There were both amazement and terror in Rosie's face when, at dusk next
day, Claude strolled down the flowery path of the hothouse. Since Thor
had turned from her, on almost the same spot, forty-eight hours
previously, no hint from either of the brothers had come her way.
Through the intervening time she had lived in an anguish of wonder. What
was happening? What was to happen still? Would anything happen at all?
Had Claude discovered the astounding fact that the elder brother was in
love with her? If he had, what would he do? Would he go wild with
jealousy? Or would he never have anything to do with her again? Either
case was possible, and the latter more than possible if he had received
a hint of the degree in which she had betrayed herself to Thor.
As to that, she didn't know whether she was glad or sorry. She knew how
crude had been her self-revelation, and how shocking; but the memory of
it gave her a measure of relief. It was like a general confession, like
the open declaration of what had been too long kept buried in the heart.
It had been a shameful thing to own that, loving one man, she would have
married another man for money; but a worse shame lay in being driven to
that pass. For this she felt herself but partly responsible, if
responsible at all. What did she, Rosie Fay, care for money in itself?
Put succinctly, her first need was of bread, of bread for herself and
for those who were virtually dependent on her. After bread she wanted
love and pleasure and action and admiration and whatever else made up
life--but only after it. She was craving for them, she was stifling for
lack of them, but they were all secondary. The very best of them was
secondary. Only one thing stood first--and that was bread.
Undoubtedly her frankness had revolted Thor Masterman. But what did he
know of an existence which left the barest possible margin for absolute
necessity? What would life have meant to him had he never had a day
since he first began to think when he had been entirely free from
anxiety as to the prime essentials? Rosie couldn't remember a time when
the mere getting of their pinched daily food hadn't been a matter of
contrivance, with some doubt as to its success. She couldn't remember a
time when she had ever been able to have a new dress or a pair of boots
without long calculation beforehand. On the other hand, she remembered
many a time when the pinched food couldn't be paid for, and the new
dress or the pair of boots had come almost within reach only to be
whisked aside that the money might be used for something still more
needful. In a world of freedom and light and flowers and abundance her
little soul had been kept in a prison where the very dole of bread and
water was stinted.
She had never been young. Even in childhood she had known that. She had
known it, and been patient with the fact, hoping for a chance to be
young when she was older. If money came in then, money for boots and
bread, for warm clothes in winter and thin clothes in summer, for fuel
and rent and taxes and light, and the pay of the men, and the
innumerable details which, owing to her father's dreaminess, she was
obliged to keep on her mind--if money were ever to come in for these
things, she could be young with the best. She could be young with the
intenser happiness that would come from spirits long thwarted. It might
never now be a light-hearted happiness, but it would be happiness for
all that. It would be the deeper, and the more satisfying, and the more
aware of itself for its years of suppression.
To her long experience in denial Rosie could only oppose a heart more
imperiously exacting in its demands. Her tense little spirit didn't know
how to do otherwise. From lines of ancestry that had never done anything
but toil with patient relentlessness to wring from the soil whatever it
was capable of yielding, she had inherited no habit of compromise. In
them it had been called grit; but a softer generation having let that
word fall into disuse, Rosie could only account for herself by saying
she "wasn't a quitter." She meant that she could neither forego what she
asked for, nor be content with anything short of what she conceived to
be the best. Could she have done that, she might have enjoyed the meager
"good time" of other girls in the village; she might have listened to
the advances of young Breen the gardener, or of Matt's colleague in the
grocery-store. But she had never presented such possibilities for her
own consideration. She was like an ant, that sees but one object to the
errand on which it has set out, disdaining diversion.
And if it had all summed itself up into what looked like a hard,
unlovely avariciousness, it was because poor Rosie had nothing to tell
her the values and co-relations of the different ingredients in life.
For the element that suffuses good-fortune and ill-fortune alike with
corrective significance she had imbibed from her mother one kind of
scorn, and from her father another. She knew no more of it than did Thor
Masterman. Like him, she could only work for a material blessing with
material hands, though without his advantages for molding things to his
will. He had his advantages through money. Since all things material are
measured by that, by that Rosie measured them. The matter and the
measure were all she knew. They meant safety for herself and for her
parents, and protection for Matt when he came out of jail. How could she
do other than spend her heart upon them? What choice had she when the
alternative lay between Claude and love on the one side and on the other
Thor, with his hands full of daily bread for them all? With Claude and
his love there went nothing besides, while with Thor and his daily bread
there would be peace and security for life. She asked it of herself; she
asked it, in imagination, of him. What else could she do but sell
herself when the price on her poor little body had been set so high?
She had spent two burning, rebellious days. All the while she was
cooking meals, or setting tables, or washing dishes, or making beds, or
selling flowers, or pruning, or watering, or addressing envelopes for
the monthly bills, her soul had been raging against the unjust code by
which she would have to be judged. Thor would judge her; Claude would
judge her, if he knew; any one who knew would judge her, and women most
fiercely of all. But what did they know about it? What did they know of
twenty-odd years of going around in a cage? What did they know of the
terror of seeing the cage itself demolished, and being without a
protection? Did they suppose she wouldn't suffer in giving up her love?
Of course she would suffer! The very extremity of her suffering would
prove the extremity of her need. Passionately Rosie defended herself
against her imaginary accusers, because unconsciously she accused
herself.
Nevertheless, Claude's sudden appearance startled her, though the set of
his shoulders towering through the dusk transported her to the enchanted
land. Here were mountains, and lakes, and palaces, and plashed marble
steps, and the music of lutes, and banquets of ambrosial things to which
daily bread was as nothing. Claude brought them with him. They were the
conditions of that glorious life in which he had his being. They were
the conditions in which she had her being, too, the minute she came
within his sphere.
She passed through some poignant seconds as he approached. For the first
time since her idyl had begun to give a new meaning to existence she
perceived that if he renounced her it would be the one thing she
couldn't bear. She might have the strength to give him up; for him to
give her up would be beyond all the limits of endurance. She put it to
herself tersely in saying it would break her heart.
But he dispelled her fears by smiling. He smiled from what was really a
long way off. Even she could see that he smiled from pleasure, though
she couldn't trace his pleasure to his delicious feeling of surprise. If
she had ceased to be a dryad in a wood, it was to become the Armida of
an enchanted garden. She could have no idea of the figure she presented
to a connoisseur in girls as from a background of palms, fern-trees, and
banked masses of bloom she stared at him with lips half parted and wide,
frightened eyes.
Submitting to this new witchery in the same way as he was yielding to
the heavy, languorous perfumes of the place, Claude smiled continuously.
"The fat's all in the fire, Rosie," he said, in a loud whisper, as he
drew nearer; "so we've nothing to be afraid of any longer."
It was some minutes before she could give concrete significance to these
words. In the mean time she occupied herself with assuring him that
there was no one in the hothouse but herself, and that in this gloaming
they could not be seen from outside. She even found a spot--a kind of
low staging from which foliage plants had recently been moved away--on
which they could sit down. They did so, clinging to each other,
though--conscious of her coarse working-dress--she was swept by a
shameful sense of incongruity in being on such terms with this
faultlessly attired man. She did her best to shrink from sight, to blot
herself out in his embrace, unaware that to Claude the very roughness,
and the scent of growing things, gave her a savage, earthy charm.
He explained the situation to her, word by word. When he told her that
their meetings were known to his father, she hid her face on his breast.
When he went on to describe how resolute he had been in taking the bull
by the horns, she put her hands on his shoulders and looked up into his
face with the devotion of a dog. On hearing what a good mother Mrs.
Masterman had been, her utterances, which welled up out of her heart as
if she had been crying, were like broken phrases of blessing. As a
matter of fact, she was only half listening. She was telling herself how
mad she had been in fancying for an instant that she could ever have
married Thor--that she could ever have married any one, no matter how
great the need or how immense the compensation. Having confronted the
peril, she knew now, as she had not known it hitherto, that her heart
belonged to this man who held her in his arms for him to do with it as
he pleased. He might treasure it, or he might play with it, or he might
break it. It was all one. It was his. It was his and she was his--to
shatter on the wheel or to trample in the mire, just as he was inclined.
It was so clear to her now that she wondered she hadn't seen it with
equal force in those days when she was so resolute in declaring that she
"knew what she was doing."
And yet within a few minutes she saw how difficult it was to surrender
herself, even mentally, without reserves. She was still listening but
partially. She recognized plainly enough that the things he was saying
were precisely those which a month ago would have filled her soul with
satisfaction. He loved her, loved her, loved her. Moreover, he had found
the means of sweeping all obstacles aside. They were to be married as
soon as possible--just as soon as he could "arrange things." Thor and
his mother were with them, and his father's conversion would be only a
matter of time. These assurances, by which all the calculations of her
youth were crowned, found her oddly apathetic. It was not because she
had lost the knowledge of their value, but only that they had become
subsidiary to the great central fact that she was his--without money or
price on his side, and no matter at what cost on hers.
It was only when he began to murmur semi-coherent plans for the future,
in which she detected the word Paris, that she was frightened.
"Oh, but, Claude darling, how could I go to Paris when there's so much
for me to do here?"
It could not be said that he took offense, but he hinted at reproval.
"Here, dearest? Where?"
"Here where we are. I don't see how I could go away."
"But you'd _have_ to go away--if we were married."
"Would it be necessary to go so far?"
"Wouldn't it be the farther the better?"
"For some things. But, oh, Claude, I have so many things to consider!"
"But I thought that when a woman married she left--"
"Her father and mother and everything. Yes, I know. But how can I leave
mine--when I'm the only one who has any head? Mother's getting better,
but father's not much good except for mooning over books. And then"--she
hesitated, but whipped herself on--"then there's Matt. He'll be out
before long. Some one must be here to tell them what to do."
He withdrew his arms from about her. "Of course, if you're going to
raise so many difficulties--"
"I'm not raising difficulties, Claude darling. I'm only telling you what
difficulties there are. God knows I wish there weren't any; but what can
I do? If it were just going to Paris and back--"
"Well, why not go--and come back when we're obliged to?"
In the end they compromised on that, each considering it enough for the
present. Rosie was unwilling to dampen his ardor when for the first time
he seemed able to enter into her needs as a human being with cares and
ties. He discussed them all, displaying a wonderful disposition to
shoulder and share them. He went so far as to develop a philanthropic
interest in Matt. Rosie had never known anything so amazing. She clasped
him to her with a kind of fear lest the man should disappear in the god.
"I'll talk to Thor about him," Claude said, confidently. "Got a bee in
his bonnet, Thor has, about helping chaps who come out of jail, and all
that."
Rosie shuddered. It was curiously distasteful for her to apply to Thor.
She felt guilty toward him. If she could do as she chose, she would
never see him again. She said nothing, however, while Claude went on:
"Thor's a top-hole brother, you know. You'll find that out one of these
days. Lots of things I shall have to explain to you." He added, without
leading up to it. "He's engaged to Lois Willoughby."
Rosie sprang from his arms. "What? Already?"
She was standing. He looked up at her curiously. "Already? Already--how?
What do you mean by that?"
She tried to recapture her position.
"Why, already--right after us."
She reseated herself, getting possession of one of his hands. To this
tenderness he made no response. He seemed to ruminate. "Say, Rosie--" he
began at last, but apparently thought better of what he had meant to
say. "All right," he broke in, carelessly, going on to speak of the
wisdom of leaving the public out of their confidence until their plans
were more fully matured. "Thor's to be married about the twentieth of
next month," he continued, while Rosie was on her guard against further
self-betrayal. "After that we'll have Lois on our side, and she'll do a
lot for us."
By the time Claude emerged from the hothouse it was dark. Glad of the
opportunity of slipping away unobserved, he was hurrying toward the road
when he found himself confronted by Jasper Fay. In the latter's voice
there was a sternness that got its force from the fact that it was so
mild.
"You been in the hothouse, Mr. Claude?"
Claude laughed. In his present mood of happiness he could easily have
announced himself as Fay's future son-in-law. Nothing but motives of
prudence held him back. He answered, jestingly, "Been in to see if you
had any American beauties."
"No, Mr. Claude; we don't grow them; no _kind_ of American beauties."
Claude laughed again. "Oh, I don't know about that. Good night, Mr. Fay.
Glad to have seen you."
He passed on with spirits slightly dashed because his condescension met
with no response. He was so quick to feel that Fay's silence struck him
as hostile. It struck him as hostile with a touch of uncanniness. On
glancing back over his shoulder he saw that Fay was following him
watchfully, like a dog that sneaks after an intruder till he has left
the premises. Being sensitive to the creepy and the sinister, Claude was
glad when he had reached the road.