She came straight up to him, put out her hand. "Indeed I will," she
said.
He took her hand, pressed it. Then he drew back with his hands behind
him. "You are a good woman," he said. "Good through and through. I
want you to help me fight a battle I'm having just now. I thought I'd
won it. I haven't. But I will!"
"I understand, I think. It is hard. But you are strong and honorable.
You-- The woman-- She is already--" She paused, looked at him
inquiringly.
"Yes--God help me!" he cried, turning away.
His cry could not have reached a more responsive heart. After a pause
she said: "If she doesn't love you, it'd be useless to tell her."
"Worse! It would mean I was a cur."
"And if she does love you, it'd be wicked to tell her--to add to her
unhappiness."
"If you were in my place-- Suppose I could be with her--could go and
live near her----"
"Oh, no; you oughtn't to do that! You ought to spare yourself and her
that."
"But suppose," he urged eagerly, "suppose she didn't care for me--never
would--and I could keep my secret----"
"But you couldn't! And she might grow to care."
He sat in a big chair by the window, stared moodily at the floor. "It
seems to me I _can't_ do that!" he said at last. "I don't love her as
men usually love. She means infinitely more to me than that. And,
loving her as I do, I'm in no danger of telling her. And it would make
me almost happy so much of the time, and a better man--yes, a better
man--to be near her. What you say I ought to do--it's like turning a
man out into the desert without food or drink--to wander--on and on----"
"I know, I know," she interrupted, her small, sweet face all tenderness
and distress. "Oh, I'm not competent to advise. You mustn't ask
anyone. You must do what you think is right."
"Right!" he echoed forlornly.
She who had eaten of the husks that went by the name of right hadn't the
heart to urge them on him. She returned to the table, to the arranging
of the flowers. Without looking up he went on: "I haven't told you
quite all. There's another thing. I--I'm engaged."
"Engaged!"
"Don't look at me that way. I can feel it, though I'm not seeing. You
can't think less of me than I think of myself. But let me tell you.
The girl's a distant cousin of mine. And her grandfather, who was crazy
about families, left her a fortune on condition that she married me. He
left an equal sum to me on condition that I marry her. But there's this
difference: What he left her is all she'd have--every cent. I've got
enough without his legacy to me."
"And you-- Oh, it's dreadful, isn't it?"
"We're not in love--not in the least. But I've given her my promise,
and she'd be penniless if I broke it. She's nineteen. We've got till
she's twenty-one. She's abroad now."
"The letters I've seen in the mail--they're from her?"
"From her," replied he. "How can I marry when I love another woman?"
"I see," said Courtney. She was sitting now, her hands full of roses
and listless in her lap. "Then you've no more right to love this woman
than she has to love you.... Oh, I don't know what to say!"
"Don't think I'm trying to shift part of my burden to you. I'm not.
But I felt if I could talk it out loud with some one who was sympathetic
I'd see the way better. And I do." The expression of his eyes thrilled
her; it was so manly, so honest, so resolved.
"What have you decided--if you don't mind telling me?"
"To go to Starky---that's my cousin--her real name's Estelle, but she
detests it--I'll go to her and we'll marry."
"No--no!" cried Courtney. "Whatever's right, that isn't. Oh, you don't
know. She has a right to love. You're cheating her--cheating her!"
"But I can never give her that."
"You may----"
"Never!"
Courtney shook her head slowly, lifted the roses, buried her face in
them, inhaled their perfume deeply. "Then--you mustn't marry her," she
said.
"You don't know her. She cares for money--the things money buys--more
than for anything else in the world. It's the way we bring 'em up in the
East.
"Believe me," cried Courtney, solemn in her earnestness, "that's not
true. There isn't any woman anywhere who doesn't put love first. Go to
your cousin--yes. But go and try to love her."
His eyes suddenly blazed upon her. "Love her after--" he began
impetuously. He reddened, his head sank. "After the woman I--" He
muttered confusedly, "I can't talk about it," and hastily left the room
by the door-window nearest him.
She sighed sympathetically, rose, moved slowly toward the vase she had
only half finished. Midway she halted. That look of his had just
penetrated to her. "Oh!" she gasped. And she wheeled round and stared
with blanching cheeks, as if he were still standing there before her
with his secret betrayed in his eyes. "Oh!" she repeated under her
breath. How her mistaken romancings about his sadness had misled her
woman's instinct! For now, like steel filings round a magnet, a swarm
of happenings since he came ranged round that telltale look of
his--where they belonged.
*VII*
Basil was last in to supper, came with his nervousness plain in his
features. His uneasy glance at her met a smile of ingenuous
friendliness that could not but reassure. Richard was there,
absent-minded as usual, and unconscious of them both. They were
unconscious of him also, Basil no less so than she, for he had long
since acquired the habit of the household. No one spoke until Richard,
having finished, lighted a cigarette and fell to explaining to Basil an
experiment he had made that day. He was full of it, illustrated his
points with diagrams drawn on the yellow pad which was never far from
his hand. Courtney, relieved of the necessity of trying to look natural
before Basil, was able to turn her thoughts again to the subject that
had been occupying her steadily from the moment she discovered his
secret.
If Gallatin could have seen into her mind, he would have been as nearly
scandalized as it is possible for an infatuated, unsatisfied lover to
be. For even where a man feels he himself has the right to revolt
against exasperating musts and must nots of conventional morality, he is
unusual indeed if he honestly approves any such revolt, however timid,
in a woman. Man is the author and guardian of that morality; in the
division of labor he has imposed upon woman the duty of being its
exemplar. Thus, though human, she must pretend not to be; she must
stifle if possible, conceal at any cost, her human fondness for the free
and the frank. For Courtney there was double attraction in this love of
Basil's--because it was love for her and because she was lonely--how
lonely she had never realised until now. There is the loneliness of
physical solitude, the loneliness for company--and a great unhappiness
it is, especially to those who approach the lower animals in lack of
resources within themselves. Courtney had never suffered from this; she
had never cared for "just people." Then there is the loneliness of soul
solitude, the loneliness for comradeship--and who suffers from this
suffers torment. It may lull, but it will surely rage again, and it will
never cease until it is satisfied or the heart itself ceases to beat.
This was the loneliness of Courtney Vaughan. "If he," thought she,
"were bad, and I, too--no, perhaps not exactly bad, but--well,
different--less--less conscientious--how happy we might be! That is, of
course, if I cared for him--or could make myself believe I did--which is
impossible." She lingered over this impossible supposition as over a
sweet, fantastic dream. She dropped it and turned away, only to return
to it. And thinking of it filled her with the same tender sadness she
got from love stories and love songs. "I would not if I could, I could
not if I would, but--" Love! Into the silence of that void in her life
had come a sound. It was the right word, but not the right voice.
Still, there was joy in the right word. And she would not have been
human had she bent other than kindly eyes and kindly thoughts upon the
man who pronounced that word of words. Long since--from her first
notion that he was hiding a romantic secret--his real self had begun to
receive from her imagination the transfiguring veil of illusion. The
discovery that she herself was the secret certainly did not make the
veil thinner. A strong imagination flings out this beautiful,
trouble-making drapery always; not quite so eagerly if there has been
sad warning experience, but none the less inevitably. It would be many
a day, if ever, before Courtney could again see Basil Gallatin as he was
in reality.
As she sat there, silent, all but oblivious of her immediate
surroundings, she was awakened by hearing him say, in reply to something
from Richard: "But I'm afraid I'll have to--to change my plans--and--go
away." It was said hesitatingly, with much effort.
"Go away!" cried Richard. Courtney could not have spoken.
"I'm afraid so."
"Not for good?"
"Probably--in fact, almost certainly."
"Why, man, you can't do that!" protested Dick. "You can't leave me in
the lurch."
"Oh, I want to keep my interest. It's simply that I can't stay on,
myself."
"But I need you now as much as I need the capital. Why, it'd upset
everything for a year--perhaps longer. I couldn't easily find a
competent man I could trust."