"How queer your voice sounds. Are you frightened?"
"No--no, indeed."
"Dear, you're not telling me----"
"It's nothing. Just a--a notion. There won't be so much of it next
time. And still less the next time. And soon I'll be quite
accustomed."
"Yes, I'm sure there's not the least danger," said he, wholly
misunderstanding.
*XXI*
One afternoon she was reading in the hammock on the balcony before the
upper sitting-room windows--the sitting room she shared with Helen and
Winchie. She heard some one in the room, glanced up--Richard was before
her. "Glad to find you alone," said he. "Do you realize it's several
weeks since we've exchanged so much as a single word in private?"
"Something wrong at the shop?"
"No. I came especially to talk with you. How'd you like to go away for
a week or so--to the sea or the mountains? We might take that trip
through the Great Lakes."
"I'll see."
"You've been working very hard down at the shop. And by the way, you've
caused an amazing improvement in Basil's work. He doesn't make those
stupid mistakes any more. He used to make them every day. Yes--you've
worked hard--and well."
She had no pleasure in these incredible compliments from Richard the
difficult to please in chemistry. It was too disquieting to have him
thus watchful and interested.
"Let's start at once," he proposed.
"Oh, I couldn't do that. I hesitate to leave here--when everything's at
its best. In the fall--or next winter----"
"I see you don't want to go--with me."
His tone compelled her to look at him. His eyes--grave, searching--were
fixed upon her. Instinct suddenly warned her of danger--what danger or
where she could not see, but the warning was imperative. "Indeed I do,"
protested she, with a deceptive show of interest, though her skin burned
as her fundamental and incurable honesty cried shame upon her--as it
always did when she, compelled by her circumstances, could not avoid the
lie direct. "But," she went on, "you can't expect a woman, with a
household like this on her mind, to drop everything and fly at a few
hours' notice."
He reflected, nodded. "That's true. Though, really, the servants are
so experienced they'd go on just as well. My dear old aunt was
thorough."
There was a little bitterness of hurt vanity in her smile of recognition
at this ancient notion of Richard's about her part in that household.
She felt that the _tete-a-tete_ had already lasted too long. "Was
Winchie in there?" she asked.
"I didn't see him," replied Dick.
She moved toward the nearest sitting-room window.
"What's the matter?" he cried, irritated. "Where are you going?"
"After Winchie. I haven't thought of him for an hour. Helen's away--at
the Foster picnic----"
"The boy's all right. Sit down here and----"
But she was gone. She did not slacken her speed until she was safely
clear of him. This new development of his threatened to become an
annoyance, thought she; however, it couldn't last much longer; she would
continue to keep out of his way; the laboratory would take hold of him
and she would be once more forgotten and free. Meanwhile, she would
avoid him.
And soon he did become once more absorbed, and resumed his accustomed
shadowy place in her life--seen yet not seen, heard yet not heard,
present yet absent; neither liked nor disliked, but unknown and
unheeded--the place of many and many a husband in a marriage that seems
happy and successful to the very servants in the household, to the
husband and wife themselves. One evening he abruptly left the table.
She saw, but did not note, his departure. When supper was over and she
and Helen and Basil strolled into the sitting room, Basil took advantage
of Helen's being apart to say to Courtney, "What's wrong with him?"
"I'm sure I don't know," replied she. "Nothing, I guess."
"Didn't you notice? He was staring furiously at you, and left in a
rage."
She shrugged her shoulders. That night she was in one of her reckless
moods, was nervous, excited, with eyes the more brilliant for the
circles round them. Richard appeared in the farthest of the long open
windows. He frowned at Basil, said sharply to his wife, "Courtney, I'd
like to speak to you out here a moment."
"It's chilly there," objected she. "Come in." And she went toward the
piano.
Dick entered. His long aristocratic face was stern and his eyes glowed
somberly. "Then let's go into the library," said he, in a tone so
positive that from him it sounded like a command.
She hesitated, reflectively caressing one slim tapering arm. "Very
well," said she, and passed into the hall, he standing formally aside at
the doorway. In the library, she faced him with eyes half closed and
chin thrust up and a little out. "Well?" she inquired.
As he looked at his sweet frivolous little child of a wife, his manner
softened toward that of one rebuking a child's trespass. "I want you to
go upstairs and wrap up your shoulders--or change your dress."
She glanced down. The bodice did not cover the upper curve of her
bosom, had no straps across the shoulders or on the arms. In the back,
it dipped almost to the waist line. She looked at him with a quizzical
expression. "I'm quite warm enough, thanks."
"You understand me," said he, more severely.
She gazed straight into his eyes before answering. "Yes, I do. But I
prefer to pretend not to."
"I've spoken to you about my wishes in this matter before. Do you know
what made me notice your--your nakedness? Pardon me for putting it that
way, but I see I must speak plainly."
Her face expressed faint, contemptuous indifference. "I cannot talk with
you. Your ideas of women ought to be buried in the grave with your
grandfather. I do not dictate the cut of your clothes. You will not
dictate mine." And she moved toward the door.
He put himself between. "I saw Gallatin looking at you with an
expression--" He made a gesture of rage--a quiet gesture but
significant. "I don't blame him. It's your fault. You've no right to
tease a man who can be nothing to you. I speak frankly because----"
"Gallatin has seen thousands of women in just such dress as this,"
interrupted she. It enraged her to hear her lover's feelings for her,
in which flesh was mere medium between spirit and spirit, thus leveled
to the carnality of his own passion. "You," she continued icily, "read
your own poisonous, provincial primness and--and vulgarity into his
look, no doubt."
"You are an innocent, pure-minded woman, Courtney," said Richard, with
more gentleness. "You follow a fashion, thinking of it only as a
fashion. I assure you, that sort of fashion is devised in Paris by
cocottes for the one purpose. If you knew men better, you'd appreciate
it."
She appreciated the penetration of this remark, puncturing the
pretentious haughtiness of her protest. She was surprised at his
reasoning so shrewdly about a matter she would not have suspected him of
having given a thought. But she must not let him interfere in her
personal affairs. "Whatever its origin," said she, "it's the
conventional fashion for women. I shall continue to wear it." And she
looked into his eyes pleasantly. Now, it struck her as amusing, the
anger of this alien, about the exhibition to others of what he regarded
as his own private and personal treasure. Just one stage removed from
the harem, such an idea as his. "And," she went on, aloud, "if your
satrapship commands me to wear a veil over my face and muffle my figure
in a loose black bag, I shall make the same reply. You can't realize
it, but the old-fashioned ideal of good, pure woman was really something
to be handled with tongs and disinfected."
"You're talking of things you, being a good woman, know nothing about."
"At any rate I know a mind that ought to be quarantined--when I smell
it." And she made a wry face and started to leave the room. When she
had got as far as the threshold, he cried, "Courtney!" and his tone told
her that he had caught sight of the reverse view of her costume--the
unimpeded display of slender dimpled shoulders and straight smooth back
almost to the waist line. She pretended not to hear, went on to the
sitting room. Yielding altogether now to the imp of the perverse, she
displaced Helen at the piano and sang the maddest, most melting love
songs she knew. Basil tried to keep to the far part of the room; but
gradually the enchantment compelled. Forgetting Richard--though he had
seen him glowering and fuming from the darkness of the veranda--he
leaned upon the end of the grand piano. His eyes were down, but his
burning face and his trembling fingers as he raised or lowered his
cigarette proclaimed how the deep passionate notes of her voice were
vibrating through him.
It was somewhat later than usual when she went upstairs. As she pressed
the button just inside her bedroom door and the light came on--a soft
pale violet light that seemed to permeate rather than to shine--she saw
Richard in the window. His back was toward her and he was smoking so
that the odor and the smoke would not come into the room. He threw the
cigarette over the balcony rail and turned. The instant she looked at
him, little as she knew of his character or noted his moods she saw she
had gone too far. But she held a calm, undaunted front. "How you
frightened me," said she, in a tone that had no fright in it. "I'm
horribly tired. I must stop eating desserts. They wear one out." She
stifled a yawn, took the small diamond sunburst from the front of her
waist and laid it on the bureau. She seemed all but unconscious of his
presence; in reality, by way of the bureau mirror, she was watching him
as a duelist an adversary. "I shall fall asleep before I can get into
bed."
"I shall detain you only a moment." His grave, exaggerated politeness
did not decrease her inward agitation. "I simply wish to tell you," he
went on, "that, as you seem determined to persist in your own mistaken
way, I shall be compelled to ask Gallatin to stay away from the house in
the evenings."
Her impulse was to smile disdain at the infantile futility of this. And
the smile did come to her lips, and lingered there to mask the feelings
that came surging with the second thought. For she instantly realized
how helpless she was. This man had no part in her life nor she in his;
yet he could impose his will upon her absolutely because he could take
Basil away from her--not merely for the unimportant evenings, but
altogether. He could make it impossible for Basil to remain--could do
it by a mere word to him. And she who fancied she had provided against
every possible contingency had never even thought of this, the most
obvious peril, and the greatest! Faint, she leaned upon the bureau,
spreading her arms so that she seemed to be merely at ease. "But why
tell _me_ about it?" said she to him. "Why didn't you simply say it to
him?" She smiled contemptuously. "And what will he think?"
Dick's calm vanished. "I don't care a damn what he thinks," he cried.
"At least, he'll not be sitting round watching you half dressed."
She drew herself up haughtily. "Good night," said she.
"I was out on the veranda," Dick rushed on. "I saw him. He forgot
Helen--forgot decency--honor--everything--and leaned there, giving
himself up to a debauch. Yes, to a debauch! And _you_ are responsible.
Not he--not at all. You, alone. At least, anger doesn't make me
unjust. And I will say too, you were innocent in the matter--like a
willful child. Good pure women don't appreciate----"
"But _I_ do," interrupted she. "I'm not the imbecile Aunt Eudosia sort
you admire so much."
"I tell you, the man's in love with you," cried Richard.
She all but staggered before the shock.
"Yes, in love with you. That's why he came back here."
As steadily and indifferently as she could contrive she went to the
sofa, seated herself. "Why, you yourself told me he was in love with
Helen."
"I was mistaken. How could he be in love with her, when you're about?
A man always takes to the best-looking woman."
She laughed with friendly conciliating coquetry. "I'm afraid you're
prejudiced."
"I saw it this evening. The way he was listening to those love songs!"
"Are you sure he was thinking of me?"
Richard did not answer.
"Perhaps Helen's equally sure he was thinking of her."
Under cover of the talk she--hardly knowing what she, or he, was
saying--darted this way and that, seeking an escape from the horror
closing in upon her. She felt like a hiding slave, hearing the distant
bay of the bloodhounds. How escape? How throw him off the scent? Was
there only the one way?
"No, he cares nothing about Helen," Richard was saying. And clear and
soft in his voice now was the note she dreaded. "At least, he didn't
this evening. How could he when you were there? Courtney, you simply
can't understand. You're modest and pure minded and innocent----"
"Then it was only this evening?" she interrupted. "I was hoping you had
real reason for flattering me."
"Flattering you!"
"Certainly. Wouldn't it flatter you if I were to tell you Helen was in
love with you? She's in love with somebody, by the way. It must be
you--how could she think of any other man when you were about?"
Dick half smiled.
"And I must begin to tear my hair and foam at the mouth, I suppose,"
continued she. She rose, stamped her foot, in melodramatic imitation of
jealous fury. "Helen shall keep to her room in the evenings! Do you
hear, sir? When I think of the times I've let you take her up to your
study--alone!--under pretense of working! You--with your shirt sleeves
rolled up and your collar open!"
"You silly child!" Dick was amused now.
"But I don't blame Helen. How could she help it--with you leading her
on----"
Dick laughed. "That's very shrewd," said he. "I own up. I guess I was
having a jealous fit. But you'd understand if you could see yourself as
I see you." And he clasped her.
"No--no!" she gasped.
Completely possessed by his mood he was too much the man to have the
power to see that her mood was different. Holding her tightly, he said:
"I do believe you acted that way this evening just to make me jealous.
I admit I seem neglectful. But I love you, just as I always did."
She was struggling to escape as strongly as she dared--more strongly
than her instinct of prudence approved--more strongly than her physical
self desired, for she realized with horror that his mood was hypnotizing
her will.
"Listen, dear," he said. "I've got a confession to make. While I was
raging up and down on the veranda, all sorts of devilish thoughts came
to me--suspicious----"
She ceased struggling.
"I got to thinking how long we've been living apart--and how, every time
I made advances, you seemed to evade----"
She felt herself growing cold. He must have felt it, too, for he
hastened on: "Please, little girl, don't get cross. I didn't _really_
suspect. I'm not so ridiculous. I know a good woman could no more be
false even in thought to her husband--than a nightingale could change
into a snake."
It was pounding, pounding at the walls of her brain that he was on the
very verge of the discovery; that unconsciously he was fighting against
a suspicion which too long-pent passion was thrusting at him ever more
pointedly. Another repulse, another jealous fit, and--five lives
overwhelmed in ruin.
She lay quiet in his arms.
In those next few days she was whimsical, capricious, fantastic.
Richard, once more wholly the man of science, was as unconscious as
mountain peak of storms in the valleys far below. Basil and the others,
but particularly Basil, watched her with a kind of dread. "I need a
change--in fact, I must have it," she announced at the supper table.
"Helen, let's go to Chicago and shop. The things in Wenona are hideous
this spring."
"I need a change too," Richard startled them all by saying, "I'll go
with you--and Helen can take care of the house and Basil--and Winchie,
if you'll leave him."
"I don't want to be left!" cried Winchie. "You wouldn't leave _me_,
mamma?"
Courtney did not hear. She was looking at Richard as if his words
jarred upon her savagely, goaded her to the verge of outburst. She had
been feeling toward her husband as she would have felt toward an
inanimate object which had bruised her when she by accident stumbled
heavily against it. She did not seek the source of this feeling, or let
it disclose itself to her. She simply felt so; and when he spoke of
going, it seemed as unthinkable that she should let him go as that she
should leave Winchie behind. When she had herself in hand, she said:
"This is a shopping trip. No men wanted or allowed."
"Not even _me_, mamma?" pleaded Winchie.
"Except you," said she.
And the two women and Winchie went the following day, to spend a busy
fortnight in the Chicago shops buying for all three and for the house.
As Courtney had limited means and exacting taste, the labor of shopping
was hard and tedious, especially in those vast modern stores. For there
the satisfaction of having everything under one roof is balanced by the
vexation of the search for the needle of just what one wants and can
afford through the mountainous haystack of what one does not want or
cannot afford. The toil almost prostrated the two women--and poor
Winchie who had to drag along since there was no one at the hotel to
whom Courtney would trust him. But she felt more than repaid, not so
much by her purchases, though she was on the whole content with them, as
by the complete change in her point of view.
The atmosphere of the city is wholly different from that of such a place
as Wenona. In Wenonas, the individual is important; the sky seems near,
and its awful problems of the eternal verities--life and death, right
and wrong--thrust at every one every moment of day and night. In a
city, the sky yields to brick and stone; men see each other, not the
universe; the eternal verities seem eternal bores, and life, of the day,
of the hour, tempts with its--"Since you are mere maggot in rotten
cheese--tiny maggot, one of billions--tremendous cheese--since you are
to die to-morrow and decay and be forgotten--since you can fret and
fritter all your years away over life and death, over right and wrong,
without getting a hair's width nearer solving them--why not perk
up--amuse yourself--do as little harm as is consistent with getting what
you need, and have all the fun there is going? Don't take yourself
solemnly!" The city's egotism is showy, but shallow; the country's,
hidden but profound.
Viewed from Chicago, all the beauty, all the possibilities of happiness
in her life in that lovely place on the shore of Wenona Lake stood out
as in the landscape of a master painter; and all that fretted and shamed
her and shot her joys with black thread of foreboding seemed the work of
her own tainted imagination. "I'm harming no one," she now argued.
"I'm free--Richard freed me when he made me realize I was to him not a
wife but simply a carnal incident. And I am helping to make life there
peaceful and even happy. The trouble with me is I'm still under the
blight of my early training--a training in how to die, not in how to
live. True, I do lead a double life. But how few human beings do not
lead double lives of one kind or another? And where am I worse than
thousands who long but have not courage or chance? Isn't it better to
live in deceit with a man one loves than to live in deceit with a man
one loathes?" If she and Basil were found out, they would be classed
with the rest of the vulgar intriguers. But that did not make them thus
low; it was not their fault that the world saw only coarseness for the
same sort of reason that a man in green spectacles saw everything green.
She came back as much improved in mental health as in dress--and
certainly the new clothes were a triumph. Also, her sense of
self-respect seemed to be restored--"and whether I'm right in my way of
looking at things or am deceiving myself, I'm certainly much the better
for feeling I'm right."
They brought part of the spoils of the city with them, but most of it
came by freight a week after their return. Courtney and Helen were
almost as excited as Winchie--and Winchie was quite beside himself--when
the great packing cases and crates were opened, and the treasures of
dresses and underclothes and "stunning" hats and fascinating shoes and
slippers and parasols and blouses, and the furniture and pictures came
into view from endless wrappings of paper and bagging and excelsior, of
boxes round and square, boxes small and large, boxes fancy and plain.
Everything, with not an exception, looked better than it had in the shop
when it was bought. "You are a wonderful shopper, Courtney. These
things seem as if they were made especially for us," Helen asserted.
And Winchie, literally pale with emotion, screamed, "Mamma Courtney,
let's go back and buy some more!"
For several days the agitation continued. Indeed, it was a month or
longer before the last ripples died away, and the normal calm was
restored. Helen had new clothes as well as Courtney--and never had she
looked so lovely. Winchie was the most stylish person of his age in all
that region. The Donaldson children had theretofore been disposed to
feel somewhat superior because they had a real imported French
governess; they now paid court to him and accepted his decisions about
games as reverently as a company of New York men accept the judgments of
any man with millions. And the new furniture and dishes, the new wall
paper, the new cooking utensils, the new contrivances for plants and for
cut flowers, some of which Courtney had had made from her own designs,
were as successful as the clothes. Also, Courtney--and Helen too--had,
through the stimulus of the city, a multitude of new ideas for house and
grounds and gardens. These they proceeded to carry out, Basil assisting
whenever he could get an afternoon away from the laboratory where
Richard had now buried himself, oblivious of her, of them all.
Altogether, May and June of that year made a new high-water mark of
happiness. And when Helen, going to Saint X to visit and display her
finery, returned in a self-complacent state of mind that indicated a
complete cure, a complete restoration of her old-time content, Courtney
felt as if the last cloud had disappeared from her horizon. Again and
again during those tranquil, sparkling days she told herself--and almost
believed--that at last her life was "settled right"--as nearly "right"
as a human life could be.
One night when she had an appointment with Basil she found Helen still
up as she was about to descend and admit him. Helen did not put out her
light until nearly three quarters of an hour after the time. When she
opened the lake-front door no one entered; not a sound. She looked out.
The veranda empty; the lawns dreaming undisturbed in the moonlight; wave
on wave of the heavy perfume of summer's flowers. But not anywhere
Basil. Her trembling ceased; she darted to the edge of the veranda,
everything forgotten but the supreme fact--he was gone. Gone! Why, she
could not doubt; for, from time to time she had seen in his eyes the
suspicion which, unjust though it was, she dared not discuss with him.
Where had he gone? She must know, must know at once.
She gave not a thought to leaving the house--the dangers that made it
impossible for them to meet at his apartment. She sped across the lawn,
along the path through the pale splendor of the east flower garden and
blossoming shrubbery, into the dark wood. And with her sped her old
enemy--the specter dread of losing him--the ghost so easily started from
its unquiet grave. She flitted on until she stood at the edge of the
clearing, with wildly beating heart, looking up at the solitary
building, gloomy in its creeper draperies. There was light from his
bedroom window. She gave a quick gasp of relief. At least he was still
within reach. The phantom beat of icy rains falling, falling ceased to
freeze her heart.
Panting from the tumult of her thoughts rather than from the run, she
knocked on the entrance door--knocked again, loudly--a third time--a
fourth. She was shaking from head to foot. No answer--none. She tried
the door; it yielded. She darted up the stairway, her body now fire and
now ice. He was in his bedroom door, was watching her. As the light
came from behind him she could not immediately see his expression; but
she felt it was dark and angry. She flung herself on his breast--"My
love--my love!" she sobbed.
His arms hung at his sides. He stood rigid.
"Basil! Put your arms round me. I'm cold--and so frightened."
He pushed her away.
She leaned against the door frame sobbing into her hands. Her long
plaits hung one over either shoulder. She looked like a child, a
broken-hearted child. "And you've been pretending to love me!"
"I do love you. That's the worst of it."
"Love!" She turned upon him passionately. "You call _that_--love? No
matter what I did, wouldn't you know I'd done it for our love's sake?
Yes, you know all that's I is yours--every thought--every heart throb."
She was sobbing again, her arm on the door frame, her face against it.
She was thinking how unsympathetic he was, how selfish and cruel--was
asking herself why she did not hate him, cast him out of her life. But
the very suggestion made her heartsick. Cast out him who was her life!
"I didn't mean it," he pleaded. "I was crazed with jealousy."
"Jealousy! Basil--Basil!"
"I can't help it. I'm human."
"But don't you know me? Oh, sweetheart--don't take from me all the
self-respect I've got."
He seated himself, stared doggedly at the floor. There was a long, a
heavy silence which he finally broke. "Courtney," he said, "we're both
going straight to hell." He looked sternly at her. "We've got to get
away from here."
She saw the resolve in his eyes, trembled, grew still. Then she
remonstrated gently, "You'd forbid me to treat Winchie so, if I wanted
to."
He continued to look straight and stern at her. "Either you go with me
or I go alone."
Her knees grew weak. The room swam before her eyes. The big wave in
the picture on the opposite wall swelled, lowered, seemed swooping down
on her. "Oh, no--you wouldn't do that," she murmured. "No--you
couldn't do that."
"I'll leave in the morning, unless you say you'll leave with me the day
after."
She watched him, relentless and utterly inconsiderate, and her anger
rose. "You've no right to go!" she cried.
"I must," he replied. "Do you mean to say you'll let me leave without
you?"
"Yes--if you'd do it," replied she. "But you wouldn't. You'd not leave
me to bear the whole burden alone. You'd not be a coward."
His florid face became crimson. He fought for self-control, gave up the
hopeless struggle, flung himself down beside her. "I can't go--I
can't," he cried. "But--how can I stay? It's dragging us down--down."
He was almost weeping. "Courtney, you must see it's dragging us down."
For the first time she had the sense of strength in herself greater than
his, of weakness in him. She caressed his fair hair tenderly. "It's
only a mood, dearest--only a mood. It'll pass--and we'll help each
other, and be strong. We'll look forward to the end of this. For, in a
few years Winchie'll be off to school. Then--I shall be free to make my
own life. I'll go away to visit--stay on and on--and gradually----"
"You must promise you will not live with him."
"I will do my best. But--I must protect Winchie--and us."
He grew red, then pale, was silent for a time. Then he said
irritatedly, weakly, "But don't you see what a position it puts _me_
in!"
"And me?" She said it very quietly, with a certain restrained pathos.
But he sat glum and moody, thinking of his own plight.
He roused himself. "All right," he cried, in a tone of contempt--for
himself and for her. He embraced her with a kind of insolent
familiarity. "Then I'll stay. If I went, I'd only come sneaking back.
I'm no longer a man. I'm a slave to you." And he held her at arms
length and eyed her with an expression that told her he was making
inventory of her charms.
"Please don't talk that way," she begged, offended and wounded by that
expression in his eyes more than she dared admit to herself. "I know
you don't mean it. I know you--love. I know----"
"Love--let's only talk of love," he interrupted.
She fell to wondering whether, when they were together in the dark, his
unseen eyes had this look--and why it made his words and his caresses
seem so different from the words and caresses of the darkness. She had
never thought of it before; she hated to learn it then--just then; but
she could not push away the monstrous truth that love and lust have the
same vocabulary, the same gestures, the same tones, differ only in their
eyes.
"What are you thinking about so solemnly?" he asked.
"I wasn't thinking solemnly," she protested with a hastily forced smile.
"I was simply remembering how rarely we've been together alone--really
alone--except in the dark, for a long long time."
"It's good to be able to see you," said he, and she felt like hiding in
shame from his eyes. "You streamer of flame that's burning up my soul."
Her lips echoed his laugh. "What nonsense," she said.
"It's the truth," declared he. "But--burn on! I can't live without
it."
The smile left her lips--it had not been in her eyes. "If I thought
you----"
He stopped her mouth with a kiss. "Only love!" he commanded. "No
thought."
"That's right," she cried eagerly. "No thought! Just feeling--just
love. We must not think. It's the cause of our unhappiness."
And she tried to be as good as her word. "I do love him, and he loves
me," she rebuked herself. "I'm unstrung--hysterical--full of crazy
fancies. I mustn't--_mustn't_--fret at his way of loving. I must always
think, 'What would become of me if I lost him?'" And she pretended to
be in his mood; for the sake of a passion that had been, she simulated a
passion that was not.
*XXII*
Masculine moral struggle is usually noisier than feminine--unless the
woman is seeking to impress some man, before yielding of her own free
will what she wishes him to fancy his superior charm and force and
subtlety are conquering. Thus, woman being by nature freer from the
footless kinds of hypocrisy than man, it was only in the regular order
that while Courtney quietly accepted the situation and conformed to it,
Basil should accept it with much moral bluster. He accused now his own
wickedness, now the wickedness of destiny, and again woman's sinful
charms. Still, the masculine conscience no less than the feminine is
bred to be an ultimately accommodating chaperon; and Basil's conscience
would soon have gone to sleep had it not been kept awake and feverish by
a contrasting presence. That contrast was Helen's virginal beauty and
virginal purity--both of which fascinated his overstimulated and
degenerating imagination.
Helen was, as Courtney had said, a girl of the old-fashioned type. This
does not mean that she was a rare survival of an extinct type, but
simply that she was the girl of yesterday as distinguished from the girl
of to-morrow, and from the girl that is partly of yesterday, partly of
to-morrow--all three of whom we have with us in this transitional
to-day. Helen had by inheritance and training all woman's ancient
instincts to be a possessed and protected property. These instincts
originated in the necessities and the ignorance of former societies; but
they are cultivated and clung to because masculine vanity dotes on the
superior attitude, and because the female very humanly finds it more
comfortable to be looked after than to look after herself, to have her
thinking done for her than to think for herself, to be supported than to
support herself, to be strong through weakness than to be strong through
strength. The male wants to pose as master. The female yields, since
the usual cost to her is merely putting up with airs of superiority at
which she can secretly laugh; at worst, the cost is only that intangible
thing, self-respect. So, why not? Self-respect is purely subjective,
unseen. It provides no comforts or luxuries. Lack of it attracts no
attention in a world that sees only surfaces. So, why not sacrifice it,
when it becomes inconvenient? Men do. Why shouldn't women?
Helen had no desire to be of full human stature--to be free. She wished
to be a "true woman," meek servant of a lord and master, and never under
the painful necessity of taking responsible thought for herself. Having
no capacity or desire for comradeship with men, she denounced it as
unwomanly. Her physical virtue--"purity," she called it--she regarded
as her chief glory. She was glad it was still woman's chief asset in
the struggle for existence; for, she could not help knowing she had
beauty, and it is beauty that makes virtue valuable, though of course
beauty adds nothing to its glory.
Helen certainly had beauty, nearly as great beauty as she imagined in
that heart of hearts where our vanity feels free to spread its tail to
the last gaudy feather and to strut as no peacock or gobbler ever dared.
Her skin was white as milk, her features were classically regular, and
she was now a shade taller than Basil, could almost look level-eyed at
Richard. Her dark hair was commonplace in color and texture, was rather
short, did not grow especially well about her brow or behind the ears;
but it was thick and abundant, and the brow and the ears were charming
in themselves. Thanks to Courtney's skill in devising a corset, the
defect of waist too close to bust was no longer conspicuous. She had
sound teeth, good arms and legs, narrow hands and feet. Her large brown
eyes were of the kind that has been regarded as ideal for woman from the
days of Homer singing the ox-eyed Juno, down to our own day when
intelligence is trying to get a place among feminine virtues and the
look of intelligence among feminine beauties. She had learned from
Courtney--who knew--a great deal about dress--dress that all women talk,
but only the rare exceptional woman knows.
Also, she had from her a practical training for what she regarded as
woman's only sphere, the home. Courtney had taught her how to keep
house with comfort, order and system. As Courtney had none of the
teacher's vanity but used the method of suggestion, she fancied she had
learned and was learning from herself; the more so, since she in
defiance of daily experience could not credit a woman of Courtney's
lively and, because light, undoubtedly thoughtless and careless
temperament, with enough seriousness to be a good housekeeper. Helen
there showed herself about on a level with the human average; for all
but incredible is the stupidity of our misjudgments and mismeasurements
of our fellow beings. There was not in her the capacity to reflect who
thought out the new ideas that were constantly being put into effect,
who told her what to do and who quietly and tactfully saw that she did
it.
The most obvious improvement in Helen was through her unconsciously
acting on Courtney's advice of delicately veiled suggestion and dropping
the culture pose. She was now patterning upon Courtney's naturalness so
far as she could. She had the handicap of an ingrained and incurable
passion for those innocuous little tricks of manner with the men; also,
she was greatly hindered by a conventional assortment of the so-called
"lofty ideals." Still, she was letting much of her own natural
personality appear. She was only slightly exaggerating her bent toward
sweetness and sympathy. She was not quite so strenuous in advocacy of
fine old-fashioned womanliness--heart without mind, purity that is mere
strait jacketed carnality; virtue that, when it yields, makes lofty
pretense of yielding only in reluctant tolerance of man's coarseness and
of nature's shameful way of reproducing. At Tecumseh, when Dr. Madelene
Ranger delivered a course of lectures on the profession all young women
are candidates for--that is, on matrimony--to the girls of the senior
class of the college of liberal arts, Helen was one of those who refused
to attend and signed the--unheeded--protest to the faculty. She was no
longer so proud of this as she had been, although she still thought she
had done what ought to be right though it rather seemed foolish.
But the greatest improvement of all in Helen was the subtlest. She had
come there, expecting to be a dependent, feeling and, in a sweet refined
way, acting like the poor relation, harbored on sufferance. Women,
trained from the outset to be dependents, easily degenerate into
sycophants, like men who have always looked to others for employment and
have lost self-confidence if they ever had it. But lack of
self-reliance, a vice in a man, is regarded as a virtue in a woman; so,
women have absolutely no restraint upon their abandoning even the forms
of self-respect, once they get in the way of degenerating. Thus,
Helen's relations with Courtney might easily have become what is usually
seen where there is intimacy between a poor woman and a woman of means.
But Courtney--not deliberately but with the unconsciousness of large
natures--made this degradation impossible. It was not merely that Helen
had not been made to feel a dependent; it was more--far more. It was
that she had been made to feel independent, more independent than
Courtney herself felt. And this fine feeling, this erectness of spirit,
permeated to every part of her character, would have made a
full-statured human being of her, had she had the mentality to shake off
her early training as mere conventional female.
Richard frankly declared her an ideal woman; Basil secretly agreed with
him. Helen became the constant reminder of his lost honor, of the
heaven he had given up for the forbidden delights. He reveled in
Courtney the tempest; but during the lulls his eyes turned yearningly to
Helen, the serene and pure calm. Courtney represented sinful excess,
Helen righteous restraint. Courtney's was love the devastator; a love
for Helen would be love the uplifter. He wanted Courtney; he felt that
Helen was what he ought to want. And in the lulls, with passion
exhausted and needing the stimulus of contrast--he sometimes fancied
that, if he could somehow contrive to assert his manhood and escape from
slavery to Courtney, he would be happy with Helen, and once more noble
and good. Like many another, he flattered himself that he had an
aspiration to a better life when in reality he was making pretense of
virtuous longing merely to whet his appetite for vice. He shut his eyes
to the obvious but rarely seen--or, rather, rarely admitted--truth that
a man is as he does, not as he pretends or dreams.
Before finally and fully condemning Basil--or Courtney or anyone--for
anything he or she may have done contrary to our views of propriety and
morality, it would be well to reflect upon the true nature of
conscience--to which Basil and Courtney and all of us habitually refer
all moral questions for settlement. As we grow older we are awed or
amused rather than shocked--and, unless we have lived as the moles and
the earthworms, are not astonished at all--by the wondrous ways in which
our conscience adjusts itself to necessity--or to what overwhelming
inclination makes us believe to be necessity. But in unanalytic youth
such adjustments take place unconsciously to ourselves; the mind, in the
parts of itself hidden from us, concocts the proof positive that what we
desire is necessary and right; all we are conscious of is that we
suddenly have the mandate of necessity and the godspeed of conscience.
Thus, conscience in youth can be as flexible as occasion may require,
yet can, without hypocrisy, be for the conduct of others a very Draco of
a lawgiver, a very Brutus of a judge. This, in youth only. But-- How
many of us ever do grow up?
The free-and-easy mode of life at the house made it impossible for any
two to be alone, except by stealth, without everyone's knowing it. As a
man who since early youth had led the "man sort of life" he was
thoroughly used to associating the idea stealth with the relations of
men and women. However, flexible though conventional "honor" is, he had
misgivings about bending it to the requirements of desire in this
particular case. But as his longing for such a moral invigorator as
Helen's innocent purity grew in intensity, he began deliberately to
revolve contriving to see her alone again, and by stealth. His first
success was accidental--callers occupying Courtney when he came seeking
her. As he turned away from the house he spied Helen, seated under a
maple tree sewing near where Winchie and the older Donaldson boy were
playing ball. She colored faintly when he dropped to the grass near her
and lit a cigarette. He so placed himself that he commanded all
approaches from the house and could not be taken by surprise. "Why is
it," he began, "that I don't see you at all any more--except at the
table?"
The fact that he did not pursue when she began to avoid had disappointed
her keenly. But it had given her a better opinion of him. It
showed--so she told herself, perhaps by way of consolation to
vanity--that however bad he might be he yet had redeeming reverence for
purity. But she had long been weary of the dutiful struggle against his
charm of the worldly and the rich for her the unworldly and the poor.
So, her manner was not wholly discouraging as she said, in reply to his
respectfully regretful question, "I've been very much occupied."
He watched her swift white fingers a while, then stared gloomily out
toward the lake. She stole a pitying glance at him. "Poor fellow!"
thought she. "He's suffering terribly to-day. That dreadful woman!
How could Courtney, generous though she is, defend a creature who is
simply wrecking his life?" As she had kept close watch on him all these
months, these signs of his sufferings were not new to her. But never
had she seen them so movingly plain. "Poor fellow!" thought she.
Presently he said: "Won't you talk to me? I feel like a--a damned soul
to-day."
Helen thrilled. He looked so distinguished, was so elegantly dressed in
his simple manly way, had that gloss, that sheen, which marks all the
kinds and conditions of anglers for the opposite sex. "What shall I
talk about?" she asked.
Her sympathetic smile, showing her excellent teeth and lighting up her
dark eyes, changed for him her common-place query into a stimulating
exhibit of depth of soul. "Anything--anything," he said. "You've got
such an honest, sweet voice that whatever you say makes one feel
better."
"What is troubling you?"
"Oh, I don't want to talk about myself."
But her instinct told her he had brought his stained soul to
confessional. "It might help you," she suggested, blushing at her own
boldness.
He looked gratefully at her and away. "It seems to me," said he,
"you've been avoiding me. Is it so?"
Helen bent her head low over her work.
"I suppose it was instinctive," he went on. "To you, I'd seem--
Sometimes I feel that, if you and I had kept on with those talks we were
having last spring, things would have been different with me. However,
it's too late now."
Helen's eyes filled. "Oh, no. It's never too late," said she.
He sighed and rose--Courtney was coming toward them. Helen took no part
in the conversation that followed. She was pondering the few
meaningless and youthful phrases he had uttered as if they were
freighted with wisdom and destiny. And she continued to ponder them
after he and Courtney and Winchie went away for a drive to Wenona. The
more meaningless a thing is, the more food for thought to those
incapable of thinking. When it is clear, it is grasped at once and the
incident closes; but let it have no meaning at all, and lives will be
devoted to cogitating upon it, and library shelves will groan with tomes
of exegesis. Helen found in Basil's words what she wished to find--found
a plain mandate of duty to help him. He couldn't be so very
bad--probably not so bad as Richard was in his bachelor days, before
chemistry and Courtney calmed him. And look at Richard now!
She did not know the very particular dangers for Basil in drink. But
she saw that he was taking a great deal more whisky and water than
formerly, and she felt that it had to do with his obviously desperate
depression. Her one chance to see him, she knew, was when Courtney was
occupied; for, had she not led Courtney to think that she did not wish
to be left alone with him ever? She decided it was best not to tell
Courtney she had changed her mind--somewhat--about him; Courtney would
misjudge, would think her careless about principle, weak,
love-sick--worst of all, would probably advise against her talking with
him. Thus it came to pass that when Courtney was safely occupied--with
callers, with Winchie, at sewing or painting or dressing--Helen put
herself oftener and oftener in such a position that Basil could find her
if he chose. She did not dream that he also wished to be stealthy; she
thought the stealth was all on her own side--and he, seeing this, soon
pretended to himself that he thought so, too, and had not the slightest
sense of guilt toward Courtney. It did not take him long to find a
satisfying explanation for Helen's aversion to having it known that they
met alone; here, decided he, was another evidence of her modesty, her
delicate sensitiveness of the good woman who can't bear being talked
about lightly--and, if they talked alone where others could see, there
would surely be joking and teasing and gossiping.
Once more habit gave illustration of its subtle grasping of ever more
and more power. Before either was aware of it, they were meeting
clandestinely with clocklike regularity. And Helen's life filled with
sunshine of the most delicious warmth and sparkle. And Basil, keeping
steadily on at his drinking, and never relaxing in his devotion to the
sweet sin of which Courtney was the scarlet altar, reveled in those
agonies of a sense of utter depravity that are about the only charm of
wickedness. "I am not fit to live," reflected he with comfortable
gloom, as he sat in his apartment alone drinking after an afternoon with
Helen and a late evening with Courtney. Here was excellent excuse for
drinking and gloriously damning himself. He did not go to bed until he
had finished the bottle and the last cigarette in the big silver box on
his table. Also, between spasms of self-damning he had contrived to
finish a novel of intrigue that had as its villain-hero just such a
devil of a fellow as he felt he himself was--or was in delightful danger
of becoming.
How it ever befell he never could remember. But the day came when he,
sitting with Helen in the summerhouse--the summerhouse!--found himself
holding her hand. He stared at the pretty white hand, large and capable
yet feminine in every curve. He noted that it was lying contentedly,
confidingly upon the brown of his palm. He lifted his dazed eyes. Her
lashes were down, her cheeks overspread with delicate color; her bosom,
like a young Juno's, rose and fell with agitated irregularity. It was
not poisonous mock morality, it was the decent human man underneath,
that sent an honestly horrified "Good God!" to his lips. He laid her
hand gently in her lap, stood up, thrust his hands deep into his
trousers pockets. His face was red with real shame.
"I've often told you," said he, "that I'm no fit companion for a pure
woman--that my life's ruined past redeeming----"
"Don't say those things," she implored. "They hurt me--and they're not
so. I know _you_."
"Past redeeming," he repeated. "It's the God's truth. I must keep away
from you. I've no right to see you--to care for you--to tempt you to
care for me. I can't tell you--but if you knew, you'd loathe me as I
loathe myself."
"Do you--do you--" Her voice faltered. But she had wrought herself up
to such a romantic pitch about him, and his earnestness was so
terrifying and so real to her, that she dared to go on--"Do you care for
some one else?" And she looked at him in all the beauty of her romance.
"I don't know--I don't know," he answered, in great agitation--physical,
though he of course fancied it moral. "Not with the love I might have
given a pure woman, if fate and my own vile weakness hadn't conspired to
ruin me.... What am I saying? I can't talk to you about it. Think me as
bad as your imagination can picture--and I'm worse still."
She gave a low wail that came straight from her honest romantic young
heart and went straight to his heart. He sat beside her, took her hand.
"Be merciful to me," he begged. "At least I'm not so bad that I don't
know goodness when I see it. And you'll always be the ideal of goodness
in my eyes--all I once sought in love--all I once deluded myself into
believing I had won."
She thrilled. Those words made her feel that he belonged to _her_. She
laid her other hand on his. "Basil," she appealed, "you are young, and
brave, and noble. You can free yourself--save yourself----"
He drew away, went to the rail of the pavilion, seated himself there.
"No," he said. "I'm past saving. And--we must not meet any more."
"Why?" she asked.
"Because--I am not free--and never shall be."
"Is that true?" Her eyes looked loving incredulity.
"I am more tightly bound--by honor and by--by habit--than if I were
married."
She gave a long sigh--of despair, she thought, but in reality of hope,
for, at least he was free. Marriage was the only real bond. As for
honor--what honor could there be in any tie not sanctioned by religion
and society?
"What a cur I am!" he exclaimed, put to shame by her sigh and her
forlorn expression.
"Please don't!" she begged. "I understand--as far as a girl could
understand such a thing. And I know it's not your fault. And--even if
we can't be anything more to each other, still I'm not sorry we've had
what we've had. I'm--I'm--glad!"
He felt the glory of her purity beaming upon him like heaven's light on
the bleak, black-hot peaks of hell. He longed to linger, and talk on
and on; but his sense of honor had reached the limit of its endurance
for that day. Without touching her hand he said good-by as if they were
never to see each other again and went as if his heart were broken.
Thenceforth Helen let her longing for romance centre in him without
concealing the fact from herself--or from him. And her castle-building
had an energy it would never have had, if she had not imagined she felt
it was hopeless. Nothing so dynamic as the hopelessness that hopes.
Believing that he loved her, that she was his one chance of redemption,
she continued to give painstaking attention to her toilet, to refresh
her memory of those of his favorite poets with whom she was acquainted,
to learn lines from those she knew less well, and to put herself in his
way--always without forwardness. And he continued to drift--held fast
to Courtney with senses so enchained that he would have fought against
release like an opium fiend for his drug; fascinated also by the woman
he could dream he ought to have loved, and might have loved. Two
restraints he laid sternly upon himself. Not to talk of love in a
_tete-a-tete_ with a woman--that would be impossible. But he would see
that the talk was kept to the general, that it never adventured the
particular. Also, he would never again so much as touch Helen's hand
when they were alone. Were he bred to be as expert at moral truth as at
moral sham, he might have found a key to his true state of soul in the
tantalization this self-restraint caused him to suffer. There were
times when her physical contrast to Courtney was as alluring to his
keyed-up, supersensitized nerves as was her moral contrast to his morbid
moral sense. If he had had the intelligence and concentration necessary
to candid self-analysis, he would have been startled--perhaps
benefited--by the discovery that he was in the way to become one of
those libertines who in all sincerity teach prayers to the innocence
they are plotting to debauch.
And all the time he was drinking more and more deeply--not for the moral
reasons he fancied, but for the practical physical reason that a
disordered nervous system craves the stimulants that will further
aggravate its disorder. Helen's father had carried his liquor badly; a
little was enough to upset him a great deal. Basil was one of those men
who are able to drink heavily without showing it, even to the most
watchful eyes. Often, when she had not the faintest suspicion he was in
liquor, he was in fact so far gone that he had to keep his surface
preternaturally solemn in order to conceal the disorder of his mind.
The day did not long delay when, under the influence of drink, he
suddenly seized her and kissed her. She did not resist; but the shock
of the contact, instead of inflaming him, instantly restored him to his
senses. He was conscience-stricken; also he saw the impossible
complications he was precipitating. In shame and fright--in fright more
than shame--he fled from her presence.
So far as outward effect is concerned, the action is everything, the
motive nothing. But so far as inward effect is concerned, the action is
nothing, the motive everything. In action Basil and Courtney were
essentially the same--equal partners in intrigue. But her motive of
seeking strength through love availed to hold her steady, even to lift
her up; while his motive of sensuality ever less and less refined and
redeemed by love was thrusting him down and down.
*XXIII*
Richard and Courtney were walking up from the laboratory together. In
his abrupt fashion Richard broke the silence with: "I wonder if it isn't
Helen that's hanging back and not Gallatin. She's innocent as a baby,
but her experience with her father must have taught her about that one
thing."
"What one thing?" asked Courtney, startled out of her abstraction.
"Drinking. Helen must have noticed how Gallatin's mopping it up these
days."
"Nonsense," said Courtney sharply. She was much irritated--as human
beings are extremely apt to be, when some matter they are making
determined efforts to ignore is forced on their attention.
"He was so drunk this morning that he had to go out and take the air.
That's what made me think of it."
Drunk! She winced at that bald revolting word. She flamed at what she
tried to think was an injustice. "This morning?" cried she. "Why,
that's absurd. I'd have noticed it."
"You're another innocent. He carries a package well--always did."
There Richard laughed at memories of his and Gallatin's "wild-oats" days
of which he fancied Courtney knew nothing--and he would have been
panic-stricken had he thought there was danger of her finding out about
them. "Yes," he went on, "Gallatin's been going some for several weeks
now. But this daytime drinking is a new development."
"I'm sure you're mistaken," said Courtney, her irritation showing in her
color now. "You both drink at supper."
"He about six to my two. I never take more than two. And every once in
a while I see Jimmie or Bill carrying a case of bottles to or from his
apartments. I can understand a boy's doing that sort of thing. A boy
wants to try everything. But how a grown man can keep on at it is
beyond me. Still, he hasn't much mind. He never says or thinks
anything he hasn't got from somebody else. But--women'd never notice
that." This last sentence half to himself, not at all for her hearing.
Courtney was all a-quiver with anger. For, his shrewd observation on
Basil's mentality compelled her to admit to herself another truth,
indeed a whole swarm of truths, she had been hiding from herself--how
Basil's conversation, when they were all together and the subject was
necessarily other than love, no longer seemed brilliant or especially
interesting even; how at the shop he made an extremely poor showing, was
now pupil, and rather backward pupil, to her who almost daily had to
cover up his blunders; how in helping her with the gardening he never
went beyond either approving her ideas or offering suggestions already
stated in the books; how she was constantly coming across things she had
thought original with him only because she happened not to have read the
books that contained them or to have known the phase of life in which
they were familiar commonplaces. Angry though an untruth about anyone
or anything we love makes us, that anger is as equanimity itself beside
the anger roused by a disagreeable truth.
As they neared the house she quickened her pace, hurrying not so much
from Richard as from her own thoughts--the thoughts his words had
startled from unexpected lurking places as a sudden light sets bats to
whirling. Courtney was loyal through and through; also, she clung to
Basil like a shipwrecked sailor to a life raft. The stronger the waves
of adverse destiny or of doubt, the fiercer she clung to her life raft.
In face of the clearest proof from without against Basil, she would have
shut her eyes and held fast to him. Yet with devilish malice and
merciless persistence circumstances were now constantly taking her blind
resolute loyalty by surprise and forcing upon her exhibitions of him as
a shallow and sensual person. A proud, intelligent woman's love could
reconcile itself to either of these--to a shallow man whose passion was
simply symbol of deep and sincere love; or, to a sensual man whose
grossness was the coarse rich soil that sent up and nourished high
intelligence, fascinating and compelling. But no woman worth while as a
human being could continue to love a shallow man treating her as mere
"symbol of the sensual side of life" because he was incapable of
appreciating any but physical qualities, and then simply as physical
qualities.
It was with a heart defiantly loving, defiantly loyal, that she met
Basil at eleven that night to admit him. He had not appeared either at
the house or at the laboratory during the afternoon or for supper or
afterwards. So, she had not seen him since Richard's "attack on him
behind his back"--for, she had succeeded in convincing herself that
Richard's accusations were an outcropping of prejudice against him. She
felt humble toward him because she had listened without bursting out in
his defense--this, though to defend would have been the height of stupid
imprudence. As he entered the door she softly opened, he lurched against
her, stumbled over the rug, saved himself by catching hold of her and
almost bringing her down. A wave of suspicion, of sickening fear and
repulsion shuddered through her. But she frowned herself down, took him
firmly by the arm.
"Be careful," she whispered. "The floor was polished only yesterday."
He mumbled something affectionate and without waiting for her to close
the door, embraced her. From him exhaled the powerful odor of mixed
tobacco and whisky that proclaims the drunken man to the most
inexperienced, to those blindest of the blind--the blind who dare not
see. She gently released herself. Several times of late he had come to
her in almost this condition; she had forced herself to deny, to excuse,
to minimize. Now, however, it was impossible for her to risk admitting
him; and also, she suddenly realized she had reached the breaking point
of her courage to keep up her self-deception. "You must go at once,"
she said.
"Why?" he demanded in a hoarse whisper. His befuddled mind reverted to
Helen as if Courtney knew about her. "What right have you got to be
jealous, if I'm not?"
She did not puzzle over this remark. "Basil, you must go at once
because you've been drinking too much." The danger was too imminent to
be trifled with in diplomatic phrases.
He stood, swaying unsteadily, his head hanging. "If you think so--" he
muttered.
She urged him gently toward the door.
"I--I beg your pardon," he mumbled. "I--I guess you're right."
He backed two steps. As soon as he was clear of the door she closed and
locked it. Slowly she went upstairs, dropped wearily into bed. She lay
quiet a few minutes, staring at the arc of the night lamp. Then on an
impulse from an instinct that could not be disobeyed, she rose, took a
dark dressing gown, wrapped it round her. She glided along the hall,
descended the stairs, opened the lake-front door. Closing it behind
her, she stood at the edge of the veranda. The sky was black; a few
drops of rain were falling. She made an effort, ran down the steps,
hurried across the lawn and along the path to the Smoke House. The
entrance door to the apartment stairway was open. She hesitated, slowly
ascended. He did not appear at the sound of her steps. His bedroom
door was open. She glanced in. His bed was turned down, his pajamas
lay ready upon the folded-over covers. But he was not there. She went
on to the door of his sitting room. It too was open. At the table desk
and facing the door he sat, half-collapsed on the chair, one hand round
a tall glass of whisky and water, the bottle and a carafe at his elbow.
Though her mind was on him, her eyes took in and forced upon her every
tiny detail of the room; she had made it over that his surroundings
might always remind him of her. He lifted his heavy head, blinked
stupidly at her. She noted his face with the same morbid acuteness to
detail--his swollen eyes, his puffy lips, the veins in his forehead, his
brows knitted in a foolishly solemn expression. Never had he seemed so
homely, since her first glance at him when he came there a stranger.
After a moment of dazed sodden staring at her, he remembered his
manners, rose not without difficulty and stood, stiff and unsteadily
swaying. "Give me some of the whisky," said she, advancing. "I feel
sort of queer." She dropped to the chair he had just left and took up
his glass. "May I have your drink?" she asked, and without waiting for a
reply drank eagerly. Color returned to her cheeks, and her eyes became
less heavy and dull. "I'm better--very much better," she declared, as
she set the glass down empty.
He had seated himself lumpishly on the sofa. They remained silent,
gazing out through the open window into the darkness and hearing the
soothing musical plash of rain on lake. In upon them poured a freshness
rather than a breeze and the pleasant odor of drenching foliage. "As I
lay there thinking," she said presently, "it came to me that I mustn't
let this night pass without seeing you and making it smooth and straight
between us."
The shock of her appearing had for the moment beaten down his
intoxication. It was now boiling up again, heating his nerves and his
imagination, though he seemed sober and self-possessed. "All right,"
said he. "I know you didn't mean to insult me, and I'll forget it."
She gazed quickly at him in amazement, started to speak, checked
herself.
"But I want to tell you," he went on, his tone and gestures
forcible-feeble, "I want to tell you this business of my being shut out
has got to stop. You must arrange for Vaughan to come down here to
live, and for me to take his rooms up at the house."
This demand seemed to her as utterly unlike him as the dictatorial tone
in which it was made. To condemn him--no, more--not to love him the
more tenderly--because he was in this mood of distracted desperation
would be unworthy of the love she professed. She crushed down her sense
of repulsion, went to him, laid her cheek against his hair. "My love,"
she murmured. "We mustn't ever forget that we have only each other.
We'll never let any misunderstanding come between us, no matter how blue
we get." And she turned his head and kissed him.
With an intoxicated man's fickleness, he switched abruptly from anger to
sentiment. His eyes became moist and shiny. A sensual drunken smile
played round his heavy mouth. She saw though she was trying hard not to
see. He reached round and drew her toward his lap. She gently resisted,
while she was nerving herself to submit--would it not be a very poor
sort of love that would let itself be chilled by a mood--a mood in which
all love's warmth, all love's gentleness were needed as they are not
needed when everything is pleasant and easy?
The tears of self-pity welled into his eyes. "God, how low I've sunk!"
He got himself on his uncertain legs, arranged his features into a
caricature of an expression of dignified command. "I want you to send
Helen--Miss March--away," he said, waving his finger at her. "She's a
pure woman. She mustn't be contaminated."
She gazed at him in horror. "Basil!" she gasped.
"Yes--I mean it. Oh, you understand. I'm not fit to 'sociate with
her--and neither are you."
With a wild cry, she turned to fly. He lurched forward, caught her by
the arm. "But we're just about fit for each other," he said. "And
that's the truth--if I am drunk." He nodded at her. "I should say,
'That's the truth _because_ I am drunk.' It's giving me the courage to
speak out a few things that've been gnawing at my insides for weeks."
And his fingers clasped her arm like steel nippers.
"Basil! You're hurting me."
"That's what I feel like doing." And in his eyes as in his fingers
there was revealed the sheer sensual ferocity that drink had freed of
the shame which at other times held it in restraint.
She hung her head. In a low voice she stammered, "You're making me feel
there isn't any love for me anywhere in your heart."
"Love?" he said, swaying to and fro and opening and closing his eyes
stupidly. "Love. Oh, yes there is. Yes, indeed. Sometimes I think
not, but it isn't so. It's because I love you that I go crazy at the
thought that I'm sharing you."
"_Sharing me!_" She wrenched herself free, put her arm over her eyes as
if she could thus hide from herself the sight of his soul which in
drunken abandon he had completely unmasked.
"Don't be frightened," he maundered on. "I'm a man of honor--'honor
rooted in dishonor' as Tennyson says. I'll not go. I'll submit to
it--all right. Love gives a man a stomach for anything."
She wished to fly, but her legs would not carry her. She had to
stay--and listen.
"How I've been dragged down! How a woman can drag a man down! Not
Helen--no--she's an angel. But those good women never are as
fascinating as you others.... Love?" He beamed upon her like a drunken
satyr. "Let's love and be happy. To hell with everything but love."
As she listened and looked she, for the first time since they had been
lovers, felt that she had sinned--had sinned without justification. The
judgment of guilt dazzled and stunned her as the sun's full light eyes
from which the scales have just fallen. She stood paralyzed, yet
wondering how she could remain erect under the weight of her
vileness--for, her sin seemed as heavy and as vile as ever celibate
fanatic asserted. When her lover moved to embrace her, she, with the
motion of shrinking from him, found she had strength and power to fly.
She rushed from the room, he stumbling after her, and crying "Courtney!
Don't get jealous and go off mad----"
*XXIV*
She knew the truth at last--the whole truth--what he was in mind and in
heart, what his love was, what he in his inmost soul thought about her,
about himself. The man who could believe he was sharing her could not
but be shallow indeed, stupid, and also incapable of understanding the
meaning of the word love; the man who could keep on with a woman he
believed he was "sharing," must be sunk in a wallow of sensuality--and
as weak as low. She knew the truth. Hearing she might have disputed
and in time denied. But there was, and would be, no evading the records
stamped clear and indelible upon her memory by that sensual, maudlin
face. To falsify those records was beyond even a proud, lonely, loving
woman's all but limitless powers of self-deception in matters of the
heart. The coarseness of that self-revelation of his was the liquor;
but the revelation itself was the man. He did not love; he lusted. He
did not love; he despised--her and himself. He did not love--and he
never had loved.
There is in every one of us a chamber where vanity and hope live and
ever conspire to deceive, and if possible, destroy us. From that secret
chamber she now wrenched an amazing secret. She discovered that from
the beginning--yes, from the beginning--she, determined to satisfy the
craving of elemental flesh and blood, had been lying to herself about
Basil Gallatin. Passion had taken sly advantage of her loneliness and
her longing for sympathy and companionship; it had beguiled her
imagination into creating out of the very ordinary materials of his true
personality the lover she had been adoring. One by one she took out and
reexamined all her memory plates of him. Now, a memory plate is like any
other photographic plate; it has a surface picture and it also yields to
a close scrutiny a thousand details which do not appear upon the
surface. Long before she finished, she was realizing that she had all
along, with the deliberate craft of self-deception, been hiding from
herself the trick her feelings were practicing upon her intelligence.
Basil--pleasing manners and dress, amiable disposition, animalism
agreeably disguised by education--Basil had been plausible enough to
pass muster with her, ready and eager to be deluded because of her
craving for love. True, he had posed to a certain extent. But he was
not really responsible for the fraud. The blame was hers--all hers.
But disillusion no more destroys a love longing than lack of food and
drink destroys hunger and thirst. High above moans of shame over the
pitiful collapse of her romance rose the defiant clamors of hunger and
thirst. They had been lovers, he and she; and that fact in itself was a
bond which a woman, at least a woman of her temperament of fidelity,
could not easily break. She feared when he, sober and a gentleman once
more, sweet and winning, came to her and pleaded for forgiveness she
would forgive--would in her loneliness and heart hunger take what she
could get rather than have nothing and the ache of nothingness. It
is--at least, it has been, up to and into the present time--second
nature to woman to depend upon a man, to select some one man, the best
available, and stake everything upon him. Basil Gallatin was that man
for her. And--not in novels, but in life--before any woman, however
high minded, goes away to utter aloneness from a man who cares for her,
he must have disclosed some traits more abhorrent than any such human
traits as those of Basil. Yes--human. Was it his fault that he had not
given her the kind of love she wanted? Was it not probably her fault
that he had not been inspired to that kind of love? Perhaps, too, the
love of any man, could it be seen in the nakedness of drunkenness, would
be much like Basil's. "I'm only a woman," she said. "I mustn't forget
that. I've no right to expect much." And then she shuddered; for in
her very ears was the sound of those cold rains falling day and night
upon her loneliness and despair.
She saw herself accepting; for, a great deal less than half a loaf is
better than no bread. And if she accepted, she must adapt herself--must
force herself to acquire a liking for what she must eat or go altogether
hungry. She saw herself wending down and down--to the level at which he
had from the beginning thought her arrived. She looked all around.
Nothing--no one--to save her. For, what could she hope from
Richard?--from any man? Was not Basil giving about the best man had to
offer woman in the way of association? There was the Richard sort of
man--an abstraction--an impossibility. There was the Shirley Drummond
sort of man--a human incarnation of Old Dog Tray--equally impossible.
There was the third sort of man--the Basil sort, somewhere between the
two impossibilities. Life must be lived, and with human beings. Of the
three available kinds of associates, was not the Basil sort the most
livable? Rather Basil than being frozen to death by a Richard or bored
to death by a Shirley. The conclusion seemed cynical; but there was no
cynicism in the sad woman who faced that conclusion.
She did not go down to breakfast; and Basil, she learned, kept away
also. When he did not appear at dinner she knew he had determined to
wait until he should surely see her alone. The emotion that stirred in
her because his place at the table was vacant gave her more and sadder
light upon how little the heart heeds the things that impress the mind
and the self-respect. About the middle of the afternoon she was at the
small antique desk in the corner of her sitting room, trying to write a
letter. But the charm of the day, the beauty of full-foliaged trees, of
lake and cloudless sky seen through the creeper-framed window, would not
let her write. As she gazed, her unhappiness calmed and all her senses
flooded with the joy that laughs in sunbeams, in light and shadow
floating on the grass, in flight and song of birds, in grace and color
and perfume of flowers, the joy that mocks at moral struggle and
flutters alluringly the gay banner of the gospel of eat, drink and be
merry.
As she took her pen to go on with the letter, Lizzie appeared in the
hall doorway. "Mr. Vaughan asked me to tell you," she said, "that he'd
gone out and might not be back for supper."
"Very well," said Courtney, not turning round. It flitted across her
mind that this was an extraordinary message for Richard to send--Richard
who came and went as he pleased and sent no word when he was not coming
to dinner or supper. "Where's he gone?" she asked--an extraordinary
question from her to match the extraordinary message from him.
"He was in a hurry and didn't say," replied Lizzie. "I'll find out."
"Oh, no. It doesn't matter."
Lizzie went, and in her dreaming and thinking Courtney soon forgot the
incident. Again Lizzie's voice interrupted--"Mr. Vaughan's gone to see
old Nanny."
"Nanny!" said Courtney. She never thought of the old woman except as
the memorandum of her pension check appeared every three months in the
household accounts.
"Yes. She's dying. She sent for him. Such dreadful roads too."
Courtney's pen halted on its way to the ink well. The room seemed to
her to have become terribly still.
"She sent him word," Lizzie went carelessly on, and her voice seemed to
come from a distance, through a profound hush, "that she had something
on her conscience and couldn't go without clearing it. I reckon she's
gone clean crazy."
It was not fear that made nerve and muscle tense. It was not
self-control that held her motionless. The peril was upon her; there
was no time to waste in emotion. All along, she had pretended to
herself that Nanny knew nothing, had at worst a dim suspicion. Now, she
realized that she had always feared the old woman had seen and had
heard. And those words of Lizzie's made it impossible for her to doubt
what was about to occur. No time for terror, for hysteria or fainting
or futile moaning. Her whole being concentrated on the one idea, What
shall I do? Calmly she said to Lizzie, "Has he gone?"
"Ten minutes ago--maybe fifteen."
"Did he take the motor?"
"Yes, ma'am. She's near dead. He went in a great hurry."
Idle then to think of overtaking him, of bringing him back with a story
that Winchie was missing, was perhaps drowned in the lake. Her mind--it
had never been clearer or steadier--gave Richard up for the moment,
turned to another phase. "Where is Mr. Gallatin?" she asked.
"Out on the lake. Winchie's with him--fishing."
"When they come in, please tell him I wish to see him at once." The
events of last night were as if they had not been. Wounds closed up
like magic; once more it was she and Basil her lover united against the
whole world.
"I can call him from the wall," suggested Lizzie.
"Yes--please do." She dipped the pen as if about to go on with the
interrupted letter. Lizzie went. She laid the pen down, leaned back in
the chair, clasped her hands behind her head, gazed unseeingly into the
huge tree almost directly before the window. The irony of it! Through
Nanny whom they had forgotten! The blow was about to fall--utter
ruin--the end of love--of life probably. A few hours and there would be
a convulsion of the most awful passions. She looked round. Everything
calm, bright, beautiful. Reason told her what was about to occur; but
there are calamities which the imagination cannot picture, and this was
one of them.... Should she tell Basil? "Nanny may be dead before
Richard gets to her. If I tell Basil--and Richard comes, only
suspicious--Basil's manner may confirm him." It was still more
significant that it did not enter her head as even a possibility that
Basil might be able to help her devise some plan to avert or to mitigate
the blow.... In the midst of her debate whether to tell him, she
suddenly gave a terrible cry, sprang to the window, her expression
wildly disheveled. The thought had flashed, "If Richard hears and
believes, he will _kill_ Basil!"
Before she reached the balcony rail, reason took her by the shoulder,
drew her back to her chair. "I must keep my head!" she exclaimed aloud.
And she fought down and triumphed over the terror that had all but
mastered her. At Gallatin's step on the threshold she did not turn.
"Shut the door," she said in her usual voice. Then, after the sound of
its closing, "Nanny, on her deathbed, has sent for him--to confess
something. He's gone to her."
She heard him slowly cross the room, knew he was standing at the window.
After a while she stole a glance at him. His skin was gray, his profile
set; there were deep lines round his mouth. She liked his face, it was
so manly; a wave of love surged out from her heart. "How long shall we
have to wait?" he asked. The voice, though wholly unlike his own, had
no note of cowardice in it.
"He's been gone about half an hour."
"Only half an hour!"
She saw the sweat burst out upon his forehead. She saw the muscles of
his face trembling. There was agony in his eyes--not fear, but that
horror of suspense which makes the trapped soldier rush upon the
bayonet, makes the man on the scaffold assist the leisurely hangman.
Silence, except the chirping of the birds. A bumblebee buzzed almost
into his face; he did not wince. A black-and-gold butterfly fluttered
in at the window on the other side of the desk, hovered, settled upon
the lid of the stationery box, rested with wings together as one. She
turned her eyes from him to watch it, said absently:
"You will have to go at once."
She heard him turn full toward her. She was expecting that quick
movement, but she could not help shrinking a little. However she went
on evenly: "You can cross in the motor boat, take a trap at Wenona,
catch the four-o'clock express at Fenton."
"I deserve that," he said, and she knew he was referring to last night.
She hesitated, went straight at it. "I'd forgotten last night since
Lizzie told me about Nanny. It's wiped out. So, you need think only of
going."
"What are you talking about?" he exclaimed. "I--go?"
She was ready. She turned upon him a look of well-simulated surprise.
Then-- "Oh!" she cried. "I've been thinking it out, and you haven't.
At first glance it does look as if we ought to face it together. But as
you consider it you'll see you've simply got to go."
He seated himself, took out his cigarette case, lighted a cigarette.
"If I go anywhere it will be in his direction, to shorten the wait."
"Listen," said she, leaning toward him, her forearms on the desk, her
hands clasped. "He'll have but one idea--to kill you. If you're here,
the very sight of you will set him wild. He'll kill you--how can you
defend yourself?"
"I can't. Vaughan has the right to my life."
She winced at this unconscious ugly reminder of what he really thought
of their romance. She waved her hand as if brushing something away.
"No matter about that," said she. "I'm thinking how to save Winchie
from disgrace--and my own life. If you're here, there's no hope. If
you're gone, he'll have the chance to reflect. And I shall know what to
say and how to say it."
"I don't believe she knew anything."
"Basil!" His eyes shifted. "Don't you _remember_?"
Both were hearing the mad flapping of that frightened bird in the copse
round the summerhouse. She shivered; he moved uneasily. "Even if she
knew," he objected, "she may be dead or in the stupor of death before he
gets to her."
"Then he'll hear nothing, and there's no reason why you shouldn't go.
I'll say you got a telegram from your mother----"
"If he comes merely suspecting and uneasy, and I'm gone----"
"Still he'd not be sure," she interrupted. "And if he were, he'd not
have the sight of you to inflame him." She rose. "There's no time to
waste."