"I want you to stay. I ask you to stay."
"That's very kind. I appreciate it. But I really must go."
"I did wish you to go. But now I sincerely wish you to stay."
Their eyes met. She was as pale as her bronze complexion permitted.
She went on, her deep, clear voice steady, "If you go, you'll put me in
a very painful position."
Gallatin looked at her, flushed, looked hastily away. In a voice of
intense embarrassment he said: "I've another reason for wishing to go.
It's even stronger than the knowledge that you're--very
naturally--displeased at my being forced upon you."
"Oh," said Courtney, baffled. Then, "Please tell Richard what it is."
"I cannot." His gaze was on the ground now.
Somehow Courtney was liking him better. As he glanced up, her eyes met
his. "Be frank with me," she urged winningly. "Is it because you
dislike it here?"
"No." His gaze was wandering again. "No, indeed."
"I'm glad of that," said she. "Do you believe me when I say I wish you
to stay?"
He lowered his eyes, remained silent.
"If I were free to choose, I would wish you to go," she went on,
speaking with the utmost deliberation. "I am not free. So, I wish you
to stay because it will be most unpleasant for me if you persist in
going. I venture to ask you, if it is not too great a sacrifice, to
stay on--at least, for the present. But if you still say you must go, I
shall not misjudge."
"I'll stay," was his prompt response. "Gladly." And his tone and eyes
were sincere.
"Thank you," said she simply.
He looked at her with an appeal that was very engaging. "I know you'll
hate me for having created this situation."
"I thought I did a few minutes ago," replied she. "Now, I feel I don't.
I feel I'd like to be friends with you--" Her small, sweet face lit up
with a faint smile--"since we can't be enemies."
"You mean that?" he asked with an eagerness that sounded only the more
eager for his effort to restrain it.
"Indeed, I do," replied she. "Will you help me with the gardening--when
you have time?"
"There's nothing I'd like so well."
"Then--it's all settled?"
"Quite."
They smiled gravely; they shook hands; they laughed. "And a little while
ago I was thinking I never could forgive you!" exclaimed she gayly.
"Now I'm wondering what on earth there was to forgive." And she felt
and looked very well acquainted with him. It was part of her
upright-downright nature either to like thoroughly or to be so
indifferent that she was little short of oblivious.
Before her generous friendliness the laughter died out of his face.
"I'll try to be worthy of your friendship and your trust," said he
gravely.
"That sounds mysterious--somehow."
"Does it? ... When may I help you?"
"Whenever you can get off. Soon?"
"To-morrow, I think."
"That's good."
"I'll join Vaughan." He hesitated, blushed. "He knows you were to ask
me to stay?"
"Yes. But not how," was her calm answer.
"I understand." Their eyes met. He colored; but her expression, sweet
and grave, did not change. As he went Winchie, seated morosely afar off
on the veranda steps, scowled at his back.
That evening Richard said: "Well, I think he's going to stay. How did
you manage it?"
"I've asked him to help me with the gardening. He's fond of it."
"A good idea," approved Richard. "I'll back you up."
She gazed silently out over the unruffled lake, so peaceful, so
suggestive of peace unchanging, endless--the lazy, graceful
sails--beyond, the town among its trees, lights coming out as the dusk
gathered.
But their friendship, thus auspiciously begun, did not prosper.
Gallatin almost pointedly avoided her. He helped her only when Richard,
disturbed from time to time by his unrelaxed reserve, urged him to take
a day or an afternoon off "and amuse yourself with the flowers, since
you like that sort of thing." If it had not been that occasionally in
talking or working at the gardening he seemed to forget his solemn and
formal pose and showed unmistakable enthusiasm, she would have thought
his profession of interest a pretense. She had a peculiar horror of
gloom--doubtless born of the austerity of her bringing up. There was in
her circumstances only too much to discourage her natural brightness,
and she had within herself a struggle as incessant as that against weeds
and destructive insects in her gardens. She had no desire to make this
struggle harder; so she saw as little of him as she in courtesy
could--the only course open to her, since she did not know him well
enough to try to help him.
"What's the matter with Gallatin?" Richard asked her one day. "He says
he likes it here and is going to stay, yet he acts as if he were
revolving something different. He used to be full of fun and life. Now
he's enough to give anyone the blues."
"He _is_ rather heavy," admitted Courtney.
"I wonder if it's the booze," said Richard reflectively.
"The booze?"
"He always drank a lot more than was good for him. And there in
Pittsburg he got to lapping it up like the get-rich-quick crowd he
traveled in. That was why he wanted to come here--to break off and take
a fresh start. I suppose he's gloomy because he's fighting his taste
for rum."
"Probably," said Courtney.
Drink was a vice she could not comprehend--and we always are
unsympathetic toward the vices we do not comprehend. She associated
drinking and stupidity; the Wenona men who drank to excess were the dull
ones, like Shirley Drummond. When Richard thus disclosed to her what
Gallatin had meant by his mysterious hint as to his reason for coming to
Wenona, she lost the interest in him started by his fine frank way of
meeting her advances and his appreciation of her work. She recalled his
other mysterious hint--about there being a hidden reason for his wishing
to go. "No doubt," thought she, "he meant he's finding it hard to keep
straight here, where it's so quiet. I wish now that he'd gone--though,
when a man can give way to such a dull, dirty habit as drunkenness, he'd
find excuse anywhere."
As the mail came in the middle of the morning and the middle of the
afternoon, she saw it first. Thus, she noted that about once a week
there was for him a foreign letter so heavy that it carried several
stamps. These letters were from the same person, the same woman. And
as the writing was large, rapid, and affectedly angular, she more than
suspected that the woman was young. Somewhat tardily these facts,
obvious though their leading was, wove together in her mind, incurious
about other people's affairs; she knew that there was traveling abroad a
young woman who taking the trouble to write their guest regularly and at
great length. But when she happened to recall that he had a young
married sister, she assumed the letters were from her.
One day he casually said that his sister had taken a house at Bar Harbor
for the summer. The moment he said this, she for some unknown reason,
or for no reason at all, jumped to the conclusion that his depressed
state was due to the lady of the letters--to her being so far
away--perhaps to some difficulty in their love--the objection of her
parents to his drinking habit.
All was now clear to her. And thenceforth she looked at him with deep
sympathy. He was not handsome; his mouth, for example, was so heavy
that it flatly gave the lie to his idealist, poetic eyes. His nose was
not good, was too small for a man's face. Somewhere there lurked a
suggestion of weakness, and this was not lessened by his attention to
dress--though she liked his clothes and his way of wearing them. He was
far from her ideal of a man. But the longer one knew him, the better
one thought of him, chiefly because the more confidence one had in his
essential generosity and kindness. And she felt that he had capacity
for tenderness of a very manly sort, and for appreciation of love and of
all the beautiful things; just the kind of nature fate seemed to delight
in making the sport of its maliciousness.
One night, in the pensive mood to which she sometimes yielded for an
hour, she was at the piano softly playing; and singing that saddest of
sad love's songs:
"Alas for lovers! Pair by pair
The wind has swept them all away--
The young, the yare; the fresh, the fair--
Where are the snows of yesterday?"
Through the window she saw him leaning against a pillar of the veranda.
His profile was outlined clear against the luminous dusk. Its
expression made her voice die altogether in a sob. She forgot her own
sense of fleeting wasting youth, of supreme joy forever denied, of love
never to be hers. This sorrow before her in those profiled
features--they were strong features now--was no vague dream, but a
living reality. She longed to go to him and try to console him; and at
the same time, no matter how well she had known him, she could not have
gone--for in that unsuspected strength of his there was the hopelessness
that is beyond consolation. From that time he was the foremost figure
in her thoughts; and her fancy put its own color into everything he said
and did. If he had begun to drink she would have been only the more
sympathetic; for, she could comprehend how unhappy love might drive its
victim to any excess--were not her own longings, for three years now
latent except for an occasional outburst, once more throbbing and aching
day and night?
It was part of her routine to make a careful tour every day to see that
everything was up to the mark. One day, in their guest's sitting room,
she happened to see half fallen from the stationery rack a letter from
his foreign correspondent. It was apparently unopened. The shock of
this made her take a second look before she realized how she was
intruding upon his sacred privacy. But she had seen; the letter was
indeed unopened. And she knew that the last come of these letters had
been at least three days in his possession.
Her heart ached for him; she felt she understood. His love affair had
been going more and more badly--his increasing silence and sadness made
that certain. And this letter must contain some news he dared not
read--some words that meant the burial of his dead hope. She went
downstairs with a heavy heart, and out into the sunshine--out to the
rose garden in the western part of the grounds. She had been dreaming
all along that this romance of which she was unsuspected, deeply moved
spectator would surely "come out all right." Life did not always mock
the story books. Love was not always sad, not always mere deceptive
echo of one's own heart call--echo that flitted mockingly on as one
pursued. No; this love that meant so much to him would prove real.
Such had been her dream. Now-- The flowers, their perfume, the gay
birds, the sunbeams--all the sights and sounds she loved seemed tricks
of a black enchanter. She remembered the day they buried her little
brother. There had been just such radiant glory as this. She
remembered the day she had seen that her own dream of love was dead.
There had been just such sunshine and music and perfume. How could
anyone with a human heart even for a moment laugh, jest? To be light
was to make oneself party to this cruel levity of bird and flower and
sunbeam. Laugh, when loved ones were dying somewhere--and the living
were bending over dead faces with cracking hearts? Jest, when the winds
of time and change were blowing love and lovers all away?
She caught her breath in a kind of terror when, on her return to the
house, Lizzie told her that Mr. Gallatin had dashed in, had packed a
bag, and had rushed off to Chicago. "He has business there," Richard
explained at dinner. "And I've asked him to buy some stuff for the
laboratory." She was uneasy, at times unhappy, throughout the following
week, as she thought of him trying to rid himself of his too heavy
burden. Probably he was dissipating--she hoped he was, if it would give
him relief. She began to debate whether she ought not to tell Richard
what she had accidentally discovered, and suggest that he go to Chicago
to help his friend, who might have fallen ill or worse. At dinner and
at supper, even at breakfast, where she had seen him only occasionally,
she positively missed Gallatin. Until he came, the time spent at table
had been the stupidest part of each day--Richard and she in silence or
abstraction, or exchanging disconnected commonplaces about the weather,
the food, their friends. While Gallatin was far from lively, still he
and she had talked--usually about gardening and plants, the difficulties
and mysteries of inducing things to grow, the comparative merits of
various species for flowering and for hardiness--not exciting
conversation, but interesting, a relief to a monotony the dreariness of
which she did not appreciate until he came--and went.
On the eighth day, as they were at supper, he appeared unexpectedly on
the threshold. There was no forcing in the cordiality of her smile. At
first glance, she suspected that he was in much better spirits. And
this impression was soon confirmed. Certainly good news--the best--must
have reached him in Chicago. Otherwise he could not sit there eating
heartily, laughing, making amusing remarks, telling funny incidents of
the trip. Courtney tried to continue to feel delighted that he had
found surcease from sorrow. But her spirits went steadily down. She
felt horribly alone. She had been company for him in his
unhappiness--though he did not know it. Now, she quite unreasonably
felt as if he had deserted her. She was ashamed of this, so ungenerous,
so selfish, but she could not help it.
After supper Richard left them alone; they went out on the veranda--out
where the full beauty of that place, now at summer's climax, could be
seen in the soft sunset light. She stood watching a belated bird, a
tall white sail--listening to the faint sounds of the town that came
tinkling across the water. But she was thinking of the man beside her.
"You've been enjoying yourself in Chicago," said she.
"No," was his unexpected answer. "I've been impatient to get back." He
glanced round at trees and lawns, gardens and shrubbery, with delighted
eyes. "I had to go away, to appreciate how well off I was." He went to
the edge of the veranda to get a broader sweep. He seemed to be noting,
reveling in, every detail. He drew a deep breath, returned to the big
lounge chair, and lit a cigarette. "Yes," continued he. "Yes--I didn't
dream it, or imagine it. It's all true. It's all here." Without
looking at her: "And you happen to be wearing the same dress you had on
the evening I came. Now, don't tell me you made it--as you've made
those gardens and these rooms."
"I superintend," said Courtney, thinking him a pleasant and agreeable,
if deplorably shallow person. "I'm not one of those dreadful original
women who get up their own awful costumes, and think they're individual
because they're different."
"If you lived in Paris, you'd set the styles," declared he. "And you're
equally good at gardening and decorating houses."
"That's laid on with the trowel," laughed she. "But I like it." She
returned to the subject that fitted her thoughts. "You're much livelier
than when you went away; I'm sure you've had good news."
"No--nothing. I simply took myself in hand." He reflected in silence,
then lifted his head and looked at her with a boyish simplicity and
candor. "You see," he proceeded to explain, "I've had something on my
mind ever since I came--that is, almost ever since--something that was
my own affair entirely. And I let it prey on me--made myself a nuisance
and a bore, I've no doubt."
There was a gleam of mischievous humor in her eyes as she nodded assent
and said: "You were solemner than I thought a human being could be."
"Precisely. Well, that's over. As I said before, I didn't realize how
well off I was, how much I had to be thankful for, as the pious people
say. I do realize it. And I'm going to behave myself."
Courtney felt she ought to be scandalized by this vanishing of the last
solemn tatters of the tragic romance she had woven about him; for it was
clear as the lake that he had gotten over his bereavement in that one
brief week, had gotten over it entirely. But somehow she was not
scandalized; was, on the contrary, taking quite cheerfully this
confirmation of his fickleness, of his incapacity for deep emotion.
After all, wasn't that the best way to be? Wasn't he perhaps philosopher
rather than shallow changeling? Wasn't he simply exemplifying the truth
that fire burns out, that the dead are forgotten, that life leans always
at the bow of the ship, never at the stern? She, eager to escape from
her own shadows and thorns, slipped easily into his mood. "I should say
you did have a lot to be thankful for!" answered she. "And you'll soon
forget her." She colored at her slip. "I assume it was a love affair,"
she hastened to add. "We women always do."
"Yes, it was."
"You'll get over it."
"I do not wish to get over it." He was not smiling back at her. She
felt his thoughts traveling over land and sea, into Europe, whence came
those letters--there were two of them waiting on his desk upstairs. "I
do not wish to get over it," he repeated. "I've learned--" His voice,
full of earnest young seriousness, sounded as if he were thinking aloud
rather than talking to her--"I've learned there's a love deeper than the
love that demands--a love that appreciates where it dares not aspire--a
love that asks nothing but just silently to love."
There was a long silence, broken by the snapping of the match, as he lit
a cigarette. She startled, rose, and leaned against a pillar. With
eyes half veiled by her long lashes she watched the gardens wane
dreamily in the evening light. She inhaled the odors of rose, of lilac,
of jasmine, of honeysuckle--perfumes so sweet that they were sad. How
cruelly she had misjudged him! She felt a kind of reverence for him
now, him with this nobility of soul so unconscious, so lofty. Here was
a man worth a woman's while. "Why couldn't I have had such a love as he
is giving?" she thought. "Oh, if she had learned what I've learned!"
"Come into the sitting room, Gallatin," called Richard from that
direction.
Gallatin went, and for a few minutes Courtney heard, in intervals
between her thoughts, snatches of the talk between the two men about the
shopping Gallatin had done for the laboratory--talk about a new crusher,
about a promising bomb calorimeter. After a while came in Vaughan's
voice, "Courtney, what do you think of that?"
She stood in the window with an inquiring glance.
"I've been telling Gallatin you're going to introduce him round among
the Wenona girls. And he says he has no use for women."
"I!" exclaimed Basil. "On the contrary, I think women--a woman--the
most important element in a man's life."
Richard laughed. "Why, the man's in love!" cried he.
Courtney saw Gallatin wince as his wound was struck by this careless,
jovial hand.
"Only a lover," proceeded Dick, "would exaggerate woman in that frenzied
fashion. To live isn't to love. It's to do--to achieve."
"I don't agree with you," said Gallatin. "Love's the center--the
mainspring--the purpose--the meaning."
"You ought to have been a woman."
"Why not?" retorted Gallatin. Courtney saw that Dick had irritated him.
"In one respect I envy women. A woman _knows_ whether or not a man loves
her. A man can only hope and believe." And he glanced swiftly at her.
He looked confused, frightened, as her expression showed that she, the
married woman, the lovelessly married woman, understood. She turned
away abruptly, two bright red spots burning in her cheeks.
"Well," said the unobserving Richard to Gallatin, "I confess I don't
grasp your meaning. But it doesn't matter. A good woman loves her
husband, and he knows it. The rest's of no consequence. We must get him
a wife, Courtney. He'd make an ideal husband, don't you think?"
"A good wife does not think," said Courtney.
Richard was amused. "But if she did?" he persisted.
"Then she'd probably think it fortunate for husbands that wives aren't
independent."
Vaughan again looked puzzled. "That sounds as irrelevant as what
Gallatin said a minute ago. Now will you tell us, what has it to do
with what we were talking about?"
"I don't know," replied she. And she did not. She was astonished
before this apparition of a thought she had not been conscious of having
definitely in mind since that conversation with her mother long ago; and
here it was popping up as if it were her constant companion. "It just
came into my head," she went smilingly on. "You know we women are
irresponsible, irrational beings, and so we don't think straight or talk
connectedly."
She said good night, went up to her apartment. She was wishing now that
Gallatin had not told her about this love of his for the woman across
the seas. It had made her discontented--unhappy. It had compelled her
to think what a patchwork of makeshifts her own life was. "Yet I ought
to be contented. Haven't I Winchie? And I can't even complain of poor
health or discomfort of any kind. I don't deserve my good fortune.
Other women would envy me." No, they would not. She saw in remembered
faces of women friends the same discontent she was hiding in her heart.
A woman--a woman grown--craved more than material comfort could give,
more than work or play, however interesting, more than motherhood could
give--craved that grown-up, equal love without which life was like a
wonderful watch with a broken mainspring. She thought of Basil Gallatin
again. At least she was more fortunate than he. Suppose she, like him,
loved and it were not returned. Then indeed would her heart ache.
When she saw him alone next day, she said shyly and with color high: "It
seems to me you can't have told her--told her as you told me. Won't you
go to her--not write, but go--and try again? Believe me, Mr. Gallatin,
women appreciate love--at least, any woman who could inspire the love
you give her. And if she knew, she'd love you--she couldn't help it."
She feared she had intruded. But when he at last spoke, his tone was
not the tone of one who is offended. "Thank you, thank you," he
stammered. "But-- I assure you it's hopeless. She is not for me."
"Oh!" Courtney shrank. "She cares for some one else. I--I'm so sorry
I spoke. I----"
"No--no," he said; "it was friendly. It was--like you."
This began their real friendship. And she needed friendship just then.
What he had told her put her in a mood where all her occupations were in
vain, and all the wisdom she had gathered from books and from thinking
about things as they are, and all the patiently, slowly acquired
stoicism of the matrimonial routine. Her heart was clamoring as it had
not since those first months of her discovery that love was delusion and
that she must learn to live without it. She wished Gallatin had not
told her; she wished he had never come. And at the same time she felt
that through the sadness he had brought there had come into her life a
pleasure she would not wish to give up--the sympathy between him and
her, based on their knowledge each of the other's secret. She felt very
proud of his confidence, of his friendship. Also, there was the
fascination that always issues from a great emotion, even though it be
seen but in mimic on the stage. This great emotion of his was a vivid
actuality. It made a smile upon his features heroism; it made a look of
sadness tragedy.
He helped her in the gardens often now. Richard, making some secret
experiments, did not want him at the laboratory. Sometimes he and she
worked together at changing color schemes or improving mass effects or
vistas. Again each worked alone, perhaps at some surprise for the
other. It was after a morning of hard labor in opposite ends of the
grounds that she said when they met at the house: "Richard's not coming
up, so Nanny has to take him his dinner. And Lizzie's away and Mazie
not well. I'll wait on you."
"Let's have a picnic," suggested he, "out under that big elm."
And with Winchie helping they carried everything to the rustic table and
proceeded to have one of those happy-go-lucky meals that make the blue
devils put their tails between their legs and fly away on their forks.
Winchie, let eat what he pleased, forgot his dislike of Gallatin--at
least so far that he only frowned occasionally as Gallatin and Courtney
talked the most hopeless nonsense with the keenest pleasure. When
Basil's face was animated it was never homely; when he smiled it was
always handsome. For the first time since he came he lost all
constraint, and the sparkle of girlhood came back to her. They stayed
out there nearly three hours, and it seemed no time at all. Nanny, sour
and scowling at the impropriety of such conduct in a married woman--one
married into the ancient and rigid house of Vaughan--took away the
dishes and linen. But the hint so plain in her dour looks went unnoted.
It was a shower that broke up the party, sent them scurrying to the
house, he carrying furious and protesting Winchie. She punished Winchie
for his rudeness by sending him up to his bedroom to sit alone and think
down his temper.
"You oughtn't to have done that," said Basil, when the boy, defiant even
in obedience, disappeared.
"It's the only way to make him remember. And I can't whip him. I'm too
selfish, even if I didn't know it was equally degrading to him."
"He can't help not liking me," persisted Basil. "We're not to blame for
our likes and dislikes."
"No. But we are to blame for giving way to them." She was arranging
freshly cut flowers in vases and jars in the sitting room.
"Yes, for giving way to them," said Basil thoughtfully, after a long
time.
"To what?" asked Courtney, who had forgotten.
"Our feelings."
"Oh, I remember."
"You're right about that." Basil was speaking with an effort. "For
example, if a man were to--to fall in love with a married woman, he'd be
a--miserable cur if he told her. Those last few words came explosively.
"Gracious!" Courtney beamed mischievously at him from behind a gorgeous
spread of half blown roses. "You are fierce! Well, that's settled. If
he heard you, he'd never dare tell her."
She saw his face, and it flashed over her that it was a married woman he
loved. Yes, of course! Why had she not guessed it at once! And he was
saying these harsh things to make it impossible for himself to yield to
the impulse. The smile left her eyes. He was at the window with his
back to her. She looked tender sympathy. "Poor boy!" she thought.
"And I saw to-day how happy he could be, and how happy he could make a
woman.... Perhaps she does love him. What a sorrow that would be! And
utterly hopeless!"