"Do you _want_ me to kiss you--dear?" he said passionately.
With a nervous glance toward the house she rose. "Please!" she said, in
vague entreaty. "You must go."
"You haven't told me--anything--yet." He cast hurriedly about for some
way to detain her. "There are your plans for being independent."
"I haven't any."
"Do sit down. I'll not touch you again."
"It isn't that, Basil. It's for the same reason that I didn't write and
can't. Hasn't what he's done pledged us both to----"
"Don't say any more, Courtney," he interrupted; for he saw how
profoundly in earnest she was, and respected her for it. "You're right.
I'm going." He took her hand, pressed it. "Dear," he said, "do you
know what it was that nearly drove me insane after you sent me away? As
soon as I thought about it, I knew no harm would come to you. He's
neither a coward nor a beast. But I was afraid you'd--kill yourself."
"I never thought of it," laughed she. "I'm too healthy. You ought to
build your romance round some lady with the morbid ideas that go with
addled insides--the kind they write novels about--only they call it
soul."
He was amused in spite of himself. "It's lucky for you," said he, "that
you look like a romance. If you didn't, your way of talking would
discourage terribly."
"Is lying the only romance?" said she. "Can't you enjoy the perfume of
a flower unless you make a silly pretense that perfume and flower are a
fairy queen and her breath?"
She went with him to the retaining wall, gave him her hand, tried to
respond to his loving pressure. He got into the boat. His expression
in that odorous, enchantment-like dimness thrilled her. The feeling
that he was going--leaving her to face the lowering future
alone--saddened her, moved her to an emotion very like the love that had
so often agitated her in these very shadows. And when he murmured,
"Soon--my love!" she echoed "Soon!" in a voice melodious with the
meaningless, impulsive sentiment of the moment. It sent him away
believing. He pushed off. She watched the boat glide deeper and deeper
into the shadow. A few seconds and the darkness had effaced it. She
went slowly up the lawn. Before she reached the house, Winchie was
again uppermost in her thoughts; to think of Basil involved puzzling
over too many problems she was not yet ready to face.
That was one of the years when the warm weather stays on and on; goes
for a night, only to return with the morning sun and change the hoar
frost on the grass into dew; then in late October or later drifts
languorously southward through the dreamy haze of Indian summer. On an
afternoon midway of this second and sweeter, if sadder, summer Courtney
came out of her sitting room to the balcony to rest a moment and to
watch the sun set--a dull red globe like a vast conflagration of which
the autumnal mists were the smoke and steam. Winchie and Helen were
playing ball on the lawn, with Helen making great pretense of being
unable to catch or to hold Winchie's curves and hard straights.
Winchie, about to throw, dropped the ball, jumped up and down clapping
his hands, made a dash for the veranda, crying "Papa! Papa!" Next she
saw Helen, in confusion, turn and go in the same direction, her delicate
skin paling and flushing by turns.
In the upstairs sitting room was the seamstress who made a local journal
of society gossip unnecessary; as the divorce suit had been begun and
was the chief local topic, the less she saw and heard, the more what
she'd circulate would sound like pure invention. Courtney went along
the balcony to the hall window and entered there. Winchie had just
reached the top of the stairs. "Oh, mamma--" he began, all out of
breath.
"Yes, I know," said she, laying her finger on her lips. "Let's go down."
And holding him by the hand she descended. Richard and Helen were in
the lake-front doorway, Richard talking, Helen obviously nervous.
Courtney advanced, her hand extended. "How do you do?" said she with
easy friendliness.
"No need to ask you that," replied Dick. "Or the boy, either. How he
has shot up!"
"We've had a great summer and fall for growing things," said Courtney.
Then to Helen: "Don't let us interrupt your game."
"Yes--of course-- Come, Winchie," stammered Helen.
"Just watch me pitch, father," cried Winchie. "Jimmie's taught me to
curve."
"You don't say!" exclaimed Dick with an interest whose exaggeration
roused no suspicion in the boy's breast.
While Richard was watching the exhibition with such exclamations as
"fine"--"that's a soaker"--"look out or you'll do up your catcher,"
Courtney was watching him. She found no trace of the weary, tragedy-torn
misanthrope of song and story. Evidently Dick had been too busy with
other things to bother about himself. Instead of travel stains, there
was neatness and care and not a little fashion in his apparel. Never
had she seen him so well dressed---and in admirable taste from collar
and tie to well-cut tan boots. His hair was short--the way it was
becoming to his long, strong face and finely shaped head. The face was
not so gaunt as in those years of close application, especially the last
two years when indigestion was giving him its look of hunger and sallow
ill temper. The cheeks had filled out, had bronzed, and the blood was
pouring healthily along underneath. It was distinctly a happier face,
too. The eyes following Winchie's elaborate contortions in imitation of
the famous pitcher of the Wenona Grays had an expression of aliveness
and alertness that meant interest in the world about him. He had been
one of those men of no age, like monks and convicts and professional
students. He was now a young man--and a handsome young man.
When he turned away from the ball game, they went to the eastern end of
the veranda. She sat in the hammock, he leaned on the broad arm of a
veranda chair. "Well," said he, by way of a beginning, "you see I'm
back."
"You've been abroad--haven't you?"
"Paris and Switzerland. I had a grand time. Fell in with some English
people and we did three passes together, and then rested and amused
ourselves at St. Moritz. Then--to Paris. I never thought I'd care about
eating, but the Ritz seduced me. I think of nothing else. Then--London,
to get myself outfitted. I needed it badly."
What he said sounded strange enough from him, from Richard the
abstraction, the embodied chemistry. The way he said it was stupefying.
There was lightness; there was the sparkle that bubbles to the surface
of every look and phrase of a person with a keen sense of humor.
Richard had plainly come to life while he was away. Said Courtney: "I
suspect you've not worked very hard this summer and fall."
"Work?" replied he, with a laugh. "Not I! It was a hard pull at first,
the habit had become so strong. But I determined I'd freshen myself up.
Once I got away where I could take an impartial look at things, I saw I
was not only not getting the right results by such stolid, stupid
grinding but was actually destroying my mind--was getting old and stale.
So, I locked up the laboratory I carry round inside me, and set out to
learn to live--to learn to have a good time."
"And you did?"
"Once I found congenial people. At first I was afraid I'd been stupid
so long that I'd lost the power to enjoy. But it came back."
As he talked Courtney's spirits went down and down. Just why, she could
not have told. She certainly wished Richard well, had no desire that he
should be miserable--at least, no active desire--though, of course, she
was human and would have found some satisfaction of vanity in a Richard
hard hit by the discovery that his domestic life was in ruins. Still,
this vanity of desire to be taken tragically was not with her the
passion it is in most men and women. She was far more puzzled than
piqued. She could not understand how so serious, so proud a man as he
could dismiss a cataclysm thus lightly, no matter how little he cared
for her. She had pictured him suffering, suffering intensely; these
pictures had given her many a self-reproachful pang, and of real pain
too. Now-- Looking at this robust, handsome, cheerful person, well fed
and well dressed, she felt she had been making a fool of herself.
"Now that I come to examine you," he was saying, "you don't look at all
well."
It was a truth of which she had been uncomfortably conscious from her
first glance at him. "You ought to have gone away somewhere," he went
on. "It's a bad idea to stay in the same place, revolving the same set
of ideas too long. Mrs. Leamington taught me that. You'd like her.
Your height--much your figure--fairer skin, though--that clear healthy
dead white--a lot of really beautiful black hair--the kind with the
gloss that's not greasy. She certainly was interesting. I didn't even
mind her love of money. She simply had to have it--needed it in her
business of being always wonderfully dressed and groomed to the last
hair and the last button."
Richard paused to enjoy contemplating the portrait he had painted.
Courtney wished to hear more. "She was in your party?"
"She made most of the interest. She cured me of my insanity for
work--gave me a wider view--made me stop being a vain ass, thinking
always about my own little ambitions and worries. There's a lot that
doesn't attract me in women of the world. They're extremely petty at
bottom, I find. But at least they do come nearer the truth with their
cynicism than we quiet people with our preposterous egotism of
solemnity."
Once more her vanity winced--that he should fancy he had to go to Europe
and learn of a cynical mercenary of an English woman what she herself
had made the law and gospel of her life for years. How feeble her
impression upon him had been! True, the only chance one has to make an
impression is in the beginning of acquaintanceship; and in their
beginning she had been too inexperienced, too captivated with
romance--too youthful to have developed much personality. Still, all
that did not change the central fact--she had been futile.
"How's the divorce coming on?" he asked abruptly.
Courtney laughed--perhaps not so genuinely as it sounded, but still with
real humorous appreciation. "The beautiful English woman--a long
silence--then the question about the divorce--that's significant," she
explained.
"She's not the marrying kind," replied he, easily enough. "She'll stay
free as long as her looks and her money hold out. Then she'll marry
some rich chap and go in for society.... She was an interesting
woman--a specimen, so to speak. And I owe her a great deal. She taught
me a few very important things--about myself--and about women.... What
a fraud this so-called education is. One half of fitting a man for life
is to teach him to know men, the other half is to teach him to know
women. And we actually are taught only about things--and mostly trifles
or falsehoods as to them."
His manner demolished her suspicion. There might have been some sort of
an affair between him and this English woman--perhaps had been. If so,
it was a closed incident. "You asked about the divorce," said she: "The
suit was begun, but it has gone over till the next term of court."
"Was it my fault?" he asked, apologetically. "I've missed my mail for
nearly two months."
Her hands, clasped in her lap, were white at the knuckles. Her eyes,
meeting his, had deep down an expression that also belied her calm
manner and even voice. "I didn't want to take the last steps until we
had decided about Winchie."
"Winchie," he said thoughtfully, his glance wandering to the lawn. The
boy and Helen were resting now, seated at the edge of the lake.
"There's where marriage differs from other business. When it goes
bankrupt, children are assets that can't be liquidated.... What do you
think ought to be done?"
"I admit you've got a share in him," replied she. "But you can't help
seeing that he belongs with his mother."
"I do see it," he declared. "If I took him, what could I do with him?
Helen'll marry before long. Then-- Could there be anything worse for
him than trusting him to the care of strangers? ... As for his traveling
back and forth between his mother's house and his father's--that's a
farce that could only end in some sort of calamity to his character....
I don't know what to say. I know I could trust you absolutely to
protect him from any possible--unfortunate influences--but--" And there
he halted.
She saw he was expecting her to realize that he meant the disadvantages
of Basil as a stepfather. It was stupefying--simply stupefying--this
calm attitude of his toward such terrible things--at least, they were
things he had always regarded as terrible.
"Don't be so gloomy about it," said he, as if reading her thoughts. "I
find I can think a great deal more effectively when I'm not trying to
act like the best examples from fiction but am simply human and natural.
Courtney, the world--at least, the intelligent people in it--have
outgrown the old, ignorant, swashbuckling sort of thing. Of course, it
still survives, and ignorant people and vain people still try to act on
the prescriptions of yesterday--and all the literature still pretends
that they are valid. But the truth is, men and women are getting
enlightened. And we--you and I--are doing, not what looks best, but what
is best. Winchie isn't a problem in a novel or a poem. He's an
actuality. And I see plainly his chances are better with you--in any
circumstances--than with me." To make sure that she should understand,
he repeated, "In any circumstances."
Her eyes were full of tears. "Thank you," she said humbly. "Thank
you."
He shrugged his shoulders. "For what? For not being a fool?" He swung
round into the chair and leaned toward her. "There are some things
we've got to say to each other. I went away to put off the saying until
I was sure just where I stood. I am sure now. Do you-- Shall
we--begin?"
"I wish to hear whatever you wish to say," replied she. "But--is it
necessary to say anything?"
He leaned back, lighted a cigarette, smoked in silence. She again
studied him. That changed expression--the tense, concentrated strain
gone--a sense of life, of attractive possibilities in it other than
chemistry, gave him a humanness, a reality he had not had for her even
in their first months of married life. "Perhaps you're right," said he,
rousing himself. "Why mull over the past? And our futures lie in
different directions." He noted the queer, intent look in her eyes.
"What's the matter? You seem puzzled."
"Nothing. I-- Nothing."
"It's the change in me--in my point of view--isn't it?"
"Your--your mind certainly seems to have changed."
"Dropped its prejudices, rather," was his reply. "There's a difference.
A man's mind's himself. His prejudices are more or less external--can
be sloughed off, like clothes."
That was it, she now saw. He had got rid of those prejudices. The dead
hand of his grandfather was no longer heavy upon him. This man, seated
there before her in the vividness of youth, was the real Richard
Vaughan.
"You used to tell me the truth about myself," he went on reflectively.
"I had never seriously thought about women--about the relations of men
and women. I simply accepted my grandfather as gospel on those subjects.
My crisis forced me to do some thinking--and I believe you'll do me the
justice of admitting I never would be stupid enough to act in a crisis
without trying to use the best mind I had. Well--when I got away--and
thought--I saw that the whole business was my fault."
"No," protested she. "There was where I wronged you. I blamed
you--myself a little--but you most. That was unjust. But let's not
talk about it. The past is--the past. I wish to drop all of it except
its lessons. They'll be useful in the future."
"One thing more," he said. "I want to say I'm glad of what has
happened."
She simply stared at him.
"That would sound strange, I suppose, to the mob in the treadmill of
conventionality," he went on, apparently not noting her expression.
"But I'm grateful to--to whatever it was--fate or chance or what you
please--for my awakening. But for it, what'd have become of me? Like so
many men who try to be masters of their profession or business, I had
let it become master of me. A little longer, and I'd have been a
dust-dry, routine plodder, getting more and more useless every day. No
wonder the world advances so slowly. Just look at the musty, narrow
rotters who do the work. They specialize. They soon lose touch with
the whole. And their minds dwindle as their natures and interests
narrow."
"You're not thinking of giving up your work!" she exclaimed in dismay.
"I'm here to begin again," replied he, with his fine look of energy and
persistence. "But not in the old way. Not month in and month out, like
a hermit--but with some sanity--and, I'm sure, with better results.
That brings me to my real reason for calling. I wished to ask if you
had any objection to my living and working at the shop." As the color
flamed into her face, he hurried on, "I'll keep an independent
establishment in every way and bind myself not to disturb you. If you
like, Helen can bring Winchie down to see me from time to time--but not
unless you like."
"I'll take Winchie and go to father's," said she, painfully embarrassed.
"I'd not have stopped on here, but you'll remember you made it a
condition----"
"If you leave, I leave also," he rejoined. His manner was emphatic,
final. "I've no intention of intruding. Please forget I said anything."
He rose to leave. "I'm going to move my laboratory to Chicago or New
York. A few months sooner will make no difference."
She insisted that she would go--that she preferred to go--that going was
entirely agreeable to her. But in the end he convinced her he really
wished her to keep on at the house, to make Winchie feel it was his
home--and would leave if she even talked of leaving. "I'll arrange with
Gerster's wife over at the farm to feed me and keep the apartment in
order. So, everything will go on just as if I were a thousand miles
away."
When he went--like a caller after a pleasant hour--she was glad because
she wished to be alone, free to shut herself in her room with the many
strange things he had given her to think about--the many startling
things. But just as she got the seamstress off for home, in came Helen,
hoping that Courtney would talk of the amazing call, determined to talk
of it herself, anyhow. "Forgive me for asking, Courtney," said she.
"But I simply must. You've decided to give up the divorce, haven't
you?"
The emerald eyes looked amused astonishment. "Why?" she asked.
"You and he are just--just as you always were."
"Indeed we're not!" exclaimed she. "Absolutely different."
"But I never saw two people friendlier----"
"That's it. That's precisely it. Now that we've freed each other, I
can like him and he can like me."
Helen was not hearing. Suddenly she burst out: "Oh, Courtney!
Courtney! What will become of you! You'll have no money--for you're
not asking alimony. You'll only have to marry again." Courtney frowned
at this frank statement of the problem she was putting off. "You know
you'll have to marry again," pursued Helen, "and it isn't likely you'll
do as well. Men don't care for widows of any kind--least of all, grass
widows. They want a fresh, unspoiled woman."