THE TRIUMPH OF THE EGO
He came punctually at three o'clock on the following afternoon, and even
as he entered the room, she was conscious of a slight disappointment
because, in some perfectly indefinable way, he was different from what
she had hoped that he would be.
"This is the first peaceful moment I have had for twenty-four hours," he
remarked, as he flung himself into a chair before the small wood fire;
"a man I knew was inconsiderate enough to die and make me the guardian
of his son, and I've had to overhaul the chap's property almost before
the funeral was over."
A frown of nervous irritation wrinkled his forehead, but as he turned to
her it faded quickly before the kindling animation in his look. "By
Jove, I've thought of you every single minute since I was here," he
pursued. "What a persistent way you have of interfering with a fellow's
peace of mind. I've known nothing like it in my life."
"I hope at least I didn't damage the property," she observed, and almost
with the words she wondered why she had longed so passionately yesterday
for his presence. Now that he had come she felt neither the delight of
realised expectation nor the final peace of renouncement.
"Well, it wasn't your fault if you didn't," he replied, leaning his head
against the chair-back and looking at her with his intimate and charming
smile. "I had to fight hard enough to keep you out even of the stocks.
Was I as much in your way, I wonder?"
She shook her head. "In my way? I wouldn't allow it. Why should I?"
"Why, indeed?" his genial irony was in his glance and he held her gaze
until she felt the warm blood mount swiftly to her forehead. "Why,
indeed unless you wanted to?" he laughed.
His eyes moved to the window, and she followed the large, slightly
coarsened features of his profile and the fullness of his jaw which lent
a suggestion of brutality to his averted face. Was it possible that she
found an attraction in mere animal vitality? She wondered; then his
caressing glance was turned upon her, and she forgot to ask herself the
useless question.
"So I must presume, then, that I haven't disturbed you?" he enquired
gayly.
Her eyes lingered upon him for a moment before she answered. "Oh, no, it
wasn't you, it was Gerty," she replied.
He drew nearer until the arm of his chair touched her own. "I thought at
least that my character was safe with Gerty," he exclaimed, not without
the annoyance of an easily aroused vanity.
"I don't know what you'd think about the danger," she returned with
seriousness, "but I simply hate the kind of things she told me."
His frown returned with gathered energy. "Is that so? What were they?"
"Oh, I don't know--nothing definite--but about women generally."
"Women! Pshaw! You're the only woman. There isn't any other on the
earth."
Her hand lay on the arm of her chair, and he reached out and grasped her
wrist, not gently, but with a violent pressure. "I'll swear there isn't
another woman in existence," he exclaimed.
An electric current started from his fingers through the length of her
arm; she felt it burning into her flesh as it travelled quickly from her
wrist to her heart. For one breathless moment she was conscious of his
presence as of a powerful physical force, and the sensation came to her
that she was being lifted from her feet and swept blindly out into
space. Then, drawing slightly away, she released herself from his grasp.
"I give you fair warning that if you repeat that for the third time, I
shall believe it," she retorted coolly.
"I'm trying to make you," he returned in a strained voice. "Why are you
such a sceptic, I wonder," he added as he fell back into his chair.
"Can't you tell the real thing when you come across it?"
"The real thing?" Her words were almost a whisper.
"Are you so used to shams that you don't recognise a man's love when you
see it?"
She leaned toward him, her black brows drawn together with the sombre
questioning look which had always fascinated him by its strangeness.
Beyond the look, what was there? he asked with an intense and eager
curiosity. What passionate surprises existed in her? What secret
suggestions of a still undiscovered charm? The wonder of her temperament
rose before him, exquisite, remote, alluring, and he felt the appeal she
made thrill like the spirit of adventure through his blood. Again he
stretched out his hand, but with a frown he drew it back before it
touched her.
"Can't you see that I love you?" he said with an angry hoarseness.
His face, his voice, the gesture of his outstretched hand startled her
into a quick feeling of terror, and she shrank back with a childlike
movement of alarm. Where was her dream, she demanded with an instinctive
repulsion, if this was the only living reality of love? Then his face
changed abruptly beneath her look, and as the strong tenderness of his
smile enveloped her, she was conscious of a sudden ecstasy of peace.
"Did I frighten you?" he asked, smiling.
She shook her head, resting her fingers for an instant upon his hand. "I
don't believe you could frighten me if you tried," she answered.
He raised his eyebrows with his characteristic blithe interrogation,
"Well, I shouldn't like to try, that's all."
"I give you leave--my courage is my shield."
"But I don't want to frighten you." His voice was softer than she had
ever heard it. "We aren't afraid of those we love, you know."
"Why should I love you?" she enquired gayly.
His pleasant irony was in his laugh. "Because you can't help
yourself--you're obliged to--it's your fate."
She frowned slightly. "I have no fate except the one I make for myself."
He bent toward her and this time his hand closed with determination upon
hers. "Well, you may make me what you please," he said.
Her hand fluttered like an imprisoned bird in his grasp, but he held it
with a pressure which sent the blood tingling sharply to the ends of her
fingers. His strength hurt her and yet she found a curious pleasure in
the very acuteness of her sensations.
"There's no use fighting," he said with a short laugh, "we can't help
ourselves. You'll have to marry me, so you may as well give in."
His tone was mocking, but she felt his tenderness as she had felt it a
moment before, resistless and enveloping. As she smiled up at him, he
bent quickly forward and kissed her brow and eyes and mouth, then
lifting her chin he kissed, also, the soft fulness of her throat. When
she put up her hands in protest, he crushed them back upon her bosom by
the strength of his lips.
She closed her eyes, yielding for one breathless instant to the passion
of his embrace. Her dream and her longing melted swiftly into
realisation, and she told herself that the agony of joy was sharper than
that of grief. This was like nothing that she had imagined, and she felt
an impulse to fly back into the uncertainty that she had left--to gain
time in which to prepare for the happiness which she told herself was
hers. Yet was it happiness? Her soul trembled as if from some almost
imperceptible shock of disillusionment, and she knew again the sense of
unreality which had come to her in the street on the day before. Again
she felt that she was in the midst of a singularly vivid dream from
which she would presently awake to life--and this dream seemed the
result of her dual nature, as if even her emotions belonged less to her
real existence than to an unconscious projection of thought.
The impulse to escape re-awoke in her, and yet she was clearly aware
that she would no sooner fly from him than her insatiable longing would
drive her back anew. His attraction appeared strangely the greater as
she withdrew the further from his actual presence, and she knew that if
he were absent from her for a day the uncertainty that he aroused would
become intolerable. "Does the soul that I see in him--the soul of which
mine is but the reflection--really exist, or have I created an image out
of mere emptiness?" she asked; and even with the thought it seemed to
her that she saw a new seriousness--a profounder meaning in his face.
Gerty had never touched the hidden springs, nor had any other woman
except herself, and the knowledge of this gave her an ecstatic
consciousness of power.
When she raised her eyes she saw that he had fallen back into his chair
and was watching her intently with a puzzled and ardent look.
"You won't keep me hanging on for an eternity," he said, with the
nervous contraction of his forehead she knew so well. "If we must go to
the scaffold, let's go at once."
"To the scaffold?" She smiled at him for the purpose of prolonging the
thrill of the uncertainty.
"Oh, I hate marriage, you know," he returned impatiently, "there's not
another woman on earth who could get me into it."
She nodded. "Well, that is to be hoped if not believed."
He made an impulsive movement toward her. "Believe it or not, so long as
you marry me," he exclaimed.
His flippancy grated upon her, and she turned from his words to the
elusive earnestness which mocked at her from his face. If she might only
arrest and hold this earnestness, then surely she might reach the depths
of his nature and be at peace.
"It never seemed possible to me that I should marry a man who has had
another wife," she said, with an emotion which was almost a regret for
the old ideal of conduct from which she had slipped away.
"A wife! Nonsense!" She saw the indignant flash of his eyes and the
nervous quiver of the hand with which he pulled at his short moustache.
Though he did not touch her she felt instinctively that his personality
had been put forth to overmaster her. "She was nothing but a schoolboy's
folly, and I've forgotten that I ever knew her. She's safely married
again now, so for heaven's sake, don't be foolish!"
"And how do you know that in ten years you will not have forgotten me?"
she asked.
For a brief pause he did not reply; then he bent toward her and she hung
for a rapturous instant upon the passionate denial in his face. The look
that she loved and dreaded was in his eyes, and she struggled blindly in
her own helplessness before it. He was so close to her that it seemed as
if the breath were leaving her body in the intensity of the atmosphere
she breathed.
"Forget you, my own sweetheart!" he exclaimed, and the trivial words
were almost an offence against the emotional dignity of the moment.
She rose to her feet, stretching out her hand until she stood as if
keeping him at a distance by the mere fragile tips of her fingers.
"If I love you, I shall love you very, very much," she said.
With a laugh he bent his lips against her hand. "You'll never love me
half so much as I love you, you bit of thistledown," he answered.
"It will be either a great happiness or a greater misery," she went on,
hesitating, retreating, as she withdrew her hands and pressed them upon
her bosom.
"There's no misery any more--it is the beginning of life," he rejoined.
She laughed softly, a little tender, yielding laugh; then at the very
instant when he would have caught her in his arms, she slipped quickly
back until her desk came between them.
"You must give me time--I must think before I let myself care too much,"
she said.
In the end she gave him her promise and he went from her with a rare and
vivid feeling of exhilaration. For the time he told himself that he
wanted her more than he remembered ever to have wanted anything in his
whole life; and his sated emotion of a man of pleasure, responded with
all the lost intensity of youth. Was it credible that he was already
middle-aged--was already growing a little bald? he demanded, with a
genuine delight in the discovery that his senses were still alive.
On his way up to his rooms, he dropped, by habit, into his club, and
after a word or two with several men whom he seldom met, he crossed over
to join Perry Bridewell, who sat in an exhausted attitude in a leather
chair beside the window. Outside a stream of carriages, containing
richly dressed women moved up Fifth Avenue, dividing as it approached
the mounted police at the corner, and Perry, as Kemper went up to him,
was following with a dulled fish-like glance the pronounced figure of a
lady who held the reins over a handsome pair of bays.
"That's a fine figure of a woman--look at her hips," he observed, with
relish, as Kemper stopped beside him.
"I saw her yesterday. Gerty says she's terrific form," commented Kemper,
gazing to where the object of their admiration vanished in a crush of
vehicles.
"Oh, they always say that of a woman with any figure to speak of,"
remarked Perry. "Unless she's as flat as an ironing board, somebody is
sure to say she's vulgar. For my part I like shape," he concluded with
emphasis.
A vision of Gerty's slender, almost boyish figure, with its daring
carriage, rose before Kemper, and he bit back the cynical laugh upon his
lips. Did one require, after all, a certain restraint in life, a
cultured abstinence before one could really appreciate the finer flavour
of the aesthetic taste? His old aversion to marriage returned to him as
he looked at Perry, sunk in his domestic satiety, and his exhilaration
of a moment ago gave place to a corresponding degree of depression. He
had done the irrevocable thing, and, as usual, it was no sooner
irrevocable than the joyous seduction of it fled from his fancy.
Marriage was utterly repugnant to him, and yet he knew not only that
there was no withdrawing from his position, but that he would not wish
to withdraw himself if he had the power. The instant that the
possibility of losing Laura occurred to him, he felt again the full,
resurgent wave of his desire. He wanted her, and if to marry her was the
one way to possess her, then--the devil take it--marry her he would!
A tinted note was brought to Perry Bridewell, who, after reading it, sat
twirling it between his fingers with a bored and discontented look on
his handsome florid face.
"Take my advice, and when you get clear of an affair, keep out," he
remarked, in a disgusted voice. "By Jove, I'm sometimes tempted to wish
that I were as cold blooded as old Adams."
"Old Adams?" Kemper repeated the name, with a quickened interest. "Well,
I'd hardly envy him his experience with the sex," he exclaimed.
"You would if you saw him--he simply never thinks about a woman so far
as I know, and at least he's well enough rid of his wife, at last. She's
on Brady's hands, thank heaven!"
Kemper shrugged his shoulders. "It serves her right, I suppose, but I
shouldn't care to be on Brady's hands, that's all."
"Oh, he'll chuck her presently, you'll see."
"And afterward--" Kemper was leaning over Perry while he critically
examined a pretty woman who was passing under the window.
"There's no afterward," laughed Perry; "you know how such women end."
As he glanced at the note again, the bored and discontented look came
back upon his face, and he tore the envelope carelessly across and flung
it with a jerk into the waste basket.
"Pshaw! it's all a confounded nuisance--the whole business of sex," he
remarked as he rose to his feet. Then while the disgust still lingered
in his expression, a servant entered and handed him a second note
written upon the same faintly tinted paper. Immediately as if by magic
his face was transfigured by the animated satisfaction of the conqueror,
and instinctively his hand wandered to the ends of his fair moustache,
to which he added an eloquent upward twirl. From the condition of a mere
sullen and dejected animal--he sprang instantly into the victorious
swagger of the complacent male.
"Sorry, but I'm in an awful hurry," he remarked in his usual hearty
voice. "Look me up later in the evening and we'll have a game of
billiards."
He went out, still twirling the fine ends of his moustache, and Kemper
followed, after a short delay, to where his newest French motor car was
waiting before the door.
A little later as he moved slowly amid the crush of vehicles in Fifth
Avenue, it occurred to him that since Perry was so agreeably engaged, he
might himself come in for a share of Gerty's society, and stopping
before her door, he sent up a request that she would come with him for a
short quick run up Riverside. Next to Laura herself he felt that he
preferred Gerty because he knew that she would enter into a lively
banter upon the subject that filled his thoughts, and his emotion was so
fresh that there was a piquant charm in her sprightly allusion to the
mere fact of its existence. When she came down at the end of a few
minutes, wearing her long tan motoring coat and a fluttering white
chiffon veil, he felt a quick impatience of the first casual phrases
with which she leaned back in the car and settled her hanging draperies
about her.
"Go as fast as you like," he said to the chauffeur, and then reaching
into his pocket, he drew out his glasses and offered her a pair.
She shook her head, with an indignant gesture of refusal. "If I perish I
perish, but I won't perish hideously!" she exclaimed.
With a laugh he slipped the elastic over his cap. "What a bore it must
be always to keep beautiful," he remarked. "You can't imagine the
positive delight there is in the freedom of ugliness."
"I dare say." She had turned her head to look at a passing carriage, and
he saw the lovely delicacy of her profile through the blown transparent
folds of her veil. "I shall know it some day," she added presently, "for
after I've safely passed my fiftieth birthday, I mean never to look into
a glass again. Then I'll break my mirrors and be really happy."
"No, you won't, my dear cousin," he rejoined, "for you'll continue to
see yourself in Perry's eyes."
He watched with a sensation of pleasure the graceful shrug of her
shoulders under her shapeless coat.
"Oh, there's no chance of that," she assured him; "he is always in them
himself?"
The vague curiosity in his thoughts took form suddenly in words.
"Where's he now, by the way, do you know?"
Her musical, empty laugh was as perfect as the indifferent glance she
gave him. "Enjoying himself, I hope," she answered. "He hung around me
until I sent him out in the sheer desperation of weariness."
Though her lashes did not quiver, he knew not only that she lied, but
that she was perfectly aware of the assurance and extent of his
knowledge. The hopeless gallantry of her deception appealed to the
fighting spirit in his blood, and he found himself wondering foolishly
if Laura could have played with so high an air the part of a neglected
wife. To a man of his peculiarly eager temperament there existed a
curious fascination in the idea of pushing to its limit of endurance an
unalterable constancy. Would Laura have uttered her futile lies with so
exquisite an insolence? or would she have acted in tears the patient
Griselda in her closet? The virtue of truthfulness was the one he had
most nearly associated with her, and it seemed to him impossible that
she should stoop to shield herself behind a falsehood. Yet he could not
dispel his curiosity as to how she would act in circumstances which he
felt to be impossible and purely imaginary.
He wanted to speak of her to Gerty, but a restraint that was almost
embarrassment kept him silent, and Gerty herself could not be induced to
abandon her flippant satirical tone. So Laura was not mentioned between
them; and he felt when at last he brought Gerty to her door again that,
on the whole, the drive had been a disappointment. He had meant to seek
her sympathy with his love for her friend, and instead he had been met
by a fine, exquisite edge of cutting humour. For once he had felt the
need to be wholly in earnest, and Gerty had taken nothing seriously,
least of all the hint which he had dropped concerning the ultimate
stability of his emotion. If she had got her heartache from his sex, he
saw clearly that she meant to have her laugh on it as well; and the only
remark from which she had let fall even momentarily her gay derision was
in answer to some phrase of his in which had occurred the name of Roger
Adams.
"Roger Adams!" she had echoed with a fleeting earnestness, "do you know
I've always had a fancy that he is meant for Laura in another life."
"In another life?" he questioned merrily.
"Oh, things went crosswise here, you see," she answered, "but somewhere
else, who knows? They may all be straightened out."
The question of Laura's possible fate in "another life" failed somehow
to disturb him seriously; but as he drove presently down the darkening
street, under the high electric lights, he found himself wondering
vaguely why Gerty had so persistently associated her friend with Roger
Adams.