But Helen was unabashed. Because she was taller and graver than
Courtney, she felt older and wiser. And because she loved Courtney, she
felt she must do all in her power to avert the impending catastrophe
through this divorce madness. "I do believe you've got no common sense
at all!" she cried. "You talk wise enough--sometimes. But when it comes
to acting-- Courtney, women brought up as we've been simply have to be
supported. And it's our right!"
"Is it?" said Courtney.
"Aren't we ladies? But you've never been poor. You don't realize what
you've got to face. You don't realize it's your position as Richard's
wife that makes everybody act so sweetly and respectfully toward
you--and that makes you feel secure."
"Oh, yes, I do," said Courtney gravely. "I realize it so keenly that
I'm afraid of myself--afraid I'll be tempted to do something
contemptible. When I married, I had the excuse that I believed I loved
and was loved and it's the custom for a man to throw in support with his
love. But if I married again--feeling as I do--I'd--" She flung out
her arms. "I don't want to think about it!" she cried. "I'll not do
it! I'll not do it!"
Helen could not understand. And she was glad she couldn't, for she felt
that such ideas, whatever they were, did not make for feminine comfort.
She had listened impatiently to Courtney. She now brought the
conversation back to the only point worth considering. "But you've
_got_ to marry," said she.
"No!" Courtney had the expression of fire and purpose that makes a
small person seem tall. "There's an alternative. I can do for myself."
"Do what?" demanded Helen. She waited for a reply--in vain--then went
on: "What could you do that anybody would pay for? Besides--you, a
lady, couldn't ask for work. You don't know how I suffered when I
thought I was going to have to do it. And you'd suffer even
more--having occupied the position you have. What a come down!"
"Don't!" commanded Courtney. "Helen, you are tempting me."
"I'm talking the sense to you that you've so often talked to me," Helen
insisted. "Unless we women have got money of our own or a man with an
income back of us, we're-- I'd hate to confess the truth even to
another woman."
Courtney nodded slowly several times, then asked, "Don't you think it
ought to be changed?"
"No!" cried Helen vehemently. "It's what God intended. The penalty of
being a man is to have to work. The penalty of being a lady, and refined
and dainty and untouched by low, vulgar things, is to have to be a
dependent. And it's not such a heavy penalty, either. Even if one
doesn't care much about the man, one isn't inflicted with him all the
time."
At these plain truths wrenched by loving anxiety from the deepest and
securest of hiding places, Courtney's eyes danced. She'd have laughed
outright, had not Helen been so terribly in earnest--Helen without a
sense of humor. However she did venture to say: "The chief equipments of
a lady are a stone instead of a heart and a hide instead of a skin--is
that it?"
But Helen did not see the ironic comment on her philosophy. "Well," she
went on in her serious, stolid way, "I don't want responsibility. And I
like to take my ease--and to have to do only things it doesn't much
matter if they go undone. We women are different from men. Our
self-respect's in a different direction.... Dear, can't I do something
to help you?"
Courtney kissed her penitently. She always felt ashamed after poking
fun at Helen whose heart was so genuinely good and kind. "Nothing,
thanks. The divorce must go on. You don't understand, Helen. Believe
me, if I knew that sheer misery was waiting for me, as soon as I was
free, I'd still go on."
"Let me talk to Richard. I can do it tactfully."
In her alarm at this Courtney caught hold of Helen. "If you did such a
thing, you'd be doing me the greatest possible injury."
"Don't be afraid, dear. I'd not meddle. But--" She looked appealingly
at Courtney--"please, dear--do let me!"
"Richard and I would both resent it equally."
"But what _will_ become of you!"
Her tone was so forlorn that Courtney had to laugh. "Why, I'm barely
twenty-five--and I know a lot about several things--and could learn
more."
"Don't talk that way!" cried Helen, tearful. "It makes me shiver. It
sounds so coarse and common." She looked at Courtney as if doubtful of
her sanity. "I can't make you out. It isn't natural for a lady bred
and born, as you are, to say such things."
"You can't believe a real lady could have ideas of self-respect? Well,
I'll admit they do seem out of place in my head--and give me awful
sinkings at the heart. And--" There was a mocking smile round
Courtney's lips, a far-away look in her eyes--"Sometimes I'm haunted by
a horrible dread that I'm merely--bluffing."
Helen saw only the smile. "I'm sure you are, you dear, sweet,
fascinating child!" cried she, greatly consoled and cheered.
"Don't be too sure!" warned Courtney, the smile fading.
But Helen was delighted to see that she said it half heartedly--that
some effect had been produced by the grewsome reminders of the
difference between independence as a dream or a vague longing and
independence in the grisly reality of the working out.
*XXVII*
After a few days Courtney asked Helen to take Winchie to the laboratory.
"You can arrange with Richard as to future visits," she said. "And in
talking with him--and with me--please remember he and I don't exist for
each other. I can trust you?"
"Yes," presently came from Helen in so reluctant a tone that Courtney
congratulated herself on having thought to exact the promise.
Winchie said little about his father at the supper table, but a great
deal about a streak of light his father had made for him with an
electrical apparatus--"clear across the room, mamma--real
lightning--only there wasn't any thunder--just noise--like when Jimmie
snaps the whip fast." Several times in the next three or four weeks she
discovered evidence of visits to the laboratory in remarks Winchie let
drop; for he said nothing direct, having somehow divined that the visits
were not to be talked about. But he had not the faintest suspicion
there was anything wrong between his father and his mother. He had
always been used to their leading separate lives; the mere surface
cleavage was too unimportant to affect him, all-observant though he was,
with his natural mind which Courtney had not spoiled by false education.
And the parents of the only children he played with--those along the
shore--were exceeding discreet in discussing the divorce in the family
circle.
In the first winter storm one of the maples near the edge of the lake,
about the oldest and finest tree on the place, blew down and in its fall
destroyed the summer-house. Courtney was awakened by the resounding
crash. Before breakfast she, in short skirt and close-fitting jacket,
went to see and to decide what should be done. As she reached the scene
Dick in shaggy ulster and cap came from behind the towering mass of
wreckage. She could not be certain whether his ease, so superior to
hers, was due to his having seen her coming and having got ready, or to
absolute indifference. "Jimmie told me what happened," explained he.
"I came early, thinking I'd not be caught trespassing." He looked sadly
at the great tree, with its enormous boughs sprawled upon the frozen
surface of the lake. "Jimmie and I," said he, "used to have a swing in
it that went out over the water. We used to dive from the seatboard."
Courtney could see the swing go up and up, high as the tree itself, then
a daring boy release his hold and shoot through the air, slim and
straight, to plunge into the lake. "You'd almost touch bottom away out
where it's deepest--wouldn't you?" she said, her eyes sparkling.
"I've brought up mud in my hands from where it's twenty feet deep."
They stood in silence, in the presence of the fallen giant whose life
had begun when the Indians trapping and fishing there were getting from
the far coast beyond the mountains the first rumors of the great winged
boats and the white man. "It was a grand tree," she sighed. "I'll miss
it as I'd not miss many people I'm more or less fond of.... I remember
that swing."
"You do?"
"One day my mother brought me along when she was calling here. I must
have been about the age Winchie is now. I had on red shoes--I remember
because they hurt terribly and I didn't dare show a sign for fear they'd
be taken away. You lured me out to play--and put me in the swing--and
made it go--the limit."
"I remember perfectly now. That was _you_--was it?"
"It was. It was," replied she. "You despised little girls and thought
you'd scare me to death."
"But I remember you were game. You didn't scream."
"I guess I was too badly frightened. Do you remember how mother
shrieked when she saw from the window what you were up to?"
"Do I? The whipping father gave me bent the whole business into me
forever. _I_ wasn't game. How I did howl!"
"I wish I'd heard!" She shivered laughingly. "I feel now how I was
suffering when the swing was out over the water and high up among the
boughs."
Richard was looking at her curiously. "So, that was you?" he said in an
abstracted way. "You certainly didn't look scared.... Helen tells me
you're planning to go East in the spring and study landscape
gardening.... I see you don't like her having told me. I assure you it
was my fault. I asked her point blank. She told me simply the one
fact."
"It's not a secret," said Courtney, and she went on to explain, as to an
acquaintance who knew nothing of her life, "I used to go to college--up
at Battle Field--with a girl named Narcisse Siersdorf. She's made quite
a reputation as an architect. We were good friends, and it occurred to
me I might get advice from her. She's been wonderfully kind--took an
interest right away. We're negotiating. I don't know what'll come of
it. I've sent her an account of things I've done, and some pictures."
He looked at the slight, strong figure, at the small and delicate face,
at the eyes so feminine yet for all that full of character. "Are you in
earnest?" he asked.
"I've got to be," replied she.
His expression showed how he was touched by her air of sad
thoughtfulness as she gazed across the glistening level of ice. "Not at
all," said he. "While nothing's been said about it, you must know that
as Winchie's mother----"
She interrupted him with a laugh that made the color flare into his
face. "So, you thought I was hinting, did you? I don't suppose you
ever will be able to understand a woman. No--I don't hint."
"I didn't suspect----"
"Be honest!"
He hung his head like a foolish boy.
"As I was saying," she went on, "I've got to do something because, when
I'm free, I want to feel free. Maybe I'm flying in the face of nature,
but I've a hankering for the same sort of independence a man has--not
the same, but the same sort.... It isn't a bit nice, being a woman--if
one wakens to the fact that she's in the same market--if in a higher
grade stall--with 'those others.'"
He looked up with a frown. "That's not the way to look at it," he
protested with more than a touch of his old-time dictatorial manner.
"It's the way _I_ look at it," replied she, quietly. That reminder of
his tyranny, added to his unconsciously contemptuous suspicion that she
was hinting for alimony, had stirred all her latterly latent antagonism
to him--made her doubt the sincerity--or, rather, the thoroughness of
the change in him. She began to move away. "I must go tell Jimmie what
to do about this tree."
"Please--not just yet," he said, red and embarrassed. "I beg your pardon
for taking that tone. And I'll admit you're right, though I'd like to
be able to deny it. Still, it's not your fault that you were brought up
in the customary way----"
"I don't want to be reminded of that," she interrupted, rather bitterly.
"In spite of all I've been through--and of the certainty that unless I
free myself, I'll have to go through it again--I'm having a constant
fight against my cowardice." Her face changed in an instant from grave
to gay. "I'm saying and doing all sorts of things to make it impossible
for me to back down. I guess telling you was one of them."
"You're not going to make any move until spring--toward this architect
friend, I mean?"
"I've no reason to think--at least not much reason--that she'll take
me."
"Meanwhile--why not perfect yourself in the trade you already almost
know?"
"What's that?"
"I'm going to pay a man a hundred and fifty dollars a month to help me
at the laboratory--exactly the work you did--and he'll do it no better,
if as well."
Courtney flushed with pleasure at this praise. "Really?" she said.
"You mean that?"
His expression forewarned her he was about to touch on the impossible
subject. "I can't comprehend, now that it's over," said he, "how I was
such an ass as to stick to the notion that women haven't brains when I
had, right before me, proof to the contrary."
"Meaning me?" said she with amused eyes.
"Meaning you," replied he with a laugh. Then seriously, "And if you'll
let me say so, the reason I blame myself for everything is, I've seen
that my stupid ignorance of you was at the bottom of it all."
She shrugged her shoulders indifferently. "We were both brought up very
stupidly for marriage. But then--who isn't? No wonder marriage is
successful only by accident."
"What a confession the proverb is," said he, "--that people have to be
married once, before they're fit to be married."
"Well," said she, "at least we've had our experience, and can be glad we
got it young enough for it to be useful. But I must get to work." And
she nodded and went briskly up the snow-drifted lawns. Not until
afternoon, while she was overseeing the sawing up of the tree, did his
unfinished offer come back to her. Had he left it unfinished because
she had not encouraged him to go on or because he had repented of the
impulse? Probably the latter, she decided; at any rate, even if he had
urged, she could not have accepted. "He'd be sure to misunderstand.
Men and women always do misunderstand each other--" She smiled at
herself--"that is, they don't. They learn by experience that there's
always the motive behind, in everything that crosses the sex line. He'd
not realize this was an exception." There she mocked herself again.
"At least, I think it'd be an exception. I'm not quite sure I'd not be
doing it out of cowardice--to get him where I could recover him if I
lost my nerve and had to. Our dependence makes us so poor spirited
that, though we know we don't want a certain man, we like to have him
where we could use him, 'in case.'"
Several stormy days, with no communication between house and laboratory.
On the first bright afternoon, she and Winchie were entering the grounds
after a walk to Wenona and back, through the still, dry air, charged
with sunbeams, air like a still, dry champagne, strong and subtle. They
came upon Dick clearing the snow from the direct path between laboratory
and gates. His trousers were tucked into high boots and he was in
flannel shirt sleeves. As they--or, rather, as Winchie--paused, he
leaned on his shovel and laughed--at the fun that is merrier than any
joke--the fun of being healthily alive from center to farthest tip. The
sunshine was brilliant on the unsullied surface of the snow, on the
ice-encased branches, and on those three health-flushed faces. "Just
been to the doctor's, I suppose?" said he to the boy who was as ruddy as
a rooster's comb, as smooth and hard as marble.
"No," declared Winchie, taking him seriously, "I never had a doctor in
my life."
This was a good enough excuse. Dick and Courtney became hilarious over
Winchie's earnestness. As Winchie had begun to play with the snow his
father's labor had piled high on either side of the reappearing path,
Courtney did not resist Dick's overtures toward conversation--about the
skating, the air, the healthfulness of a hard winter, the ravages of the
storm throughout the neighborhood. "I see," said he, "the old maple's
gone. You did clear it up in a hurry. There's not a sign of its ever
having been in existence--or the summerhouse either."
At that the color poured into her cheeks--the deeper, fierier red of
acute embarrassment. When he realized what he had said--which he
instantly did--he did not color but became pale. "I'm glad it was
destroyed," he said, "glad not a trace of it remains--_anywhere_. If I
believed in omens I'd look on the whole incident as a good omen--the
landmark of the Vaughan home that seemed so strong and wasn't--the
summerhouse that was a constant reminder--both gone--and the place where
they were is clear--is ready for the new and better things."
She was listening with her head low. "Thank you," she said, in a choked
voice. "Sometimes I think there isn't another man in the world who'd
have helped me as you have."
"Don't you believe it," cried he, cheerfully. "Human nature's a lot
better than it pretends. Thank God, very few of us are despicable
enough to live up to our creeds and our conventions.... Winchie, you
didn't know you came very near losing your father yesterday. He almost
blew himself up."
Winchie's eyes grew big. "I'd like to have seen," said he, excitedly.
"Jimmie says, when you do go, it'll be straight up through the roof and
high as the moon."
"It all came of my working without an assistant," Dick explained to
Courtney. "I've got one coming from Baltimore, as I think I told you
the other day. But he can't get away just yet. I wish you'd consider
my offer."
She felt no embarrassment. His tone prevented; it was businesslike, and
polite rather than friendly.
"I need some one badly--some one I shan't have to teach. You like the
work. You need the experience. A few weeks of the sort of thing I'd
put you at now would fit you for a place in a first-class laboratory."
A little constrainedly--"I know why you hesitate. But I assure you,
that's foolish. What I'm proposing will not interfere with--with our
plans for freeing each other. It's purely business--and good business
for you as well as for me."
She looked directly at him for the first time. "You're quite sure you'd
not misunderstand?"
"Quite," he assured her.
She still hesitated. "I want to accept," she confessed, "for business
reasons. But I've an instinct against it."