amusement. “Take their time, don’t they?” he remarked. “One wouldn’t
think we’d both come three thousand miles to meet them. What fools men
are!”
“Hulloa,” said Desire, holding out her hand gladly, “it’s good to see
you. So you two men have introduced yourselves! Fluffy, this is Mr.
Gurney.”
It was arranged that the maid should be seen into a taxi to take care of
the luggage. When she had been disposed of, they crossed the street for
tea at the Belmont. Fluffy and Desire still walked arm-in-arm as though
it was they who had been so long separated. At the table Teddy found
himself left to talk to Fluffy; Desire and the man with the amused blue
eyes were engaged in bantering reminiscences of the summer. The game
seemed to be to pretend that you were not in love; or, if you were, that
it was with some one for whom actually you didn’t care a rap.
“Did it go well?” asked Teddy.
“Wonderfully.”
“I wish you’d tell me. Of course Desire wrote me; but I don’t know
much.”
While she told him, he kept stealing glances at the others. He wondered
at what they were laughing; then he came to the conclusion that it
wasn’t at what was being said, but at the knowledge each had of the
game that was in the playing. He began to take notice of Fluffy. She had
pale-gold hair--quantities of it--a drooping mouth and eyes of a child’s
clearness. She had a way of employing her eyes as magnets. She would fix
them on the person to whom she talked so that presently what she said
counted for nothing; questions would begin to rise in the mind as to
whether she was lonely, why she should be lonely and how her loneliness
might be dispelled. Then her glance would fall away and she would seem
to say: “I shall have to bear my burden; you won’t help me.” After that
all the impulse of the onlooker was to carry her over rough places in
his arms. Her voice sounded as though all her life she had been petted;
her face made you feel that, however good people had been, she deserved
far more. Why had Desire been so positive that he wouldn’t like her? He
did; or rather he would, if she would let him. But he had the feeling
that, while she was kind, she was distrustful and had fenced herself off
so that he could not get near her. He had an idea that he had met her
before; he recognized that grave assured air of being worthy to be loved
without the obligation of taking notice of the loving. Then he spotted
the resemblance, and had difficulty to refrain from laughing. In her
quiet sense of beautiful importance she was like Twinkles.
“It’s wonderful,” she was saying; “I never had such a part. ‘Little
girl,’ Simon Freelevy said when he saw me, ‘little girl, you’ll take
New York by storm.’ And I shall.” She nodded seriously. “Simon Freelevy
ought to know; he’s the cleverest producer in America; I believe he was
so pleased with himself that he’d have kissed me if I hadn’t had my
make-up on. And then, you see, it’s called _October_, and we open in
October. The idea’s subtle; it may catch on.”
She spoke as though the play was a negligible quantity and any success
it might have would be due to her acting. Teddy caught the amused eyes
of the playwright opposite. He turned back to Janice Audrey. “What’s the
plot?” he asked.
“The plot! I’m the plot. You may smile, but I am.--I am the plot of
_October_--isn’t that so, Horace?”
“Oh, yes, Miss Audrey is the plot,” the playwright said gravely. “I have
nothing to do with it, except to draw my royalties.” He picked up the
thread of his conversation with Desire.
A puzzled look crept into Fluffy’s clear child’s eyes--a wounding
suspicion that she was being mocked. She put it from her as incredible.
“When I say I’m the plot, I mean I gave him the story. I told it to him
in a punt at Pangbourne this summer. It’s about a woman called October,
who’s come to the October of her beauty, but has spring hidden in
her heart. She’d loved a man excessively once, when she was young and
generous; and he hadn’t valued her love. After that she determined to
wear armor, to keep her dreams locked away in her heart and to leave
it to the men to do the loving. She becomes an actress, like me. Almost
autobiography! At last, when she realizes that her popularity depends
on her beauty and she hears the feet of the younger generation climbing
after her--at last he comes, the one wearing a smoke-blue corded velvet,
trimmed with gray-squirrel fur at the sleeves and collar. Her hat was
the gray breast of a bird and sat at a slant across her forehead. There
was a flush of color in her cheeks. Again the beauty-patch had wandered;
it was on the left of her chin now. As he watched, he felt the lack of
something; then he knew what it was.
“Why, what’s happened to your curl?”
She put her hand up to her neck and opened her eyes widely. “H’I sye,
old sort, yer don’t mean ter tell me as I’ve lost it?”
While he was laughing at this sudden change of personality, she
commenced searching her vanity-case with sham feverishness; to his
amazement she drew out the missing decoration.
“Oh, ’ere it is. You’re learnin’ h’all me secrets, dearie. It ain’t
wise. But, Lawd, ‘cause yer likes it and ter show yer ‘ow glad I am ter
be wiv yer----”
She deliberately pinned it into place behind her ear; it hung there
trembling, looking entirely natural.
Dropping her Cockney characterization, she bowed to him with bewitching
archness: “Do I look like Nell Gywnn now? I expect, if she were here
for an inquisitive person like you to ask, she’d tell you that hers were
false.”
He loved her for her honesty; if any one had told him a month ago that
so slight and foolish an action could have made him love her better, he
would have laughed them to scorn.
It was intoxicating--transforming. It was as though these stone-palaces
of Fifth Avenue fell back, disclosing magic woodlands--woodlands such as
his father painted through whose shadows pale figures glided. People
on the pavement were lovers, going to meetings which memory would make
sacred. Like Arcady springing out to meet him, the Park swam into sight,
tree-tufted, lagooned, embowered, canopied with the peacock-blue and
saffron of the sunset.
“It’s a pity,” Desire murmured, as though continuing a conversation,
“that they couldn’t have remained happy.”
“Who?”
“Those two. They were such good companions, till he began to speak of
love. I was with them all summer, wherever they went We used to talk
philosophy, and life, and--oh, everything. Then one day I wasn’t with
them; after that our happiness stopped.”
“But she must have known that he loved her before he told her.”
“Of course. That was what made us all so glad, because there was
something left unsaid--something secret and throbbing. It was all gone
when once it had been uttered.”
“It oughtn’t to have gone. It ought to have become bigger and better.”
He spoke urgently, hoping to hear her agree, “Yes. It ought.”
They were fencing with their problem, discussing it in parables of other
people’s lives.
“Why doesn’t she marry him?” he asked. “I expect I’ve been brought up to
a different set of standards, so I’m not criticizing; I’m trying to see
things from her angle. I’ve been brought up to believe that marriage is
what we were all made for; that it’s something gloriously natural and to
be hoped for; that to grow old unmarried is to be maimed, especially if
you’re a woman. All poetry and religion springs from motherhood; it’s
the inspiration of all the biggest painters. I never dreamed that there
were people who wilfully kept themselves from loving. I don’t know quite
how to express myself. But to see yourself growing up in little children
has always seemed to me to be a kind of immortality. There was a thing
my mother once said: that marriage is the rampart which the soul flings
up to guard itself against calamity. Don’t you think that’s true?”
“You put it beautifully. That’s the man’s view of it.” She smiled
broodingly; the plodding of the horse’s steps filled the pause. “When
a man asks a woman to marry him, he asks her to give up her freedom.
Before she’s married, she has the power; but afterwards---- When a man
tells her that he loves her, he really means that he wants to be her
master.”
“Not her master.” He had forgotten now that it was Fluffy they were
supposed to be discussing; he spoke desperately and his voice trembled.
“Women aren’t strong like men. They can’t stand alone and, unless
they’re loved, they lose half their world when their beauty’s gone. You
say a woman gives up her freedom, but so does a man. They both lose
one kind of freedom to get another. What he wants is to be allowed to
protect her, to----”
“And what Fluffy wants is the right to fulfill herself,” she
interrupted, bringing the argument back to the point from which it
started. “My beautiful mother----” There she stopped. Their glances met
and dropped. He hadn’t thought of her mother. Everything that he had
been saying had been an accusation. “My beautiful mother----” She had
said it without anger, as though gently reminding him of the reason for
her defense. He felt ashamed; in uttering things that were sacred he had
been guilty of brutality. Would the shadow of Vashti always lie between
them when he spoke to her of love?
She came to the rescue. “You’ll think I haven’t any ideals; but I have.”
She laughed softly. “You men are like boys who make cages. Some one’s
told you that if you can put salt on a bird’s tail, you can catch it.
Away you go with your cages and the first bird you see, you start saying
pretty things to it and trying to creep nearer. It hops away and
away through the bushes and you follow, still calling it nice names.
Presently it spreads its wings and then, because you can’t reach it, you
throw stones at it That’s what Horace is doing to poor little Fluffy.
He never ought to have made his cage; if he hadn’t, he wouldn’t have got
angry.--But we’ve not struck a happy subject, Meester Deek. Tell me, did
you miss me much?”
It took one and a half times round the Park to tell her. That she cared
to listen was a proof to him that she wasn’t quite as interested in
preserving her freedom as she pretended. As he described his anxiety in
waiting for her letters, she made her eyes wide and sympathetic. Once or
twice she let her hands flutter out to touch him. He didn’t touch hers;
it was so important to hide from her how much he was in earnest. He
mustn’t do a thing that would startle her.
As darkness fell and her face grew indistinct, he found that he had less
difficulty in talking. Horsemen had disappeared. The procession of
cars and carriages was gone. They jingled through a No-Man’s-Land
of whispering leaves and shadows; lamps buoyed their passage like
low-hanging stars.
Behind trees on a knoll, lights flashed. She pushed up the trap and
spoke to the driver: “Well stop here for dinner.” She turned to Teddy:
“Shall we? It’s McGown’s.”
He helped her out As they passed up the steps to the bungalow, he took
her arm and felt its shy answering pressure. In the hall she drew away
from him.
“Where are you going? Don’t go.”
“Only for a minute. Please, Meester Deek, I want to make myself
beautiful for you.”
“But I can’t spare a minute of you. I’ve lost you for so long.”
“Only one little minute,” she pleaded, “but if you don’t want me to be
beautiful----”
While she was gone he played tricks to make the time pass quickly. He
would see her returning by the time he had counted fifty; no, sixty; no,
a hundred. If he walked to the door and looked out into the Park, by the
time he turned round she would be waiting for him. At last she came--ten
minutes had elapsed; her eyes were shining. He guessed that she
had purposely delayed in order to spur her need of him. They seated
themselves by a window through which they could watch the goblin-eyes of
automobiles darting through the blackness, and the white moon climbing
slowly above tattered tree-tops.
She sat with her hand against her throat, gazing at him smilingly.
“What are you thinking, Princess?”
“Thoughts.”
“Won’t you tell me?”
“I was thinking that I say some very foolish things. I pretend to know
so much about life, and I don’t know anything. I borrow other people’s
disappointments--Fluffy’s, for instance. And then I talk to poor you,
as though you had disappointed me. I wish I were a little girl again,
asking you what it was like to have a father. D’you remember?--I always
wanted to have a father. Tell me about my father, please, won’t you?”
His eyes had grown blurred. The witch-girl was gone. They had traveled
mysteriously back across the years to the old untested faiths and
loyalties. She had become his child-companion of the lumber-room days.
On her submissive lips, like parted petals, hovered the unspoken words:
“I love you. I love you.”
“I didn’t mean to make you sad,” she said gently, “so, if it’ll make you
sad to tell me----” Two fingers were spread against the comers of her
mouth to prevent it from widening into smiling.
“That’s what Mrs. Sheerug does when she doesn’t want to smile.”
When she asked him “What?” he showed her.
“Funny! The only time I saw her was when she fished me out of the pond
with her umbrella. She seemed a strict old lady. And there was a boy
named Ruddy; he was my cousin, wasn’t he? It’s a kind of romance to have
a father whom you don’t know. I sometimes think I’m to be envied. D’you
think I am, Meester Deek?--Ahl you don’t Never mind; tell me about him.”
Then they fell to talking of Eden Row. He had to describe Orchid Lodge
to her and how he had first met her mother there, and had thought that
she had really meant to marry him. They got quite excited in building up
their reminiscences.
“Yes, and you came to our house when my father, whom I didn’t know was
my father, was playing lions with me. And I ran to you for protection.
When Pauline took me away, I fought to get back to you and got slapped
for it You didn’t know that? Didn’t you hear me crying? Go on with what
you were saying. It’s fine to be able to remember. Don’t let’s stop.”
They were picking up the threads of each other’s lives and winding them
together. She told him about herself--how for long stretches, while her
mother had been on tour singing, she had been left in the care of maids,
and her favorite game had been to play that she was a great actress.
“And you’ll never guess why it was my favorite. I used to pretend that
my father was in the audience and came afterwards to tell me he was
proud of me. That’s why------ Do you think he would be proud of me?”
“He’d be proud of you without that, wild bird.”
“Why do you call me wild bird, Meester Deek? But I know: because I’m
always struggling and flying beyond my strength. You think that, if
I became an actress, I wouldn’t succeed. You don’t believe in me very
much. I’ll have to show you--have to show you all. Everybody discourages
me.”
His heart was beating furiously. Where was the good of hiding things?
She knew he was in earnest “My dear,” he said, and a kind disapproval
came into her eyes, “I believe in you so much--more than in any woman.
It isn’t that; but I’m afraid that you’ll lose so many things that
you’ll some day want.”
“You mean that an actress oughtn’t to marry? That’s what Fluffy
says--she must be like a man and live for her art. If you married, you’d
still go on sketching and writing; but men expect their wives to drop
everything. It’s selfish of them and hard.”
“But it’s always been like that and you’re not an actress yet, and--and,
if you were, it would be terrible to think of you going through
love-scenes every night with some one else.”
She laughed into his eyes; he almost believed that her talk had been an
ambush to lead him on. “You could be very jealous.”
She rose from the table. When they were settled in the hansom, she
whispered: “Let me be little again, Meester Deek. Tell me abouts knights
and faeries, the way you did when you were only Teddy.”
“There was once a knight,” he began, “who dreamt always of a princess
whom he would marry. At last he found her, and she pretended that she
didn’t want him.”
“And did she?”
“She did at last The title of the story is _The Princess Who Didn’t Know
Her Heart_.”
“Go on.”
“That’s all.”
“It’s very short.--That’s Miss Self-Reliance you’re holding, Meester
Deek. I don’t know whether she likes it.” And again she said in a drowsy
whisper, “I don’t know whether she likes it.”
They both fell silent, staring straight before them into the darkness.
“You don’t mind if I close my eyes, Meester Deek? I’m really tired.”
He answered her with a pressure of the hand. She drooped nearer. “You
are good to me.”
In a husky contented little voice, she began to sing to herself. It
was a darkie song about a pickaninny who had discovered that she was
different from the rest of the world because the white children refused
to play with her. To Teddy it seemed Desire’s pathetic way of explaining
to him the loneliness of her childhood. At the end of each verse the
colored mammy crooned comfortingly:
“So, honey, jest play in your own backyard,
Don’t mind what dem white chiles say.”
He stooped lower over her closed eyes and murmuring lips. She seemed
aware of him; she turned her face aside. He brushed her cool cheek and
thrilled to the touch of it.
He waited. She still sang softly with her eyes fast shut, as though
advising him:
“So, honey, jest play in your own backyard.”
Over and over she hummed the line. He crept back into his place in the
darkness.
When they had drawn up before the apartment and he had jumped to the
pavement to help her out, she whispered reproachfully, “Meester Deek,
you did get out quickly.” Then, as they said good-by, “It’s been the
nicest time we’ve ever had.”
It was only after she had vanished that he asked himself what she had
meant, “You did get out quickly.” At the last moment was she going to
have kissed him, or to have given him her lips to kiss? And, “The nicest
time we’ve ever had”--did she know that he had been trembling to ask her
to marry him?
When he got back to the Brevoort he destroyed the letter he had written
to Hal. His optimism was aflame; soon he would have something better to
write him. He fell asleep that night with the coolness of her cheek upon
his lips.
CHAPTER XII--ARCADY
His first sensation on awaking next morning was of that stolen kiss.
All night he had been dreaming of it. All night he had been conscious of
the porcelain smoothness of her hand held closely in his own. He closed
his eyes against the amber shaft of sunlight which streamed from the
window across the counterpane. He strove to recall those dreams; but
the harder he strove the dimmer grew the lamps in the haunted chamber
of remembrance. He saw vague shapes, which receded from him and melted.
Since dreams failed him, he flung wide the windows of imagination.
He saw himself walking with his arm about her, between pollarded trees
along a silver road. She clung against his breast like a blown spray
of lilac. Now he was stretched at her feet in the greenest of green
meadows, while above the curve of her knees her brooding smile watched
him. He pictured her, always in new landscapes of more than earthly
beauty, enacting a hundred scenes of uninterrupted tenderness.
The burden of his longing made him weary. Until he had kissed her, he
had had no real understanding of what love meant; she had been to him
an idea--an enchanting, disembodied spirit. Now she was white and warm,
exquisitely clothed with glowing flesh. It was not the magic cloak any
longer, but Desire herself, sweetly perverse and wilfully cold, that he
worshiped.
How old he had become since last night, and yet how young! In kissing
her he had tasted of the Tree of Knowledge; from now on his thirst would
grow unquenchably till he knew her as himself. All that that knowledge
might mean passed before his mind in slow procession. Ominous as the
rustle of God’s feet in Eden, he could hear her humming her plaintive
warning:
“So, honey, jest play in your own backyard.”
He threw back the clothes and jumped out. Such imaginings were not
allowed. But they returned. Like a snow-capped mountain in the dawning,
his manhood caught the rose-red glow of passion and trembled, a tower of
flame and ivory, above the imperiled valleys of experience.
As he dressed he molded the future to any shape he chose, rolled it into
a ball and molded it afresh. Now that he had kissed her, all things
were possible. His interest in all the world was quickened. His work
and success again became important. He thought of her thin little
high-heeled shoes, her dancing decorative way of walking, the costly
frailty of her dress. He would need money--heaps of it--to marry her.
It was half-an-hour later, while he sat at breakfast, that a small cloud
loomed on his horizon. It grew out of the sobering effect which comes
of being among everyday people. A doubt arose in his mind as to the
propriety of his last night’s actions. He’d whisked her away from the
station without letting her see her mother, and had brought her home
late after driving for hours through the darkness. Would Vashti consider
him a safe person after such behavior? He knew that Eden Row wouldn’t.
But in Desire’s company he lost sight of conventions in the absolute
rightness of their being together. Besides, as he knew to his cost,
she was well able to take care of herself. Strangers might think----
It didn’t matter what they thought. Nevertheless, it was with some
trepidation that he approached the telephone and heard Vashti answer;
“You brought my baby-girl home rather late. I hope you had a good
time.--Oh, no, I didn’t mind; but I should have if it had been any one
but Teddy.”
He wondered whether Desire had told her mother that he had kissed her.
Did girls tell their mothers things like that?
“May I speak with Desire?”
“She’s not here. Fluffy called with Mr. Overbridge just after you’d
brought her back. They took her out to supper. Desire slept with her
last night. I don’t know what plans she’s made for to-day.--Yes, I’ll
ask her to call you up.”
Fluffy again! He frowned. Overbridge hadn’t wanted her--that was
Fluffy’s doing; she had taken her for protection. He didn’t like to
think of Desire’s being put to such uses. He didn’t like to think of her
being made a foil to another woman’s ill-conducted love-affair. There
was a lack of system about not knowing where you were going to sleep up
to within five minutes of getting into bed. He felt chagrined that
his imagination had been wasted in picturing her thinking of him. He
criticized Vashti for the leniency of her attitude; it was proper, if
bonds of affection were worth anything, for a mother and daughter to
be together after a three weeks’ separation. For his own lack of
consideration in keeping Desire from her mother, there was some excuse;
but for Fluffy’s---- The thing that hurt most was that Desire should
have been willing to telescope the most exalted moment of his life into
the next trivial happening, allowing herself no time for reflection.
All that day he waited with trembling suspense to hear from her; it was
not until the following morning that she called him and arranged to
go to lunch. Almost her first words on meeting were, “I’ve thought it
over.”
“Over! Was there anything?”
“Thieves must be punished. You mustn’t do it again.” Then, with a quick
uplifting of her eyes--so quick that the gray seas seemed to splash
over: “Come, Meester Deek, let’s forget and be happy.”
So he learnt that it was he who had done wrong--he who had to be
forgiven. Her forgiveness was offered so generously that it would have
been churlish to dispute its necessity. Besides, argument wasted time
and might lead to fretfulness.
In the weeks that followed a dangerous comradeship sprang up between
them; dangerous because of its quiet confidence, which seemed to deny
the existence of passion. Her total ignoring of the fact of sex made
any reference to it seem vulgar; yet everything that she did, from
the itinerant beauty-patch to the graceful frailty of her dress, was a
silent and provocative acknowledgment that sex was omnipresent.
“I wouldn’t dare to trust myself so much with any other man,” she told
him.
It was what Vashti had said: “Oh, no, I didn’t mind; but I should have
if it had been any one but Teddy.”
So he found himself isolated on a peak of chivalry, from which the old
sweet ways of love looked satyrish. Other men would have tried to hold
her hands. Given his opportunities, other men would have crushed their
lips against her sweet red mouth. Because she had proclaimed him nobler
than other men he refrained from any of these brutalities--and all the
while his mind was on fire with the vision of them. Instead, he put the
poetry of his passion into the parables of love that he told her. They
were like children in a forest, hiding from each other, yet continually
calling and making known their whereabouts out of fear of the forest’s
solitariness.
They showed their need of each other in a thousand ways which were more
eloquent than words. Every morning at ten promptly--ten being her hour
for rising--he phoned her. Sometimes he found her at Vashti’s apartment,
sometimes at Fluffy’s; at Fluffy’s there were frequently sleepy sounds
which told him that she was answering him from bed. This morning
conversation grew to be a habit on which they both depended.
It was a rare day when they did not lunch together. She would meet him
in the foyer of one of the fashionable hotels. They had special nooks
where they found each other--nooks known only to themselves. In the
Waldorf it was against a pillar at the end of Peacock Alley, opposite to
the Thirty-fourth Street entrance which is nearest to Fifth Avenue.
In the Vanderbilt it was a deep armchair, two windows uptown from the
marble stairs. In the same way they had their special tables; they got
to know the waiters, and often to please her he would order the table
to be reserved. He learnt that lavish tips and the appearance of wealth
were the Open Sesame to pleasures of which the frugality of Eden Row had
never dreamt.
She was invariably late to their appointments--or almost invariably; if
he counted on her lateness and arrived late himself, it would so happen
that she had got there early. Her instinct seemed to keep her informed,
even when he was out of her sight, as to what he was thinking and doing,
so that she was able to forestall him, thwart him, surprise him. He felt
that this was as it should be if she were in love. The contradiction was
that, though he loved her, his sixth sense never served him. When he
had calculated that this would be her early day and had arrived with ten
minutes in hand, he would watch for an hour the surf of faces washed
in through the revolving doors. As time passed, he would begin
to conjecture all kinds of dismal happenings; underlying all his
conjectures was the suspicion of unexpected death. Then, like a
comforting strain of music, she would emerge from the discord of the
crowd and take his hand. In the joy that she was still alive, he would
hardly listen to her breathless apologies.
In all his dealings with her there was this constant harassment of
uncertainty. She would never make an arrangement for a day ahead; he
must call her up in the morning--she wasn’t sure of her plans. He
knew what this meant: she wasn’t sure whether Fluffy would command her
attentions. Fluffy came first. He determined at all costs to supplant
Fluffy’s premiership in her affections. He had to prove to her, not by
talking, but by accumulated acts, how much his love for her meant. So he
never complained of her irresponsibility. She could be as capricious as
she chose; it never roused his temper. His reward was to have her pat
his hand and murmur softly, “Meester Deek, you are good to me.”
Through the blue-gold blur of autumn afternoons they would drift off
to a matinée or he would accompany her shopping. There was a peculiar
intimacy attaching to being made the witness of her girlish purchases.
She would take him into a millinery shop and try on a dozen hats,
referring always to his judgment. The assistant would delight him by
mistaking him for her husband. Desire would correct the wrong impression
promptly by saying: “I don’t know which one I’ll choose; I guess I’ll
have to bring my mother.” In the street she would confess to him that
she’d done it for a lark and hadn’t intended to buy anything.
“But why do they all--waiters and everybody--think that we’re married?”
“Perhaps because we were made for each other, and look it.”
She would twist her shoulders with a pretense of annoyance; her gray
eyes would become cloudy as opals. “That’s stupid. I’m so young--only
twenty.”
On one of these excursions she filled him with joy by accepting from him
a dozen pairs of silk-stockings. He was perpetually begging her to let
him spend his money on her and she was perpetually refusing.
“You tempt me, Meester Deek. What would people think?”
“I don’t know and don’t care. People be hanged. There aren’t any
people--only you and I alone in the world. How’d you like a new set of
furs?”
“Now, do be good,” she would beg of him, eyeing the furs enviously.
“I don’t know,” he told her, “whether you really mean no or yes.”
“And perhaps I don’t know myself,” she mocked him.
Later, when wild-flowers of the streets flamed in the hedges of the
dusk, they would again postpone their parting. Some new palace would
magically spring up to lure them. Then they would dine to music and she
would insist on acting the hostess and serving him; sometimes by seeming
inadvertence their hands would touch. They would dawdle over their
coffee; like a mother humoring a child full of fancies, at his repeated
request she would sweeten his cup with the lips that were forbidden him.
They might sit on all evening; they might stroll languorously off
to find a new stimulus to illusion in a theatre. Their evenings were
intolerably fugitive. Before midnight they would ride uptown through
the carnival of Broadway, where light foamed on walls of blackness like
champagne poured across ebony.
At first he was inclined to be dissatisfied that he gained so little
ground: when he advanced, she retreated; when he retreated, she
advanced. If, to woo him back to a proper demonstrativeness, she had
to display some new familiarity, she was careful not to let it become a
habit.
“The more stand-offish I am with you,” he said, “the more sweet you are
to me. Directly I start to fall in love with you again----”
“Again?” she questioned, with a raising of her brows.
“Again,” he repeated stubbornly. “Directly I do that, you grow cold.
The thing works automatically like a pair of scales--only we hardly ever
balance. When you’re up, I’m down. When I’m up, you’re down.”
“What charming metaphors you use,” she exclaimed petulantly; and then,
with swift tormenting compassion, “Poor Meester Deek.”
But his protestations worked no difference. One night, in crossing Times
Square, she said, “You may take my arm if you choose.” When an hour
later he tried to do it, she drew away from him, with, “I cross heaps
of streets without that.” Sometimes, driving home, she would unglove a
temptress hand and let it rest invitingly in her lap. At the first sign
that he was going to take it, it would pop like a rabbit into the warren
of her muff.
At the moment of parting she became most fascinating; then, for an
instant, poignancy would touch her, making her humble. The dread
foreknowledge would creep into her eyes that even such loyalty as his
could be exhausted; the imminent fear would clutch her that one evening
there would be a final parting and the hope of a new dawn would bring no
hope of his returning. She would coax him to come up to the apartment;
if he consented, she would divert him by chattering to the astonished
elevator-boy in what she conceived to be French. She would slip her key
into the latch, calling softly: “Mother! Mother!” Sometimes Vashti
would come out from the front-room where she had been sitting in the
half-light with a man--usually a Mr. Kingston Dak. As often as not she
would be in bed. Like conspirators they would tiptoe across the passage.
By the piano, with her back towards him, she would seat herself and play
softly with one hand, “In the Gloaming, oh My Darling,” one of the few
tunes which she could strum without error. He would stand with his face
hanging over her shoulder, and they would both wonder silently whether
he was going to crush her to him. Just as he had made up his mind, she
would swing round with eyes mysterious as moonstones: “Meester Deek,
let’s take Twinkles out.”
So, leaving the apartment with its heavy atmosphere of sleepers, they
would seize for themselves this last respite.
Loitering along pale streets with the immensity of night brooding over
them, the world became wholly theirs and she again the haunting dream
of his boyhood. There was only the blind white eye of the moon to watch
them. Reluctantly they would come back to the illumined cave which was
fated to engulf her.
Their hands would come together and linger. Their lips would stumble
over words and grow dumb.
“And to-morrow?” he would falter.
“To-morrow!--Phone me.--It’s one of the nicest days we’ve ever had.”
In a flash she would stoop to Twinkles, tuck the bundle of wriggling fur
beneath her arm, wave her hand and run lightly up the steps.
If he stayed, he would see her turn before entering the elevator, wave
her hand again and throw a last smile to him--a smile which seemed to
reproach him, to plead with him and to extend a promise.
CHAPTER XIII--DRIFTING
Through the red flame-days of October she danced before him, a
tantalizing heart of thistledown. If she settled, it was always well
ahead. When he came up with her and stooped, thinking her capture
certain, some new breeze of caprice or reticence would sweep her beyond
the reach of his grasp.
They discussed love in generalizations--in terms of life, literature and
the latest play. They discussed very little else.
“When I’m married-------” he would say.
“Well?” she would encourage him, snuggling her face against her
white-fox furs.
“When I am married, every day’ll be a new romance. I can live anywhere
I like--that’s the beauty of being an artist. I think I shall live in
Italy first, somewhere on the Bay of Naples. I and my wife” (how her
eyes would twinkle when he said that!), “I and my wife will dress up
every evening. We’ll have a different set of costumes for every night in
the week, and we’ll dine out in an arbor in our little garden. Sometimes
she’ll be a Dresden Shepherdess, and sometimes a Queen Guinevere, and
sometimes-----”
“And won’t she ever be herself?”
“She’ll always be that, with a beauty-patch just about where you wear
yours and a little curl bobbing against her neck.”
“But what’s the idea of so many costumes?”
“We shall never get used to each other; we shall always seem to be
loving for the first time--beginning all afresh.--Doesn’t it attract
you, Princess?”
“Me? I don’t see what I’ve got to do with it. Here’s the kind of woman
you’ll marry: a nice little thing without any ambitions, who’ll think
you’re a genius. You’ll live in one house forever and ever, and have
a large family and go to church every Sunday. And you’ll have a dead
secret that you’ll never be able to tell her, about a famous actress
whom you once romped with in New York before she was famous.”
She had a thousand ways of turning him aside from confession.
“Men are rotters--all men except you, Meester Deek. Poor little Fluffy!
Horace isn’t at all nice to her.”
It transpired on inquiry that Horace wasn’t at all nice to Fluffy
because she was dividing her leisure between himself and Simon Freelevy.
“You see, she must,” Desire explained. “It’s business. _October_ isn’t
the success they expected--it’s too English in its atmosphere. If
Freelevy likes her, he can put her into his biggest productions. Horace
won’t understand that it’s business. He sulks and makes rows. That’s
why I go about with her so much--her little chaperone, she calls me.
Men have to be polite and can’t take advantage when a young girl is
present.”
“But what does she give them in return?” Teddy asked.
Desire became cold. “Any man should feel proud to be seen in her
company.”
Her way of saying it made him feel that all women were queens and all
men their servitors. His idea that love-affairs ended in marriage seemed
rustic and adolescent. To be seen in the company of a pretty face was
all the reward a man ought to expect for limousines, late suppers,
tantalized hopes and the patient devotion of an honorable passion.
He couldn’t bear that Desire should class herself with the nuns of
pleasure, who dole out their lure as payment, and have blocks of ice
where less virtuous women have hearts. In her scornful defense of
Fluffy, she seemed to be building up a case for herself.
In the last extremity, when a proposal of marriage threatened, she
employed a still more effective weapon.
“Look here, Meester Deek, I like you most awfully and we’ve had some
splendid times, but why are you stopping in America?”
He would gaze into her eyes dumbly, thinking, “Now’s my chance.”
His hesitancy would infect her with boldness. “If it’s for my sake,
I’m not worth the trouble. I think you’d better go back to England. The
_Lusitania’s_ sailing tomorrow.”
Piqued by her assumed indifference, he would pretend to take her at her
word: “Perhaps I had better. Would you come to see me off?”
“Maybe.”
“And kiss me good-by?”
“If I felt like it.”
“Then it’s almost worth going.”
“Why don’t you?”
Once he gave her a fright They were passing The International Sleeping
Car Company on Fifth Avenue. “I think I will,” he said lightly.
Entering, he made a reservation and paid the deposit money. During the
next hour she was so sweet to him, so sad, that they raced back through
the thickening night, arriving just as the last clerk was leaving, and
canceled the booking.
“Did you mean it?” she whispered.
“Well, didn’t I?”
“But do tell me,” she pleaded. “If you don’t, I shall never be at rest.”
He slipped his arm into hers without rebuff. “Odd little, dear little
Princess, was it likely?”
After that, when in this mood of self-effacement, she would insist
without fear of being taken seriously that he should sail.
“If you don’t, I’ll refuse to see you ever again. But,” she would add,
“that’s only if you really are stopping here on my account.”
To relieve her conscience of responsibility he would lie like a
corsair, bolstering up the fiction that business was his sole reason for
remaining.
“Then, it’s your funeral, isn’t it?”
“My funeral,” he echoed solemnly.
The Indian summer sank into a heap of ashes from which all heat was
spent. November looked in with its thin-lipped mornings and its sudden
pantherlike dusks. Still they wandered, separate and yet together, from
the refuge of one day to the next, establishing shrines of habit which
made them less and less dispensable to each other’s happiness. She was
always darting ahead into the uncertain shadows, hiding, and springing
out that she might test his gladness in having refound her.
Each new day was an exquisite wax-statue which by night had melted to
formlessness in his hands. He made repeated resolutions to organize
his energies. He lived im-paradised in a lethargy of fond emotions.
His career was at a halt; his opportunities were slipping from him. To
encourage his industry he drew up a chart of the hours in the current
month that he would work. He pinned it to the wall above his desk that
it might reproach him if he fell below his average. The average was
never reached. The chart was tom up. His most stalwart plans were driven
as mist before the breath of her lightest fancy. Not that she encroached
on him by deed or word; but her memory was a delirium which kept him
always craving for her presence.
“If you were to drop me to-morrow,” she told him, “you’d never hear from
me. I’m like that. I shouldn’t run after you.”
She left him to place his own construction on the statement--to discover
its origin in nobility or carelessness. Whichever it was, it made him
the needle while she remained the magnet. When he wasn’t with her, he
was waiting for her; so the hours after midnight, when he had seen her
home, were the only ones free from feverishness. His work suffered;
he stole from the hours when he ought to have been in bed. He began to
suspect that he was losing his confidence of touch. The suspicion was
sharply confirmed when one of his commissioned articles came back
with the cryptic intimation that it wasn’t exactly what the editor had
expected. That meant the loss of five hundred dollars; what was worse,
it filled him with artistic panic.
In the old days--the days of _Life Till Twenty-one_--fame had been the
goal of his ambitions. He had set before his eyes, as though it were
a crucifix, the austere aloofness of his father’s pure motives. He
couldn’t afford to do that any longer. He was spending lavishly; the
example of the extravagance of Fluffy’s lovers spurred his expenditures.
He didn’t care how he won Desire’s admiration; win it he must.
Unconsciously he was trying to win it with a display of generosity.
Dimly he foresaw that he was doing her an injustice; he would have to
cut down and recuperate the moment they were married. In preparation he
painted to her the joys of simplicity and of life in the country. Her
curl became agitated with merriment.
“That isn’t the way I’ve been brought up. Cottages don’t have bathrooms,
and the country’s muddy except in summer. It wouldn’t suit me. And I do
like to wear silk.” Then, with a shudder: “Poverty’s so ugly. There’s
only one thing worse, and that’s growing old. Please, Meester Deek,
let’s talk of something else.”
She was like a child, stopping her ears with her fingers and pleading,
“Please don’t tell me any more ghost-stories.” He felt sorry for her;
at such times she seemed so inexperienced and young. By her
misplaced valuations, she was giving life such power to hurt her. Her
sophistication seemed more apparent than real--a disguise for her lack
of knowledge. He wanted to comfort her against old age. If one were
loved, neither poverty nor growing old mattered. He thought of Dearie
and the way she had married his father, with their joint affection and
her high belief in him for their sole assets.
There were times when Desire seemed to guess his problem.
“I wish you’d do more work. Why don’t you leave me alone to-morrow? And
you oughtn’t to keep on spending and spending. I’d be just as happy if
you spent less.”
The joy of her thoughtfulness gave him hope and made him the more
reckless. Besides, it wasn’t possible to economize in her company. Her
fear of the subway and her abhorrence of crowded surface-cars made taxis
a continual necessity. Her shoes were so thin that a mile of walking
tired her; her clothes were so stylish that she would have looked
conspicuous in any but a fashionable setting. Her method of dress, in
which he delighted, limited them both to costly environments. He had
named her rightly years ago in calling her “Princess.”
Vashti puzzled him. She seemed to avoid him. When he visited the
apartment she was out, just going out or expected back shortly. He had
fugitive glimpses of her hurrying off to concert engagements, or going
on some pleasure jaunt with the unexplained Mr. Dak, similar to those
which he and Desire enjoyed together.
Mr. Kingston Dak was a little grasshopper of a man. He had lemon-colored
hair, white teeth, extremely well-kept hands and was nearly forty. His
littleness was evidently a sore point with him, for the heels of his
shoes were built up like a woman’s. He held himself erectly and when
others were seated he usually remained standing. He seemed to be always
in search of something to lean against which would enable him to
tiptoe unobtrusively and to add another inch to his stature. He was
clean-shaven, and in appearance shy and boyish; he would have looked
excellently well in clerical attire. By hobby he was an occultist;
by profession a stockbroker. His chief topic of conversation was the
superiority of Mohammedanism to Christianity.
Desire called him “King” familiarly; Vashti referred to him as “My
little broker.” Although in his early twenties he had been divorced and
tattered by the thorns of a disastrous passion, neither of them
seemed to regard him as dangerously masculine. They treated him as a
maiden-aunt--as a pale person receiving affection in lieu of wages,
expected to safeguard their comfort and to slip into a cupboard when he
wasn’t wanted.
“King’s quite nice,” Desire told Teddy; “he was most awfully fond of
her. His troubles have made him so understanding.”
Teddy wondered what had happened to the world that all its women had
become Vestal Virgins and all its men unassailable St. Anthonies. He
watched Mr. Dak for any sign that he remembered the days of his flesh.
The little man was as perfunctory over his duties as a well-trained
lackey.
Vashti’s bearing towards himself during their brief meetings was
affectionately sentimental. There was a hint of the proprietary in the
way she touched him, as though she regarded him already as her son. Her
eyes would rest on him with veiled inquiry; she never put her question
into words. She was giving him his chance, and he felt infinitely
grateful to her--so grateful that he was blind to the unexplained
situations which surrounded her. That she should allow his unchaperoned
relations with Desire endowed her with broadmindedness. “Unto the pure
all things are pure,” seemed the maxim on which she acted. In accepting
that ruling for his own conduct, he had to extend the same leniency to
Mr. Dak’s.
Desire stretched it a point further and made it apply to herself. He
found that frequently after he had said “Good-by” to her at close on
midnight, Fluffy would call with a car and carry her off to make a
party of three at supper, or sometimes to join a larger party--mostly of
men--in her apartment. He remonstrated with her: “It’s all very well for
an actress; but I hate to think of you mixing with all kinds of people
whose standards are just anyhow, and playing ’gooseberry’ for two
people older than yourself.”
“I don’t see that you can complain,” she laughed. “If my standards
weren’t theatrical and if I were the kind of girl who sees evil in
everything, you wouldn’t be allowed to go about with me so much.”
There was his dilemma in a nut-shell. In joining the ranks of the
superiorly pure, he was pledged to see purity everywhere. Divorces were
pure. Nobody was to blame for anything. People ought to be sympathized
with, not punished, when they got into trouble. He seemed to have made
lax conventions his own by taking advantage of them for facilitating
his courtship. It would look like hypocrisy to disapprove of them after
marriage. It was very jolly, for instance, to hear her whisper in
the jingling secrecy of a hansom, “Meester Deek, please light me a
cigarette.” Very jolly to convey it from his lips to hers, and to
watch the red glow of each puff make a cameo of her face against the
blackness. But---- And that _but_ was perpetually walking round new
corners to confront him--if she were his wife, would the sight of her
smoking afford him such abiding happiness? She had taunted him with
being a King Arthur. In the presence of her emotional tolerance,
which found excuses for everything and ostracized nobody, his sense of
propriety seemed a lack of social charity. He guessed the reason for
her continual plea that people should be forgiving--her mother. The
knowledge silenced his criticisms and roused his compassion.
Two moods possessed him alternately: in the one he despised himself as
an austere person, in whom an undue restraint of upbringing had
dammed the stream of youth, so that it lay alone and unruffled as a
mountain-tarn; in the other he saw himself as a man with a chivalrous
duty.
Little by little he came to see that her faery lightheartedness, her
faculty for taking no thought for the morrow, made her an easy prey for
the morrow. Her ease in acquiring new friendships made friendship of
small value.
Her butterfly Sittings from pleasure to pleasure left her without
garnerings. She lived, he calculated, at the rate of at least five
thousand dollars per annum. But different people paid for it; she
contributed as her share her gay well-dressed schoolgirl self. The
chances were that she rarely had a five-dollar bill in her purse, and
yet she was accustoming herself to extravagance.
He began to watch her friends. When he ran over the list of them, he
found that they were all temporary, held by the flimsiest bonds
of common knowledge. They had been met at hotels, in pensions, on
transatlantic voyages. A good many of them were divorced or unattached
persons. They were all on the wing; none of them seemed to comply with
any settled code of morals. The more he saw of her, the more aghast he
became at the precariousness of her prosperity. Some day these friends,
who could dispense with her for months together, would happen all to
dispense with her at the same moment Then the telephone, which was her
wizard summons to dinners, balls, and motor-parties, would suddenly grow
silent. She would wait and listen; and listen and wait; her round of
gayeties would be ended. Perhaps this thirst for the insubstantial
things of life was a part of the price which Hal had mentioned. Did she
know it? Winged creature as she was, she must covet the security of
a nest sometimes, though, while she was without it, she affected to
despise it as dullness.
When he married her---- He became lost in thought
If they went on living as they were living now, his career would be torn
to shreds by her unsatisfied energy. They would have to settle down. In
putting up with any irritations that might result, he’d be helping her
to pay the penalty--the penalty which Vashti had imposed on so many
lives--on her own most of all--by her early selfishness. Towering above
his passion and mingling with it oddly, was the great determination
to save her from the ruinous lightness to which her mother’s undefined
social position had committed her.
She was fully aware of the unspoken strictures which lent melancholy to
his ardor.
“You think I’m a silly little moth. I know you do. I’m pyschic. You
think I’m fluttering about a candle and that my wings’ll get scorched.
Just you wait. I’ll have to show you.”
Or she would say, leaning out towards him, “I wonder what it is that you
like about me, Meester Deek. There are so many things you don’t like,
though you never tell me. You don’t like my powdering, or my smoking
cigarettes, or--oh, such lots of things. But where’s the harm? And
there’s another thing you won’t like--I’m going to dye my hair to
auburn.”
This threat, that she would dye her hair, led to endless conversations.
It made him bold to tell her how pretty she was, which was exactly what
she wanted.
Sometimes she was sweetly grown up, preparing him for disillusionment;
but it was when she was little that he loved her best Then she would
give him the most artless confidences; telling him about her religion,
how she prayed for him night and morning, and of her longings to know
her father. She would plead with him to tell her about Orchid Lodge and
Mrs. Sheerug, and Ruddy, and Harriet She came to picture the old house
as if she had lived there, and yet she was never tired of hearing the
old details afresh. Orchid Lodge became a secret between them--one of
their many secrets, like the name she had given him. And still they
drifted undecided.
Then the series of events happened which forced their love to its first
anchorage.
CHAPTER XIV--THE TRIFLERS GROW EARNEST
Night was tremulous with the beat of wings. The first snow of the
season was falling, giving to familiar streets a theatric look of
enchanted strangeness. Large flakes sailed confidently as descending
doves; little ones came in flurries like a storm of petals. Perhaps
boy-angels in heavenly orchards were shaking the blossoms with their
romping. Teddy glanced at the girl beside him; it seemed that an
all-wise providence had sent the snow especially as a background for
her.
They were returning from the final performance of _October_. They had
been behind the scenes with Fluffy, where friends had been drugging her
melancholy with the assurance that, whatever might be said of the play,
her acting had scored a triumph.
The illusion of the footlights followed them. Streets were a new
stage-setting in which they had become the dominant personalities. The
shrieking of motor-horns above the din of traffic seemed the agonized
cry of defeated lovers, divided in a chaos of misunderstandings.
As they drove up Broadway Desire crouched with her cheek against the
pane. She was trying to make out the hoardings on which the name of
Janice Audrey was featured in large letters. While she performed her
ritual at each vanishing shrine, Teddy sat unheeded.
Her saint-like hands were clasped against her breast. Her face hung
palely meditative, a shadow cast upon the dusk. She filled the night
with fragrance. The falling flakes outside seemed to kiss her hair in
passing.
He could only imagine the old-rose shade of the velvet opera-cloak
that hid her from him. Her white-fox furs lay across her shoulders like
drifted snow. He ached intolerably to take her in his arms.
Her eyes were turned away. He could only see the faint outline of her
cheek and the slender curve of her girlish neck. She threw out remarks
as they traveled--remarks which called for no answer and expected none.
“Horace’ll have to own now that she was wise in cultivating other
friendships. Poor old Horace!--And all those bills will be covered
up to-morrow with some new great success. Such is fame!--Fluffy’s so
discouraged.”
“Do you think that was true?”
“What?” Her question was asked lazily, more out of politeness than
curiosity.
“That _October_ was her autobiography?”
“Partly. Artistic people like to think themselves tragic. You do. I’ve
noticed.”
“I think it was.” He refused to be diverted. “I think it was real
tragedy. She’s given up so much for fame; it’s brought her nothing.”
Desire laughed quietly. “The old subject. I knew where you were going
the minute you started. It’s like a hat that you want to get rid of; you
hang it on every peg you come to. No, I’m not meaning to be unkind; but
you do amuse me, Meester Deek.--Fluffy’s very much to be envied.”
“Why?”
“She’s beautiful.”
“So are you. But being beautiful isn’t everything. Being loved is the
thing that satisfies.”
“Does it? And loving too, I expect. But you see I don’t know: I’ve never
loved.”
“You won’t let yourself love.” He spoke the words almost inaudibly.
They both fell silent. She still bent forward, her head and shoulders
silhouetted against the pane. Her lack of response made his passion seem
foolishness.
During the weeks of enforced friendship the physical bond between them
had been growing more compelling.
It was only in crowded places that her actions acknowledged it; when
they were by themselves her reticence announced plainly, “Trespassers
will be prosecuted.” Then she became forbidding; but her sudden gusts
of coldness, her very inaccessibility, only added the more to her
attraction. He told himself that women who left men nothing to conquer
were not valued. He found himself filled with overpowering longings to
defy her attempts to thwart him. His mind seethed with pictures of what
might happen. He saw himself pressing those hands against his lips,
kissing her eyes or her slender neck, where the false curl danced and
beckoned. Would this pain of expectancy never end? Did she also suffer
beneath her pale aloofness?
With the high-strung sensitiveness of the lover, he began to suspect
that his procrastination piqued her. Sometimes he fancied that even
Vashti criticized his delay in announcing his intentions. He dreaded
lest Desire should think that he was flirting. But why didn’t she help
him? Did girls ever help their lovers? She increased his difficulties at
every opportunity. Shyness, perhaps! Time and again when he had nerved
himself to the point of proposing, she had struck him dumb with a
languid triviality or flippancy of gesture.
But to-night it would be different The enchantment of the snow tingled
in his blood. The warning of the woman who had procrastinated so long
that she had lost her sincerity, spurred him to confession. Surely
to-night, if ever----
His hand set out on a voyage of discovery. It slipped into her muff and
found her fingers.
She shuddered. It was as though a chill had struck her. “What are you
doing? You’re queer to-night. Funny.”
He had no words in which to tell her. He was terribly in earnest.
Hammers were pounding in his temples. His face was twitching. The
darkness choked him.
He drooped closer. His lips brushed her furs. She sat breathless. His
lips crept higher and touched her hair.
“No, please.” Her voice was shaky and childish. “Not now. I--I don’t
feel like it.”
He drew back. Though she had denied him, their hands clung together.
Hers lay motionless, like the beating heart of a spent bird that has
lost the strength to save itself. The power that he knew he had over her
at that moment made him feel like a ruffian who had lain in ambush and
taken her unaware.
“Shall I let it go?” he whispered.
For answer the slim fingers nestled closer.
“Meester Deek, you were never in love before, were you?”
“Never.”
“Very wonderful. I thought not. You don’t act like it.”
“And you, Princess?”
“Ah!” She smiled mysteriously. “There was a boy who asked permission to
marry me once. It was just after I’d put up my hair. I was only fifteen,
but I looked just as old as I do now. He told mother that he’d saved
fifty dollars, and that he wanted to start early so as to raise a large
family. Very sweet and domestic of him, wasn’t it?”
“But that wasn’t serious.”
“No, not serious, you poor Meester Deek; but it makes you jealous.--And
there were others.”
“How many?”
“Oh, dozens. I’ve always had some one in love with me, ever since I can
remember. That’s why I gave names to my hands.”
“Then no one ever held them before?”
“I shouldn’t say that. But almost no one. I used to let Tom hold them
when he wouldn’t stop drizzling. Tom was different; he was a kind of
brother.”
“And what am I?”
“I’ve often wondered.” Her brows drew together. “You’re a kind of
friend, and yet you’re not.”
“More than a friend?”
They were halting. She freed her hand and stroked his face daringly.
“You’re Meester Deck. Isn’t that enough? Some one whom I love and
trust.”
She threw the door open. On the point of jumping out, she hesitated.
“The pavement’s so slushy. Whatever shall I do with my thin shoes and
all?”
“Let me carry you.”
As his arms enfolded her, she stiffened. For a moment there was a
rebellious struggle. Then her arm went about his neck and her face sank
against his shoulder.
How light she was! How little! How unchanged from the child-Desire of
the woodland!
“D’you remember the last time?” he whispered. “It’s years since I’ve
done it.”
“Not your fault,” she laughed. “You’d have done it often and often, if
I’d allowed you. I guess you wish it was always snowing.”
The distance was all too short. He would have carried her across the
lighted foyer, into the elevator, up to the apartment. He didn’t mind
who stared at him. He would have gone on holding her thus forever. As
they reached the steps she slipped from his arms.
“Oh, you big, strong man!” Her gray eyes were dancing; a faint flush
spread across her forehead. “I do hope nobody saw us.” He was stealing
his arm into hers. She turned him back. “Forgetful! You haven’t paid the
taxi.”
After he had paid, he searched round for her. She had gone. It was the
first time she had done it; she always waited for him. So she knew what
was coming! By her flight she was lengthening by a few more minutes
their long uncertainty. In the quiet of the dim-lit room, with the snow
gliding past the window, each separate flake tiptoeing like a faery, he
would tell her. But would he need to tell her? She would be waiting for
him, her face drooping against her shoulder, looking sweet and weary.
She would be like a tired child, its mischief forgotten, ready to
stretch out its arms and snuggle in his breast. All that need be said
would come in broken phrases--phrases which no one but themselves could
understand. And then, after that---- She might cry a little. When they
were married, perhaps Hal----
He waited till the elevator had descended before he tapped. Probably she
was listening for him, fearing and yet hoping for the pressure of his
arms and all the newness that they would begin together. He would read
in her eyes the writing of surrender--the same writing that he had read
on the dusty panes of childhood, “I love you. I love you.”
He tapped; he tapped more loudly. The door was opened ty Mr. Dak.
“Hulloa! Come in.”
“Where’s Desire?”
“In her room getting ready.”
“Ready? For what?”
They entered the dim-lit room where the most splendid moment of life
should have been happening.
“Didn’t you know?” Mr. Dak appeared not to notice his emotion.
“Everybody else knew. There’s a supper-party to Miss Audrey. Just the
six of us.”
They fell to making conversation. Mr. Dak did most of the talking. Teddy
found himself agreeing to the statement that Christianity was a colossal
blunder, and that Mohammedanism was the only religion worth the having.
He would have agreed to anything. As he listened for Desire’s footstep,
he nodded his head, saying, “Yes. Of course. Obviously.” All the while
he was aware of the embarrassed kindness that looked out from the eyes
of the little man. Somewhere, in the silence of his brain, a voice kept
questioning, “Mr. Dak, are you in love with Vashti? Does she laugh at
you when you try to tell her? Do you wish the world was pagan because
then you’d be her lord and master?”
“In the Mohammedan faith,” Mr. Dak was saying, “a woman’s hope of
immortality lies in merging her life with a man’s.”
Then he set himself to criticize pedantically the breakdown of the
Christian ideal of marriage.
The door-bell rang. Fluffy and Horace entered. The sparkle of laughter
was in their eyes. They brought with them an atmosphere of love-making.
As Horace helped her out of her sables, his hands loitered on her
shoulders caressingly.
She turned to the others with the sad little smile of one who summons
all the world to her protection. She looked extremely beautiful and
lavish, with her daffodil-colored hair floating like a cloud above her
blue, hypnotic eyes. “I’m so depressed. I do hope you’ll cheer me. Fancy
having to learn a new part and to worry with rehearsals, and then to go
on the road again.” She sat down on the couch, her hands tucked beneath
her, her arms making handles for the vase of her body. “I wish I wasn’t
an actress. I wish I were just a wife in a dear little house--a sort of
nest--with a kind man to take care of me. Only----” She glanced at
Horace. “Only I never met the always kind man.”
“Women never know their own minds,” said Horace. “A law ought to be
passed to compel every woman who’s loved to marry.”
At supper Desire’s place was empty. Teddy turned to Vashti and
whispered, “Where is she? Isn’t she coming?”
Vashti looked at him with her slow, comprehending smile. “She’s coming.
But she’s thinking. I wonder what about.”
At that moment Desire entered and slipped into the vacant chair beside
him. All through the meal as the atmosphere brightened, she sat silent.
She seemed to be doing her best not to notice that he was there.
The talk turned on women and what men thought of them.
“Men may think what they like, but they never know us,”. Fluffy said.
“Love’s a game of guess-work and deception. Half the time when a man’s
blaming a woman for not having married him, he ought to be down on his
knees thanking her for having spared him. She knows what she is, and
she knows what he is. He doesn’t. Men invariably confuse friendship with
matrimony. They can’t understand how women can enjoy their company and
yet couldn’t fancy them as husbands.”
Desire woke up. “And the worst of it is that sometimes we women can’t
understand ourselves.”
“Some men can.” Vashti glanced at Mr. Dak, whom she had so often praised
for his understanding. Mr. Dak returned her gaze as non-committingly
as a Buddhish idol. Horace leant forward across the table. The gleam of
tolerant amusement was never absent from his eyes.
“You ladies are all talking nonsense, and you know it. Even little
Desire over there knows it. Directly you begin to like a man you begin
to think of marriage--only some of you begin to think of running away
from it ‘Between men and women there is no friendship possible.
Passion, enmity, worship, love, but no friendship’--you remember Lord
Darlington’s lines. When love is trifled with, it sours into hatred.
Every man who loves a woman has his moments when he hates her
intensely.”
“Did you ever hate me?” Fluffy covered his hand to insure the answer she
required.
“Yes. And you’ve hated me. Desire could tell just how much if she dared.
You women all discuss your love-affairs. You’re fondest of a man when
he’s absent. When he’s present, you never confess.”
Teddy sat quietly listening. He thought how silly these people were to
talk so much and to love so little. Life was going by them; none of them
had begun to live yet They were like timid bathers at the seaside, who
splashed and paddled, but never really got wet. They wouldn’t learn
to swim for fear of getting drowned. He wished he could take them to
a house in Eden Row, where a man and woman were living bravely and
accepting hard knocks as things to be expected. While he listened, he
watched Desire, wondering what ghostly thoughts were wandering behind
her wistful eyes.
Chairs were pushed back. They were leaving the room. Fluffy turned to
meet him in the doorway. Her arm was about Desire. She hung her head,
glancing searchingly from one to the other.
“We’re a pack of fools,” she whispered intensely. “Don’t you listen to
us.” She took Teddy’s hand and hesitated at a loss for words. With a
sudden gust of emotion she kissed him. “Little Desire, why don’t you
marry him? He looks at you so lovingly and sadly.”
“Marry him!” Desire faltered. “I don’t know. But we’re very fond of each
other, aren’t we, Teddy?”
It was the first time she had called him that. The babies came into
her eyes; she broke from Fluffy and ran down the passage. From a safe
distance she called laughingly, “I won’t have you hanging about with my
beau. You’ll be kissing him again; and I won’t have you kissing him when
I’m not present.”
In the room which overlooked the Hudson, Vashti was playing. For a
minute Teddy had a vision of how he had first seen her with Hal; only
times had changed. The man who bent across her shoulder now was Mr. Dak.
It was a child’s song that she was singing, about a lady who was devoted
to a poodle-dog which died, and how she fretted and fretted. The last
verse leapt out of melancholy into merriment,
“But e’er three months had past
She had bought another poodle-dog.
Exactly like the last”
To Teddy the words were a philosophy of fickleness; that was precisely
what she had done on losing Hal. A worrying fear came upon him as he
glanced from mother to daughter: in outward appearance they were so much
alike. If he were to leave Desire, would she, too, replace him?
The thought was in the air. Mr. Dak, leaning against the piano to make
himself an inch taller, began to descant on the transience of affection.
He had arrived at his favorite topic and was saying, “Now, among the
Mohammedans----” when Horace interrupted.
“It depends on what you mean by transience. One’s got to go on living,
so one goes on loving. But if you mean that one forgets--why, it’s not
true.”
Last night, ah, yesternight, betwixt her lips and mine
There fell thy shadow, Cynara! Thy breath was shed
Upon my soul between the kisses and the wine;
And I was desolate and sick of an old passion,
Yea, I was desolate and bowed my head:
I have been faithful to thee, Cynara, in my fashion.’
“One never forgets. There’s always a Cynara. One may love twenty times,
but betwixt your lips and the lips of the latest woman there’s always
the memory of the first ghostly rapture. You seek Cynara to the end of
life; but if you met her again, you would not find her.”
Across the window the snow drifted white as the loosened hair of Time.
In the room there was no stir. Unseen people entered. Vashti shaded
her face with her hand; it was easy to guess of whom she was thinking.
Fluffy gazed into space, a child who finds itself alone and is
frightened. Mr. Dak was inscrutable. Horace lay back, staring at the
ceiling, watching the ascending smoke of his cigarette. To Teddy the
room was like an empty house in which innumerable clocks ticked loudly.
He met Desire’s eyes. “We are young. We are young,” they said. “Why
won’t they leave us to ourselves?”
“My God, I wish I were little. I wish I were no older than Desire. I
wish I could get away from all this rottenness and wake up to-morrow
in the country. Think what it’ll look like, all white and sparkling and
shiny! Where’s the good of your telling me you love me, Horace, if you
can’t make me good and little--if you can’t put back the hands of Time?”
Fluffy jumped up, half laughing, half crying, and threw wide the window.
She leant out, so that the snow fell glistening in the gold of her hair.
“Not a sound. Listen!”
Horace rose and stood beside her. “Would you like to wake up in the
country? I’ll manage it. I’d manage anything for you, little girl.”
Mr. Dak broke his silence. “I know a farm. It’s up the Hudson--seventy
miles at least from here. The people are my friends.”
In a babel of excited voices it was planned. Of a sudden the triflers
had become lovers confessed. They seemed to think that by the childish
trick of escaping, their youth could be recaptured. While the women
ran off to change and wrap up, the men completed arrangements for the
journey.
When the limousine arrived it had seats for only five; cushions were
strewn on the floor for Desire and Teddy. She kept far away from him
till the light went out. Again it was like standing in an empty house;
people’s brains were clocks which ticked solemnly, “And I was desolate
and sick of an old passion.”
They two alone had nothing to remember--all the rapture of life lay
ahead. In the darkness he felt her hand groping. One by one he coaxed
apart the reluctant fingers and pressed the little palm against his
mouth. She allowed herself to be drawn closer; he could feel the wild
bird of her heart beating its wings against the walls of the flesh.
“Dearest.”
“Hush! Dear is enough,” she whispered.
Long after she was asleep he sat staring into the blackness.
To-morrow--all the long to-morrows would be theirs.
CHAPTER XV--SLAVES OF FREEDOM
It was as though he were in a nest; the windows were padded with the
feathers of snow that had frozen to them overnight. He felt cramped.
Then he found that his arm was about a girl and that her head was
against his shoulder. She roused and gazed at him drowsily. She sat up,
rubbing her fists into her eyes. They stared at each other in amused
surprise.
“Well, I never!” she whispered. “Wot liberties ter taik wiv a lady!”
She drew away from him in pretended haughtiness, tilting her chin into
the air.
Some one yawned. “Good Lord! We must have been mad.”
Disenchantment spoke in the complaining voice. They turned. The rest of
the party were awake, looking bored and fretful.
“I’m aching for some sleep,” Fluffy sighed; “I know I’m going to quarrel
with some one. It was you and your wretched Cynaras did this for us,
Horace. If I’m not in bed in half-an-hour, I’ll never speak to you
again.”
“Why mother, where’s King?” Desire noticed the absence of Mr. Dak.
“If he’s wise, he’s walking back to New York,” Vashti said; “but I think
he’s outside, directing the driver.--We certainly were mad. I am tired.”
A discontented silence settled down. Teddy wished that they all would
close their eyes and leave him alone with Desire. She was like a wild
thing when others were watching; beneath her stillness he could detect
her agitation lest he should betray to others that he loved her.
“You’re not cross, too--are you?” he whispered. “Are you, Princess?”
She shook her head. “You made a splendid pillow.”
She gave him no encouragement, so he sank into himself. He tried to
recapture his sensations of the night In his dreams he must have
been conscious of her; they must have gone together on all manner of
adventures. He blamed himself for having slept; if he had kept his
vigil, what memories he would have had.
The car halted. The door was opened by Mr. Dak. White and soft as a
swan’s breast, gleaming in the early morning sunlight, lay a rolling
expanse of unruffled country. Distant against the glassy sky mountains
shone imperturbably, like the humped knees of Rip Van Winkles taking
their eternal rest.
Mr. Dak beamed with pride. He seemed to be claiming all the credit for
the stillness and whiteness, and most especially for the low-roofed
farmhouse, with its elms and barns, and its plume of blue smoke curling
up hospitably into the frosted silence. He was pathetically eager to be
thanked. He looked more like a maiden-aunt than ever.
As the company tumbled out, their self-ridicule was heightened by the
patent unsuitability of their attire. The men in their silk-hats and
evening-dress, the women in their high-heeled shoes and dainty gowns
looked dishonest and shallow apart from their environment.
“Damn!” said Fluffy, giving way to temperament “I want to hide.”
Horace attempted comfort. “You’ll feel better when you’ve had
breakfast.”
“I shan’t. I shan’t ever feel better. You oughtn’t to have brought me.
You know I’m not responsible after midnight.”
“But you were so keen on waking in the country.”
She swept by him indignantly up the uncleared path, kilting her skirt.
“Could I wake when I haven’t slept?”
In the door a young man was standing--a very stolid and sensible young
man. He wore oiled boots and corduroy breeches; he was coatless; his
sleeves were rolled up and, despite the cold, his shirt was unbuttoned
at the neck. In an anxious manner Mr. Dak was explaining to him the
situation. As the others came up he was introduced as Sam; he at once
began to speak of breakfast.
“I don’t want any breakfast,” Fluffy pouted ungraciously; “all I want is
a place to lie down.”
Sam eyed her rather contemptuously--the way a mastiff might have looked
at Twinkles.
“The wife’s bathing the babies; but I daresay it can be managed.” He
stepped back into the hall and shouted, “Mrs. Sam! Mrs. Sam!”
Mrs. Sam appeared with a child in her arms, which she had hastily
wrapped in a towel. She was a wholesome, smiling, deep-breasted young
woman, with a face as placid as a Madonna’s. Three beds were promised
and the ladies immediately retired.
“Cross, aren’t they?” said Sam, before the last skirt had rustled
petulantly up the stairs.
“Rather,” Horace assented.
“It’s to be expected,” said Mr. Dak.
“Expected! Is it?” Sam scratched his head. “Well, all I can say is if a
woman doesn’t choose to be agreeable, she can go somewhere else, as far
as I’m concerned.”
It was a rambling old house, paneled, many-windowed, and full of quaint
furniture. The room in which breakfast was set was a converted kitchen,
with shiny oak-chairs and a wide open-fireplace in which great logs
blazed and crackled. It was cheerful with the strong reflected light
thrown in by the newly laundered landscape. From the next room came the
rumble of farm-hands talking; as the door opened for the maid to bring
in dishes, the smell of baking bread and coffee entered. When the guests
had seated themselves, their host became busy about serving.
“I used to be a bit wild myself,” he said. “I knew Broadway as well as
any man. But it made me tired--there’s nothing in it. If you want to be
really happy, take my advice: settle down and have babies.”
Mrs. Sam returned. Having dressed the fair-haired mite she was carrying,
she gave it into her husband’s care. He took it on his knee and
commenced spooning food into its mouth. Drawing nearer to the fire, she
set about bathing her youngest. Teddy watched her as she stooped to kiss
the kicking limbs, laughing and keeping up a flow of secret chatter.
Neither she nor her husband apologized for this intimate display of
domesticity. Sometimes he caught her quiet eyes. They made him think
of his mother’s. Try as he would, he could not prevent himself from
comparing her with the women upstairs. Old standards, odd glimpses of
his own childhood flitted across his memory. “These people are married,”
he told himself. How foolish the cynicisms of last night sounded now!
“So I ran away from towns and the women they breed; I became a farmer
and married her,” Sam was saying. “I don’t reckon I did so badly.”
When the meal was ended, Mr. and Mrs. Sam excused themselves and went
about their work. Mr. Dak lit a cigar; before the first ash had fallen,
he was nodding.
Horace and Teddy drew up to the logs, toasting themselves and sitting
near together. There was a distinct atmosphere of disappointment. They
glanced at each other occasionally, saying nothing. It was an odd thing,
Teddy reflected--the men whom he met at Vashti’s apartment rarely had
anything to say to each other. They met distrustfully as the women’s
friends. They never talked of their interests or displayed any
curiosity; yet most of them were distinguished in their own line and
would have been knowable, if met under other circumstances.
Horace glanced up and spoke abruptly in a lowered voice. “When I was
at Baveno one summer, I ran across an old man. He had a cottage in a
vineyard half a mile up the hill, overlooking Maggiore. He came every
year all the way from Madrid to photograph the view from his terrace. He
thought it the most beautiful view in the world, and was as jealous of
letting any one else share it as if it had been a woman. He had taken
thousands of pictures of it, all similar and yet all different He
was always hoping to get two that were alike; but the light on
snow-mountains is fickle. I suppose he was a little cracked. He had
fooled away his career, and was old and hadn’t married. When he went
back to Madrid, it was only to earn money so as to be able to return and
to take still more photographs next year.--Can you guess why I’ve told
you?”
“I’m afraid not.”
“Because we’re like that--you and I. We let a woman who’s as
unpossessable as a landscape, become a destructive habit with us. You’re
not very old yet, but you’ll find out that there are women in the world
who can never be possessed. There’s only one thing to do when you meet
one--run away before she becomes a habit.”
“Don’t you think that’s a bit cowardly?” Teddy objected.
“In her heart every woman wants to marry and be like---- Well, like Mrs.
Sam was with those kiddies.”
“Go on believing. It’s good that you should believe it. But don’t put
your belief to the test.” Horace leant forward and tapped him on the
knee. “Go back to England while you can.”
“I don’t understand.”
“I think you do. Fluffy isn’t discreet over other people’s affairs.
You’ve fallen in love with a dream, my boy--with an exquisite,
unrealizable romance. Keep your dreams for your work; don’t try to find
’em in life--they aren’t there. Look what’s happened this morning
through following a dream into the daylight. Here we sit, a pair of
foolish tragedies in evening-dress, while our ideals are sleeping off
their tempers upstairs.”
When Teddy frowned and didn’t answer, Horace smiled. “I know how it is.
I’ve been through it. You oughtn’t to get angry; anything that I’m
saying applies twice as forcibly to myself. Look here, Gurney, your
affection for Desire is made up of memories of how you’ve loved her.
She’s given you nothing. That isn’t right. Neither she, nor her mother,
nor Fluffy know how to----”
“Desire----”
“No. Hear me out There are women who never take a holiday from
themselves. They’re too timid--too selfish. They’re afraid of marrying;
they distrust men. They’re afraid of having children; they worship their
own bodies. They loath the disfigurement of child-bearing. All
their standards are awry. They regard the sacredness of birth as
defilement--think it drags them down to the level of the animals. They
make love seem ugly. They’ve got a morbid streak that makes them fear
everything that’s blustering and genuine. Their fear lest they should
lose their liberty keeps them captives. They’re _slaves of freedom_,
starving their souls and living for externals. Because they’re women,
their nature cries out for men; but the moment they’ve dragged the soul
out of a man their weak passion is satisfied. They have the morals of
nuns and the lure of courtesans. They’re suffocating and unhealthy as
tropic flowers.--I’ve been at it too long, but I want you to get out
while you can.”
All this was spoken in the whisper of a conspirator lest Mr. Dak should
be aroused. It was as though Horace had raised a mask, revealing behind
his bored good-humor a face emaciated with longings. Teddy wanted to be
angry--felt he ought to be angry; but he couldn’t. “I’d rather we didn’t
discuss Desire,” he said coldly. “You see, my case is different from
yours. I intend to marry her.”
“My dear boy, it’s not different; I was no more a trifler than you
are--I intended to marry Fluffy. I gave up a good woman--a good woman
who’s waiting for me now. But I’m like that old man at Baveno; the
unpossessable haunts me. I’ve been infatuated so long that I can’t break
myself of the habit. But you haven’t. You’re young, with a life before
you. For God’s sake go back to the simple good people--the people you
understand. Your mother wasn’t a Desire, I’ll warrant; if she had been,
you wouldn’t be her son. A man commits a crime against his children when
he willfully stoops below his mother to the girl he worships. Desire’ll
never belong to you, even though you marry her. She’s not of your flesh.
Her pretty, baby hands’ll tear the wings off your idealism. She won’t
even know she’s doing it. You’ve made your soul the purchase-price of
love, while she--she commits sacrilege against love every hour.” He
gripped him by the arm. “Cut loose from her while there’s time. She
doesn’t know what you’re offering.”
“Shish!” Mr. Dak was sitting up, a finger pressed against his mouth.
Some one stirred behind them. In the middle of the room Desire was
standing. Her hands were clasped against her breast as though she held a
bird. Through the windows the purity of the snow-covered country formed
a dazzling background for her head and shoulders. The gold in the bronze
of her hair glistened. She might have been posing for a realist painting
of the immaculate conception. There was a misty, pained looked in the
grayness of her eyes--an eloquence of yearning.
“Teddy.”
That was all. It was the second time. It meant more than if she had held
out her arms to him. Her clear, lazy voice, speaking his name, seemed
to mark the end of evasion. He went to her without a word. There was the
heat of tears behind his eyes and a swollen feeling in his heart. The
passion she had roused in him at other times sank into gentleness.
The things that Horace had been saying were true--he knew it; but if his
love could reach her imagination, they would prove them false together.
What was the good of love if it couldn’t do that? Probably Hal had
thought to do the same for Vashti, and Horace for Fluffy--all the men
who had loved in vain had promised themselves to do just that; but they
hadn’t loved with sufficient obstinacy--with sufficient courage.
He helped her into her wraps. They passed out into the gold and silver
landscape. It was like entering into a new faith--like leaving deceit
behind. Merriness was in the air. Birds fluttered out of hedges, making
the snow glitter in their exit. From farms out of sight, roosters blew
shrill challenges, like trumpeters riding through a Christmas faeryland.
Humping their knees against the horizon, mountains lay hushed in their
eternal rest.
There was scarcely a sound save the crunch of their footsteps. At a
turn, where the lane descended and the house was lost to sight, she drew
closer. “You may take my arm if you like.”
He thrilled to the warmth of it. His fingers closed upon the slimness of
her wrist. Their bodies came together, separated and came together with
the unevenness of the treading.
She laughed softly. “It’s like a legend. It’s ever so much better than
our other good times.”
“I’m glad you think that.” He pressed against her. “We’ve always talked
across hotel-tables and in theatres; we’ve always been going somewhere
or doing something up till now. We’ve never met only to be together. It
was a little vulgar, wasn’t it, buying all our pleasures with money?”
“A little, and stupid when we had ourselves.”
They spoke in whispers; there was no one to hear what they said.
“Horace was persuading you to go away?”
“Yes.”
“Because of me? He was right. Are you going?”
“Never.”
“You ought to go. I’m--I’m glad you’re not going.”
On they went, heedless of direction. At times their lips grew silent,
but their hearts twittered like birds. They did not look at each other.
Strange that they should be so shy after so much boldness! When one saw
some new beauty to be admired, a hugging of the arm would tell it.
They came to a wood--an enchanted place of maple and silver birch. The
squirrel’s granary was full; there was no sound of life. It was a sylvan
Pompeii frozen in its activities by the avalanche from the clouds. Trees
stood stiffly, like arrested dancers, sheathed in their scabbards of
burnished ice. Boughs hung heavy with snow blossoms. Scrub-oak and
berries of winter-green wrought mosaics of red and brown on the silver
flooring. Over all was the coffined stillness of death. Here and there
a solitary leaf shone more scarlet, like the resurrection hope of a
lamp kept burning in the hollow of a shrine. It was a forsaken temple
of broken arches. Summer acolytes, with their flower-faces, no longer
fidgeted on the altar-steps. The choir of birds had fled. The sun
remained as priest and sole worshiper. Night and morning he raised the
host to the wintry tinkling of crystal bells. Down a far vista, as they
plunged deeper, their attention was held by a steady brightness--a pond
which glowed like a stained-glass window. By its withered sedges they
sat down.
“It’s like---”
“Yes, isn’t it?”
“I was a little girl then. Meester Deek, was I a dear little girl?”
“The dearest in the world. Not half so dear as you are now.”
“Ah, you would say that; you’re always kind. If--if you only knew, I was
much dearer then.”
He was holding her hand. Slowly he unbuttoned her glove. She watched him
idly. He drew it off and raised the slender fingers to his lips.
“You always told me I had beautiful hands.”
He kissed the fingers separately and then the palm, which was delicate
as a rose-leaf.
“And don’t miss the little mole on the back; mother used to say that it
told her when I had been bad.”
So he kissed the little mole on the back as well. Curious that he should
take so little, when his heart cried out for so much! His head was
swimming. He felt nothing, saw nothing but her presence.
“I wouldn’t have let you do that once,” she whispered.
In the long silence that followed, the snow-laden trees shivered,
muttering their suspense. Each time he tried to meet her eyes, she
looked away as though his glance scorched her.
“My dear! My dearest!”
She did not answer.
“I love you. I’ve always loved you. I can’t live without you. You’re
more to me than anything in the world.”
“Don’t say that” Her voice trembled. “It’s terrible to love people so
much; you give them such power to hurt you. I might die, or I might love
some one else, or----”
“But you don’t--you wouldn’t.”
His arm stole about her neck. Like a child fondling a child, he tried to
coax her face towards him. He yearned, as if his soul depended on it,
to rest his lips on hers. She smiled, closing her eyes in denial. As he
leant out, she turned her face swiftly aside. He kissed her where the
little false curl quivered.
“Oh, Meester Deek, why must you kiss me? Where’s the good of it? Can’t
we be just friends?”
“All my life I’ve loved you,” he pleaded hoarsely. “Doesn’t it mean
anything to you? Care for me a little--only a little, Desire. Say you
do, and I’ll be content.”
“I’m not good,” she whispered humbly. “You don’t know anything about me;
and yet you’ve seen what I am. My friends are all so gay; I like them
to be gay. And I want to be an actress; and I live for clothes and
vanities. You’d soon get sick of me if we married.--Dear Meester Deek,
please let’s be as we were. I’ve tried to spare you because I don’t love
you so as to marry you. I couldn’t give up my way of living even for
you. I never could love you as you deserve.”
“But you do love me,” he urged. “Look at the way we’ve gone about
together. I’ve never tired you, have I? If I had, you wouldn’t have
wanted to see me so much. You must love me, Desire.” Then, in a voice
which was scarcely above a breath, “I would ask so little if you married
me.”
“You dear fellow!”
She laid her cool cheek against his, trying to give comfort for what she
had done. Their bodies grew hushed, listen-ing for each other. The wood,
with its snow-paved aisles and arcades of twisted turnings, became a white
cathedral in, which their hearts beat as one and worshiped.
“You do love me, Princess.”
“I’m cold,” she whispered mournfully. “I’m trying to feel what I ought
to be feeling, but I can’t. I’m disappointed. God left something out
when He made me. If only you weren’t so fine, but---- My dear, you’re
better than any man I ever met. I couldn’t be good the way you are, and
I’m ashamed to be worse. Sometimes I’m almost bitter against you for
your goodness. My beautiful mother.--I’m all she has. And there’s your
family. I haven’t any. I’ve missed so much. Surely you under-stand?”
“Darling, I want to make it all up to you. I want to give you
everything.”
“And I--I can give you nothing.” She closed her eyes tiredly. “I’m so
young--so young. I don’t think I want to be married. So much may happen.
If we married, everything would be ended; there’d be nothing to dream
about. We’d know everything.” Her face moved against his caressingly.
“But it is so sweet to be loved.”
He laughed softly. “You will marry me, Princess. You will. One day
you’ll want to know everything. I’ll wait till you’re ready.”
She let him draw her to him. Her eyelids drooped. She lay in his arms
pulseless. The silkiness of her hair trembled against his forehead.
“Give me your lips.” His voice was thirsty.
She did not stir.
“Just this once.”
She rested her hands on his shoulders. The moist sweet mouth shuddered
as he pressed it. He clung to it; an eternity was in the moment. He was
drinking her soul from the chalice of her body. Gently she pushed him
from her. It was over--this ecstasy to which all his life had been a
preface.
She crumpled forward, her knees drawn up, burying her face in her hands.
He was dizzy. The world swung under him.
“I’m not crying,” she panted brokenly. “I’m not glad, and I’m not sorry.
No one ever kissed me like that.--Oh, please don’t touch me. I ought to
send you away forever.”
He knelt beside her, conscience-stricken. It was as if he had done her
a great wrong. Passion was tossed aside by compassion. As he knelt, he
kissed timidly the quivering hands which hid her eyes from him.
“Forgive me, my darling. You couldn’t send me away. I shall never leave
you.”
“Poor you! There’s nothing to forgive.” It was a little child talking.
Making bars of her fingers, she peered out at him. “If I let you
stay, will you promise not to blame me--never to think I’ve led you on
when--when I don’t marry you?”
“I won’t blame you,” his voice was strained and husky, “but I’ll wait
for you forever.”
“Will you? All men say that.” She shook her head wisely. “I wonder?”
She tidied her hair. It gave him a thrilling sense of possession to
be allowed to watch her. When he had helped her to rise, he stooped to
brush the snow from her. Suddenly he fell to his knees in a wild abandon
of longing, and reverently kissed the hem of her gown.
“Meester Deek, don’t. To see you do that--it hurts.”
They walked through the wood in silence, retracing their old footsteps.
At the point where it was lost to sight, they gazed back, hand-in-hand,
to the sacred spot where all had happened. The snow would melt; they
might come in search of the place one day--they might not find it.
Would they come alone or together? Their hands gripped more closely; the
present at least was theirs.
The storm of emotion which had rocked them, had left them exhausted.
They had said so much without words; the eloquence of language seemed
inadequate. Each thought as it rose to their lips seemed too trifling
for utterance.
As they turned from the wood into the road, she began to whistle softly.
He listened. Memory set the tune to words:
“So, honey, jest play in your own backyard,
Don’t mind what dem white chiles say.”
“I can’t bear it.”
She glanced at him sidelong. “Now, old dear, h’if I wants ter whistle,
why shouldn’t I?”
“It’s as though you were telling me, I don’t want you.’ You sang it in
the Park that night.”
“But she doesn’t want him, perhaps. There! But she does a little. Does
that make him feel better? Come, let’s be sensible. You don’t recommend
love by getting tragic. Take my arm and stop tickling my hand. I’m going
to ask you a question.--Hasn’t there ever been another girl?”
“Never, upon my----”
“You needn’t be so fierce in denying. I didn’t ask you whether you’d
killed anybody.”
“I believe you almost wish there had been another girl” She shrugged
her shoulders. “My darling mother was before me--you forgot that. But I
don’t mind her.”
“I think,” he said, smiling at the mysticism of the fancy, “I think I
must have been loving you even then. Yes, I’m sure it was the _you_ in
her, before ever I knew you, that I was loving.”
She glanced at him tauntingly. “I’m afraid I’ve not been so economic;
you’ll hate me because I haven’t. Shall I tell you about all my lovers?”
“I won’t listen.”
But she insisted. Whether it was truth or invention that she told him,
he could not guess. All he knew was that, having lowered her barriers,
she was carefully replacing them for her defense. Her way of doing
it was to make him suspect that he was only an incident in a long
procession; that all this poetry of passion, which for him had the dew
on it, had been experienced by her already; that she had often watched
men travel through weeks and months from trembling into boldness;
that Love to her was the clown in Life’s circus and that she was proof
against the greed of his mock humility.
“For God’s sake, stop!”
“Why?” Her tone was innocent of offense.
“If it’s all true, this isn’t the time to confess it.”
“Confess it! D’you think I’m ashamed, then?” She withdrew her arm.
“Thank you, I can walk quite nicely by myself.”
He tried to detain her. She shook him off and ran ahead. As he followed,
his eyes implored her. She did not turn. Between the white cage of
hedges she whistled her warning,
“So, honey, jest play in your own backyard.”
He wondered how any one so beautiful could be so cruel. She seemed to
regard herself as a shrine at which it was ordained that men should
worship, while her right was to view them with neither heat nor
coldness. “Slaves of freedom”--Horace’s words came back.
He caught up with her. “Why did you tell me? I didn’t mean to speak
crossly.”
“Didn’t you?”
“I didn’t, really. I’m sorry. But why did you tell me?”
“Because I wanted to be honest: to let you know the kind of girl I am.
And because,” her eyes flooded, “because you’re the first man who ever
kissed me like that and--and I didn’t want to let you know it--and I
wish I hadn’t let you kiss me now.”
She didn’t give him her lips this time. With her face averted, she lay
trembling in his arms without a struggle. While his lips wandered from
her hair to her cheeks, to her throat, she seemed unconscious of what he
was doing. “I do like being kissed by you,” she murmured.
“You’re so fragrant, so soft, so sweet, so like a lily,” he whispered.
Her finger went up to her mouth. “Am I fragrant? That isn’t me. That’s
just soap.”
She sprang from his embrace laughing; he joined her in sheer gladness
that their quarrel was ended.
As they came into sight of the farmhouse she insisted that he should
behave himself.
“But you’re walking further away from me,” he objected, “than you would
from a stranger you’d only just met. No wonder Horace thinks you don’t
care for me.”
“Well, and who said I did?” She slanted her eyes.
“Oh, well---- But before other people, I wish you wouldn’t ignore me so
obviously. It makes me humiliated.”. “That’s good for you.”
Mr. Sam was splitting logs by the wood-pile. He laid down his ax and
came towards them.
“You’ve missed it,” he chuckled. “We’ve had a fine old row. They’ve
queer notions of enjoying themselves, your city folks.--Has anything
happened! I guess it has. When Golden-Hair got through with her snooze,
she came down and started things going. She wanted to know whose fault
it was that she had a head-ache, and whose fault it was she’d come here,
and a whole lot besides. Her beau told her straight that he’d had enough
of it, and got the car out. Mr. Dak seemed frightened that it would
be his turn next; he said he was going too. So they all piled in,
quarreling like mad, a regular happy little party. Daresay they’re still
at it.”
“But what about us?” Desire looked blank. “How do we get back?”
“No need to, unless you’re in a hurry. There’s plenty of room; we’ll
be glad to have you. But if you must go, there’s a station ten miles
distant; I can get the sleigh out.”
Teddy tried to persuade her to stay a day longer. The country was
changing her. Who knew what a few more walks in the silver wood might
accomplish? New York meant Fluffy, life jigged to rag-time, and the
feverish quest for unsatisfying pleasures.
She laid her head on her shoulder and winked, like a knowing little
bird. She understood perfectly what the country was doing for her.
“In these clothes,” she asked, “and borrow the hired man’s tooth-brush?
And leave my dear mother alone, and Fluffy to cry her poor little eyes
out? And run the risk of what people would think when we both came
creeping back? I guess I’d have to marry you then, Meester Deek. No,
thanks.”
So at four o’clock, as the dusk was drawing a helmet of steel over
the vagueness of the country, the sleigh was brought round. There were
farewells and promises to come again; the twinkling of lanterns; the
jingling of harness; the babies to be kissed; the quiet eyes of the
mother who had found happiness; the atmosphere of sentiment which kindly
people create for half-way lovers; then the last good-by, the steady
trot of the horses, and the tinkling magic of sleigh-bells. Romance!
“You like babies, Meester Deek? If ever I were married, I’d like to have
a baby-girl first. They’re so cuddly and dear to dress.”
He tucked the robe round her warmly and held it against her chin to keep
the cold out. His free hand was clasped in hers. Then he let go her hand
and slipped his arm about her, and found her hand waiting for him on the
other side.
“Better and better,” she murmured contentedly, “and it isn’t the day
we’d planned. I feel so safe with you, Meester Deek--far safer than I
ought to if I loved you. You won’t say I led you on, will you? You won’t
ever?”
“Never,” he promised.
“That’s what the sleigh-bells seem to say. ‘Never! Never! Never!’ as
though they were telling us that this is the end.”
“To me they don’t say that.” His lips were against her cheek. “To me
they say, ‘Forever. Forever. Forever.’”
The moon, gazing down on them, recognized him and smiled. The stars
clapped their hands. Even the mountains, which had slept all day,
uncrouched their knees and sat up in bed to look at them. Farmhouse
windows, across the drifted whiteness, blinked wisely, speaking of home
and children, and an end of journeys. Sometimes she drowsed with the
swaying motion. Sometimes when he thought her drowsing, her eyes were
wide.
“What are you thinking, dearest?”
“Isn’t dear enough?”
“Not now.”
“It ought to be---- What was I thinking? I was wondering: could a girl
make a man whom she liked very much believe that she loved him? Would he
find her out?”
“He’d find her out But liking’s almost loving sometimes.”
“I haven’t kissed you yet. I’ve only let you kiss me. Have you noticed?”
“Yes.”
“When I kiss you, Meester Deek, without your asking, you’ll know then.”
“Kiss me now.”
She shook her head. “It would be a lie.”
Once she said, “Shall we be horrid to each other one day like Horace and
Fluffy?” And, when he drew her closer for answer, “I wonder why I let
you do it. It’s so hard not to let you; you kiss so gently--I guess
every girl loves to be loved.”
When they came to the station he had to wake her. In the train she
slept. He scarcely removed his eyes from her. Behind the window he was
aware of the shadowy breadth of river, the steep mountains, and the
winking, swiftly vanishing lights of towns. It was a return from
faery-land, with all the pain of returning. He wasn’t sure of her yet,
and he had used all his arguments. Was it always like that? Did girls
always say “No” at first? He feared lest in the flare and rush of the
city he might lose her. He dreaded the casualness of their telephone
engagements--the way she fitted him into the gaps between her pleasures.
He wanted to be first in her life--more than that: to be dearer to her
than her body, than her soul itself. The permission which she gave him
to love her, without hope of reciprocity, was torturing. He would not
own it to himself, but at the back of his mind he knew that it was not
fair.
Once more they were fleeing up Fifth Avenue; night was polluted by the
glare of lamps.
“It isn’t the same,” she whispered. “It’s somehow different.”
“We’ve seen something better and got our perspective.”
“Oh, I don’t know,” she laughed. “New York has its uses.”
She sat up as they swung into Columbus Circle, and seemed to forget
him. She was watching the hoardings for the announcements of _October_,
seeing whether Janice Audrey’s name had been blotted out.
Already she was slipping from him. The silver wood--had it ever existed?
If it had, had they ever walked there? It seemed a dream created by his
ardent fancy, too kind and generous for reality.
He leant towards her; she drew away from him. “No more pilfering.”
“Our good times are always coming to an end,” he said sadly.
She smiled at his tone of melancholy. “And beginning; don’t forget that
But I do wish it were last night.”
“You do! Then, you do wish it could last forever? Dear little D., if you
chose, you could make it last.”
“Not forever. If anything lasted forever it would make me
tired.--Hulloa, here we are.”
He helped her to alight The pavement had been swept; there was no excuse
for carrying her.
“I live here,” she reminded him as he tried to touch her hand; “so let’s
behave ourselves.”
She was settling back into the old rut of reticence, thinking again more
of appearances than affection; even employing her old phrases to defend
herself.
They stepped from the elevator and she slipped her key into the latch.
He was trying to think of one final argument by which he might persuade
her.
As the door pushed open, they halted; there was a sense of evil in the
air. Desire clutched his arm for protection. They listened: panting; a
chair falling; silence. Then the panting recommenced.
“Mother!”
The struggle stopped.
Teddy rushed across the hall to the front-room. He tried to keep Desire
back. Vashti was stretched upon the couch, white as death, breathing
hard, and exhausted. Her hair had broken loose and lay spread like
a shawl across her breast. Mr. Dak was standing over her, his hands
clenched. His collar was crumpled and had burst at the stud. His tie was
drawn tight, as though it had been used to strangle him.
Desire threw herself down beside her mother, kissing her wildly and
smoothing back her hair. “Oh, what is it? What is it, dearest? Tell me.”
She leant her face against her mother’s to catch the words. Springing to
her feet, she glared at Mr. Dak.
“You low beast.” Her white virago fist shot up and struck him on the
mouth. “You little swine. Get out.”
In the hall, as Teddy was seeing him off the premises, Mr. Dak commenced
a mumbling defense. “What did she suppose I thought she meant? I wanted
to marry her, but she wouldn’t. If she didn’t mean anything, what right
had she to let me spend my money trotting her round?” From the
dim-lit room came the terrible sound of sobbing. Desire met him on the
threshold. “She’s only frightened. She wants you to help her to bed.”
Outside the bedroom door Vashti took his face between her hands.
“Thank God, there are good men in the world.” He waited for Desire. All
tenderness had become a trap. She nodded to him sullenly, “Good-night.”
Then, flam-ing up, “Fluffy’s right. All men are beasts, I expect.”
The bedroom door shut. He switched off the lights and let himself out.
CHAPTER XVI--THE GHOST OF HAPPINESS
To a man who has never been in love the humble passion of his heart is
to be allowed to love. He conjures visions of the woman who will call
out his affection; he is always looking for her, seeing a face which
seems the companion of his dreams, following, turning back disappointed
and setting out afresh. When he does find her, his first feeling is
one of overwhelming gratitude. His one idea is to give unstintingly,
expecting nothing. He robes himself in a white unselfishness.
But the moment he has been allowed to love his attitude changes. He
still wants to love, but he craves equally to be loved. He is no longer
content to worship solitarily; he becomes sensitive to be worshiped in
return. He is anxious to compete with the woman’s generosity. If she
receives and does not give, he grows infidel like a devotee whose
prayers God has not answered.
The right to clasp her without repulse, which the silver wood had
granted him, had brought him to this second stage in his journey--the
urgent longing to be loved. Then, like a coarse cynicism, discovering in
all love’s loyalties an unsuspected foulness, had come the scene which
he had witnessed in her presence. It had struck the barbaric note,
stripping of conventional pretenses the motives which underlie all
passion. It had revealed to him the direction of impulses which he
himself possessed. Mr. Dak was no worse than any other man, if only the
other man were tantalized sufficiently. Vashti had starved him too much
and relied too much on his awe of her. She was a lion-tamer who had
grown reckless through immunity; the beast had taken her unaware.
Probably Mr. Dak was as surprised as herself.
Teddy understood now what Horace had meant by calling her “a slave of
freedom.” All this gayety which he had envied, which had made him wish
that he was more of a Sir Launcelot and less of a King Arthur--it was
nothing but the excitement of skating over the treacherous thin ice of
sex.
Mr. Dak was no worse than he might be if circumstances pushed him far
enough. Desire had told him as much: “All men are beasts, I expect.”
He felt hot with shame. He sympathized with her virginal anger. He, too,
felt besmirched. But her words rankled; they had destroyed their common
faith in each other. Never again would he be able to approach her with
his old simplicity. Never again would he hear her whisper, “I feel so
safe with you, Meester Deek.” How could she feel safe with him? All
men were beasts. She classed him with the lowest Any moment he might be
swept out of caution into touching and caressing her. They would both
remember the ugliness they had witnessed; she would flinch from him, and
view him with suspicion. He would suspect himself. His very gentleness
would seem to follow her panther-footed.
He returned to the Brevoort, but not to sleep. As he tossed restlessly
in the darkness, he could hear her words of dismissal. She spoke them
sorrowfully with disillusion; she spoke them mockingly; she spoke them
angrily, clenching her white virago fists. It was she who ought to have
said, “Thank God, there are good men.” Her mother had said that She had
said, “All men are beasts, I expect” In the saying of it, she had seemed
to attribute to his courting the disarming smugness of a Mr. Dak. The
silver wood with its magnanimity counted for nothing. Whatever ideals he
had built up for her were shattered by this haphazard brutality.
He shifted his head on the pillow. How did she look when she was tender
and little? His last memory of her had blotted out all that. Rising
wearily, he switched on the light and commenced a search for
the tin-type photograph. At last he found it. Her features were
undiscernible--faded into blackness.
Sleep refused to come to him. He dressed and sat himself by the window.
How quiet it was! Night obliterates geography. The yards at the back of
the hotel were merged into a garden--a garden like the one in Eden Row.
He had only to half close his eyes to image it.
Eden Row set him remembering. The disgust with life that he was now
feeling, had only one parallel in his experience--that, too, was
concerned with her: the shock which her father’s confession had caused
him on the train-journey back from Ware. “If you’re ever tempted to do
wrong, remember me. If you’re ever tempted to get love the wrong way, be
strong enough to do without it” And then, “I sinned once--a long while
ago. I’m still paying for it You’re paying for it One day Desire may
have to pay the biggest price of any of us.”
She was paying for it now when she could see no difference between his
love and Mr. Dak’s--between honor and mere passion. “All men are beasts,
I expect.” That was the conclusion at which she had arrived. She was
incapable of high beliefs at twenty!
He recalled what the knowledge of Hal’s sin had done for him. Perhaps it
had done the same for her. It had made him see sin everywhere; marriage
itself had seemed impurity--all things had been polluted until into
the dusk of the studio his mother had entered. He could hear himself
whispering, “Things like that make a boy frightened, mother, when--when
they’re first told to him.” It was after that that he had determined to
make Desire in his life what the Holy Grail had been in Sir Galahad’s.
Would the consequences of this wrong, more than twenty years old, never
end? Ever since he had begun to think, it had striven to uproot his
idealism. Yet once, in the little moment of selfishness, it must have
been ecstatic.
He had been thinking only of himself. In a great wave of compassion his
thoughts swept back to her. She had had to live in the knowledge of this
sin always. For her there had been no escape from it--no people like his
mother and father to set her other standards of truer living. What was
his penalty as compared with hers? What was the worth of his chivalry if
it broke before the first shock of her injustice? He saw her again as
a little girl, inquiring what it was like to have a father. There must
have been a day in her waking womanhood when the knowledge that all
children are not fatherless had dawned on her. Perhaps it had been
explained to her coarsely by a servant or by the cruel ostracism of
school-children. He could imagine the shame and tears that had followed,
and then the hardening.