"You mustn't," replied she. Then a reason--the reason--the solution of
her life problem--came to her as if by inspiration. "It's my only
chance to be a good woman. That sounds strange, doesn't it?"
"Not to me. I understand. If you hadn't sent for me soon--" he checked
himself.
"What?"
"You didn't know that my coming here last spring--and loving you--cured
me of the drinking habit. I know, it's stupid and disgusting. I used
to loathe myself when I gave way. But it's the only resort in
loneliness. And if I realized that you were lost to me, what would I
care?"
She nodded sympathetically. "I was going all to pieces, in another way.
I was sliding down as fast as Winchie and I were coasting the hill back
there. I was going the way of all women who have no love--grown-up
love--in their lives. I know now, the reason I used to keep myself
together and built myself up and looked after things was because I was
waiting and hoping for love, and was expecting it. Love is all of a
woman's life, as things are run in this world--at present."
"And quite enough it is, too," said he.
"No," disagreed she. "But let that pass. If I went back to--to that
life--alone, I'd be going to ruin. And I'd probably drag him and
Winchie down with me. A woman of that unburied-dead sort drags down
everybody about her.... You've only to look round, in any station of
life, to see those women by the scores. Some few are saved by
children--not many and they are of a different nature from me--from most
women, I think.... If I don't go back, I either go to you disgraced, a
shame to my family, a lifelong stain on my boy here, a miserable, afraid
dependent of yours.... No, don't interrupt; I've thought it all out....
Or, I'd plunge into a life of social dissipation. If possible, that sort
of woman is worse for herself and for her husband and children than the
domestic rotter. A chattering, card-playing gadabout. Possibly I might
remain true to my husband, but-- If the world weren't the fool it is,
it would have discovered long ago that there are worse vices than--" As
always when she forced herself to say frank, merciless things, she
looked straight into his eyes with defiant audacity--"worse vices than
ours."
"But--" he began, shifting his gaze and coloring.
"Oh, yes, it is. Don't make any mistake about it. But I know lots of
'good' women--liars, gossips, naggers, petty swindlers of their
husbands, envious, malicious, spiteful--lots and lots of so-called good
women beside whom I'd feel white as this snow."
"Rather!" exclaimed Basil.
"So--if you'll go with me--I'm going home--to make it a home--to be a
good mother--to give Richard at least his money's worth in care and
comfort and--" She looked at him with eyes suddenly solemn--"and that
is all, Basil--all. It's all I can give him, all he has the right to....
I'm going home to be a good woman, if you'll come and be there too."
"There's only one life for me--to be as near you as you'll let me."
A long silence. Then she again, sadly: "I don't know how it will work
out. But--what else is there for us? We're not heroes. We're human.
We must do the best we can. Together we may survive. Apart, I at least
will perish--and destroy those near me. I suppose I'm all wrong.
But"--with a sigh--"I'm doing the best I can."
Silence again. Then he, deeply moved: "I'll try to be worthy of you,
dear."
"Worthy of _me_? For God's sake, don't say those things. There isn't
any pedestal I wouldn't fall off of and break to bits.... Basil--"
wistfully--"you don't care for me in just a physical way--do you, dear?"
"I care for you in every way," he answered. "Courtney, I never believed
I could respect a woman as I respect you. You know, men aren't brought
up really to respect women--or themselves, for that matter."
"Then--couldn't we try to--" She lowered her head, faltered--"couldn't
we live as if we were engaged only?"
"Why should we?" he cried.
"I know it's only a fancy. But fancies count more than facts.... I'd
feel less the--" She faltered--paused.
"Yes--yes--I understand. And-- Well, it doesn't do a man any good to
be pretending friendship and smiling in another fellow's face, when all
the time-- I'll try, Courtney-- But--it won't be exactly easy."
Her gaze burned for an instant on his, then dropped. "I should hope
not!" murmured she.
They, absorbed in each other, moved so slowly along the road that
Winchie, silent, motionless, sullen, upon the sled they were trailing as
far as the rope permitted, was stiff with cold. But he did not murmur.
By the time they reached the door of the farmhouse, Courtney and Basil
had it all planned. He was to leave immediately after supper, was to go
at once to Vaughan, make the arrangements, reinstall himself. She was
to come home in three or four days--unless Vaughan sent, asking her to
come sooner. He dined with the family at the farmhouse, made himself so
agreeable that they were all pleased with him--even sister Ann whose
bitterness over her failure at what she secretly regarded as woman's
only excuse for being alive, took the unoriginal disguise of aggressive
man-hating. At six o'clock he drove away in the starlight with a merry
jingling of sleigh bells that echoed in Courtney's happy heart. The
cold was intense; but she felt only warmth--that delicious warmth that
comes from within. She stood on the little front porch, with the stars
brilliant above and the snow white and smooth over hill and valley. She
watched the swift dark sleigh--listened to those laughing bells, their
music growing fainter and fainter--but not in her heart. She was so
happy that the tears were in her eyes and the sobs in her throat. It
was for her one of those moments in life when she asked nothing more,
could imagine nothing that would add to joy. Love again!--and oh, what
exalted love, to warm the heart and fill it with light and joy, to
brighten every moment of life, to guide her up and ever up.
Winchie, standing beside her and looking up at her rapt face, tugged
angrily at her skirts.
*XVII*
When the mail cart on the third afternoon failed to bring a letter from
Richard, she decided that prudence had been satisfied, that she need
wait no longer. Toward four she and Winchie set out, snuggled deep in
furs and straw in the rear of a huge country sleigh. The roads were
perfect; the snow was like a strand at low tide, rolled smooth and firm
by the broad tires of high tide's billows. The big horses, steaming as
if they were engines, flew as if they were a wind. But her impatient
heart was always far ahead, fretting at their laggard pace.
They dashed into the outskirts of Wenona. The journey was ended except
the mile and a half round the curve of the lake. She became all at once
serenely calm. Life her real life--was now about to begin. It was far
from the life she would have chosen, had she been prearranging her own
fate. However--who could live an ideal life in such a topsy-turvy
world? Nature and conventionality ever at war; right and wrong, not two
straight paths, one up, the other down, but a tangle, a maze, a
labyrinth. One must often travel the path of the wrong in order to
reach the path of the right; and keeping to the path of the right often
meant arriving in a hopeless network of blind alleys of the wrong. She
was in the confused state about right and wrong characteristic of this
era of transition that has seen the crumbling of the despotism of dogma,
and has not yet received, or created, a moral guidance to replace it.
"Life is a compromise, unless one lives alone and miserably and
uselessly," thought she. "My life's to be a thistle with fig grafts.
I'll do the best I can with it--Basil and I. With him to help me--his
strength and character and self-denying love--with him to help, all may
go well. Is my compromise--Basil's and mine--worse than those almost
everyone has to make? If so, then they ought to educate women
differently, and change marriage."
And when the sleigh reached the drive-front porch, making a dashing and
musical arrival, she was in a mood of moral exaltation that might have
stirred the enthusiasm of a saint--that is, a saint ignorant of the
foundations of that mood or the processes by which it had reared itself
skyward. Saints who are wise in the ways of humanity do not interrogate
too closely the glitter and lift of moral temples; they know humanity
has only humble materials with which to build.
The doors opened wide and, in a flood of bright warm air, redolent of
the perfume of flowers, out came Dick to welcome them. "I _am_ glad!"
cried he. Because of the peculiar relations long established between
them--relations such as must exist in some degree between a husband and
a wife before the triangular situation can ever even threaten--because
of these peculiar relations, she had not anticipated and did not feel
the least embarrassment. She was not defying or ignoring her husband;
she had no husband. After he swung Winchie to the porch he turned to do
the same service for her. But she had quickly disengaged herself from
the robes and was standing beside him. He looked into her face, fully
revealed by the pour of soft light from the hall. "Your trip certainly
has done you good," said he.
"Thank you," replied she absently, presenting her left cheek for the
necessary formality of the occasion. Her attention was wholly
elsewhere.
In the hall before her there had appeared two people, hanging back
discreetly, so that they would not intrude upon the family reunion.
Basil, she expected. The woman beside him so astonished her that she
forgot to be glad to see him. _Who_ was she? This tall, slender girl
with the proud, regular features, the attractively done dark hair, the
big, honest brown eyes? She glanced at Basil, standing beside this
lovely girl and making a laughing remark; her feminine sight instantly
noted how the remark was received by the girl--the flattering glance and
smile a marriageable woman rarely wastes upon anything from one of her
own sex or from an ineligible man. And through Courtney shot a pang
that dissolved her structure of moral uplift as a needle thrust
collapses a toy balloon. Who was this woman?--this _young_ woman--this
_tall_ woman--this _handsome_ woman--so pleased with Basil Gallatin?
"Aren't you surprised to find Helen March here?" Dick was now saying.
Helen March! So, that scrawny, raw-boned girl, all freckles and
pimples, and unable to manage her mouth, the Helen March she had seen
three years before and had not seen since--so, that prim and homely gawk
had developed into this stately creature! Prim, still--unless that
expression was the familiar maidenly pose to attract wife hunters. But
certainly neither homely nor awkward. She even dressed her hair well,
and wore her clothes with quite an air. All this Courtney saw and felt
and thought in a few twinklings of an eye--for in such circumstances a
woman's mind works with the rapidity of genius, and with genius's grasp
of essential detail. Helen was advancing.
"Don't you recognize me, Courtney?" she asked. The voice was one of
those honest, pleasant voices that disarm the most cynical pessimists
about human nature--the voice that makes the _blase_ city man fall to
dreaming of taking a country girl to wife.
"_Now_ I do, of course," said Courtney sweetly. And the two embraced
and kissed.
To do this, Helen had to bend, as she was more than a head the taller.
She bent with not a suggestion of condescension in manner or in thought.
Nevertheless Courtney, for the first time in her life painfully
sensitive about her stature, flamed and was resentful--and in her scorn
of her own pettiness felt tinier within than without. True, Helen's
figure was commonplace, the bust too high and ominously large for her
age, the hips already faintly menacing, the waist and arms somewhat too
short for the great length of leg. True, her own figure was--certainly
better. Still, Helen had that advantage of height--could look at Basil
level-eyed, could make her seem--short! And this Helen here to stay
indefinitely!
There was pathos in the slow, sweet smile Courtney gave Basil as their
trembling hands met in what seemed to the others a formal greeting. She
turned away with a sigh. Just as she, the thirsty, the desert-bound,
was all ready to rush forward and drink--the mirage vanished. Was it to
be always so? Was life to be ever a succession of mirages, vanishing at
approach, only to reappear and revive hope--and cheat again? Through
her mind flashed the memory of the first one--an indelible memory,
always for her symbolic of vain expectation: A fourth of July when she
was a very small child--how she awakened at sunrise, rushed to the
window to find sky clear and world radiant and ready for the picnic that
was to be her first great positive joy; how she was dressed in her best,
in wonderful new white frock, in white stockings and shoes and white
bows covering the top buttons, shimmering sash of pale green, and bows
of pale green on her braids; how, just as she descended in all her glory
to issue forth, down came the rain--in floods--and no picnic, nothing
but stay at home all day and weep and watch the downpour. "It was my
horoscope," thought she, as she stood there in the hall too sad for
bitterness over her spoiled home-coming. "Is it fate? Or, is it somehow
my fault? My fault, I suppose. I must be asking of life something no
one--at least, no woman--has the right to expect."
She was near the library door, with Winchie on its threshold staring
round big-eyed and crying, "Oh, mamma Courtney. Look!" His eyes were
no more wondering than her own. She had been too disheartened to make
the library over into a conservatory that year; now, here it was
transformed into a conservatory--the carpet up from the hardwood floor,
plants beautiful for bloom or for foliage or for both in boxes, in jars,
in pots--everywhere. A conservatory like that of former years, but more
elaborate.
The others were laughing and watching her face. So she exclaimed "I am
surprised!" in the indefinite tone the listener can easily adapt to his
expectations. But she was not pleased--far from it. Another fierce
pang of jealousy. She, modest about her own abilities, did not realize
that the room lacked just the finishing touch of her exquisite taste.
To her it seemed better far than she could have done. Why, she hadn't
been needed, or missed even! Things went on as well in her absence as
when she was here. And near her, side by side, were Basil and
Helen--how she could feel them!--so well matched physically--and he
fair, she dark. And Courtney had not that self-complacent, satisfied
vanity which shelters so many of us from any and all misgivings and
doubts.
"Helen did most of it," explained Vaughan. "She's a trump, you'll find.
Look out, Helen, or we'll make you do all the work."
"Cousin Dick proposed it and really carried it out," protested Helen in
her school-teacherish or collegiate speech and manner. "And Mr.
Gallatin was invaluable in showing us how you had it last winter. We
wanted to get it exactly the same."
Courtney turned brilliant, grateful eyes on Basil. "So, you remembered,
did you?" she ventured to say, sure her meaning and her tone would pass
the others safely.
Basil flushed. "You can judge for yourself," said he.
"I'm so overcome I don't know what to say." Their smiling, friendly
faces, all bent upon her, made her natural generosity burst forth like
April's unending green at the first warmth of the sun. Her eyes filled.
"Thank you--thank you all!" she cried. "I am so--_so_--happy!" And she
kissed Helen again, ashamed of her mean impulses toward one whose
aloneness and poverty commanded kindness and consideration and help from
another woman, especially from a woman who had known the bitterness of
dependence and aloneness.
Good sense and decent instincts, having driven off jealousy, held the
field--not without occasional alarms and excursions, but still
decisively. It was the merriest party that had gathered about the
mahogany dining-room table since Colonel 'Kill imported it from beyond
the mountains, along with sundry novelties in those parts, in that early
day--carpets and curtains and window glass, wall paper and carved beds
and crystal chandeliers. In Colonel 'Kill's time the atmosphere had
been genial but austere; Aunt Eudosia, during her brief reign between
his death and her own, had maintained his traditions reverently; and
Courtney had struggled not altogether with success, though bravely and
resolutely, against the atmosphere that lingered on after all her
brightening changes. But that night, the spell was broken. Dick put
aside his chemistry; Basil and Courtney forgot him and their burden of
deceit. Helen belied her mourning which, as Courtney had shrewdly
guessed, was mere formality anyhow. Everyone was gay, even jealous
little Winchie, devoting himself to Helen, determined to make her love
him. And Courtney was gayest of all; was not that vacant place at the
table filled once more? Her heart overflowed with joy and her lips and
eyes with laughter each time she looked in that direction and
saw--_him_! Everyone was gay except old Nanny, listening sourly to the
merriment that came through door and hall into kitchen and sounded like
a burst from a ballroom whenever Lizzie was passing in or out. "Poor
young man!" muttered Nanny to her dishes and pans. "If he only knowed
the whited sepulchre he's living amidst, what a holocaust there'd be."
She did not know what holocaust meant, having got merely its vague sense
from a sermon; thus, it gave her a conception of anarchy and chaos far
beyond the scope of words she understood.
Courtney's emerald eyes, dancing and laughing though they were,
scrutinized Basil. Not that she really suspected him; she simply wished
to fortify herself against the folly and the unhappiness of
suspicion--as women look under a bed before getting into it. Having
fortified herself, she concentrated on Helen--Helen, the homeless, the
unmarried, the eager to be married. There the results of her scrutiny
were not so satisfactory. Basil would have called Helen's manner mere
civility; and perhaps, in strict justice, it was nothing more. But
Courtney the woman, judging Helen the woman, saw the hidden truth
beneath the surface truth--saw that Helen was not without an instinct
for a possible customer for the virtue so carefully nurtured against the
coming of an opportunity for it to expand in the garden of matrimony
with the flower and leaf and fruit of wife and mother. Courtney judged
fairly, conceded that Helen was the reverse of forward, was using no
arts, no subtleties. But the candidate for matrimony showed in her
charmingly receptive and appreciative attitude toward the young man.
The danger which Courtney foresaw and feared lay in the fact that Basil
and Helen were both attractive. To Courtney it seemed a question of a
very brief time when, without any effort whatever on her part, Helen
must fall in love with him. What then? A well-bred, pretty woman in
love is always more and ever more attractive to the man she centers
upon. And Helen was free--and could be honorable throughout!
As Courtney undressed for bed, these reflections, so forbidding of
aspect, faced her whichever way she turned. "I like Helen," she thought,
"and it's decent and right to give her a home. If I were what I ought
to be--ought to try to be--I'd give her every opportunity to win Basil.
She's got to have some one to support her. I'm provided for. It's mean
of me to stand in her way." She found some cheer in the reflection
that, while most women would straight off hate Helen and look on her as
an impudent interloper, she herself had generosity enough to be just in
thought at least. "But I'm human," said she. "Helen has got to go.
She doesn't love him. I do. She doesn't need him. I do. She's got to
go!"
It was her habit to sit on the rug before the fire in her sitting room,
and do her hair for the night; then she would sometimes stretch herself
out flat upon her breast and read by the fire light or watch it and
dream or think. She was lying that way, head pillowed upon a book and
face toward the fire, when Dick opened the door, glanced in, entered. So
absorbed was she that she did not know he was in the room until he
spoke.
"It's like what Nanny would call a special providence, isn't it?" said
he, seating himself on the sofa parallel to the fireplace but well back
from it. He had a long dressing gown over his pajamas and was smoking a
last cigarette.
"Special providence? What?" inquired she without turning her head. His
entrance had not interrupted her train of thought. Her answer was, as
usual, a reflex action from her surface mind.
"Why, Basil's coming back."
No reply. She was not thinking of Dick's statement of Basil's return as
coming from him but as if she had herself begun to revolve it of her own
accord.
"And Helen's being here."
A restless shiver. She was unconscious of Dick's presence. She was
gazing absorbed at the proposition: Helen is here.
"It's just as we wanted it," he went on.
The lithe, delicately formed body grew tense. "Speak for yourself," she
said curtly.
Richard received this rebuff in silence. "I know you don't like Basil,"
said he at length. "And, it's true he was a tank and a tear-about at
college----"
There he stopped, shamefaced. He forgot he had told her about Basil; he
felt it was undignified and unworthy gossip now that he had matrimonial
designs upon him. "That slipped out," he said to her apologetically. "I
never intended to tell you. Anyhow, he has dropped all that sort of
thing, and I don't believe he'll ever turn loose again.... I wonder why
that girl broke the engagement. He tells me he's free, and I suspect he
wanted to come back because he's pretty badly cut up.... You will be
nice to him, Courtney?--and help him and Helen along? They were intended
for each other--height--contrast of coloring----"
Courtney sat up impatiently, turned her back to the fire to warm it,
clasped her knees in her arms. She was conscious of him now, vaguely,
unpleasantly conscious, though the ideas he had suggested still held
most of her attention. Gradually she became uncomfortable; no, it was
not the cold. Her wandering glance happened upon Richard's face. His
expression-- That was it! Not cold, but the sense of being looked at
by eyes that had not the right. She blushed furiously from head to
feet, had an impulse to snatch the rug about her and dart from the room.
"You are--_beautiful_!" he exclaimed, rising. "I was just contrasting
you with Helen March this evening. She's undoubtedly handsome. Has
height, and go, and, for a girl, really a surprising amount of----"
Courtney was not listening. She was thinking of her oversight in not
locking her doors into the hall.
"Of charm--aside from the freshness that's about all there is to most
girls, I imagine."
She must be careful not to irritate him, not to rouse him to the
vigilance that nothing can escape. What a luckless beginning of a new
life!
"And you're so well now--so alive----"
"I'm all but dead," she declared, pretending a yawn. "I must go to bed."
She sprang lightly up. "Good night," she said. And to take away the
sting--for, his slight wince showed her there was sting--she stood on
tiptoe, hands behind her and face upturned.
His lips touched her cheek hesitatingly; fired by the contact, he took
her in his arms and kissed her. She did not draw away; an instinct of
prudence, not a deliberate thought, restrained her. She flushed from
head to foot, her modesty wounded, her pride abased. "Good night," said
he, lingeringly.
"Good night," she echoed, turning away to screen the fire.
Half an hour later all the lights in the house were out. She had gone to
bed, but not to sleep. She suddenly sat up, gazed eagerly toward the
window giving on the small veranda. It was open for the night; the
shutters were latched, however, and through them came intensely cold air
and some faint light. She thought she heard a tapping at the
shutter--that shutter she had so often thrown wide in the hope that
Basil had secretly returned. She listened. After a long wait, again
the tapping--so soft that only the attention of an expectant listener
would have been attracted.
"Basil!" she murmured. "I must have been expecting him."
She was about to dart to the window when there came a thought like a
blow in the face flinging her back and making her cover her head. First
the one man; now the other. "God!" she muttered. "How they will
degrade me, between them."
No, it should not be! She grew angry with Basil. At the first
opportunity, breaking his promise, trying to tempt her to become what he
could not but despise. _That_ was what he called _love_! And how
poorly he must think of her! ... She uncovered her head, listened. No
repetition of the sound. She ran to the window, opened the shutter. No
one! Yes--the snow on the rail had been disturbed. She leaned out.
Snow--the black boughs--the biting midnight air--stars--the crescent
moon with a pendant planet--the distant muffled sound of a horse
stamping in its stall. She closed the shutter, went shivering back to
bed--heartsick with disappointment.
*XVIII*
When she at last went to sleep it was like a ship going down in a storm.
But she slept nine hours without a dream; and she awakened in that
buoyant mood with which perfect health of body will triumph over
whatever heaviness of soul. Her troubles seemed largely fanciful, were
certainly anticipatory; she would push steadily forward, and all would
be well.
When she descended, the two men had breakfasted and gone, and Winchie
was out on the lawn playing at snow man with the Donaldson children and
their governess. Helen, still at table with coffee and newspaper,
greeted her so honest of eye and of voice that she was altogether
ashamed of her thoughts of evening and night before. Also, Helen did not
look especially well in the mornings. Sleep swelled her face, her
eyelids; her skin inclined to be cloudy; her hair hung rather stringily
about her brow. And in negligee the defect of too much bust and too
short waist seemed worse than it was. "I must see that she gets a
proper corset," thought Courtney. "Like so many women, she doesn't
realize that corset is three fourths of the battle for figure." She
studied Helen with an artist's eye and an artist's enthusiasm for
bringing out the best, the beautiful. "Yes," she said to herself,
"Helen can be made a perfect wonder for looks. I _must_ try it." And
then she knew she had never really intended to send Helen away. She who
had suffered so much from the tyranny of dependence--it would be
impossible for her to exercise that tyranny over another. "I don't want
to send her away. But if I did want to, I couldn't, no matter what
happened. I might think I would, and try to compel myself to do it.
But when it came to the pinch, I'd remember--and I couldn't. No other
human being shall ever know through me the sort of humiliation I bear."
She was ashamed of her fears about Basil, too. "As if he hadn't known
lots of women. As if our love were just the ordinary thing that passes
for love. And Helen'll help brighten things up--this house must not and
shall not be gloomy." Then too--and this idea she did not definitely
express to herself--Helen would give her and Basil more freedom by
pairing off with Richard when they were all together.
Still more cheering were the thoughts that came from her mail. From the
bank's monthly statement she learned that Richard had for the first time
fixed an allowance sufficient for the position she was expected to
maintain. There is a minimum amount on which a family can live in a
certain style; every dollar below that means pinch, every dollar above
it luxury. Courtney had at times been hard put to keep from going into
debt. Many a woman, bred as she had been, as most American women
are--with small practical knowledge, with only the silly useless
"education" the usual school and college give, with no notion of values
or mistaken notions, with contempt for realities and reverence for
inanities--has in the same circumstances become hopelessly involved.
But whatever the shortcomings in Mrs. Benedict's system of bringing up
her children, she had certainly inculcated a horror of debt. And as
human life and character are grounded upon material things if they have
any substantial foundation at all, this dread of debt had been and
continued to be one of the main factors in Courtney's development. It
is amazing how far a single cardinal _real_ principle, such as a fixed
aversion to debt, will go toward keeping any human being straight,
toward bringing them back to sense of the just and the right, when they
have been swerved by emotion or irresistible gale of circumstance. But
in human affairs all the truly great powers are forces so quiet and move
so close to the ground that their existence is unsuspected; or if
pointed out, it is denied and scouted, and some windy fake of philosophy
or politics or superstition is hailed as the god in the machine.
Instead of going into debt and playing the "refined, cultured lady,"
Courtney had set about learning to economize without privation or
meanness or tawdry pretense, acquiring the supreme art of living--the
getting of its full value for every dollar. It had been a hard
schooling; she began to realize how valuable, how invaluable. With this
additional allowance Richard was now making, she saw what wonders of
improvement she could work--she who had been getting out of the smaller
income what many women in Wenona, spending four and five times as much,
had not got. Certainly, the sky was brightening.
"If you haven't taken a dislike to me," Helen was saying, "and are going
to let me stay a while, I'll make myself useful. In fact, I'll not stay
if I don't. I must pay my way, and I can't pay in money."
"Whatever you like," said Courtney, "if you'll only stay. We want you.
We need you."
Helen never forgot the warmth that cordial genuine tone sent through
her. She didn't try to put her thanks into words, for there are no
words for such real and deep feeling. She simply looked at Courtney--a
look that more than rewarded her. After a moment she went on in an
unsteady voice, "I could help--with Winchie. I took a course in
kindergarten work at Tecumseh--and in housekeeping, too. They really
teach things--real things--there. Then, I sew beautifully--the finest
kind of sewing."
"So I see," said Courtney, looking at the sacque Helen was wearing. She
did not like the sacque, because she did not like flummery and
elaboration--and Helen had the poor girl's weakness for both. But she
did admire the quality of the work that had been put into it.
"You must let me do some sewing for you. Do you like fine
underclothes?"
"Crazy about them."
"I knew you were," said Helen who, judging by Courtney's dress and light
way of talking, had already clearly and finally made up her mind that
the verdict of "serious people" as to her cousin was just--a sweet,
light, pretty creature, fond of dress and all the frivolities. "Just
you wait! Mrs. Hargrave up at our town brought back some things from
Paris--perfectly wonderful! All the women were excited about them.
Well, I know how to make them--and where the goods can be got. Not
expensive, either."
"I'll get the material," said Courtney, "and you can make some for both
of us."
"Then I took a course in fitting. Don't judge by the things I wear. I
somehow can't fit myself."
"It's the corset," said Courtney.
"I suppose so. I could never afford to have them made--or to buy the
best ready-made kind. But I can do well for others. I can teach your
dressmaker how to behave herself. That'll save you a lot of time and
worry, won't it?"
"And work. Now, I have to remake most of my things."
Courtney began to respect Helen. The evening before, the girl, bent
upon making a favorable impression, had been a wholly different person.
She had seemed to Courtney stuffed to bursting with the familiar,
everywhere admired and nowhere admirable "idealism" that chokes thought
with cant and cumbers action with pretense. She had displayed a
disquieting fondness for the "cultured" drivel about art and literature,
about morals and manners, that destroys sincerity and simplicity's
strength, and creates the doleful dreary lack of individuality
characteristic of the so-called educated classes throughout the world.
Courtney had always had the courage to confess that these honored frauds
seemed to her ridiculous and wearisome. She assumed that Richard's and
Basil's admiring attention, as Helen "showed off" after the manner of
young girls, was politeness--or tribute to Helen's good looks. Now that
she had discovered real virtues in Helen, she was not alarmed; for, she
had learned that men are not interested in such virtues in young women
but only in surface charms that stimulate their sex illusions. "It'd
take a man who had been married at least once to appreciate Helen,"
thought she.
By the time Courtney finished breakfast, she had explained her plans and
Helen had made many intelligent suggestions. They lost no time in
getting to work. The morning flew, dinner was ready before they had
given it a thought. Yes, Helen was a genuine addition, was just what
she needed. "Yet I've no doubt Basil'll think her stupid once he gets
used to her beauty and her sweetly pretty romantic pose for the
matrimonal game."
Dick and Basil came, and the merry party of the night before was
repeated. Courtney noted with pleasure that Dick and Helen had taken a
fancy to each other. Without her realizing it, this was a thorough test
of her absolute apartness from him; for, many a woman who is not in love
with her husband, who actively dislikes him, will yet be furiously
jealous of him--and by no means entirely from the sordid motive of fear
lest his being attracted elsewhere will end in lessening her own portion
of the income. Dick showed that he thought Helen, tall of stature and
serious looking, an appreciative listener to his discourses on
chemistry; and Helen's manner was indeed well calculated to deceive--a
man. After dinner Dick led her up to his study further to explain some
things they had been discussing. Winchie hurried away to resume play
with the Donaldsons, their governess having come for him--and Courtney
and Basil were free.
"It seems too good to be true," said Basil. "How much better this
is--in every way--than what we've been condemning each other to....
Courtney, I did a very indiscreet thing last night. I came to your
window--climbed up by a ladder Jimmie had forgotten to lock up in the
woodshed."
Courtney, rosy red, lowered her head.
"I don't wonder you're angry. I'll never do it again. When we have such
happiness as this, we must do nothing--_nothing_--to endanger it. And I
want to say, you were right about--about what's best for us. The very
resolve to try has made everything seem entirely different. I'm not
ashamed when I look at Richard. I can meet his eyes. And with your
help I think I can wait patiently--and hope! ... Don't you think it
possible those two might fall in love?"
She was startled, then fascinated by the idea. "Why not? If they only
would!"
"It's just possible--barely possible." They sat silent, reflecting on
this new hope. Presently Basil went on, "They're both very serious
minded. And Miss March would be a real companion for him. She's
thoroughly intellectual, has quite a remarkable mind--more like a
man's."
At "intellectual" Courtney thought he was joking. She began to smile,
rather reluctantly--for, she did not like to laugh at so sweet and
honest a girl as Helen, even with one so near to her, so like another
self. Then his expression warned her that he was in earnest, that he
really regarded Helen's "cultured" conversation as an indication of
intelligence, did not see that it was merely education of an elementary
and commonplace sort--the sort the colleges, those wholesale dealers in
ready-made mental clothes, dressed out all minds in, so that usually one
could tell a college man just as one could tell a ready-made suit. It
was at her face to laugh at him. What an instance of woman's good looks
blinding susceptible man to the truth about her internal furnishing, as
different from the real thing as a hotel parlor from the drawing-room of
a person of taste and individuality. But she did not laugh; that would
have seemed meanness toward Helen--and Courtney, no lenient critic of
her own character, rather suspected herself of a sly ungenerous envy of
Helen's stature.
"Yes," pursued Basil, "Miss March has a remarkable mind. But I'm afraid
there's no hope--about her and him. You see, she's not at all that sort
of girl. She'd rather die than commit any impropriety--that is, I mean
of course," he stammered, "she's horribly prim."
Courtney would have thought nothing of it, had he not stumbled and
hastened on to explain. But that agitated, apologetic embarrassment
changed "she'd rather die than commit any impropriety" from a
commonplace into a tribute to Helen which was a slur upon herself. For
her love's sake she resisted the temptation to pretend not to have heard
or felt. "You like that sort of thing in a woman, don't you?" said she,
with a lift of the eyebrows, those deep notes in her voice ominous.
"In Miss March--yes," blundered he. "That is, in a young girl." He
halted, burst out desperately, "You're always suspecting me of not
respecting you."
There began to gather in Courtney an emotion that terrified her. It was
not anger; it was not shame. It seemed, rather, a sort of dread--though
of what she did not know--did not wish to know. "Please, no protests,"
she said hurriedly. "Let's drop the subject."
"I do respect you," he said, doggedly. "But if I didn't"--there, he
looked at her--"I feel for you something that's so much more than
respect--I love you."
She drew in her breath sharply, and her eyes gleamed and glistened as
they opened wide. She had a way of opening her eyes upon him that made
him feel as if he were standing on a high place and about to plunge
dizzily into the sea at the call of a mermaid. The silence that
followed was interrupted--rudely it seemed to them--by the return of
Helen and Dick.
"I need somebody in addition to you, Gallatin, to help out down at the
shop," said Dick, "and Helen is going to try."
"If Cousin Courtney is willing," said Helen. "She may need me here, as
I told you."
Courtney had been standing with her fingers on the edge of the
chimney-piece, gazing between her arms into the fire. She slowly turned
and regarded Richard. Basil and Helen working together!
"Oh, no, she doesn't need you here," asserted Vaughan. And catching
Courtney's eye, he glanced from Basil to Helen and winked.
Courtney seemed not to see. "Helen doesn't want to go down there," said
she. "Richard imagines, if people listen politely to his talk about
chemistry, that they're as interested as he."
"Really I'd like it," said Helen, a good deal of nervousness in her
enthusiasm.
"She could try it anyhow," urged Vaughan. "We need some one--don't we,
Basil?"
"Yes," said Basil. "You remember, I suggested you ought to ask Mrs.
Courtney to take a hand."
"Courtney!" Vaughan laughed gayly. "She has no fancy for anything
serious. Now, Helen is masculine minded."
"Not a bit," declared Helen, much agitated by such an accusation, in
presence of an eligible young man. "I'm so much a woman that I'm what's
called a woman's woman."
"Helen prefers to stay here," said Courtney. "So, I think _I'll_ try."
Richard stared and frowned.
She smiled at Basil. "Richard is getting broad minded," she went on
slowly, selecting her words. "A short time ago the idea of a woman in
that laboratory of his would have upset him quite. I remember, when we
were first married, I made the most desperate efforts to get him to let
me help. He was finally quite rude about it." She spoke with no
suggestion of resentment; and, indeed, that time seemed so remote, so
like a part of another life or another person's life that she felt no
resentment.
"I'm sure--we'll--both--be glad to have you," stammered Basil. He was
confused before the instinct-born thought that those few apparently
simple words of hers, so quietly and so good-humoredly spoken, were in
fact the story of the matrimonial ruin he had found when he came--and
was profiting by.
"I'll come down to-morrow," Courtney went on. "Helen can look after
things here."
Helen could not conceal her relief; when the men were gone she said:
"I'm so glad you got me out of that. Dick would have discovered what a
stupid I am in about one hour, and he'd have despised me. I'd hate
that, as I think he's wonderful. How proud you must be of him. Of
course, Basil is very sweet--and _such_ a gentleman--and how well he
does dress! But Dick-- They're not in the same class."
"No," said Courtney.
Just then Vaughan came hurrying in. "I forgot something I wanted to say
to you, my dear," he began. "Come in here----"
Helen took the hint and hastened away. Vaughan went on, "Why on earth
didn't you help me?"
Courtney looked interrogative. She felt a curious impersonal anger
against him for having blunderingly interfered in her affairs.
"Didn't you see," explained Richard somewhat irritably, "I had it all
fixed to bring those two together?"
"How dull of me!"
"It's not too late. All you have to do is back out and send her."
"And have her exhibit herself before him at her worst. And get him sick
of the very sight of her." Richard began to look foolish. Courtney
went on in the same tone of light mockery: "If you want a girl to marry
a man, or a man a girl, you mustn't let them see too much of each other.
If possible, make it hard for them to get at each other." The emerald
eyes were mockingly mirthful now. "No such love-inducer in the world as
holding two people apart. And when two can see each other freely--to
their heart's content--and satiation--why--" She finished with a shrug,
her eyes looking straight into his.
"All right. You women know each other best," said he, uncomfortable,
without being able to locate the cause.
"Helen will stay at home, like the homebody she is," pursued Courtney.
"And I'll come to help you. I've had it in mind for several days."
"You're not in earnest about that!" cried Vaughan in alarm. "Why,
what'd you do there? You'd be in the way."
"More than Helen?"
"Frankly--yes," said Richard bluntly. "As I said before, serious things
interest her. You know, I dislike that sort of thing in a woman--am
glad to see that you've gotten entirely over it, as I knew you would.
But I could have put up with it--for a while--to help Helen to a good
husband and Basil to a fine wife. It wouldn't have taken long--at
least, I thought not. I admit I was probably wrong, and you right."
"Well--now that I've said I'd come, I'll come," said Courtney.
"Helen'll take most of the detail here off my hands."
"If you really want to come--" said Dick, reluctant. "I suppose--after
what I've said-- Well, you can come for a few days."
Courtney was looking into the fire. Not for a "few days" but for as
long as Basil worked with those dangerous chemicals. If anything
happened--they would be together. Richard was looking at her; but he
thought it was the fire light that was giving her the strange, somehow
terrible expression which yet enhanced her beauty and her charm.
"How serious you look," said he. "Really, quite tragic--in that light."
"Yes, it must be the way the light falls," replied she. "Or is it
because I've mislaid my pet powder rag?"
Next morning as soon as Courtney dispatched her household routine she
went down to the Smoke House and appeared before Richard in his
laboratory for the first time since that morning after the homecoming,
long, long ago in that other life. With a platinum rod he was slowly
stirring some fiery mixture of a dark purple color in a big iron
crucible. She saw that the fumes were poisonous, as his nose and mouth
were protected by a respirator. As on the previous visit she stood
silent in the doorway watching him. She had long since passed the stage
of comparisons and contrasts; and her mind was altogether upon the
present and the future, as an intelligent young mind is extremely apt to
be. So, she was not thinking of that previous visit, but was simply
interested in what he was doing--in his work, which she had now
resolved, with an experienced woman's determination, to make her own
work also, no matter what opposition she might encounter. Her
achievements in house and gardens, in bringing up Winchie, in breaking
through the barriers of moral convention so powerful round a woman born
and bred as she had been--these feats had wonderfully developed her
will, had replaced shyness and timidity with quiet self-confidence.
When the contents of the crucible cooled and he took off the respirator,
she spoke. "I see you've run up a partition."
He glanced at her with a frown--not severe but irritated, as at the
persistent naughtiness of a sweet and charming child. "Oh, you've
come--have you? ... Yes--the partition gives Basil and me each his own
shop. I like to work alone, whenever it's possible."
She advanced calmly, indifferent to his unfriendliness. "Then you don't
want me to help _you_?" She put all her diplomacy of tone and manner
into that little speech. She knew how much depended upon this "entering
wedge"--this getting tolerated within those walls.
"What a whimsical creature you are!" Dick was still vexed, but half
laughing, too. She was so delicate and graceful, so fascinating to the
eye; and she seemed to him absurdly, quaintly out of place there.
"Basil!" he called. "Gallatin!"
Gallatin, in a blouse, rubber apron and gloves appeared from the other
part of the shop.
"Well--here's the--the 'prentice," said Dick. "You're not busy
nowadays. Take charge of her."
"It'll be a great pleasure, I'm sure," he stammered. He looked about as
uncomfortable at sight of her as had Richard. Demurely she followed him
into his compartment. As the partition did not extend to the ceiling,
they had to content themselves with an exchange of eloquent glances.
Then, taking the tone of gentleman chemist to not overbright and densely
ignorant lady visitor at a laboratory, he began to explain to her the
names and uses of things, and to demonstrate how to use them.
For the entire morning he talked and illustrated, thoroughly enjoying
himself at making a fine impression with his display of superior
knowledge. He told her little she did not already know. But she was
not so tactless as to spoil his pleasure or hurt his vanity. She
listened and tried; and when he complimented her on her quickness in
learning, she showed delight at being praised. In the afternoon he
allowed her to practice his teachings unassisted--set her at weighing a
little nitrate of potassium precipitate in the gold and ivory and
aluminum balances. She had done this sort of things a hundred times, but
was meek under his elaborations of cautioning and explaining.
"I worked a lot in laboratories at school," said she ingenuously, when
his guidance became a little tiresome. "It's beginning to come back to
me."
He smiled in a way that reminded her of Richard. "All right. Do the
best you can," said he. "We'll not expect much of you for the present.
I'm afraid you'll soon give up."
She looked at him. "I'm here to stay," said she, "You'll not get rid of
me."
"But the work's very hard--not at all feminine."
"That suits me. For, I'm not at all feminine, myself--what men mean by
feminine."
He laughed, went about his own business. As she sat at the balances,
her whole mind on the needle she was watching through the reading glass,
she felt herself caught from behind. She turned her laughing face
upward and backward, and they kissed. "Isn't it splendid!" he exclaimed
under his breath. "Yes--you must stay." It had been part of her plan
of life that they should never caress. Suddenly she realized how
impossible this rule was--and how foolish. On occasions--such occasions
as this joy in the unexpected kindness of fate--the rule must be
suspended.
"How long it's been!" he said in a low voice. "Not since early
September have I kissed you--and this is almost February."
She glanced warningly toward the top of the partition.
"Away at the other end," Basil assured her, "and doing something that
can't be left an instant for an hour or more."
"Well then--" She blushed, hesitated, gave him a passionate, longing
look. "One more kiss--and we go to work."
He seated himself and drew her to his lap. With their heads close
together, they talked--of anything, of everything, of nothing--and
hardly knew what they were saying--and cared not at all. "Oh, the
happiness of it," she murmured. "And we are to work side by side, too.
It seems a dream. I can't believe it."
"And soon it will be spring again, and we shall be a little freer."
"Be patient until I get everything settled," she answered, "and we shall
be free almost all the time. I have thought it out."
"You think of everything."
"I think of nothing but you--always you," she answered. "What have I
but our love? I want to make the house comfortable, your apartment
comfortable, myself attractive--all, so that love will never begin to
think of taking flight."
"Flight!" He laughed softly. "How absurd! Can't you feel that I'm
just wrapped up in you?"
She touched his tight encircling arms. "I can feel that I'm just
wrapped up in you," she retorted. "Now, let me go. I am not to keep
you from the work--or you me."
"Not just yet."
"Yes"--firmly. "You don't take me any more seriously than Richard does.
But I don't in the least care. If I am serious, what does it matter
whether anyone thinks so or not?" She laughed a little. "And I'm
feminine enough, I'll admit, to want to be what the man who wants me
wants me to be."
He was not listening. He held her more tightly, and she knew what was
coming before he began to speak. "Let me come to-night, Courtney. Just
this once. I simply want to be alone with you----"
"Not yet," she replied. "Don't let's tempt each other to risk years of
happiness for a frightened moment." And, afraid she would yield if he
kept on urging, she abruptly freed herself and sent him back to his
seat.
An hour, and he came to her again. "I've been doing nothing but watch
you, and you haven't looked round once."
"This work is interesting," replied she--and it was the simple truth.
"No--not once!"
"What a good example I'm setting you. I always used to like chemistry.
And I was a harum-scarum girl then. Now, I see I'm going to be
tremendously fond of it."
"Courtney--I can't stand--our--our compact. I simply can't. I feel as
if you had thrust me out of your life. And-- Have you no memory,
sweetheart? Courtney, we're only human beings, after all. And we've
the right. Aren't you my wife?"
"Don't tempt me, Basil," she answered with a sigh. "Do you suppose I
don't feel it? Sometimes I get to thinking what might be-- But I will
not! You do not wish it." And she glanced meaningly at the partition.
"You are mine!" he whispered, moved by the reminder but not abashed.
"If I had never known love in its fullness, I might be able to endure
this cold, repellent pretense of virtue--for, it's nothing but a flimsy
pretense. Courtney, if you love me----"
"Is your love only--_that_!"
"If you loved me," he repeated, "you'd not calculate so puritanically.
If I weren't seeing you, dear, I could bear it. But seeing you all the
time--touching you--kissing you--Courtney, Courtney, how can you make
me, and yourself too, suffer so needlessly? If you really love, how can
you keep me out of your inmost life--as if I were not everything to
you?"
"I explained to you----"
"Explained! Explained!" he said, impatiently. "We explain and explain,
but it's all sophistry. The truth is--what? That we are lovers. And,
if our love is a sin, why not take all its reward since we'll have to
take all its punishment?"
"Don't harass me now," she begged, agitated and trembling.
"Harass you!" He drew away offendedly. "I thought I was pleading for
you, as well as for myself. If I am not, please forget what I said."
"I didn't mean that!"
"Then I may come to-night--or you to me?"
She gave him a sad, pleading look. "Not to-night, dear. Not just yet.
We _must_ wait till things are going quietly in a routine."
"How easily you put us off!"
"Basil!--_Please_!"
He stared sulkily out of the window. "It does sting my pride that you
care so much less than I. It does make me--almost doubt."
"Not so loud!"
"You don't realize how far away he is, and how absorbed.... I take back
all I said." And he straightened himself coldly and went to his own
part of the room.