With her hand on her heart, "I thought I understood you to say Mr.
Gallatin had gone."
"So he has. For a few days."
"Oh!" Courtney drew a vast breath of relief. She felt a tugging at her
skirt, glanced down. It was Winchie, looking up at her with an
expression of terror; and she knew she must have revealed herself in her
face. Her pale cheeks flooded with color. She sank into her chair
opposite her husband. She could lie to herself, cheat herself, no
longer. "How much Basil means to me!" she muttered. Then, in terror,
she glanced round, for she felt as if she had shouted it. But Vaughan
was at his unending calculations. Only Winchie saw. _Only_ Winchie!
There was a look in his great gray-green eyes, a look of the accusing
angel, that made her hang her head while the dark red burned upon her
whole body.
"He'll be back Thursday or Friday," continued Vaughan, tossing the pad
into the window seat, a dozen feet away.
"You sent him on business?" inquired she, to make conversation.
"He wanted to go to Pittsburg, so he told me. I guess it's some girl.
I suspect our 'dressy' friend of being a ladies' man. He takes too much
trouble about his clothes--and silk underclothes! Anyhow, I let him
go."
She sat there, the food untouched, her blood pounding at her temples, at
her finger ends. For she was remembering her advice to Basil when she
was trying both to persuade him to stay and to deceive herself as to why
she intensely wished him to stay. And now, on her advice--on the advice
of the woman who loved him--he was journeying--even as she sat quietly
there at supper in respectable calm--he was journeying to his "old
haunts"--to some woman--he who belonged to her! Such a wild tempest
raged in her that she wondered how she could sit motionless, why she was
not walking the floor and crying out. With another woman! Oh, the
vileness of men! "And I was beginning to care for him!" she said to
herself. "He's like the rest--worse than most. How many men are there
who'd dare talk of love to a woman like me, and then go jauntily away to
a low woman?"
She went upstairs immediately after supper, shut herself in. She moved
calmly about; she took her exercises; she read for several hours before
turning out her light. But beneath a surface that could have been no
more tranquil had she been observed and on guard, chaos reigned. One
tempest succeeded another--anger against Basil, against
herself--disgust, scorn, jealousy--and, before she slept, she had seen
that in reality all these moods were jealousy under different forms.
The following morning, when the coast was clear, she slipped into his
room, knelt by his untouched bed, cried upon its pillow. This humility
soon wept itself out, however; she flung herself into her work.
"Nonsense! I don't care for him. It's simply pique and outraged
friendship. How coarse men are!"
"What's the matter, mamma?" said Winchie, who was following her about
the garden, looking after insects and dead leaves. Than his there never
was a keener eye for signs of the red spider.
"Why, dear?"
"You treat the flowers as if you wanted to hurt them."
"Your mamma is in a very naughty humor this morning."
"And you were so happy yesterday. Is it because Mr. Gallatin's gone
away?"
Courtney, flushing deeply, looked hastily round. "Sh! You mustn't say
those things!"
"Why not?"
Already she was teaching the boy to conceal! "I didn't mean that,
Winchie," said she. "You are to say whatever you please--as always."
"I don't want you to like Mr. Gallatin. _I_ don't like him."
"Why not?"
"Because he likes you."
"You wouldn't want anybody not to like your mamma, would you?"
"No." A long silence. Then: "But he looks at you exactly like papa
does when he's really seeing you."
Courtney's skin burned. The same story--always the same!
"Well--dear--I'll not like him."
"I hope he won't come back."
The suggestion set her heart to aching with loneliness. "I have no shame
and no pride," she said to herself. "What a contemptible creature a
woman is!" But these sneers availed her nothing. As she sat at
table--dinner and supper--his vacant place gave her a sense of
bereavement not unlike death itself.
Another night of wakefulness and of the subtle and varied torments known
only to those blessed and cursed with vivid imagination. What if he
should not come back! That was the final and crudest twist of the rack.
Next day, it was all day long as if the silence and darkness of the
night were still suffocating her. The house, the grounds seemed a
desolation of despair. What if he should not come back! A drizzling
rain fell, and she sat miserably by the window, unable to sew, unable to
read. And at the first sound from the piano--the melancholy notes her
fingers instinctively struck--she sprang away as if a hateful ghost had
breathed on her. It was only Wednesday; he would not be home until the
next day--probably not until Friday--perhaps not then.
She put fresh flowers in vases in all the rooms every day. That day she
filled the vases in his sitting room with the best. And she lingered
among his belongings, that promised his return. In the drawers, his
fine tasteful shirts and ties; in the closets, those attractive suits,
silk lined, agreeable to the touch, varied and always tasteful in
pattern. She went back to his books--to the poetry, of which he was
particularly fond. The volumes fell open naturally at poems that
glorified the lofty, the spiritual side of love. Then, like a scorpion,
scuttled across the page of Browning's "Last Ride" what Winchie had
said--"He looks at you like papa does." She shuddered, was all dread
and foreboding again. Was there no such thing in man as love for woman,
but only its coarse and lying counterfeit?
She heard an outside door open noisily. She darted along the hall and
down to the angle of the stairway, to the landing from which the
drive-front entrance could be seen. She leaned over the balustrade,
looked. She drew back, stopping the glad cry that rose to her lips; for
it was Basil. With features composed she leaned forward again. His
soft hat and his rain coat were dripping; evidently, in his eagerness to
arrive, he had crossed the lake in an open boat, instead of coming round
by the road in a closed carriage. He was gazing toward the sitting-room
door with an expression that thrilled her--and at the same time gave her
the courage to treat him as her self-respect and her ideas of decency in
a man dictated.
"Back already?" said she in a pleasant, indifferent tone.
He turned, looked up at her, his face alight. "How are you?" he cried.
"It seems an age."
"We didn't expect you for several days yet," she went on, descending.
When she reached the hall, he was waiting with extended hand. "It _is_
good to be here again!" said he. "It was worth going, for the pleasure
of getting back."
She shook hands, smiled friendlily, continued on her way to the sitting
room. He hesitated, an uneasy look in his eyes that did not escape her.
He put his hat and coat on the rack, followed her. "I _am_ glad to be
back!" said he.
She laughed, friendlily enough, but her baffling manner only increased
his uneasiness. "We're glad to have you," was her polite reply. "If
you want to go to your room before supper, you'd better hurry."
"I've been doing a great deal of thinking while I was away."
"Really? That's good."
"I see you've changed your mind--as I felt you would, when I thought it
over. Your first impulse was to be lenient. But when you fully
realized what a dishonorable thing it was for me to do--to----"
"Don't you think you'd better go up before supper?"
"Not till I've said one thing," replied he doggedly.
"Well?"
"I want you to know that you can trust me never to repeat my offense.
I'd go to Vaughan and tell him and apologize----"
"And, pray, what has Richard to do with it?" inquired she coldly.
"I understand," he hastened to protest. "I'm not going to speak of it
to him. It might put unjust suspicion of you in his head----"
There she laughed outright at him. "You are making yourself perfectly
absurd," she said, and turned away to go into the dining room.
When he came down, the others were at table. Dick, figuring on his
yellow pad, glanced up, rose, greeted him with unprecedented cordiality.
"Why, when did you blow in?" he exclaimed.
"A few minutes ago." Gallatin glanced at Courtney. The quiet mockery of
her absent gaze made him red and awkward. "I--I--got
through--so--I--came," he explained with stammering lameness.
"Naturally," said Dick. He had taken up his pencil. "Make yourself at
home."
Gallatin's glance fell on Winchie frowning at him. "Howdy, Winchie?"
said he.
The boy made a curt bow, resumed his supper. He was permitted--or,
rather, under Courtney's system of training him to think and act for
himself, he permitted himself to eat only certain simple things, and
very little of them--and he was wonderfully sensible about it. When he
finished he kissed his mother good night, made his salute to his father
and, almost imperceptibly, to Gallatin, and went upstairs. Gallatin
nerved himself to several efforts at beginning conversation with
Courtney. Each time, as he glanced up, he was checked and flung back
into embarrassed silence by seeing in her absent eyes the same
disconcerting mockery. After supper, Richard hurried away to the
library. When she showed that she was going upstairs, Gallatin detained
her. "One moment, please," he pleaded humbly. "What have I done to
offend you?"
Courtney flushed. But the raillery came back instantly. "I'm not
offended. I'm amused."
"At what?"
"At you." The smile broadened charmingly. "So you've had a successful
trip?"
"Yes--in a way."
"And have come back completely cured."
"I want you to be my friend--if you will. I repeat, you can trust me
now."
Her eyes sparkled dangerously. "It's fortunate I understand men--and
have a sense of humor."
"I know I deserve any punishment you choose to give," said he. "And
I'll take it. Only--I want to stay on here--and to have your
friendship."
She studied him critically. Her expression would have been trying
enough in its penetrating judicial intelligence for the least
self-conscious of men. It utterly disconcerted Basil, bred in the
fashionable world's incessant consciousness of self. But in his
desperation he withstood her look, returned it with eyes that were
appealing yet not abject. It pleased her that he was not abject. "After
all, you went on my advice, didn't you?" said she in a friendlier tone.
"And you've been most manlike--have shown yourself to be just what I
thought you. So I'm really unreasonable." She gave him her hand.
"Yes, let us be friends."
"And you forgive me?"
She smiled queerly. "That's asking too much. I may--in time. Just at
present--you've made me feel horribly cheap and--common."
He hung his head. "If you knew how I've suffered for it," he said. "I
was afraid you'd send me away--would never see me again."
"Let's not talk about it," cried she, angry at her own weakness in not
meting out to him what he apparently expected and certainly deserved.
But she was not so angry that she held to her purpose of going upstairs.
Instead, she sat at the piano and began to dash off the noisiest pieces
she knew.
*IX*
The friendship now throve like Courtney's best-placed flower bed. She
had always been healthy; so she had not a touch of "temperament"--which
is the misleading romantic name for internal physical conditions
anything but romantic. Most of those who have mentality have also
imperfect health through neglect of physical needs; and the somberer
shades, the grays and blue blacks, made the more melancholy by
imagination, usually canopy their lives. But with her it was not so.
Always healthy in body and in mind, she now irradiated perfume and color
like the rose that is getting just the right sun and rain.
Late in that summer there were several weeks when one perfect day
followed another like a child's dream of fairy-land. Vaughan wished to
work alone, dropped completely out of their life, was forgotten. Every
day, all day long, she and Basil were together, he helping her at the
pastime that kept house and grounds beautiful. She was one of those
human beings who abhor disorder; if anything went wrong it was righted
at once. If a knob came off a door or a plant withered, she could not
rest until the imperfection was remedied. It kept her incessantly
occupied, but the results were worth the pains they cost. Her
imagination, stimulated by Basil, planned many changes in grounds and
gardens, changes that would bring the place still nearer the landscape
artist's three ideals--contrast, variety, bounds concealed. And she and
Basil together carried out these alterations.
Then there were the leisure hours, as full as the hours of toil.
They--with Winchie--strolled in the woods on the farm, across the
highway, and picnicked under the trees beside the brook, or in the
shadow of some gigantic fern-covered rock left on a hillside by the
retreating glaciers of the ice age. Or, they went out on the lake,
Winchie fishing, she and Gallatin talking in low tones or happy in
sympathetic silence, with the boat moving languidly where the shadows of
the great weeping willows were deepest, its keel troubling the dark
clear waters hardly more than a floating leaf.
She was fond of talking, he of listening. And she had so many things to
say--the things that had been accumulating in those five years when she
had said little, had read and thought much. When Basil did talk it was
usually of what he had experienced in his wanderings over Europe and
Asia. And, as she had been everywhere in fancy through her reading, she
drew him out with questions that made it hard for him to believe she had
not actually viewed with her own eyes. He seemed a wonderful person to
her, he who had lived in the world's half dozen great capitals, had
wandered all over the earth and had seen everything. Her comments
astonished him, made him ashamed, and privately reverent of her "woman's
intuition. No wonder it's considered better than brains."
"I wish I'd had some one like you along when I was chasing about," said
he. "It was usually horribly dull, and I went on at it chiefly because
I was always hoping something interesting would turn up. Now, I see it
was turning up all the time. You have a light way of looking at things.
A man sees only the serious side."
"Oh, it couldn't be dull--not anywhere on earth," insisted she.
"No--not with--that is, with somebody like you along." An awkward
silence; then, "and I don't see how you ever learned so much without
having experience."
"I don't really know things," confessed she. "I just _seem_ to know.
As a matter of fact, I'm frightfully innocent."
"That's the beautiful part of it," said he with enthusiasm.
"I hate it!" she cried.
"Oh, no," protested he.
"Yes, hate it," she insisted. The chief pleasure in this friendship
with him was that it gave her freedom to be herself, to be frank. She
would not let him spoil it for her, as Richard had in their early
married days spoiled even the times of closest intimacy with formalism
and restraint. "I want to know--I want to _live_," she went on, with
glowing, eager face. "I've always felt proud it was the woman who had
the sense to eat the apple. I detest innocence. I love _life_!"
"Oh, you don't mean exactly that."
"Just that."
"Even--sin?" This, not an inquiry, but an argument proving her beyond
question in the wrong.
But she replied undauntedly: "It seems to me, the only way to learn is
by doing things. And doesn't that mean making mistakes--sins, as you
call it? Life's a good deal like gardening. You have to do it wrong
first in order to learn how to do it right."
"That's all very well for a man. But----"
She was giving him one of those disconcerting eerie glances from the
mysterious eyes. "I've got to _live_, and in the same world you have.
Also, I've got to bring up a boy to live in it."
"I must say," confessed he, "I don't see just how to meet that." And
she accepted the answer as evidence of his broad-minded sympathy. She
did not realize that he was anything but convinced, but was simply
admitting the "light cleverness" of her reply and was too eager about
standing well with her to combat her "queer ideas."
The interruption to the delights of this friendship came before she had
nearly exhausted his novelty, and while she was still as uncritical of
him as a starving man of the cooking. However, in any circumstances it
would have been long before she could have made any accurate judgment of
him. She had become his partisan; and a generous nature takes the most
favorable, the always too favorable, view of a personality to which it
is attracted.
Until that summer Richard had been, for a young man, remarkably careful
about regularity and exercise. At the very outset of his task, away
back at Johns Hopkins, seven years before, he had realized that he was
in for an investigation of all known elements in every possible
combination--that is, for a long and hard struggle for about the most
jealously guarded of nature's secrets--the origin of heat. And he knew
that, if he was to win any victory worth while, he must resist the
temptation to overwork, and must make health his first consideration.
And although he had small liking for physical exercise and was as little
fond of the grind of regularity as the next man, he had kept to his
rules for himself with the same inflexible firmness that characterized
him in all his serious purposes. But Basil's coming with the additional
money he had needed, and the help, too, tempted him beyond his
resistance. In exercise, as in everything else, there is system or
there is nothing. Before Basil had been there a month Richard was
breaking his rules; and soon the whole system went by the board. All
summer he had not exercised, and he ate at any hours or not at all.
Such a reversal of a long-established routine could not but create an
immediate internal commotion. There were no physical surface signs; he
looked the same as always; but his temper became uncertain. Where he
had been simply absent-minded he was now irascible in it. Without
reason--except the internal physical turmoil he himself did not feel or
suspect---he would burst from abstraction to attack Gallatin or Courtney
or Winchie or one of the servants, or to rave against everything and
everybody. And this new Richard appeared at just the time when it would
stand out in sharpest, most odious relief--most dangerous contrast to
the even temper of Basil Gallatin. Under the stimulus of her friendship
with Gallatin, Courtney had got back much of her former gayety. Again
she was overflowing with jest and laughter, with the joy she seemed to
have absorbed from the bright things that grew or flitted and flew in
her gardens.
The change in Richard came rapidly, yet was so gradual that its cause
escaped them all. It is not in human nature to be inexhaustibly patient
even with the vagaries of an obvious invalid. Where the illness is
unsuspected, patience with its victim soon turns to gall. This new
development in Richard's character--for Courtney and all the others
assumed it was character--changed her passive, almost unsuspected
resentment and indifference into dislike that could easily deepen into
aversion.
He was disagreeably reminding her of his existence; he was saying in
effect "Look at me!" She looked. She had bowed to fate, had accepted a
loveless life of duty. She had done her part loyally. She had made a
home, had kept it in order, had submitted whenever his physical
necessities began to distract him from his work. Yes, she had accepted
all the degradation without a murmur. And when love had come to her
unsought, had tempted her, she had put the temptation aside. In order
that his plans might not be upset, she had taken the hard instead of the
easy way to combat this temptation, had let Basil Gallatin stay on. And
what was her reward? Whenever Richard spoke, it was to say something
disagreeable, to be as nearly insulting as a well-bred man could become.
"It's perhaps fortunate for Richard," reflected she, "that Basil showed
the true nature of his love in that trip to Pittsburg. For what do _I_
owe Richard Vaughan? Is there any woman anywhere who does not in her
heart feel she'd be justified in doing _anything_, when her husband has
treated her as mine has treated me?" And the obvious answer--that her
husband was the normal husband, that it was she who, expecting what the
conventional and customary marriage relation did not contemplate and did
not provide, was in the wrong--this answer seemed to her no answer at
all, but an insult to her intelligence and her self-respect.
Because of Vaughan's rages Gallatin got into the habit of rising from
the table as soon as he finished and leaving the Vaughans to themselves.
Courtney, with the sex charm subtly seducing her to seek and exaggerate
merits in Basil, was deeply moved by this thoughtfulness; for it
increased her humiliation to have him there when Richard lost control of
himself. One evening, as they finished supper, Vaughan was suddenly
infuriated by the stealthy fiend of indigestion that is the chief cause
of humanity's faults of temperament, from morbidness to acute mania. He
burst out at Gallatin--sprang from absent-mindedness with flaming eyes
like a madman from ambush. "You messed everything to-day!" cried this
unsuspected and unconscious invalid, sicker far than many a one in bed
with doctors and nurses. "You simply raised the devil. Another day or
so like it, and I'll not let you come into the shop."
Gallatin made no reply.
"I suppose you're cursing me," fumed Richard. "That's the way it always
is. The whole world's mad on the subject of self-excuse. Somebody else
is always to blame, and criticism is always an outrage."
"Not at all," said Gallatin, and Courtney knew his self-control was
wholly for her sake. "I was stupid to-day, Vaughan. It was wholly my
fault. I know I came near blowing up the shop and sending us both to
kingdom come----"
An exclamation of terror from Courtney halted him. She was pale, was
looking with frightened, questioning eyes from one man to the other.
Vaughan blazed again. "There you go!" cried he to Gallatin. "Now,
she'll think I'm at something as dangerous as a powder factory--when, in
fact----"
"Yes, indeed, Mrs. Vaughan," interrupted Gallatin. "It was my stupidity
that made all the danger. Really, we do nothing that ought to be
dangerous."
"That's not true," said Courtney quietly. "I know the truth now. And I
never thought of it before!" She could not understand how she had been
so unthinking; it was another, an unexpected measure of the cleavage
between Richard's life and hers.
"You'd better confine your attention to things you understand," said
Vaughan. "It was all Gallatin's folly, I assure you."
"That's the truth, Mrs. Vaughan," said Gallatin earnestly. "The whole
truth."
She said no more, but her face showed she did not believe him.
Gallatin, depressed and remorseful, went out on the veranda, strolled
down toward the lake. Vaughan sat on, pulling savagely at his cigar.
He was enraged because his outburst had caused the disclosure of the
secret he had intended to keep from her, had given her a false idea
which, as she was a woman, a creature of notions and whims, nothing
could ever correct. He forgot his fine philosophy about self-excuse,
and turned his rage from himself to her. "It's really all your fault,"
he exclaimed, glowering at her.
Winchie, seated between his father and mother, took up his knife and
raised it threateningly against his father, his gray-green eyes ablaze.
In another mood Vaughan would have been secretly delighted, would have
gravely accepted the rebuke and made apology to the boy and to Courtney.
But the devil--the realest devil that torments spirit through flesh--was
in him that night, was on the prowl. He pointed his cigar at the
infuriated child. "What's the meaning of this?" he demanded.
"Winchie," said Courtney, in a low, firm voice.
The boy's eyes shifted from father to mother.
"Put down that knife, go upstairs and go to bed."
Son and mother looked at each other fully ten seconds; the boy lowered
the knife, laid it on the table, descended from his chair, marched
haughtily from the room. When he was gone Vaughan said: "You should have
made him apologize to me."
Courtney did not reply. She was pulling out the bows the flowing tie
she was wearing under the loose collar of her shirt waist.
"I'll have Lizzie bring him back."
"No," said Courtney, and her eyes met his. "You will not interfere with
Winchie. I do not interfere with your work."
"But you do!" Richard burst out. "It's your interfering that's making
Gallatin so worthless."
She shrank back in her chair, hastily veiled her eyes. Now it was the
cuffs of the shirt waist that were engaging her attention.
"You dislike him, I know," Vaughan went on. "But why do you treat him
so badly?"
No answer. She could hardly believe that it had been so long since
Richard had noted her and Basil. Besides, when had she ever treated him
in a way that could be called badly?
"I am sure you treat him badly. Why?"
No answer.
"I asked you a question. Politeness would suggest----"
"Not in this family," said Courtney, cold and calm, her slim fingers
touching her hair here and there.
"All I've got to say is, it's no wonder Gallatin's becoming useless at
the shop. He must feel his position acutely. I can conceive of no
reason why you should subject a gentleman--and my guest--to such
indignity."
Courtney looked as if she were sitting quietly alone.
"Has he been making love to you?" demanded Vaughan.
Her eyelids fluttered, but it was the only sign she gave.
"Some time ago I observed he had a way of looking at you that was most
loverlike."
Still no answer, and no sign.
"Even so, you could deal with him tactfully. He is a gentleman."
"You said that before," observed she, elbows on the table, her chin on
the backs of her intertwined fingers, her gaze upon the bowl of
old-fashioned yellow roses in the center of the table.
He glowered at her. "So I did," said he. "Now I say it again, and
perhaps you will be able to grasp it. And I want you to treat him as a
gentleman should be treated. So long as he is my guest, so long as he
conducts himself like a gentleman, you must be courteous to him."
No answer; no change.
"Do you hear, Courtney?"
"Yes."
"What do you intend to do?"
Up went the long lashes and the deep green eyes burned coldly at him.
"As I choose," said she. "And I may add, I will not put up with your
bad temper any longer. At the next outburst from you, Winchie and I
leave this house. I will not be insulted, and will not have my boy
ruined by his father's bad example."
Richard's eyes softened; he lowered them, the red mounted. After a
silence he said "Excuse me" without looking at her, rose and went to the
veranda. When she finished giving directions for the next day to Nanny
and was going upstairs, he was still walking up and down, head bent,
hands behind his back, sternness in that long aristocratic profile. An
hour later, as she sat at her desk in her own sitting room upstairs, she
heard his voice at the door into the hall.
"May I come in?" he asked.
"Certainly," replied she. Her back was toward the door.
"I want to beg your pardon."
"Very well," said she, her voice cold and even. She did not realize how
much this meant from a man who had not the apologizing spirit or habit.
And if she had realized, she would have been no more appreciative.
"You do not accept it?" said he, ruffled at once, and feeling that she
was now the one in the wrong.
"I do not care any thing about it, one way or the other."
He was silent for a moment, then: "I hardly blame you," said he, with a
great air of generous concession. "I've been out of temper,
rude--disgracefully so--for some time. I'm sorry." And he stood
looking at her expectantly, more complacent than penitent.
"I see you think a few words are enough to make up for all you've done."
"What more can I do? It's not a bit like you, Courtney, to----"
"And what do you know about me?" inquired she, turning half round and
looking calmly at him over her shoulder. "It's quite true," she went
on, "that I have no means of support but what I earn here as your
housekeeper and--wife. But, I----"
"Courtney!" he cried in a tone of imperative rebuke.
"A few plain words--of truth--seem to shock you more than your own
conduct."
"Such language from you! But you did not realize what you were saying."
"I did. I meant just what I said."
"That is not language for a wife to use to a husband."
She rose from the desk and, without looking at him, went into her
bedroom, closing the door behind her.
She was working in the garden beneath the west windows. She moved among
the flowers, as restless and graceful as any other of the elves always
hovering about blooming things--bees, humming birds, butterflies. It
was a rare chance to study the marvels of pose of which the human body
is capable. Now she was stooping, now kneeling; bending forward,
backward, to one side; or, erect and stretching upward, to relieve a
tall rosebush of a dead leaf or spray. And the lines of her figure,
ever changing, were ever alluring. Her arms, too--and her neck--how
smooth and slenderly round, and how intensely alive! Her whole skin
seemed aureoled with invisible, tremulous, magnetic waves. She was
wearing a big pale-green garden hat; her hair was perfectly done, as
always--as if it had taken no time or trouble, yet so that it formed a
delightful frame for her small, delicate face, and splintered and
reflected every stray of sunlight that dodged in under the brim. Her
short skirt revealed slim, tapering ankles and small feet. There are
feet that are merely short; then there are feet such as
hers--exquisitely small--not useless looking, but the reverse. The same
quality of the exquisite was in her figure. She was small, but she was
not short. Her smallness enabled a perfection nature never gets in the
long or the large. She made largeness suggest coarseness. Women of her
form send thrilling through their lovers the feeling of being able
completely to enfold and to possess.
All alone and thinking only of the flowers, she entered one of the
narrow paths that led toward the veranda. She stretched upward to
re-curl a refractory tendril. Both arms were extended, her head thrown
back, the rosy bronze face upturned--pathetic, yet laughter-loving
mouth, eyes of deep, deep green. Like one awakening from a profound
sleep she slowly became conscious that she and Basil Gallatin were
gazing into each other's eyes with only the trellised creeper between.
And his look made her heart leap. She straightened herself, colored,
paled, stood trembling. The next thing she distinctly knew, he had come
round to the lawn at the edge of the garden in which she was working.
"How you startled me!" she said, in a careless, casual tone.
As he did not answer, she glanced at him. He was standing with eyes
down. And his look made her vaguely afraid.
"Are you going to help me to-day?" she asked, resolved to brave it
through.
"I can't stand it!" he cried, his voice trembling with passion. "I love
you. I must go. I shall go as soon as Vaughan comes back. Until then
I'll keep to the other part of the grounds."
"Why not just do it, and not talk so much?" she demanded, suddenly
angry.
"If you had ever loved," said he humbly, "you'd understand. But I didn't
intend to say these things. I came to tell you Vaughan's away. They
telegraphed for him to hurry to Washington--something about the duties
on a lot of new instruments."
"How long will he be?"
"Several weeks, perhaps. He's going afterwards to Baltimore, and then
to Philadelphia and New York. He left word with Jimmie about sending a
trunk after him. He had just time to catch the express. He asked me to
explain to you."
Nanny appeared at the drive-front corner of the house. He said to her:
"Oh--Nanny. I've been upstairs packing a few of my belongings. Will
you have them taken to Mr. Vaughan's apartment at the shop?"
"Jimmie says Mr. Vaughan locked everything up down there, and took the
keys, and said no one was to go near it while he was away."
Basil hesitated, but only for an instant. "How forgetful he is!" he
exclaimed with a smile. "Of course I've got to sleep there--as
watchman. Well, I'll force the stairway door. You can telephone over
for a locksmith this afternoon or to-morrow. He'll make a new lock and
key."
Nanny departed, muttering. She did not like disobedience to the head of
the house of Vaughan; but, on the other hand, she would have liked it
much less had Gallatin stayed on at the house with Mr. Richard not
there. Gallatin turned to Courtney. "Would it be too much trouble to
send my meals to the shop?" he asked, in a constrained, formal tone that
deeply offended her.
"Nanny will attend to that," replied she, eyes cold as winter seas.
"Thank you. If you should need anyone--there's the telephone to the
shop. I'll re-connect it."
"You needn't bother."
"There have been several robberies round here of late, and----"
"As you please.... Thank you."
He looked at her as wistfully as a prisoner at the fields of freedom
beyond his cell window. She seemed impatient to resume work; he went
reluctantly away. She stood gazing after him until he disappeared in
the shrubbery at the far eastern edge of the lawns. Then she sighed and
glanced at the unblemished sky as if she thought it was clouding.
Three uneasy, tedious days and two wakeful nights. In the third night,
toward one o'clock, she tossed away her book, put out her light, and
opened all her shutters as usual, to air the rooms. "If I opened his
door and window, I might get a breeze," she said to herself. "It's
terribly close." She crossed the hall, entered the room Gallatin had
occupied, raised a window, and leaned upon the sill--it was the small
window beyond the end of the balcony, and so did not extend to the
floor. The sky was clear; the moon was hidden by the house.
Stillness--peace--beauty--beauty of view and of odor--the lake with its
dark banks, trees tossing up into the blue-black sky and shimmering with
moonlight--perfumes of foliage and flowers and of the fresh-cut grass in
the meadows beyond the highroad.
"It's as if everybody in the world were dead except me," she murmured.
She listened again to get the weird effect of utter absence of sound.
This time she heard the faint plaint of a cricket, appealing for company
in its blindness and solitude. Then--her nerves became tense. From the
balcony, which ended just a few feet to her left, came a stealthy
sound--like a step. Softly she crossed the room--the hall--her own
room, to the high-boy. She took from its top drawer her pistol. She
returned to Gallatin's bedroom--noiselessly unlocked the shutters over
one pair of the long windows opening on the balcony--unbolted one of
them and held it ajar. Yes, there was some one on that balcony.
Several of the neighbors had been robbed; now, it was their turn. The
pistol was self-cocking. Taking it in her right hand, she drew back the
window with her left, stepped out. She thrust the pistol into the very
face of the man.
He sprang back. She saw what looked like a knife in one hand--nothing,
apparently, in the other. At the same instant she heard him cry
"Courtney!"
The pistol dropped from her nerveless hand to the balcony floor.
"It's I!" Gallatin exclaimed. "I heard a second-story window go up very
softly--I was walking and smoking in the path. I came--climbed a
pillar--and----"
"O God! God!" she sobbed. Down she sank to the floor, her face buried
in her hands. "My love! My love! And I almost killed you!"
He knelt beside her. "Dearest--" He put his arm round her. Instantly
he drew away and sprang to his feet. Up she started, gazing wildly
round. "What is it?" she exclaimed. "Where?"
"Nothing--nothing," was his confused answer. But already she had felt a
thrill from where his arm, his hand had been, and understood.
A stifling silence. He said: "I must go now. I'm sorry to have
disturbed you." And with his conventionality that was of instinct he
lifted his hat and made a dignified bow. In her hysterical state, she
did not miss the grotesque humor of this; she burst out laughing. She
leaned against the window frame and laughed until she had to wipe away
the flowing tears. He stood staring blankly at her, with rising
offense, as he, always sensitive about himself, suspected she was
laughing at him. For his sense of humor was not nearly so keen as she
had been deceived into thinking by his store of jokes and songs, of odds
and ends of amusing cleverness, all entirely new to her, and therefore
seeming practically original with him.
"What is it?" he said stiffly, when she was somewhat calm. "I should
like to laugh, too." It seemed to him characteristic indeed, but most
untimely, this display of her utter incapacity for seriousness.
"Hysteria--reaction--and your everlasting good manners," replied she.
"Is there anything on earth that would make you forget you are a
gentleman from Philadelphia?"
"Nothing but you," answered he bitterly. "Good night."
"Wait a second--please," she pleaded. And--why, she could not have
told--she went on, to her own surprise, "The other day you said you had
changed your mind and were going."
"Yes."
"Isn't that--cruel? I've learned to--to depend on your friendship."
He did not answer immediately. When he did, his voice betrayed his
agitation. "I'm going because my manhood demands it. It may be
weakness, but if I stayed I should--should go all to pieces."
"I can't argue against that. But there's one thing: As you're going, I
want to be able to feel that there's no blot on our friendship. I've
been condemning you unheard. Tell me----"
She paused. He felt how embarrassed she was. "What?" he asked gently.
"Anything you wish to know?"
"Did you go to--to Pittsburg because--because--I sent you?"
He did not answer; it was too dark to make out his expression.
"I told you," she went on, speaking rapidly, as soldiers advance at a
double quick, where if they advanced at ordinary pace they would have
time to think, to be afraid, to turn and fly, "I told you to go back to
your old haunts and cure yourself of--of your fancy for me.... You
went?"
"You could suspect that!"
"If you did, don't lie to me. Say so, and I'll never think of it again.
I'd understand. I'd--I'd--forgive."
"There is no woman for me but you," he answered, drawing a step farther
from her and putting his hands behind his back. "I went because my aunt
telegraphed for me. I came as soon as I could get away."
She clasped her hands and pressed them against her bosom. She leaned
toward him, eyes like two of the few large stars in that summer night
sky. "I am so glad," she murmured.
"Why did you suspect? How could you? Why did you care?"
"I was--jealous." The confession was almost inaudible.
"Courtney!" His arms impulsively extended.
She waved him back. "Go--go! I am upset--hysterical. Forget what I
said. We are friends again. There is jealousy in friendship, too.
Good night."
He hesitated. There she stood, all in that flimsy white--her coils of
soft fine hair about her small head--her arms, her throat, her face
tantalizingly half revealed in the dimness. "Courtney--do you love me?"
"No--no--not that," answered she, softly, hurriedly, pleadingly. "But I
like you--and I'm a woman--and--and that tells the whole story. Good
night, Mr. Basil." She held out her hand.
He did not take it. "I dare not touch you--to-night," he said. "I
can't be trusted--nor can you."
"No," she assented, letting her hand drop. She drew a long, deep
breath, and he also--a draught of that intoxicating air, surcharged with
perfume and moonbeams and the freedom of the midnight outdoors.
"We are friends--through and through?"
"Yes." His reply was in the same low, hushed voice as her question.
"That is so much--so much." Their nerves like their voices were tense
from the restraint of the passionate emotions damming up higher and
higher within.
"And I'll see you at breakfast--and thank you for coming.... Good
night, Mr. Basil."
He bared his head. She did not feel like laughing now at his
"everlasting good manners," but was shivering, with hot tears in her
eyes. He said "Good night, Mrs. Courtney."
Slowly she went in at the window of his room. Just as she was about to
push the bolt, she opened it again. "You must come in this way," she
said. "I'll let you out at the front door."
"No, I'll go as I came."
"Nonsense!"
"If any of the servants----"
"You make me feel guilty--when I'm not. Come!"
He entered the room. Both began to close the window. Their hands
touched, hesitated, clasped. She was in his arms, his lips were upon
hers. A long kiss. Her form relaxed; she drew her lips away to murmur,
"Hold me. I'm--faint." Again their lips met, and he clasped her to him
until he could feel the wild pulsing of her blood against his face,
against his chest, against his arms--could feel it in every part of that
small form, so utterly within his embrace. "Don't," she gasped. "It is
too much--too much."
"I love you--I love you. You are mine--yes, you are, Courtney! There
is nothing but love."
She gently released herself, swayed, leaned against the casement, looked
up into the summer starlight. Again he seized her, and again his lips
found hers. Her head dropped upon his shoulder. A sound--one of those
creakings that haunt the stillness of a house in the night hours. She
startled, stiffened, shut her teeth upon a scream.
"It was nothing," he said. He, too, was rigid, with every sense alert
for danger.
"What have we done!" she exclaimed. They stood silent, facing each
other, overcome with shame, burning with longing. "Oh--Basil!"
He took her in his arms. But she pushed him resolutely away. "No--not
again," she said. He looked at her; she gazed up into the sky. "Love!"
she murmured. "Love! And I--must not."
"I forgot--forgot!" he cried. "O God--Courtney--I love you more than
honor." And he opened the other the door windows, rushed past her,
vanished round the corner of the house. She sighed, shivered, stepped
out upon the balcony, stood at the rail until she saw a dark form
rapidly cross the lawns toward the shrubbery densely inclosing the Smoke
House. She looked all round--sky--lake--woods. "It is so lonely," she
sobbed. "So lonely!"
*X*
Ten minutes before breakfast time a knock at the hall door into her
bedroom. She knew who it was that could not reach above the lower
panels. "Come in!" she cried. Winchie entered--stopped short on the
threshold.
"Good morning, Mr. Benedict Vaughan," said she, nodding at him by way of
the mirror before which she was arranging her blouse at the neck. And
he knew she was in a particularly fine humor.
"Have we got company? Who?" he asked.
"No. Why?"
"Aren't you going to take me for a walk after breakfast?"
"Of course. Don't we always go?"
"But it's raining."
"I know."
"Wouldn't it spoil that dress?"
"One'd think you had a sloven for a mother. Don't I always dress?"
"But that's a long skirt. And you're not putting on a shirt waist."
"I'll change after breakfast."
"Oh." This, however, contented him for a moment only. He eyed her
critically as she made one insignificant little change after another,
displaying a fussiness quite unusual. "I guess we're to have
company--maybe."
"Not at all. We never have people to breakfast. What _are_ you puzzling
about?"
"Why didn't you put on the rain dress?"
Courtney's delicate skin was showing more than its normal color. She
shook her head laughingly at him--this child whose questions were
forcing her to see a truth she was striving might and main to hide from
herself. "You don't like this dress?"
"Yes, I like 'em all. It isn't the dress, exactly."
"Then what is it?"
"I don't know. It's--something. It made me think company right away."
The bar of music from the gong came floating up from below. "There's
breakfast!" he exclaimed. "Are you 'most ready?"
"Quite," replied she, with a last look at profile, back hair and back of
skirt with the aid of a hand glass.
"Maybe there'll be company," said Winchie as they started.
"I'm sure there'll be corn muffins," said she. "I smell them."
"If there's hash, may I have a little?"
"A little."
The descent was slow as Winchie's legs were short. She listened at
every step, but could hear no sound of the kind she hoped. At the
sitting-room door she glanced round. He was not there. "He's in the
dining room," she said half to herself.
"Who, mamma?"
Courtney startled, flushed. "What is it, dear?" she stammered guiltily.
"Has papa come?"
"No, I was thinking of Mr. Gallatin."
Winchie drew his hand from hers. But she did not note it; for they were
at the threshold of the dining room, and no one was there but Lizzie.
She and Winchie sat, but she did not begin. A moment and she went to
the telephone in the hall, took down the receiver of the private wire.
Soon she heard in Basil's voice, "Hello. What is it?"
"It's--I."
"Oh." Then silence.
"Did you hurt yourself last night?"
"No, not at all--thank you."