Claude found it a vivid and curious contrast to dine that evening with
the Darlings and their sophisticated friends. The friends were even more
sophisticated than Claude himself, since they had more money, had
traveled more, and in general lived in a broader world. But Claude knew
that it was in him to reach their standards and go beyond them. All he
needed was the opportunity; and opportunity to a handsome young American
of good antecedents like himself is rarely wanting. He never took in
that fact so clearly as on this night.
He was glad that he had not been placed next to Elsie at table, for the
reason that he felt some treachery to Rosie in his being there at all.
Conversely, in the light of Thor's judgment, he felt some treachery to
Elsie that he should come to her with Rosie's kisses on his lips. Not
that he owed her any explanations--from one point of view. Considering
the broad latitude of approach and withdrawal allowed to American young
people, and the possibility of playing fast and loose with some amount
of mutual comprehension, he owed her no explanations whatever; but the
fact remained that she was expressing a measure of willingness to be
Juliet to his Romeo in braving the mute antagonism that existed between
their respective families. As far as that went, he knew he was unwelcome
to the Darlings; but he knew, too, that Elsie's favor carried over her
parents' heads the point of his coming and going. It was conceivable
that she might carry over their heads a point more important still if he
were to urge her.
To the Claude who was it seemed lamentable that he couldn't urge her;
but to the Claude who might be there were higher things than the
gratification of fastidious social tastes, and for the moment that
Claude had some hope of the ascendant. It was that Claude who spoke
when, after dinner, the men had rejoined the ladies.
"Your mother doesn't like my coming here."
Elsie threw him one of her frank, flying glances. "Well, she's asked
you, hasn't she?"
He smiled. "She only asked me at the last minute. I can see some other
fellow must have dropped out."
"You can see it because it's a dinner-party of elderly people to which
you naturally wouldn't be invited unless there had been the place to
fill. That constantly happens when people entertain as much as we do.
But it isn't a slight to be asked to come to the rescue. It's a
compliment. You never ask people to do that unless you count them as
real friends."
He insisted on his point. "I don't suppose it was her idea."
"You mean it was mine; but even if it was, it comes to the same thing.
She asked you. She needn't have done it."
He still insisted. "She did it, but she didn't want to." He added,
lowering his voice significantly, "And she was right."
He forced himself to return her gaze, which rested on him with unabashed
inquiry. Everything about her was unabashed. She was free from the
conventional manners of maidendom, not as one who has been emancipated
from them, but as one who has never had them. She might have belonged to
a generation that had outgrown the need for them, as perhaps she did.
Shyness, coyness, and emphasized reserve formed no part of her
equipment; but, on the other hand, she was clear--clear with a kind of
crystalline clearness, in eyes, in complexion, and in the staccato
quality of her voice.
"She's right--how?"
"Right--because I oughtn't to come. I'm--I'm not free to come."
"Do you mean--?" She paused, not because she was embarrassed, but only
to find the right words. She kept her eyes on his with a candor he could
do nothing but reciprocate. "Do you mean that you're bound--elsewhere?"
He nodded. "That's it."
"Oh!" She withdrew her eyes at last, letting her gaze wander vaguely
over the music-room, about which the other guests were seated. They were
lined on gilded settees against the white French-paneled walls, while a
young man played Chopin's Ballade in A flat on a grand piano in the far
corner. Not being in the music-room itself, but in the large, square
hall outside, the two young people could talk in low tones without
disturbing the company. If she betrayed emotion it was only in the
nervousness with which she tapped her closed fan against the palm of her
left hand. Her eyes came back to his face. "I'm glad you've told me."
He took a virtuous tone. "I think those things ought to be--to be open
and aboveboard."
"Oh, of course. The wonder is that I shouldn't have heard it. One
generally does."
"Oh, well, you wouldn't in this case."
"Isn't it anybody--about here?"
"It's some one about here, but not any one you would have heard of. She
lives in our village. She's the daughter of a--well, of a
market-gardener."
"How interesting! And you're in love with her?" But because of what she
saw in his face she went on quickly: "No; I won't ask you that. Don't
answer. Of course you're in love with her. _I_ think it's splendid--a
man with your"--chances was the word that suggested itself, but she made
it future--"a man with your future to fall in love with a girl like
that."
There was a bright glow in her face to which he tried to respond. He
said that which, owing to its implications, he could not have said to
any other girl in the world, but could say to her because of her
twentieth-century freedom from the artificial. "Now you see why I
shouldn't come."
She gave a little assenting nod. "Yes; perhaps you'd better not--for a
while--not quite so often, at any rate. By and by, I dare say, we shall
get everything on another--another basis--and then--"
She rose, so that he followed her example; but he shook his head. "No,
we sha'n't. There won't be any other basis."
She took this with her usual sincerity. "Well, perhaps not. I don't
suppose we can really tell yet. We must just--see. When he stops," she
added, with scarcely a change of tone, as she moved away from him, "do
go over and talk to Mrs. Boyce. She likes attentions from young men."
What Claude chiefly retained of his brief conversation was the approval
in the words, "_I_ think it's splendid." He thought it splendid himself.
He felt positive now that if he had pressed his suit--if he had been
free to press it--he might one day have been treading this polished
floor not as guest, but as master. There were no difficulties in the way
that couldn't easily be overcome, if he and Elsie had been of a mind to
do it--and she would have a good fifty thousand a year! Yes, it was
splendid; there was no other word for it. He was giving up this
brilliant future for the sake of little Rosie Fay--and counting the
world well lost.
* * * * *
The sense of self-approval was so strong in him that as he traveled
homeward he felt the great moment to have come. He must keep his word;
he must be a gentleman. He was flattered by the glimpse he had got of
Elsie Darling's heart; and yet the fact that she might have come to love
him acted on him as an incentive, rather than the contrary, to carrying
out his plans. She would see him in a finer, nobler light. As long as
she lived, and even when she had married some one else, she would keep
her dream of him as the magnificently romantic chap who could love a
village maid and be true to her.
And he did love a village maid! He knew that now by certain infallible
signs. He knew it by the very meagerness of his regret in giving up
Elsie Darling and all that the winning of her would have implied. He
knew it by the way he thrilled when he thought of Rosie's body trembling
against his, as it had trembled that afternoon. He knew it by the wild
tingle of his nerves when she shuddered at the name of Thor. That is, he
thought she had shuddered; but of course she hadn't! What had she to
shudder at? He was brought up against that question every time the
unreasoning fear of Thor possessed him. He knew the fear to be
unreasoning. However possible it might be to suspect Rosie--and a man
was always ready to suspect the woman he loved!--to suspect Thor was
absurd. If in the matter of Rosie's dowry Thor was "acting queerly,"
there was an explanation of that queerness which would do him credit. Of
that no one who knew Thor could have any question and at the same time
keep his common sense. Claude couldn't deny that he was jealous; but
when he came to analyze his passion in that respect he found it nothing
but a dread lest his own supineness might allow Rosie to be snatched
away from him. He had been dilly-dallying over what he should have
clinched. He had been afraid of the sacrifice he would be compelled to
make, without realizing, as he realized to-night, that Rosie would be
worth it. No later than to-morrow he would buy a license and a
wedding-ring, and, if possible, marry her in the evening. Before the
fact accomplished difficulties--and God knew there were a lot of
them!--would smooth themselves away.
As he left the tram-car at the village terminus he was too excited to go
home at once, so he passed his own gate and went on toward Thor's. It
was not yet late. He could hear Thor's voice reading aloud as the maid
admitted him, and could follow the words while he took off his overcoat
and silk hat and laid them carefully on one of the tapestried chairs. He
still followed them as he straightened his cravat before the glass,
pulled down his white waistcoat, and smoothed his hair.
"'Christ's mission, therefore,'" Thor read on, "'was not to relieve
poverty, but to do away with it. It was to do away with it not by
abolition, but by evolution. It is clear that to Christ poverty was not
a disease, but a symptom--a symptom of a sick body politic. To suppress
the symptom without undertaking the cure of the whole body would have
been false to the thoroughness of His methods.'"
Claude appeared on the threshold. Lois smiled. Thor looked up.
"Hello, Claude! Come in. Just wait a minute. Reading Vibart's _Christ
and Poverty_. Only a few lines more to the end of the chapter. 'To the
teaching of Christ,'" Thor continued, "'belongs the discovery that the
causes of poverty are economic only in the second place, and moral in
the first. Economic conditions are shifting, changing vitally within the
space of a generation. Nothing is permanent but the moral, as nothing is
effectual. Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart and with
all thy soul and with all thy mind, and thy neighbor as thyself; on
these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets. On these two
commandments hangs also the solution of the problems of poverty, seeing
that a race that obeys them finds no such problems confronting it. In
proportion to the spread of moral obedience these problems tend to
disappear. They were never so near to disappearing as now, when the
moral sense has become alive to them.'"
Claude smoked a cigar while they sat and talked. It was talk in which he
personally took little share, but from which he sought to learn whether
or not Thor was satisfied with what he had done. If there was any
_arrière pensée_, he thought he might detect it by looking on. It was a
pleasant scene, Lois with her sewing, Thor with his book. The library
had the characteristic of American libraries in general, of being the
most cheerful room in the house.
"What I complain of in all this," Thor said, tossing the book on the
table, "is the intermediary suffering. It does no good to the starving
of to-day to know that in another thousand years men will have so
grasped the principles of Christ that want will be abolished."
Lois smiled over her sewing. "You might as well say that it does no good
to the people who have to walk to-day, or travel by trains and motors,
to know that in a hundred years the common method of getting about will
probably be by flying. This writer lays it down as a principle that
there's a rate for human progress, and that it's no use expecting man to
get on faster than he has the power to go."
"I don't expect him to get on faster than he has the power to go. I only
want him to go faster than he's going."
"Haven't you seen others, who wanted the same thing, dragging people off
their feet, with the result that legs or necks were broken?"
"That's absurd, of course; but between that and quickening the stride
there's a difference."
"Exactly; which is what Vibart says. His whole argument is that if you
want to do away with poverty you must begin at the beginning, and
neither in the middle nor at the end. People used to begin at the end
when they imagined the difficulty to be met by temporarily supplying
wants. Now they're beginning in the middle by looking for social and
economic readjustments which won't be effective for more than a few
years at a time. To begin at the beginning, as I understand him to say,
they must get at themselves with a new point of view, and a new line of
action toward one another. They must try the Christian method which they
never _have_ tried, or put up with poverty and other inequalities. It's
futile to expect to do away with them by the means they're using now;
and that," she added, in defense of the author she was endeavoring to
sum up, "seems to me perfectly true."
Without following the line of argument, in which he took no interest,
Claude spoke out of his knowledge of his brother. "Trouble with Thor is
that he's in too much of a hurry. Won't let anything take its own pace."
This was so like a paraphrase in Claude's language of Uncle Sim's
pietistic ditty that Thor winced. "Take its own pace--and stop still,"
he said, scornfully.
"And then," Lois resumed, tranquilly, "you've got to remember that
Vibart has a spiritual as well as a historical line of argument. The
evolution of the human race isn't merely a matter of following out
certain principles; it depends on the degree of its conscious
association with divine energy. Isn't that what he says? The closer the
association the faster the progress. Where there's no such association
progress is clogged or stopped. You remember, Thor. It's in the chapter,
'Fellow-workers with God.'"
"I couldn't make it out," Thor said, with some impatience.
"'Fellow-workers with God!' I don't see what that means."
"Then, until you do see--"
Apparently she thought better of what she was about to say, and
suppressed it. The conversation drifted to cognate subjects, while
Claude became merely an observer. He wanted to be perfectly convinced
that Thor was happy. That Lois was happy he could see. Happiness was
apparent in every look and line of her features and every movement of
her person. She was like another woman. All that used to seem wistful in
her and unfulfilled had resolved itself into radiant contentment.
According to Claude, you could see it with half an eye. She had gained
in authority and looks, while she had developed a power of holding her
own against her husband that would probably do him good.
As to Thor he was less sure. He looked older than one might have
expected him to look. There was an expression in his face that was
hardly to be explained by marriage and a two months' visit to Europe.
Claude was not analytical, but he found himself saying, "Looks like a
chap who'd been through something. What?" Being "through something"
meant more than the experience incidental to a wedding and a honeymoon.
With that thought torture began to gnaw at Claude's soul again, so that
when his brother was called to the telephone to answer a lady who was
asking what her little boy should take for a certain pain, he sprang the
question on Lois:
"What do you really think of Thor? You don't suppose he has anything on
his mind, do you?"
Lois was startled. "Do you?"
"I asked first."
"Well, what made you?"
"Oh, I don't know. Two or three things. I just wondered if you'd noticed
it."
Her face clouded. "I haven't noticed that he had anything on his mind. I
knew already--he told me before we were married--that there was
something about which he wasn't--wasn't quite happy. I dare say you know
what it is--"
He shook his head.
"Don't you? Well, neither do I. He may tell me some day; and till
then--But I've thought he was better lately--more cheerful."
"Hasn't he been cheerful?"
"Oh yes--quite--as a rule. But of course I've seen--"
They were interrupted by Thor's return, after which Claude took his
departure.
He woke in the morning with a frenzy that astonished himself to put into
execution what he had resolved. With his nervous volatility he had half
expected to feel less intensely on the subject after having slept on it;
but everything that could be called desire in his nature had focused
itself now into the passion to make Rosie his own. That first!--and all
else afterward. That first!--but he could neither see beyond it nor did
he want to see.
The excitement he had been tempted to ascribe on the previous evening to
his talk with Elsie Darling, and perhaps in some degree to a glass or
two of champagne, having become intensified, it was a proof of its being
"the real thing." He was sure now that it was not only the real thing,
but that it would be lasting. This was no spasmodic breeze through his
æolian harp, but the breath and life of his being. He came to this
conclusion as he packed a bag that he could send for toward evening, and
made a few other preparations for a temporary absence from his father's
house. Putting one thing with another, he had reason to feel sure that
he and Rosie would be back there together before long, forgiven and
received, so that he was relieved of the necessity of taking a farewell.
"_I_ think it's splendid," rang in his heart like a cheer. Any one would
think it splendid who knew what he was going to do--and what he was
renouncing!
It was annoying that on reaching the spot where he took the electric car
to go to town old Jasper Fay should be waiting there. It was still more
annoying that among the other intending passengers there should be no
one whom Claude knew. To drop into conversation with a friend would have
kept Fay at a distance. Just now his appearance--neat, shabby, pathetic,
the superior workingman in his long-preserved, threadbare Sunday
clothes--introduced disturbing notes into the swelling hymeneal chant to
which Claude felt himself to be marching. There were practical reasons,
too, why he should have preferred to hold no intercourse with Fay till
after he had crossed his Rubicon. He nodded absently, therefore, and,
passing to the far end of the little straggling line, prayed that the
car would quicken its speed in coming.
Through the tail of his eye he could see Fay detach himself from the
patient group of watchers and shamble in his direction. "What's it to be
now?" Claude said to himself, but he stood his ground. He stood his
ground without turning, or recognizing Fay's approach. He leaned
nonchalantly on his stick, looking wearily up the line for rescue, till
he heard a nervous cough. The nervous cough was followed by the words,
huskily spoken:
"Mr. Claude!"
He was obliged to look around. There was something about Fay that was at
once mild and hostile, truculent and apologetic. He spoke respectfully,
and yet with a kind of anger in the gleam of his starry eyes.
"Mr. Claude, I wish you wouldn't hang round my place any more. It don't
do any one any good." Claude was weighing the advantages of avowing
himself plainly on the spot, when Fay went on, "One experience of that
kind has been about enough--in _one_ year."
Claude's heart seemed to stop beating. "One experience of what kind?"
"You're all Mastermans together," Fay declared, bitterly. "I don't trust
any of you. You're both your father's sons."
"By God! I've got at it!" Claude cried to himself. Aloud he said, with
no display of emotion. "I don't understand you. I don't know what you
mean."
Fay merely repeated, hoarsely, "I don't want either of you coming any
more."
Claude took a tone he considered crafty. "Oh, come now, Mr. Fay. Even if
you don't want me, I shouldn't think you'd object to my brother Thor."
"Your brother Thor! You've a nice brother Thor!"
"Why, what's he done?"
"Ask my little girl. No, you needn't ask her. She wouldn't tell you. She
won't tell me. All I know is what I've seen."
If it hadn't been for the decencies and the people standing by, Claude
could have sprung on the old man and clutched his throat. All he could
do, however, was to say, peacefully, "And what _have_ you seen?"
Fay looked around to assure himself that no one was within earshot. The
car was bearing down on them with a crashing buzz, so that he was
obliged to speak rapidly. "I've seen him creep into my hothouse where my
little girl was at work, under cover of the night, and I've seen him
steal away. And when I've looked in after he was gone she was crying fit
to kill herself."
"What made you wait till he went away?" Claude asked, fiercely. "Why
didn't you go in after him and see what they were up to?"
The old man's face expressed the helplessness of the average American
parent in conflict with a child. "Oh, she wouldn't let me. She won't
have none of my interference. She says she knows what she's about. But I
don't know what _you're_ about, Mr. Claude; and so I'm beggin' you to
keep away. No good'll come of your actions. I don't trust any Masterman
that lives."
The car had stopped and emptied itself. The people were getting in. Fay
climbed the high steps laboriously, dropping a five-cent piece into a
slot as he rounded a little barrier. Claude sprang up after him,
dropping in a similar piece of money. Its tinkle as it fell shivered
through his nerves with the excruciating sharpness of a knife-thrust.