It was one of those mornings of coolness after cloying heat when even
the crowded, reeking, frowzy metropolis wakes with a breath of freshness
in its nostrils. Independent of sleep as ever, Banneker was up and
footing it briskly for the station before eight o'clock, for Camilla Van
Arsdale was returning to Manzanita, having been ordered back to her
seclusion with medical science's well-considered verdict wrapped up in
tactful words to bear her company on the long journey. When she would be
ordered on a longer journey by a mightier Authority, medical science
forbore to specify; but in the higher interests of American music it was
urgently pressed upon her that she be abstemious in diet, niggardly of
work, careful about fatigue and excitement, and in general comport
herself in such manner as to deprive the lease of life remaining to her
of most of its savor and worth. She had told Ban that the physicians
thought her condition favorable.
Invalidism was certainly not suggested in her erect bearing and serene
face as she moved about her stateroom setting in order the books,
magazines, flowers, and candy, with which Banneker had sought to fortify
her against the tedium of the trip. As the time for departure drew near,
they fell into and effortfully maintained that meaningless, banal, and
jerky talk which is the inevitable concomitant of long partings between
people who, really caring for each other, can find nothing but
commonplaces wherewith to ease their stress of mind. Miss Van Arsdale's
common sense came to the rescue.
"Go away, my dear," she said, with her understanding smile. "Don't think
that you're obliged to cling to the dragging minutes. It's an ungraceful
posture.... Ban! What makes you look like that?"
"I thought--I heard--"
A clear voice outside said, "Then it must be this one." There was a
decisive tap on the door. "May I come in?"..."Come in," responded Miss
Van Arsdale. "Bring them here, porter," directed the voice outside, and
Io entered followed by an attendant almost hidden in a huge armful of
such roses as are unpurchasable even in the most luxurious of stores.
"I've looted our conservatory," said she. "Papa will slay me. They'll
last to Chicago."
After an almost imperceptible hesitation she kissed the older woman. She
gave her hand to Banneker. "I knew I should find you here."
"Any other woman of my acquaintance would have said, 'Who would have
expected to find you here!'" commented Miss Van Arsdale.
"Yes? I suppose so. But we've never been on that footing, Ban and I."
Io's tone was casual; almost careless.
"I thought that you were in the country," said Banneker.
"So we are. I drove up this morning to bid Miss Van Arsdale _bon
voyage_, and all the luck in the world. I suppose we three shall meet
again one of these days."
"You prophesy in the most matter-of-fact tone a gross improbability,"
observed Miss Van Arsdale.
"Oh, our first meeting was the gross improbability," retorted the girl
lightly. "After that anything might be logical. _Au revoir_."
"Go with her, Ban," said Miss Camilla.
"It isn't leaving time yet," he protested. "There's five whole minutes."
"Yes; come with me, Ban," said Io tranquilly.
Camilla Van Arsdale kissed his cheek, gave him a little, half-motherly
pat, said, "Keep on making me proud of you," in her even, confident
tones, and pushed him out of the door.
Ban and Io walked down the long platform in a thoughtful silence which
disconcerted neither of them. Io led the way out of it.
"At half-past four," she stated, "I had a glass of milk and one
cracker."
"Where do you want to breakfast?"
"Thanking you humbly, sir, for your kind invitation, the nearer the
better. Why not here?"
They found a table in the well-appointed railroad restaurant and
ordered. Over her honey-dew melon Io asked musingly:
"What do you suppose she thinks of us?"
"Miss Camilla? What should she think?"
"What, indeed? What do we think, ourselves?"
"Has it any importance?" he asked gloomily.
"And that's rather rude," she chided. "Anything that I think should, by
courtesy, be regarded as important.... Ban, how often have we seen each
other?"
"Since I came to New York, you mean?"
"Yes."
"Nine times."
"So many? And how much have we talked together? All told; in time, I
mean."
"Possibly a solid hour. Not more."
"It hasn't made any difference, has it? There's been no interruption.
We've never let the thread drop. We've never lost touch. Not really."
"No. We've never lost touch."
"You needn't repeat it as if it were a matter for mourning and
repentance. I think it rather wonderful.... Take our return from the
train, all the way down without a word. Were you sulking, Ban?"
"No. You know I wasn't."
"Of course I know it. It was simply that we didn't need to talk. There's
no one else in the world like that.... How long is it? Three
years--four--more than four years.
'We twain once well in sunder
What will the mad gods do
For hate with me, I wond--'"
"My God, Io! Don't!"
"Oh, Ban; I'm sorry! Have I hurt you? I was dreaming back into the old
world."
"And I've been trying all these years not to."
"Is the reality really better? No; don't answer that! I don't want you
to. Answer me something else. About Betty Raleigh."
"What about her?"
"If I were a man I should find her an irresistible sort of person.
Entirely aside from her art. Are you going to marry her, Ban?"
"No."
"Tell me why not."
"For one reason because she doesn't want to marry me."
"Have you asked her? It's none of my business. But I don't believe you
have. Tell me this; would you have asked her, if it hadn't been for--if
Number Three had never been wrecked in the cut? You see the old railroad
terms you taught me still cling. Would you?"
"How do I know? If the world hadn't changed under my feet, and the sky
over my head--"
"Is it so changed? Do the big things, the real things, ever change?...
Don't answer that, either. Ban, if I'll go out of your life now, and
stay out, _honestly_, will you marry Betty Raleigh and--and live happy
ever after?"
"Would you want me to?"
"Yes. Truly. And I'd hate you both forever."
"Betty Raleigh is going to marry some one else."
"No! I thought--people said--Are you sorry, Ban?"
"Not for myself. I think he's the wrong man for her."
"Yes; that would be a change of the earth underfoot and the sky
overhead, if one cared," she mused. "And I said they didn't change."
"Don't they!" retorted Banneker bitterly. "You are married."
"I have been married," she corrected, with an air of amiable
rectification. "It was a wise thing to do. Everybody said so. It didn't
last. Nobody thought it would. I didn't really think so myself."
"Then why in Heaven's name--"
"Oh, let's not talk about it now. Some other time, perhaps. Say next
time we meet; five or six months from now.... No; I won't tease you any
more, Ban. It won't be that. It won't be long. I'll tell you the truth:
I'd heard a lot about you and Betty Raleigh, and I got to know her and I
hoped it would be a go. I did; truly, Ban. I owed you that chance of
happiness. I took mine, you see; only it wasn't happiness that I gambled
for. Something else. Safety. The stakes are usually different for men
and women. So now you know.... Well, if you don't, you've grown stupid.
And I don't want to talk about it any more. I want to talk about--about
The Patriot. I read it this morning while I was waiting; your editorial.
Ban"--she drew a derisive mouth--"I was shocked."
"What was it? Politics?" asked Banneker, who, turning out his editorials
several at a time, seldom bothered to recall on what particular day any
one was published. "You wouldn't be expected to like our politics."
"Not politics. It is about Harvey Wheelwright."
Banneker was amused. "The immortally popular Wheelwright. We're
serializing his new novel, 'Satiated with Sin,' in the Sunday edition.
My idea. It'll put on circulation where we most need it."
"Is that any reason why you should exploit him as if he were the
foremost living novelist?"
"Certainly. Besides, he is, in popularity."
"But, Ban; his stuff is awful! If this latest thing is like the earlier.
["Worse," murmured Banneker.] And you're writing about him as if he
were--well, Conrad and Wells rolled into one."
"He's better than that, for the kind of people that read him. It's
addressed to them, that editorial. All the stress is on his piety, his
popularity, his power to move men's minds; there isn't a word that even
touches on the domain of art or literary skill."
"It has that effect."
"Ah! That's my art," chuckled Banneker. "_That's_ literary skill, if you
choose!"
"Do you know what I call it? I call it treason."
His mind flashed to meet hers. She read comprehension in his changed
face and the shadow in her eyes, lambent and profound, deepened.
"Treason to the world that we two made for ourselves out there," she
pursued evenly.
"You shattered it."
"To the Undying Voices."
"You stilled them, for me."
"Oh, Ban! Not that!" A sudden, little sob wrenched at her throat. She
half thrust out a hand toward him, and withdrew it, to cup and hold her
chin in the old, thoughtful posture that plucked at his heart with
imperious memories. "Don't they sing for you any more?" begged Io,
wistful as a child forlorn for a dream of fairies dispelled.
"I wouldn't let them. They all sang of you."
She sighed, but about the tender corners of her lips crept the tremor of
a smile. Instantly she became serious again.
"If you still heard the Voices, you could never have written that
editorial.... What I hate about it is that it has charm; that it imparts
charm to a--to a debasing thing."
"Oh, come, Io!" protested the victim of this criticism, more easily.
"Debasing? Why, Wheelwright is considered the most uplifting of all our
literary morality-improvers."
Io amplified and concluded her critique briefly and viciously. "A slug!"
"No; seriously. I'm not sure that he doesn't inculcate a lot of good in
his way. At least he's always on the side of the angels."
"What kind of angels? Tinsel seraphs with paint on their cheeks, playing
rag-time harps out of tune! There's a sickly slaver of sentiment over
everything he touches that would make any virtue nauseous."
"Don't you want a job as a literary critic Our Special Reviewer, Miss Io
Wel--Mrs. Delavan Eyre," he concluded, in a tone from which the raillery
had flattened out.
At that bald betrayal, Io's color waned slightly. She lifted her
water-glass and sipped at it. When she spoke again it was as if an inner
scene had been shifted.
"What did you come to New York for?"
"Success."
"As in all the fables. And you've found it. It was almost too easy,
wasn't it?"
"Indeed, not. It was touch and go."
"Would you have come but for me?"
He stared at her, considering, wondering.
"Remember," she adjured him; "success was my prescription. Be flattering
for once. Let me think that I'm responsible for the miracle."
"Perhaps. I couldn't stay out there--afterward. The loneliness...."
"I didn't want to leave you loneliness," she burst out passionately
under her breath. "I wanted to leave you memory and ambition and the
determination to succeed."
"For what?"
"Oh, no; no!" She answered the harsh thought subtending his query. "Not
for myself. Not for any pride. I'm not cheap, Ban."
"No; you're not cheap."
"I would have kept my distance.... It was quite true what I said to you
about Betty Raleigh. It was not success alone that I wanted for you; I
wanted happiness, too. I owed you that--after my mistake."
He caught up the last word. "You've admitted to yourself, then, that it
was a mistake?"
"I played the game," she retorted. "One can't always play right. But one
can always play fair."
"Yes; I know your creed of sportsmanship. There are worse religions."
"Do you think I played fair with you, Ban? After that night on the
river?"
He was mute.
"Do you know why I didn't kiss you good-bye in the station? Not really
kiss you, I mean, as I did on the island?"
"No."
"Because, if I had, I should never have had the strength to go away."
She lifted her eyes to his. Her voice fell to a half whisper. "You
understood, on the island?... What I meant?"
"Yes."
"But you didn't take me. I wonder. Ban, if it hadn't been for the light
flashing in our eyes and giving us hope...?"
"How can I tell? I was dazed with the amazement and the glory of it--of
you. But--yes. My God, yes! And then? Afterward?"
"Could there have been any afterward?" she questioned dreamily. "Would
we not just have waited for the river to sweep us up and carry us away?
What other ending could there have been, so fitting?"
"Anyway," he said with a sudden savage jealousy, "whatever happened you
would not have gone away to marry Eyre."
"Should I not? I'm by no means sure. You don't understand much of me, my
poor Ban."
"How could you!" he burst out. "Would that have been--"
"Oh, I should have told him, of course. I'd have said, 'Del, there's
been another man, a lover.' One could say those things to him."
"Would he have married you?"
"You wouldn't, would you?" she smiled. "All or nothing, Ban, for you.
About Del, I don't know." She shrugged dainty shoulders. "I shouldn't
have much cared."
"And would you have come back to me, Io?"
"Do you want me to say 'Yes'? You do want me to say' Yes,' don't you, my
dear? How can I tell?... Sooner or later, I suppose. Fate. The
irresistible current. I am here now."
"Io." He leaned to her across the little table, his somber regard
holding hers. "Why did you tell Camilla Van Arsdale that you would never
divorce Eyre?"
"Because it's true."
"But why tell her? So that it should come back to me?"
She answered him straight and fearlessly. "Yes. I thought it would be
easier for you to hear from her."
"Did you?" He sat staring past her at visions. It was not within
Banneker's code, his sense of fair play in the game, to betray to Io his
wonderment (shared by most of her own set) that she should have endured
the affront of Del Eyre's openly flagitious life, even though she had
herself implied some knowledge of it in her assumption that a divorce
could be procured. However, Io met his reticence with characteristic
candor.
"Of course I know about Del. We have a perfect understanding. He's
agreed to maintain the outward decencies, from now on. I don't consider
that I've the right to ask more. You see, I shouldn't have married him
... even though he understood that I wasn't really in love with him.
We're friends; and we're going to remain friends. Just that. Del's a
good sort," she added with a hint of pleading the cause of a
misunderstood person. "He'd give me my divorce in a minute; even though
he still cares--in his way. But there's his mother. She's a sort of
latter-day saint; one of those rare people that you respect and love in
equal parts; the only other one I know is Cousin Willis Enderby. She's
an invalid, hopeless, and a Roman Catholic, and for me to divorce Del
would poison the rest of her life. So I won't. I can't."
"She won't live forever," muttered Banneker.
"No. Not long, perhaps." There was pain and resolution in Io's eyes as
they were lifted to meet his again. "There's another reason. I can't
tell even you, Ban. The secret isn't mine.... I'm sorry."
"Haven't you any work to do to-day?" she asked after a pause, with a
successful effect of lightness.
He roused himself, settled the check, and took her to her car, parked
near by.
"Where do you go now?" he asked.
"Back to the country."
"When shall I see you again?"
"I wonder," said Io.