"Good night." She was reading again; and his thoughts returned to his
work as he closed her bedroom door behind him. If he had looked in on
her an hour later, he might have seen that she had not yet turned the
page she pretended to begin, to get rid of him--or, rather, to help him
go where he really wished to be. And he would have distrusted her
assurance that she was not ill. For her eyes, wide and circled and
wretched, were staring into space. She was indeed ill--ill of
loneliness, of heart-emptiness, of that hope deferred which maketh the
heart sick. And the rain streamed on and on. The sight of it by day
filled her with the despair that lowers and rages. The sound of it
monotonously pattering upon the balcony at night changed her despair
from active to passive, from vain revolt to lying inert in the wash of
inky waves under inky sky.
The sympathy between her and Winchie was so close that they were like
one rather than like two. He had early discovered her sensitiveness to
the weather, but never before had he seen her frankly downhearted. He
did not annoy her. He watched her furtively, his little heart aching.
He spent most of his time near the west windows of the upstairs sitting
room. From them, now that the trees were almost bare, he could see part
of the Donaldson's roof--the part topped by a weather vane. He knew
that so long as the vane pointed east the rains would pour down, and his
mother's low spirits would continue--that when it should veer to the
west the rain would cease and the sky clear.
Day after day he watched, his hopes rising as the vane veered now toward
the north, now toward the south, and falling again as, with a jerk, it
flirted back into the eye of the east. That vane was the last thing he
saw as the darkness closed down in the late afternoon; it was the first
thing he looked at in the morning, dashing to the window the instant he
awakened. The change came in the night, when it finally did come. As
he awakened, the difference in the light, in the feel of the air told
him that all was well once more. But he made sure; he hurried to one of
his windows, turned the slats of a blind, looked at the vane. Then,
with a shout, he darted to her door, beat upon it, crying: "Mamma!
Mamma Courtney! The wind's west--the wind's west!"
She understood, opened the door. She had made her face bright. "Thank
you--thank you," she said, with a catch in her voice, as she knelt and
took him in her arms. He put one of his small hands on each of her
cheeks, kissed her, then looked into her eyes. His face fell. She
could not deceive him; it had not been the rain.
The wind was in the west; her mood veered--but to another futility. She
watched for the postman. She startled and ran to the window at every
crunch of wheels on the drive. She was agitated whenever the telephone
bell rang. At night every suggestion of sound from the direction of the
window made her lift her head from the pillow to listen; and often she
would fly to open a shutter and lean out into the darkness. She would
not go to Wenona, lest he should come while she was away. She never
left the house for a walk without telling the servants just where she
was going--"and if anyone comes, send for me."
Never before had she surrendered to the somber mood; she had always met
it by taking up some one of the things at hand that interested her, and
working at it until health and youth and hope reasserted themselves.
But this time she could find nothing to build upon; it was all
quicksand, slipping away and leaving her to sink. She no longer cared
about her surroundings. She had always seen to it that the servants she
had so thoroughly trained in a modern system she had carefully worked
out did their duties, and did them well. Now she let the servants do as
they pleased--and they soon pleased to do very poorly--as poorly as the
average human being does, unless held rigidly from his natural
tendencies to slovenliness and shirking. She had always done the buying
for the kitchen, and had herself selected at the farm the things to be
sent over. Now the good old days of Aunt Eudosia returned, with the
farmer sending whatever gave him or one of "the hands" the least
trouble, and with Nanny accepting from the storekeepers what they chose
at their own price. The bills went up; yet the meat was often tough,
the chickens and game inferior, the butter and eggs only fair, instead
of the very best. Canned vegetables appeared on the table when fresh
vegetables were still to be had. The coffee was capricious. The table
itself was carelessly set; napkins were used several times, instead of
only once; tablecloths did not always go into the wash with the first
spot. Lizzie and Mazie lost no opportunity to cut down the amount of
work they would have to do on wash and ironing days.
In the living rooms, upstairs as well as down, there was no longer the
beautiful order that had made the interior a pleasure to the eye and so
comfortable. A chair had only three casters; a door was losing its
knob. A window curtain had broken away from its rod at one corner and
was hanging down. Several cushions had rips in them that would soon be
rents. Winchie's ravages remained unrepaired--and unrebuked. The
flowers in the vases were not fresh every day, and were arranged by a
servant's heavy hands. Window gardens and baskets and hothouse suffered
from alterations of drought and deluge, and showed it. The red spider
was rarely interrupted in his ruinous feasts. Where order has been
perfect, brief neglect produces unsightly disorder. The house was
becoming like most houses--indifferently looked after by women who know
little about housekeeping as an art and feel "above" the endless petty
details that must be attended to, no matter what the enterprise, if
there is to be success. The work of changing the library to a winter
conservatory had, like the vegetable greenhouse, been begun, and
abandoned midway.
From the house the blight spread to herself. It is well-nigh impossible
for a person who has been bred from birth in personal order and
cleanliness to become really slovenly and dirty, unless beaten down into
the hopeless wretchedness of extreme poverty. But Courtney had lost
interest in herself, just as she had lost interest in the house. She
got herself together "any old way" in the mornings, took to breakfasting
in bed. Sometimes she dressed for supper, and sometimes she came in
working or walking clothes or in the negligee she had been wearing all
day. Sometimes her blouse was buttoned in the back, oftener it was
partly open. Wrinkled stockings had been her especial abhorrence, as
she was proud of her slim tapering legs; now she habitually went the
whole day without garters. She read much, and always novels. Formerly
their pandering to "spirituality," to "culture," to all the silly and
enfeebling sentimentalisms had bored her. They had offended her sense of
what was truly ideal--for, even thus early in her development, she had a
strong suspicion that "idealism" was not a mode of life but a strut, and
that "idealists" were not above but beneath usefulness. Now she took
novels as a drug fiend his dope. Anything to escape reality--the ugly
facts which her negligence was making uglier day by day.
She was in the way trod by so many women who, married and safe, cease to
compete and deteriorate physically, morally, and mentally. And she knew
it. She had too much intelligence to delude herself, as some women do.
Instead of being angered when evidence of her plight thrust at her, she
found bitter satisfaction in it. "I'll soon be down to the level of
those 'good' women Dick regards as models," thought she. And she read
on at her novels.
And still she continued to hope, though she constantly assured herself
that hope was dead and buried. It was nearly Christmas; he had been
gone more than four months--a hundred and thirty days. No word from
him, no sign. "It's over," declared she. "It was just physical
attraction, nothing more. And he got enough." This lash upon pride and
vanity stung. But the pain seemed to ease another and fiercer pain, and
she scourged on. "He got enough. In New York he found fresh
attraction--not hard for a man with money and free." Yes, he had used
her, despising her the while--how she writhed as she rubbed the coarse
salt of these taunts into her wounds!--had used her, despising her the
while, had cast her away, like the butt of a smoked cigarette. "And why
shouldn't he use and despise and drop me? Could anyone have been
'easier' than I was--I, poor fool, with my dreams of love, and my
loneliness and credulity? Well, anyhow he ought to be grateful to fate
for having given him a distraction in this dull hole." ... What vanity
had been hers, to imagine she could win and hold such a man as he--man
of the world, experienced, clever. What colossal vanity! "Really, I
deserve all I've got. I'm just like the rest of the women--a vanity
box, a mirror and a powder puff, silly and empty--a fool for men to
flatter and wheedle and laugh at.... What a poor, dependent thing a
woman is! Dick's right; we're worthless except as pastimes. Don't we
always despise and trample on a man who takes us seriously? We feel he
has dropped down to our level."
She dissected, one by one, the "good" women over in the town and in the
big houses along the south shore--their inane lives, their inane
pastimes, their inane conversation. What animal grossness concealed by
manners and a thin veneer of education, just as their costly clothes
concealed the truth about their neglected bodies. What lazy ignorance
beneath those pretentious fads for "culture" or religion or charity.
And the men, too--through their passions dominated by these women. Not
an idea--not an aspiration--just hunting and money-making and eating and
drinking--catering to crude appetites. Slavish conformity to the
soddening, mind-suffocating routine prescribed by custom for the
comfortable classes. Fit associates, these men and their women. The
nauseating hypocrisies and self-cheating about virtue and piety and
"pure family life!" A pigsty of a world, if one looked at it as it was,
instead of at its professions and pretenses. "I'd rather be the dupe of
my own honest folly than the dupe of the world's cheap frauds. At
least, I aspired. And now that I've fallen back into the muck, all
bruised and broken, I don't lie to myself about its being muck.... And
what can I do for Winchie? If I teach him what he ought to be, I'll
unfit him for life in the world. If I fit him for life in the world, I
must teach him to pretend, to cheat, to lie, to trample and cringe. If
I teach him the truth about women, he'll become a rake. If I don't,
he'll become their dupe. If I teach him the truth about men, he'll shun
them. If I don't, they will debauch him."
A wound always constructs a cover, to protect itself while it is
healing. The wounded heart of an intelligent man or woman usually
protects itself with the scab of cynicism. For the last few years
Courtney had shared with Wenona's few progressive, restless young
married women that reputation for thinking and saying startling things
which anyone at all free in thought and speech soon gets among
conventional people. Now she became a mild scandal. Wenona appreciated
that it was the fashion in these degenerate days, the mark of the "upper
class," to indulge in audacities of every kind. Also, whatever a
Benedict and a Vaughan did must be just about right. But sometimes,
when she was in a particularly insurgent mood, her callers went away
dazed.
They wondered what her husband thought of such disbelief in everything
that men, themselves disbelieving, held it imperative for women to
believe--women and children and preachers. The fact was he knew nothing
about it. Conversation between him and his wife was confined to the
necessary routine matters, and never extended beyond a few sentences.
They saw each other at table only; then Winchie did most of the talking,
or it grew out of and centered round things he had inquired about.
Richard and Courtney neither acted nor felt like strangers. That would
have meant strain. They ignored each other with the easy
unconsciousness that characterizes an intimate life in which there is no
sympathy, no common interest. When Richard talked about his work, as he
did occasionally, merely the better to arrange his thoughts, Courtney
did not listen. When Courtney and Winchie talked together, Richard did
not listen.
"You saw the news in to-day's paper?" said Richard at supper a few days
after Christmas.
As he continued to look expectantly at her, she roused herself from her
reverie, slowly grasped his question. "I didn't read to-day's papers,"
answered she.
"Well, Gallatin's engagement's announced--from Philadelphia."
She nerved herself for the reaction of inward turmoil which would, she
felt, certainly follow such a blow. To her amazement no reaction came.
She felt as calm as if the news had been about some one of whom she had
never heard.
"Why, you seem not to be interested."
"Oh, yes," replied she indifferently.
"I remember, you didn't like him."
It almost seemed true to her. Or, rather, that she had never cared
about him one way or the other.
"And he so mad about you," continued Richard with raillery. "I'll never
forget the looks he used to give you--or the ones he gave me, either.
Well, it's all over now. He's evidently cured."
"Evidently," said Courtney. She looked calmly at him, shifted her gaze.
It happened to fall upon Winchie. The boy was frowning jealously into
his plate. She colored. She never had the slightest self-consciousness
about Basil with Richard, but only with the boy. However, the reminder
soon passed in marvel at her amazing tranquillity. How could she be thus
calm in face of such a blow? Had she really conquered her love? Had
this sudden, unexpected news of his perfidy killed it all in an instant?
Had she never loved him?
Richard had been talking, and she had been so absorbed she had not
heard. Now he was holding a letter across the table toward her.
Mechanically she reached out, took it, fixed her eyes upon it. "And
Mrs. Torrey says," Richard was explaining, "that we ought to ask Cousin
Helen here--for a few months at least--until she gets over her father's
death."
"Wenona's no place for a girl in search of a husband."
"A husband!" exclaimed Richard. "Who said anything about a husband?"
"Now that her father's dead, with nothing but a small life insurance,
she's got to marry."
"Yes, I suppose so."
"That's what Mrs. Torrey's saying between these lines." And she handed
the letter back.
"Mrs. Torrey's a fine, noble old lady. Such sordid ideas never'd enter
her head."
"Mrs. Torrey's a woman."
"And a good one--and so is Helen," maintained Richard. "Marrying's about
the last idea in her head at present."
"I believe that is the theory--among men who know nothing about women."
"She's doubtless almost prostrated with grief."
"With anxiety, perhaps. Not with grief. Not for a worthless old
drunkard."
"You forget, Courtney. He was her _father_."
Courtney lifted her eyebrows. "So much the more certain she detested
him. She had to live right up against him."
Richard leaned forward slightly, to add emphasis to his rebuke. "I
repeat, Helen is a good woman--a woman with a sense of duty. She must
have loved him."
"Why repeat such twaddle?" inquired Courtney, unimpressed. "What has
duty to do with hearts?"
Dick looked strong disapproval. "What is the matter, my dear? You're
not talking in the least like yourself."
"You always make that same remark," observed Courtney, "whenever I say
anything that does not suit you."
"Are you irritated by the prospect of Helen's coming? If you don't want
her----"
"I am not irritated about anything. As for Helen, I care not a rap one
way or the other."
Winchie had finished. He kissed his father, then his mother good night,
and went upstairs. Richard came out of a deep study to say, "It's a
pity Gallatin isn't free and here--if Helen comes."
"It would have made a good match," said Courtney judiciously. "A
splendid living for Helen."
"I wasn't thinking of Gallatin's wealth," protested Richard, reddening.
Then he laughed, "At least, not altogether."
"The living's the main point in marriage."
"What an unpleasant mood you're in."
"I? I never felt more amiable."
"Have I said anything to offend you?"
"Not a thing." She rose languidly. "You're still the model--not a
single redeeming fault."
She stretched herself with slow, lazy grace. "But you," said he, "are a
bundle of redeeming faults and vagaries--a bouquet of them." And he was
about to kiss her.
She flung away from him with flashing eyes. He stared, amazed. "How
you startled me!" she exclaimed, quickly changing her expression from
fury to half-laughing irritation.
"Miss Caprice!" And his gaze was soft and brilliant.
There was a virgin coldness in her manner that puzzled and abashed him.
"How I hate this body of mine, sometimes!" said she. "An admiring look
makes me angry, and a kiss seems an insult. Come to me with your love
when I'm old and ugly. Then, perhaps, I'll believe it."
And she strolled out of the room and upstairs. The instant she had her
bedroom door locked, she knew why she had come away--knew she had been
obeying an instinct warning her secret self that she could not many
minutes longer endure the strain. "But really I am calm," she insisted.
In the same second her wound opened and was aching and bleeding and
throbbing, unhealed. "I can never forget--never!" she cried. "Was it
only this body of mine he cared for? What does it matter? Even the
little he gave was more than I had to give. I ought to have been more
humble about giving--I who had so little. And what happiness he gave me
in exchange! No--not happiness, but more than happiness." Her eyes
strained into the night. It was so dreary--so lonely. "Basil!--Basil!
I'm dying for you--dying from the core out!"
She flung her windows wide. The snow came whirling in. The wind was
moaning among the branches. Somewhere, far away, a bell tolled.
Silence, utter solitude, a stretch of white snow under a black sky, and
the chilling cold. "Come to me!" she cried. "I am so cold--so
lonely--so hungry! And I love you."
Even where a woman cannot doubt that her lover has forgotten, there are
times when memory--of his vows so convincing, of his caresses that
seemed the inspiration of her charms alone--makes her defy certainty and
believe. And Courtney had no real reason to think him either false or
forgetful. They had been torn apart when their love was still hungry
and thirsty, when even the long calm that precedes satiety was still far
in the future, when they were so absorbed in loving that they had not
yet had time to begin to get acquainted with each other's real self. It
was doubt of him that was forced, belief in him that was natural. "If
he were not so strong, so honorable!" she cried. "Ah, if he were only
where I could tempt him!"
Even the thought of Winchie now lost all power to check her; he was too
much like part of herself. She seemed as placid in her slender
youthfulness as those handsome matronly women who suggest extinct
volcanoes covered with flowers and smiling fields. Beneath her manner
of monotonous, emotionless calm she was battling with the temptation to
take her boy and fly from that cold desolation of loveless loneliness,
to fly to him. If Richard had not been absolutely apart from her life,
absolutely out of her thoughts she would have hated him. As it was her
rage fretted at the impersonal barriers and bonds that held her--not
Richard, but conventionality and, above all, lack of money. "If only I
had money!" she cried again and again.
But she had nothing--her clothes, a few dollars that must be paid out
for expenses already incurred. "If I went to him, it would be to become
his dependent, just as I am Richard's. Oh, the horror of being a woman!
Bred to dependence; bred for the market; bred to tease some man into
undertaking her support for life. There is the rotten spot in my whole
life. If Richard had ever deigned to speculate as to what was going on
in my head, he'd never have dared touch me. He'd have feared I was his
only for hire. But would he care? Doesn't he expect me to be true
because he supports me? Isn't that what marriage means, beneath the
cant and pretense? Yes, I'm simply part of his property, and the
pretenses that gloze it over only make it the more revolting. Oh, if
men had sensibilities, and if they knew what women thought!--why we
smile and flatter and stay on, in spite of neglect and insult!"
She felt that, if she should go to Basil, the day would come when their
love would die of this poison exuding from the basic fact of their
relations--his sense of his rights because of her dependence; or, her
fear of losing or impairing her living; or, her feeling that since she
took bread she must give body--all she had to pay with. Richard thought
he could afford to be neglectful; and when it suited him to give passing
attention to his property again--to walk in his garden and eat a little
fruit from his tree--he thought he had a perfect right to do so. If
Richard was thus, if all men believed thus, why fancy Basil an
exception? Basil, in time, when passion cooled, would hold her in the
same light disesteem. If a man lost his virtue, even hypocrisy did not
go beyond a half smiling shake of the head; if a woman lost her virtue,
she was "ruined." Ruined--that is, a worthless wreck. "No, I shall not
go to Basil. No doubt, he still cares--in a man's way of caring. But
he holds me, the unfaithful wife, cheap enough. If I were to lose
reputation also, were to be unable to give him the pleasure of
trespassing on another's property, were to be merely a ruined woman,
living off him, he'd soon treat me like the slave that I am. No, I'll
not change owners.... If only I had money!"
What, then? She had seen all along that she was like one sinking in the
ooze of a marsh--softly, inevitably toward suffocation. "If I stay on
here, I'll become like the rest of the settled, disillusioned married
women. I'll become a chronic sloven and--as my disposition isn't toward
fat, squatted good nature--a shrew. A slovenly shrew!" Why not? What
had she left to live for? In a few years Winchie would be away at
school--then in some city at profession or business--and married and out
of her life. "I might as well give up. Why not?"
There seemed to be no reason. But our conduct in its main lines is not
governed by reason, but by instincts that impel us even against will.
When Richard had failed her at the outset of their married life, she had
sunk; then her temperament of hope and energy had forced her up again in
face of deepest discouragements. So now, while there was no reason why
she should cease to sink, should begin to struggle, while Basil's
announced engagement assuring a speedy marriage seemed just the thing to
make her sink on, she began to rouse herself and to look about her. For
the second time her longings and energies had lost their stimulus, their
inspiration, their vitalizing center. And that center is to an
unselfish nature as necessary as queen bee to swarm which clusters about
her, labors for her, and renews through her. With human beings such as
Courtney Vaughan longings and energies rarely die upon the corpse of
their inspiration. After a while they fly upward, as did hers, and
begin to circle in search of a new clustering center, a new reason for
living and working on. "I can't stay here," she kept repeating. "I
must go somewhere. I must do something. Where? What?" How settle her
life problem so that it would be "settled right," and she could have
peace and happiness? She found no answer. But she kept on thrusting
the question at herself. It was as significant of her character as of
her trend of thought that her cry "If only I had money!" changed to "If
only I could _make_ money!"
*XVI*
They were at supper, Dick reading the paper, Winchie busy with bowl of
rice and milk, Courtney listening to the storm that shrieked in baffled
rage after each vain assault upon the house. Her whole being was
quivering with the pain that never pierced her more acutely than when
she was in the presence of Basil's vacant place at the table. Winchie,
without looking up, broke the silence: "We shan't go, mamma, shall we,
unless it clears up?"
Dick, turning the paper, happened to hear. "Go where?" he asked.
"To grandfather's."
"When?"