your eyes are hot with fever.”
He spoke impersonally; it was like the soothing hand of the physician
to his patient. Simmons was laughing still more hilariously, and his
neighbor, the Magnificent Wreck, was laughing with him; those near them
were shouting and clapping their hands; they were urging him to do
something. To his wife it all seemed silly.
“Does _that_ worry you?” continued Vessinger, following her eyes.
She looked at her husband again with a sudden sense of detachment from
him. He was foolish, like a child, and she suspected why he was foolish
and drank too much: he wished not to think. She despised his male way
of trying to escape from himself. His was the man’s simple, coarse
instinct--to drink, to laugh, to forget!
Suddenly he was just a man in black and white, like all the others who
had come to her that evening and said words and smiled and danced and
gone away. He was just a man, like one-half creation.
“Yes,” she replied steadily to the doctor. “I am miserable. Does it
make you happy to know that?”
She did not comprehend what inferences he might draw from the
juxtaposition of acts and words.
“In a way, it does,” he answered calmly. “But I shouldn’t let _that_
bother you. Our hostess, good woman, loves a laughing guest, and your
husband is colossal. The best of men forget themselves, you know, and
on the morrow they are ashamed. A good wife forgives--that is her
_métier_.”
The racket below increased until every one stopped his eating or his
talk to find out what made the disturbance. Simmons was rising somewhat
unsteadily to his feet. His tie had come undone. His large brown eyes,
usually twinkling with gentle kindliness, flashed with the passion of
the moment.
“Bravo! Simmons! Bravo! A song!” rose from some of the guests. “Sing
your old song, Sim!” one called out. The guests jostled into the
dining-room, deserting the terrace, where they had been supping and
flirting. There were some among the men who had been at the School of
Mines and knew his college fame.
“So your husband sings?” Dr. Vessinger asked.
“We will hear,” his wife replied tranquilly. “Listen!”
The drinking song, which was not meant for dinner-parties where any
proprieties were observed, rolled out, at first uncertainly and then
with greater force. At the end of the stanza, young men’s voices from
all over the house shouted out the chorus. One or two of the older men
shook their heads, and while laughing said: “No, no. That’s too bad!
Some one should stop him.”
“It seems to take,” Dr. Vessinger murmured to Mrs. Simmons. “He has
chosen that moment of inspiration when we are all drunk enough to think
it a great song and not too drunk to join the chorus. Bravo! More,
more!” he called with those who were applauding.
It was, apparently, a tremendous success. Men were patting Simmons on
the back, and a servant was filling his glass with champagne. The calls
for another stanza grew more clamorous.
His wife looked at him stonily. She did not make much of his
unaccustomed drinking, of the spectacle he was offering of himself to
their public. She was wondering at his male mind. How could _he_ find
it in him--just now with the truth they both knew but two hours cold
in his memory--how could he find the heart to drink and sing? She had
said to him defiantly that she would get joy in spite of all. But was
there anything in life which could make her drink and sing and forget?
Her heart was shut to pleasure, and she looked at him coldly, as one
might look at a bad actor who is much applauded.
* * * * *
He, poor man! had sat down to the feast with the twin devils of despair
and remorse by his side. The others around him laughed and were merry.
Why should _his_ food taste bitter when to them it seemed sweet? Why
should his be the wife and his the child? He felt himself to be a
common man, and wished to have their taste for the feast, their content
with common life. So he began to drink because it was pleasant to
drink. The devils faded as the spirit of champagne entered him. At
last he was comfortable, and then happy. The woman by his side, the
Magnificent Wreck, became beautiful, witty, and alluring. The woman
at his left smiled with a pretty doll’s smile, showing her nice teeth,
white like porcelain. He was drunk; he knew it, and he was happy!
So he wanted to sing, to make the room ring with his new joy. There
seemed to open a concealed door in his mind, and out tramped words and
sounds, expressing beautiful, happy feelings; he was singing....
“On the table! On the table!” they shouted to him. “Up, up!”
The older men were trying to calm the racket to a more decorous note.
But already they had cleared the dishes and glass from his end of the
table, and the Magnificent Wreck, with glistening eyes, was applauding,
urging him on. He hopped on his chair, like a boy, as he had done years
ago at college dinners. He placed one foot on the table to steady
himself, raised the long-stemmed wine-glass above his head, and, less
certainly, out rolled the second stanza.
It was good to be drunk, if this were being drunk! Again, with all the
volume of the first time, sprang the notes of the chorus.
Simmons raised his long-stemmed glass and waved it slowly in a circle
above his head. They clapped and stamped and sang over again the chorus.
“Why not leave? Why inflict this on yourself?” the doctor asked his
companion.
“_That_ does not make me miserable,” she answered coldly, recognizing
how he had mistaken her. “It is foolish, of course, to drink too much.
He will be sorry to-morrow.”
“What is it then that burns your eyes, and gives you that look of pain?”
“I will _never_ tell you!”
“Perhaps I can guess,” he answered at random.
Her eyes lost their defiance. Perhaps this subtle doctor, who could
read the miseries of life, had seen and comprehended all, that
afternoon when he had come to call. The shame that she vowed to herself
he should know last of all, he knew, perchance, _best_ of all.
“Don’t reject my sympathy,” he added. “I pity you.”
His voice had softened from the tone of irony. His gentleness broke
down her pride. There was something humanly warm and kindly in his
sympathy. It seemed to reach farther than her husband’s. A mist
gathered in her eyes, and she lowered her head that he might not see
the possible tears and the quivering lips....
Would her fate have been thus cruel, if, in the years gone by, in the
Sicilian garden, she had preferred this man,--if this man, who loved
her, had been bound with her? Would she have known the clutch of terror
and felt the wound from the arms of her son? The child who was hers and
another’s--might he not have been wholly hers?
She thought bitterly how the male heart had its escape from
misery,--such an easy, common one! She wanted _her_ escape. She could
not drink and shout; she could fly, leave the terror behind her, and
seek a new self in a new world.
“To one that loves you as I do, your misery is his misery, and your
despair is his.”
She felt that she should resent his words, but her heart welcomed them.
There was a cry in the room below them, then a crash, and the song
came to an inglorious end. Simmons had circled the swaying yellow ball
of sparkling wine in too ample an arc. The champagne dashed upon the
laughing, upturned face of their hostess; the glass shattered on the
floor. A kindly hand saved Simmons from falling.
Dr. Vessinger’s sharp eyes detected the glance of contempt in the
wife’s face.
“I think a breath of night air would suit us both better than this
hubbub,” he suggested, opening the casement window behind him. “Will
you take my arm, Evelyn?”
She hesitated a moment, a sense of duty to be done detaining her. Then,
with another look at her husband, at the noisy room of flushed people,
repugnance mounted too high; she placed her hand on the doctor’s arm,
and stepped down to the terrace beneath the casement. Beyond lay the
scented gardens, the breadth of cool heavens, the velvet darkness
outside the range of light from the cottage windows, pointed in places
by tall poplars.
“Let us get beyond the sound of their noise,” the doctor murmured,
drawing her more closely to him. A fresh burst of laughter, doubtless
caused by some new antic of her husband, sped her steps away from the
band of light about the house. She shivered with distaste of it. Not
that! Rather to flee away in the cool, dark night, away forever from
the life which she had known and which was a failure,--to find escape
from the threatening horror which was hers and his!
Vessinger drew her wrap more closely about her, with an air of
domination, and she followed submissively through the deserted alleys
of the dark garden, listening to his tense words, in a lethargy of
spirit....
There was an eruption from the brilliant house. Men’s voices reached
the pair in the garden. The voices protested, coaxed; for a time they
faded away to the other side of the house. Then they returned, and the
woman in the garden heard her husband speaking thickly and loudly.
“That’s all right, boys. But I must find my wife, first. Dixey says he
saw her go out here, when I was singing.”
She started involuntarily, but the doctor restrained her.
“They will take him away,” he whispered, “in a minute.”
Evidently that was what his companions were endeavoring to do, but
Simmons with drunken obstinacy persisted in his point.
“Yes,” he said, in his loud, confident voice, “I’ll go with you all
right, just as soon as I find my wife. Never left my wife. It wouldn’t
be right, you know!”
She slipped her arm from her companion, and walked rapidly toward the
terrace, Vessinger following her.
“I am here, Olaf,” she said, going up to the knot of men. “Are you
looking for me?”
His companions separated awkwardly,--all but one, who held Simmons’s
swaying figure.
“That you, Evelyn? Wanted to tell you that I am going in town with
these fellows. Let me get the carriage for you. Don’t mind going home
alone, do you, Evelyn?”
“I will take Mrs. Simmons to her carriage,” Vessinger offered, stepping
forward.
“Excuse me!” Simmons replied, waving him back. “Will you take my arm,
Evelyn?”
Together in some fashion, they reached the _porte-cochère_, and there
again Vessinger tried to put Mrs. Simmons in the carriage, to whisper a
word privately to her.
“Shan’t I drive back with Mrs. Simmons?” he asked. Simmons wavered
unsteadily, looking at Vessinger all the time. Then he said very
distinctly:
“No thank you, Vessinger. We can trust the coachman,--good man, the
coachman.”
He handed his wife to the carriage.
“Won’t you come, Olaf?” she asked. “I think you had better come with
me.”
Her tone was cold and hard. The man drew himself up quickly.
“Thank you, Evelyn. I had rather not. Good-night.”
He closed the carriage door, and turned to the men, who had been
awkwardly watching the performance from a distance.
“Drive on, Tom. Ready now, boys.”
[Illustration]
VI
The morrow was close and sultry. The sun pursued its course through
the heavens, round and red like a ball of heated metal. Careful
housewives in suburban cottages scrupulously drew in the shutters,
pulled the shades, and closed the windows against the fierce heat. Thus
they produced the musty coolness of the tomb, in which they existed
languidly until late afternoon. Then easterly windows were opened,
admitting fresh air.
On the eastern piazza of the Simmons house, as the sun sank, there
appeared two people. Mrs. Simmons moved here and there restlessly, her
face pale with the heat of the day, dark circles beneath her blue eyes.
She looped up the wilted tendrils of the climbing vine, patting the
belated blossoms with her soft, plump hands. Behind her in the shade of
the long house Dr. Vessinger lounged on a chair, smoking a cigarette.
“Evelyn!”
The doctor’s low voice just reached to her. She started and turned her
face to him. He was a slight man, with an active, well-proportioned
body. How much he had done for himself since those far-off days when
she had first known him! He was Some One now; she had a vague movement
of pride that she had held his fancy all these years.
“You knew I should be out to-day?” he questioned, following her with
his intelligent eyes.
“Yes,” she answered dully. “I suppose I did. It was the proper thing
to do,” she added bitterly. “No! I don’t mean that! I know you are
kind--only I suffer so!”
“Has your husband turned up yet?”
“No, but he telephoned that he should be back for dinner, late, quite
late.”
“Oh! Pat Borden took care of him. He was well looked after. You needn’t
worry.”
“Why should I, about him?” she asked inquiringly, as if she failed to
see any significance in what he said. “He telephoned; he is well; he
will be here this evening. I do not think about him especially.”
“I hope you have thought about--”
“No, no, please don’t say those foolish things. They don’t sound well
the day after.”
He threw away his cigarette and joined her.
“You men are all alike!” she continued musingly. “You are all at the
bottom brutal; you don’t care for anything but--what it means to _you_.
I wonder if there was ever a man born who could care for a woman more
than for himself?”
“If there were, the woman would tire of him in a week.”
“Mamma! You here?”
Oscar came skipping out of the house, making one long leap from the
drawing-room window to the railing of the veranda. Then he ran toward
his mother, arms stretched out to hug her.
“Nice little fellow,” Dr. Vessinger remarked propitiatingly. “Won’t you
come here, little man?”
“No, no!” the mother objected hastily. “Run away, Oscar. Ask Dora to
take you to the Laurels. It will be shady and cool there.”
The child looked steadily and curiously at the doctor.
“Who is that gentleman, mamma?” he demanded.
“Ha, ha, well said!” the doctor laughed. “He wants to know who your
friends are, madam. He will manage _you_ one of these days. Come here,
sir!”
Instead of running forward at the doctor’s invitation, the child backed
steadily into his mother’s dress, eying the stranger with dislike.
Mrs. Simmons glanced up at the doctor, surprised and annoyed at his
conduct. Did he not understand? How could he anger the child, perhaps
provoke one of his frightful paroxysms? It was disagreeable in him to
dwell thus on her misery, to play with the child.
“Go away, Oscar,” she said, leading him away from the terrace.
At the same moment Dr. Vessinger walked toward the mother and child.
Oscar stood still, his limbs stiffening, his under lip trembling. Tears
began to gather in the mother’s eyes. She was frightened, and she hated
the imperious man.
“Come, dear,” she urged. “Come with mamma. Be good and do as I want you
to.”
She had leaned down to him, and he threw one arm about her neck and
drew her close to him, looking defiantly at the doctor.
“Is he the man who makes you cry, mamma?” he asked. “Send him away. I
will drive him away!”
As the mother watched him, standing there with his head thrown back,
the black curls falling on his brown neck, he recalled to her vividly
his father. She had seen the man in something like the attitude of the
child. Commanding, erect, noble, defiant,--so she had seen him and
worshipped him during the months of their ardent first love. The little
mite was like her lover born again.
“Fiery little devil, isn’t he?” the doctor remarked, hesitating and
disconcerted. “Looks as if he would like to smash me, stick a knife
into me, or something. Handsome, though!”
“I think you had better sit down,” Mrs. Simmons answered coldly. As the
man stood irresolute, she added vehemently:
“Why do you tease the child? Go back!”
The doctor turned back to his chair sulkily. The mother kissed the
boy’s face, gently loosening the grasp of the strong little arm about
her neck. “Come, Oscar,” she whispered. “We will go together!”
She led him from the terrace, he looking backward constantly and
scowling at the unacceptable guest.
“Send him away, mamma,” he said. “I don’t like him.”
“Ssh, ssh,” his mother murmured reprovingly, seeking to soften his
barbarian instincts.
She was gone for what seemed to the doctor an interminable time, and
when she returned there was something cold and severe in her pale face.
Before she seated herself, she began to say what she had in mind:
“Dr. Vessinger, there is something I must say to you, all at once,
now, and then you must go. You have made love to me,--yesterday
evening,--and I listened. I was in great agony of mind, and so
foolishly absorbed in my pain that I thought you--you understood what
my trouble was. I wanted to escape from it--at any price. I was wild
and bad. Now, well, you don’t understand; and I know, myself, I could
not get any joy or give any, without him, little Oscar.”
“I don’t understand,” Dr. Vessinger exclaimed, thoroughly mystified.
“No, you don’t understand,” she admitted with cool irony. “Perhaps it
is not necessary that you should. You doubtless see that I could not
give you the pleasure you look for.”
“I do not admit that for one moment,” he protested, rising.
She held out her hand.
“I was right--eight years ago; that is all, my friend.”
He took her hand and held it, trying to come nearer, to melt the icy
mood of the woman. She smiled pleasantly at him, unmoved, confident,
and in another world of feeling than his.
“You are not well,” he stammered, “not yourself!”
“Who can tell what _is_ yourself? Last night I wanted the freedom of
my youth. Now I am ready to take the other thing, which makes us
old,--pain. Good-by.”
He still held her hand, and she smiled at him, aloof. Just then a man’s
voice sounded from inside the house, and Simmons poked his head out of
the drawing-room window.
“Oh! You here, Evelyn?”
Perceiving Vessinger, he added gruffly:
“Where is Jane or some one? I must be off to-night, and I want them to
pack my bag and give me some dinner!”
“How are you, Simmons?” the doctor called out in his cool manner. “Come
out here and let’s have a look at you!”
“I’m all right, Vessinger,” Simmons answered sulkily, stepping through
the window.
“That was a great performance you gave us last night, Simmons, a
triumph! I never heard anything better. Your waving that glass over the
Bellflower’s crown of false hair was magnificent!”
Simmons glowered at the man and looked furtively at his wife. She
seemed to be gazing at something at the other end of the lawn.
“Oh!” Simmons muttered. “Damn nonsense!”
His handsome face looked thin and pale, as if he had been paying well
for his moments of forgetfulness.
“Yes,” continued the doctor, with an insistence which seemed to Mrs.
Simmons to be petty malice. “You were the success of the evening. Mrs.
Bellflower ought to thank you for your parlor tricks.”
“Oh! damn,” commented the harassed man, looking miserably toward his
wife.
She turned suddenly to the two men.
“We have had enough of last night, haven’t we?”
“So you’re off again?” the doctor persisted, seeking a new topic.
“Yes, yes, long trip. God knows when I shall get back.” This last he
muttered to himself. Vessinger did not hear it, but Mrs. Simmons
looked quickly at her husband. He hung his head.
“You--you are going away?” she asked in a low voice, forgetting the
other man’s presence. “To leave me? Going to-night?”
“Why, those Jews telegraphed me--last night--got it this morning--must
be in Chicago to meet them.”
He turned to enter the house. Mrs. Simmons followed him without
regarding Vessinger.
“I am off,” the doctor said to her. “Good-by.”
But no one heeded him.
[Illustration]
VII
“Olaf!”
There was a note of dread in her voice, which arrested the man’s
footsteps.
“What?” he asked curtly.
“You will not leave me, _now_! You are not going away?”
“You can’t want me around much, after last night,” he answered
hesitatingly.
“What do you mean?” she asked quickly, a flush coming to her face.
“There’s no use of going over it, is there? I began to drink, of
course, because I was so damned blue about the boy and you. It seemed
as if everything was helplessly mixed up, and there was no way of
straightening it out. After all the fight I made to be something,
and to win you, and to give you a good place in the world,--all that
was suddenly smashed. I couldn’t stand sitting there and thinking of
nothing but that. And when I looked about at those folks, and saw how
gay and lively and light-hearted they were, I said to myself: ‘Why
haven’t I a right to a good time, too? What’s the use of mulling over
this black stuff in my mind?’ But I couldn’t make a big enough effort
to keep away from it! I kept on thinking of you and little Oscar, with
all those gay people talking and laughing and handsome women. ‘My God,’
I said to myself, ‘if I can’t stop thinking of this, I shall have to
get up and go outside.’ So I took up my glass of champagne, which I
hadn’t touched,--never drink it, as you remember; it was the stuff old
Oscar used to start in with when he was on a blow-out--that is why I
never could bear it.
“That first glass made everything easier and more natural. It untied
the knots in my face. And another made things pleasant; well, there’s
no use in going on! I made a beastly fool of myself, sang that fool
song, disgraced you before all your friends. Showed them how you had
married just a hand out of the mines! My God, I should think you’d
_want_ me to go away and never come back!”
He had dropped into a chair, and lay there limp, his head fallen
forward upon his hands. She listened to him with increasing wonder,
trying to comprehend the significance of his abasement. What was it
which he made so much of? Singing a silly song, drinking too much wine.
That was his man’s way of escape from the pain of living, which had
fastened upon them both. Thus he had tried to live for himself and defy
God to make him wretched!
And her way? She reddened with the shame of it, and was silent. Both
of them, so she saw, had been trying to flee from the grief that had
overtaken them; to take their lives out of the place of despair, away
to some new peace and joy. She saw it now very clearly, and she knew
suddenly that through that gate there was no escape for either of them.
The trap that had caught them was set in the obscure past and was made
secure.
“But you would not really leave me, Olaf? You could not. You could not!
I and our child would follow you in your thoughts everywhere.”
She knelt beside him and took his head in her hands.
“I tried to run away, too. And I could not. Nor could you. Mine was
so much worse than yours! I will tell you some day. Yours was nothing
to me, nothing. Believe me. I think nothing of it, nothing more than
if you spilled a glass of wine on my dress, or went out in the rain
without your coat, or did something else foolish. Don’t think of that,
Olaf! We have so much else to feel, you and I.”
[Illustration: “SHE KNELT BESIDE HIM AND TOOK HIS HEAD IN HER HANDS.”]
She drew his head to her. She was his mother and yearned, and yet was
afraid, also. The man’s tired eyes looked into her eyes. He, too, had
suffered in his male way as she had suffered. About his face there was
a look, wistful and young and tender, such as it had been in the past
when she had loved him passionately. She kissed his lips, thus wiping
away his self-contempt.
“Do you remember, Olaf?” she whispered. “Do you remember the night you
carried me down the mountain, when the horse stumbled on the trail and
you were afraid to trust him again? Your arms were a shield about my
body. I want them now, my husband!”
He saw that black night, the slipping sand and rocks beneath his feet,
the precious body in his arms, the white face upturned to his. When he
could go no farther safely, they had camped among the rocks under a
scrawny fir. He had built a wind screen of brush against a boulder,
and they had crawled within. There he had held her locked in his arms
the whole night that she might rest while he watched and loved....