asked you to marry me,” she
remarked.
“Thank you,” said Jason Burrage. He stood up. “If you mean it, I'd like
to very much.”
“You'd better sit down,” she went on in an impersonal voice; “there
ought to be a lot of things to arrange. For instance, hadn't we better
live on here, for a while anyhow? It's a big house to waste.”
“Honora, you'll just have to stop a little,” he asserted; “I'm kind
of lost. It was quick in California, but that was a funeral procession
compared with you.”
Now that it was done, she was frightened. But there was time to escape
even yet. She determined to leave the room quickly, get away to the
safety of her bolted door, her inviolable privacy. She didn't stir. An
immediate explanation that she hadn't been serious--how could he have
thought it for a moment!--would save her. But she was silent.
A sudden enthusiasm lighted up his immobile face. “I'll get the
prettiest diamond in Boston,” he declared.
“You mustn't----” she commenced, struggling still to retreat. He
misunderstood her.
“The very best,” he insisted.
When he had gone she remained seated in the formal chamber. At any rate
she had conquered the emptiness of her life, of the great square house
above her. It was definitely arranged, they were to marry. How
amazed Herriot Cozzens would be! It was probable that she would leave
Cot-tarsport, and her, Honora, immediately. Jason hadn't kissed her, he
had not even touched her hand, in going. He had been extremely subdued,
except at the thought of the ring he would buy for her.
There were phases of the future which she resolutely ignored.
Mrs. Cozzens came back as had been planned, and Honora told her at once.
The older woman expressed her feeling in contained, acid speech. “I am
surprised he had the assurance to ask you.”
“Jason didn't,” Honora calmly returned.
“It's your father,” the elder stated; “he had some very vulgar blood. I
felt that it was a calamity when my sister accepted him. A Cot-tarsport
person at heart, just as you are, always down about the water and those
low docks.”
“I'm sure you're right, and so it's much better for me to find where I
belong. I have tried to get away from Cottarsport, and from the sea and
the schooners sailing in and out of the Narrows, a thousand times. But I
always come back, just as father did, back to this little place from
the entire world--China and Africa and New York. The other influences
weren't strong enough, Aunt Herriot; they only made me miserable;
and now I've killed them. I'll say good-bye to you and Paret and the
cotillions.” She kissed her hand, but not gaily, to a whole existence
irrevocably lost.
With Jason's ring blazing on her slim finger she drove, the day before
the wedding, for the last time as Honora Canderay. The leaves had
been stripped from the elms on the hills, brown and barren against the
flashing, steely water. She saw that Coggs was so impotent with age that
if the horses had been more vigorous he would be helpless. Coggs had
driven for her father, then her, for thirty years. It was too cold
for the old man to be out today. His cheeks were dark crimson, and
continually wet from his failing eyes.
Herriot Cozzens had left her; Coggs... all the intimate figures of
so many years were vanishing. Jason remained. He had almost entirely
escaped annoying her, and she was conscious of his overwhelming
admiration, the ineradicable esteem of Cottarsport for the Canderays;
but a question, a doubt more obscure than fear, was taking possession of
her. After all she was supremely ignorant of life; she had been screened
from it by pride and luxurious circumstance; but now she had surrendered
all her advantage. She had given herself to Jason; and he was life,
mysterious and rude. The thunder of large, threatening seas, reaching
everywhere beyond the placid gulf below, beat faintly on her perception.