By the time Thor and Lois had returned from their honeymoon in early May
the line of battle in Claude's soul had been extended. The Claude who
might be was fighting hard to get the better of the Claude who was. It
was, nevertheless, the Claude who was that spoke in response to the
elder brother's timid inquiry concerning the situation as it affected
Rosie Fay. Hardly knowing how to frame his question, Thor had put it
awkwardly.
"Done anything yet?"
"No."
In the little smoking-room that had been Len's and was now Thor's--Mr.
and Mrs. Willoughby having retired already to their _petit trou pas
cher_--they puffed at their cigars in silence. It had been the wish of
both bride and bridegroom that Claude should dine with them on their
second evening at home. Thor had man[oe]uvered for these few minutes
alone with his brother in order to get the information he was now
seeking. For his own assurance there were things he needed to know. He
wanted to feel convinced that he hadn't acted hastily, that in marrying
he had made no mistake. There would be proof of that when he saw that
Claude and Rosie had found their happiness in each other, and that in
what he himself had done--there had been no other way! He wished that
Uncle Sim's pietistic refrain wouldn't hum so persistently in his
memory: "Oh, tarry thou the Lord's leisure!" He didn't believe in a
Lord's leisure; but neither did he want to be afraid of his own haste.
He had grown so self-conscious on the subject that it took courage for
him to say:
"Isn't it getting to be about time?"
Claude drew the cigar from his lips and stared obliquely. "Look here,
old chap; I thought I was to put this thing through in my own way?"
"Oh, quite so; quite so."
Claude's thrust went home when he said, "I don't see why _you_ should be
in such a hurry about it." He followed this by a question that Thor
found equally pertinent: "Why the devil are you?"
"Because I thought you were."
"Well, even if I am, I don't see any reason for rushing things."
"Oh, would you call it--rushing?" He threw off, carelessly, "I hear you
go a good deal to the Darlings'!"
"Not any oftener than they ask me."
"Well, then, they ask you pretty often, don't they?"
"I suppose they do it when they feel inclined. I haven't counted the
number of occasions."
"No; but I dare say Rosie has."
"I'm not a fool, Thor. I don't talk to Rosie about the Darlings."
"Nor to the Darlings about her. That's the point. At least, it's one of
the two points; and both are important. It's no more unjust for Rosie
Fay to know nothing of Elsie Darling than it is for Elsie Darling to
know nothing of Rosie Fay."
"Oh, rot, Thor!" Claude sprang to his feet, knocking off the ash of his
cigar into the fireplace. "What do you think I'm up to?"
"I don't know. And what I'm afraid of is that _you_ don't know."
"If you think I mean to leave Rosie in the lurch--"
"I don't think you _mean_ it--no!"
"Then, if you think I'd do it--"
"The surest way not to do it is to--do the other thing."
"I'll do the other thing when I'm ready--not before."
"Humph! That's just what I thought would happen."
"And this is just what _I_ thought would happen--that because you'd put
up that confounded money you'd try to make me feel I was bought. Well,
I'm not bought. See? Rather than be bribed into doing what I mean to do
anyhow I'll not do it at all."
"Oh, if you mean to do it _anyhow_--"
Claude rounded on his brother indignantly. "Say, Thor, do you think I'm
going to be a damn scoundrel?"
"Do you think you'd be a damn scoundrel if you didn't put it through?"
"I should be worse. Even a damn scoundrel can be called a man, and I
should have forfeited the name. There! Does that satisfy you?"
"Up to a point--yes."
Claude sniffed. "You're such a queer chap, Thor, that if I've satisfied
you up to a point I ought to be content."
"Oh, I'm all right, Claude. I only hoped that you'd be able to go on
with it for some better reason than just--just not to be a scoundrel."
"Good Lord, old chap! I'm crazy about it. If Rosie wouldn't hum and haw
I'd be the happiest man alive."
"Oh? So Rosie hums and haws, does she? What about?"
"About that confounded family of hers. Must do this for the father, and
that for the mother, and something else for the beastly cub that's in
jail. You can see the position that puts me in."
"But if you're really in love with her--"
"I'm really in love with _her_, I'm not with them. I never pretended to
be. But if I have to marry the bunch, the cub and all--"
Thor couldn't help thinking of the opening he would have had here for
his own favorite kinds of activity. "Then that'll give you a chance to
help them."
"Not so stuck on helping people as you, old chap. Want help myself."
"But you've got help, whereas they've got no one. You'll be a godsend to
them."
"That's just what I'm afraid of. Who wants to be a godsend to people?"
"I should think any one would."
"If I'm a godsend to them, it shows what _they_ must be."
"Mustn't undervalue yourself. Besides, you knew what they were when you
began--"
"Oh, hang it all, Thor! I didn't begin. It--it happened."
Thor's eyes followed his brother as the latter began moving restlessly
about the room. "Well, you're glad it happened, aren't you?"
Claude stopped abruptly. "Of course I am. But what stumps me is why you
should be. See here; would you be as keen on it if I were going to marry
some one else?"
Before so leading a question Thor had to choose his words. "I'd be just
as keen on it; only if you were going to marry some one else, some one
in circumstances more like your own, you wouldn't require so much of
my--of my sympathy."
"Well, it beats me," Claude admitted, starting for the door. "I know
you're a good chap at heart--top-hole, of course!--but I shouldn't have
supposed you were as good as all that. I'll be darned if I should!"
Thor thought it best not to inquire too precisely into the suggestions
implied by "all that," contenting himself with asking, "When may I tell
Lois?"
Claude answered over his shoulder as he passed into the hall. "Tell her
myself--perhaps now."
He joined his sister-in-law in the drawing-room, though he didn't tell
her. He was on the point of doing so once or twice, but sheered off to
something else.
"Awful queer fellow, Thor. Can _you_ make him out?"
Lois was doing something with white silk or thread which she hooked in
and out with a crocheting implement. The action, as she held the work
up, showed the beauty of her hands. On her lips there was a dim, happy
smile. "Making Thor out is a good deal like reading in a language you're
just beginning to learn; you only see some of the beauties yet--but you
know you'll find plenty more when you get on a bit. In the mean while
the idioms may bother you."
Claude, who was leaning forward limply, his elbows on his knees, made a
circular, protesting movement of his neck and head, as though his collar
fitted him uncomfortably. "Well, he's all Greek to me."
"But they say Greek richly repays those who study it."
"Humph! 'Fraid I'm not built that way. Do you know why he's got such a
bee in his bonnet about--?"
He was going to say, in order to lead up to his announcement, "about
Fay, the gardener"; but he couldn't. The words wouldn't come out. The
prospect of telling any one that he was going to marry little Rosie Fay
terrified him. He hardly understood now how he could have told his
father and mother. He would never have done it if Thor hadn't been
behind him. As it was, both his parents were so discreet concerning his
confidence that neither had mentioned it since that night--which made
his situation endurable. So he changed the form of his question to--"bee
in his bonnet about--helping people?"
"Oh, it isn't a bee in his bonnet. It's just--himself. He can't do
anything else."
He said, moodily, "Perhaps he doesn't help them as much as he thinks."
"He doesn't--as much as he wants to. I know that."
"Well, why not?"
She dropped her work to her lap and looked vaguely toward the dying
fire. Her air was that of a person who had already considered the
question, though to little purpose. "I don't know. Sometimes I think he
doesn't go the right way to work. And yet it can hardly be that.
Certainly no one could go to work with a better heart."
Claude was referring inwardly to Rosie's five thousand a year, and
perceiving that it created as many difficulties as it did away with,
when he said, "Thinks everything a matter of dollars and cents."
She received this pensively. "Perhaps."
* * * * *
And yet Thor's warning sent Claude to see Rosie on the following
afternoon. It was not his regular day for coming, so that his appearance
was a matter of happy terror tempered only by the fact that he caught
her in her working-dress. His regular days were those on which Jasper
Fay took his garden-truck to town. Fay rarely returned then before six
or seven, so that with the early twilights there was time for an
enchanted hour in the gloaming. The gloaming and the blossoms and the
languorous heat and the heavy scents continued to act on Claude's senses
as a love-philter might in his veins.
It was the kind of meeting to be clandestine. Secrecy was a necessary
ingredient in its deliciousness. The charm of the whole relation was in
its being kept _sub rosa_. _Sub rosa_ was the term. It should remain
under the rose where it had had its origin. It should be a stolen bliss
in a man's life and not a daily staple. That was something Thor would
never understand, that a man's life needed a stolen bliss to give it
piquancy. There was a kind of bliss which when it ceased to be hidden
ceased to be exquisite. Mysteries were seductive because they were
mysteries, not because they were proclaimed and expounded in the
market-place. Rosie in her working-dress among the fern-trees and the
great white Easter lilies was Rosie as a mystery, as a bliss. It was the
pity of pities that she couldn't be left so, where she belonged--in the
state in which she met so beautifully all the requirements of taste. To
drag her out, and put her into spheres she wasn't meant for, and endow
her with five thousand dollars a year, was like exposing a mermaid, the
glory of her own element, by pulling her from the water.
He grew conscious of this, as he always did the minute they touched on
the practical. In general he avoided the practical in order to keep
within the range of topics of which his love was not afraid. But at
times it was necessary to speak of the future, and when they did the
poor mermaid showed her fins and tail. She could neither walk nor dance
nor fly; she could only flounder. There was no denying the fact that
poor little Rosie floundered. She floundered because she was obliged to
deal with life on a scale of which she had no experience, but as to
which Claude had keenly developed social sensibilities. Not that she was
pretentious; she was only what he called pathetic, with a pathos that
would have made him grieve for her if he hadn't been grieving for
himself.
He had asked her idea of their married life, since she had again
expressed her inability to fall in with his. "Oh, Rosie, let us go and
live in Paris!" he had exclaimed, to which she had replied, as she had
replied so many times already: "Claude, darling, how _can_ I? How can I
leave them, when they've no one else?"
"Then if we get married, what do you propose that we should do?"
He had never come to anything so bluntly definite before. With that
common sense of hers which was always looking for openings that would
lead to common-sense results, Rosie took it as an opportunity. She
showed that she had given some attention to the matter, though she
expressed herself with hesitation. They were sitting in the most
embowered recess the hothouse could afford--in a little shrine she kept
free, yet secret, for the purpose of their meetings. She let him hold
both her hands, though her face and most of her person were averted from
him as she spoke. She spoke with an anxiety to let him see that in
marrying her he wouldn't be letting himself down too low.
"There's that little house in Schoolhouse Lane," she faltered. "The
Lippitts used to live in it."
"Well?"
"If we lived there, I could manage--with a girl." She brought out the
subordinate clause with some confusion, for the keeping of "a girl" was
an ambition to which it was not quite easy to aspire. She thought it
best, however, to be bold, and stammered on, "We could get one for about
four a week."
He let her go on.
"And if we lived in the Lippitt house I could slip across our own yard,
and across Mrs. Willert's yard--she wouldn't mind!--and keep an eye on
things here. Mother's ever so much better. She's taking hold again--"
"Then why couldn't we go and settle in Paris?"
"Because--don't you see, Claude?--that's not the only thing. There's
father and Matt and the business. I must be on hand to--to prop them up.
If I were to go, everything would come down with a crash--even if your
father didn't make any more trouble about the lease. I suppose if we
were married he wouldn't do _that_?"
Though he kept silence, his nervous, fastidious, super-fine soul was
screaming. Why couldn't he have been allowed to keep the poignant joy of
touching her, of breathing her acrid, earthy atmosphere, of kissing her
lips and her eyelids, to himself? It was an intoxication--but no one
wanted intoxication all the time. It was curious that a life in this
delirious state should be forced on him by the brother who wished him
well. It was still more curious that he should feel obliged to force it
on himself in order not to be a cad.
He didn't despise Rosie for the poverty of her ideals. On the contrary,
her ideals were exactly suited to the little rustic thing she was. If he
could have been Strephon to her Chloe it would have been perfect. But he
couldn't be Strephon; he could be nothing but a neurotic
twentieth-century youth, sensitive to such amenities and refinements as
he had, and eager to get more. He was the type to go sporting with
Amaryllis in the shade--but the shade was what made the exercise
enchanting.
His obscure rebellion against the power that forced him to drag his love
out into the light impelled him to say, without quite knowing why, "Did
Thor ever speak of you and me being married?"
Because he was pressing her to him so closely he felt the shudder that
ran through her frame. It seemed to run through his own as he waited for
her reply.
"No."
Rosie never told a lie unless she thought she was obliged to. She
thought it now because of Claude's jealousy. She had seen flashes of it
more than once, and always at some mention of his brother. She was
terror-stricken as she felt his arm relax its embrace--terror-stricken
lest Thor should have already given the information that would prove she
was lying. She asked, trembling, "Did he ever say he had?"
"Do you think he'd say it, if he hadn't?"
"N-no; I don't suppose so."
"Then why should you ask me that?"
She surprised him by bursting into tears. "Oh, Claude, don't be cross
with me. Don't say what you said the last time you were cross--that
you'd go away and never come back again. If you did that I should die. I
couldn't live. I should kill myself."
There followed one of the scenes of soothing in which Claude was
specially adept, and which he specially enjoyed. The pleasure was so
exquisite that he prolonged it, so that by the time he emerged from the
hothouse Jasper Fay was standing in the yard.
As the old man's back was turned, Claude endeavored to slip by,
unobserved and silent. He succeeded in the silence, but not in being
unobserved. Glancing over his shoulder, he saw the dim figure dogging
him as it had dogged him on a former occasion, with the bizarre,
sinister suggestion of a beast about to spring.
Claude could afford to smile at so absurd an idea in connection with
poor old Fay, but his nerves were shaken by certain passionate,
desperate utterances he had just heard from Rosie. She was in general so
prudent, so self-controlled, that he had hardly expected to see her give
way either in weeping or in words. She had broken down in both respects,
while his nature was so responsive that he felt as if he had broken down
himself. In the way of emotions it had been delicious, wonderful. It was
a revelation of the degree to which the little creature loved him. It
was a sensation in itself to be loved like that. It struck him as a
strange, new discovery that in such a love there was a value not to be
reckoned by money or measured by social refinements. New, strange
harmonies swept through the æolian harp of his being--harmonies both
tragic and exultant by which he felt himself subdued. It came to him
conclusively that if in marrying Rosie there would be many things to
forego, there would at least be compensation.
And yet he shivered at the stealthy creeping behind him of the shadowy
old man, by whom he felt instinctively that he was hated.