The place is charming and everything is ready for you and Helen whenever
you care to come. I had the caretaker's wife and daughters here for
several days' scrubbing and cleaning woodwork, windows and floors.
They've put a vacuum cleaner on everything else and the house shines!
As for the new servants, they seem the usual sort, unappreciative, sure
to quarrel among themselves, fairly efficient, incapable of gratitude,
and likely to leave you in the lurch if the whim seizes them. They've
all come to me with complaints of various sorts. The average servant
detests clean, fresh quarters in the country and bitterly misses the
smelly and oily animation of the metropolitan slums.
But this unpretentious old place is very beautiful, Steve. You haven't
been here since you were a girl, and it will be a surprise to you to
find how really lovely are this plain old house and simple grounds.
Oswald has made several sketches of the grounds, and is making others
for the pool and fountain. He is anything but melancholy; he strolls
about quite happily with the eternal cigarette in his mouth and an
enormous rose-scented white peony in his button-hole; and in the evening
he and I light a fire in the library--for the evenings are a trifle
chilly still--and we read or chat or discuss men and affairs most
companionably. The occult charm in this man, of which you are so
conscious, I myself can perceive. There seems to be, deep within him,
an inexplicable quality which appeals--something latent,
indefinable--something that you suspect to be wistful, yet which is too
sensitive, too self-distrustful to respond to the very sympathy it seems
to draw.
Steve, I have asked him to spend July with us. He seemed quite
surprised and a little disconcerted by the invitation--just as he seemed
to be when I asked him to do the pool and fountain.
He said he would like to come if he could arrange it--whatever that may
mean. So it was left that way.
Do you approve?
It will be wonderful to see you here, moving in the garden, standing out
yonder on the lawn!--Steve, herself, in her own actual and matchless
person!--Steve in the flesh, here under the green old trees of Runner's
Rest.... Sometimes when I am thinking of you--and I think of practically
nothing else!--I seem to see you as you were when last here--a girl in
ribbons and white, dancing over the lawn with her chestnut hair flying;
or down by the river at the foot of the lawn, wading bare-legged,
fussing and poking about among the stones; or lying full-length on the
grass under the trees, reading "Quentin Durward"--do you remember? And
I used to take you trout-fishing to that mysterious Dunbar Brook up in
the forest, where the rush of ice-cold waters and the spray clouding the
huge round bowlders always awed you and made you the slightest bit
uneasy.
And do you remember the brown pools behind those bowlders, where you
cautiously dropped your line; and the sudden scurry of a black shadow in
the pool--the swift tug, the jerk and spatter as you flung a speckled
trout skyward in mingled joy and consternation?
Runner's Rest has not changed. House and barns need paint; the garden
requires your soft white hands to caress it into charming discipline;
the house needs you; the lawns are empty without you; the noise of the
river rippling on the shoals sounds lonely. The whole place needs you,
Steve, to make it logical. And so do I. Because all this has no
meaning unless the soul of it shows through.
When I am perplexed, restless, impatient, unhappy, I try to remember
that you have given me a bit of your heart; that you realize you have
mine entire--every atom of my love, my devotion.... There must be some
way for us.... I don't know what way, because you have thought it
necessary to leave me blind. But I shall never give you up--unless you
find that you care more for another man.
And now to answer what you have said concerning you and me. I suppose I
ought to touch what is, theoretically, another man's. Yet, you do not
belong to him. And you have begun to fall a little in love with me,
haven't you? And in this incomprehensible pact it was agreed that you
retain your liberty until you came to final decision within two years.
I don't understand it; I can't feel that, under the strange
circumstances, I am unfair to you or to this strange and unexplained
enigma named Oswald Grismer.
As for my attitude toward him, I hope I am free of the lesser jealousy
and resentments. I will not allow myself to brood or cherish unworthy
malice. I am trying to accept him, with all his evident and unusual
qualities, as a man I've got to fight and a man I can't help liking when
I let myself judge him honestly.
As for the flimsy, eccentric, meaningless, yet legal tie which links you
to him, I care nothing about it. It's got to be broken ultimately--if
one can break a shadow without substance.
How to do it without your aid, without knowledge of the facts, without
causing you distress for some reason not explained, I don't know. But
sooner or later I shall have to know. Because all this, if I brood on
it, seems a nightmare--an unreal dream where I struggle, fettered,
blindfolded, against the unseen and unknown, striving to win my way
through to you.
That is about all I have to say, Steve.
Oswald has just come in with his drawings, to find me writing to you.
He seems very cheerful. His design is delightful and quite in keeping
with the simplicity of the place--just a big, circular pool made out of
native stone, and in the centre a jet around which three stone trout are
intertwined under a tumbling spray.
It is charming and will not clash at all with the long, low house with
its shutters and dormers and loop-holes, and the little stone forts
flanking it.
Telegraph me what day and what train. And tell Helen you and she may
bring your maid-of-all-work.
JAMES CLELAND, in love with you.
There was no need of a fire in the library that evening at Runner's
Rest. The night was mild; a mist bordered the rushing river and stars
glimmered high above it.
Every great tree loomed huge and dark and still, the foliage piled up
fantastically against the sky-line. There was an odour of iris in the
night; and silence, save for the dull stamping of horses in the stable.
Cleland, deep in an arm-chair on the porch, became aware of Grismer's
tall shape materializing from the fog about him.
"It's a wonderful place, Cleland," he said with a graceful, inclusive
gesture. "All this sweet, vague mystery--this delicate grey dark
appeals to me--satisfies, rests me.... As though this were the abode of
the Blessed Shades, and I were of them.... And the rest were ended."
He seated himself near the other and gazed toward the mist out of which
the river's muffled roar came to them in ceaseless, ghostly melody.
"Charon waits at every river, they say," he remarked, lighting a
cigarette. "I fancy he must employ a canoe down there."
"The Iroquois once did. The war trail crossed there. When they burned
Old Deerfield they came this way."
"The name of your quaint and squatty old house is unusual," said
Grismer.
"Runner's Rest? Yes, in the Indian wars before the Revolution, the
Forest Runners could find food and shelter here. The stone forts
defended it and it was never burned."
"You inherited it?"
"Yes. It belonged to a Captain Cleland in those remote days."
There was a long silence. The delicately fresh odour of grey iris
became more apparent--a perfume that, somehow, Cleland associated with
Stephanie.
Grismer said in a pleasant, listless voice:
"You are a happy man, Cleland."
"Y-yes."
"Here, under the foliage of your forefathers," mused Grismer aloud, "you
should rest contented that the honour of an honourable line lies secure
in your keeping."
Cleland laughed:
"I don't know how honourable they were, but I've never heard of any
actual criminals among them."
"That's a great deal." He dropped one lean, well-shaped hand on the arm
of his chair. The cigarette burned between his pendant fingers, spicing
the air with its aromatic scent.
"It's a great deal to have a clean family record," he said again. "It
is the greatest thing in the world--the most desirable.... The other
makes existence superfluous."
"You mean dishonour?"
"Yes. The stain spreads. You can't stop it. It taints the generations
that follow. They can't escape."
"That's nonsense," said Cleland. "Because a man had a crook for a
forebear he isn't a crook himself."
"No. But the stain is in his heart and brain."
"That's morbid!"
"Maybe.... But, Cleland, there are people whose most intense desire is
to be respectable. It is a ruling passion, inherent, unreasoning, vital
to their happiness and peace of mind. Did you know that?"
"I suppose I can imagine such a person."
"Yes. I suppose such a person is not normal. In them, hurt pride is
more serious than a wound of the flesh. And pride, mortally wounded,
means to them mental and finally physical death."
"Such a person is abnormal and predestined to unhappiness," said Cleland
impatiently.
"Predestined," repeated Grismer in his pleasant, even voice. "Yes,
there's something wrong with them. But they are born so. Nobody knows
what a mental hell they endure. Things that others would scarcely
notice they shrink from. Their souls are raw, quivering things within
them that agonize over a careless slight, that wither under disapproval,
that become paralyzed under an affront.
"Their fiercest, deepest, most vital desire is to be welcomed, approved,
respected. Without kindness they become deformed; and crippled pride
does strange, perverse things to their brain and tongue.
"There are such people, Cleland.... Predestined ... to suffering and to
annihilation.... Weaklings ... all heart and unprotected nerves ...
passing their brief lives in desperate and grotesque attempts to conceal
what they are.... Superfluous people, undesirable ... foredoomed."
He dropped his cigarette upon the drenched grass, whore it glimmered an
instant and went out.
"Cleland," he said in a singularly gentle voice, "I once told you that I
wished you well. You did not understand. Let me put it a little
plainer.... Is there anything I can do for you? Is there anything I
can refrain from doing which might add to your contentment?"
"That's an odd thing to ask," returned the other.
"No. It is merely friendship speaking--a very deep friendship, if you
can understand it."
"You're very kind, Grismer.... I don't know quite how to take it--or
how to answer. There is nothing that you can do for me--nothing one man
could ask of another----"
"Ask it, all the same."
"I can't."
"Then I'll offer it.... I give up--Stephanie--to you."
The silence lasted a long time. Neither man stirred. Finally Cleland
said in an altered voice:
"I can't ask it--unless she does, too. I don't know what to say to you,
Grismer, except that no man ever spoke more nobly----"
"_That_ is enough. If you really think it, that means everything,
Cleland.... And this is my chance to tell you that when I--married
her--I never dreamed that it could ever be a question of you.... I
don't believe she did, either.... But it has become so. That _is_ the
question, now.... And so I--step out."
"I--I tell you I can't accept--that way--unless she asks it, too,"
stammered Cleland.... "After all, it's got to be on a basis of her
happiness.... I am not _sure_ that her happiness lies in my keeping. I
do not know how much she cares for you--how deeply you are engaged in
her heart.... I can't find out.... I'm like a blind man involved in a
maze!"
"She cares for me," said Grismer in his low, pleasant voice. "We have
been intimate in mind--close and responsive, intellectually....
Sentimentally, too. On her part a passionless loyalty to whatever in me
she believed appealed to her intelligence and imagination; an emotional
solicitude for what she discovered in me that aroused her sympathy----"
He turned and looked at Cleland in the darkness:
"Hers is a tender heart, Cleland. Impulse carries it to extremes.
Injustice to another provokes quick action from her; and nothing so
sways her as her intense sense of gratitude, unless it be her fear of
wounding others.
"I shall have to tell you more, some day. If I do, it will be more than
I would do for anybody else alive--the ultimate sacrifice of pride."
He rose and stood gazing out across the mist at a far star above it,
glimmering with dimmed brilliancy all alone.
"It couldn't have been," he said, half to himself. "I always knew it.
Not that the thought of you ever crossed my mind. I knew it would come
somehow. It simply couldn't be."
He turned to Cleland with a sudden laugh that sounded light and natural:
"This is to be no tragedy. It will disentangle itself easily and
simply. I am very sure that she is in love with you. Tell her what I
have said to you.... And--good night, old chap."
*CHAPTER XXX*
Stephanie and Helen arrived, bringing a mountain of baggage and the
studio cat--an animal evidently unacquainted with the larger freedom of
outdoors, and having no cosmic urge, for when deposited upon the lawn it
fled distracted, and remained all day upon a heap of coal in the cellar,
glaring immovably upon blandishment.
"Oh!" cried Stephanie, standing on the lawn and quite enchanted by the
old place. "It is simply too lovely! It's like a charming doll's
house--it's so much smaller than I remember it! Helen, did you ever see
such trees! And isn't the garden a dear! Listen to the noise of the
river! Did you ever hear anything as refreshing as that endless
rippling? Where is Oswald, Jim?"
"He went back to town this morning."
"How mean of him!"
"I tried to keep him," said Cleland, "but he insisted that it was really
a matter of business. And, of course, I had nothing more to say."
"Did he have a good time here?" asked Stephanie in a guileless voice.
But she looked sideways at him.
"I think so, Steve. He seemed carefree and vastly contented to rove
over the place. I planned to go with him after trout, but he preferred
to prowl about the lawn or smoke on the porch.... I am glad he came. I
have learned to like him very much."
"You're a dear!" she murmured under her breath, her grey eyes fixed on
him and full of a gay tenderness tinged with humour. "You always do the
right thing, Jim; you _are_ right, that's the reason. Do you wonder
that I'm quite mad about you?--I, who am all wrong."
"Who says you are all wrong?" he demanded, starting toward her. But she
deftly avoided him, putting the sun dial between them. And, leaning on
it with both elbows, her face framed in her hands, she let her eyes look
gay defiance into his.
"I'm all wrong," she said. "You don't know it, but I am."
"Do you want to be punished?"
She laughed tormentingly, feeling delightfully secure from his
demonstrations there on the sunny lawn, with Helen wandering about
inspecting the flowers in the garden, and the hired man unloading the
luggage at the side-door.
"Come on, Helen!" she called gaily. "We can have a bath; there's
plumbing in the house, you know. Where do you suppose that poor cat is
hidden?"
Helen came from the garden with a blue pansy between her lips, which she
presently drew through Cleland's lapel.
"A bribe, dear friend. I wish to go fishing," she said. "Stephanie has
been telling me about her girlhood days here with you, and how you took
her on several sacred occasions to a mysterious, dashing stream full of
huge bowlders--somewhere deep in the primeval woods----"
"The Dunbar brook, Jim," smiled Stephanie. "Shall we go fishing in the
morning? I'm not going to spend all my time fussing with domestic
problems."
"The cares of housekeeping sit lightly on her," remarked Helen, as they
all strolled toward the porch. "What if the new servants are slack and
wasteful? Being a man you wouldn't know; being Steve, she doesn't worry.
I see that it's going to devolve on me. Is it possible to run two baths
in this house at the same time?"
"Is it?" inquired Stephanie of Cleland. "I forget."
"Yes," he replied, "if you don't draw too much hot water."
"Take yours first, Helen," she said. "I'll sit in this cool library and
gossip with Jim for a while."
She unpinned her hat and flung it on a sofa, untied a large box of
bonbons, and careless of her charmingly disordered hair, vaulted to a
seat on the massive centre table--a favourite perch of hers when a young
girl.
Helen lingered to raid the bonbons; Cleland immediately began his pet
theme:
"Why do Americans eat candy? Because the nation doesn't know how to
cook! The French don't stuff themselves with candy. There isn't, in
Paris, a candy-shop to the linear mile! That's because French stomachs,
being properly fed with properly and deliciously cooked food, don't
crave candy. But in a country noted for its wretched and detestable
bread----"
"Oh, you always say that," remarked Stephanie. "Some day I'll go over
and find out how much truth there is in your tirades. Meanwhile, I
shall consume candy."
"When you go over," he said, "you'll go with me." His voice was low.
Helen had strolled into the "best room" and was standing there with a
bitter chocolate between her fingers, contemplating the old-time
furniture.
"When I go over to Paris," said Stephanie airily, "I shall invite whom I
choose."
"Who will it be?"
"Oh, some agreeable young man who isn't too bossy," she returned airily.
"Somebody who doesn't try to place me in a day nursery while he goes
about and has his fling. But, of course, that doesn't mean you. You've
had your fling, haven't you?"
"Not too violently," he said.
"That is your story. But I think I'll investigate it when I go over,
and tell you what I've found out when I return."
Helen finished her chocolate and came back. "Where the dickens is that
unhappy cat, do you suppose?" she inquired.
"Oh, she'll turn up at dinner-time," Cleland reassured her. "Do you
know where your room is, Helen?"
"How should I?" returned that young lady, "--never having been in the
house before----"
"Dear, forgive me!" cried Stephanie, jumping from her perch and passing
one arm around Helen's shoulders.
They went away together, the former waving a saucy adieu to Cleland
behind her back, without turning. She did not return.
So he concluded to get himself into fresh flannels, the late afternoon
having grown very warm and promising a close and humid evening.
But when he descended again from his room, he found nobody except the
cat, who, sadly disfigured by coal-dust, advanced toward him with
amiable intention.
"Very fine, old girl," he said, "but you need a bath, too." So he rang
and sent for some butter, dabbed a little on the cat's nose; and in ten
seconds she had begun a thorough and minute toilet, greatly to Cleland's
edification.
"Keep it up," he said, much interested, watching the pink tongue
travelling over the fur, and the velvet paw scrubbing away
industriously. "Good old cat! Go to it! Take the whole
course--massage, shampoo, manicure, whiskers ironed! By Jove, you're
coming out brand new!"
The cat paused to blink at him, sniff for a moment some faint perfume of
distant cooking, unnoticed by his less delicate nostrils, then she
settled down to the business in hand. And when a cat does that she
feels that she is entirely at home.
Not until a maid announced dinner did the two girls appear, both arrayed
in that filmy and dainty flyaway apparel suitable only to youth and
freshness.
"We had naps," remarked Stephanie shamelessly, and with a slightly
malicious humour in her smile, for she knew that Cleland had expected
her to return for the ten-minutes' gossip she had suggested.
He shrugged:
"You should see your cat! She's polished within an inch of her
life----"
A loud mew by his chair announced the regenerated animal's advent.
Stephanie fed it with odd morsels from time to time, and cautioned the
waitress to prepare a banquet for it after dinner.
It was still daylight when they strolled out into the garden. The
tree-clad eastern ridge was all ruddy in the rays of a declining sun;
the river dull silver save in pools where pearl and pink tints tinged
the stiller water. Birds were very noisy, robins gallantly attacking a
gay carol which they always found impossible to vary or bring to any
convincing musical conclusion; song sparrows sweetly monotonous; an
exquisite burst of melody from a rose-grosbeak high on a balsam-tip
above the stream; the rushing twitter of chimney swifts sweeping by,
mounting, fluttering, sheering through the sunset sky.
Helen, pausing by the sun-dial, read aloud what was chiselled there,
black with encrusted lichens.
"Who wrote this?" she asked curiously.
"Some bandit of the back-woods, some wilderness fur trader or ruthless
forest runner--with murder on his soul, perhaps. I don't remember now.
But my father made a note of the story."
She read the straggling lines again, slowly:
"But for ye Sunne no one would heed Me--
A senseless Stone;
But for ye Sunne no one could rede Me
Save God alone.
I and my comrade Sunne, together,
Print here ye hours
In praise of Love and pleasant weather
And Youth and flowers."
"How odd and quaint," she mused, "--and what straggling, primitive,
illiterate letters these are, chiselled here in this black basalt.
Fancy that gaunt, grim, buck-skinned runner emerging from the wilderness
into this solitary settlement, finding shelter and refreshment; and, in
his brief hour of rest and idleness, labouring to leave his record on
this old stone!"
"His was a poet's soul," said Cleland, "--but he probably took an
Iroquois scalp when unobserved, and skinned living and dead impartially
in his fur transactions."
"Some degenerate son of honest English stock, I suppose," nodded Helen.
"Yet, he had the simplicity of the Cavalier verse-makers in his gracious
heart.... Well, for his sake----"
She laid a June rose on the weather-ravaged dial. "God rest him,
anyway!" she added lightly. "There's a devil in every one of us."
"Not in you, darling," cooed Stephanie, enlacing her waist. "If there
ever was, he's dead."
"I wonder." ... She glanced deliberately at Cleland, then smiled:
"There was a bully romance I read in extreme youth, in which an old
swashbuckler was always exclaiming: 'Courage! The devil is dead!' And
since I have realized that I, also, harboured a devil, the memory of
that cheery war-cry always puts me on my mettle to slay him.... It's a
good fight, Jim," she added, serenely. "But a really good fight is
never finished, you know. And it's better to end the story with, 'so
they lived to fight happily ever after,' than to announce that the
problem is solved, the romance ended for eternity."
In the pink dusk she picked her way over the dewy grass toward the
porch, saying carelessly that her ancient bones resented dampness.
Stephanie, resting against the sun-dial, inhaled the sweetness of the
iris and spoke of it.
"The flowers are lilac-grey, like your eyes," he said. "The scent
expresses you to me--faintly sweet--a young, fresh, delicate
odour--_you_--in terms of perfume."
"_Such_ a poet! ... But you know one never should touch the petals of an
iris.... The indiscreet imprint remains."
"Have I left any imprint?"
"I should say you had! Do you suppose my mind isn't busy most of the
time remembering your--imprints?"
"Is it?"
"Does it comfort you to know it? Nobody else ever pawed me."
"A nice way to put it!" he remarked.
She shrugged:
"I don't know how it was I first permitted it--came to endure it----"
She lifted her grey eyes deliberately, "--invited it ... because I came
to expect it--wish for it----" She bit her lip and made a quick gesture
with clenched hand. "Oh, Jim, I'm no good! Here I am married, and as
nonchalantly unfaithful to my vows as you care to make me----"
She turned abruptly and walked across the lawn toward the willows that
fringed the stream, moving leisurely, pensively, her hands linked behind
her back. He rejoined her at the willows and they slowly entered the
misty belt of trees together.
"If you knew," she said, "what a futile, irresolute, irresponsible
creature I am, you wouldn't waste real love on me. There's nothing to
me except feminine restlessness, mental and physical, and it urges,
urges, urges me to wander frivolously in pursuit of God knows what--_I_
don't! But always my mind is a traveller impatient to go a-gypsying,
and my feet beat the devil's tattoo----"
She sprang from the pebbles to a flat river stone projecting from the
shore and stood poised, looking out across the rushing water at the mist
curling there along the crests of little hurrying waves. A firefly
drifted through it; above, unseen, night-hawks called persistently. She
turned her head toward him expectantly.
There was room enough on the rock and he stepped to her side.
"I'm like that water," she said, "making a futile noise in the world,
dashing and rippling along without any plan of my own, any destination.
When I'm honest with myself, I know that it isn't the intellectual
desire for self-expression that keeps me restless; it's merely and
solely the instinct to ripple and bubble and dance and flow out under
the stars and sunsets and dawns--and go sparkling and swirling and
glimmering purposelessly away out into the world at random.... And
_that's_ all there is to Stephanie Quest!--if you really desire to
know--you very romantic and foolish boy, who think yourself in love with
her!"
She looked up and laughed at his sober face.
"Dear novelist," she said, "it's common realism, not romantic fiction,
that has _us_ in its clutches. We're caught by the commonplace. If
life were only like one of your novels, with some definite beginning, an
artistic plot full of action running toward a properly planned
climax!--but it isn't! It begins in the middle and ends nowhere. And
here's another trouble with real life; there aren't any villains. And
that's fatal to me as your heroine, Jim, for I can't be one unless I'm
furnished with a foil."
"Steve," he said, "if you are not everything that my mind and heart
believe you to be, the time is past when it makes any difference to me
what you are."
She laughed:
"Oh, Jim, is it really as serious as that? Can you stand for a
mindless, purposeless girl of unmoral and nomadic proclivities who
really hasn't a single gift--no self to express, no creative or
interpretive talent--with nothing but an inordinate, unquiet curiosity
to find out everything there is to find out--a mental gypsy, lazy,
self-indulgent, pleasure-loving, irresponsible----"
He began to laugh:
"All that is covered by one word--'intelligent,'" he said. "You're just
human, with a healthy intellect and normal inclinations."
"Oh, dear, you're so dreadfully wrong. I'm a fraud--nice to look at and
to stroll with----"
She turned and stepped across to the pebbled shore. He followed. She
bent her head and, not looking at him, drew his arm around her waist and
held it there with one hand across his.
"I'm desperately in love," she said, "but I'm a sham--agreeable to
caress, pliant, an apt pupil--pretty material for a sweetheart, Jim--but
for nothing more important." ... They walked slowly along the shore path
down stream under the silver willows, his arm enlacing her supple
figure, her slow, deliberate steps in rhythm with his.
After a while he said in a low voice:
"Dear, you and I have already come a long way on the blossoming path
together. I believe it is written that we travel it together to the
end. Don't you want me _always_, Steve?"
"Yes," she sighed, pressing her hand over his at her waist. "I do want
you, always.... But, Jim--I'm not what you think me. I ran rather wild
while you were away. Liberty went to my empty head. I didn't seem to
care what I did. The very devils seemed to be in my heels and they
carried me everywhere at random----"
"Nonsense!"
"Oh, they did! They landed me in a dreadful pickle. You know they did.
And now here I am, married, and falling more desperately in love every
minute with the other man. _You_ can't really love such a fool of a
girl!"
"It makes no difference," he said, "I can't go on alone, now."
She pressed her cheek against his shoulder:
"You need not. You can always have me when you wish."
"You mean--just this way?"
"Yes.... How else----" She looked up at him; he suddenly stopped in
the path, her next step brought her around facing him, where she halted,
encircled by his arm. After a moment's silence, she rested her clasped
hands on his shoulder, looking very seriously into his eyes.
"How else?" she repeated in a half-whisper.
"Divorce."
"No, dear."
"Either that or--we can go away somewhere--together----"
The dryness of his throat checked him, and her clear eyes looked him
through and through.
"Either you or I," he said, "have got to tell Oswald how matters----"
"We can't, Jim."
"Tell him," he continued, "that we are in love with each other and need
to marry----"
"Oh, Jim--my dear--dearest, I can't do that!"
"It's true, isn't it?" he demanded.
She did not answer for a while. Then she unclasped his hands, which had
been resting on his shoulder, and slipped one arm around his neck:
"Yes, it is true; I want to marry you. But I can't.... So--so won't
this way do?" she said. "You can always have me this way."
He kissed her lifted lips.
"No, it won't do, Steve. I want all that you are, all that you have to
give the man you love and marry, all that the future holds of beauty and
of mystery for us both.... I want a home with you, Steve; I want every
minute of life with you, waking and sleeping.... I love you, Steve....
And because I do love you I dare tell you that I am falling in love with
our future, too--in love with the very thought of--your children,
Steve.... Dear, I think that I am like my father. I love only once.
And once in love, there is nothing else for me; no other woman, no
recompense if you fail me, no cure for me."
They both were deadly serious now; his face was quiet but set in firm
and sober lines; she had lost much of her colour, so that the grey eyes
with their dark lashes seemed unusually large.
"I _can't_ marry you," she said, drawing his head nearer. "Do you think
for one moment that I would deny you anything you asked of me if it were
in my power to give?"
"Will you not tell me why?"
"I'm not free to tell you.... Oh, Jim! I adore you--I do love you
so--so deeply. I'm married. I'm sorry I'm married. But I can't help
it--I can't get out of it--it scares me even to think of trying----"
"What hold has that man----"
"No hold. There's something else--something sad, terrible----"
"I'll take you, anyway," he said in a low, tense voice. "He will have
his remedy."
"How, Jim? Do you mean that you wish me to defy opinion with you? You
wouldn't let me do that, would you, dear? I'd do it if you asked, but
you wouldn't let me, would you?"
"No." He had lost his head for a moment; that was all; and the ugly
threat had been wrenched out of him in the confusion of a tortured mind
struggling against it knew not what.
"Jim," she asked under her breath, "would you really _let_ me?"
"No," he said savagely.
"I knew you wouldn't."
Her arm slipped from his neck and again she clasped both slender hands,
rested them on his shoulder, and laid her cheek against them.
"It wouldn't help me out of this pickle if we misbehaved," she said
thoughtfully. "It wouldn't solve the problem.... I suppose you've
taken me seriously as an apostle of that new liberty which ignores
irregularities--doesn't admit them to be irregular. That's why you said
what you did say, I fancy. I've talked enough modern foolishness to
have you think me quite emancipated--quite indifferent to the old social
order, the old code of morals, the old dogmas, the ancient and orthodox
laws of community and individual conduct.... Haven't you supposed me
quite capable of sauntering away unconventionally with the man I love,
after the ironical and casual spectacle of marriage which I have
afforded you?"
"I don't know," he said bitterly. "I don't know what I have thought....
There will never be anybody except you. If I lose you I lose the world.
But between you and me there is a deeper tie than anything less than
marriage could sanction. We couldn't ever do that, Steve--let the world
go hang while we gave it an extra kick for each other's sakes."
"Because," she whispered, "dad's roof was ours. For his honour, if not
for our own, we could not affront the world, dear.... Not that I don't
love you enough!" she added almost fiercely. "I do love you enough! I
don't care whether you know it. Nothing would matter--if there were no
other way--and if I were free to take the only way that offered. Do you
suppose I'd hesitate if it lay between taking that way and losing you?"
She turned and began to pace the path excitedly, cheeks flushed and
hands clenching and unclenching.
"What do I care about myself!" she said. She snapped her fingers: "I
don't care _that_, Jim, when your happiness is at stake! I'd go to you,
go with you, love you, face the world undaunted. I care nothing about
myself. I know myself! What am I? _You_ know!"
She came up close to him, her face afire, her grey eyes brilliant.
"You know what I am," she repeated. "You and dad did everything to make
me like yourselves. You took me out of the gutter----"
"Steve!"
"You took me out of the gutter!" she repeated excitedly. "You cleaned
the filth from me, gave me shelter, love;--you educated me, made me
possible, strove to eradicate the unworthy instincts and inclinations
which I might have inherited. My aunt told me. I know what dad did for
me! Why shouldn't I adore the memory of your father? Why shouldn't I
love his son? I do. I always have. I didn't dream that you ever could
offer me a greater love. But when I understood that it was true--when I
realized that it was really love, then I stepped into your arms because
you held them out to me--because you were your father's son whom I had
loved passionately all my life in one way, and was willing to learn to
love in any way you asked of me--Jim!--my brother--my lover----"
She flung herself into his arms, choking, clinging to him, struggling to
control her voice:
"I am nothing--I am nothing," she sobbed passionately. "Why should not
all my gratitude and loyalty be for your father's son? What is so
terrible to me is that I can't give myself! That I can't throw myself
at your feet for life. To marry you would be too heavenly wonderful!
Or, to snap my fingers in the world's face for your sake--dearest--that
would be so little to do for you--so easy.
"But I can't. Your father--dad--would know it. And then the world would
blame him for ever harbouring a gutter-waif----"
"Steve, dearest----"
"Oh, Jim," she stammered, "I haven't even told you how those inherited
traits have raised the deuce with me. I've got in me all the low
instincts, all the indolence, the selfish laziness, the haphazard,
irresponsible, devil-may-care traits of the man who was my own father!"
"Steve----!"
"Let me tell you! I've got to tell you. I can't keep it any longer.
It was something in Oswald that appealed to that gypsy side of me--awoke
it, I think. The first time I ever saw him, as a boy, and under
disagreeable circumstances, I felt an odd inclination for him. He was
_like_ me, and I sensed it! I told you that once. It's true.
Something in him appealed to the vagabond recklessness and
irresponsibility latent in me--the tendency to wander, the indolent
desire to drift and explore pleasant places.... After you went abroad I
met him. I wrote you about it. I liked him. He fascinated me. There
was something in common--something common in common between us.... I
went to his studio, at first with Helen, and also when others were
there. Then I went alone. I didn't care, knowing there was really no
harm in going, and also being at the age when defiance of convention is
more or less attractive to every girl.
"He was fascinating. He was plainly in love with me. But that means
nothing to a girl except the subtle excitement and flattery of the fact.
But he was what I wanted--a fellow vagabond!
"Every time I came into town I went to his studio. My aunt had no idea
what I was up to. And we did have such good times, Jim!--you see he was
successful then, and he had a wonderful studio--and a car--and we ran
out into the country and then returned to take tea in his studio....
And, Jim, it was all right--but it was not good for me."
She clasped his arm with both of hers and rested her head on his
shoulder; and went on talking in a steadier and more subdued voice:
"I didn't write you about it; I was very sure you wouldn't approve. And
my head was stuffed full of modernism and liberty and urge and the
necessity for self-expression. I felt that I had a perfect right to
enjoy myself.... And then came trouble. It always does.... Oswald's
father, Chiltern Grismer, came to the hospital one day, terribly wrought
up and looking ghastly.
"My aunt had gone to New York to consult a specialist, but he asked for
me, and I came down to the private reception room. I was a graduate
nurse then. Oh, Jim!--it was quite dreadful. He seemed to be scared
until he saw that I was. Then he was fearfully harsh with me. He told
me that my aunt was about to begin suit against him to recover some
money--a great deal of money--which my aunt pretended I should have
inherited from my grandmother, Mr. Grismer's sister.
"He said we were two adventuresses and that he would expose me and my
unhappy origin--all that horror of my childhood----"
A sob checked her; she rested in his arms, breathing fast and
irregularly; then, recovering self-control:
"I was bewildered. I told him I didn't want his money. But there was
in his eyes a terror which I could see there even when he was upbraiding
and threatening me most violently. I didn't know what to do; I wanted
to go back to my ward, but he followed me and held the door closed, and
I had to listen to the terrible, shameful things he said about my
mother's mother and my own mother and myself.... Well--just as he was
about to leave, my aunt entered.... I was in tears, and Mr. Grismer's
face was all twisted and contorted with rage, as I thought; but it
remained so, white and distorted, as though something had broken and he
couldn't recover the mobility of his features. I heard what my aunt
said to him--I didn't want to hear it. I cried out, protesting that I
didn't wish any of his money.... He went away with his face all
twisted...."
"What did your aunt say to him?"
"I can't tell you, dear. I am not at liberty to tell you.... And after
all, it doesn't matter.... He died--suddenly--a week later.... My aunt
was ill at the time and I was with her.... A letter was handed to her
by an orderly. It was from Mr. Grismer.... From a dead man! What she
read in it seemed to be a terrific shock to her. She was sick and weak,
but she got out of bed and telephoned to her attorneys in New York....
I was frightened.... It was a most dreadful night for us both.... And
... and my aunt died of it, I think--the shock and her illness
combined.... She died a week later.... I took our studio with
Helen.... I saw Oswald every day. He had inherited a great deal of
money. We went about.... And, Jim, the very devil was in me to roam
everywhere with him and see things and explore the part of the world we
could cover in his touring car. All the gypsy instinct born in me, all
the tendency to irresponsible wandering and idle pleasure suddenly
seemed to develop and demand satisfaction.... Oswald was a dear. He
was in love with me; I knew it. He didn't want to go on those escapades
with me; but I bullied him into it.... And it got to a point beyond all
bounds; the more recklessly we went about the keener my delight in
risking everything for the sake of unconventional amusement. Twice we
were caught out so far from New York that he had to drive all night to
get into town. And then, what was to be expected happened: our car
broke down when it meant a night away from the studio with Oswald. And
the very deuce was to pay, too, for in the Ten Eyck Hotel at Albany we
ran into friends--girls I knew in school and their parents--friends of
dad's!
"Oh, Jim, I was panic-stricken. We _had_ to stay there, too. I--there
was nothing to do but present Oswald as my husband.... That was a
terrible night. We had two rooms and a connecting parlour. We talked it
over; I cried most of the time. Then I wrote out that cablegram to
you.... Oh, Jim, he is a dear. You don't know him as I do. He knew I
didn't love him and he was in love with me.... Well, we had to do
something.
"He went out to the Fort Orange Club and got a man he knew. Then, with
this man as witness, we told each other that we'd marry each other....
Then Oswald went away with his friend and I didn't see him again until
next day, when he called for me with the car.... And that is all there
was of my marriage.... And now," she sobbed, "I'm in love with you and
I--I----" She broke down hopelessly. He drew her close to him, holding
her tightly.
"There is m-more," she faltered, "but I c-can't tell it. It's
c-confidential--a matter of honour. I want to be what dad and you
expect of me. I do want to be honourable. That is why I can't tell you
another person's secret.... It would be dishonourable. And even if I
told you, I'd be afraid to ask him for my freedom----"
"You mean he would not let you divorce him?"
"Oh, no, I _don't_ mean that! That is the terrible part of it! He
would give me my freedom. But I don't want it--that way--not on
the--not on such terms----"
They walked slowly toward the house together, she leaning on him as
though very tired. Ahead of them a few fireflies sparkled. The rushing
roar of the river was in their ears all the way to the house.
Helen had retired, leaving a note for them on the library table:
Forgive me, but I've yawned my head off--not because you two lunatics
are out star-gazing, but because I'm in my right mind and healthily
fatigued. Put the cat out before you lock up!