The shortcake was a triumph when she set it, steaming hot and oozing
amber juice, on the table between them. "You certainly are a wonder,
Helen!" Paul said, struck by its crumbling perfection. "Here we haven't
been in the house an hour, and with a simple twist of the wrist you
give a fellow a dinner like this! Lucky we aren't living a couple of
centuries ago. You'd been burned for a witch." His eyes, resting on
her, were filled with warm light.
Already he seemed to irradiate a glow of contentment; the hint of
sternness in his face had melted in a joy that was almost boyish, and
all day there had been a touch of possessive pride in his contemplation
of her. It intoxicated her; she felt the exhilaration of victory in her
submission to it, and a sense of her power over him gave sparkle to her
delight in his nearness.
Her bubbling spirits had been irrepressible: she had flashed into
whimsicalities, laughed at him, teased him, melted into sudden
tendernesses. Together they had played with light-hearted absurdities,
chattering nonsense while they explored a rocky canyon in Alumn Rock
Park, a canyon peopled only with bright-eyed furtive creatures of the
forest whisking through tangled underbrush and over fallen logs. They
had looked at each other with dancing eyes, smothering bursts of mirth
like children hiding some riotous joke, when they came down into the
holiday crowd around the hot-dog counters at the park gate, and side by
side with Portuguese and Italians, they had bought ice-cream cones from
a hurdy-gurdy and listened to the band.
Now she looked at him across her own dinner-table, and felt that the
last touch of perfection had been given a happy day. She laughed
delightedly.
"It's a funny thing when you think of it," he went on, pouring
cream over the fruity slices. "Here you're working all week in an
office--just about as good a little business woman as they make 'em, I
guess--and then on top of it you come home and cook like mother never
did. It beats me."
"Well--you see I like to cook," she said. "It's recreation. Lots of
successful business men are pretty good golf players. Besides I'm not a
business woman any more. I've left the office. Shall I pour your coffee
now?"
"Left the office!" he exclaimed. "What for? When?"
"The other day. I don't know why. I felt--oh, I don't know. I just
quit. Why, Paul!" She was startled by his expression.
"Well--it would rather surprise anybody," he said. "A sudden change
like this. You didn't give me any idea--" There was a shade of reproach
in his tone, which shifted quickly to pugnacity. "That partner of
yours--what's-his-name? He hasn't been putting anything over on you?"
"Why, no, of course not! I just made up my mind to stop selling land.
I'm tired of it. Besides, it looks as though there'd be a slump in the
business."
"Well, you can't tell. However, you may be right," he conceded. He
smiled ruefully. "It's going to be pretty hard on me, though--your
quitting. It's a long way to Masonville."
"To Masonville?" she repeated in surprise.
"Aren't you going there?"
"Why on earth should I go to Masonville?" She caught at the words, not
quite quickly enough to stop them. "Oh, I know--my mother. Of course.
But, to tell the truth, Paul, I'm fond of her and all that, you know
I've been up to see her a good many times,--but after all we've been
apart a long time, and my life's been so different. She doesn't exactly
know what to make of me. I honestly don't think either of us would be
very happy if I were to go back there now. She has Mabel, you know,
and the baby. It isn't as though--" Floundering in her explanations,
she broke through them, with a smile, to frankness. "As a matter of
fact, I never even thought of going back there."
There was bewilderment in his eyes, but he repressed a question.
"Just as you like, of course. Naturally I supposed,--but I'm glad you
aren't going. Two lumps, please."
"As though I wouldn't remember!" she laughed. But as she dropped the
sugar into his cup and tilted the percolator, a memory flashed across
her mind. She saw him sitting at a little table in a dairy lunch-room,
struggling to hide his embarrassment, carefully dipping two spoonsful
of sugar from the chipped white bowl, and the memory brought with it
many others.
The iridescent mood of the afternoon was gone, and reaching for the
deeper and more firm basis of emotion between them, she braced herself
to speak of another thing she had not told him.
Constraint had fallen upon them; they were separated by their diverging
thoughts, and uneasily, with effort, they broke the silence with
disconnected scraps of talk. Time was going by; already twilight crept
into the room, and looking at his watch, Paul spoke of his train.
Helen led the way to the porch, where the shade of climbing rose-vines
softened the last clear gray light of the day. There was sadness in
this wan reflection of the departed sunlight; the air was still, and
the creaking of the wicker chair, when Helen settled into it, the sharp
crackle of Paul's match as he lighted his after-dinner cigar, seemed
irreverently loud. With a sudden keen need to be nearer him, Helen drew
a deep breath, preparing to speak and to clear away forever the last
barrier between them.
But his words met hers before they were uttered.
"What are you going to do, then, Helen?--If you aren't going home?" he
added, before her uncomprehension.
"Oh, that! Why--I haven't thought exactly. I'd like to stay at home,
stay here in my own house. There's so much to do in a house," she
said, vaguely. "I've never had time to do it before."
His voice was indulgent.
"That'll be fine! It's just what you ought to have a chance to do. But,
see here, Helen, of course it's none of my business yet, in a way, but
naturally I'd worry about it. It takes an income to keep up a house,
you know. I'd like--you know everything I've got is--is just the same
as yours, already."
"Paul, you dear! Don't worry about that at all. If I needed any help
I'd ask you, truly. But I don't."
"Well, we might as well look at it practically," he persisted. "It's
going to figure up maybe more than you think to keep this house going.
Not that I want you to give it up if you'd rather stay here," he
parenthesized, quickly. "I'd rather have you here than in Masonville,
and I'd rather have you in Ripley than here, for that matter. Say, why
couldn't you come down there? I could fix up that little bungalow on
Harper Street. And every one knows you're an old friend of mother's."
"I might do something like that," she said at random. She was troubled
by the knowledge that their hour was slipping past and the conversation
going in the wrong direction.
"It would cost you hardly anything to live there. And we could--"
"Yes," she said. "I'd love that part of it. You know how I'd like to
see you every minute. But there's plenty of time. I'll think about it,
dear."
"That's just the point. There is so much time. A whole year and more
before I can--and it would be just like you to half starve yourself and
never say a word to me about it."
"O Paul!" she laughed, "you are so funny! And I love you for it. Well,
then, listen. I have a little over twelve hundred dollars in the bank.
Not much, is it, to show for all the years I've been working? But it
will keep me from growing gaunt and hollow-eyed for lack of food, quite
a little while. And if I really did need more there's a whole world
full of money all around me, you know. So please don't worry. I promise
to eat and eat. I promise never to stop eating as long as I live.
Regularly, three times a day, every single day!"
"All right," he said. His cigar-end glowed red for a minute through the
gathering dusk. She put her hand on his sleeve, and it moved beneath
her fingers until its firm, warm grip closed over them. Palm against
palm and fingers interlaced, they sat in silence. "It's going to be a
long time," he said. After a long moment he added gruffly, "I suppose
you've--begun the thing--seen a lawyer?"
"I'm going to, this week. I--hate to--somehow. It's so--"
"You poor dear! I wish to heaven you didn't have to go through it. But
I suppose it won't be--there won't be any trouble. Tell me, Helen,
honestly. You do want to do it? You aren't keeping--anything from me?"
"No. I do want to. But there's something I've got to tell you. He's
come back." He was instantly so still that his immobility was more
startling than a cry. At the faint relaxing of his hand, her own fled,
and clenched on the arm of her chair. Quietly, in a voice that was
stiff from being held steady, she told him something of her interview
with Bert. "I thought you ought to know. I didn't want you to hear it
from some one else."
"I'm glad you told me. But--don't let's ever speak of him again." His
gesture of repugnance flung the cigar in a glowing arc over the porch
railing, and it lay a red coal in the grass.
"I don't want to." She rose to face him, putting her hands on his
shoulders. "But, Paul, I want you to understand. He never was anything
to me, really. Nothing real, I mean. It was just because I was a
foolish girl and lonely and tired of working--and I didn't understand.
We never were really _married_." She stumbled among inadequate words,
trying to make him feel what she felt. "There wasn't any reality
between us, any real love, nothing solid to build a marriage on. And I
think there is between you and me."
"The only thing I want," he said, his arms around her, "the only thing
I want in the world is just to take you home and take care of you."
She kissed him, a hushed solemnity in her heart. He was so good, so
fine and strong. With all her soul she longed to be worthy of him, to
make him happy, to be able to build with him a serene and beautiful
life.
* * * * *
The days went by with surprising slowness. In the mornings, waking
with the first twittering of the birds in the vines over the sleeping
porch, she started upright, to relax again on the pillows and stretch
luxuriously between the cool sheets, with delicious realization that
the whole, long day was hers. But her body, filled with energy,
rebelled at inaction. She rose, busying her mind with small plans while
she dressed and breakfasted. At ten o'clock she could think of nothing
more to do to the house or the garden, and still time stretched before
her, prolonged indefinitely, empty.
The house, lamentably failing as an occupation, became a prison. She
escaped from it to the streets. She shopped leisurely, comparing colors
and fabrics and prices, seeking the bargains she had been obliged to
forego while she was working. An afternoon spent in this way might
save her a dollar, and her business sense grinned at her sardonically.
She might meet an acquaintance, a woman who lived near her, and over
ices elaborately disguised with syrups and nuts they could talk of the
movies, the weather, the stupidities of servants. Time had become an
adversary to be destroyed as pleasantly as possible. In the long, lazy
afternoons she sat on a neighboring porch, listening to talk about
details, magnified, distorted, handled over and over again, and while
her fingers were busy at an embroidery hoop, stitching bits of thread
back and forth through bits of cloth, her mind yawned with boredom.
At night, letting down her hair, she looked back at a day gone from her
life, a day spent in sweeping and dusting and making pleasant a house
that must be swept and dusted and made pleasant on the morrow, a day
that had accomplished several inches of scalloping on a table-cloth,
and she was overwhelmed with a sense of futility. "After all, I've
rather enjoyed it," she said. "To enjoy a day--what more can one do
with it?" The argument rang hollow in her mind, answered only by an
uneasy silence.
If she were with Paul the days would mean more, she told herself. But
it seemed best to remain in San José until the first legal formalities
were done. The case, her lawyer told her, would come on the court
calendar in four or five weeks. She would have no difficulty in getting
a decree. "But can't you charge something to make it more impressive?
No violence? He never hit you or threw anything at you?" The lawyer's
eyes filled with a certain eagerness. Wincing, she told him with cold
fury that she would charge nothing but desertion. No, she wanted no
alimony. When, disappointed, he had jotted these details on a pad and
tried with professional jocularity to make her smile, she escaped,
shrinking with loathing.
Something like this she must endure again, upon a witness-stand in open
court. Better to face it alone, to finish it and push it behind her
into the past before she went to Ripley to meet the shrewd interest
of Mrs. Masters and the warmth of Paul's sympathy. Meantime her life
seemed motionless as a treadmill is motionless, and a vague irritation
nagged at her nerves.
She began to frequent the public library. In a locked room, to which
the librarian gave her the key after an embarrassed scrutiny, she
found on forbidden shelves a history of marriage, and curled among
the cushions on her window-seat, she spent an afternoon absorbed in
tracing that institution from the first faint appreciation of the
property value of women into the labyrinth of custom and morality to
which it led. She became interested in marriage laws, and discovered
with amazement the contracts so blithely entered upon by men and
women who would not so unquestioningly subscribe to any other legal
agreement. When she wearied of this subject, she turned to others
and, with an interest sharpened by the European news, she devoured
history and floundered beyond her depths in economics. She bought a
French dictionary and grammar and, finding them but palely alluring
in themselves, she boldly attacked _La Livre de Mon Ami_, digging the
meaning from its charming pages eagerly as a miner washing gold. But
the nights found her still haunted by a restlessness as miserable and
vague as that of unused muscles. "I wish I were doing something!" she
cried.