“This only drives me crazy!” said Joe, suddenly rising. “. . . It
maddens me!”
Elaine huddled in the big chair, turned sideways and dropped her face on
her outstretched arm. “You’re not so crazy but you’re able to stop!” she
murmured resentfully.
Joe helped himself to a cigarette from the mantel. “The servants already
suspect,” he said.
“What makes you think so?”
“They tap on the door before coming in.”
“Well, let them suspect! They’re devoted to me. Servants always are.”
“That may be; but it won’t prevent their talking. And talk spreads from
servants.”
“I don’t care!”
“I _do_. If you won’t take care of yourself, I must take care of you.”
Elaine smiled crookedly.
“Oh, I’m not taking a moral attitude,” said Joe. “It’s just that I don’t
choose to have my wife talked about by servants.”
“I have not said that I would marry you,” she said quickly.
“But you will!”
Elaine was silent, looking into the grate. She was pale; her cheeks
showed little shadowy hollows. It was a disagreeable mild day
out-of-doors; indoors the fire sulked.
Her silence shook Joe a little. Darting an uneasy glance at her, he
asked combatively: “Why don’t you want to marry me?”
Elaine closed her eyes and let her head fall back. Joe’s eyes fastened
on the pulse in her wan throat. “Ah, don’t let’s begin that again,” she
said in a lifeless voice. “It gets us nowhere. . . . I love you! Isn’t
that enough?”
A spark returned to Joe’s eyes; his lips pushed out a little. “But where
is it going to land us?” he said. “We’ve got to thresh the thing out.”
Elaine opened her eyes. “Oh for heaven’s sake give me a cigarette and
let’s stop arguing about ourselves.”
He put the cigarette between her lips and lighted it. “Why don’t you
want to marry me?” he persisted.
“If I marry, commonsense tells me it ought to be a man of my own
sort. . . .”
“This is new!” put in Joe. “Where did you get it?”
“. . . This madness will pass. What would we have then?”
“You mean one of the slick young fellows I meet around here? How often
have you told me that their smoothness made you sick? You said it was my
commonness and coarseness and naturalness that attracted you in the
beginning.”
“Sure, I said it; what good to remind me of it now.”
“I’m only trying to get at your meaning.”
“Well . . . marriage is an everyday affair—a matter of superficialities
if you like; breakfast, lunch and dinner. We have to live by little
things when this passes. . . .”
“What makes you think this feeling we have for each other will pass?”
demanded Joe. “That is not like you.”
“Well . . . everybody says it will pass . . .”
“Who is everybody . . . Wilfred Pell?”
Elaine straightened up in anger. She tossed the cigarette into the fire.
“Don’t be common and tiresome!” she said. “Do you think I would allow
Wilfred Pell to discuss my private affairs with me?—or any other man?
. . . What on earth made you think of him?”
“I dunno,” said Joe indifferently. “I just had a hunch. . . . Just the
same, it _was_ Wilfred Pell.”
“Oh, very well!” said Elaine hotly. “Then I am a liar!”
There was a silence. Joe whistled softly between his teeth.
“Not that I give a damn,” he presently said, good-humoredly. “A man like
Wilfred Pell couldn’t trouble my peace any. I know the white-faced,
hungry-eyed breed. You will always find them in a woman’s room
whispering with her. That’s as near as they get, poor devils!
sympathetic and safe!”
“Wilfred Pell is a gentleman!” said Elaine. “He is intelligent and
good-hearted and decent!”
“Sure!” cried Joe, grinning with an open brow. “He is all that; and I am
none of it!—But what does it all signify really, between man and
woman?”
Elaine was silent, still angry.
“This is just spinning words,” said Joe, his voice becoming warm. “Why
fight against the inevitable, sweetheart? I am your man! You can’t
resist me!”
“And you?” she asked.
“You are my woman!” he said with glittering eyes. “Look at me!”
She dragged her eyes up to him, where he stood by the mantelpiece, a
tall, muscular figure, displaying himself. He was as finished in
appearance as any young man she knew; and he had in addition, the zest
which had always tormented her in the faces of vulgar young men. Her
eyes grew irresponsible; her face seemed to sharpen.
“Do you doubt it?” he demanded.
She shook her head helplessly.
“Well, then?”
“I can’t argue with you,” she said, low.
“You’re the sort of woman that never loves but once,” said Joe. “If you
were to let me go . . . !”
“Are you threatening to leave me?” she asked, with a bitter smile.
“Frankly, I can’t stand this,” said Joe. “I must either have you
entirely, or I _will_ leave you.”
Elaine was silent. Her eyes were hidden. Suddenly she rose, and going to
one of the windows, stood, twisting the cord of the window shade between
thumb and finger, and looking down on the squalid panorama of soiled,
half-melted snow. The old Square looked exhausted and leprous with the
patches of scant dead grass and naked earth showing amidst the snow.
Finally she murmured:
“I am not sure that you love me!”
“What more do you want?” cried Joe. “You know your power over me. You
have felt my heart beat against yours. You know that when I come near
you, I am lost.”
“A power over your body,” she murmured without looking around.
“That’s the only thing I know,” said Joe coolly. “I don’t go in for soul
states. You’ve read too many novels. For God’s sake let’s be natural
with each other. What else is there but this blind hunger we have for
each other. The big thing that comes only once!”
“And passes!”
“Passes? Why do you keep harping on that? Do you doubt your own power? A
woman like you! Are you afraid of common women? You will never lose me
as long as you are sure of yourself!”
“Then I have lost you already!” she whispered to the glass.
“What’s that?” he asked irritably.
She would not repeat it. “I shouldn’t so much mind about you,” she said
slowly, “if I was sure that _I_ could stay mad. That’s what I most
dread, coming to myself!”
“You needn’t fear,” said Joe smiling. “I’ll undertake to hold you.”
Elaine continued to look out of the window.
Presently he said: “I suspect the real reason is, you think I’m not good
enough for you . . . not that I blame you. . . .”
“That’s not it,” she said quickly.
“I have never put on any pretences with you. . . .”
“Oh, no!” she said bitterly.
“I have told you the whole of my nefarious history. . . .”
“I wouldn’t care if you had committed a murder!”
“I suppose people warn you against me.”
“Oh, yes. Everybody. I don’t listen . . . I live only for the hours I
spend with you.”
“Same here,” put in Joe.
Elaine looked at him involuntarily. The little hollows in her cheeks
darkened; and her eyes became liquid with bitter mirth. She laughed
shakily, unaware that she was laughing; paused as if startled by the
sound; and resumed in her former toneless voice: “From the first moment
that I saw you in the field at Piping Rock I was lost. It was your
damned insolence. In half a glance you knew you had me.”
“Insolence was your line,” said Joe laughing.
“Then it was a kind of retribution,” she said darkly.
“You looked at me as if I was something dirty in the road.”
“You knew you had me!”
“Well, you had me, too.”
She shook her head. “There was triumph in your eyes.”
“All a bluff,” said Joe; “a man’s supposed to look like that. . . . Why,
for weeks after that whenever we met, you went out of your way to insult
me.”
“A fat lot you cared!” murmured Elaine.
“And the first night I tried to kiss you,” said Joe chuckling; “Gee!
. . . Remember? Cave woman act. No man ever took worse punishment for a
kiss.”
“You knew you had me,” murmured Elaine. “You laughed. . . . Oh, God! why
does it have to be so one-sided!”
“Now who’s agonizing?” said Joe, going to her. “One-sided nothing! We’re
both crazy. It’s just as it ought to be. We would be as happy as kids if
it wasn’t for outside interference . . . I can see exactly what has
happened. Your folks have been keeping after you about me, until you’re
half hysterical. Well, it’s nobody’s business but our own. I am able to
take care of you. Let’s steal away by ourselves and get married. We are
free, white and twenty-one. That’s the way to stop the uproar. Nobody
bothers about a thing once it’s done. To-morrow, Princess—or to-day!
now! My car is at the door. Then good-bye to all worries. Nothing but
happiness—Oh, my God! think of it. . . . Go get your hat and coat!”
Elaine shook her head.
Joe drew her back from the window. Holding her within one arm, he
roughly pressed her hair back from her forehead, and kissed her eyelids.
“You can’t fight against this thing, sweetheart,” he whispered. “It’s
stronger than we are. The more you try to fight it, the stronger it
gets!”
“Oh, don’t!” she whispered between his kisses. “I know it. . . . Oh, if
I could stay like this forever! Oh, God! if I didn’t have to think!”
“Stop thinking, dearest dear. Come with me and stay with me forever.
Come now! . . .”
She withdrew herself from his arm. “I will not,” she murmured.
Joe returned to the fireplace and flung himself into one of the big
chairs. “Oh God! you do try a man’s patience!” he exclaimed. “You want
me, and you don’t want me! Where is this going to end?”
“I’m afraid of you,” Elaine said suddenly. She had turned, and was
looking at him somberly. The fear she spoke of was not evident in her
glance.
Joe laughed softly. “That’s flattering,” he said: “for you’re the
bravest woman I know.”
She went a step or two towards him. She seemed to speak by a power
outside herself. “In our maddest moments your eyes are still measuring
me. You never lose yourself. . . . You should not have forced me to
speak of this. I see that all the things I ordinarily say are mere
nonsense—like the noises made by savages to keep devils off. . . . You
have roused a fever in me that is burning me up. . . . But . . . but
. . . I don’t want to have a child. . . .”
“Oh, for Heaven’s sake!” exclaimed Joe, startled, showing his teeth.
The jangling voice recalled her to herself, wincing. She walked unevenly
up and down. “The nonsense that they teach girls!” she murmured. “It
made a rebel of me. I had prudence and obedience and chastity thrust
down my throat until I fell in love with everything that was reckless
and bad. I understood the devil worshippers. That’s how you got
me. . . .”
“I don’t care how I got you,” said Joe with a secret smile.
She came to a stop. Her eyes were widely distended and quite unseeing.
She made vague passes with her hand in the effort to express the
inexpressible. “But all that stuff I laughed at . . . religion . . . all
that stuff . . . is getting back at me . . . I mean may be it is . . .
all kinds of things are working inside me . . . maybe there’s something
in it. . . .”
“You’re talking wildly!” said Joe.
She shook her head. “I never got so close to naming it before . . . the
thing you don’t talk about . . .”
“Come here,” said Joe, half contemptuously.
She shook her head inattentively. “Let me be. . . .”
He stood up. “Come here!” he said, peremptorily.
She looked at him reluctantly—and lost herself. A deep blush overspread
her pale skin; her face became irradiated with a confused and imploring
smile. She went to him slowly; shamed and rapturous.
Joe had dropped back into the big chair. Placing his hands on her
shoulders, he pressed her down to her knees at his feet. “Put your arms
around my neck,” he commanded.
She obeyed. He pressed his lips to hers.
“Now . . . _now_ tell me if there is anything in life that matters
beside this,” he said breathlessly.
“No! No! No!” she whispered passionately. “I want only you!”
“You see, you’ll have to marry me!”
“No, Joe!”
“But I say you shall!”