"Courtney! Courtney!" he pleaded. "That's the way to tear our
happiness down, stone by stone, till nothing's left but ruins. You must
not be suspicious." He patted her reassuringly on the shoulder with an
air of possession. "Of course I love you, more than ever."
"You say it in a tone that--that sounds like superior to inferior." She
sighed. "Is nothing in the world up to its promise? Here, I thought
we'd be perfectly happy--two pariahs together--two lost souls--but
accepting our punishment of secret shame and hypocrisy--accepting it
gladly, as it was the price we had to pay for freedom and each other.
And already, in the first hour, we're almost quarreling. It must not
be, Basil."
"No, dearest," he cried. "And it will not be. We will be happy. Trust
me. I'm unstrung--and maybe you, too. But you know I love you--more
than I ever thought. And really you ought to go in the morning--really,
dearest! You need stay only two days. You can come home the second
day. Don't you see we must--must--must be careful? Now that there's
something to conceal, we can't act any longer as we did."
She laid her clasped hand on her breast, looked wistfully up at him.
"We can't ever be free and unafraid again, can we?" said she. "It isn't
just one act of--of concealment--is it?--and freedom and openness
afterwards. I see lies--and lies--and yet more lies--stretching
away--away--until--" She shuddered, hid her face in his shoulder. "Oh,
my love!"
"I'd tell all the lies in the world to have you." He embraced her
almost roughly. "All--all! And care not a rap. You--you are my god
and my morality. To love you, to have you, to keep you--that's all.
The rest is trash."
"Yes--yes," echoed she feverishly. "The rest is trash. We've got the
best. Love!"
"And we'll hold on to it--always!"
"Must I go in the morning, when life has just begun? How can I?
No--no--don't answer. I know you're right. I'll go--and ... Good by!"
She flung her arms about him. He caught up her small, warm body with
its soft curves and its radiations of vivid, perfumed life. Their lips
clung together. They separated, laughed dizzily. She waved her arm and
darted up the path. From the shadows he watched her cross the lawn,
like some creation of the summer and the moonlight. In the doorway she
paused, waved to him once more; the door closed. Then he, like a thief,
sneaked along the retaining walls at the lake shore--now stooping to
keep in the deep shadow, out of sight of anyone who might be watching
from the house--now advancing erect with stealthy swiftness--until he
was able to strike into the darkness of the path to the Smoke House.
Midway in undressing his eyes chanced upon her picture, framed and
hanging opposite the foot of the bed--a large photograph, with Winchie,
a tiny baby, against her shoulder, his fat check pressing upon hers.
Basil stood before the picture, his expression a very human and moving
mingling of awe and adoration and passion. Suddenly he remembered to
whom that picture belonged. "But not she!" he said aloud defiantly.
Nevertheless, he flushed, hung his head, switched off the light, and
sought his bed. "How can I ever face him?" he muttered. Then: "She is
mine! She never was really his. I take nothing that belongs to him. I
take nothing she could give, or ever did give, to him."
He fell immediately into a sound sleep--the exhaustion of nerves so long
on fierce tension. But about two in the morning he started up,
listened. Yes, some one was moving beneath the window. He went to it,
looked down. There was Courtney, swathed in a long, dark cloak. He
thrust his feet into slippers, drew on a big dressing gown, descended,
and opened the door. He stretched out his arms.
She flung herself against his breast. "I couldn't go without seeing you
again," she panted. "After I left you, and got into bed, I began to
think all sorts of dreadful things about you. You acted so strangely.
And then I felt ashamed of myself, felt I must come and beg your pardon.
And--and--here I am. Are you glad?"
His laugh was answer enough. He took her in his arms, carried her up to
the sitting room, set her down on the sofa. "How light you are!" he
cried. "But how strong--I've seen you swing Winchie to your shoulder as
if he were nothing at all. Now--please--won't you let your hair down?
There never was such hair as yours."
She sat up, let the cloak fall away. The moon was flooding the room.
As she sat there, with eyes sparkling and small, sensitive face
shy-bold, she looked as if she had sprung to mortal life from an old
folk song about loreleis and nymphs and enchanted princesses. "You
floated in on the moonbeams," he declared. "I'm afraid, if I don't shut
the window, you'll flit away."
"That'd not stop me," laughed she. And she began to take her hair down.
Just as it was about to unroll, she paused. "Wouldn't you like to take
it down yourself?"
He went round behind her, drew out the hairpins one by one, fumbling
softly, lingeringly for them, keeping them carefully. Her hair
loosened, uncoiled, fell about her in a shimmering veil. "Oh, my love!"
he cried. "My beautiful Courtney!" And he took the soft, perfumed veil
in his hands, kissed it again and again, buried his face in it, wrapped
her head and his together in it.
She laughed delightedly, then drew away, looking at him with mock
severity. "And where, sir, did you learn how to make a woman so happy?"
"What things you _do_ say!" he laughed, just a little bit scandalized.
"I might ask the same question of you."
"And I can answer it--" with a mocking smile--"without evasion.
Imagination. I've so often thought--and thought--and thought--what I
would be to a man I freely loved--one I wasn't afraid of scandalizing.
Oh, I know I shock you--for there's a great deal you've yet to learn
about women--that they're human, just like men. But you'll learn--and
then I think you'll see I'm good--for I am. I couldn't be bad--hate
anyone--play mean tricks, say or do mean things. Don't you wish I were
tall--wish there were more of me?"
"I couldn't live through it."
"And you really--really--love me?"
He held her tightly by the shoulders, gazed into her eyes. "So much
that, if you were untrue to me, I'd kill you."
"Now, what made you think of that?"
"I don't know."
Thoughtfully: "I guess it is because I'm giving myself to you when I
am--am-- Now, there you go, shocked again."
He laughed recklessly. "Give me time," said he, "and I'll get used to
it. You say you'd rather I showed just how I felt than locked it away
and pretended."
"Yes--yes--a thousand times! I don't mind your being shocked--not
really." With a queer little laugh, "I'm shocked myself. Somehow I
seem to delight in shocking myself--and you. Loving you is--all sorts
of pleasures and pains. I want them all!"
"All!" he echoed. "Yes--all!"
Midway in her embrace she stopped him, pushed him laughingly away with,
"But you weren't quite frank a while ago."
"When?"
"There at the lake."
"Why do you think so?"
"Did you ever see one of those little toy spaniels--how they quiver and
shiver all the time? I'm just as sensitive as that. You mustn't try to
deceive me--ever! You mustn't say or act any of those hypocrisies of
what some people call good taste, either. They're not necessary with
me. They'd make me feel deceived. I might not confess I knew--and
then--'The little rift within the lute.'"
"I guess I'll tell you," he said for the moment deeply impressed. "Yes,
I will."
"Tell me everything--_every_thing. There mustn't be any
concealment--anything to lie hid away in the depths of some dark closet
to rot and rot and infect the whole house." She suddenly lowered her
head; and, as the full meaning of her words, the meaning she had not
foreseen, reached him, he, too, became ill at ease.
Presently he said: "I didn't want to frighten you needlessly. When I
saw Nanny--she was--just going up the steps of the porch."
Courtney's eyes widened and her face blanched. "You think--" she began
when she could find voice.
"I couldn't tell which direction she had come from," he replied. "But
it's no matter. She couldn't know."
Courtney remembered the darkness--how grateful she had been for its
friendly aid. "No," said she resolutely. "She couldn't know."
"Certainly not," echoed he, as if the idea that she could were absurd.
"But it made me realize how careful we must be."
"Yes," replied she thoughtfully. "Yes." And she was clinging to him,
was sobbing. "Oh, my love--my love--I don't care what comes, if only it
does not separate us.... Look! Look!" she cried, pointing out into the
sky. "Dawn! I must fly. Where _are_ my slippers!"
He found them for her, put them on, bundled her into her cloak, picked
her up, and hurried downstairs with her. "I'm not so little," said she.
"It's because you're so big and strong. One kiss--quick!"
He kissed her--on the lips and, as she turned to go, again on the nape
of the neck. "Day after to-morrow!" he cried.
"Yes, I'll come here at nine, rain or shine."
And she ran along the path. The moon had set; it was intensely dark.
Arriving within sight of the house she stopped short. There were
lights, upstairs and down, shadows of moving figures on the curtains.
"God!" she ejaculated. "What _shall_ I do!" And for the first time the
great fear--the fear a woman has when she thinks she has lost her
reputation--buried its talons in her throat and its beak in her heart.
Do? Face it! She lifted her head high, gathered herself together,
advanced boldly. As she entered the front door she ran into Nanny.
"What's the meaning of this?" she demanded. In the same instant her
courage fled and she leaned faint against the wall. "Winchie!" she
gasped. "Has something happened to him?"
Nanny was standing stiffly with eyes down--a sullen figure, accusing,
contemptuous. But she answered respectfully enough if surlily: "Winchie
missed you and came up and waked me and Mazie just now."
Down the stairs came the boy, sobbing, shouting, "Mamma! Mamma! I lost
you."
Courtney caught him up, hugged him, kissed him. "You silly baby!" she
cried, laughing. "What a fuss about nothing. Put out the lights,
Nannie." Halfway up the stairs she hesitated. Would it be more natural
to make an explanation or to say nothing? She decided it was best, more
like her usual self, to say nothing. "Put out the lights and go to
bed," she repeated.
*XII*
She had said nine o'clock, but it was not quite half past eight, the
next evening but one, when she appeared at the edge of the clearing. He
was seated in the entrance to the upper story, his gaze fixed on the
opening in the trees where the path emerged. At first glimpse of her in
the long dark cloak, he flung away his cigarette and rushed toward her.
He embraced her, then held her off as if to reassure himself that it was
really she. "Do you still love me?" he asked. "Are you _sure_?"
The emerald eyes flashed up at him. Her face, revealed in the
starlight, was gravely earnest and sweet. But beneath her calm, as
beneath his, there was evidently still raging the hysteria that had
whirled both clean out of the realm of sanity and sense--the fever that
keeps whirling the soul it seizes from pinnacle to abyss and back again.
"Ever since we separated," said she, "I've been imagining I was
struggling to give up our love. But as the time for me to come got
nearer and nearer, I realized what a fraud I was."
"Do you love me?"
"I am here."
They sat side by side in the entrance. "May I smoke?" he asked.
"Do." As he opened his cigarette case, "Let me have one."
"I didn't know you smoked."
"Oh--a little--at college. We girls used to do it, for the sensation of
being devilish. Wouldn't you like me to smoke?"
"If you wish to."
"You don't approve?"
"Well--I don't exactly like for women to smoke or use slang. Those
things seem sort of unsexing. Of course, it's only an idea."
She smiled indulgently, rolling the cigarette to loosen the tobacco, as
Basil did, with a great air of being an old hand at it. "I'm afraid
you're narrow."
"I guess I am."
"Gracious! What you must be thinking of me!"
As she said it, she gave that little audacious laugh of delight in her
freedom to be frank. But he became grave, and it was with deep
earnestness that he answered, "I love you."
She, too, was grave and thoughtful now. "What a difference that does
make! Then everything--anything seems all right."
"And is!"
She put her arm through his. "Here, take your cigarette. I'll not
distress you."
"No--do smoke."
"I'll confess the real reason. It makes such a nasty taste in my
mouth."
He tossed his cigarette into the grass. His every gesture--and
hers--betrayed what a strain they were undergoing, how deceptive was
their appearance of sanity.
"Now, what did you do that for?" exclaimed she.
"I oughtn't to smoke when I'm going to kiss you."
She put her cigarette to his lips. "Please," she urged, "I like you to
smoke. Don't you know a woman likes everything, even the unpleasant
things, that make a man different from her? ... Smoke, and tell me what
you've been doing. It's forty hours since we were together."
"I've been conscious of pretty nearly every one of them," said he.
"I've done nothing but think of you."
"Sad thoughts?"
"Very. But I'll not do that again. What's the use, Courtney? We've
got to have each other. What's the use of struggling against it?"
"I can't realize it--I can't," said she absently. "Last night--out at
father's--I got up in the middle of the night and ran and looked at
myself in the glass. And--" She paused.
"Yes?"
"I could look myself straight in the eyes and tell myself what I had
been to you, and not feel like hiding. Is it that I'm not doing anything
bad or that I'm so bad I don't know good from bad?"
"It's love," declared he gloomily.
"I can look back now and see that from the beginning--from the day I saw
you cared--I've been coming straight to you. I was lying to myself."
"I, too," he confessed. "Courtney, we've been--and are--in the clutch
of a force that's stronger than we."
"I--don't--know," said she slowly. Then, with her arms round his neck,
"and I don't care. If conscience tolls its ugly bell, I'll shout 'Love!
Love!' so loud that it'll be drowned. I must have love--I will have
love. And how can I help loving you, who are so altogether wonderful in
every way? You've only kissed me once since I came."
"Twice."
"And what's twice?"
For answer he gathered her into his arms, carried her up to the sitting
room. With all of her within his arms, he sat in the big armchair.
"Now!" he exclaimed. "We'll be happy!"
"Yes. Oh, _what_ a scare when I was here before!"
She sat up and told him about Winchie's raising the hue and cry for her.
He listened with a somber countenance. When she had, finished he said,
"And where's Winchie now!"
"In bed--asleep."
"But--if he wakes!"
"Why, he'll lie perfectly quiet till he sleeps again. I told him never
to repeat that escapade."
"But he may get frightened----"
"You forget, sir," said she smilingly, "he's my child. He could not be
afraid.... What a mournful face!"
"I'm horribly jealous of him."
"If Winchie didn't keep us apart, he never could push us apart now."
"I'm very selfish," he said despondently. "I want all--all!"
"Here we are--sad again."