As Vickers crossed the village on his way back from the Johnstons', Lane
emerged from the telegraph office and joined him. On the rare occasions
when they were thrown together alone like this, John Lane's taciturnity
reached to positive dumbness. Vickers supposed that his brother-in-law
disliked him, possibly despised him. It was, however, a case of absolute
non-understanding. It must remain forever a problem to the man with a firm
grasp on concrete fact how any one could do what Vickers had done, except
through "woman-weakness," for which Lane had no tolerance. Moreover, the
quiet little man, with his dull eyes, who moved about as if his faculties
had been forgotten in the morning when he got up, who could sit for hours
dawdling at the piano striking chords, or staring at the keys, seemed
merely queer to the man of action. "I wish he would do something," Isabelle
had said of Vickers, using his own words of her, and her husband had
replied, "Do? ... What could he do!"
"I've just been to see Alice," Vickers remarked timidly. "She takes Steve's
change of business very calmly."
"She doesn't know," Lane answered curtly. "And I am afraid he doesn't
either."
He let the topic drop, and they walked on in silence, turning off at the
stile into an old by-path that led up to the new house through a small
grove of beeches, which Isabelle had saved at her brother's plea from the
destructive hand of the landscape artist. Vickers was thinking about Lane.
He understood his brother-in-law as little as the latter comprehended him.
He had often wondered these past months: 'Doesn't he _see_ what is
happening to Isabelle? Doesn't he care! It isn't surely helpless yet,--they
aren't so wholly incompatible, and Isabelle is frank, is honest!' But if
Lane saw the state of affairs in his house, he never showed that he
perceived it. His manner with his wife was placid,--although, as Isabelle
often said, he was very little with her. But that state of separation in
which the two lived seemed less due to incompatibility than to the accident
of the way they lived. Lane was a very busy man with much on his mind; he
had no time for emotional tribulations.
Since his return from the West--these five days which he had allowed
himself as vacation--he had been irritable at times, easily disturbed, as
he had been with Steve Johnston, but never short with his wife. Vickers
supposed that some business affair was weighing on him, and as was his
habit he locked it up tight within....
And Lane would never have told what it was that gnawed at him, last of all
to Vickers. It was pride that made him seem not to see, not to know the
change that had come into his house. And something more, which might be
found only in this kind of American gentleman,--a deep well of loyalty to
his wife, a feeling of: 'What she wishes, no matter what it may be to me!'
'I shall trust her to the last, and if she fails me, I will still trust her
to be true to herself.' A chivalry this, unsuspected by Vickers! Something
of that old admiration for his wife which made him feel that he should
provide her with the opportunities she craved, that somehow she had stooped
in marrying him, still survived in spite of his successful career. And
love? To define the sort of sentiment Lane at forty-two had for his wife,
modified by his activities, by his lack of children, by her evident lack of
passion for him, would not be an easy matter. But that he loved her more
deeply than mere pride, than habit would account for, was sure. In that
afterglow between men and women which comes when the storms of life have
been lived through, Lane might be found a sufficient lover....
As they entered the narrow path that led through the beechwood, Lane
stepped aside to allow Vickers to precede him. The afternoon sun falling on
the glossy new leaves made a pleasant light. They had come to a point in
the path where the western wing of the house was visible through the trees
when suddenly Vickers stopped, hesitated, as if he would turn back, and
said aloud hastily: "I always like this side of the house best,--don't you?
It is quieter, less open than the south facade, more _intime_--" He talked
on aimlessly, blocking the path, staring at the house, gesticulating. When
he moved, he glanced at Lane's face....
Just below in a hollow where a stone bench had been placed, Isabelle was
sitting with Cairy, his arm about her, her eyes looking up at him,
something gay and happy in the face like that little French song she was
singing these days, as if a voice had stilled the restless craving in her,
had touched to life that dead pulse, which had refused to beat for her
husband.... This was what Vickers had seen, and it was on his lips to say,
"When did Cairy come? Isabelle did not tell me." But instead he had
faltered out nonsense, while the two, hearing his voice, betook themselves
to the upper terrace. Had her husband seen them? Vickers wondered.
Something in the man's perfect control, his manner of listening to
Vickers's phrases, made him feel that he had seen--all. But Lane in his
ordinary monosyllabic manner pointed to a nest of ground sparrows beside
the path. "Guess we had better move this establishment to a safer place,"
he remarked, as he carefully put the nest into the thicket.
When they reached the hall, Isabelle, followed by Cairy, entered from the
opposite door. "Hello, Tom; when did you get in?" Lane asked in his
ordinary equable voice. "I sent your message, Isabelle." And he went to
dress for dinner.
* * * * *
The dinner that night of the three men and the woman was tense and still at
first. All the radiance had faded from Isabelle's face, leaving it white,
and she moved as if she were numb. Vickers, watching her face, was sad at
heart, miserable as he had been since he had seen her and Cairy together.
Already it had gone so far! ... Cairy was talkative, as always, telling
stories of his trip to the South. At some light jeer over the California
railroad situation, Lane suddenly spoke:--
"That is only one side, Tom. There is another."
Ordinarily he would have laughed at Cairy's flippant handling of the topics
of the day. But to-night he was ready to challenge.
"The public doesn't want to hear the other side, it seems," Cairy retorted
quickly.
Lane looked at him slowly as he might at a mosquito that he purposed to
crush. "I think that some of the public wants to hear all sides," he
replied quietly. "Let us see what the facts are."...
To-night he did not intend to be silenced by trivialities. Cairy had given
him an opening on his own ground,--the vast field of fact. And he talked
astonishingly well, with a grip not merely of the much-discussed railroad
situation, but of business in general, economic conditions in America and
abroad,--the trend of development. He talked in a large and leisurely way
all through the courses, and when Cairy would interpose some objection, his
judicious consideration eddied about it with a deferential sweep, then
tossed it high on the shore of his buttressed conclusions. Vickers listened
in astonishment to the argument, while Isabelle, her hands clasped tight
before her, did not eat, but shifted her eyes from her husband's face to
Cairy's and back again as the talk flowed.
... "And granted," Lane said by way of conclusion, having thoroughly
riddled Cairy's contentions, "that in some cases there has been trickery
and fraud, is that any reason why we should indict the corporate management
of all great properties? Even if all the law-breaking of which our roads
are accused could be proved to be true, nevertheless any philosophic
investigator would conclude that the good they have done--the efficient
service for civilization--far outbalances the wrong--"
"Useful thieves and parasites!" Cairy interposed.
"Yes,--if you like to put it in those words," Lane resumed quietly. "The
law of payment for service in this world of ours is not a simple one. For
large services and great sacrifices, the rewards must be large. For large
risks and daring efforts, the pay must be alluring. Every excellence of a
high degree costs,--every advance is made at the sacrifice of a lower order
of good."
"Isn't that a pleasant defence for crime?" Isabelle asked.
Lane looked at his wife for a long moment of complete silence.
"Haven't you observed that people break laws, and seem to feel that they
are justified in doing so by the force of higher laws?"
Isabelle's eyes fell. He had seen, Vickers knew,--not only this afternoon,
but all along! ... Presently they rose from the table, and as they passed
out of the room Isabelle's scarf fell from her neck. Lane and Cairy stooped
to pick it up. Cairy had his hands on it first, but in some way it was the
husband who took possession of it and handed it to the wife. Her hand
trembled as she took it from him, and she hurried to her room.
"If you are interested in this matter of the Pacific roads, Tom," Lane
continued, handing Cairy the cigarette box, "I will have my secretary look
up the data and send it out here.... You will be with us some time, I
suppose?"
Cairy mumbled his thanks.
After this scene Vickers felt nothing but admiration for his
brother-in-law. The man knew the risks. He cared,--yes, he cared! Vickers
was very sure of that. At dinner it had been a sort of modern duel, as if,
with perfect courtesy and openness, Lane had taken the opportunity to try
conclusions with the rival his wife had chosen to give him,--to tease him
with his rapier, to turn his mind to her gaze.... And yet, even he must
know how useless victory was to him, victory of this nature. Isabella did
not love Cairy because of his intellectual grasp, though in the matters she
cared for he seemed brilliant.
'It's to be a fight between them,' thought Vickers. 'He is giving the other
one every chance. Oh, it is magnificent, this way of winning one's wife.
But the danger in it!' And Vickers knew now that Lane scorned to hold a
woman, even his wife, in any other way. His wife should not be bound to him
by oath, nor by custom, nor even by their child. Nor would he plead for
himself in this contest. Against the other man, he would play merely
himself,--the decent years of their common life, their home, her own heart.
And he was losing,--Vickers felt sure of that.