Whatever may have been Grant’s philosophy about the unwisdom of creating
a situation which had no way out he found himself looking forward
impatiently to Wednesday evening. An hour or two at Zen’s fireside
provided the social atmosphere which his bachelor life lacked, and as
Transley seemed unappreciative of his domestic privileges, remaining in
town unless his business brought him out to the summer home, it seemed
only a just arrangement that they should be shared by one who valued
them at their worth.
The Wednesday evening conversation developed further the understanding
that was gradually evolving between them, but it afforded no solution of
the problem which confronted them. Zen made no secret of the error she
had made in the selection of her husband, but had no suggestions to
offer as to what should be done about it. She seemed quite satisfied
to enjoy Grant’s conversation and company, and let it go at that--an
impossible situation, as the young man assured himself. She dismissed
him again at a quite respectable hour with some reference to Saturday
evening, which Grant interpreted as an invitation to call again at that
time.
When he entered Saturday night it was evident that she had been
expecting him. A cool wind was again blowing down from the mountains,
laden with the soft smell of melting snow, and the fire in the grate was
built ready for the match.
“I am my own maid to-night,” she said, as she stooped to light it.
“Sarah usually goes to town Saturday evening. Now we shall see if
someone is in good humor.”
The fire curled up pleasantly about the wood. “There!” she exclaimed,
clapping her hands. “All is well. You see how economical I am; if we
must spend on fires we save on light. I love a wood fire; I suppose it
is something which reaches back to the original savage in all of us.”
“To the days when our great ancestors roasted their victims while they
danced about the coals,” said Grant, completing the picture. “And yet
they say that human nature doesn’t change.”
“Does it? I think our methods change with our environments, but that is
all. Wasn’t it you who propounded a theory about an age when men took
what they wanted by force giving way to an age in which they took what
they wanted by subtlety? Now, I believe, you want society to restrain
the man of clever wits just as it has learned to restrain the man of big
biceps. And when that is done will not man discover some other means of
taking what he wants?”
She had seated herself beside him on a divanette and the joy of her
nearness fired Grant with a very happy intoxication. It recalled that
night on the hillside when, as she had since said, she felt safe in his
protection.
“I am really very interested,” she continued. “I followed the argument
at the table on Sunday with as much concern as if it had been my pet
hobby, not yours, that was under discussion. If I said little it was
because I did not wish to appear too interested.”
Her amazing frankness brought Grant, figuratively, to his feet at every
turn. She seemed to have no desire to conceal her interest in him, her
attachment for him. Hers was such candor as might well be born of
the vast hillsides, the great valleys, the brooding silences of her
girlhood. Yet it seemed obvious that she must be less candid with
Transley....
“I am glad you were interested,” he answered. “I was afraid I was rather
boring the company, but it was MY scheme and I had to stand up for it. I
fear I made few converts.”
“You were dealing with practical men,” she returned, “and practical
men are never converted to a new idea. That is one of the things I have
learned in my years of married life, Dennison. Practical men find many
ways of turning an old idea to advantage, but they never evolve new
ones. New ideas come from dreamers--theoretical fellows like you.”
“The dreamer is always a lap ahead of the rest of civilization, and the
funny thing is that the rest always thinks itself much more sane than
the dreamer, out there blazing the way.”
“That’s not remarkable,” she replied. “That’s logical. The dreamer
blazes the way--proves the possibilities of his dream--and the practical
man follows it up and makes money out of it. To a practical man there is
nothing more practical than making money.”
“Did I convert you?” he pursued.
“I was not in need of conversion. I have been a follower of the new
faith--an imperfect and limping follower, it is true--ever since you
first announced it.”
“I believe you are laughing at me.”
“Certainly not! I have been brought up in an environment where there
is no standard higher than the money standard. Not that my father or
husband are dishonest; they are rigidly honest according to their ideas
of honesty. But to say that a man must give actual service for every
dollar he gets or it isn’t his--that is a conception of honesty so far
beyond them as to be an absurdity. But I have wanted to ask you how you
are going to enforce this new idealism.”
“Idealism is not enforced. We aspire to it; we may not attain to it.
Christianity itself is idealism--the idealism of unselfishness. That
ideal has never been attained by any considerable number of people, and
yet it has drawn all humanity on to somewhat higher levels as surely as
the moon draws the tide. Superficial persons in these days are drawing
pictures of the failure of Christianity, which has failed in part; but
they could find a much more depressing subject by painting a world from
which all Christian idealism had been removed.”
“But surely you have some plan for putting your theories to the
test--some plan which will force those to whom idealism appeals in vain.
We do not trust to a man’s idealism to keep him from stealing; we put
him in jail.”
“All that will come in time, but the question for the seeker after truth
is not ‘Will it work?’ but ‘Is it true?’ I fancy I can see the practical
men of Moses’ time leaning over his shoulder as he inscribed the Ten
Commandments and remarking ‘No use of putting that down, Moses; you can
never enforce it.’ But Moses put it down and left the enforcement to
natural law and the growing intelligence of the generations which have
followed him. We are too much disposed to think it possible to evade
a law; to violate it, and escape punishment; but if a law is true,
punishment follows violation as implacably as the stars follow their
courses. And if society has failed to recognize the law that service,
and service only, should be able to command service in return, society
must suffer the penalty. We have only to look about us to see that
society is paying in full for its violations.
“Yes, I have plans, and I think they would work, but the first thing is
the ideal--the new moral sense--that value must not be accepted without
giving equal value in return. Society, of course, will have to set up
the standards of value. That is a matter of detail--a matter for the
practical men who come in the wake of the idealist. But of this I am
certain--and I hark back to my old theme--that just as society has found
a means of preventing the man who is physically superior from taking
wealth without giving service in return, so must society find a means to
prevent men who are mentally superior from taking wealth without giving
service in return. The superior person, mark you, will still have an
advantage, in that his superiority will enable him to EARN more; we
shall merely stop him taking what he does not earn. That must come. I
think it will come soon. It is the next step in the social evolution of
the race.”
She had drunk in his argument as one who hangs on every word, and her
wrapt face turned toward his seemed to glow and thrill him in return
with a sense of their spiritual oneness. She did not need to tell him
that Transley never talked to her like this. Transley loved her, if he
loved her at all, for the glory she reflected upon him; he was proud of
her beauty, of her daring, of her physical charm and self-reliance. The
deeper side of her mental life was to Transley a field unexplored; a
field of the very existence of which he was probably unaware. Grant
looked into her eyes, now close and responsive, and found within their
depths something which sent him to his feet.
“Zen!” he exclaimed. “The mystery of life is too much for me. Surely
there must be an answer somewhere! Surely the puzzle has a system to
it--a key which may some day be found! Or can it be just chaos--just
blind, driveling, senseless chaos? In our own lives, why should we be
stranded, helpless, wrecked, with the happiness which might have been
ours hung just beyond our reach? Is there no answer to this?”
“I suppose we disobeyed the law, back in those old days. We heard it
clearly enough, and we disobeyed. I allowed myself to be guided by
motives which were not the highest; you seemed to lack the enterprise
which would have won you its own reward. And as you have said, those who
violate the law must suffer for it. I have suffered.”
She drew up her chin; he could see the firm muscles set beneath the
pink bloom of her flesh.... He had not thought of Zen suffering; all
his thought of her had been very grateful to his vanity, but he had not
thought of her suffering. He extended his hands and took hers within
them.
“I have sometimes wondered,” he said, “why there is no second chance;
why one cannot wipe the slate clear of everything that has been and
start anew. What a world this might be!”
“Would it be any better? Or would we go on making our mistakes over
again? That seems to be the only way we learn.”
“But a second chance; the idea seems so fair, so plausible. Suppose you
are shooting on the ranges, for instance; you are allowed a shot or
two to find your nerve, to get your distance, to settle yourself to the
business in hand. But in this business of life you fire, and if some
distraction, some momentary influence or folly sends your aim wild, the
shot is gone and you are left with all the years that follow to think
about it. You can do nothing but think about it--the most profitless of
all occupations.”
“For you there is a second chance,” she reminded him. “You must have
thought of that.”
“No--no second chance.”
She drew herself up slightly and away from him. “I have been very frank
with you, Dennison,” she said. “Suppose you try being frank with me?”
In her eyes was still the fire of Zen of the Y.D., a woman unconquered
and unconquerable. She gave the impression that she accepted the
buffetings of life, but no one forced them upon her. She had erred; she
would suffer. That was fair; she accepted that. But as Grant gazed
on her face, tilted still in some of its old-time recklessness and
defiance, he knew that the day would come when she would say that her
cup was full, and, throwing it to the winds, would start life over, if
there can be such a thing as starting life over. And something in her
manner told him that day was very, very near.
“All right,” he said, “I will be frank. Fate HAS brought within my orbit
a second chance, or what would have been a second chance had my heart
not been so full of you. She was a girl well worth thinking about. When
an employee introduces herself to you with a declaration of independence
you may know that you have met with someone out of the ordinary. I am
not speaking of these days of labor scarcity; it takes no great moral
quality to be independent when you have the whip-hand. But in the days
before the war, with two applicants for every position, a girl who
valued her freedom of spirit more than her job--more than even a very
good job--was a girl to think about.”
“And you thought about her?”
“I did. I was sick of the cringing and fawning of which my wealth made
me the object; I loathed the deference paid me, because I knew it was
paid, not to me, but to my money--I was homesick to hear someone tell me
to go to hell. I wanted to brush up against that spirit which says it is
as good as anybody else--against the manliness which stands its ground
and hits back. I found that spirit in Phyllis Bruce.”
“Phyllis Bruce--rather a nice name. But are the men and women of the
East so--so servile as you suggest?”
“No! That is where I was mistaken. Generations of environment had merely
trained them into docility of habit. Underneath they are red-blooded
through and through. The war showed us that. Zen--the proudest moment of
my life--except one--was when a kid in the office who couldn’t come into
my room without trembling jumped up and said ‘We WILL win!’--and called
me Grant! Think of that! Poor chap.... What was I saying? Oh, yes;
Phyllis. I grew to like her--very much--but I couldn’t marry her. You
know why.”
Zen was looking into the fire with unseeing eyes. “I am not sure that
I know why,” she said at length. “You couldn’t marry me. It was your
second chance. You should have taken it.”
“Would that be playing the game fairly--with her?”
She rested her fingers lightly on the back of his hand, extending them
gently down until they fell between his own.
“Denny, you big, big boy!” she murmured. “Do you suppose every man
marries his first choice?”
“It has always seemed to me that a second choice is a makeshift. It
doesn’t seem quite square--”
“No. I fancy some second choices are really first choices. Wisdom comes
with experience, you know.”
“Not always. At any rate I couldn’t marry her while my heart was yours.”
“I suppose not,” she answered, and again he noted a touch of weariness
in her voice. “I know something of what divided affection--if one can
even say it is divided--means. Denny, I will make a confession. I knew
you would come back; I always was sure you would come back. ‘Then,’ I
said to myself, ‘I will see this man Grant as he is, and the reality
will clear my brain of all this idealism which I have woven about him.’
Perhaps you know what I mean. We sometimes meet people who impress us
greatly at the time, but a second meeting, perhaps years later, has a
very different effect. It sweeps all the idealism away, and we wonder
what it was that could have charmed us so. Well--I hoped--I really hoped
for some experience like that with you. If only I could meet you again
and find that, after all, you were just like other men; self-centred,
arrogant, kind, perhaps, but quite superior--if I could only find THAT
to be true then the mirage in which I have lived for all these years
would be swept away and my old philosophy that after all it doesn’t
matter much whom one marries so long as he is respectable and gives her
a good living would be vindicated. And so I have encouraged you to come
here; I have been most unconventional, I know, but I was always that--I
have cultivated your acquaintance, and, Denny, I am SO disappointed!”
“Disappointed? Then the mirage HAS cleared away?”
“On the contrary, it grows more distorted every day. I see you towering
above all your fellow humans; reaching up into a heaven so far above
them that they don’t even know of its existence. I see you as really The
Man-On-the-Hill, with a vision which lays all this selfish, commonplace
world at your feet. The idealism which I thought must fade away is
justified--heightened--by the reality.”
She had turned her face to him, and Grant, little as he understood the
ways of women, knew that she had made her great confession. For a moment
he held himself in check.... then from somewhere in his subconsciousness
came ringing the phrase, “Every man worth his salt.... takes what he
wants.” That was Transley’s morality; Transley, the Usurper, who had
bullied himself into possession of this heart which he had never won
and could never hold; Transley, the fool, frittering his days and
nights with money! He seized her in his arms, crushing down her weak
resistance; he drew her to him until, as in that day by a foothill river
somewhere in the sunny past, her lips met his and returned their caress.
He cared now for nothing--nothing in the whole world but this quivering
womanhood within his arms....
“You must go,” she whispered at length. “It is late, and Frank’s habits
are somewhat erratic.”
He held her at arm’s length, his hands upon her shoulders. “Do you
suppose that fear--of anything--can make me surrender you now?”
“Not fear, perhaps--I know it could not be fear--but good sense may do
it. It was not fear that made me send you home early from your previous
calls. It was discretion.”
“Oh!” he said, a new light dawning, and he marvelled again at her
consummate artistry.
“But I must tell you,” she resumed, “Frank leaves on a business trip
to-morrow night. He will be gone for some time, and I shall motor into
town to see him off. I am wondering about Wilson,” she hurried on, as
though not daring to weigh her words; “Sarah will be away--I am letting
her have a little holiday--and I can’t take Wilson into town with me
because it will be so late.” Then, with a burst of confession she spoke
more deliberately. “That isn’t exactly the reason, Dennison; Frank
doesn’t know I have let Sarah go, and I--I can’t explain.”
Her face shone pink and warm in the glow of the firelight, and as the
significance of her words sank in upon him Grant marvelled at that
wizardry of the gods which could bring such homage to the foot of man.
A tenderness such as he had never known suffused him; her very presence
was holy.
“Bring the boy over and let him spend the night with me. We are great
chums and we shall get along splendidly.”