Produced by Al Haines.
*David Graham Phillips*
_*The*_*
HUNGRY HEART*
_*A NOVEL*_
NEW YORK AND LONDON
D. APPLETON AND COMPANY
1909
Copyright, 1909, by
D. APPLETON AND COMPANY
_Published September, 1909_
*THE HUNGRY HEART*
*I*
Courtship and honeymoon of Richard Vaughan and Courtney Benedict are
told accurately enough by a thousand chroniclers of love's fairy tales
and dreams. Where such romances end in a rosily vague "And they lived
happily ever after," there this history begins. Richard and Courtney
have returned from Arcady to reality, to central Indiana and the Vaughan
homestead, across the narrow width of Wenona the lake from Wenona the
town.
The homecoming was late in a June evening, with a perfumed coolness
descending upon the young lovers from the grand old trees, round the
Vaughan house like his bodyguard round a king. Next morning toward
eight Courtney, still half asleep, reached out hazily. Her hand met
only the rumpled linen on Richard's side of the huge fourposter. She
started up, brushed back the heavy wave of auburn hair fallen over her
brow, gazed down at his pillow. The dent of his head, but not he. Her
eyes searched the dimness. The big room contained only a few large
pieces of old mahogany; at a glance she saw into every corner. Alone in
the room. Her eyes, large and anxious now, regarded the half-open door
of the dressing room to the rear.
"Dick!" she called hopefully.
No answer.
"Dick!" she repeated, a note of doubt in her voice.
Silence.
"Dick!" she repeated reproachfully. It was the first morning she had
awakened without the sense of his nearness that had become so dear, so
necessary. It was the first morning in this house strange to her--in
this now life they were to make beautiful and happy together. She gave
a forlorn sigh like a disappointed child, drew up her knees, rested her
elbows upon them, and her small head upon her hands. Sitting there in
the midst of that bed big enough for half a dozen as small as she, she
suggested a butterfly poised motionless with folded wings. A moment and
she lifted her drooped head. How considerate of him not to wake her
when the three days and nights on train had been so wearing!
Swift and light as a butterfly she sprang from the bed, flung open the
shutters of the lake-front windows. In poured summer like gay cavalcade
through breach in gloomy walls--summer in full panoply of perfume and
soft air and sparkling sunshine. She almost laughed aloud for joy at
this timely rescue. She gazed away across the lake to the town where
she was born and bred! "Home!" she cried. "And so happy--so utterly
happy!" Her expression, her whole manner, her quick movements gave the
impression of the impulsive self-unconsciousness of a child.
It was a radiant figure, small and perfect like a sun sprite, that
issued from the room three quarters of an hour later to flit along the
polished oak hall, to descend a stairway glistening like hall above and
wider and loftier hall below. With hair piled high on her small head,
with tail of matinee over her arm and tall heels clicking merrily on the
steps, she whistled as she went. Some people--women--criticised that
laughter-loving mouth of hers as too wide for so small a face. It
certainly did not suggest a button-hole. But no one could have found
fault with the shape of the mouth or with the coloring, whether of the
lips or within, or with her teeth, pearl white and seeming the whiter
for the rose bronze of her skin--the shade that seems to be of the
essence of youth, health, and summer. Her nose was rather large, but
slender and well shaped. It was the nose of mobility, of sensitiveness,
of intelligence, not at all of repose. And there were her eyes, of a
strange soft emerald, with long dark lashes; the brows long also and
only slightly curved, and slender yet distinct. These eyes were her
greatest beauty--greater even than her skin. It would have been
difficult to say whether in them or in her mouth lay her greatest charm,
for charm is not always beauty, and beauty often wholly lacks charm.
But woman feels that figure determines the woman--"the woman" meaning,
of course, efficiency as a man catcher. It was upon Courtney's flawless
figure that the sour glance of old Nanny, the head servant, rested--old
Nanny, whose puritanism aggravated for her by suppression all the damned
charms of "the flesh." Nanny had reigned supreme in that house ever
since Dick Vaughan was left alone; so from the first news of the
engagement she had been hating Courtney, whom she regarded as her
supplanter. As Courtney entered the dining room, stiff and dim and
chilly, like all the rooms in that house, old Nanny was superintending
fat, subdued Mazie at work at the breakfast table. It occupied the
exact center of the room, formal as for a state banquet.
"Good morning," cried Courtney in her charming manner of bright
friendliness. "Good morning, Mazie. Am I late? Where's Richard?" Her
voice was deeper than one would have expected, but low and musical.
Mazie smiled a welcome, then cast a frightened glance of apology at
Nanny, who did not smile. "Mr. Richard's down to the Smoke House," said
she.
The Smoke House was the laboratory Dick's grandfather, Achilles Vaughan,
had built for him on the site of the smoke house of the pioneer Vaughan,
settler there when Wenona was a trading post in New France. "Of
course!" said Courtney. "I might have known. He wanted to go last
night, but I wouldn't let him."
Nanny scowled at this innocent, laughing "I wouldn't let him." She
turned on Mazie, who was gazing open-mouthed at Courtney's simple, fresh
finery. "What'r ye gawkin' here fur, with your mouth hangin' like a
chicken with the gaps?" she demanded in a fierce aside. Mazie lumbered
through the door into the kitchen. "As I was saying," continued Nanny
to her new mistress, "he's put in most nigh all his time down to that
there smoke house day and night--ever since his aunt, Miss Eudosia,
died. Yes, an' before that, while Colonel 'Kill, his grandfather, was
still alive. He's got sleeping rooms and everything in the upstairs.
He often don't come here even to meals for weeks. Mazie or Jimmie carry
'em to him."
Courtney nodded. "A regular hermit. It was the merest chance that we
happened to meet."
"You was the first young woman he'd laid an eye on in a long time."
Nanny's tone was colorless. Only a very stupid woman puts both barb and
poison on a shaft when either is enough. Courtney, who understood and
felt remorseful about the old woman's jealous anger, answered with
good-humored gentleness: "I guess that _was_ why I got him. But he'll
not be a hermit any more."
"He's begun already," said Nanny.
"We mustn't allow it," replied Courtney, not quite so good-humoredly.
The old woman's steady bearing down was having its effect.
"There's no goin' agin nature. The Vaughan men ain't ever bothered much
about women. They don't let foolishness detain 'em long. And this
one's his gran'paw over agin. When he gits at his work, he's like a dog
after a rabbit."
"It seems a little chilly and damp in here," said Courtney. "Do help me
open the windows. I love sun and air."
"Miss Eudosia--" began Nanny, and checked herself with a considerable
shortening of the distance between chin and end of nose.
Courtney understood what that beginning meant. But she ignored. "And,"
she went on, busying herself with curtains and fastenings, "we'll move
the table in front of this big window. I like breakfast near the window
in summer, near the fire in winter."
Nanny lowered upon the small straight young figure, so bright and
graceful. "Miss Eudosia--" she began fiercely. Again she checked
herself, but it was to say with bitterness, "But then she's dead--and
forgot."
"No, indeed!" protested Courtney. "You'd have thought she'd gone only a
few months ago instead of four years if you'd heard Richard talking
about her yesterday. And I'm sure she'd have done what I'm suggesting if
she'd happened to think of it." Then with a look that might have
softened any but a woman resolved to hate another woman: "Do try to
humor me in little things, Nanny. I'll be very meek about things that
do matter. I've had no experience in keeping house. You'll teach me,
won't you?"
Nanny stood inflexible, her wrinkled hands folded tightly at the waist
line of her black alpaca. She could not help Courtney displace that
table from its ancient site. It was as if this frivolous, whistling,
useless chit of an ornamental wife were violating the sacred Eudosia's
coffin--the graves of all the Vaughans--for traditions are graves, and
Nanny, like all who live by tradition, lived among graves. After a time
Courtney, more nervous under those angry eyes than she showed, got the
table at the open window. The room was livable now, and after she had
rearranged the dishes the table looked invitingly human. But her
buoyant young enthusiasm had oozed away. With wistful gaze out over
prim lawns and flower beds, stiff and staid as Sunday, she said: "I
guess I'll bring Richard to breakfast."
"He et before he went."
"Oh!" Courtney's tone showed that she was hurt. But she instantly
brightened. "I'll get him to come and sit with me while I have
breakfast."
A covert sneering smile in the depths of Nanny's eyes made her flush
angrily. "If I was you I wouldn't interrupt him," said the old woman.
"He don't allow it."
"How absurd!" cried Courtney. But straightway she was amazed and
shocked at herself--on this her first morning in the new and beautiful
life, to be drawn nearer a vulgar squabble than in all her nineteen
years--and with an old woman toward whom it would be cowardice not to be
forbearing. "I'm cross because I'm hungry," she said contritely.
"While breakfast's coming I'll run down for him."
"He's set in his ways," said Nanny.
"He'll not mind me--this once." And she took up her train and went by
the long French window to the broad veranda with its big fluted pillars.
At the end steps she paused. Yes, it was summer in the Vaughan grounds
as elsewhere. But that prodigal wanton had there been caught, had had
her tresses sleeked and bound, her luxuriant figure corseted and clad in
the most repellant classical severity. Courtney, of the eyes keen for
color and form and fitness of things, felt rebuked and subdued once
more. She glanced farther round, saw Nanny's parchment face and
sinister gaze watching and hating her. There is a limit beyond which
youth refuses to be suppressed and compressed, and defiantly expands in
more than its natural gay audacity. This climax of Nanny,
representative of Vaughans not so rigid in death as they had been in
life, was just the necessary little-too-much. With a laugh and a toss
of the head, she swung her skirts very high indeed above her pretty
ankles and ran like a young antelope across the lawn, and into and along
the path leading away toward the eastern part of the grounds. Through a
carefully artificial thicket of lilacs, elders, and snowballs she sped,
then through a small wood with not a spray of underbrush anywhere. She
came out in a clearing at the water's edge. Before her, one of its
walls rising sheer from the retaining wall of the lake, stood the
laboratory.
She paused astonished. She had expected a temporary sort of structure.
Before her rose a fitting temple for the mysteries of the "black art."
It was a long two-story building of stone and brick, not visible from
the lake proper because it stood upon the bank of a deep, narrow inlet.
The weather had stained its walls into the semblance of age wherever
they showed through the heavy mantle of bitter-sweet that overspread
even the roof. Around the place hung an air of aloofness and seclusion,
of mystery, that appealed to her young instinct for the romantic. The
brick path divided into two. One went to what was obviously the
entrance to the second-story bachelor suite; the other turned to the
left, rounded the corner of the house, ended at the massive iron door of
the laboratory proper.
This door was wide open. Courtney stood upon the threshold like a
bright bird peering from the sunshine into the entrance to a cave. The
air that came out was heavy with the odors of chemicals, but not sharp
or especially unpleasant. Besides, in high school and college she had
done a good deal at chemistry, enough to be seized of its fascination.
She stood gazing into a big high-ceilinged room, filled with a
bewildering variety of unusual articles--gigantic bottles, cylinders,
vials, jars of glass, of stone, of metal; huge retorts with coils of
pipe, lead and rubber; lamps and balances and mortars; tiers on tiers of
crowded shelves of glass and porcelain and iron; drying ovens,
distilling apparatus, condensers and generators, crushers and
pulverizers, cupels and cupel trays, calorimeters and crucibles and
microscopes; floor all but filled with batteries and engines and
machines of gold and platinum, of aluminum and copper, of brass and
steel and glass and nickel. A thousand articles, in the orderly
confusion that indicates constant use.
She was more and more amazed as she stared and reflected. "He works
with all these things!" thought she, depressed for no clear reason. "I
had no idea--no idea!"
She ventured a step farther. In a twinkling her expression of wonder
and vague pain vanished before a love light that seemed to stream not
from her face only, but from her whole body, with those rare eyes of
hers as radiating centers. She was seeing Richard--near a window, so
standing that his long high-bred face was in profile to her. He was
tall, well above six feet; his careless flannels revealed the strong,
slender, narrow form of the pioneers and their pure-blooded descendants.
His fairish hair was thick and wavy--"Thank Heaven, not curly!" thought
Courtney.
She did not interrupt. She preferred to watch him, to let her glance
caress him, all unconscious of her presence. In one hand he was
balancing a huge bottle; the other held a long test tube. He was slowly
dropping the bottle's contents of quiet colorless liquid into the test
tube, which was half full of a liquid, also quiet and colorless. Each
drop as it touched the surface of the liquid dissolved into black steam.
It was this steam that gave off the pungent odor. As she watched, there
came a slow tightening at her throat, at her heart.
"I never saw him look like this," thought she. No, it wasn't his
serious intentness; one of the things she had first noted about him, and
best loved, was the seriousness of his deep-set dark gray eyes--the look
of the man who "amounts to something," and would prove it before he got
through. No, it was the _kind_ of seriousness. She felt she was seeing
a Richard Vaughan she did not know at all. "But, then," she reflected,
"there's a side of me he doesn't know about either." This, however, did
not satisfy her. The man she was now seeing disquietingly suggested that
the Richard Vaughan she had been knowing and loving and had been loved
by was not the real man at all, but only one of his moods. "I thought
he just amused himself with chemistry. Instead-- Nanny is about
right." A pang shot through her; she would have recognized it as
jealousy, had she stopped to think. But at nineteen one does not stop
to think. "I do believe he cares almost as much for this as he does for
me."
He lowered the bottle to the table. As he straightened up, he caught
sight of her. His expression changed; but the change was not nearly
enough either in degree or in kind to satisfy her. "Hello!" cried he
carelessly. "Good morning."
She got ready to be kissed. But, instead of coming toward her, he half
turned away, to hold the test tube up between his eyes and the light.
"Um--mm," he grumbled, shaking it again and again, and each time looking
disappointedly at the unchanged liquid.
Like all American girls of the classes that shelter their women, she had
been brought up to accept as genuine the pretense of superhuman respect
and deference the American man--usually in all honesty--affects toward
woman--until he marries her, or for whatever reason becomes tired and
truthful. She had been confirmed in these ideas of man as woman's
incessant courtier, almost servant, by receiving for the last five
lively years the admiration, exaggerated and ardent, which physical
charm, so long as it is potent, exacts from the male. No more than
other women of her age--or than older women--or than the men had she
penetrated the deceptive surface of things and discovered beneath
"chivalry's" smug meaningless professions the reality, the forbearance
of "strength" with "weakness," the graciousness of superior for
inferior. Thus, such treatment as this of Dick's would have been
humiliating from a casual man, on a casual occasion. From her husband,
her lover, the man she had just been garlanding with all the fairest
flowers of her ardent young heart--from him, and on this "first"
morning, this unconcern, which Nanny's talk enabled her to understand,
was worse than stab into feminine vanity; it was stab straight into her
inmost self, the seat of her life.
She dared not admit the wound--not to her own secret thought. Bravely
she struggled until her voice and manner were under control. "I've come
to take you to breakfast," said she. It seemed to her that her tone was
gratifying evidence of triumph of strength of character over "silly
supersensitiveness--as if Dick could mean to hurt _me_!"
"Breakfast," repeated he. His gaze was discontentedly upon the bottle
whose contents had acted disappointingly. "Breakfast-- Oh, yes-- Don't
wait on me. I had coffee before I came down here. I'll be along in a
few minutes." He took up the bottle again, resumed the cautious
pouring.
The tears sprang to her eyes; her lip quivered. But sweet
reasonableness conquered again, and she perched on a high stool near the
door. She gazed round, tried to interest herself in the certainly
extraordinary exhibits on floor and tables and shelves. She recalled
the uses of the instruments she recognized, tried to guess the uses of
those that were new to her. But her mind refused to wander from the one
object that really interested her in that room. Perhaps ten minutes
passed, she watching him, he watching the unchanged liquid in the test
tube.
She had been born in her father's and mother's prime. She had been
taught to use her brain. Thus, underneath the romantic and idealizing
upper strata of her character there was the bedrock of good common
sense, to resist and to survive any and all shocks. As she sat watching
her engrossed husband her love, her fairness, and her good sense pleaded
for him, or, rather, protested against her sensitiveness. What a dear
he was! And how natural that he should be absorbed in these
experiments, after having been away so long. What right had she to
demand that his mood should be the same as hers? What a silly child she
had shown herself, expecting him to continue to act as if love making
were the whole of life. If he were to be, and to do exactly as she
wished, would she not soon grow sick of him, as of the other men, who
had thought to win her by inviting her to walk on them? Her eyes were
sweet and tender when Dick, happening to glance seeingly in her
direction, saw her ensconced, chin on hand, elbow on knee. "Hello,"
said he half absently. "Good morning."
There was no room for doubt; he had completely forgotten her. As her
skin was not white, but of delicate pale yet rosy bronze, it did not
readily betray change of emotion. But such a shock had he given her
sensitive young heart, in just the mood of love and longing to be most
easily bruised, that even his abstraction was penetrated. He set the
bottle down. "Didn't I speak to you--" he began, and then remembered.
"I beg your pardon," he said, contrite and amused.
Pride always hides a real wound. She smiled. "I'm waiting to take you
to breakfast," she said.
He looked uncertainly at the bottle and the tube.
A wave of remorse for her thoughts swept over her. "Also," she went on,
and she was radiant again, "I'm waiting to be kissed."
He laughed, gazed lovingly at her. "What a beauty she is, this
morning," he cried. "Like the flowers--the roses--the finest rose that
every grew--in a dream of roses."
Her eyes at once showed that his negligence was forgotten. Their lips
met in a lingering kiss. He drew away, threw back his head, gazed at
her. "Was there ever woman so lovely and fresh and pure?" he said.
With impulsive daring she overcame her virginal shyness, flung her arms
round his neck, and kissed him. "I love you," she murmured, blushing.
"When I woke up and found you gone--it was dreadfully lonely." She had
dropped into the somewhat babyish manner natural to any affectionate
nature in certain moods and circumstances. It seemed especially natural
to her, on account of her size and her exuberant gayety; and she had
been assuming it with him in all its charming variations from the
beginning of their engagement because it was the manner that pleased him
best. "Next time, you'll wake me and take me along--won't you?"
He patted her. "Bless the baby! A lot of work I'd do."
"I'm going to help you. I can soon learn."
He shook his head in smiling negative. "You're going to be the dearest,
sweetest wife a man ever had," said he. "And always your womanly self."
"But," she persisted with an effort, "I can help. I'm sure I can."
There was no trace of the "baby" in her expression now; on the contrary,
her face and her voice were those of an extremely intelligent young
woman, serious without the dreary, posed solemnity that passes current
for seriousness, but is mere humorless asininity. "I really know
something about chemistry," she went on. "I liked it, and took the
courses both at high school and at college. Last winter I won a prize
for original work." His smile made her color. "I don't say that," she
hastened to explain, "because I think I'm a wonderful chemist, but just
to prove to you that I do know a little something--enough to be able to
help in a humble sort of way."
His expression was still that of grown people when laughing at the
antics of children, and concealing amusement behind a thin pretense of
grave admiration. "Yes, I've no doubt you're clever at it," said he.
"But a refined woman oughtn't to try to do the man sort of thing."
"But, dear, I'm not so superfine as you seem to think--and not
altogether foolish." She glanced round the laboratory. "You don't know
how at home I feel here. What a wonderful, beautiful equipment you
have! Everything of the best--and so well taken care of! Dick, I want
to be your--wife. As I watched you I realized I've got to fit myself
for it. That is--of course, I always knew I'd have to do that--but now
I know just what I must do."
"What a serious child it is!" he cried, pinching her cheek. It was
delightful, this baby playing at "grown-up."
She laughed because she loved him and loved laughter; but she persisted.
"Being wife to a man means a great deal more than looking pretty and
making love."
"That's very dear and sweet," said he, in the same petting, patronizing
way. "I'm content with you as you are. I don't want anything more."
And he set about putting things away and locking up.
Quiet on her high stool, she struggled against a feeling of resentment,
of depression. Her instinct was, as always, to hide her hurt; but it
seemed to her that if she did, it would not get well, would get worse.
"Dick," she began at last.
"Yes?" said he absently. "Come along, dear." And he lifted her down
with a kiss.
She went out, waited for him while he locked the door. "Dick," she began
again, as they walked along the path, "I don't want to be shut out of
any part of your life, least of all out of the realest part. I want to
be truly your wife."
No answer. She glanced up at him; obviously his thoughts were far away.
She slipped her arms through his. "Tell me what you're thinking about,
dear."
"About that test I was making."
"What was it?"
"Oh, nothing. Is the house satisfactory? How do you like old Nanny?"
As she did not answer, he looked down at her. "Why, what's the matter
with my little sweetheart? Such a discontented expression!"
"Nothing--nothing at all," replied she, forcing a smile and steadying
her quivering lip.
"I'm afraid those two days on the train----"
"Yes," she interrupted eagerly. "And I guess I'm hungry, too. _That's_
very upsetting."
With a little forcing she kept up the semblance of good spirits through
breakfast and until he was off to the laboratory again. Then she gave
way to her mood--for it could be only a mood. With old Nanny as guide,
she went through the house, through all its spacious solidly and stiffly
furnished rooms. At every step Nanny had something to say of Miss
Eudosia--how good Miss Eudosia had been, how Miss Eudosia kept
everything as her mother had it before her, how particular Miss Eudosia
had been. And when it wasn't Miss Eudosia it was Colonel 'Kill--that
splendid-looking, terrible-looking old Achilles Vaughan; as a child she
had decided that the awful god the family worshiped must look like
Achilles Vaughan. Nanny talked on and on; Courtney's spirits went down
and down. In one respect the house should have appealed to her--in its
perfect order. For she had inherited from her mother a passion for
order--an instinct that would have a neatly kept ribbon box almost as
soon as she could talk, and had prompted her, long before she could talk
distinctly, to cry if they tried to put on her a dress the least bit
mussed or a stocking with a hole in it. But there is the order that is
of life, and there is the order that is of death. This Vaughan order
seemed to her to be of death. She felt surrounded, hemmed in, menaced
by a throng of the Vaughan women of past generations--those women of the
old-fashioned kind, thoughtless, mindless, cool, and correct and
inane--the kind of women the Vaughan men liked--the kind Richard
liked--"No--no. He does _not_ like that kind!"
Assisted by Nanny and Mazie, she unpacked the trunks into drawers and
closets. When the last box was empty, Jimmie took them down to the
cellar. She was established--was at home. She and Dick were to have
the same bedroom; he would use the big spare bedroom directly across the
hall and its bath for dressing. It was all most convenient, most
comfortable. But she could not get interested, could not banish the
feeling that she would soon be flitting, that she was stranger, intruder
here. And the last sweet days of the honeymoon kept recurring in
pictured glimpses of their happiness of various kinds, all centering
about love. How tender he had been, how absorbed in their romance--that
wonderful romance which began ideally in a chance meeting and love at
first sight. And now, just as she was getting over her deep-down
shyness with him, was feeling the beginnings of the courage to be wholly
her natural self, to show him her inmost thoughts, o release the
tenderness, the demonstrativeness that had been pent up in her all her
life--just as the climax of happiness was at hand--here was this shadow,
this relegating her to the chill isolation and self-suppression and
self-concealment of a pedestaled Vaughan wife. "He acts as if a woman
were not like a man--as if I had no sense because I'm not tall, and
don't go about in a frown and spectacles." And it depressed her still
further to recall that his attitude had been the same throughout
courtship and honeymoon--treating her as a baby, a pet, something to
protect and shield, something of which nothing but lover's small talk
was expected. She had liked it then; it seemed to fit in with the
holiday spirit. "I gave him a false impression. It's my fault." To
pretend to be infantile for purposes of a holiday of love-making is one
thing; to have one's pretense taken as an actual and permanent
reality--that was vastly different, and wearisome, and humiliating, and
not to be permitted. "But," she reflected, "it's altogether my fault.
And the thing for me to do is not to talk about it to him, but just
quietly to go to work and make myself his wife--fit myself for it." A
wonderful man she thought him; and it thrilled her, this high and loving
ambition to be worthy of him, and not mere pendant and parasite as so
many wives were content to be.
They were to go the scant half mile across the lake in the motor boat at
noon and lunch at her old home. She was ready a few minutes before
time, and started toward the Smoke House. Halfway she stopped and
turned back. No, she could not interrupt him there again. His manner,
unconscious, more impressive than any deliberate look or word, made her
feel that the Smoke House was set in an enchanted wood which she could
not penetrate until She smiled tenderly.
At half past twelve he came on the run. "Why didn't you telephone?"
exclaimed he. "We'll be scandalously late. I'm so sorry. When I get
to work down there I forget everything. I even forgot I was married."
She busied herself with the buttons of her glove, and the brim of her
hat hid her face. And such a few hours ago he and she were all in all
to each other!
"Do you forgive me?"
She thought she was forgiving him; the hurt would soon pass. So she
gave him a look that passed muster with his unobservant eyes. "Don't
worry. We'll soon be there."
They got under way, he at the motor, she watching his back. On impulse
she moved nearer. "Dick," she said. "Don't turn round. I want to say
something to you that's very hard to say.... I feel I ought to warn
you. At college the girls called it one of my worst traits. When anyone
I care for hurts me, I don't say anything--I even hide it. And they
don't realize--and keep on hurting--until-- Oh, I've lost several
friends that way. For--the time comes-- I don't let on, and it gets to
be too late--and I don't care any more."
"You mean about my keeping you waiting?"
"No--not that--not that alone. Not any one thing. Not anything at all
yet--but a kind of a shadow. Just--you've made me feel as if I weren't
to be part of you--of your life. No, I don't say it right. I've felt
as if I were to be part of you, but that you weren't to be part of me."
He began to laugh, believing that the proper way to dispel a mood so
unreal. But glancing at her he saw she was shrinking and literally
quivering with pain. His face sobered. He reminded himself that women
could not be dealt with on a basis of reason and sense, since they had
those qualities only in rudimentary form. As his hands were occupied,
he was puzzled how to treat this his first experience with feminine
sweet unreasonableness in her. All he could do toward pacifying was to
say soothingly, as to a sensitive child: "I understand, sweetheart. I
must be very--very careful."
"Not at all!" she cried, ready to weep with vexation at her complete
failure to make him understand. "I'm not a silly, sensitive thing,
always trailing my feelings for some one to step on."
"No, dearest--of course not," said he in the same tone as before. "If
there weren't so many sail boats about, I'd show you how penitent I am."
"But I don't want you to be penitent."
"Then what do you want?"
"I want you to--I want us to be comrades."
"What a child it is! You girls are brought up to play all the time.
But you can't expect a man to be like that. Of course we'll play
together. I'd not have wanted to marry you if I hadn't needed you."
"But what am _I_ to do when you can't play?" she asked. "And I'm afraid
you won't play very often. That is, I know you won't--and I'm glad you
won't--for I'd not care as I do if you were that kind. I didn't realize
until this morning. But I do realize now, and--Dick, you don't think of
me as just to play with?"
Facing her earnestness, he would not have dared confess the truth. "No,
indeed!" said he. "Your head's full of notions to-day. You're not at
all like your sweet loving self."
She felt instantly altogether in the wrong. "It's the strangeness, I
guess," she said penitently.
"That's it, exactly. But in a few days you'll be all right--and as
happy as a bird on a bough."
As they were about to land she mustered all her courage, and with
heightened color said: "You'll let me come down and try to help, won't
you? I'll promise not to be in the way--not for a minute. And if I am,
I'll never come again. I can at least wash out test tubes and bring you
things you need."
"Oh, if you really want to come," began he, with good-humored tolerance.
"Thank you--thank you," she interrupted, eager and radiant.
"Not right away," he hastened to add. "Just at present I'm clearing
things up."
"I understand. You'll tell me when the time comes."
"Yes, I'll tell you."
*II*
In late July, after he had not appeared either at dinner or at supper
for four days, she said to him, "You're becoming a stranger."
The idea of reproaching him was not in her mind. She had been most
respectful of what she compelled herself to regard as his rights, had
been most careful not to intrude or interrupt or in any way annoy. The
remark was simply an embarrassed attempt to open conversation--not an
easy matter with a man so absorbed and silent as he had become. But he
was feeling rather guilty; also, he had not recovered from the failure
of an elaborate experiment from which he had expected great things in
advancing him toward his ultimate goal--the discovery of a cheap,
universal substitute for all known fuels. "You know, my dear," said he,
"in the sort of work I'm trying to do a man can't control his hours."
"I know," she hastened to apologize, feeling offense in his tone, and
instantly accusing herself of lack of tact. "I'm too anxious for you to
succeed to want you ever to think I'm expecting you. I've been busy
myself--and a lot of people have been calling."
This, though bravely said, somehow did not lessen his sense of guilt.
"You're not lonely, are you?" he asked gently. And he gave her a
searching, self-reproachful look.
"No, indeed!" laughed she. "I'm not one of the kind that get hysterical
if they're left alone for a few minutes." Her tone and expression were
calculated to reassure, and they did reassure.
"Really, you ought to have married a fellow who was fond of society and
had time for it. I know how you love dancing and all that." This, with
arms about her and an expression which suggested how dreary life would
have been if she had married that more suitable other fellow.
"I used to like those things," said she. "But I found they were all
simply makeshifts, to pass the time until you came."
"We _are_ happy--aren't we?"
"And just think!" she cried. "How happy we'll be when our real life
begins."
"Yes," said he vaguely.
He looked confused and puzzled, but she was too intent upon her dream to
note it. "When do you think you'll get time to teach me the ropes?"
asked she.
After a little groping he understood. He had forgotten all about that
fantastic plan of hers to potter at the laboratory. And she had been
serious--had been waiting for him to ask her down! A glance at her face
warned him that she was far too much in earnest to be laughed at. "Oh, I
don't know exactly when," said he. "Probably not for some time. Don't
bother about it."
"Of course, I'll not bother you about it," replied she. "But naturally I
can't help thinking. It won't be long?"
He detested liars and lies. Yet, looking on her as a sort of child--and
it's no harm to humor a child--he said, "I hope not."
He blushed as he said it, though his conscience was assuring him there
was absolutely nothing wrong in this kind of playful deception with
woman the whimsical, the irrational. "Certainly not," thought he.
"She'll soon forget all about it. I don't see how she happened to
remember so long as this." Still, it was not pleasant to tell even the
whitest of white lies, facing eyes so earnest and so trusting as were
hers just then. He changed the subject--inquired who had been calling.
She did not return to it. She was content; his long hours and his
complete absorption were proof of his eagerness to hasten the day when
they should be together. "Of course," thought she, "he likes what he's
doing--likes it for itself. But _the_ reason is 'us.'" And some day
soon he would surprise her--and they would begin to lead the life of
true lovers--the life she had dreamed and planned as a girl--the life
she had begun to realize during courtship and honeymoon--the life of
which, even in these days of aloneness and waiting, she had occasional
foretastes when overpowering impulse for a "lighter hour" brought him
back to her for a little while.
She had been puzzled when in those hours he sometimes called her
"temptress." The word was tenderly spoken, but she felt an accent of
what was somehow suggestion of reproach--and of rebuke. Now she thought
she understood. He meant she stimulated in him the same deep longings
that incessantly possessed her; and when those longings were stimulated,
it was hard for him to keep his mind on the work he was hastening with
all his energy--the work that must be done before their happiness could
begin. "I must be careful not to tempt him," thought she.
From this she went on to feel she understood another matter that had
puzzled her, had at times disquieted her. She had noticed that his moods
of caressing tenderness, of longing for the outward evidences of love
seemed to be satisfied, and to cease just when her own delight in them
was swelling to its fullness. Why should what roused her quiet him?
This had been the puzzle; now she felt she had solved it: He had greater
self-control than she; he would not let his feelings master him, when
they would certainly interfere with the work that must be done to clear
their way of the last obstacles to perfect happiness; so he withdrew
into himself and fought down the longings for more and ever more love
that were no doubt as strong in him as in her.
Thus she, in her faith and her inexperience, reasoned it all out to her
satisfaction and to his glory. She had not the faintest notion of the
abysmal difference between her idea of love and his. With her the
caresses had their chief value as symbols--as the only means by which
the love within could convey news of its existence. With Dick, the
caresses were not symbols at all, not means to an end, but the end in
themselves. Of love such as she dreamed and expected he knew nothing;
for it he felt no more need than the usual busy, ambitious man. His
work, his struggle to wrest from nature close-guarded secrets, filled
his mind and his heart.
He soon assumed she had forgotten her fantastic whim, and forgot it
himself. She often wished he would talk to her about his work, would
not be quite so discouraging when she timidly tried to talk with him
about it. And in spite of herself she could not but be uneasy at times
over his growing silence, his habitual absentmindedness. But she
accepted it all, as loving inexperience will accept anything and
everything--until the shock of disillusion comes. So stupefying is
habit, there were times when her dream became vague, when she drifted
along, leading, as if it were to be permanent, the ordinary life of the
modern married woman whose husband is a busy man. She was learning a
great deal about that life from her young married friends of the
neighborhood and of Wenona. Many of them--in fact, most of them--were
husbanded much like herself. But they were restless, unhappy, and for
the best of reasons--because they had no aim, no future. She pitied
them profoundly, felt more and more grateful for her own happier lot.
For she--Dick's wife--had a future, bright and beautiful. Surely it
could not be much longer before he would have the way clear for the life
in common, the life together!
She fell to talking, in a less light vein than she usually permitted
herself with him, about these friends of hers to him one evening as they
walked up and down the veranda after supper. She described with some
humor, but an underlying seriousness, their lives--their amusing, but
also pitiful, efforts to kill time--their steady decline toward inanity.
"I don't see what they married for," said she. "They really care
nothing about their husbands--or their husbands about them. The men
seem to be contented. But the women aren't, though they pretend to
be--_pretend_ to their _husbands_! Isn't it all sad and horrible?"
"Indeed it is," he replied. He had been only half listening, but had
caught the drift of what she was saying. "It's hard to believe decent
women can be like that."
"And the men--they're worse," said she; "for they're satisfied."
"Why shouldn't they be?" said Dick. "They don't know what kind of wives
they've got."
"I--I don't think you quite understood me."
"Oh, yes; you said the wives were dissatisfied. They've got good homes
and contented husbands. What right have they to be dissatisfied? What
more do they want?"
"What we've got," said she tenderly. "Love."
"But they've got love. Didn't you say their husbands were contented?
When a man's contented it means that he loves his wife. And a good
woman always loves her husband."
She laughed. He often amused her with his funny old-style notions about
women. "You can't understand people who live and feel as they do,
dear," said she. "Of course, you and I seem to be living much like them
just now. But you know we'd never be contented if we had to go on and
on this way."
With not a recollection of the "whim," he stopped short in astonishment.
"What way?" he asked. "Aren't we happy?"
She smiled radiantly up at him in the clear, gentle evening light. "But
not so happy as we shall be, when you get things straightened out and
take me into partnership."
"Partnership?" he demanded blankly. "What do you mean?"
"I call it partnership. I suppose you'd call it working for you. I
suppose I shall be pretty poor at first. But I'll surprise you before
I've been down there many weeks. I've been brushing up my chemistry, as
well as I could, with only books."
It came to him what she was talking about--and it overwhelmed him with
confusion. "Yes--certainly. I--I supposed you'd forgotten."
She gazed at him in dismay. "Forgotten!" Then she brightened. "Oh,
you're teasing me."
He began to be irritated. "You mustn't fret me about that," he said.
"I didn't even mean to speak of it," she protested, her supersensitive
dread of intrusion alert. "I know you're doing the best you can. But I
couldn't help dreaming of the time when I'll have you back again....
Now, don't look so distressed! Meanwhile, we'll have what we can. And
that's something--isn't it?"
What queer, irrational creatures women were! To persist in a foolish,
fanciful notion such as this! Why couldn't she play at keeping house
and enjoy herself as it was intended women should? A woman's trying to
do anything serious, a woman's thinking--it was like a parrot's
talking--an imitation, and not a good one. But the "whim" and his
"harmless deception" became the same sort of irritation in his
conscience that a grain of dust is on the eyeball. He was forced to
debate whether he should not make a slight concession. After all, where
would be the harm in letting her come to the laboratory? She'd soon get
enough. Yes, that would be the wise course. Humor a woman or a child
in an innocent folly, and you effect a cure. Yes--if she brought the
matter up again, and no other way out suggested, he would let her come.
It amused him to think of her, delicate as a flower, made for the
hothouse, for protection and guidance and the most careful sheltering,
trying to adapt herself to serious work calling for thought and
concentration. "But she'd be a nuisance after a day or so. A man's
sense of humor--even his love--soon wears thin when his work's
interfered with." Still, she'd be glad enough to quit, probably after a
single morning of the kind of thing he'd give her to discourage her.
"Really, all a woman wants is the feeling she's having her own way."
This decision laid the ghost. As she said no more, the whole thing
passed to the dark recesses of his memory. One evening in late
September, when he was taking a walk alone on the veranda, she came out
and joined him. After a few silent turns she said, "Let's sit on the
steps." She made him sit a step lower than she, which brought their
eyes upon a level. The moon was shining full upon them. The expression
of her face, as she looked intently at him, was such that he
instinctively said, "What is it, dear?" and reached for her hand.
He had given the subject of children--the possibilities,
probabilities--about as little thought as a young married man well
could. There are some women who instantly and always suggest to men the
idea motherhood; there are others, and Courtney was of them, in
connection with whom the idea baby seems remote, even incongruous. But
as she continued to look steadily at him, without speaking, his mind
began to grope about, and somehow soon laid hold of this idea. His
expression must have told her that he understood, for she nodded slowly.
"Do you mean--" he began in an awe-stricken voice, but did not finish.
"Yes. I've suspected for some time. To-day the doctor told me it was
so."
Her hand nestled more closely into his, and he held it more tightly. A
great awe filled him. It seemed very still and vast, this moonlight
night. He gazed out over the lake. He could not speak. She continued
to look at him. Presently she began in a low, quiet voice, full of the
melody of those soft, deep notes that were so strange and thrilling,
coming from such slim, delicate smallness of body and of face: "I can't
remember the time when I wasn't longing for a baby. When I was still a
baby myself I used to ask the most embarrassing questions--and they
couldn't stop me-- When could I have a baby? How soon? How many? And
when I finally learned that I mustn't talk about it, I only thought the
more. I never rested till I found out all about it. I came very near
marrying the first man that asked me because----"
He was looking at her with strong disapproval.
She smiled tenderly. "I know you hate for me to be frank and natural,"
she said with the gentlest raillery. "But, please, let me--just this
once. I must tell you exactly what's in my head--my foolish, feminine
head, as your grandfather would have said."
"Go on, dear. But you couldn't convince me you weren't always innocent
and pure minded."
"You--a chemist--a scientist, talking about knowledge being wicked! But
I'll not discuss those things with you. I never have and I never shall."
She drew closer to him, put one arm round his neck. "Now do listen,
dear," she went on. "Then--you came into my life. It's very queer--I
don't understand why--at least not clearly--but from the moment I loved
you I never thought of baby again--except to think I didn't want one."
"My dear!" he exclaimed. He drew away to look at her. "Courtney!
That's very unnatural. You're quite mistaken."
As she did not know men, it seemed to her a unique and profoundly
mysterious case, this of him so broad-minded, scandalously broadminded
most Wenona people thought, yet in the one direction a puritan of
puritans. With a wisdom deeper than she realized she said smilingly:
"Dear--_dear_ Dick! I guess the reason you men think women irrational
is because you're irrational on the subject of women yourselves. To a
crazy person the whole world seems crazy."
He did not respond to her pleasantry. She sighed, drew his arm round
her, went on: "Well--anyhow, it's true. And, do you know, I think that
whenever a woman really loves a man, cares for just him, she doesn't
want a baby."
"You're quite mistaken," he assured her gravely. "It's natural for a
woman to want children. _You_ want them."
"Do _you_?"
"I? I've never given it much thought."
"I did hope you'd say no," said she, half in jest. "Now honestly,
doesn't it seem reasonable that when two people love each other they
shouldn't want any--any intruder?"
He looked at her with more than a trace of severity in his expression.
"Where did you get these unnatural ideas? I don't like you to say such
things even in joke. They're most unwomanly."
She felt rebuked and showed it, but persisted, "You must admit it'll
interfere."
"Interfere with what?"
"With the life we've been looking forward to--with my helping you."
"Oh--yes--" he stammered. Again that exasperating ghost! What
possessed her to persist in such nonsense?
"You know it would interfere--would put off our happiness for a year or
two. A year or two! Oh, Dick!"
When she had the child, thought he, the ghost would be laid forever.
"Well--we'll do the best we can," he said. His tone and manner of
regret were as sincere as ever mother used in assuring her child of the
reality of Santa Claus. And Courtney believed and was reconciled.
"I do want the baby," she now admitted. "But I want you--love--more,
oh, so much more. I'm glad your life work is something I naturally care
about. Still, I suppose, when a woman loves a man, she cares about
whatever he is and does, and fits herself to be part of it."
He smiled with patronizing tenderness, as he often did, always evidently
quite sure she'd not understand. If we could but realize it, how our
mismeasurements of others would enable us to study as in a mirror our
own limitations! "Wait till you have the baby," said he.
"Do you think that with me love for a baby could ever take the place of
need for love--grown-up love? You're always making me feel as if you
didn't know me at all, Dick."
He laughed and kissed her. "You don't know yourself. Wait till you have
a baby, and you'll be content to be just a woman."
"But I'm content to be that now."
"Well--let's not argue."
*III*
Except courtship and honeymoon never had she been so happy as in the
last two months before the baby came. "Every-one is spoiling me," she
said, dazzled by the revelations of thoughtfulness and affection. Her
friends, her acquaintances, showered attentions upon her. Even her
mother, austere and cold, unbent. Her father, the shy, the silent,
betrayed where she had got her silent, shy, intense longing for love.
The two sour old-maid sisters were all tenderness and chaste excitement.
As for Dick, he actually neglected his career. Again and again he would
stop in the midst of an experiment to dash up to the house and inquire
what he could do for her--this when there was a private telephone at his
elbow.
She was intelligent about diet and exercise; so she suffered hardly at
all. As for the baby, he came into the world positively shrieking with
health. Finally, she had none of the petty vanity that leads many a
first-time mother into fancying and acting as if maternity were a unique
achievement, original with herself. Thus the agitation quickly died
away, and life resumed its former course, except that she had a baby to
take care of. At first it was great fun. Dick helped her, forgot his
chemistry, seemed in the way to become a father of unprecedented
devotion. But this did not last long. He loved playthings and played
with them; but the call of his career was the strong force in his life,
and he went back to the laboratory. She might have given the baby over
to a nurse, as all the other women were doing. But it seemed to her
that, as she was responsible for the coming of this frisky helplessness,
she could not do less than guard him until he was able to look out for
himself. "When he can talk and tell me exactly how's he treated when
I'm not around," said she, "why, perhaps I'll trust him to a nurse--if
he needs one. But until then I'll be nurse myself."
Many and many a time in the next eighteen months she wished she had not
committed herself openly and positively. She loved her baby as much as
any mother could--and a good-humored lovable baby he was, fat and
handsome, and showing signs of being well bred while still a speechless
animal. But, except in romances and make-believe life, the deepest love
wearies of sacrifices, though it gladly makes them. This baby--Benedict
they named him, but he changed it to Winchie as soon as he could--this
baby made a slave of her. She understood why so many women retrograde
after the birth of the first child. The temptation to go to seed is
powerful enough in the most favorable circumstances, once a woman has
caught a husband and secured a living for life. A baby, she soon saw,
made that temptation tenfold stronger. She wondered what it was in her
that compelled her to fight unyieldingly against being demoralized.
Dick was deep in a series of experiments that forbade him a thought for
anything else. He did occasionally spend a few moments in mechanical
dalliance with his two playthings; but that interrupted his thoughts
little if at all. By the slow, unnoted day-to-day action that plays the
only really important part in human intimacies of all kinds, she had
grown too shy and strange with him to ask his help or even to think of
expecting it. She did not judge him--at least, not consciously. She
assumed he was doing the best he could, the best anyone could, the best
possible. To have complained, even in thought, would have seemed to her
as futile as railing against any fundamental of life--against being
unable to fly instead of walk. She made occupation for herself, as will
presently appear. But, after all, it was Winchie who saved her. But
for him she, with no taste for "chasing about," would have withdrawn
within herself, would have become silent, cold, ever more and more like
her mother, with barren cynicism in place of Mrs. Benedict's equally
barren religiosity. Winchie's spirits of overflowing health, his
newcomer's delight in life were infectious and stimulating. In keeping
him in perfect health--outdoors, winter and summer, and always active,
she made her own health so perfect that the cheerful and hopeful side of
things was rarely so much as obscured.
One evening after supper Richard, moved by the intermittent impulse to
amuse himself, sought her in her sitting room, where she was reading.
She always sat there in the evenings because she could hear Winchie if
he became restless. He never did, but that fact no more freed her to go
off duty than the absence of burglars the policeman. Dick gave her the
kind of kiss that was always his signal for a "lighter hour." She
merely glanced up, gave him the smile that is a matrimonial convention
like "my dear," and went on with her book. Theretofore, whenever he had
shown the least desire to take an hour off from that career of his, she
had instantly responded. She assumed this readiness meant love; in
fact, love had no part in it. She responded for two reasons, both
unsuspected by her: because she did not know him well enough to have
moods with him and to show them, and because refusal would have been
admission of the truth of indifference to him which she had not yet
discovered. That evening, for the first time, she did not respond. It
was unconscious on her part, unnoted by him; yet it was the most
significant event in their married life since the wedding ceremony two
years and a half before.
He stood behind her and began gliding his fingers over the soft down at
the nape of her neck. It has become second nature to women to repress
their active emotions, no matter how strong, and to wait upon the
man--an evidence of inferior status that is crudely but sufficiently
disguised as "womanly delicacy and reserve." In response to the signal
of those caressing fingers Courtney mechanically put up her hand and
patted his. Her gesture was genuinely affectionate--but there had been
a time when it would not have been mechanical. She did not lift her
eyes from the page.
"Is that a good love story?" asked he. "As good as ours?"
A tender little smile of half absent appreciation played round her lips.
But--her glance remained upon her reading. "It isn't a novel," replied
she. "It's a treatise."
"A treatise?" mocked he. "Gracious me! What a wise fairy it is! Put
it away, and let's go on the balcony. There'll not be many more sit-out
nights."
He moved to pick her up in his arms. But she smilingly pushed him away.
"I want to finish this chapter," said she.
"All right. I'll go out and smoke. Don't be long."
And he sauntered through the window door. After perhaps a quarter of an
hour she joined him in the hammock. Matrimony is a curious fabric of
set phrases, set thoughts, and set actions. It was their habit, in such
circumstances, for her to snuggle up to him and for him to put his arm
round her. The habit was on this occasion observed. It was her habit
to assume that she was happy--and she now so assumed. He began the
conversation. "I've been watching you as I sat here," said he lazily.
"What are all those books on the table? They look
serious--businesslike."
"Let's not talk about anything serious. You always laugh at me or get
absent-minded."
"But you seemed so absorbed. What was it?"
"Oh, I've been doing a little reading and thinking and studying for the
past year. You see, when a woman takes care of a baby, she's got to
look out or she'll become one herself."
"But you are a baby." And there followed the usual caresses.
"Not a real baby," said she. "We both act like children at times--very
little children. But we'd not care for each other as we do if either of
us were really infantile. It takes a grown person to play baby
attractively."
"Baby," he insisted fondly. He was smiling with the masculinely
patronizing tolerance to which she had grown so used that she never
noted it. He appreciated that she was clever--with the woman sort of
cleverness--bright, witty, sometimes saying remarkably keen things.
But, being a man, he knew that man mind and woman mind are entirely
different--never so different as when woman mind seems to be like man
mind--just as purely instinctive actions of animals seem to display
profound reasoning power. "And what was the baby wrinkling its brow
over, in there? The care and feeding of infants?"
"Dear me, no," replied she with perfect good humor. "I went into that
before Winchie came. You think it's all a joke--my reading and
studying. But the real joke is your thinking so. You must remember I
can't afford to let myself go, as you do."
He had been chiefly absorbed in caresses and caressing thoughts. At
this last remark he laughed. "Now, what does that mean?" he inquired.
"You've given up everything for chemistry. Haven't you noticed that we
can hardly talk to each other--that you can hardly talk to anybody?"
"I never did have much talent for small talk."
"But I didn't mean small talk. You care only for chemistry, know only
chemistry. You never did know or care much about literature or art or
music or any of the worth-while things except just your own specialty.
And you can afford to be that way. It's your career, and also you're
not a woman and a mother."
He had stopped caressing her. "I confess I don't understand," said he
stiffly.
"A man can afford to be narrow--not to know life or the world. But a
mother--if she's the right sort--has to try to know everything. She's
got to bring up children--and how can she hope to teach and train
successfully if she doesn't know?"
"I don't agree with you," said he, a certain curtness in his voice. "A
woman must be pure, innocent, womanly--as you are. Nature didn't make
her to be learned or wise--to think. She has her instincts to keep her
straight, and a father or a husband----"
"Dick--Dick!" she cried, patting him on the cheek. "What an old fogey it
is! You talk like--like an ordinary man. How bored you'd be if you had
that kind of wife--one who couldn't be comrade and companion, and didn't
want to be--one who was merely a mistress."
Vaughan was sitting bolt upright now. "Those books in there--
Courtney, you're not reading impure, upsetting books?"
She laughed delightedly.
"What are those books?" he insisted.
"They're--now, Dickey dear, please don't be shocked--they're on
landscape gardening and interior decoration." She looked up at him
mischievously in the starlight. "Are they womanly enough to suit you?"
"Yes, indeed," said he heartily. "But I might have known you'd not read
anything a good woman oughtn't. I love you as you are--and I'd hate to
see you changed, my spotless little angel."
She submitted to his caresses. And presently, in that brain which he
would have thought it absurd to look into except for the very lightest
kind of amusement, there formed the first really disloyal thought she
had ever permitted to be born. The thought was: "Dick certainly does
take himself terribly seriously. If it weren't Dick, I'd say he was
getting to be a prig." She was instantly shocked at herself, as one
always is at the first impulse to doubt the idol one has set up for
blind worship. She felt there was but one way to prevent the recurrence
of such perilous blasphemy. After a brief silence she said in a
constrained voice: "Dick, I was not a stupid, incurious fool as a girl,
and I went to college, and I'm a wife and a mother. If by innocence you
mean ignorance, I'm anything but innocent."
She saw that he was highly amused.
"Women," she went on earnestly, "always tell each other that before men
it's wise to pretend to be ignorant and too refined to know life, and to
be shocked at everything. They say it pleases men. But I'm sure you're
not that sort of man. Anyhow, I can't be a hypocrite."
"That's right, dear," said he, nodding approvingly, the amused smile
lingering. "Go on with your interior decoration and landscape
gardening. You can't learn too much about them." He was leaning back
again, secure, comfortable, happy, enjoying the sensation of caressing
her.
She gave it up, as she always did when she found herself being ruffled
by that strange antiquated prejudice of his. It would yield in time.
Besides, what did it really matter?--since they loved each other, and
would be happy once their real life got under way. "I'd have taken up
chemistry," she continued, "but one can't go far alone in that, with
only books. And you wouldn't help me. I'm afraid you'll find me very
rusty when I come down to the laboratory next spring."
His lips were open to inquire what she meant, when he was unpleasantly
spared the necessity. Out of a dark recess of memory sprang the
ghost--the "whim." He was astounded, irritated, alarmed. He had
supposed he had heard the last of that silly notion about helping him;
she hadn't spoken of it in nearly two years. Now--here it was again!
"Dick," she was saying, her hand clasping his, "I've appreciated your
not speaking of it, or even talking about what you were doing. If you
had, the delay'd have been much harder to bear. For, as long as Winchie
needs me, I simply can't come."
"I understand, dear," said he, much relieved.
"It's a dreadfully long delay, isn't it?" she went on, dreamily gazing
up into the great quiet sky. "The more I see of married people, and the
more I think about married life, the clearer I see that two must have a
common interest, a common career, or they drift apart, and usually the
woman sinks down and down into a gadabout or a fat frump or a
professional minder of other people's business--a gossip or a charity
worker."
If she had been looking, even in that faint light she could have seen
his expression of gathering displeasure.
"Or else," she went on, "she seeks love elsewhere. Isn't it strange,
Dick, how in unhappy marriages the so-called good women are the bad
ones, and the so-called bad ones good? I mean, when a weak woman finds
herself married wrong she accepts it and gently rots, and people say
she's a good soul, when she's really degrading herself and rotting
everybody round her. While a strong woman--one that's worth
while--refuses to be crushed, and people call her bad. But then I've
begun to think life's like one of those exhibitions where some cut-up
slips round and changes the labels so that everything's named wrong."
She was talking along lightly, talking what seemed to her the plainest
common sense, and was all unconscious that she had brought him and
herself where both were almost peering into the abyss between them. He
was sitting up, was getting ready to deliver himself. Her next remark
checked him. "Thank Heaven, Dick, you and I are going to have the
interest that makes two lives one--makes it impossible to grow apart.
It seems to me I can't wait for Winchie to release me so that I may come
and work with you. Aren't you glad I really, naturally, like chemistry,
and already know something about it?"
He winced, and instead of speaking, put his cigar between his opened
lips.
She leaned her head affectionately against his arm. "I feel close to
you to-night--feel that we're in perfect sympathy. Sometimes--I--I
don't feel quite that way. Of course I know it's all right, but I
get--afraid. It's such a long, long delay--and your work absorbs
you--and we almost never talk as we're talking to-night. There have
been times when---I've almost--been afraid _we_ were drifting apart."
"What nonsense!" he cried sharply. "How could that be? Do you suppose
I don't know you're a good woman? You talk foolishly at times--things
you've picked up from loose people. But you are a lady and a good
woman."
She saw he was for some unknown reason irritated. She swiftly changed
the subject. "Anyhow, dearest, we shan't be in danger much longer.
We're nearly to the end of the life we've been leading ever since we got
back from our wedding trip. Just think--ever since then! How time has
gone!"
He stirred uncomfortably, ventured: "We've been happy, and, even if
things were to go on just as they are, we'd continue to be happy."
"Of course, you've had your work and I've had Winchie, and once in a
while we have each other. But most of the happiness has been in looking
forward, hasn't it?"
She assumed that his silence was assent.
"But don't think, dear," she said, "that I've been content just to wait.
As soon as I saw it was going to be a long time before I could come to
the laboratory----"
He rose abruptly, under the pretense of lighting a fresh cigar.
"--I made another occupation for myself. It'll be next spring at the
earliest before I can come to you. And even then I'll be able to spend
only part of the day. Winchie'll have to be looked after when he's not
at the kindergarten. Now that he's talking and understanding, it's more
necessary than ever to watch over him. I've had to watch only his body.
Now it's both his body and his mind; for, if any harm came to either,
it'd be our fault, wouldn't it?"
"There's no doubt of that," said Dick with strong emphasis, as he seated
himself in a chair opposite her. He thought this remark of hers opened
the way out of his perplexity. "I don't see how you can come to the
laboratory at all."
"Oh, yes. It's not so bad as that. If it were, I don't know what I'd
do. It'd be choice between losing you and neglecting him."
"Trash!" exclaimed Dick impatiently. There seemed something essentially
immoral in her whole attitude, an odor of immorality exuding from
everything she said. It exasperated him that he could not locate it and
use it as the text for the lecture he felt she greatly needed. "Your
good sense must tell you there's not the slightest danger of your losing
me."
She laughed with raillery. "Oh, I know you're far too busy with your
chemistry to wander. But that isn't what I meant. You understand."
Her eyes shone upon him. "Sometimes--when we're holding each other tight
and your lips are on mine--I can scarcely keep from crying. It seems to
me we're like two held apart and trying to be one--and trying in vain.
It's as if we touched only at the surface, and our bodies were keeping
us from each other. But all that will soon end now, and we'll be really
one. Closer and closer, day by day----"
She sat on his lap, and he clasped her in his arms. He felt ashamed
somehow, and in awe of this emotion that was beyond him. "How wonderful
a pure woman is!" he thought.
After a pause she sat up, went back to the hammock, seated herself,
leaning toward him. "But I started to tell you my plans."
"What plans?" he asked, in high good humor with her again and
overflowing with "lighter-hour" tenderness. "Tell me quick and we'll go
in. It's getting late." He moved to seat himself beside her.
"No," she said, laughingly. "Sit where you are. I want you to listen.
It isn't often I can get you to listen. As I said, I've got to have
something worth while to fill in as I look after Winchie when he's not
at kindergarten. I've been getting ready for a year, and it has given me
occupation when he was sleeping or playing, for I taught him to amuse
himself and not to look to me for everything. That was good for him and
saved me. Well, I studied gardening and interior decoration."
"What a fuss you do make," said he, amused. "Why not just settle down
and be a plain woman?"
"Shame on you! Tempting me to go to pieces."
"You'll not improve on the good old-fashioned woman, my dear."
"You deserve to be married to one of them."
"I am," declared he. "Your whims don't deceive me. I know you. Let's
go in, dear."
She shook her head in smiling reproach. "Then you don't care to hear my
plans?"
"Oh, yes. What are they?"
"I've got everything ready to make those changes we discussed on our
honeymoon."
"Really!" exclaimed he, seeing that enthusiasm was expected, though he
hadn't the remotest idea what she was talking about.
"Of course, I'm going slowly at first, as I want to be sure, and mustn't
be extravagant. I've been very careful. I've made drawings and even
water colors, for I thought I ought to see how things would look."
He was puzzled and alarmed. "I don't believe I know which scheme you
mean," he said. "We discussed so many things on that trip."
"I mean, to change the house and grounds," explained she with bright
enthusiasm. "They'll not be ugly and stiff and cold looking much
longer."
He started up. "Courtney, what are you talking about?" he demanded.
"Why, Dick! Don't you remember? I told you some of my ideas on gardens
and interiors, and you said----"
"I don't know what careless, unthinking remark I may have dropped,"
interrupted he angrily. "I certainly never intended to let you tear
things up and make a mess." He walked up and down. "What possesses you
anyhow?" he cried. "Why can't you behave yourself like a woman? I
never heard of such nonsense! I want you to stop meddling in things
that are beyond you. I want you to do your duty as a wife and a mother.
I want you to stop annoying me. I didn't marry a blue-stocking, an
unsexed thinking woman. I married a sweet, loving wife."
She sat on the edge of the hammock, perfectly still. It was as if he
had struck her unconscious so suddenly that she had not yet fallen over.
"What devil keeps nagging at you?" he demanded, pausing in his angry
stride to face her. "It must be some woman's having a bad influence on
you. I'll not have it. I'll not have my home upset and my wife spoiled.
Who is it, Courtney?"
She was silent.
"Answer me!"
"It's myself," replied she in a quiet, dumb way.
"It's not yourself. _You_ are womanly."
"I've got to have something to do--something worth while--or I can't
live."
"Attend to your house and your baby, like all true women."
"It isn't enough," replied she in the same monotonous, stupefied way.
"It isn't enough for me, any more than it'd be for you."
"Nonsense," said he, with the man's feeling that he had thereby answered
her.