"Not in the least."
"How pale your face is. And what a strange expression round the
mouth--and your eyes are circled. Are you ill, dear?"
"Absolutely well. It's the strain of getting ready to say these things
to you." She saw he was observing her like a physician studying a
patient. "No, I'm not insane, either," said she good-humoredly.
"What's happened to upset you?"
She put one knee in a chair, leaned toward him over its back, her elbows
upon it. Said she, "It isn't a matter of to-day, but of five years--or,
rather, of four years."
He straightened up in his chair. She imagined that his grandfather, old
Colonel Achilles, must have looked like that at the same age. "What
_are_ you talking about?" he demanded.
"About our failure as a married couple," replied she, meeting his gaze
with calm courage.
"Failure!" exclaimed he. "Why, our married life is ideal. I wouldn't
have it changed in the least particular." He nodded his handsome,
powerful head. "Not in the least particular."
She had expected him to say something like this. But the actual words,
spoken with sincerity and conviction, stopped her. Her road had ended
against the face of a cliff with a precipice on either side.
"I want to be free," she said desperately. "I must be free!"
"Free? You _are_ free."
"I mean free from marriage," explained she gently, "free to make my own
life."
He reflected, looked at her, reflected again. She saw, as plainly as if
his thoughts were print before her eyes, that he had decided she was a
spoiled child in a pet, that he was trying to find some kindly,
effective way of humoring her. But to take her words seriously, to meet
her on a plane of equality--the idea had not occurred to the grandson of
Achilles Vaughan, and could not occur to him. Anger boiled up in her,
evaporated. She laughed.
He glanced at her quickly. "Oh, you were joking!" said he in a relieved
tone.
"That wasn't why I laughed. It was to save myself from doing something
ridiculous--shouting out, or upsetting the table, or running amuck."
"No matter. It's clear to me that you're not yourself this evening--not
at all."
"Richard," said she slowly, "I know it's hard for you to believe a
woman's not a fool. I don't expect you to credit me with intelligence.
Perhaps you might if I were a big, fat woman with a loud voice. But I'm
not. So, assume I'm as silly a fool as--as most women pretend to be, to
catch husbands and to use them after they're caught. But please assume
also that, whatever I am or am not, I want my freedom. And try to
realize that we women are living in the twentieth century as well as you
men--and not in the tenth or fifteenth."
His expression was serious and respectful; he was not one to fail in
polite consideration for the feminine--the wayward, capricious,
irrational feminine with which stronger and rational man should ever be
patient and gentle. But she saw that he was in reality about as much
impressed as he would have been by a demand for the open cage door from
a canary born and bred to captivity and helplessness. He came round the
table, put his hands tenderly on her shoulders, pressed his lips in a
husbandly caress upon the coil of auburn hair that crowned her small
head. "You're tired and nervous to-night, dear," said he with grave
kindness. "So we'll not talk about it any more. Go to bed, and get a
good night's sleep. Then----"
She rose, found herself at a disadvantage standing before one so much
taller, sat down in another chair. "Yes, I am tired and I am nervous.
But I'm also in earnest. Why, if we weren't strangers, you'd realize.
You'd have felt it long ago. Can't you see I'm nothing to you or you to
me that is, nothing especial--nothing that ought to satisfy either of
us?" She was trying to speak with serious calmness; the very effort
overstrained her. And his face--its expression was so hopeless! She
was speaking a language he did not understand, was speaking of matters
of which he had not the faintest glimmer of knowledge. Her voice broke;
she steadied it. It broke again. She began to sob. "This life of ours
is a degradation. It's like a stagnant pool--it's death in life. I
can't stand it. I want love--want to give love and get it! My whole
being cries out for love! I'm dying here of the empty heart. I must
go. I ask you to be just--to give me my right--my freedom----"
It was his expression that stopped her. He was not listening to her
words at all. He was simply waiting for her to talk out her hysteria,
as he thought it, so that he could begin to soothe the agitated child.
She threw out her arms in despair.
"Go on, dear," he urged. "Say all you want. You'll feel better for
it."
The cliff, with choice between turning back and leaping over one of the
precipices on either side--the precipice of flight to Basil in secrecy
and dishonor, with Winchie, or the precipice of a divorce with Winchie
taken away from her. She buried her face in her arms and burst into
wild sobs. With Winchie taken away from her! If she fled, he would
follow, would take Winchie. If she divorced him, he would take Winchie.
It was hopeless--hopeless. There was no escape. Sobbing, she ran round
and round her prison's outer court to which she had penetrated. It had
no gates--none! He waited until she was quiet, except that her
shoulders heaved occasionally. "Poor dear!" he said tenderly. "Poor
child!" And he took her in his arms. She felt physically and morally
too weak for the least struggle. She lay passive against his breast,
her heartache throbbing dully. He carried her upstairs, laid her gently
on the sofa at the foot of her bed. "Now you feel better, don't you?"
said he, bending over her and smiling sympathetically down.
She gazed at him with forlorn, hopeless eyes, then rested her head
weakly against the cushions in the corner of the sofa.
"Of course, I understood that what you were saying a while ago was only
a nervous mood. But it gave me a shock, too. I know now what was the
matter."
She grew cold, rigid. Did he suspect? Would he take Winchie?
"I admit I've been neglecting you lately. Gallatin's leaving put a lot
of work on me. And, too, I read an article that gave me a silly
scare--made me afraid I'd be anticipated in one of my discoveries if I
didn't push things. But even if I was negligent, I can't see how you
could get the notion in your head that you weren't loved any more." He
sat down by her on the sofa, kissed the nape of her neck. "I'll make up
for it," he murmured. "Why, it'd be as impossible for me to stop loving
you as for you, a good woman, to stop loving your husband. The idea of
_you_ talking divorce!" He laughed boyishly. "You and I--divorced!
What a naughty child it was! It seems dreadful that those pure lips
could be sullied by such a word. But it never was in your heart. A
woman like you, a woman I trust my honor to, and trust my boy to,
couldn't think such things."
His words and manner, all tenderness, were for her reminders of the
Vaughan prejudice and the Vaughan will and the Vaughan pride that lay
behind; the clang of iron doors, the grate of brass keys in steel locks.
She, back in her cell and prostrate on its floor, felt she must indeed
have been driven out of her senses by heart hunger to imagine she could
get freedom and Winchie from Richard Vaughan. How love and hope had
tricked her!
"Asleep, dear?"
"No."
"You don't doubt my love any longer, do you?"
She moved restlessly.
"Still cross?" He took her in his arms in spite of her struggles, began
to caress her. And she who had never resisted did not know how to
resist now--did not dare to resist, so cowed was she by fear of losing
Winchie, so utterly was she despising herself--"nothing but a woman."
She endured till reaction stung her into crying out in anguish: "For
God's sake, Richard! I am so miserable!"
"I'm sorry," he said contritely. "I thought you wanted it." He rose at
once. "Would you like to be left alone?"
"Please."
"You forgive me for neglecting you?
"Anything!" she cried. "Only go. If you don't, I shall--" She pressed
her lips together tightly and drew all her nerves and muscles tense to
keep back the avowal that was fighting for exit.
"I'll give up my work until you feel better."
"No--no. I don't want-- Go--please go! For Winchie's sake--for
mine--for your own."
He did not attach enough importance to her words to note them and
inquire. When the door closed behind him, she drew a long breath--not
so much relief that she was alone, as relief that, before seeing how
useless it was to try to escape, she had not burst out with the whole
truth. A turn of the wind of emotion before he spoke of Winchie, and
she would have told all! Even after he had reminded her--yes, even
until the door closed between them, she might still have been goaded by
her despair or by his manner into precipitating the cataclysm----
"For he'd never have let me see Winchie again!" And--what else would he
have done?--what would he not have done? She put out her lights and,
without drawing aside the portiere, softly opened Winchie's door and
entered. She dropped down by his bed, slipped her hand under the cover,
delicately warm from his healthy young body. Her fingers rested upon
his breast over his heart. That calm, regular throb of young life beat
upon her spirit like the soft, insistent rain that soothes the
storm-racked sea.
Winchie! If she had lost him! If she had brought disgrace upon him!
She drew her hand away lest its trembling should waken him. The room
was pitch dark, but she could see him lying there, his tumbled fair hair
against the white pillow, his round cheeks flushed with healthy sleep.
She sat on the floor beside the bed, listening to his breathing. She
had gone down to the gates of the world and had led him through them
into life. Claim upon him she had none--for he owed her nothing, and if
his lot were not happy he would have the right to blame her. No, he
owed her nothing; but his claim upon her was for the last moment of her
time, for the last thought of her brain, for the last drop of her blood.
"If it were not for Winchie," she said to herself, "I'd go to Basil.
I'd leave here to-night. I owe nothing to Dick. While his way of
looking at life is not his fault, neither is it mine. And as it's his
way, not mine, he should suffer for it, not I. But for Winchie I must
stay--and live and make this house a home."
Never again would there be the least danger of her being goaded into
telling Richard and defying and compelling him. No delirium, not even a
fever like a maniac loose in the brain and hurling all its tenant
thoughts helter-skelter through the lips, could dislodge that secret.
It was sealed with the great seal of a mother's love.
When she came down to breakfast, Dick was at one of the long windows,
back to the room, hands deep in trousers' pockets. At her "Good
morning," he turned quickly. Before he answered, he noted her
expression, and his face brightened. He kissed the cheek she turned for
him as usual, and they seated themselves. In came Mazie with the
coffee; it had the delicious fragrance that proclaims fine coffee well
made, the fragrance that will put the grouchiest riser into an amiable
frame of mind. Then she brought the spoon bread and an omelette--not
the heavy, solid, yellow-brown substantiality that passes for omelette
with the general, but a light and airy, delicately colored thing of
beauty such as a skilled cook can beat up from eggs the hens have laid
within the hour.
"Feeling all right this morning?" asked Dick when Mazie had gone out.
"Perfectly," replied Courtney, her smiling eyes like the dark green of
moss round where the spring bubbles up. She was rearranging the flowers
in the bowl.
"Sleep well?"
She had not slept at all. She evaded his question by saying: "I was
very much upset last night, wasn't I?"
Dick made a gesture of generous dismissal. "Oh, I knew it was only a
passing mood," said he, helping himself liberally to the omelette.
"Everybody has moods. Do give me some of that coffee."
Strange indeed was the expression of that small, quiet face. What a
chaos a few blundering words from her a few hours ago would have put in
place of this domestic content of his! "I want to say one thing more,"
said she, "and then we'll never speak of last night--or what led up to
it."
"Yes, dear?"
"We talked a lot about ourselves--and I was thinking altogether of
myself, I find. But the truth is, Winchie's the only important fact in
our lives. We don't belong to ourselves. We belong to him."
"That's not exactly the way I'd put it," said he hesitatingly. "Do try
this spoon bread. Mazie's a wonder at making it. Do try it."
"Not just now," said she. "No, I know you wouldn't put it that way.
Put it any way you like. But it must be Winchie first, last, and all
the time. We must see to it that he has the right sort of example--from
you--from me--from us both."
Dick nodded approvingly, and when his mouth was said: "There's no
disputing that. Where is he, by the way?"
"He'll be down in a minute," replied Courtney; then went on unruffled:
"If you and I had had love before our eyes in our homes when we were
children----"
"But I did. And I'm sure your father and mother were an equally fine
example----"
"No matter," interrupted Courtney. Then she said, in a tone that
revealed for the first time how profoundly moved she was: "The point is
I want you to help me make a home--of love for Winchie."
"By all means!" exclaimed Dick heartily.
He stirred his coffee thoughtfully, looked at her with puzzled eyes; and
she saw that his keen, analytic mind, usually reserved wholly for his
work, was curiously inspecting her words and her manner for the meaning
that must be beneath so much earnestness about a passing anger over a
few days of neglect. She said no more--and was glad when Winchie came
rushing in to turn the current of his thoughts. As he was leaving for
the shop, he hunted her out in the library to kiss her good-by--a thing
he had not done in several years.
She colored, made an effort, kissed him.
"I'm sorry for my negligence since Basil left me in the lurch," said he
cheerfully. "And you're sorry you flew into such a fury about it. And
it's all settled--and forgotten?"
"We--make a fresh start," replied she.
"I'll come and take a walk with you before dinner."
"No--no. Please don't. You mustn't change abruptly." She stopped,
confused to find herself already shrinking from the new course she had
so highly resolved. "Yes--do come," said she.
"Oh--I forgot. There's one thing I simply must attend to to-day."
"Then--to-morrow."
"Yes--to-morrow we'll make the start--the fresh start."
"Very well," said she, relieved--for she felt she had done her duty.
Instead of going out immediately for a walk with Winchie, as was the
habit, she lingered about the house, keeping herself busily occupied.
She must write Basil. What she said must be final, for she owed him the
truth. And she must not say much; a long letter would give him hope, no
matter what words she used, and would harrow him in the reading and her
in the writing. At last she put on hat and even gloves for the walk,
sat hastily down at her desk, wrote: "I cannot. I belong to my boy, not
to myself." She wished to add, "I shall try to forget. So must you,
for my sake--" and also some word of love. But with the two sentence
she halted her pen. She read what she had written--"I cannot. I belong
to my boy--not to myself." She folded the sheet, sealed it in an
envelope, addressed it. As she reached for the stamp she called
Winchie. They went out together, and she mailed the letter in the box
at the edge of town. Well, it was settled--once more. Was this final?
"Nothing is settled until it's settled right." And she said to herself
that this settlement was undoubtedly right--that is, as nearly right as
anything ever is. Yes, it was settled--but her father's uncompromising
axiom continued to reiterate its clear-cut, unqualified assertion.
"Why did you sigh, mamma?" asked the boy.
"Did I sigh?" said she, trying to smile as she looked down at him.
"Yes--and you haven't been listening as we came along. You didn't hear
what I said about the dead whip-poor-will I found on the lawn--did you?"
"No," she confessed. "But I'll listen now."
She found herself wondering at her calmness. "Perhaps," reflected she,
"my fright about Winchie conquered my love. And how deep the roots of
my life are sunk into the soil of this place! Still--I don't understand
it. It doesn't seem natural I should be calm." There flashed before
her mind a picture--herself flying disheveled--coming forward with
laughter and jest--and lie--with the sting of forbidden kisses still
upon her face--the thrill of forbidden caresses-- And she flushed
crimson as the autumnal maples above her head, and glanced guiltily down
at Winchie--and saw that he was trying to pretend not to see.
*XV*
Long before Dick got caught up with the particular piece of work that
postponed their "fresh start," Courtney's "queer mood" and his own
resolution were shelved in one of those back closets of his memory where
reposed in darkness and dust matters relating to his family. He forgot
nothing; his was not the forgetting kind of mind. Everything was stored
away somewhere, under its proper heading, ready for him if he should
happen to need it. But for that especial matter there came no demand.
His happy married life had resumed its unrippled course. He worked,
with allowance for exercise--usually a long walk or a row on the lake in
the very early morning, before breakfast. Courtney occupied herself with
house and garden. She was building a vegetable greenhouse with a small
legacy from an aunt; also, there was the household routine of a
multitude of time-filling, thought-filling, not to be neglected details
for keeping things smooth and orderly--and there were reading and
painting and music--and there were callers and visits. She even began
to be philosophical about the almost daily evidences that her husband
regarded her as an inferior. All men felt that way toward women. The
very men who never made a move without consulting their wives thought
themselves superior intelligences, and their wives mere possessors of a
crafty instinct, in common with the lower animals, an instinct that was
worth availing themselves of, as long as it was right there in the
house. No, she was a silly supersensitive, she told herself, to be
disturbed by such a ridiculous universal masculine weakness of vanity.
As husbands went, Richard was about as good as any--better than most.
The evenings they spent together. A charming picture of family life
they made each evening during that rare, exquisite September. The big
log fire in the sitting room; he at the desk, she reading or sewing, or,
less frequently, playing and singing softly. She had never been
lovelier. The slightly haggard look was becoming to her young face, and
the weariness of the eyelids also, and the pathos of her mouth so eager
to smile, and the milky emerald of the eyes, like seas troubled so deep
down that the surface was only clouded, but not ruffled. Sometimes she
let Winchie stay with them an hour or so. Then the picture was
complete--the boy playing on the floor before the fire, making what he
called drawings at the table, always between his father and his mother,
always nearer his mother, near enough to put out his hand and touch her
and make quite sure of the reality of her lovely presence. Yes, she
assured herself many times each day, the struggle was over; the pain
would grow less and less, would pass--for the question of her life
relations was settled--"and settled right."
This until mid-October, when the bleak rains inaugurated what promised
to be a worse than the previous winter. On the fourth successive day
indoors, as she sat at a drawing table in the upstairs sitting room, she
suddenly lifted her head, thrust back the table, flung down the pencil,
and rushed to the window. The lawns were flooded. Bushes and trees
were drearily fluttering the last wet faded tatters of autumnal finery.
Decay--desolation--death-- "Will he never come! Will he never write!"
And the secret of her calm, so carefully guarded from herself, was a
secret from her no longer.
It had been a farce--the six weeks of resignation. One of
self-deception's familiar farces; those farces that finally make old
people cynical in spite of themselves about the reality of disinterested
goodness, of self-sacrifice, of anything except selfishness. A
farce--nothing more. That was why she could write a brief farewell and
send it off with merely a pang and a sigh. And ever since she had been
confidently waiting for something to happen. Something? What but his
coming--coming to give her again the love that was life and light to
her, the love she could no more refuse than a drowning man can withhold
his hand from clutching the rope though the devil himself toss it. And
once more her father's maxim, "Nothing is settled until it's settled
right," began to thrust itself at her--mockingly now, as if deriding her
self-deceiving attempts to found her life upon conditions to which mind
and conscience had agreed, but not heart. And heart, the most powerful
of the trinity that must harmonize within a human being or there is no
peace--heart had suddenly torn up the treaty of peace and declared war.
And war there was.
About seven that evening Dick knocked at her bedroom door. "May I
come?" he called.
"Yes--if you won't stay long," was her reply in a listless tone.
He entered, looked surprised when he saw her propped up in bed with her
supper tray in her lap. "Are you ill?"
"No."
"You didn't come down to supper."
"No."
"I don't think I ever knew you to do this before."
"No."
"Your voice sounds--strange--tired."
"I am."
"You don't exercise enough, I guess. And there's little for you to do
about the house--with Lizzie looking after the flowers and Nanny such a
good housekeeper and Mazie such a splendid cook. We're getting the
benefit of my aunt's toil. She built up such a splendid system that it
runs itself--and there's really not enough for you to do. You ought
to----"
"Won't you take this tray--take it down with you?"
"Don't you want me to sit a while?"
"Don't let me interfere with your work."
"Oh, there's no hurry."
"I'm sure you want to be at it."
He took the tray from her lap, put it on the floor beside his chair.
She reached for the book on the stand at her elbow, opened it, seemed to
be waiting for him to go. He glanced round uncertainly. "What a
charming room this is," said he. "That pale brown paper with the panels
made by broad violet stripes-- Let me see--was this one of the rooms
you did over?"
She was reading.
"Yes of course. In my aunt's time-- You'd have admired her, and she'd
have been invaluable as a teacher. But then she taught Nanny; and
Nanny's been very good about teaching you, hasn't she?"
No answer.
He laughed. "We've got a rather bad habit of not listening--haven't
we?"
"Oh--I don't mind."