Alix and Alan were in the grip of a fever that is hard to break save
through satiety and ruin. They were still held apart by generations
of sound tradition, but against this bulwark the full flood of
modern life, as they lived it, was directed. In Alan there was a
counter-strain, a tradition of passion that predisposed him to accept
the easy tenets of the growing sensual cult. As he found it more and
more difficult to turn his thoughts away from Alix, he strove to regain
the clear-headedness that only a year before had held him back from
definite moral surrender.
With her things had not gone so far. From the security of the untempted
she had watched her chosen world play with fire, and only now, when
temptation assailed her, did she realize the weakness that lies in
every woman once her outposts have fallen and her bare heart becomes
engaged in the battle.
One early morning Nance sent for Alan. He found her alone. She had been
crying. He came to her where she stood by the fire, and she turned and
put her arms around his neck. She tried to smile, but her lips twitched.
“Alan,” she said, “I want you to go away.”
Alan was touched. He caught her wrists and took her arms from about his
neck.
“You mustn’t do that sort of thing to me, Nance. I’m not fit for it.”
He made her sit down on a great sofa before the fire and sat down
beside her. “You remind me to-day of the most beautiful thing I ever
heard said of you--by a spiteful friend.”
“What was it?” said Nance, turning her troubled eyes to him.
“She said, ‘She is only beautiful in her own home.’ I never understood
it before. It’s a great thing to be beautiful in one’s own home.”
“Oh, Alan,” said Nance, catching his hand and holding it against her
breast, “it _is_ a great thing. It’s the greatest thing in life. That’s
why I sent for you--because you are wrecking forever your chance of
being beautiful in your own home. And worse than that, you are wrecking
Alix’s chance. Of course you are blind. Of course you are mad. I
_understand_, Alan, but I want to hold you close to my heart until you
see--until the fever is cooled. You and Alix cannot do this thing. It
isn’t as though her people and ours were of the froth of the nation.
You and she started life with nothing but Puritan to build on. You
may have built just play-houses of sand, but deep down the old rock
foundation must endure. You must take your stand on that.”
Her eyes had been fixed in the fire, but now she turned them to his
face. Alan sat with head hanging forward, his gaze and thoughts far
beyond the confines of the room. Then he shook himself and got up to go.
“I wish we could, Nance,” he said gravely, and then added half to
himself, half to her, “I’ll try.”
For some days Alan had been prepared to go away and take Alix with
him, should she consent. Upon his arrival he had had an interview with
McDale & McDale, in the course of which that firm opened its eyes and
its pocket wider than it ever had before.
“You are out for money, Mr. Wayne,” had been the feeble remonstrance of
the senior member.
“Just money,” replied Alan. “If you owed as much as I do, you would be
out for it, too. Of course you’re not. What do you want? You’ve got my
guaranty--ten per cent. under office estimates for work and time.”
When Alan left McDale & McDale’s offices he had contracted more or less
on his own terms, and McDale, Jr., said to the senior:
“He’s only twenty-six--a boy. How did he beat us?”
“By beating Walton’s record first,” replied McDale, Sr. “And how he did
that, time will show.”
As he walked slowly back from Nance’s, Alan was thinking that, after
all, there was no reason why he should not cut and run--no reason
except Alix.
He reached his rooms. As he crossed the threshold a premonition seized
him. He felt as though some one were there. He glanced hurriedly about.
The rooms were still in the disorder in which he had left them, and
they were empty. Then he saw that he had stepped on a note that had
been dropped through the letter-slip. He picked it up. A thrill went
through him as he recognized Alix’s handwriting. There was no stamp.
It must have been delivered by hand. He tore it open and read: “You
said that a moment’s notice was all you asked. I will take the Montreal
express with you to-day.”
Alan’s blood turned to liquid fire. The note conjured before him a
vision of Alix. He crushed it, and held it to his lips and laughed, not
jeeringly, but in pure, uncontrolled excitement.
* * * * *
It was not a coincidence that Gerry had sought out Alix at the very
hour that Nance was summoning Alan. Gerry and Nance were driven by the
same forewarning of catastrophe. Gerry had felt it first, but he had
been slow to believe, slower to act. He had no precedent for this sort
of thing. His whole being was in revolt against the situation in which
he found himself. It was after a sleepless night, a most unheard of
thing with him, that he decided he could let things go no longer. He
went to Alix’s room, knocked, and entered.
Alix was up, though the hour was early for her. Fresh from her bath,
she sat in a sheen of blue dressing-gown before the mirror doing her
own hair. Gerry glanced about him and into the bath-room, looking for
the maid.
“Good morning,” said Alix. “She’s not here. Did you want to see her?”
Gerry winced at the levity. He wondered how Alix could play the game
she was playing and be gay. Alix finished doing her hair.
“There,” she said with a final pat, and turned to face Gerry.
He was standing beside an open window. He could feel the cold air on
his hands. He felt like putting his head out into it. His head was hot.
“Alix,” he said suddenly without looking at her, “I want you to drop
Alan.”
“But I don’t want to drop Alan,” replied Alix, lightly.
Gerry whirled around at her tone. His nostrils were quivering. To his
amazement, his hands fairly itched to clutch her beautiful throat. He
could hardly control his voice.
“Stop playing, Alix,” he gulped. “There’s never been a divorcée among
the Lansings nor a wife-beater, and one is as near this room as the
other right now.”
Gerry regretted the words as soon as he had said them, but Alix was not
angry. She looked at him through narrowed eyes. She speculated on the
sensation of being once again roughly handled by this rock of a man.
Only once before had she seen Gerry angry and the sight had fascinated
her then, as it did now. There was something tremendous and impressive
in his anger and struggle for control--a great torrent held back by a
great strong dam. She almost wished it would break through. She could
almost find it in her to throw herself on the flood and let it carry
her whither it would. She said nothing.
Gerry bit his lips and turned from her.
“And Alan, of all men!” he went on. At the words the current of her
thoughts was changed. She found herself suddenly on the defensive. “Do
you think you are the first woman he has played with and betrayed?”
Gerry’s lip was curved to a sneer. “A philanderer, a man who surrounds
himself with tarnished reputations.”
A dull glow came into Alix’s cheeks.
“Philanderers are of many breeds,” she said. “There are those who
have the wit to philander with woman, and those who can rise only
to a whisky or a golf-club. Whatever else Alan may be, he is not a
time-server.”
Once aroused, Alix had taken up the gantlet with no uncertain hand. Her
first words carried the war into the enemy’s camp, and they were barbed.
“What do you mean?” said Gerry, dully. He had not anticipated a defense.
“I mean what you might have deduced with an effort. What are you but a
philanderer in little things where Alan is in great? What have you ever
done to hold me or any other woman? I respected you once for what you
were going to be. That has died. Did you think I was going to make you
into a man?”
Gerry stood, breathing hard, a great despondency in his heart. Alix
went on pitilessly:
“What have you become? A monumental time-server on the world, and you
are surprised that a worker reaches the prize that you can not attain!
‘All things come to him who waits.’ That’s a trite saying; but how
about this? There are lots of things that come to him who only waits
that he could do without. The trouble with you is that you have built
your life altogether on traditions. It is a tradition that your women
are faithful; so you need not exert yourself to holding yours. It is a
tradition that you can do no wrong; so you need not exert yourself to
doing anything at all. You are playing with ghosts, Gerry. Your party
was over a generation ago.”
Alix had calmed down. There was still time for Gerry to choke her
to good effect. The hour could yet be his. But he did not know
it. Smarting under the lash of Alix’s tongue, he made a final and
disastrous false step.
“You try to humiliate me by placing me back to back with Alan?” he
said, with his new-born sneer. Alix appraised it with calm eyes, and
found it rather attractive. “Well, let me tell you that Alan is so
small a man that if I dropped out of the world to-day, he’d sail for
Africa to-morrow and think for the rest of his life of his escape from
you as a close shave.”
Alix sprang to her feet. She was trembling. Gerry felt a throb of
exultation. It was his turn to wound.
“What do you mean?” said Alix, very quietly; but it was the quiet of
suppressed passion at white heat.
“I mean that Alan is the kind of man who finds other men’s wives an
economy. He would take everything you have that’s worth taking, but not
you.”
Alix’s eyes blazed at him from her white face. “Please go away,” she
said. He started to speak. “Please go away,” she repeated. Her lips
were quivering, and her face twitched in a way that was terrifying to
Gerry. He hurried out, repeating to himself over and over: “You have
made Alix cry. You have made Alix cry.”
Alix toyed with the silver on her dressing-table until he had gone, and
then she swept across the room to her little writing-desk and wrote the
note that Alan had found half an hour later in his rooms.