It was not till Rosie was well enough to go listlessly back to work, and
the Mastermans had sailed, that Lois found her own emotions ripe for
speech. During the intervening fortnight she and Thor had lived their
ordinary life together, but on a basis which each knew to be temporary.
While he kept his office hours in the mornings and visited his patients
in the afternoons, and she busied herself with household tasks or
superintended the gardener in replanting the faded tulip-beds with phlox
and sweet-peas and dahlias; while she sewed or did embroidery in the
evenings and listened to him reading aloud, or--since the nights were
growing warm--they sat silent on an upper balcony, or talked about the
stars, each knew that the inner tension would never be relaxed till it
was broken.
If there was any doubt of that it was on Thor's side. Because she said
nothing, there were minutes when he hoped she had nothing to say.
Unaware of a woman's capacity for keeping the surface unruffled while
storm may be raging beneath, he beguiled himself at times into thinking
that his fears of her acuteness had been false alarms. If so, he could
only be thankful. He wanted to forget. If he had had a prayer to put up
on the subject, it would have been that she would allow him to forget.
So, as day followed day, regularly, peacefully, with an abstention on
her part from comment that could give him pain, he began to indulge the
hope--a hope which he knew in his heart to be baseless--that she had
nothing to remember.
When he was called on at last to face the realities of the case the
moment was as unexpected to him as it was to her. She had not meant to
bring the subject up on that particular evening. She had made no
program--not because she was uncertain as to what she ought to say, but
because the impulse to say it lagged. In the end it came to her without
warning, surprising herself no less than him.
"Thor, were you going to give money to Rosie Fay?"
The croaking of frogs seemed part of the silence in which she waited for
his answer. The warm air was heavy with the scents of lilac,
honeysuckle, and syringa. As they stood by the railing of the balcony
that connected the exterior of their two rooms, she erect, he leaning
outward with an arm stretched toward the sky, a great white lilac, whose
roots were in the early days of the Willoughby farm, threw up its
tribute of blossom almost to their feet. The lights of the village being
banked under verdure, the eye sought the stars.
Thor loved the stars. On moonless nights he spent hours in contemplation
of their beckoning mystery. From Auriga and Taurus in January, he
followed them round to Aries and Perseus in December, getting a beam on
his inward way. Just now, with the aid of a pencil, he was tracing for
his wife's benefit the lines of the rising Virgin. Lois could almost
discern the graceful, recumbent figure, winged, noble, lying on the
eastern horizon, Spica's sweet, silvery light a-tremble in her hand. She
was actually thinking how white for a star was Spica's radiance, when
the words slipped out: "Thor, were you going to give money to Rosie
Fay?"
He suppressed the natural question concerning her sources of information
in order to say, as quietly as he could, "If--if Claude had married her
I was going to--to help them out."
She resented what she considered his evasiveness. "That isn't just what
I asked."
"Even so, it tells you what you want to know. Doesn't it?"
"Not everything I want to know."
"Why should you want to know--everything?"
"Because--" It struck her that her reason could be best expressed by
shifting her ground. "Thor dear, exactly why did you want to marry me?"
The change in tactics troubled him. "I think I told you that at the
time."
"You told me you came to me as to a--to a shelter."
"And as to a home. I said that, too, Lois."
"Yes," she agreed, slowly, "you said that, too." A brief interval gave
emphasis to the succeeding words: "But did you think it was enough?"
"I couldn't judge of that. I could only say--what I had to
say--truthfully."
"Oh, I know it was--truthfully. It's--it's just the trouble. You see,
Thor," she went on, unsteadily, "I thought you were telling me only some
of what was in your heart--and it was all."
"I'm not certain that I know what you mean by all. What I felt was--so
much." He added, reproachfully, "It's surely a great deal when a man
finds a woman his refuge from trouble."
"That's perfectly true, Thor; and there's no one in the world who
wouldn't be touched by it. But in the case of a wife, she can hardly
help thinking of the kind of trouble he's escaping from."
"But so long as he escapes from it--"
She interrupted quickly: "Yes; so long as he does. But when he doesn't?
When, instead of leaving his trouble outside the refuge, he brings it
in?"
He took an uneasy turn up and down the balcony. "Look here, Lois; have
you any particular motive in bringing this up now?"
"Yes, Thor. It's the same motive I had a few weeks ago, only that I
haven't been sure of it till to-night. I want you"--she hesitated, but
urged herself on--"I want you--to let me go away."
"Go away?" he cried, sharply. "Go away where?"
"I don't know yet. Anywhere. There are one or two visits I might
make--or I could find a place. That part of it doesn't matter."
"But when you wanted to go away a few weeks ago--"
"It was to--to take _her_. I shouldn't need to do that now, because
she's better. In a way she's all right--all right, only changed."
It was to make a show of not being afraid to mention Rosie that he said,
"Changed in what way?"
"Well, you'll see." She decided that for his own sake it was kindness to
be cruel, and so added: "Changed to a healthier frame of mind. She's
very much ashamed of what she tried to do, and wants to begin again on
a--on a less foolish basis. So," she continued, reverting to her former
point, "my going away wouldn't now have anything to do with her. It
would be on my own account. I want to--to think."
"Think about what?"
"Well, chiefly about you."
He knew they were nearing the heart of the question, and so went up to
it boldly. "To wonder--whether or not--I--love you? Is that it?"
"N-no; not exactly." She allowed a second to pass before letting slip
the words: "Rather the other way."
"The other way--how?"
She spoke very softly. "Whether or not--I love _you_."
"Oh!" His tone was as soft as hers, but with the ejaculation he moved
his big hands about his body like a man feeling for his wound. "I
thought you did."
"Yes, I thought so, too--till--till lately. Perhaps I do, even now. I
don't know. It's what I want to get away for--to think--to see. I can't
do either when you're so near me. You--you overwhelm me--you crush me. I
don't get the free use of my mind."
He turned again to pace the narrow limits of the balcony. "If you ever
did love me, Lois," he said, in a voice she hardly recognized because of
the new thrill in it, "I've done nothing to deserve the withdrawal
of--of your affection."
She answered while still keeping her eyes absently on Spica's white
effulgence. "I know you haven't, Thor dear. But that's not the point.
It's rather that I have to go back and--and revise everything--form new
conceptions."
He paused, standing behind her. "I don't think I get your idea."
"No, probably not. You couldn't without knowing what it all used to mean
to me."
"_Used_ to mean?"
"Yes, Thor; used to mean in a way that it doesn't now, and never can any
more."
There was pain in his voice as he said, "That's hard, Lois--damnably
hard."
"I know, Thor dear. I wouldn't say it if I hadn't made up my mind that I
must--that I ought to. I've had a great shock--which has been in its way
a great humiliation--but I could go on keeping it to myself if I hadn't
come to the conclusion that it's best for you to know. Men are so slow
to fathom what their wives are thinking of--"
"Well, then, tell me."
She turned slowly round from her contemplation of the stars, a hand on
each side grasping the low rail against which she leaned. The spangles
on a scarf over her bare shoulders glittered iridescently in the light
streaming from her room. Of Thor she could discern little more than the
whiteness of his face and of his evening shirt-front from the obscurity
in which he kept himself. A minute or more elapsed before she went on.
"You see, Thor, I didn't fall in love with you first of all for your own
sake; it was because--because I thought you'd fallen in love with me.
That's a sort of confession, isn't it? It may be something I ought to be
ashamed of, and perhaps I am--a little. But you'd understand how it
could happen if you were to realize what it was to me that a man should
fall in love with me at all."
He tried to interrupt her, but she insisted on going on in her own way.
"I wasn't attractive. I never had been. During the years when I was
going out I never received what people call attentions--not from any
one. I don't say that I didn't suffer on account of it. I did--but I'd
begun to take the suffering philosophically. I'd made up my mind that no
one would ever care for me, and I was getting used to the
idea--when--when you came."
Because her voice trembled she pressed her handkerchief against her
lips, while Thor stood silent in the darkness of the far end of the
balcony.
"And when you did come, Thor dear, it couldn't but seem to me the most
amazing thing that ever happened. I didn't allow myself to think that
you were in love with me--I didn't dare--at first. It made me happy that
you should think it worth while just to come and see me, to talk to me,
to tell me some of the things you hoped to do. That in itself--"
She broke off again, losing something of her self-command. In the stress
of physical agitation she drew the spangled scarf over her shoulders and
stepped forward into the shaft of light that fell through the open
French window of her room.
"But, finally, Thor, I came to the conclusion that you must love me. I
couldn't explain your kindness in any other way. Believe me, I didn't
accept that way till--till it seemed the only one, but when I did, well,
it wasn't merely pride and happiness that I felt--it was something
more." A sob in her throat obliged her to interrupt herself again, while
the croaking of frogs continued. "And so, Thor dear, love came to me,
too. It came because I thought you brought it; but now that I see you
didn't bring it, you can understand why I should be in doubt as to--as
to whether or not--it really did come."
Since he recognized the futility of making an immediate response, they
stood confronting each other in silence.
She took another step nearer him. "But what I'm not in any doubt about
at all is the scorn I feel for myself for ever having cherished the
delusion. If I'd been a woman with--with more claim, let us say, to
being loved--"
"Lois, for God's sake, don't say that!"
"But I must say it, Thor. It's at the bottom of all I mean. I was weak
and foolish enough to think that in spite of the things I lacked a man
had given me his heart--when he hadn't."
"Lois, I can't stand this. Please don't go on."
"But I have to stand it, Thor. I have to stand it day and night, without
ever getting away from the thought of it. I have to go back and puzzle
and wonder and speculate as to why you did what you've done to me. I see
things this way, Thor: There was a time when you thought you might come
to care for me. You really thought it. And then--something happened--and
you were not so sure. Later, you felt that you couldn't--that you never
would. But the something that happened happened the wrong way for
you--and papa broke down as he did--and I was in danger of being
poor--and you were kind and generous--and--you weren't very happy as
things were--you told me so, didn't you? And--and--in short--you thought
you might as well. You knew I expected it--or had expected it once--and
so--so you did it. Tell me, Thor dear; am I so very far wrong? Wasn't it
like that?"
He raised his head defiantly. "And if I admitted that it was like that,
what then?"
"Oh, nothing. I should merely ask you the same thing--to let me go
away."
"Away for how long?"
She reflected. "Till I could establish a new basis on which to come
back."
"I don't know what you mean by a new basis."
"I dare say I don't mean anything very different from the compromise
most people have to make--a little while after marriage; only that in my
case the necessity comes more as--a shock. You see, Thor, you're not the
man--not the man I thought you were. I must have a little while to get
used to that."
He stirred uneasily. "You find I'm--I'm not so good a man."
"Oh, I don't say that. I don't say that at all. You're just as good.
Only you're not--" She went up to him, laying her hands on his
shoulders--"Oh, you don't understand. I loved the other Thor. I'm not
sure that I love this one. I don't know. Perhaps I do. I can't tell till
I get away from you. Let me go. It may not be for long."
She stepped back from him toward the window of her room, through which
she seemed about to pass. He was obliged to speak in order to retain
her.
"Look here, Lois," he began, not knowing exactly how he meant to
continue. She turned with a foot on the threshold, her hand on the knob
of the open window-door. The pose, set off by the simplicity of the old
black evening dress she was in the habit of wearing when they were
alone, displayed the commanding beauty of her figure to a degree which
he had never observed before. He remembered afterward that something
shot through him, something he had associated hitherto only with
memories of little Rosie Fay, but for the minute he was too intensely
preoccupied for more than a subconscious attention. She was waiting and
he must say something to justify his appeal to her. "It's all right,"
were the words he found. "I'm willing. That is, I'm willing in
principle. Only"--he stammered on--"only I don't want you to go roaming
the country by yourself. Why not let me go? I could go away for a while,
and you could stay here." He warmed to the idea as soon as he began to
express it. "This is your home, rather than mine. It's your father's
house. You've lived in it for years. I couldn't stay here without
you--while you're used to it without me. I'll go. I'll go--and I'll not
come back till you tell me. There. Will that do?"
The advantages of the arrangement were evident. She answered slowly.
"It--it might. But what about your patients?"
"Oh, Hill would look after them. He said he would if I wanted to attend
the medical congress at Minneapolis. I told him I didn't, but--but"--he
tapped the rail to emphasize the timeliness of the idea--"but, by
George! I'll do it. You'd have three weeks at least--and as many more as
you ask for."
She gave the suggestion a minute's thought. "Very well, Thor. Since the
congress is going on--and your time wouldn't be altogether thrown
away--You see, all I want is a little quiet--a little solitude,
perhaps--just to realize where I am--and to see how--to begin again--if
we ever can."
She closed one side of the window, softly and slowly. Her hands were on
the other _battant_ when he uttered a little throaty cry. "Aren't you
going to say good night?"
Standing on the low step of the window, she was sufficiently above him
to be able to fold his head in her arms, to pillow it on her breast,
while she imprinted a long kiss on the thick, dark mass of his hair.
Having released him, she withdrew, closing the window gently and pulling
down the blinds.
Outside in the darkness Thor turned once more to where the Virgin,
recumbent, noble, outlined and crowned with stars, Spica the wheat-ear
in the hand hanging by her side, rose slowly toward mid-heaven.
Irrelevantly there came back to his memory something said months before
by his uncle Sim, but which he had not recalled since the night he heard
it. "You may make an awful fool of yourself, Thor, but you'll be on the
side of the angels--and the angels will be on yours."
"Humph!" he snorted to himself. "That's all very fine. But--where are
the angels?" And again he sought the stars.