THE CRISIS
Looking back at that evening as the summer wore on, Stella perceived
that it was the starting point of many things, no one of them definitely
outstanding by itself but bulking large as a whole. Fyfe made his
appeal, and it left her unmoved save in certain superficial aspects. She
was sorry, but she was mostly sorry for herself. And she denied his
premonition of disaster. If, she said to herself, they got no raptures
out of life, at least they got along without friction. In her mind their
marriage, no matter that it lacked what she no less than Fyfe deemed an
essential to happiness, was a fixed state, final, irrevocable, not to be
altered by any emotional vagaries.
No man, she told herself, could make her forget her duty. If it should
befall that her heart, lacking safe anchorage, went astray, that would
be her personal cross--not Jack Fyfe's. _He_ should never know. One
might feel deeply without being moved to act upon one's feelings. So she
assured herself.
She never dreamed that Jack Fyfe could possibly have foreseen in Walter
Monohan a dangerous factor in their lives. A man is not supposed to have
uncanny intuitions, even when his wife is a wonderfully attractive
woman who does not care for him except in a friendly sort of way.
Stella herself had ample warning. From the first time of meeting, the
man's presence affected her strangely, made an appeal to her that no man
had ever made. She felt it sitting beside him in the plunging launch
that day when Roaring Lake reached its watery arms for her. There was
seldom a time when they were together that she did not feel it. And she
pitted her will against it, as something to be conquered and crushed.
There was no denying the man's personal charm in the ordinary sense of
the word. He was virile, handsome, cultured, just such a man as she
could easily have centered her heart upon in times past,--just such a
man as can set a woman's heart thrilling when he lays siege to her. If
he had made an open bid for Stella's affection, she, entrenched behind
all the accepted canons of her upbringing, would have recoiled from him,
viewed him with wholly distrustful eyes.
But he did nothing of the sort. He was a friend, or at least he became
so. Inevitably they were thrown much together. There was a continual
informal running back and forth between Fyfe's place and Abbey's.
Monohan was a lily of the field, although it was common knowledge on
Roaring Lake that he was a heavy stock-holder in the Abbey-Monohan
combination. At any rate, he was holidaying on the lake that summer.
There had grown up a genuine intimacy between Linda and Stella. There
were always people at the Abbeys'; sometimes a few guests at the Fyfe
bungalow. Stella's marvellous voice served to heighten her popularity.
The net result of it all was that in the following three months source
three days went by that she did not converse with Monohan.
She could not help making comparisons between the two men. They stood
out in marked contrast, in manner, physique, in everything. Where Fyfe
was reserved almost to taciturnity, impassive-featured, save for that
whimsical gleam that was never wholly absent from his keen blue eyes,
Monohan talked with facile ease, with wonderful expressiveness of face.
He was a finished product of courteous generations. Moreover, he had
been everywhere, done a little of everything, acquired in his manner
something of the versatility of his experience. Physically he was fit as
any logger in the camps, a big, active-bodied, clear-eyed, ruddy man.
What it was about him that stirred her so, Stella could never determine.
She knew beyond peradventure that he had that power. He had the gift of
quick, sympathetic perception,--but so too had Jack Fyfe, she reminded
herself. Yet no tone of Jack Fyfe's voice could raise a flutter in her
breast, make a faint flush glow in her cheeks, while Monohan could do
that. He did not need to be actively attentive. It was only necessary
for him to be near.
It dawned upon Stella Fyfe in the fullness of the season, when the first
cool October days were upon them, and the lake shores flamed again with
the red and yellow and umber of autumn, that she had been playing with
fire--and that fire burns.
This did not filter into her consciousness by degrees. She had steeled
herself to seeing him pass away with the rest of the summer folk, to
take himself out of her life. She admitted that there would be a gap.
But that had to be. No word other than friendly ones would ever pass
between them. He would go away, and she would go on as before. That was
all. She was scarcely aware how far they had traveled along that road
whereon travelers converse by glance of eye, by subtle intuitions,
eloquent silences. Monohan himself delivered the shock that awakened her
to despairing clearness of vision.
He had come to bring her a book, he and Linda Abbey and Charlie
together,--a commonplace enough little courtesy. And it happened that
this day Fyfe had taken his rifle and vanished into the woods
immediately after luncheon. Between Linda Abbey and Charlie Benton
matters had so far progressed that it was now the most natural thing for
them to seek a corner or poke along the beach together, oblivious to all
but themselves. This afternoon they chatted a while with Stella and then
gradually detached themselves until Monohan, glancing through the
window, pointed them out to his hostess. They were seated on a log at
the edge of the lawn, a stone's throw from the house.
"They're getting on," he said. "Lucky beggars. It's all plain sailing
for them."
There was a note of infinite regret in his voice, a sadness that stabbed
Stella Fyfe like a lance. She did not dare look at him. Something rose
chokingly in her throat. She felt and fought against a slow welling of
tears to her eyes. Before she sensed that she was betraying herself,
Monohan was holding both her hands fast between his own, gripping them
with a fierce, insistent pressure, speaking in a passionate undertone.
"Why should we have to beat our heads against a stone wall like this?"
he was saying wildly. "Why couldn't we have met and loved and been
happy, as we could have been? It was fated to happen. I felt it that day
I dragged you out of the lake. It's been growing on me ever since. I've
struggled against it, and it's no use. It's something stronger than I
am. I love you, Stella, and it maddens me to see you chafing in your
chains. Oh, my dear, why couldn't it have been different?"
"You mustn't talk like that," she protested weakly. "You mustn't. It
isn't right."
"I suppose it's right for you to live with a man you don't love, when
your heart's crying out against it?" he broke out. "My God, do you think
I can't see? I don't have to see things; I can feel them. I know you're
the kind of woman who goes through hell for her conceptions of right and
wrong. I honor you for that, dear. But, oh, the pity of it. Why should
it have to be? Life could have held so much that is fine and true for
you and me together. For you do care, don't you?"
"What difference does that make?" she whispered. "What difference can it
make? Oh, you mustn't tell me these things, I mustn't listen. I
mustn't."
"But they're terribly, tragically true," Monohan returned. "Look at me,
Stella. Don't turn your face away, dear. I wouldn't do anything that
might bring the least shadow on you. I know the pitiful hopelessness of
it. You're fettered, and there's no apparent loophole to freedom. I know
it's best for me to keep this locked tight in my heart, as something
precious and sorrowful. I never meant to tell you. But the flesh isn't
always equal to the task the spirit imposes."
She did not answer him immediately, for she was struggling for a grip on
herself, fighting back an impulse to lay her head against him and cry
her agony out on his breast. All the resources of will that she
possessed she called upon now to still that tumult of emotion that
racked her. When she did speak, it was in a hard, strained tone. But she
faced the issue squarely, knowing beyond all doubt what she had to face.
"Whether I care or not isn't the question," she said. "I'm neither
little enough nor prudish enough to deny a feeling that's big and clean.
I see no shame in that. I'm afraid of it--if you can understand that.
But that's neither here nor there. I know what I have to do. I married
without love, with my eyes wide open, and I have to pay the price. So
you must never talk to me of love. You mustn't even see me, if it can be
avoided. It's better that way. We can't make over our lives to suit
ourselves--at least I can't. I must play the game according to the only
rules I know. We daren't--we mustn't trifle with this sort of a feeling.
With you--footloose, and all the world before you--it'll die out
presently."
"No," he flared. "I deny that. I'm not an impressionable boy. I know
myself."
He paused, and the grip of his hands on hers tightened till the pain of
it ran to her elbows. Then his fingers relaxed a little.
"Oh, I know," he said haltingly. "I know it's got to be that way. I have
to go my road and leave you to yours. Oh, the blank hopelessness of it,
the useless misery of it. We're made for each other, and we have to grin
and say good-by, go along our separate ways, trying to smile. What a
devilish state of affairs! But I love you, dear, and no matter--I--ah--"
His voice flattened out. His hands released hers, he straightened
quickly. Stella turned her head. Jack Fyfe stood in the doorway. His
face was fixed in its habitual mask. He was biting the end off a cigar.
He struck a match and put it to the cigar end with steady fingers as he
walked slowly across the big room.
"I hear the kid peeping," he said to Stella quite casually, "and I
noticed Martha outside as I came in. Better go see what's up with him."
Trained to repression, schooled in self-control, Stella rose to obey,
for under the smoothness of his tone there was the iron edge of command.
Her heart apparently ceased to beat. She tried to smile, but she knew
that her face was tear-wet. She knew that Jack Fyfe had seen and
understood. She had done no wrong, but a terrible apprehension of
consequences seized her, a fear that tragedy of her own making might
stalk grimly in that room.
In this extremity she banked with implicit faith on the man she had
married rather than the man she loved. For the moment she felt
overwhelmingly glad that Jack Fyfe was iron--cool, unshakable. He would
never give an inch, but he would never descend to any sordid scene. She
could not visualize him the jealous, outraged husband, breathing the
conventional anathema, but there were elements unreckonable in that
room. She knew instinctively that Fyfe once aroused would be deadly in
anger and she could not vouch for Monohan's temper under the strain of
feeling. That was why she feared.
So she lingered a second or two outside the door, quaking, but there
arose only the sound of Fyfe's heavy body settling into a leather chair,
and following that the low, even rumble of his voice. She could not
distinguish words. The tone sounded ordinary, conversational. She prayed
that his intent was to ignore the situation, that Monohan would meet him
halfway in that effort. Afterward there would be a reckoning. But for
herself she neither thought nor feared. It was a problem to be faced,
that was all. And so, the breath of her coming in short, quick
respirations, she went to her room. There was no wailing from the
nursery. She had known that.
Sitting beside a window, chin in hand, her lower lip compressed between
her teeth, she saw Fyfe, after the lapse of ten minutes, leave by the
front entrance, stopping to chat a minute with Linda and Charlie Benton,
who were moving slowly toward the house. Stella rose to her feet and
dabbed at her face with a powdered chamois. She couldn't let Monohan go
like that; her heart cried out against it. Very likely they would never
meet again.
She flew down the hall to the living room. Monohan stood just within
the front door, gazing irresolutely over his shoulder. He took a step or
two to meet her. His clean-cut face was drawn into sullen lines, a deep
flush mantled his cheek.
"Listen," he said tensely. "I've been made to feel like--like--Well, I
controlled myself. I knew it had to be that way. It was unfortunate. I
think we could have been trusted to do the decent thing. You and I were
bred to do that. I've got a little pride. I can't come here again. And I
want to see you once more before I leave here for good. I'll be going
away next week. That'll be the end of it--the bitter finish. Will you
slip down to the first point south of Cougar Bay about three in the
afternoon to-morrow? It'll be the last and only time. He'll have you for
life; can't I talk to you for twenty minutes?"
"No," she whispered forlornly. "I can't do that. I--oh,
good-by--good-by."
"Stella, Stella," she heard his vibrant whisper follow after. But she
ran away through dining room and hall to the bedroom, there to fling
herself face down, choking back the passionate protest that welled up
within her. She lay there, her face buried in the pillow, until the
sputtering exhaust of the Abbey cruiser growing fainter and more faint
told her they were gone.
She heard her husband walk through the house once after that. When
dinner was served, he was not there. It was eleven o'clock by the
time-piece on her mantel when she heard him come in, but he did not come
to their room. He went quietly into the guest chamber across the hall.
She waited through a leaden period. Then, moved by an impulse she did
not attempt to define, a mixture of motives, pity for him, a craving for
the outlet of words, a desire to set herself right before him, she
slipped on a dressing robe and crossed the hall. The door swung open
noiselessly. Fyfe sat slumped in a chair, hat pulled low on his
forehead, hands thrust deep in his pockets. He did not even look up. His
eyes stared straight ahead, absent, unseeingly fixed on nothing. He
seemed to be unconscious of her presence or to ignore it,--she could not
tell which.
"Jack," she said. And when he made no response she said again,
tremulously, that unyielding silence chilling her, "Jack."
He stirred a little, but only to take off his hat and lay it on a table
beside him. With one hand pushing back mechanically the straight,
reddish-tinged hair from his brow, he looked up at her and said briefly,
in a tone barren of all emotion:
"Well?"
She was suddenly dumb. Words failed her utterly. Yet there was much to
be said, much that was needful to say. They could not go on with a cloud
like that over them, a cloud that had to be dissipated in the crucible
of words. Yet she could not begin. Fyfe, after a prolonged silence,
seemed to grasp her difficulty. Abruptly he began to speak, cutting
straight to the heart of his subject, after his fashion.
"It's a pity things had to take his particular turn," said he. "But now
that you're face to face with something definite, what do you propose to
do about it?"
"Nothing," she answered slowly. "I can't help the feeling. It's there.
But I can thrust it into the background, go on as if it didn't exist.
There's nothing else for me to do, that I can see. I'm sorry, Jack."
"So am I," he said grimly. "Still, it was a chance we took,--or I took,
rather. I seem to have made a mistake or two, in my estimate of both you
and myself. That is human enough, I suppose. You're making a bigger
mistake than I did though, to let Monohan sweep you off your feet."
There was something that she read for contempt in his tone. It stung
her.
"He hasn't swept me off my feet, as you put it," she cried. "Good
Heavens, do you think I'm that spineless sort of creature? I've never
forgotten I'm your wife. I've got a little self-respect left yet, if I
was weak enough to grasp at the straw you threw me in the beginning. I
was honest with you then. I'm trying to be honest with you now."
"I know, Stella," he said gently. "I'm not throwing mud. It's a damnably
unfortunate state of affairs, that's all. I foresaw something of the
sort when we were married. You were candid enough about your attitude.
But I told myself like a conceited fool that I could make your life so
full that in a little while I'd be the only possible figure on your
horizon. I've failed. I've known for some time that I was going to fail.
You're not the thin-blooded type of woman that is satisfied with
pleasant surroundings and any sort of man. You're bound to run the gamut
of all the emotions, sometime and somewhere. I loved you, and I thought
in my conceit I could make myself the man, the one man who would mean
everything to you."
"Just the same," he continued, "you've been a fool, and I don't see how
you can avoid paying the penalty for folly."
"What do you mean?" she asked.
"You haven't tried to play the game," he answered tensely. "For months
you've been withdrawing into your shell. You've been clanking your
chains and half-heartedly wishing for some mysterious power to strike
them off. It wasn't a thing you undertook lightly. It isn't a
thing--marriage, I mean--that you hold lightly. That being the case, you
would have been wise to try making the best of it, instead of making the
worst of it. But you let yourself drift into a state of mind where
you--well, you see the result. I saw it coming. I didn't need to happen
in this afternoon to know that there were undercurrents of feeling
swirling about. And so the way you feel now is in itself a penalty. If
you let Monohan cut any more figure in your thoughts, you'll pay bigger
in the end."
"I can't help my thoughts, or I should say my feelings," she said
wearily.
"You think you love him," Fyfe made low reply. "As a matter of fact, you
love what you think he is. I daresay that he has sworn his affection by
all that's good and great. But if you were convinced that he didn't
really care, that his flowery protestations had a double end in view,
would you still love him?"
"I don't know," she murmured. "But that's beside the point. I do love
him. I know it's unwise. It's a feeling that has overwhelmed me in a
way that I didn't believe possible, that I had hoped to avoid. But--but
I can't pretend, Jack. I don't want you to misunderstand. I don't want
this to make us both miserable. I don't want it to generate an
atmosphere of suspicion and jealousy. We'd only be fighting about a
shadow. I never cheated at anything in my life. You can trust me still,
can't you?"
"Absolutely," Fyfe answered without hesitation.
"Then that's all there is to it," she replied, "unless--unless you're
ready to give me up as a hopeless case, and let me go away and blunder
along the best I can."
He shook his head.
"I haven't even considered that," he said. "Very likely it's unwise of
me to say this,--it will probably antagonize you,--but I know Monohan
better than you do. I'd go pretty far to keep you two apart--now--for
your sake."
"It would be the same if it were any other man," she muttered. "I can
understand that feeling in you. It's so--so typically masculine."
"No, you're wrong there, dead wrong," Fyfe frowned. "I'm not a
self-sacrificing brute by any means. Still, knowing that you'll only
live with me on sufferance, if you were honestly in love with a man that
I felt was halfway decent, I'd put my feelings in my pocket and let you
go. If you cared enough for him to break every tie, to face the
embarrassment of divorce, why, I'd figure you were entitled to your
freedom and whatever happiness it might bring. But Monohan--hell, I
don't want to talk about him. I trust you, Stella. I'm banking on your
own good sense. And along with that good, natural common sense, you've
got so many illusions. About life in general, and about men. They seem
to have centered about this one particular man. I can't open your eyes
or put you on the right track. That's a job for yourself. All I can do
is to sit back and wait."
His voice trailed off huskily.
Stella put a hand on his shoulder.
"Do you care so much as all that, Jack?" she whispered. "Even in spite
of what you know?"
"For two years now," he answered, "you've been the biggest thing in my
life. I don't change easy; I don't want to change. But I'm getting
hopeless."
"I'm sorry, Jack," she said. "I can't begin to tell you how sorry I am.
I didn't love you to begin with--"
"And you've always resented that," he broke in. "You've hugged that
ghost of a loveless marriage to your bosom and sighed for the real
romance you'd missed. Well, maybe you did. But you haven't found it yet.
I'm very sure of that, although I doubt if I could convince you."
"Let me finish," she pleaded. "You knew I didn't love you--that I was
worn out and desperate and clutching at the life line you threw. In
spite of that,--well, if I fight down this love, or fascination, or
infatuation, or whatever it is,--I'm not sure myself, except that it
affects me strongly,--can't we be friends again?"
"Friends! Oh, hell!" Fyfe exploded.
He came up out of his chair with a blaze in his eyes that startled her,
caught her by the arm, and thrust her out the door.
"Friends? You and I?" He sank his voice to a harsh whisper. "My
God--friends! Go to bed. Good night."
He pushed her into the hall, and the lock clicked between them. For one
confused instant Stella stood poised, uncertain. Then she went into her
bedroom and sat down, her keenest sensation one of sheer relief. Already
in those brief hours emotion had well-nigh exhausted her. To be alone,
to lie still and rest, to banish thought,--that was all she desired.
She lay on her bed inert, numbed, all but her mind, and that traversed
section by section in swift, consecutive progress all the amazing turns
of her life since she first came to Roaring Lake. There was neither
method nor inquiry in this back-casting--merely a ceaseless, involuntary
activity of the brain.
A little after midnight when all the house was hushed, she went into the
adjoining room, cuddled Jack Junior into her arms, and took him to her
own bed. With his chubby face nestled against her breast, she lay there
fighting against that interminable, maddening buzzing in her brain. She
prayed for sleep, her nervous fingers stroking the silky, baby hair.