As Thor and Lois breakfasted on the following Sunday the former was too
busy with the paper to notice that his wife seemed preoccupied. He was
made to understand it by her manner of saying, "Thor."
Dropping the paper, he gave her his attention. "Yes?"
Her head was inclined to one side as she trifled with her toast. "You
know, Thor, that it's an old custom for newly married people to go to
church together on the first Sunday they're at home."
"Oh, Lord!"
She had expected the exclamation. She also expected the half-humorous,
half-repentant compliance which ensued.
"All right, I'll go."
It was the sort of yielding that followed on all his bits of resistance
to her wishes--a yielding on second thought--a yielding through
compunction--as though he were trying to make up to her for something he
wasn't giving her. She laughed to herself at that, seeing that he gave
her everything; but she meant that if she were not so favored she might
have harbored the suspicion that on account of something lacking in
their life he fell back on a form of reparation. As it was, she could
only ascribe his peculiarity in this respect to the kindness of a nature
that never seemed to think it could be kind enough.
It was her turn to feel compunction. "Don't go if you'd rather not. It's
only a country custom, almost gone out of fashion nowadays."
But he persisted. "Oh, I'll go. Must put on another suit. Top-hat, of
course."
With a good woman's satisfaction in getting her husband to church, if
only for once, she said no more in the way of dissuasion. Besides, she
hoped that, should he go, he might "hear something" that would comfort
this hidden grief of which she no longer had a doubt, since Claude too,
was aware of it. It was curious how it betrayed itself--neither by act
nor word nor manner, nor so much as a sigh, and yet by a something
indefinable beyond all his watchfulness to conceal from her. She
couldn't guess at his trouble, even when she tried; but she tried only
from inadvertence. When she caught herself doing so she refrained,
respecting his secret till he thought it well to tell her.
She said no more till he again dropped the paper to give his attention
to his coffee. "Have you been to see the Fays yet?"
He put the cup down without tasting it. He sat quite upright and looked
at her strangely. He even flushed.
"Why, no."
The tone appealed to her ear and remained in her memory, though for the
moment she had no reason to consider it significant. She merely
answered, "I thought I might walk up the hill and see Rosie this
afternoon," leaving the subject there.
Thor found the service novel, and impressive from its novelty. Except
for the few weddings and funerals he had attended, and the service on
the day he married Lois, he could hardly remember when he had been
present as a formal participant at a religious ceremony. He had,
therefore, no preconceived ideas concerning Christian worship, and not
much in the way of prejudice. He had dropped in occasionally on the
services of foreign cathedrals, but purely as a tourist who made no
attempt to understand what was taking place. On this particular morning,
however, the pressure of needs and emotions within his soul induced an
inquiring frame of mind.
On reaching the pew to which Lois led him he sat down awkwardly, looking
for a place in which to bestow his top-hat without ruffling its gloss.
Lois herself fell on her knees in prayer. The act took him by surprise.
It was new to him. He was aware that she said prayers in private, and
had a vague idea of the import of the rite; but this public, unabashed
devotion gave him a little shock till he saw that others came in and
engaged in it. They entered and knelt, not in obedience to any
pre-concerted ceremony, but each on his own impulse, and rose, looking,
so it seemed to Thor, reassured and stilled.
That was his next impression--reassurance, stillness. There was a
serenity here that he had never before had occasion to recognize as part
of life. People whom he knew in a commonplace way as this or that in the
village sat hushed, tranquil, dignified above their ordinary state,
raised to a level higher than any that could be reached by their own
attainments or personalities. It seemed to him that he had come into a
world of new standards, new values. Lois herself, as she rose from her
knees and sat beside him, gained in a quality which he had no capacity
to gauge.
He belonged to the new scientific school which studies and co-relates,
but is chary of affirmations, and charier still of denials. "Never deny
anything--_ne niez jamais rien_"--had been one of the standing bits of
advice on the part of old Hervieu, under whom he had worked at the
Institut Pasteur. He kept himself, therefore, in a non-hostile attitude
toward all theories and systems. He had but a hazy idea as to Christian
beliefs, but he knew in a general way that they were preposterous.
Preposterous as they might be, it was his place, however, to observe
phenomena, and, now that he had an opportunity to do so, he observed
them.
"How did you like it?" Lois ventured, timidly, as after service they
walked along County Street.
"I liked it."
"Why?"
The answer astonished her. "It was big."
"Big? How?"
"The sweep--the ideas. So high--so universal! Makes a tremendous appeal
to--the imagination."
She smiled toward him shyly. "It's something, isn't it, to appeal to the
imagination?"
"Oh, lots--since imagination rules the world."
* * * * *
They were on their way to lunch with Thor's father and stepmother. Now
that there were two households in the family, the father insisted on a
domestic reunion once a week. It was his way of expressing paternal
forbearance under the blow Thor had dealt him in marrying Lois
Willoughby.
"Where's Claude?"
Thor asked the question on sitting down to table. His father looked at
his mother, who replied, with some self-consciousness:
"He's--he's gone West."
"West? Where?"
"To Chicago first, isn't it, Archie?"
Masterman admitted that it was to Chicago first, and to the Pacific
coast afterward. Thor's dismay was such that Lois looked at him in
surprise. "Why, Thor? What difference can it make to you? Claude's able
to travel alone, isn't he?"
The efforts made by both his parents to carry off the matter lightly
convinced Thor that there was more in Claude's departure than either
business or pleasure would explain. Before Lois, who was not yet in the
family secret, he could ask no questions; but it seemed to him that both
his father and his mother had uneasiness written in their faces. He
could hardly eat. He bolted his food only to put Lois off the scent. The
old tumult in his soul which he was seeking every means to still was
beginning to break out again. If it should prove that he had given up
Rosie Fay to Claude, and that, with his parents' connivance, Claude was
trying to abandon her, then, by God....
But he caught Lois's eye. She was watching him, not so much in
disquietude as with faint amusement. It seemed odd to her that Claude's
going away for a holiday should vex him so. Poor Lois! He was already
afraid on her account--afraid that if Rosie Fay were left
deserted--free!--and a temptation he couldn't resist were to come to
him!--Lois would be the one to suffer most.
By the middle of the afternoon, when his father had gone off in one
direction and Lois in another, he found an opportunity for the word with
his stepmother which he had hung about the house to get.
"There's nothing behind this, is there?"
She averted her head. "How do I know, Thor? _I_ had nothing to do with
it. All I know is just what happened. Claude came rushing home last
Wednesday, and said he had to go right off to Chicago on business. I
helped him pack--and he went."
"Why didn't any one tell me?"
"Well, you haven't been at the house. And it didn't seem important
enough--"
"But it is important, isn't it? Doesn't father think so?"
She tried to look at him frankly. "Your father doesn't know any more
about it than I know--and that's nothing at all. Claude came to him and
said--but I really oughtn't to tell you, Thor. Your father would be
annoyed with me."
"Then it's something that's got to be kept from me."
"N-no; not exactly. It's only poor Claude's secret. We didn't try to
wring it from him because--Oh, Thor, I wish you would let things take
their course. I'm sure it would be best."
"Best to let Claude be a scoundrel?"
"Oh, he couldn't be that. I want to be just to that girl, but we both
know that there are queer things about her. There's that man who's
giving her money--and dear knows what there may be besides. And so if
they _have_ quarreled--"
But Thor rushed away. Having learned all he needed to know on that side,
he must hear what was to be said on the other. He had hoped never again
to be brought face to face with Rosie till she was his brother's wife.
That condition would have dug such a gulf between them that even nature
would be changed. But if she was not to be Claude's wife--if Claude was
becoming a brute to her--then she must see that at least she had a
friend.
His heart was so hot within him as he climbed the hill that he forgot
that Lois would probably be there before him. As a matter of fact, she
was talking to Fay in a corner of the yard, standing in the shade of a
great magnolia that was a pyramid of bloom. All around it the ground was
strewn in a circle with its dead-white petals, each with its flush of
red. Near the house there were yellow clumps of forsythia, while the
hedge of bridal-veil to the south of the grass-plot seemed to have just
received a fall of snow.
Fay confronted him as, slackening his pace, he went toward them; but
Lois turned only at his approach. Her expression was troubled.
"Thor, I wish you'd explain to me what Mr. Fay is saying. He doesn't
want me to see Rosie."
"Why, what's up?"
Fay's expression told him that something serious was up, for it was
ashen. It had grown old and sunken, and the eyes had changed their
starry vagueness to a dulled animosity.
"There's this much up, Dr. Thor," Fay said, in that tone of his which
was at once mild and hostile, "that I don't want any Masterman to have
anything to do with me or mine."
Thor tried to control the sharpness of his cry. "Why not?"
"You ought to know why not, Dr. Thor. And if you don't, you've only to
look at my little girl. Oh, why couldn't you leave her alone?"
Lois spoke anxiously. "Is anything the matter with her?"
"Only that you've killed her between you."
Thor allowed Lois to question him. "Why, what _can_ you mean?"
"Just what I say, ma'am--that she's done for."
Lois grew impatient. "But I don't understand. Done for--how?" She turned
to her husband. "Oh, Thor, do see her and find out what's the matter."
"No, ma'am," Fay said, firmly. "He's seen her once too often as it is."
Lois repeated the words. "'Once too often as it is'! What does that
mean?"
"Better ask _him_, ma'am."
"It's no use asking me," Thor declared, "for I've not the slightest idea
of what you're driving at."
"Oh, I know you can play the innocent, Dr. Thor; but it's no use keeping
up the game. You took me in at first; you took me in right along. You
were going to be a friend to me!--and buy the place!--and keep me in it
to work it!--and every sort of palaver like that!--when you was only
after my little girl."
Thor was dumb. It was Lois who protested. "Oh, Mr. Fay, how can you say
such things? It's wicked."
"It may be wicked, all right, ma'am; but ask _him_ how I can say them.
All I know is what I've seen. If you was going to marry this lady," he
went on, turning again to Thor, "why couldn't you have kept away from my
little girl? You didn't do yourself any good, and you did her a lot of
harm."
It was to come to Thor's aid as he stood speechless that Lois said,
soothingly: "But I had nothing to do with that, Mr. Fay. I never wanted
anything of Rosie but to be her friend."
"You, ma'am? You're all of a piece. You're all Mastermans together. What
had you to do with being a friend to her?--getting her to call!--and
have tea!--and putting notions into her head! The rich and the poor
can't be friends any longer. If the poor think they can, the more fool
they! We've _been_ fools in my family, thinking because we were
Americans we had rights. There's no rights any more, except the right of
the strong to trample on the weak--till some one tramples on _them_. And
some one always does. There's that. We're down to-day, but you'll be
down to-morrow. Don't forget it, ma'am. America has that kind of justice
when it hasn't any other--that it makes everybody take their turn. It's
ours now; but you'll get yours as sure as life is life."
Lois looked at Thor. "Can you make out what he means?"
"I can make out that he's very much mistaken--"
"Mistaken, Dr. Thor? I don't see how you can say that. I wasn't mistaken
the night I saw you creeping into that hothouse over there, where you
knew my little girl was at work. I wasn't mistaken when I saw you creep
away. Still less was I mistaken when I stole in after you had gone, and
found her with her arms on the desk, and her head bowed down on them,
and she crying fit to kill herself. That was just a few days before she
heard you was going to marry this lady--and she's never been the same
child since. Always troubled--always something on her mind. Not once
since that night have you darkened these doors, though you'd had a
patient here. Have you, now?"
"I didn't come," Thor stammered, "because Dr. Hilary had done all that
was necessary for Mrs. Fay, and--and I've been away."
"But if you didn't come," Fay went on, with the mildness that was more
forcible than wrath, "some one else did. You'd left a good substitute.
He's finished the work that you began. He was here with her an hour last
Wednesday morning--just after I'd warned him off for good and all."
Thor started. "Let me go to her."
But Fay stood in his way. "No, sir. To see you would be the finishing
touch. She can't hear your name without a shiver going through her from
head to foot. We've tried it on her. Between the two of you--your
brother and you--it's you she's most afraid of." There was silence for a
second, while he turned his gray face first to the one and then to the
other of his two listeners. "Why couldn't you all have let her be? What
were you after? What have you got out of it? _I_ can't see."
"Fay, I swear to you that we never wanted anything but her good," Thor
cried, with a passion that made Lois turn her troubled eyes on him
searchingly. "If my brother hasn't told you what he meant, I'll do it
now. He wanted to marry Rosie. He _was_ to have married her. If there's
trouble between them, it's all a mistake. Just let me see her--"
But Fay dismissed this as idle talk. "No, Dr Thor. Stories of that kind
don't do any good. Your brother never wanted to marry her, or meant to,
either--not any more than you. What you did want and what you did mean
God only knows. It's mystery to me. But what isn't mystery to me is that
we're all done for. Now that she's gone, we're all gone--the lot of us.
I've kept up till now--"
"If money will do any good, Fay--" Thor began, with a catch in his
voice.
"No, Dr. Thor; not now. Money might have helped us once, but I ain't
going to take a price for my little girl's unhappiness."
"But what _would_ do good, Mr. Fay?" Lois asked. "If you'd only tell
us--"
"Then, ma'am, I will. It's to let us be. Don't come near me nor mine any
more--none o' you."
She turned to Thor. "Thor, is it true that Claude wanted to marry Rosie?
I've never heard of it."
"Oh yes, ma'am, you have," Fay broke in, with irony. "We've all heard of
that kind o' marriage. It's as old as men and women on the earth. But it
don't go down with me; and if I find that my little girl has been taken
in by it, then I sha'n't be to blame if--if some one gets what he
deserves."
The words were uttered in tones so mild that, as he shuffled away,
leaving them staring at each other, they scarcely knew that there had
been a threat in them.