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’reslaves 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 theyouin 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 ofOctober, 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.
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.
If she would only allow herself to understand what it was that he was offering! He longed to take her in his arms—not the way he had; but as he would cuddle a sick child against his breast to give it comfort. His compassion for her was almost womanly; it was something that he dared not tell her. Compassion from him was the emotion which she would most resent.
It was her pride that made her so poignantly tragic—her pose of being an enviable person. There was no getting behind it except by a brutal statement of facts. The scene which they had surprised in the apartment had staged those facts with ugly vividness. Despite the gayety with which she drugged herself, she must know that her mother’s position made her fair game for the world’s Mr. Daks. Her way of speaking of her as “my beautiful mother” was an acknowledgment, and sounded like a defense.
Her fear of losing her maiden liberty, her dread of the natural responsibilities of marriage, her eagerness to believe the worst of men, her light friendships, her vague, continually postponed ambitions—they were all part of the price she was paying. Her glory in her questionable enfranchisement was the worst part of her penalty; it made what was sad seem romantic, and kept her blind to the better things in the world. She did not want to be rescued from the dangers of her position. She ignored any sacrifice that he might be making and spoke only of the curtailments that love would bring to her. In putting forward her unattempted career as an obstacle, she did not recognize that his accomplished career was in jeopardy while she dallied.
Increasingly since he had landed in New York, his financial outlook had worried him. At the time of sailing he had had seven hundred pounds in the bank; then there were the three hundred pounds per annum from his Beauty Incorporated shares. This, in addition to what he could earn, had looked like affluence by Eden Row standards. But in the last few months he had been spending recklessly. The frenzy which held him prevented work. Commissions from magazines were still uncompleted. His American and English publishers were urging him to let them have a second manuscript. He assured them they should have it, but the manuscript was scarcely commenced. The dread weighed upon him like a nightmare that he had lost his creative faculty. His intellect was paralyzed; he had only one object in living—to win her.
And when he had won her, at the rate at which he was now going, marriage might be impossible. Already he had drawn on his English savings. After accustoming her to a false scale of expenditure, he could scarcely urge retrenchment It would seem to prove all her assertions of the dullness which overtakes a woman when she has placed herself absolutely in a man’s power. At this stage there was no chance of curtailing his generosity. So long as they were both in New York the endless round of theatres, taxis and restaurants must continue. He could not confess to her how it was draining his resources. It would seem like accusing her of avarice and himself of poverty. Poverty and the loss of beauty were the two calamities which filled her heart with the wildest panic.
Like a thunderstorm that had spent itself, the clamor of argument died down. It left him with a lucid quietness. Again she lay hushed in his embrace; her lips shuddered beneath his pressure. That moment of dearness, more than any ceremony of God or man, had bound him to her. It had made him sure of subtle shades of fineness in her character which she refused to reveal to him yet His love should outlast her wilfulness. He would wait for years, but he would win her. The day would come when she would awake to her need of him. Meanwhile he would make himself a habit—what the landscape was to the old man at Baveno—adding link upon link to her chain of memories, so that in every day when she looked back, there would be some kindness to remind her of him.
A thought occurred. He would put his chances to the test. He fetched a pack of cards from his trunk and drew up to the desk. Having shuffled them, he spread them out face-downwards. If he picked a heart, he would many her within the year. When he found with a thrill of dismay that it was a spade, he changed his bargain and agreed to give himself three chances. The next two were hearts. That encouraged him. He played on for hours in the silent room—played feverishly, as though his soul depended on it He craved for certainty. When luck ran against him, he made his test more lenient till the odds were in his favor. Whatever the cards said, he refused to take no for an answer. Morning found him with the lights still burning, his shoulders crouched forward, his head pillowed on his arms.
All that day he waited to hear from her. He could not bring himself to telephone her. After what had happened, delicacy kept him from intruding. In the afternoon he sent her flowers to provide her with an excuse for calling him up. She let the excuse pass unnoticed. Herstrategicfaculty for silence was again asserting itself. He lived over all the events of the previous day, marking them in sequence hour by hour, finding them doubly sweet in remembrance. The longest day of his life had ended by the time he crept to bed.
Next morning he searched his mail for a letter from her. There was nothing. He was sitting in his room trying to work—it was about lunch-time—when the telephone tinkled.
“Hulloa,” a voice said which he did not recognize, “are you Mr. Gurney, the great author?—Well, something terrible’s happened; you’ve not spoken to your girl for more than twenty-four hours. It’s killing her.” A laugh followed and the voice changed to one he knew. “Don’t you think I’m very gracious, after all your punishment?—Where am I?—No, try another guess. You’re not very psychic or you’d know. I’m within—let me count—forty seconds of you. I’m here, in a booth of the Brevoort, downstairs.—Eh! What’s that?—Will I stop to lunch with you? Why, of course. That’s what I’ve come for.”
It was extraordinary how his world brightened. The ache had gone out of it Finances, work, nothing mattered. The future withdrew its threat “I’m wearing my Nell Gwynn face,” she laughed as he took her hands. Then they stood together silent, careless of strangers passing, smiling into each other’s eyes.
“You silly Meester Deek,” she whispered, “why did you keep away if you wanted me so badly?”
“Because——” and there he ended. He couldn’t speak to her of the ugliness they had seen together; she looked so girlish and innocent and fresh. It was hateful that they should share such a memory.
“I’m not proud when I’ve done wrong,” she said. Her eyes winked and twinkled beneath their lashes. “And it’s rather fun to have to ask forgiveness when you know you’ve been forgiven beforehand.”
He led her into the white room with its many mirrors. Quickly forestalling the waiter, he helped her off with her furs and jacket. She glanced up at him as he did it. “Rather mean of you to do the poor man out of that It’s about the nearest a waiter ever comes to romance.”
When he had taken his seat opposite to her, she questioned him, “Why did you act so queerly?”
“Queerly!”
“You know. After the night before last?”
He wished she would let him forget it “I thought you might not want me.”
“Want you!” She reached across the table and touched his hand. “You do think unkind thoughts. If I did say something cruel, it wasn’t meant—not in my heart I’m afraid you think I’m fickle.”
He delayed her hand as she was withdrawing it “If I did, I shouldn’t love you the way I do, Princess.”
A waiter intruded to take their order. It seemed to Teddy that ever since Long Beach, waiters had been clearing away his tenderest passages as though it were as much a part of their duties as to change the courses.
When they were left alone, she brought matters to a head. “I suppose you got that strange notion because—because of what I said. Poor King! He did make me angry, and yesterday he came to us so penitent and sorry. We had to forgive him.—You’re looking as though you thought we oughtn’t But it doesn’t do to be harsh. We all slip up sooner or later, and the day’s always coming when we’ll have to ask forgiveness ourselves.”
He stared at her in undisguised amazement Was this merely carelessness or a charity so divine that it knew no bounds?
“Oh, I know what you’re thinking,” she continued; “you’re thinking we’re lax. That’s what people thought about Jesus when he talked to the woman of Samaria. Mr. Dak’s quite a good little man, if he did make a mistake. He’s always been understanding until this happened.”
She described as a mistake something that had appealed to him as tragedy. Had her innocence prevented her from guessing the truth? Perhaps it was he who was distorting facts.
“You seem to be accusing me of self-righteousness when you speak of other people being understanding. I’m not self-righteous—really I’m not, Desire—I do wish you’d believe that. Can’t you see why I’m not so lenient as some of your friends? It’s because I’m so anxious to protect you. If people are too lenient, it’s usually because they don’t want to be criticized themselves. But when a man’s in love with a girl, he doesn’t like to see her doing things that he might encourage her to do if he didn’t respect her and if they were only out for a good time together.”
She had frowned while he was speaking. When he ended, she lifted her gray eyes. “I do understand. I think I understand much more than you’ve said. But please don’t judge me—that’s what I’m afraid of. I know I’m all wrong—wrong and stupid in so many directions.—I’ve only found out how wrong,” her voice dropped, “since I’ve known you.” He felt like weeping. He had judged her; in spite of his resolutions to let his love be blind, he had been judging her. Every time he had judged her, her intuition had warned her. And there she sat abasing herself that she might treat him with kindness.
He became passionate in her defense. “You’re not wrong. I wouldn’t have anything, not a single thing in your life altered—nothing, Desire, from—from the very first. You’re the dearest, sweetest——”
She pressed a finger to her lips and pointed to the mirror. He caught sight of his strained expression, and remembered they were in public.
While he recovered himself, she did the talking. “I’m not the dearest, sweetest anything; you don’t see straight. Some day you’ll put on your spectacles. You’ll see too much that’s bad then. That’s what Horace has done.—He sailed for England this morning.”
“What’s that? D’you mean he’s broken with——”
She nodded. “Too bad, isn’t it? She didn’t much want him to come to America, but she’s fearfully cut up now he’s left She was counting on having such good times with him at Christmas. He didn’t explain anything; he just went. And——” She made a pyramid of her hands over which she watched him. “D’you know, she owns up now that some day she might have married him.”
“But she never told him?”
Desire looked away. “A girl never tells a man that till the last moment. He got huffy because she was cross with him for taking her to the country. He didn’t know that when a woman dares to be angry with a man, it’s quite often a sign that she’s in love with him.”
“Is it?” He asked the question eagerly. Desire had been cross; this might be the key to her conduct.
She caught his meaning and smiled mysteriously. “Yes—quite often.” Then, speaking slowly, “I guess most misunderstandings happen between men and women because they’re not honest with each other.”
The tension broke. “Fancy calling you a man and me a woman,” she laughed. She bent forward across the table. “We both ought to be spanked—you most especially.”
“Why me especially?”
“A little boy like you coming to a little girl like me and pretending to speak seriously of marriage.—But let’s be honest with each other always. Do you promise?”
“I promise.”
“Then, I’ll tell you something. I think it’s splendid of you to go on loving me when you know that I’m not loving you in return.”
“And I think it’s splendid of you to let me go on loving.”
“But do I?” She eyed him mockingly. Then, with one of those sudden changes to wistfulness, “What Horace has done has made me frightened. I’m afraid—and I’m only telling you because we’ve promised to be honest—I’m so afraid that you’ll leave me, and that then I may begin to care. But you’d never be unkind like that, would you?” His hand stole out and met hers in denial. They kept on assuring each other that, whatever had befallen other people’s happiness, theirs was unassailable.
They had dawdled through lunch. When at last they rose the room was nearly empty.
“What next?”
She clapped her hands. “I know. Make this day different from all the others. Let’s pretend.”
“Pretend what?”
“You’ll see.”
On the Avenue they hailed a hansom and drove the long length of New York, through the Park to the Eighties on the West Side. Then she told him: they were to examine apartments, pretending they wanted to rent one. Wherever they saw a sign up they stopped the cabby and went in to make inquiries. Sometimes she talked Cockney. Sometimes she was a little French girl, who had to have everything that the janitor said translated to her by Teddy. She only once broke down—when the janitor, as ill-luck would have it, was a Frenchman; then they beat an ignominious retreat, laughing and covered with confusion.
It was a very jolly game to play with a girl you loved—this pretending that you were seeking a nest. It was all the jollier because she would not own that that was the underlying excitement of their pretense. As they passed from room to room, and when no one was looking, he would slip his arm about her and kiss her unwilling cheek. “Wait till we’re in the hansom,” she would whisper. “Oh, Meester Deek, you do embarrass me.”
Try as he would, he could not disguise the fact that he was in love with her. A light shone in his eyes. This seemed no game, but a natural preliminary to something that must happen. She was indignant when the custodians of the apartments took it for granted that they were an engaged couple. She ungloved her hand that they might see for themselves that the ring was lacking. “It’s for my mother,” she explained. “Yes, I like the apartment; but I can’t decide till my mother has seen it” She referred to Teddy pointedly as “My friend.” The janitors looked knowing. They smiled sentimentally and put her conduct down to extreme bashfulness.
That afternoon was a sample of many that followed. In ingenious and unacknowledged ways they were continually playing this game that they were married. Frequently it commenced with his presumption that she shared his purse, and that it was his right to give her presents. If a dress in a window caught her fancy, he would say, “How’d you like me to buy you that?”
“But you can’t. It isn’t done in the best families.”
“But I could if I were your husband.”
“If! Ah, yes!”
Then, for the fun of it, she would enter and try on the dress. Once he surprised her. She had fitted on a green tweed suit-far more girlish than anything that she usually wore-and the shop-woman was appealing to him for his approval. When Desire wasn’t looking, he nodded and paid for it in cash.
“Very pretty,” Desire said, not knowing it had been purchased, “but a little too expensive. Thank you for your trouble.”
At dinner, long after the store had closed, he told her.
“But I can’t accept things from you like that. It’s very sweet of you, but the suit’ll go back to-morrow. Even if I were willing, mother wouldn’t allow it.”
But Vashti only smiled. She was giving him his chance. It pleased her to regard them as children.
“Of course it isn’t the thing to do, but if it gives Teddy pleasure——”
So when the suit came home it was not returned. When she met him in the day time she invariably wore it He knew that her motive was to make him happy. The little tweed suit gave him an absurd sense of warmth about the heart whenever he thought of it. It was another bond between them.
“I wonder whether my fattier was at all like you—whether he was always buying things for my beautiful mother. It is strange to have a father and to know so little of him. You’re the only person, Meester Deek, I ever talk to about him. That’s a compliment. D’you think——” she hesitated, “don’t you think some day you and I might bring them together?”
It became one of the secret dreams they shared. He told her about the letter he had written to Hal and never sent.
“Don’t you ever mention me to your father and mother?”
It was an awkward question.
“You don’t Why not?”
He wasn’t sure why he didn’t He hadn’t dared to admit to himself why he didn’t. His world was out of focus. He supposed that every man’s world grew out of focus when he fell in love. But the supposition wasn’t quite satisfying; his conscience often gave him trouble.
“But why not?” she persisted. “Are you ashamed of me?”
“Ashamed of you!” he laughed desperately. “What is there to tell? If we were engaged———- But so long as we’re not, they wouldn’t understand. I’m waiting till I can tell them that.”
“I wish they knew,” she pouted. “I wish it wasn’t my fault that you were stopping in America. I wish so many things. I wouldn’t do a thing to prevent you if you wanted to sail to-morrow. You won’t ever blame me, will you?”
It always came back to that, her fear that he might accuse her of having led him on.
One day he made a discovery. He had gone to the apartment to call for her earlier than he was expected. She was out Lying on the table under some needle-work was a book which he recognized. He picked it up; it was the copy of Life Till Twenty-One which he had bought for her after the ride from Glastonbury, the receipt of which she had never acknowledged. He had invented all manner of reasons for her silence: that she was annoyed with him for having written about her; that she didn’t take him seriously as an artist. On opening it he found that not only had it been read, but carefully annotated throughout. The passages which referred most explicitly to herself were underscored. Against his more visionary flights she had set query marks. They winked at him humorously up and down the margins. They were like her voice, counseling with laughing petulance, “Now, do be sensible.”