Did he know that he had virtually lost when at the end of his brief
vacation he went back to the city, leaving his rival alone in the field?
During those tense days Vickers's admiration for the man grew. He was good
tempered and considerate, even of Cairy. Lane had always been a pleasant
host, and now instead of avoiding Cairy he seemed to seek his society, made
an effort to talk to him about his work, and advised him shrewdly in a
certain transaction with a theatrical manager.
"If she should go away with Cairy," Vickers said to himself, "he will look
out for them always!"
Husband and wife, so Vickers judged, did not talk together during all this
time. Perhaps they did not dare to meet the issue openly. At any rate when
Isabelle proposed driving John to the station the last night, he said
kindly, "It's raining, my dear,--I think you had better not." So he kissed
her in the hall before the others, made some commonplace suggestion about
the place, and with his bag in hand left, nodding to them all as he got
into the carriage. Isabelle, who had appeared dazed these days, as if, her
heart and mind occupied in desperate inner struggle, her body lived
mechanically, left the two men to themselves and went to her room. And
shortly afterwards Cairy, who had become subdued, thoughtful, pleaded work
and went upstairs.
* * * * *
When Vickers rose early the next morning, the country was swathed in a thin
white mist. The elevation on which the house stood just pierced the fog,
and, here and there below, the head of a tall pine emerged. Vickers had
slept badly with a suffocating sense of impending danger. When he stepped
out of the drawing-room on the terrace, the coolness of the damp fog and
the stillness of the June morning not yet broken by bird notes soothed his
troubled mind. All this silent beauty, serenely ordered nature--and
tumultuous man! Out of the earthy elements of which man was compounded, he
had sucked passions which drove him hither and yon.... As he walked towards
the west garden, the window above the terrace opened, and Isabelle, dressed
in her morning clothes, looked down on her brother.
"I heard your step, Vick," she said in a whisper. Her face in the gray
light was colorless, and her eyes were dull, veiled. "Wait for me, Bud!"
In a few moments she appeared, covered with a gray cloak, a soft
saffron-colored veil drawn about her head. Slipping one hand under his
arm,--her little fingers tightening on his flesh,--she led the way through
the garden to the beech copse, which was filled with mist, then down to the
stone bench, where she and Cairy had sat that other afternoon.
"How still it is!" she murmured, shivering slightly. She looked back to the
copse, vague in the mist, and said: "Do you remember the tent we had here
in the summers? We slept in it one night.... It was then I used to say that
I was going to marry you, brother, and live with you for always because
nobody else could be half so nice.... I wish I had! Oh, how I wish I had!
We should have been happy, you and I. And it would have been better for
both of us."
She smiled at him wanly. He understood the reference she made to his
misadventure, but said nothing. Suddenly she leaned her head on his
shoulder.
"Vick, dear, do you think that any one could care enough to forgive
everything? Do you love me enough, so you would love me, no matter what I
did? ... That's real love, the only kind, that loves because it must and
forgives because it loves! Could you, Vick? Could you?"
Vickers smoothed back her rumpled hair and drew the veil over it.
"You know that nothing would make any difference to me."
"Ah, you don't know! But perhaps you could--" Then raising her head she
spoke with a harder voice. "But that's weak. One must expect to pay for
what one does,--pay everything. Oh, my God!"
The fog had retreated slowly from their level. They stood on the edge
looking into its depth. Suddenly Vickers exclaimed with energy:--
"You must end this, Isabelle! It will kill you."
"I wish it might!"
"End it!" and he added slowly, "Send him away--or let me take you away!"
"I--I--can't,--Vick!" she cried. "It has got beyond me.... It is not just
for myself--just me. It's for _him_, too. He needs me. I could do so much
for him! And here I can do nothing."
"And John?"
"Oh, John! He doesn't care, really--"
"Don't say that!"
"If he did--"
"Isabelle, he saw you and Tom, here, the afternoon Tom came!"
She flushed and drew herself away from her brother's arms.
"I know it--it was the first time that--that anything happened! ... If he
cared, why didn't he say something then, do something, strike me--"
"That is not right, Belle; you know he is not that kind of animal."
"If a man cares for a woman, he hasn't such godlike control! ... No, John
wants to preserve appearances, to have things around him smooth,--he's too
cold to care!"
"That's ungenerous."
"Haven't I lived with him years enough to know what is in his heart? He
hates scandal. That's his nature,--he doesn't want unpleasant words, a
fuss. There won't be any, either.... But I'm not the calculating kind,
Vick. If I do it, I do it for the whole world to know and to see. I'm not
Conny,--no sneaking compromises; I'll do it as you did it,--for the whole
world to see and know."
"But you'll not do it!"
"You think I haven't the courage? You don't know me, Vick. I am not a girl
any longer. I am thirty-two, and I know life _now_, my life at any rate....
It was all wrong between John and me from the beginning,--yes, from the
beginning!"
"What makes you say that! You don't really believe it in your heart. You
loved John when you married him. You were happy with him afterwards."
"I don't believe that any girl, no matter what experience she has had, can
really love a man before she is married to him. I was sentimental,
romantic, and I thought my liking for a man was love. I wanted to
love,--all girls do. But I didn't know enough to love. It is all blind,
blind! I might have had that feeling about other men, the feeling I had for
John before.... Then comes marriage, and it's luck, all luck, whether love
comes, whether it is right--the thing for you--the only one. Sometimes it
is,--often enough for those who don't ask much, perhaps. But it was _wrong_
for John and me. I knew it from the first days,--those when we tried to
think we were happiest. I have never confessed this to a human
being,--never to John. But it was so, Vick! I didn't know then what was the
matter--why it was wrong. But a woman suspects then.... Those first days I
was wretched,--I wanted to cry out to him: 'Can't you see it is wrong? You
and I must part; our way is not the same!' But he seemed content. And there
was father and mother and everything to hold us to the mistake. And of
course I felt that it might come in time, that somehow it was my fault. I
even thought that love as I wanted it was impossible, could never exist for
a woman.... So the child came, and I went through the motions. And the gap
grew between us each year as I came to be a woman. I saw the gap, but I
thought it was always so, almost always, between husbands and wives, and I
went on going through the motions.... That was why I was ill,--yes, the
real reason, because we were not fitted to be married. Because I tried to
do something against nature,--tried to live married to a man who wasn't
really my husband!"
Her voice sank exhausted. Never before even to herself had she said it
all,--summed up that within her which must justify her revolt. Vickers felt
the hot truth to her of her words; but granted the truth, was it enough?
Before he could speak she went on wearily, as if compelled:--
"But it might have gone on so until the end, until I died. Perhaps I could
have got used to it, living like that, and fussed around like other women
over amusements and charities and houses,--all the sawdust stuffing of
life--and become a useless old woman, and not cared, not known."
She drew a deep breath.
"But you see--I know _now_--what the other is! I have known since"--her
voice sank to a whisper--"that afternoon when I kissed him for the first
time." She shuddered. "I am not a stick, Vick! I--am a woman! ... No, don't
say it!" She clasped his arm tightly. "You don't like Tom. You can't
understand. He may not be what I feel he is--he may be less of a man for
men than John. But I think it makes little difference to a woman so long as
she loves--what the man is to others. To her he is _all_ men!"
With this cry her voice softened, and now she spoke calmly. "And you see I
can give him something! I can give HIM love and joy. And more--I could make
it possible for him to do what he wants to do with his life. I would go
with him to some beautiful spot, where he could be all that he has it in
him to be, and I could watch and love. Oh, we should be enough, he and I!"
"Dear, that you can never tell! ... It was not enough for us--for her. You
can't tell when you are like this, ready to give all, whether it's what the
other most needs or really wants."
In spite of Isabelle's doubting smile, Vickers hurried on,--willing now to
show his scar.
"I have never told you how it was over there all these years. I could not
speak of it.... I thought _we_ should be enough, as you say. We had our
love and our music.... But we weren't enough, almost from the start. She
was unhappy. She really wanted those things we had given up, which she
might have had if it had been otherwise--I mean if she had been my wife. I
was too much of a fool to see that at once. I didn't want divorce and
marriage--there were difficulties in the way, too. We had thrown over the
world, defied it. I didn't care to sneak back into the fold.... Our love
turned bad. All the sentiment and lofty feeling somehow went out of it. We
became two animals, tied together first by our passion, and afterwards
by--the situation. I can't tell you all. It was killing.... It did kill the
best in me."
"It was _her_ fault. The woman makes the kind of love always."
"No, she might have been different, another way! But I tell you the facts.
She became dissatisfied, restless. She was unfaithful to me. I knew it, and
I shielded her--because in part I had made her what she was. But it was
awful. And at the end she went away with that other man. He will leave her.
Then she'll take another.... Love turns sour, I tell you--love taken that
way. Life becomes just curdled milk. And it eats you like poison. Look at
me,--the marrow of a man is all gone!"
"Dear Vick, it was all _her_ fault. Any decent woman would have made you
happy,--you would have worked, written great music,--lived a large life."
His story did not touch her except with pity for him. To her thinking each
case was distinct, and her lips curved unconsciously into a smile, as if
she were picturing how different it would be with _them_....
The fog had broken, and was rising from the meadows below, revealing the
trees and the sun. The birds had begun to sing in the beeches. It was fresh
and cool and moist before the warmth of the coming day. Isabelle drew deep
breaths and loosened her scarf.
Vickers sat silent, miserable. As he had said to Alice, the wreck of his
life, where he had got knowledge so dearly, availed nothing when most he
would have it count for another.
"No, Vick! Whatever happens it will be our own fate, nobody's else--and I
want it!"
There was cool deliberation in her tone as if the resolve had been made
already.
"Not John's fate, too?"
"He's not the kind to let a thing like this upset him long. While the
railroad runs and the housekeeper stays--"
"And Molly's fate?"
"Of course I have thought about Marian. There are ways. It is often done.
She would be with me until she went to school, which won't be long, now."
"But just think what it would mean to her if her mother left her father."
"Oh, not so much, perhaps! I have been a good mother.... And why should I
kill the twenty, thirty, maybe forty years left of my life for a child's
sentiment for her mother? Very likely by the time she grows up, people will
think differently about marriage."
She talked rapidly, as if eager to round all the corners.
"She may even decide to do the same thing some day."
"And you would want her to?"
"Yes! Rather than have the kind of marriage I have had."
"Isabelle!"
"You are an old sentimental dreamer, Vick. You don't understand modern
life. And you don't know women--they're lots more like men, too, than you
think. They write such fool things about women. There are so many silly
ideas about them that they don't dare to be themselves half the time,
except a few like Margaret. She is honest with herself. Of course she loves
Rob Falkner. He's in Panama now, but when he gets back I have no doubt
Margaret will go and live with him. And she's got three children!"
"Isabelle, you aren't Margaret Pole or Cornelia Woodyard or any other woman
but yourself. There are some things _you_ can't do. I know you. There's the
same twist in us both. You simply can't do this! You think you can, and you
talk like this to me to make yourself think that you can.... But when it
comes to the point, when you pack your bag, you know you will just unpack
it again--and darn the stockings!"
"No, no!" Isabelle laughed in spite of herself; "I can't--I won't.... Why
do I sniffle so like this? It's your fault, Vick; you always stir the
pathetic note in me, you old fraud!"
She was crying now in long sobs, the tears falling to his hand.
"I know you because we are built the same foolish, idiotic way. There are
many women who can play that game, who can live one way for ten or a dozen
years, and then leave all that they have been--without ever looking back.
But you are not one of them. I am afraid you and I are sentimentalists.
It's a bad thing to be, Belle, but we can't help ourselves. We want the
freedom of our feelings, but we want to keep a halo about them. You talked
of cutting down these beeches. But you would never let one be touched, not
one."
"I'll have 'em all cut down to-morrow," Isabelle murmured through her
tears.
"Then you'll cry over them! No, Belle, it's no use going dead against your
nature--the way you were made to run. You may like to soar, but you were
meant to walk."
"You think there is nothing to me,--that I haven't a soul!"
"I know the soul."
Isabella flung her arms about her brother and clung there, breathing hard.
The long night had worn her out with its incessant alternation of doubt and
resolve, endlessly weaving through her brain.
"Better to suffer on in this cloudy world than to make others suffer," he
murmured.
"Don't talk! I am so tired--so tired."....
From the hillside below came a whistled note, then the bar of a song, like
a bird call. Some workman on the place going to his work, Vickers thought.
It was repeated, and suddenly Isabelle took her arms from his neck,--her
eyes clear and a look of determination on her lips.
"No, Vick; you don't convince me.... You did the other thing when it came
to you. Perhaps we _are_ alike. Well, then, I shall do it! I shall dare to
live!"....
And with that last defiance,-the curt expression of the floating beliefs
which she had acquired,--she turned towards the house.
"Come, it is breakfast time."
She waited for him to rise and join her. For several silent moments they
lingered to look at Dog Mountain across the river, as if they were looking
at it for the last time, at something they had both so much loved.
"You are dear, brother," she murmured, taking his hand. "But don't lecture
me. You see I am a woman now!"
And looking into her grave, tear-stained face, Vickers saw that he had
lost. She had made her resolution; she would "dare to live," and that life
would be with Cairy! His heart was sad. Though he had tried to free himself
of his old dislike of Cairy and see him through Isabelle's eyes, it was
useless. He read Tom Cairy's excitable, inflammable, lightly poised nature,
with the artist glamour in him that attracted women. He would be all
flame--for a time,--then dead until his flame was lighted before another
shrine. And Isabelle, proud, exacting, who had always been served,--no, it
was hopeless! Inevitable tragedy, to be waited for like the expected
motions of nature!
And beneath this misery for Isabelle was the bitterest of human
feelings,--personal defeat, personal inadequacy. 'If I had been another!'
"Don't lecture me!" she had said almost coldly. The spiritual power of
guidance had gone from him, because of what he had done. Inwardly he felt
that it had gone. That was part of the "marrow of the man" that had been
burned out. The soul of him was impotent; he was a shell, something dead,
that could not kindle another to life.
'I could have saved her,' he thought. 'Once I could have saved her. She has
found me lacking _now_, when she needs me most!'
The whistle sounded nearer.
"Will you do one thing for me, Isabelle?"
"All--but one thing!"
"Let me know first."
"You will know."
Cairy was coming down the terrace, cigarette in hand. His auburn hair shone
in the sunlight. After his sleep, his bath, his cup of early coffee, he was
bright with physical content, and he felt the beauty of the misty morning
in every sense. Seeing the brother and sister coming from the beeches
together, he scrutinized them quickly; like the perfect egotist, he was
swiftly measuring what this particular conjunction of personalities might
mean to him. Then he limped towards them, his face in smiles, and bowing in
mock veneration, he lay at Isabelle's feet a rose still dewy with mist.
Vickers turned on his heel, his face twitching. But Isabelle with parted
lips and gleaming eyes looked at the man, her whole soul glad, as a woman
looks who is blind to all but one thought,--'I love him.'
"The breath of the morn," Cairy said, lifting the rose. "The morn of
morns,--this is to be a great day, my lady! I read it in your eyes."