XVIIIWhen she at last went to sleep it was like a ship going down in a storm. But she slept nine hours without a dream; and she awakened in that buoyant mood with which perfect health of body will triumph over whatever heaviness of soul. Her troubles seemed largely fanciful, were certainly anticipatory; she would push steadily forward, and all would be well.When she descended, the two men had breakfasted and gone, and Winchie was out on the lawn playing at snow man with the Donaldson children and their governess. Helen, still at table with coffee and newspaper, greeted her so honest of eye and of voice that she was altogether ashamed of her thoughts of evening and night before. Also, Helen did not look especially well in the mornings. Sleep swelled her face, her eyelids; her skin inclined to be cloudy; her hair hung rather stringily about her brow. And in négligée the defect of too much bust and too short waist seemed worse than it was. "I must see that she gets a proper corset," thought Courtney. "Like so many women, she doesn't realize that corset is three fourths of the battle for figure." She studied Helen with an artist's eye and an artist's enthusiasm for bringing out the best, the beautiful. "Yes," she said to herself, "Helen can be made a perfect wonder for looks. Imusttry it." And then she knew she had never really intended to send Helen away. She who had suffered so much from the tyranny of dependence—it would be impossible for her to exercise that tyranny over another. "I don't want to send her away. But if I did want to, I couldn't, no matter what happened. I might think I would, and try to compel myself to do it. But when it came to the pinch, I'd remember—and I couldn't. No other human being shall ever know through me the sort of humiliation I bear."She was ashamed of her fears about Basil, too. "As if he hadn't known lots of women. As if our love were just the ordinary thing that passes for love. And Helen'll help brighten things up—this house must not and shall not be gloomy." Then too—and this idea she did not definitely express to herself—Helen would give her and Basil more freedom by pairing off with Richard when they were all together.Still more cheering were the thoughts that came from her mail. From the bank's monthly statement she learned that Richard had for the first time fixed an allowance sufficient for the position she was expected to maintain. There is a minimum amount on which a family can live in a certain style; every dollar below that means pinch, every dollar above it luxury. Courtney had at times been hard put to keep from going into debt. Many a woman, bred as she had been, as most American women are—with small practical knowledge, with only the silly useless "education" the usual school and college give, with no notion of values or mistaken notions, with contempt for realities and reverence for inanities—has in the same circumstances become hopelessly involved. But whatever the shortcomings in Mrs. Benedict's system of bringing up her children, she had certainly inculcated a horror of debt. And as human life and character are grounded upon material things if they have any substantial foundation at all, this dread of debt had been and continued to be one of the main factors in Courtney's development. It is amazing how far a single cardinalrealprinciple, such as a fixed aversion to debt, will go toward keeping any human being straight, toward bringing them back to sense of the just and the right, when they have been swerved by emotion or irresistible gale of circumstance. But in human affairs all the truly great powers are forces so quiet and move so close to the ground that their existence is unsuspected; or if pointed out, it is denied and scouted, and some windy fake of philosophy or politics or superstition is hailed as the god in the machine. Instead of going into debt and playing the "refined, cultured lady," Courtney had set about learning to economize without privation or meanness or tawdry pretense, acquiring the supreme art of living—the getting of its full value for every dollar. It had been a hard schooling; she began to realize how valuable, how invaluable. With this additional allowance Richard was now making, she saw what wonders of improvement she could work—she who had been getting out of the smaller income what many women in Wenona, spending four and five times as much, had not got. Certainly, the sky was brightening."If you haven't taken a dislike to me," Helen was saying, "and are going to let me stay a while, I'll make myself useful. In fact, I'll not stay if I don't. I must pay my way, and I can't pay in money.""Whatever you like," said Courtney, "if you'll only stay. We want you. We need you."Helen never forgot the warmth that cordial genuine tone sent through her. She didn't try to put her thanks into words, for there are no words for such real and deep feeling. She simply looked at Courtney—a look that more than rewarded her. After a moment she went on in an unsteady voice, "I could help—with Winchie. I took a course in kindergarten work at Tecumseh—and in housekeeping, too. They really teach things—real things—there. Then, I sew beautifully—the finest kind of sewing.""So I see," said Courtney, looking at the sacque Helen was wearing. She did not like the sacque, because she did not like flummery and elaboration—and Helen had the poor girl's weakness for both. But she did admire the quality of the work that had been put into it."You must let me do some sewing for you. Do you like fine underclothes?""Crazy about them.""I knew you were," said Helen who, judging by Courtney's dress and light way of talking, had already clearly and finally made up her mind that the verdict of "serious people" as to her cousin was just—a sweet, light, pretty creature, fond of dress and all the frivolities. "Just you wait! Mrs. Hargrave up at our town brought back some things from Paris—perfectly wonderful! All the women were excited about them. Well, I know how to make them—and where the goods can be got. Not expensive, either.""I'll get the material," said Courtney, "and you can make some for both of us.""Then I took a course in fitting. Don't judge by the things I wear. I somehow can't fit myself.""It's the corset," said Courtney."I suppose so. I could never afford to have them made—or to buy the best ready-made kind. But I can do well for others. I can teach your dressmaker how to behave herself. That'll save you a lot of time and worry, won't it?""And work. Now, I have to remake most of my things."Courtney began to respect Helen. The evening before, the girl, bent upon making a favorable impression, had been a wholly different person. She had seemed to Courtney stuffed to bursting with the familiar, everywhere admired and nowhere admirable "idealism" that chokes thought with cant and cumbers action with pretense. She had displayed a disquieting fondness for the "cultured" drivel about art and literature, about morals and manners, that destroys sincerity and simplicity's strength, and creates the doleful dreary lack of individuality characteristic of the so-called educated classes throughout the world. Courtney had always had the courage to confess that these honored frauds seemed to her ridiculous and wearisome. She assumed that Richard's and Basil's admiring attention, as Helen "showed off" after the manner of young girls, was politeness—or tribute to Helen's good looks. Now that she had discovered real virtues in Helen, she was not alarmed; for, she had learned that men are not interested in such virtues in young women but only in surface charms that stimulate their sex illusions. "It'd take a man who had been married at least once to appreciate Helen," thought she.By the time Courtney finished breakfast, she had explained her plans and Helen had made many intelligent suggestions. They lost no time in getting to work. The morning flew, dinner was ready before they had given it a thought. Yes, Helen was a genuine addition, was just what she needed. "Yet I've no doubt Basil'll think her stupid once he gets used to her beauty and her sweetly pretty romantic pose for the matrimonal game."Dick and Basil came, and the merry party of the night before was repeated. Courtney noted with pleasure that Dick and Helen had taken a fancy to each other. Without her realizing it, this was a thorough test of her absolute apartness from him; for, many a woman who is not in love with her husband, who actively dislikes him, will yet be furiously jealous of him—and by no means entirely from the sordid motive of fear lest his being attracted elsewhere will end in lessening her own portion of the income. Dick showed that he thought Helen, tall of stature and serious looking, an appreciative listener to his discourses on chemistry; and Helen's manner was indeed well calculated to deceive—a man. After dinner Dick led her up to his study further to explain some things they had been discussing. Winchie hurried away to resume play with the Donaldsons, their governess having come for him—and Courtney and Basil were free."It seems too good to be true," said Basil. "How much better this is—in every way—than what we've been condemning each other to.... Courtney, I did a very indiscreet thing last night. I came to your window—climbed up by a ladder Jimmie had forgotten to lock up in the woodshed."Courtney, rosy red, lowered her head."I don't wonder you're angry. I'll never do it again. When we have such happiness as this, we must do nothing—nothing—to endanger it. And I want to say, you were right about—about what's best for us. The very resolve to try has made everything seem entirely different. I'm not ashamed when I look at Richard. I can meet his eyes. And with your help I think I can wait patiently—and hope! ... Don't you think it possible those two might fall in love?"She was startled, then fascinated by the idea. "Why not? If they only would!""It's just possible—barely possible." They sat silent, reflecting on this new hope. Presently Basil went on, "They're both very serious minded. And Miss March would be a real companion for him. She's thoroughly intellectual, has quite a remarkable mind—more like a man's."At "intellectual" Courtney thought he was joking. She began to smile, rather reluctantly—for, she did not like to laugh at so sweet and honest a girl as Helen, even with one so near to her, so like another self. Then his expression warned her that he was in earnest, that he really regarded Helen's "cultured" conversation as an indication of intelligence, did not see that it was merely education of an elementary and commonplace sort—the sort the colleges, those wholesale dealers in ready-made mental clothes, dressed out all minds in, so that usually one could tell a college man just as one could tell a ready-made suit. It was at her face to laugh at him. What an instance of woman's good looks blinding susceptible man to the truth about her internal furnishing, as different from the real thing as a hotel parlor from the drawing-room of a person of taste and individuality. But she did not laugh; that would have seemed meanness toward Helen—and Courtney, no lenient critic of her own character, rather suspected herself of a sly ungenerous envy of Helen's stature."Yes," pursued Basil, "Miss March has a remarkable mind. But I'm afraid there's no hope—about her and him. You see, she's not at all that sort of girl. She'd rather die than commit any impropriety—that is, I mean of course," he stammered, "she's horribly prim."Courtney would have thought nothing of it, had he not stumbled and hastened on to explain. But that agitated, apologetic embarrassment changed "she'd rather die than commit any impropriety" from a commonplace into a tribute to Helen which was a slur upon herself. For her love's sake she resisted the temptation to pretend not to have heard or felt. "You like that sort of thing in a woman, don't you?" said she, with a lift of the eyebrows, those deep notes in her voice ominous."In Miss March—yes," blundered he. "That is, in a young girl." He halted, burst out desperately, "You're always suspecting me of not respecting you."There began to gather in Courtney an emotion that terrified her. It was not anger; it was not shame. It seemed, rather, a sort of dread—though of what she did not know—did not wish to know. "Please, no protests," she said hurriedly. "Let's drop the subject.""I do respect you," he said, doggedly. "But if I didn't"—there, he looked at her—"I feel for you something that's so much more than respect—I love you."She drew in her breath sharply, and her eyes gleamed and glistened as they opened wide. She had a way of opening her eyes upon him that made him feel as if he were standing on a high place and about to plunge dizzily into the sea at the call of a mermaid. The silence that followed was interrupted—rudely it seemed to them—by the return of Helen and Dick."I need somebody in addition to you, Gallatin, to help out down at the shop," said Dick, "and Helen is going to try.""If Cousin Courtney is willing," said Helen. "She may need me here, as I told you."Courtney had been standing with her fingers on the edge of the chimney-piece, gazing between her arms into the fire. She slowly turned and regarded Richard. Basil and Helen working together!"Oh, no, she doesn't need you here," asserted Vaughan. And catching Courtney's eye, he glanced from Basil to Helen and winked.Courtney seemed not to see. "Helen doesn't want to go down there," said she. "Richard imagines, if people listen politely to his talk about chemistry, that they're as interested as he.""Really I'd like it," said Helen, a good deal of nervousness in her enthusiasm."She could try it anyhow," urged Vaughan. "We need some one—don't we, Basil?""Yes," said Basil. "You remember, I suggested you ought to ask Mrs. Courtney to take a hand.""Courtney!" Vaughan laughed gayly. "She has no fancy for anything serious. Now, Helen is masculine minded.""Not a bit," declared Helen, much agitated by such an accusation, in presence of an eligible young man. "I'm so much a woman that I'm what's called a woman's woman.""Helen prefers to stay here," said Courtney. "So, I thinkI'lltry."Richard stared and frowned.She smiled at Basil. "Richard is getting broad minded," she went on slowly, selecting her words. "A short time ago the idea of a woman in that laboratory of his would have upset him quite. I remember, when we were first married, I made the most desperate efforts to get him to let me help. He was finally quite rude about it." She spoke with no suggestion of resentment; and, indeed, that time seemed so remote, so like a part of another life or another person's life that she felt no resentment."I'm sure—we'll—both—be glad to have you," stammered Basil. He was confused before the instinct-born thought that those few apparently simple words of hers, so quietly and so good-humoredly spoken, were in fact the story of the matrimonial ruin he had found when he came—and was profiting by."I'll come down to-morrow," Courtney went on. "Helen can look after things here."Helen could not conceal her relief; when the men were gone she said: "I'm so glad you got me out of that. Dick would have discovered what a stupid I am in about one hour, and he'd have despised me. I'd hate that, as I think he's wonderful. How proud you must be of him. Of course, Basil is very sweet—andsucha gentleman—and how well he does dress! But Dick— They're not in the same class.""No," said Courtney.Just then Vaughan came hurrying in. "I forgot something I wanted to say to you, my dear," he began. "Come in here——"Helen took the hint and hastened away. Vaughan went on, "Why on earth didn't you help me?"Courtney looked interrogative. She felt a curious impersonal anger against him for having blunderingly interfered in her affairs."Didn't you see," explained Richard somewhat irritably, "I had it all fixed to bring those two together?""How dull of me!""It's not too late. All you have to do is back out and send her.""And have her exhibit herself before him at her worst. And get him sick of the very sight of her." Richard began to look foolish. Courtney went on in the same tone of light mockery: "If you want a girl to marry a man, or a man a girl, you mustn't let them see too much of each other. If possible, make it hard for them to get at each other." The emerald eyes were mockingly mirthful now. "No such love-inducer in the world as holding two people apart. And when two can see each other freely—to their heart's content—and satiation—why—" She finished with a shrug, her eyes looking straight into his."All right. You women know each other best," said he, uncomfortable, without being able to locate the cause."Helen will stay at home, like the homebody she is," pursued Courtney. "And I'll come to help you. I've had it in mind for several days.""You're not in earnest about that!" cried Vaughan in alarm. "Why, what'd you do there? You'd be in the way.""More than Helen?""Frankly—yes," said Richard bluntly. "As I said before, serious things interest her. You know, I dislike that sort of thing in a woman—am glad to see that you've gotten entirely over it, as I knew you would. But I could have put up with it—for a while—to help Helen to a good husband and Basil to a fine wife. It wouldn't have taken long—at least, I thought not. I admit I was probably wrong, and you right.""Well—now that I've said I'd come, I'll come," said Courtney. "Helen'll take most of the detail here off my hands.""If you really want to come—" said Dick, reluctant. "I suppose—after what I've said— Well, you can come for a few days."Courtney was looking into the fire. Not for a "few days" but for as long as Basil worked with those dangerous chemicals. If anything happened—they would be together. Richard was looking at her; but he thought it was the fire light that was giving her the strange, somehow terrible expression which yet enhanced her beauty and her charm."How serious you look," said he. "Really, quite tragic—in that light.""Yes, it must be the way the light falls," replied she. "Or is it because I've mislaid my pet powder rag?"Next morning as soon as Courtney dispatched her household routine she went down to the Smoke House and appeared before Richard in his laboratory for the first time since that morning after the homecoming, long, long ago in that other life. With a platinum rod he was slowly stirring some fiery mixture of a dark purple color in a big iron crucible. She saw that the fumes were poisonous, as his nose and mouth were protected by a respirator. As on the previous visit she stood silent in the doorway watching him. She had long since passed the stage of comparisons and contrasts; and her mind was altogether upon the present and the future, as an intelligent young mind is extremely apt to be. So, she was not thinking of that previous visit, but was simply interested in what he was doing—in his work, which she had now resolved, with an experienced woman's determination, to make her own work also, no matter what opposition she might encounter. Her achievements in house and gardens, in bringing up Winchie, in breaking through the barriers of moral convention so powerful round a woman born and bred as she had been—these feats had wonderfully developed her will, had replaced shyness and timidity with quiet self-confidence.When the contents of the crucible cooled and he took off the respirator, she spoke. "I see you've run up a partition."He glanced at her with a frown—not severe but irritated, as at the persistent naughtiness of a sweet and charming child. "Oh, you've come—have you? ... Yes—the partition gives Basil and me each his own shop. I like to work alone, whenever it's possible."She advanced calmly, indifferent to his unfriendliness. "Then you don't want me to helpyou?" She put all her diplomacy of tone and manner into that little speech. She knew how much depended upon this "entering wedge"—this getting tolerated within those walls."What a whimsical creature you are!" Dick was still vexed, but half laughing, too. She was so delicate and graceful, so fascinating to the eye; and she seemed to him absurdly, quaintly out of place there. "Basil!" he called. "Gallatin!"Gallatin, in a blouse, rubber apron and gloves appeared from the other part of the shop."Well—here's the—the 'prentice," said Dick. "You're not busy nowadays. Take charge of her.""It'll be a great pleasure, I'm sure," he stammered. He looked about as uncomfortable at sight of her as had Richard. Demurely she followed him into his compartment. As the partition did not extend to the ceiling, they had to content themselves with an exchange of eloquent glances. Then, taking the tone of gentleman chemist to not overbright and densely ignorant lady visitor at a laboratory, he began to explain to her the names and uses of things, and to demonstrate how to use them.For the entire morning he talked and illustrated, thoroughly enjoying himself at making a fine impression with his display of superior knowledge. He told her little she did not already know. But she was not so tactless as to spoil his pleasure or hurt his vanity. She listened and tried; and when he complimented her on her quickness in learning, she showed delight at being praised. In the afternoon he allowed her to practice his teachings unassisted—set her at weighing a little nitrate of potassium precipitate in the gold and ivory and aluminum balances. She had done this sort of things a hundred times, but was meek under his elaborations of cautioning and explaining."I worked a lot in laboratories at school," said she ingenuously, when his guidance became a little tiresome. "It's beginning to come back to me."He smiled in a way that reminded her of Richard. "All right. Do the best you can," said he. "We'll not expect much of you for the present. I'm afraid you'll soon give up."She looked at him. "I'm here to stay," said she, "You'll not get rid of me.""But the work's very hard—not at all feminine.""That suits me. For, I'm not at all feminine, myself—what men mean by feminine."He laughed, went about his own business. As she sat at the balances, her whole mind on the needle she was watching through the reading glass, she felt herself caught from behind. She turned her laughing face upward and backward, and they kissed. "Isn't it splendid!" he exclaimed under his breath. "Yes—you must stay." It had been part of her plan of life that they should never caress. Suddenly she realized how impossible this rule was—and how foolish. On occasions—such occasions as this joy in the unexpected kindness of fate—the rule must be suspended."How long it's been!" he said in a low voice. "Not since early September have I kissed you—and this is almost February."She glanced warningly toward the top of the partition."Away at the other end," Basil assured her, "and doing something that can't be left an instant for an hour or more.""Well then—" She blushed, hesitated, gave him a passionate, longing look. "One more kiss—and we go to work."He seated himself and drew her to his lap. With their heads close together, they talked—of anything, of everything, of nothing—and hardly knew what they were saying—and cared not at all. "Oh, the happiness of it," she murmured. "And we are to work side by side, too. It seems a dream. I can't believe it.""And soon it will be spring again, and we shall be a little freer.""Be patient until I get everything settled," she answered, "and we shall be free almost all the time. I have thought it out.""You think of everything.""I think of nothing but you—always you," she answered. "What have I but our love? I want to make the house comfortable, your apartment comfortable, myself attractive—all, so that love will never begin to think of taking flight.""Flight!" He laughed softly. "How absurd! Can't you feel that I'm just wrapped up in you?"She touched his tight encircling arms. "I can feel that I'm just wrapped up in you," she retorted. "Now, let me go. I am not to keep you from the work—or you me.""Not just yet.""Yes"—firmly. "You don't take me any more seriously than Richard does. But I don't in the least care. If I am serious, what does it matter whether anyone thinks so or not?" She laughed a little. "And I'm feminine enough, I'll admit, to want to be what the man who wants me wants me to be."He was not listening. He held her more tightly, and she knew what was coming before he began to speak. "Let me come to-night, Courtney. Just this once. I simply want to be alone with you——""Not yet," she replied. "Don't let's tempt each other to risk years of happiness for a frightened moment." And, afraid she would yield if he kept on urging, she abruptly freed herself and sent him back to his seat.An hour, and he came to her again. "I've been doing nothing but watch you, and you haven't looked round once.""This work is interesting," replied she—and it was the simple truth."No—not once!""What a good example I'm setting you. I always used to like chemistry. And I was a harum-scarum girl then. Now, I see I'm going to be tremendously fond of it.""Courtney—I can't stand—our—our compact. I simply can't. I feel as if you had thrust me out of your life. And— Have you no memory, sweetheart? Courtney, we're only human beings, after all. And we've the right. Aren't you my wife?""Don't tempt me, Basil," she answered with a sigh. "Do you suppose I don't feel it? Sometimes I get to thinking what might be— But I will not! You do not wish it." And she glanced meaningly at the partition."You are mine!" he whispered, moved by the reminder but not abashed. "If I had never known love in its fullness, I might be able to endure this cold, repellent pretense of virtue—for, it's nothing but a flimsy pretense. Courtney, if you love me——""Is your love only—that!""If you loved me," he repeated, "you'd not calculate so puritanically. If I weren't seeing you, dear, I could bear it. But seeing you all the time—touching you—kissing you—Courtney, Courtney, how can you make me, and yourself too, suffer so needlessly? If you really love, how can you keep me out of your inmost life—as if I were not everything to you?""I explained to you——""Explained! Explained!" he said, impatiently. "We explain and explain, but it's all sophistry. The truth is—what? That we are lovers. And, if our love is a sin, why not take all its reward since we'll have to take all its punishment?""Don't harass me now," she begged, agitated and trembling."Harass you!" He drew away offendedly. "I thought I was pleading for you, as well as for myself. If I am not, please forget what I said.""I didn't mean that!""Then I may come to-night—or you to me?"She gave him a sad, pleading look. "Not to-night, dear. Not just yet. Wemustwait till things are going quietly in a routine.""How easily you put us off!""Basil!—Please!"He stared sulkily out of the window. "It does sting my pride that you care so much less than I. It does make me—almost doubt.""Not so loud!""You don't realize how far away he is, and how absorbed.... I take back all I said." And he straightened himself coldly and went to his own part of the room.A moment, and she followed him. "You are offended, Basil.""No—hurt."She sighed. "I will come to-night.""You do not wish to come!""To be honest, no. I should feel—" She hesitated. She wished to be frank; but how could she be, when he was in that mood of doubt? How could she explain again that, in some respects, she loathed the memory of the times they had been stealthily together—the alarms, the narrow escapes from discovery—the commonness of it all—like those low intrigues that get into the newspapers, to make coarse mouths water and vulgar eyes sparkle? If she tried to tell him, he would misunderstand. "Not just yet," she went on. "I'm in a queer mood—not myself. You——"She was so tender, so loving, so deeply distressed that, in shame and contrition, he embraced her. "I'm sorry I said anything. But you'll understand. How can I help longing for you? It's your own fault—you beautiful, wonderfulwoman!"And their first clash ended in kisses, in serenity restored, with him saying—and thinking—"How much braver and better you are than I! Yours is the love that makes a man stronger and decenter."Her look was eloquent of gratitude and happiness. But the happiness in it was forced, at least in part, was rather what she felt she ought to feel than what she actually did feel—as is so often the case. And she went back to work with a certain heaviness of heart—and a foreboding. The slightest alarm, however fanciful, was enough to call up the specter of those months of loneliness and despair after he left. That specter haunted her, was in her mind the fixed idea that becomes an obsession. She knew that to quiet it, she would if necessary stop at nothing. "I can never give him up again. I'd do anything—anything—rather than even risk it." Pride and self-respect were all very well, but those who could put such things before love had not loved. She hoped and prayed Basil would not force her to the test. But—if he did— She sighed, and bade herself wait until that situation arose before worrying over it.XIXNow that the throes of birth were over, their love bade fair to be like those robust infants that almost kill mothers in the bearing but thereafter give not a moment's anxiety. Outdoors it was rivalling the previous winter; indoors—at the house and at the laboratory—there reigned mid-summer serenity. Nanny—always a shadow, though very faint indeed latterly—had yielded before her arch enemy, rheumatism, had been pensioned off, had gone to her brother's, seventeen miles into the wilderness. She would shadow them no more. Richard had come to another crisis in his researches; and a mind in the act of gestation is like a hen on eggs—solitary, brooding, best left utterly alone. He was as unconscious of Courtney and Basil as of himself; all three were, for him, simply instruments to the strange and terrible marvels of chemical action that were unfolding. Soon Basil felt about him as did Courtney—that is, lost all sense of his being related to her or to the life of the household. As they held to their compact, they experienced none of passion's inevitable alternations of rapture and revulsion. Habit is equally the friend of virtue and of vice. It was not a matter of months but of weeks when they were looking on their love as not only moral but even exalted, since they were self-restrained.The chief factor in the tranquillity was the work. Courtney began at the laboratory solely that she and Basil might be together. Soon she had another reason—love of the work itself. Everything worth while, whether for achievement or for amusement, involves drudgery at the outset—tennis or bridge no less than a trade or an art. Although Courtney had done at school the worst part of the drudgery in acquiring chemistry, it was nearly a month before she began to enjoy. Then came the first haunting alluring glimpses of the elusive mystery which makes chemistry the most fascinating of the sciences; and from that hour forth she forgot the difficulties in the delights. She often stole in to gaze longingly at Richard's work—for, he kept the main part of the great task of finding a new and universal fuel altogether in his own hands and used the other two as mere helpers. She would have liked to work with him; and, as she understood better and better what he was about, the temptation to try to bring her skill and her knowledge to his attention became strong at times. But she was afraid that if he began to think attentively about her being there, he would send her away. No, it was best to remain hidden behind Basil, to do nothing to remind Richard of her existence.At first Basil assumed she was toiling like another Richard because she wished quickly to get knowledge enough to make plausible her necessary pretense of interest. But after a few weeks he saw she was in earnest, or thought she was—for, he could not believe one so pretty, so charming, so light of spirit and of mind, could be deeply in earnest about such a heavy, unwomanly matter as chemistry—or about anything else, except of course love. He was fond of chemistry; but it was in the fashion of most men's fondness for serious effort—to get excuse and appetite for idling. However, partly through pride, partly because her enthusiasm was contagious, he buckled to and worked as Richard had never been able to make him."Really, you needn't crowd yourself quite so hard," said he to Courtney, when his own energy began to flag."I've got to choose between being a drag and a help. Besides—" She glanced down with the shy, subtle smile he had learned to recognize as a cover for something she meant very much indeed—"don't you find that being occupied is a great aid?""I'd not have thought it possible to live as we're living—and be happy.""You are happy?" As she asked this, she scrutinized his face in woman's familiar veiled fashion. She was always watching, watching, for the first faint dreaded sign of discontent."So much so," answered he, earnestly, "that I'd be afraid to change anything."She saw that he meant it, that he felt it with all the intensity of the fine side of his nature. And she breathed a secret sigh of relief. She said: "Every day—time and again—I say to myself, 'If only this will last!'""It will!" declared he.And, pessimist though she had been made by disappointment on disappointment in small things and large her whole life through, she began to hope that this would last, that the worst of her life was perhaps over, that her life problem was settling and settling right. The watchdogs of presentiment are like their much overrated animal prototypes. They bark at everything, that they may get credit for usefulness if by chance they once do happen to vent their nerve-racking warnings in advance of a real peril. Even presentiment called its dogs off duty.She had been brought up among people who imagine they see the operations of natural law in the artificial conventions of morality that differ for every age and race and creed, really for every individual. She had long discarded as superstition the creed of her parents; but she had not been able wholly to uproot all the ramifications of beliefs dependent upon that creed for vitality. Thus, she vaguely felt a relationship of effect and cause between her sufferings in the autumn and early winter and those fear-shadowed, shame-alloyed but ecstatic moments of joy in the summer. And in the same vague way, there seemed to her some sort of connection between their present happiness and their self-restraint. She would have, quite honestly, denied, had she been accused of harboring such a "remnant of superstition." Nevertheless, it was the fact. However, she did not analyze or reason about her happiness. She simply accepted and enjoyed it—and forgot the foundations on which it rested.And the days—the long, long days that only people who live in quiet places have—moved tranquilly and happily by, swift yet slow. The weeks seemed to be flying, and the days went very fast; but each hour presented its full quota of sixty minutes for enjoyment. In those dreadful days of the previous fall she had wished every hour that she was living in a city, because in the city a thousand resolute intrusions compel distraction, make the moments seem to fly, whether the heart is heavy or light. Now, she was glad with all her heart that she was living and loving where there were no distractions, where each moment could be lived as a connoisseur drinks his glass of rare old wine drop by drop.One day late in April she and Richard, it so happened, were alone for a few minutes before supper. He abruptly emerged from his abstraction to say, "Basil and Helen are getting on famously."She startled, then lapsed into her usual isolation when alone with him."I expect there'll be a marriage before the summer is out.""Yes?" said Courtney, absently."Well, it's a good match. They're both comfortably shallow. They're fond of the same kind of harmless pretenses. They look well together.... I hope they'll stay on with us—at least until the first baby comes."She shivered, rose abruptly. "Supper must certainly be ready," said she."Then," pursued Dick, intent upon his train of thought, "they might get the Donaldson place. The Donaldsons want to sell."She smiled ironically. "I suppose you've spoken to Donaldson about it.""Not yet. But next time I see him, I'll give him a hint. He might sell to some one else."Basil now came in. "Sell what?" he asked, to join in the conversation."Oh, nothing," answered Dick. "Courtney and I were discussing the Donaldson place. Donaldson wants to sell, and we thought we might get neighbors we didn't like.""Richard suggested," said Courtney, in her most innocent manner, "that you might buy it."Dick looked alarmed. Basil, with his eyes on Courtney, promptly said: "Maybe I will. It's second only to this place. And I shall always live here.""Richard thought it would be a good idea for you to settle there when you and Helen marry," said Courtney, with a smile only Basil could understand.If anything, Basil looked more confused and nervous than did Richard; he laughed hysterically. "Really—really—that's very attractive—if—" he stammered.Just then Helen, out of hearing on the lake-front veranda, happened to call, "Oh, Mr. Gallatin!""Yes," he answered, and hastened out to join her. Richard stared helplessly at his wife. "Now, why did you do that?" he demanded."What?""You certainly are the most thoughtless, frivolous person! I never knew you to be serious about anything—except something that was of not the least importance. I must remember to be always on guard when I speak before you.""Yes, you ought to be careful. I'm not intellectual, like Helen. But I was forgetting; now you say she's shallow, too.""All intellectual women are shallow," said Dick. He was ashamed of his heat of the moment before. "And I never said you were shallow. You ought to be glad you have no intellectual tendencies, but are a bundle of instincts and impulses, as a woman should be. I guess you didn't spill the milk, after all. If Gallatin loves Helen, a little break such as you made won't scare him off.""No indeed. When a man's in love, the sight of the net doesn't frighten him. He helps to hold it open so that he can jump in deep."Courtney intended to tease Basil, the next time they were alone. But it slipped her mind until nearly a week later. Basil had got into the habit of going out for a stroll and a smoke every morning about ten. She never went with him, because she did not wish to interrupt her work to which she could give only the mornings, as the time for gardens and growing things was at hand. One morning it so chanced that her task of the moment was just finished when Basil moved toward the door. "I'll go with you," said she.He hesitated, looked disconcerted."Oh, if you don't want me," laughed she."Indeed I do," he hastened to say. "Only—usually you don't."They went out together, walked up and down the wide retaining wall of the lake, beyond the Smoke House. Presently Helen appeared, on her way to the apartment over the laboratory. Now that she had charge of the housekeeping, it was part of her duties to look at the apartment and see that Lizzie was keeping things clean and was making Gallatin comfortable. At sight of Basil and Courtney, she stopped short, colored painfully. She answered their greetings with embarrassment, went with awkward haste in at the apartment entrance."Helen's extremely shy," said Courtney."Sheisdifficult to get acquainted with," replied Basil. His manner might have been either absent or constrained."I'm afraid I haven't given you much chance," said Courtney, merely by way of saying something."Oh, I know her pretty well," Basil hastened to protest. "There's a lot more to her than one sees at first.""Indeed there is," said Courtney, warmly. "I've grown very fond of her—fonder than I ever thought I could be of another woman. I don't care much for women. They're so small toward each other—because they're all brought up to be cutthroat rivals in the same low business—husband-catching. But Helen isn't a bit small. She has a real heart.""And real intellect, too."Courtney's smile was absolutely free from malice. "That's just what she has not," she replied, for she talked with perfect frankness to him, her other self. "I suppose the man never lived who could judge a good-looking woman. Women don't always misjudge men. But men always fancy beauty means brains, if the woman's heavy and serious—and not downright imbecile.""I shouldn't call Miss March imbecile," said he. "Or even heavy.""Now don't be cross because I hinted that women could fool you," teased Courtney. "And I didn't mean to suggest that Helen is imbecile or heavy.""She knows an awful lot," said Basil. "She often corrects me—in little slips about authors and poetry, and so on."Courtney could hardly keep from showing her amusement that Basil should be impressed by what was really one of Helen's weaknesses. For Helen, like so many who have small or very imperfect knowledge, attached as great importance to trifles of worthless learning as a college professor; she became agitated if anyone showed lack of knowledge of some infinitesimal in etiquette or grammar or what not, just as fashionable people sweat with mortification or distend with vast inward derision if some one, however intelligent, however capable, appears among them in an out-of-style garment or uses an expression not in their tiny vocabulary. Courtney was striving tactfully to open out a less ignorant point of view to Helen. And here was Basil showing that Helen's weakness was in reality a strength, highly useful in dealing with men.Courtney said: "Helen is a fine, sensible, capable girl—about the finest I ever knew. And she has genuine sweetness and good taste.""She does dress well," said Basil warmly. "If she had the means, she'd be stunning.""Could be, but wouldn't be," replied Courtney, perfectly just and good humored, but perhaps a little weary of hearing another young woman's praises in her lover's voice. "She'd 'settle down' if she married. She's resolutely old fashioned—hates to think or to exert herself. She'll make a fine, old-fashioned wife for some man who likes to be mildly bored at home and wants his fun elsewhere. This reminds me. Richard has you and her married—wedding in the fall—baby next spring."Basil flushed at this teasing."You don't seem enthusiastic.""I don't care to hear a good young girl spoken of so lightly," said he, with some stiffness.And now Courtney colored. After a moment she said, apologetic without knowing why: "Perhaps I shouldn't have done it. But I always feel free to speak out to you any stray thought that drifts into my head—without choosing my words."Helen now reappeared, cast a peculiar glance in their direction, blushed rosily, hastened away toward the house. "She'd better be careful how she blushes at sight of you," said Courtney smiling, "or you'll be thinking she's in love with you.""Nonsense!" protested Basil, again unaccountably irritated."How solemn you are to-day, dear. And, why shouldn't she fall in love with you? I can see how a woman might."He did not respond to her glance. He stared straight ahead, answered awkwardly, "Helen and I are simply good friends."The phrase jarred upon her a little. "Simply good friends." As she repeated it, she remembered suddenly, vividly, the beginning of their own love. They too had been "simply good friends." The phrase kept recurring to her, dinning disagreeably in her ears. She frowned on herself; she laughed at herself. But it continued to ring and to jar. "I certainly have a nasty jealous streak hidden away in my disposition," she said to herself. "I mustn't encourage it."During the next few days every time Helen and Basil were together, she caught herself watching them for signs—"Signs of what?" she demanded of herself. But in spite of herself she kept on watching. That specter of the dreadful days without him—that specter so easily called up—began to glide about in the background of her thoughts, rousing those fears before which she was abject coward.Helen had the young girl's usual assortment of harmless little tricks. Her favorite was to note when a man made a remark which she thought he regarded as clever, to go back to it after a moment or so, and repeat it and laugh or admire according as it had been intended to be amusing or profound. She was constantly doing this—with Richard, with Basil, with every man she met. The time came when the overworked trick began to get upon Courtney's nerves, especially as Helen, being entirely without humor and a close-to-shore wader in the waters of thought, was not always happy in her selection of the remark. Still, her intentions being of the best, Courtney endured; and at times she got not a little secret amusement from seeing how Basil and even Richard were flattered by the trick, never suspecting, even after Helen had again and again laughed or admired effusively in quite the wrong place. As she watched Helen and Basil now, the only "sign" she saw was this clever-stupid subtlety of Helen's for flattering male vanity—Helen practicing it on Basil, Basil purring each time like a cat under the stroking of an agreeable hand. This certainly was not serious. She laughed at herself with a reproachful "You don't deserve happiness—trying to poison it with contemptible suspicion." And the specter faded, and she no longer heard the sound of rain beating, of rain drizzling, of rain dripping through days and nights of aloneness and despair.
XVIII
When she at last went to sleep it was like a ship going down in a storm. But she slept nine hours without a dream; and she awakened in that buoyant mood with which perfect health of body will triumph over whatever heaviness of soul. Her troubles seemed largely fanciful, were certainly anticipatory; she would push steadily forward, and all would be well.
When she descended, the two men had breakfasted and gone, and Winchie was out on the lawn playing at snow man with the Donaldson children and their governess. Helen, still at table with coffee and newspaper, greeted her so honest of eye and of voice that she was altogether ashamed of her thoughts of evening and night before. Also, Helen did not look especially well in the mornings. Sleep swelled her face, her eyelids; her skin inclined to be cloudy; her hair hung rather stringily about her brow. And in négligée the defect of too much bust and too short waist seemed worse than it was. "I must see that she gets a proper corset," thought Courtney. "Like so many women, she doesn't realize that corset is three fourths of the battle for figure." She studied Helen with an artist's eye and an artist's enthusiasm for bringing out the best, the beautiful. "Yes," she said to herself, "Helen can be made a perfect wonder for looks. Imusttry it." And then she knew she had never really intended to send Helen away. She who had suffered so much from the tyranny of dependence—it would be impossible for her to exercise that tyranny over another. "I don't want to send her away. But if I did want to, I couldn't, no matter what happened. I might think I would, and try to compel myself to do it. But when it came to the pinch, I'd remember—and I couldn't. No other human being shall ever know through me the sort of humiliation I bear."
She was ashamed of her fears about Basil, too. "As if he hadn't known lots of women. As if our love were just the ordinary thing that passes for love. And Helen'll help brighten things up—this house must not and shall not be gloomy." Then too—and this idea she did not definitely express to herself—Helen would give her and Basil more freedom by pairing off with Richard when they were all together.
Still more cheering were the thoughts that came from her mail. From the bank's monthly statement she learned that Richard had for the first time fixed an allowance sufficient for the position she was expected to maintain. There is a minimum amount on which a family can live in a certain style; every dollar below that means pinch, every dollar above it luxury. Courtney had at times been hard put to keep from going into debt. Many a woman, bred as she had been, as most American women are—with small practical knowledge, with only the silly useless "education" the usual school and college give, with no notion of values or mistaken notions, with contempt for realities and reverence for inanities—has in the same circumstances become hopelessly involved. But whatever the shortcomings in Mrs. Benedict's system of bringing up her children, she had certainly inculcated a horror of debt. And as human life and character are grounded upon material things if they have any substantial foundation at all, this dread of debt had been and continued to be one of the main factors in Courtney's development. It is amazing how far a single cardinalrealprinciple, such as a fixed aversion to debt, will go toward keeping any human being straight, toward bringing them back to sense of the just and the right, when they have been swerved by emotion or irresistible gale of circumstance. But in human affairs all the truly great powers are forces so quiet and move so close to the ground that their existence is unsuspected; or if pointed out, it is denied and scouted, and some windy fake of philosophy or politics or superstition is hailed as the god in the machine. Instead of going into debt and playing the "refined, cultured lady," Courtney had set about learning to economize without privation or meanness or tawdry pretense, acquiring the supreme art of living—the getting of its full value for every dollar. It had been a hard schooling; she began to realize how valuable, how invaluable. With this additional allowance Richard was now making, she saw what wonders of improvement she could work—she who had been getting out of the smaller income what many women in Wenona, spending four and five times as much, had not got. Certainly, the sky was brightening.
"If you haven't taken a dislike to me," Helen was saying, "and are going to let me stay a while, I'll make myself useful. In fact, I'll not stay if I don't. I must pay my way, and I can't pay in money."
"Whatever you like," said Courtney, "if you'll only stay. We want you. We need you."
Helen never forgot the warmth that cordial genuine tone sent through her. She didn't try to put her thanks into words, for there are no words for such real and deep feeling. She simply looked at Courtney—a look that more than rewarded her. After a moment she went on in an unsteady voice, "I could help—with Winchie. I took a course in kindergarten work at Tecumseh—and in housekeeping, too. They really teach things—real things—there. Then, I sew beautifully—the finest kind of sewing."
"So I see," said Courtney, looking at the sacque Helen was wearing. She did not like the sacque, because she did not like flummery and elaboration—and Helen had the poor girl's weakness for both. But she did admire the quality of the work that had been put into it.
"You must let me do some sewing for you. Do you like fine underclothes?"
"Crazy about them."
"I knew you were," said Helen who, judging by Courtney's dress and light way of talking, had already clearly and finally made up her mind that the verdict of "serious people" as to her cousin was just—a sweet, light, pretty creature, fond of dress and all the frivolities. "Just you wait! Mrs. Hargrave up at our town brought back some things from Paris—perfectly wonderful! All the women were excited about them. Well, I know how to make them—and where the goods can be got. Not expensive, either."
"I'll get the material," said Courtney, "and you can make some for both of us."
"Then I took a course in fitting. Don't judge by the things I wear. I somehow can't fit myself."
"It's the corset," said Courtney.
"I suppose so. I could never afford to have them made—or to buy the best ready-made kind. But I can do well for others. I can teach your dressmaker how to behave herself. That'll save you a lot of time and worry, won't it?"
"And work. Now, I have to remake most of my things."
Courtney began to respect Helen. The evening before, the girl, bent upon making a favorable impression, had been a wholly different person. She had seemed to Courtney stuffed to bursting with the familiar, everywhere admired and nowhere admirable "idealism" that chokes thought with cant and cumbers action with pretense. She had displayed a disquieting fondness for the "cultured" drivel about art and literature, about morals and manners, that destroys sincerity and simplicity's strength, and creates the doleful dreary lack of individuality characteristic of the so-called educated classes throughout the world. Courtney had always had the courage to confess that these honored frauds seemed to her ridiculous and wearisome. She assumed that Richard's and Basil's admiring attention, as Helen "showed off" after the manner of young girls, was politeness—or tribute to Helen's good looks. Now that she had discovered real virtues in Helen, she was not alarmed; for, she had learned that men are not interested in such virtues in young women but only in surface charms that stimulate their sex illusions. "It'd take a man who had been married at least once to appreciate Helen," thought she.
By the time Courtney finished breakfast, she had explained her plans and Helen had made many intelligent suggestions. They lost no time in getting to work. The morning flew, dinner was ready before they had given it a thought. Yes, Helen was a genuine addition, was just what she needed. "Yet I've no doubt Basil'll think her stupid once he gets used to her beauty and her sweetly pretty romantic pose for the matrimonal game."
Dick and Basil came, and the merry party of the night before was repeated. Courtney noted with pleasure that Dick and Helen had taken a fancy to each other. Without her realizing it, this was a thorough test of her absolute apartness from him; for, many a woman who is not in love with her husband, who actively dislikes him, will yet be furiously jealous of him—and by no means entirely from the sordid motive of fear lest his being attracted elsewhere will end in lessening her own portion of the income. Dick showed that he thought Helen, tall of stature and serious looking, an appreciative listener to his discourses on chemistry; and Helen's manner was indeed well calculated to deceive—a man. After dinner Dick led her up to his study further to explain some things they had been discussing. Winchie hurried away to resume play with the Donaldsons, their governess having come for him—and Courtney and Basil were free.
"It seems too good to be true," said Basil. "How much better this is—in every way—than what we've been condemning each other to.... Courtney, I did a very indiscreet thing last night. I came to your window—climbed up by a ladder Jimmie had forgotten to lock up in the woodshed."
Courtney, rosy red, lowered her head.
"I don't wonder you're angry. I'll never do it again. When we have such happiness as this, we must do nothing—nothing—to endanger it. And I want to say, you were right about—about what's best for us. The very resolve to try has made everything seem entirely different. I'm not ashamed when I look at Richard. I can meet his eyes. And with your help I think I can wait patiently—and hope! ... Don't you think it possible those two might fall in love?"
She was startled, then fascinated by the idea. "Why not? If they only would!"
"It's just possible—barely possible." They sat silent, reflecting on this new hope. Presently Basil went on, "They're both very serious minded. And Miss March would be a real companion for him. She's thoroughly intellectual, has quite a remarkable mind—more like a man's."
At "intellectual" Courtney thought he was joking. She began to smile, rather reluctantly—for, she did not like to laugh at so sweet and honest a girl as Helen, even with one so near to her, so like another self. Then his expression warned her that he was in earnest, that he really regarded Helen's "cultured" conversation as an indication of intelligence, did not see that it was merely education of an elementary and commonplace sort—the sort the colleges, those wholesale dealers in ready-made mental clothes, dressed out all minds in, so that usually one could tell a college man just as one could tell a ready-made suit. It was at her face to laugh at him. What an instance of woman's good looks blinding susceptible man to the truth about her internal furnishing, as different from the real thing as a hotel parlor from the drawing-room of a person of taste and individuality. But she did not laugh; that would have seemed meanness toward Helen—and Courtney, no lenient critic of her own character, rather suspected herself of a sly ungenerous envy of Helen's stature.
"Yes," pursued Basil, "Miss March has a remarkable mind. But I'm afraid there's no hope—about her and him. You see, she's not at all that sort of girl. She'd rather die than commit any impropriety—that is, I mean of course," he stammered, "she's horribly prim."
Courtney would have thought nothing of it, had he not stumbled and hastened on to explain. But that agitated, apologetic embarrassment changed "she'd rather die than commit any impropriety" from a commonplace into a tribute to Helen which was a slur upon herself. For her love's sake she resisted the temptation to pretend not to have heard or felt. "You like that sort of thing in a woman, don't you?" said she, with a lift of the eyebrows, those deep notes in her voice ominous.
"In Miss March—yes," blundered he. "That is, in a young girl." He halted, burst out desperately, "You're always suspecting me of not respecting you."
There began to gather in Courtney an emotion that terrified her. It was not anger; it was not shame. It seemed, rather, a sort of dread—though of what she did not know—did not wish to know. "Please, no protests," she said hurriedly. "Let's drop the subject."
"I do respect you," he said, doggedly. "But if I didn't"—there, he looked at her—"I feel for you something that's so much more than respect—I love you."
She drew in her breath sharply, and her eyes gleamed and glistened as they opened wide. She had a way of opening her eyes upon him that made him feel as if he were standing on a high place and about to plunge dizzily into the sea at the call of a mermaid. The silence that followed was interrupted—rudely it seemed to them—by the return of Helen and Dick.
"I need somebody in addition to you, Gallatin, to help out down at the shop," said Dick, "and Helen is going to try."
"If Cousin Courtney is willing," said Helen. "She may need me here, as I told you."
Courtney had been standing with her fingers on the edge of the chimney-piece, gazing between her arms into the fire. She slowly turned and regarded Richard. Basil and Helen working together!
"Oh, no, she doesn't need you here," asserted Vaughan. And catching Courtney's eye, he glanced from Basil to Helen and winked.
Courtney seemed not to see. "Helen doesn't want to go down there," said she. "Richard imagines, if people listen politely to his talk about chemistry, that they're as interested as he."
"Really I'd like it," said Helen, a good deal of nervousness in her enthusiasm.
"She could try it anyhow," urged Vaughan. "We need some one—don't we, Basil?"
"Yes," said Basil. "You remember, I suggested you ought to ask Mrs. Courtney to take a hand."
"Courtney!" Vaughan laughed gayly. "She has no fancy for anything serious. Now, Helen is masculine minded."
"Not a bit," declared Helen, much agitated by such an accusation, in presence of an eligible young man. "I'm so much a woman that I'm what's called a woman's woman."
"Helen prefers to stay here," said Courtney. "So, I thinkI'lltry."
Richard stared and frowned.
She smiled at Basil. "Richard is getting broad minded," she went on slowly, selecting her words. "A short time ago the idea of a woman in that laboratory of his would have upset him quite. I remember, when we were first married, I made the most desperate efforts to get him to let me help. He was finally quite rude about it." She spoke with no suggestion of resentment; and, indeed, that time seemed so remote, so like a part of another life or another person's life that she felt no resentment.
"I'm sure—we'll—both—be glad to have you," stammered Basil. He was confused before the instinct-born thought that those few apparently simple words of hers, so quietly and so good-humoredly spoken, were in fact the story of the matrimonial ruin he had found when he came—and was profiting by.
"I'll come down to-morrow," Courtney went on. "Helen can look after things here."
Helen could not conceal her relief; when the men were gone she said: "I'm so glad you got me out of that. Dick would have discovered what a stupid I am in about one hour, and he'd have despised me. I'd hate that, as I think he's wonderful. How proud you must be of him. Of course, Basil is very sweet—andsucha gentleman—and how well he does dress! But Dick— They're not in the same class."
"No," said Courtney.
Just then Vaughan came hurrying in. "I forgot something I wanted to say to you, my dear," he began. "Come in here——"
Helen took the hint and hastened away. Vaughan went on, "Why on earth didn't you help me?"
Courtney looked interrogative. She felt a curious impersonal anger against him for having blunderingly interfered in her affairs.
"Didn't you see," explained Richard somewhat irritably, "I had it all fixed to bring those two together?"
"How dull of me!"
"It's not too late. All you have to do is back out and send her."
"And have her exhibit herself before him at her worst. And get him sick of the very sight of her." Richard began to look foolish. Courtney went on in the same tone of light mockery: "If you want a girl to marry a man, or a man a girl, you mustn't let them see too much of each other. If possible, make it hard for them to get at each other." The emerald eyes were mockingly mirthful now. "No such love-inducer in the world as holding two people apart. And when two can see each other freely—to their heart's content—and satiation—why—" She finished with a shrug, her eyes looking straight into his.
"All right. You women know each other best," said he, uncomfortable, without being able to locate the cause.
"Helen will stay at home, like the homebody she is," pursued Courtney. "And I'll come to help you. I've had it in mind for several days."
"You're not in earnest about that!" cried Vaughan in alarm. "Why, what'd you do there? You'd be in the way."
"More than Helen?"
"Frankly—yes," said Richard bluntly. "As I said before, serious things interest her. You know, I dislike that sort of thing in a woman—am glad to see that you've gotten entirely over it, as I knew you would. But I could have put up with it—for a while—to help Helen to a good husband and Basil to a fine wife. It wouldn't have taken long—at least, I thought not. I admit I was probably wrong, and you right."
"Well—now that I've said I'd come, I'll come," said Courtney. "Helen'll take most of the detail here off my hands."
"If you really want to come—" said Dick, reluctant. "I suppose—after what I've said— Well, you can come for a few days."
Courtney was looking into the fire. Not for a "few days" but for as long as Basil worked with those dangerous chemicals. If anything happened—they would be together. Richard was looking at her; but he thought it was the fire light that was giving her the strange, somehow terrible expression which yet enhanced her beauty and her charm.
"How serious you look," said he. "Really, quite tragic—in that light."
"Yes, it must be the way the light falls," replied she. "Or is it because I've mislaid my pet powder rag?"
Next morning as soon as Courtney dispatched her household routine she went down to the Smoke House and appeared before Richard in his laboratory for the first time since that morning after the homecoming, long, long ago in that other life. With a platinum rod he was slowly stirring some fiery mixture of a dark purple color in a big iron crucible. She saw that the fumes were poisonous, as his nose and mouth were protected by a respirator. As on the previous visit she stood silent in the doorway watching him. She had long since passed the stage of comparisons and contrasts; and her mind was altogether upon the present and the future, as an intelligent young mind is extremely apt to be. So, she was not thinking of that previous visit, but was simply interested in what he was doing—in his work, which she had now resolved, with an experienced woman's determination, to make her own work also, no matter what opposition she might encounter. Her achievements in house and gardens, in bringing up Winchie, in breaking through the barriers of moral convention so powerful round a woman born and bred as she had been—these feats had wonderfully developed her will, had replaced shyness and timidity with quiet self-confidence.
When the contents of the crucible cooled and he took off the respirator, she spoke. "I see you've run up a partition."
He glanced at her with a frown—not severe but irritated, as at the persistent naughtiness of a sweet and charming child. "Oh, you've come—have you? ... Yes—the partition gives Basil and me each his own shop. I like to work alone, whenever it's possible."
She advanced calmly, indifferent to his unfriendliness. "Then you don't want me to helpyou?" She put all her diplomacy of tone and manner into that little speech. She knew how much depended upon this "entering wedge"—this getting tolerated within those walls.
"What a whimsical creature you are!" Dick was still vexed, but half laughing, too. She was so delicate and graceful, so fascinating to the eye; and she seemed to him absurdly, quaintly out of place there. "Basil!" he called. "Gallatin!"
Gallatin, in a blouse, rubber apron and gloves appeared from the other part of the shop.
"Well—here's the—the 'prentice," said Dick. "You're not busy nowadays. Take charge of her."
"It'll be a great pleasure, I'm sure," he stammered. He looked about as uncomfortable at sight of her as had Richard. Demurely she followed him into his compartment. As the partition did not extend to the ceiling, they had to content themselves with an exchange of eloquent glances. Then, taking the tone of gentleman chemist to not overbright and densely ignorant lady visitor at a laboratory, he began to explain to her the names and uses of things, and to demonstrate how to use them.
For the entire morning he talked and illustrated, thoroughly enjoying himself at making a fine impression with his display of superior knowledge. He told her little she did not already know. But she was not so tactless as to spoil his pleasure or hurt his vanity. She listened and tried; and when he complimented her on her quickness in learning, she showed delight at being praised. In the afternoon he allowed her to practice his teachings unassisted—set her at weighing a little nitrate of potassium precipitate in the gold and ivory and aluminum balances. She had done this sort of things a hundred times, but was meek under his elaborations of cautioning and explaining.
"I worked a lot in laboratories at school," said she ingenuously, when his guidance became a little tiresome. "It's beginning to come back to me."
He smiled in a way that reminded her of Richard. "All right. Do the best you can," said he. "We'll not expect much of you for the present. I'm afraid you'll soon give up."
She looked at him. "I'm here to stay," said she, "You'll not get rid of me."
"But the work's very hard—not at all feminine."
"That suits me. For, I'm not at all feminine, myself—what men mean by feminine."
He laughed, went about his own business. As she sat at the balances, her whole mind on the needle she was watching through the reading glass, she felt herself caught from behind. She turned her laughing face upward and backward, and they kissed. "Isn't it splendid!" he exclaimed under his breath. "Yes—you must stay." It had been part of her plan of life that they should never caress. Suddenly she realized how impossible this rule was—and how foolish. On occasions—such occasions as this joy in the unexpected kindness of fate—the rule must be suspended.
"How long it's been!" he said in a low voice. "Not since early September have I kissed you—and this is almost February."
She glanced warningly toward the top of the partition.
"Away at the other end," Basil assured her, "and doing something that can't be left an instant for an hour or more."
"Well then—" She blushed, hesitated, gave him a passionate, longing look. "One more kiss—and we go to work."
He seated himself and drew her to his lap. With their heads close together, they talked—of anything, of everything, of nothing—and hardly knew what they were saying—and cared not at all. "Oh, the happiness of it," she murmured. "And we are to work side by side, too. It seems a dream. I can't believe it."
"And soon it will be spring again, and we shall be a little freer."
"Be patient until I get everything settled," she answered, "and we shall be free almost all the time. I have thought it out."
"You think of everything."
"I think of nothing but you—always you," she answered. "What have I but our love? I want to make the house comfortable, your apartment comfortable, myself attractive—all, so that love will never begin to think of taking flight."
"Flight!" He laughed softly. "How absurd! Can't you feel that I'm just wrapped up in you?"
She touched his tight encircling arms. "I can feel that I'm just wrapped up in you," she retorted. "Now, let me go. I am not to keep you from the work—or you me."
"Not just yet."
"Yes"—firmly. "You don't take me any more seriously than Richard does. But I don't in the least care. If I am serious, what does it matter whether anyone thinks so or not?" She laughed a little. "And I'm feminine enough, I'll admit, to want to be what the man who wants me wants me to be."
He was not listening. He held her more tightly, and she knew what was coming before he began to speak. "Let me come to-night, Courtney. Just this once. I simply want to be alone with you——"
"Not yet," she replied. "Don't let's tempt each other to risk years of happiness for a frightened moment." And, afraid she would yield if he kept on urging, she abruptly freed herself and sent him back to his seat.
An hour, and he came to her again. "I've been doing nothing but watch you, and you haven't looked round once."
"This work is interesting," replied she—and it was the simple truth.
"No—not once!"
"What a good example I'm setting you. I always used to like chemistry. And I was a harum-scarum girl then. Now, I see I'm going to be tremendously fond of it."
"Courtney—I can't stand—our—our compact. I simply can't. I feel as if you had thrust me out of your life. And— Have you no memory, sweetheart? Courtney, we're only human beings, after all. And we've the right. Aren't you my wife?"
"Don't tempt me, Basil," she answered with a sigh. "Do you suppose I don't feel it? Sometimes I get to thinking what might be— But I will not! You do not wish it." And she glanced meaningly at the partition.
"You are mine!" he whispered, moved by the reminder but not abashed. "If I had never known love in its fullness, I might be able to endure this cold, repellent pretense of virtue—for, it's nothing but a flimsy pretense. Courtney, if you love me——"
"Is your love only—that!"
"If you loved me," he repeated, "you'd not calculate so puritanically. If I weren't seeing you, dear, I could bear it. But seeing you all the time—touching you—kissing you—Courtney, Courtney, how can you make me, and yourself too, suffer so needlessly? If you really love, how can you keep me out of your inmost life—as if I were not everything to you?"
"I explained to you——"
"Explained! Explained!" he said, impatiently. "We explain and explain, but it's all sophistry. The truth is—what? That we are lovers. And, if our love is a sin, why not take all its reward since we'll have to take all its punishment?"
"Don't harass me now," she begged, agitated and trembling.
"Harass you!" He drew away offendedly. "I thought I was pleading for you, as well as for myself. If I am not, please forget what I said."
"I didn't mean that!"
"Then I may come to-night—or you to me?"
She gave him a sad, pleading look. "Not to-night, dear. Not just yet. Wemustwait till things are going quietly in a routine."
"How easily you put us off!"
"Basil!—Please!"
He stared sulkily out of the window. "It does sting my pride that you care so much less than I. It does make me—almost doubt."
"Not so loud!"
"You don't realize how far away he is, and how absorbed.... I take back all I said." And he straightened himself coldly and went to his own part of the room.
A moment, and she followed him. "You are offended, Basil."
"No—hurt."
She sighed. "I will come to-night."
"You do not wish to come!"
"To be honest, no. I should feel—" She hesitated. She wished to be frank; but how could she be, when he was in that mood of doubt? How could she explain again that, in some respects, she loathed the memory of the times they had been stealthily together—the alarms, the narrow escapes from discovery—the commonness of it all—like those low intrigues that get into the newspapers, to make coarse mouths water and vulgar eyes sparkle? If she tried to tell him, he would misunderstand. "Not just yet," she went on. "I'm in a queer mood—not myself. You——"
She was so tender, so loving, so deeply distressed that, in shame and contrition, he embraced her. "I'm sorry I said anything. But you'll understand. How can I help longing for you? It's your own fault—you beautiful, wonderfulwoman!"
And their first clash ended in kisses, in serenity restored, with him saying—and thinking—"How much braver and better you are than I! Yours is the love that makes a man stronger and decenter."
Her look was eloquent of gratitude and happiness. But the happiness in it was forced, at least in part, was rather what she felt she ought to feel than what she actually did feel—as is so often the case. And she went back to work with a certain heaviness of heart—and a foreboding. The slightest alarm, however fanciful, was enough to call up the specter of those months of loneliness and despair after he left. That specter haunted her, was in her mind the fixed idea that becomes an obsession. She knew that to quiet it, she would if necessary stop at nothing. "I can never give him up again. I'd do anything—anything—rather than even risk it." Pride and self-respect were all very well, but those who could put such things before love had not loved. She hoped and prayed Basil would not force her to the test. But—if he did— She sighed, and bade herself wait until that situation arose before worrying over it.
XIX
Now that the throes of birth were over, their love bade fair to be like those robust infants that almost kill mothers in the bearing but thereafter give not a moment's anxiety. Outdoors it was rivalling the previous winter; indoors—at the house and at the laboratory—there reigned mid-summer serenity. Nanny—always a shadow, though very faint indeed latterly—had yielded before her arch enemy, rheumatism, had been pensioned off, had gone to her brother's, seventeen miles into the wilderness. She would shadow them no more. Richard had come to another crisis in his researches; and a mind in the act of gestation is like a hen on eggs—solitary, brooding, best left utterly alone. He was as unconscious of Courtney and Basil as of himself; all three were, for him, simply instruments to the strange and terrible marvels of chemical action that were unfolding. Soon Basil felt about him as did Courtney—that is, lost all sense of his being related to her or to the life of the household. As they held to their compact, they experienced none of passion's inevitable alternations of rapture and revulsion. Habit is equally the friend of virtue and of vice. It was not a matter of months but of weeks when they were looking on their love as not only moral but even exalted, since they were self-restrained.
The chief factor in the tranquillity was the work. Courtney began at the laboratory solely that she and Basil might be together. Soon she had another reason—love of the work itself. Everything worth while, whether for achievement or for amusement, involves drudgery at the outset—tennis or bridge no less than a trade or an art. Although Courtney had done at school the worst part of the drudgery in acquiring chemistry, it was nearly a month before she began to enjoy. Then came the first haunting alluring glimpses of the elusive mystery which makes chemistry the most fascinating of the sciences; and from that hour forth she forgot the difficulties in the delights. She often stole in to gaze longingly at Richard's work—for, he kept the main part of the great task of finding a new and universal fuel altogether in his own hands and used the other two as mere helpers. She would have liked to work with him; and, as she understood better and better what he was about, the temptation to try to bring her skill and her knowledge to his attention became strong at times. But she was afraid that if he began to think attentively about her being there, he would send her away. No, it was best to remain hidden behind Basil, to do nothing to remind Richard of her existence.
At first Basil assumed she was toiling like another Richard because she wished quickly to get knowledge enough to make plausible her necessary pretense of interest. But after a few weeks he saw she was in earnest, or thought she was—for, he could not believe one so pretty, so charming, so light of spirit and of mind, could be deeply in earnest about such a heavy, unwomanly matter as chemistry—or about anything else, except of course love. He was fond of chemistry; but it was in the fashion of most men's fondness for serious effort—to get excuse and appetite for idling. However, partly through pride, partly because her enthusiasm was contagious, he buckled to and worked as Richard had never been able to make him.
"Really, you needn't crowd yourself quite so hard," said he to Courtney, when his own energy began to flag.
"I've got to choose between being a drag and a help. Besides—" She glanced down with the shy, subtle smile he had learned to recognize as a cover for something she meant very much indeed—"don't you find that being occupied is a great aid?"
"I'd not have thought it possible to live as we're living—and be happy."
"You are happy?" As she asked this, she scrutinized his face in woman's familiar veiled fashion. She was always watching, watching, for the first faint dreaded sign of discontent.
"So much so," answered he, earnestly, "that I'd be afraid to change anything."
She saw that he meant it, that he felt it with all the intensity of the fine side of his nature. And she breathed a secret sigh of relief. She said: "Every day—time and again—I say to myself, 'If only this will last!'"
"It will!" declared he.
And, pessimist though she had been made by disappointment on disappointment in small things and large her whole life through, she began to hope that this would last, that the worst of her life was perhaps over, that her life problem was settling and settling right. The watchdogs of presentiment are like their much overrated animal prototypes. They bark at everything, that they may get credit for usefulness if by chance they once do happen to vent their nerve-racking warnings in advance of a real peril. Even presentiment called its dogs off duty.
She had been brought up among people who imagine they see the operations of natural law in the artificial conventions of morality that differ for every age and race and creed, really for every individual. She had long discarded as superstition the creed of her parents; but she had not been able wholly to uproot all the ramifications of beliefs dependent upon that creed for vitality. Thus, she vaguely felt a relationship of effect and cause between her sufferings in the autumn and early winter and those fear-shadowed, shame-alloyed but ecstatic moments of joy in the summer. And in the same vague way, there seemed to her some sort of connection between their present happiness and their self-restraint. She would have, quite honestly, denied, had she been accused of harboring such a "remnant of superstition." Nevertheless, it was the fact. However, she did not analyze or reason about her happiness. She simply accepted and enjoyed it—and forgot the foundations on which it rested.
And the days—the long, long days that only people who live in quiet places have—moved tranquilly and happily by, swift yet slow. The weeks seemed to be flying, and the days went very fast; but each hour presented its full quota of sixty minutes for enjoyment. In those dreadful days of the previous fall she had wished every hour that she was living in a city, because in the city a thousand resolute intrusions compel distraction, make the moments seem to fly, whether the heart is heavy or light. Now, she was glad with all her heart that she was living and loving where there were no distractions, where each moment could be lived as a connoisseur drinks his glass of rare old wine drop by drop.
One day late in April she and Richard, it so happened, were alone for a few minutes before supper. He abruptly emerged from his abstraction to say, "Basil and Helen are getting on famously."
She startled, then lapsed into her usual isolation when alone with him.
"I expect there'll be a marriage before the summer is out."
"Yes?" said Courtney, absently.
"Well, it's a good match. They're both comfortably shallow. They're fond of the same kind of harmless pretenses. They look well together.... I hope they'll stay on with us—at least until the first baby comes."
She shivered, rose abruptly. "Supper must certainly be ready," said she.
"Then," pursued Dick, intent upon his train of thought, "they might get the Donaldson place. The Donaldsons want to sell."
She smiled ironically. "I suppose you've spoken to Donaldson about it."
"Not yet. But next time I see him, I'll give him a hint. He might sell to some one else."
Basil now came in. "Sell what?" he asked, to join in the conversation.
"Oh, nothing," answered Dick. "Courtney and I were discussing the Donaldson place. Donaldson wants to sell, and we thought we might get neighbors we didn't like."
"Richard suggested," said Courtney, in her most innocent manner, "that you might buy it."
Dick looked alarmed. Basil, with his eyes on Courtney, promptly said: "Maybe I will. It's second only to this place. And I shall always live here."
"Richard thought it would be a good idea for you to settle there when you and Helen marry," said Courtney, with a smile only Basil could understand.
If anything, Basil looked more confused and nervous than did Richard; he laughed hysterically. "Really—really—that's very attractive—if—" he stammered.
Just then Helen, out of hearing on the lake-front veranda, happened to call, "Oh, Mr. Gallatin!"
"Yes," he answered, and hastened out to join her. Richard stared helplessly at his wife. "Now, why did you do that?" he demanded.
"What?"
"You certainly are the most thoughtless, frivolous person! I never knew you to be serious about anything—except something that was of not the least importance. I must remember to be always on guard when I speak before you."
"Yes, you ought to be careful. I'm not intellectual, like Helen. But I was forgetting; now you say she's shallow, too."
"All intellectual women are shallow," said Dick. He was ashamed of his heat of the moment before. "And I never said you were shallow. You ought to be glad you have no intellectual tendencies, but are a bundle of instincts and impulses, as a woman should be. I guess you didn't spill the milk, after all. If Gallatin loves Helen, a little break such as you made won't scare him off."
"No indeed. When a man's in love, the sight of the net doesn't frighten him. He helps to hold it open so that he can jump in deep."
Courtney intended to tease Basil, the next time they were alone. But it slipped her mind until nearly a week later. Basil had got into the habit of going out for a stroll and a smoke every morning about ten. She never went with him, because she did not wish to interrupt her work to which she could give only the mornings, as the time for gardens and growing things was at hand. One morning it so chanced that her task of the moment was just finished when Basil moved toward the door. "I'll go with you," said she.
He hesitated, looked disconcerted.
"Oh, if you don't want me," laughed she.
"Indeed I do," he hastened to say. "Only—usually you don't."
They went out together, walked up and down the wide retaining wall of the lake, beyond the Smoke House. Presently Helen appeared, on her way to the apartment over the laboratory. Now that she had charge of the housekeeping, it was part of her duties to look at the apartment and see that Lizzie was keeping things clean and was making Gallatin comfortable. At sight of Basil and Courtney, she stopped short, colored painfully. She answered their greetings with embarrassment, went with awkward haste in at the apartment entrance.
"Helen's extremely shy," said Courtney.
"Sheisdifficult to get acquainted with," replied Basil. His manner might have been either absent or constrained.
"I'm afraid I haven't given you much chance," said Courtney, merely by way of saying something.
"Oh, I know her pretty well," Basil hastened to protest. "There's a lot more to her than one sees at first."
"Indeed there is," said Courtney, warmly. "I've grown very fond of her—fonder than I ever thought I could be of another woman. I don't care much for women. They're so small toward each other—because they're all brought up to be cutthroat rivals in the same low business—husband-catching. But Helen isn't a bit small. She has a real heart."
"And real intellect, too."
Courtney's smile was absolutely free from malice. "That's just what she has not," she replied, for she talked with perfect frankness to him, her other self. "I suppose the man never lived who could judge a good-looking woman. Women don't always misjudge men. But men always fancy beauty means brains, if the woman's heavy and serious—and not downright imbecile."
"I shouldn't call Miss March imbecile," said he. "Or even heavy."
"Now don't be cross because I hinted that women could fool you," teased Courtney. "And I didn't mean to suggest that Helen is imbecile or heavy."
"She knows an awful lot," said Basil. "She often corrects me—in little slips about authors and poetry, and so on."
Courtney could hardly keep from showing her amusement that Basil should be impressed by what was really one of Helen's weaknesses. For Helen, like so many who have small or very imperfect knowledge, attached as great importance to trifles of worthless learning as a college professor; she became agitated if anyone showed lack of knowledge of some infinitesimal in etiquette or grammar or what not, just as fashionable people sweat with mortification or distend with vast inward derision if some one, however intelligent, however capable, appears among them in an out-of-style garment or uses an expression not in their tiny vocabulary. Courtney was striving tactfully to open out a less ignorant point of view to Helen. And here was Basil showing that Helen's weakness was in reality a strength, highly useful in dealing with men.
Courtney said: "Helen is a fine, sensible, capable girl—about the finest I ever knew. And she has genuine sweetness and good taste."
"She does dress well," said Basil warmly. "If she had the means, she'd be stunning."
"Could be, but wouldn't be," replied Courtney, perfectly just and good humored, but perhaps a little weary of hearing another young woman's praises in her lover's voice. "She'd 'settle down' if she married. She's resolutely old fashioned—hates to think or to exert herself. She'll make a fine, old-fashioned wife for some man who likes to be mildly bored at home and wants his fun elsewhere. This reminds me. Richard has you and her married—wedding in the fall—baby next spring."
Basil flushed at this teasing.
"You don't seem enthusiastic."
"I don't care to hear a good young girl spoken of so lightly," said he, with some stiffness.
And now Courtney colored. After a moment she said, apologetic without knowing why: "Perhaps I shouldn't have done it. But I always feel free to speak out to you any stray thought that drifts into my head—without choosing my words."
Helen now reappeared, cast a peculiar glance in their direction, blushed rosily, hastened away toward the house. "She'd better be careful how she blushes at sight of you," said Courtney smiling, "or you'll be thinking she's in love with you."
"Nonsense!" protested Basil, again unaccountably irritated.
"How solemn you are to-day, dear. And, why shouldn't she fall in love with you? I can see how a woman might."
He did not respond to her glance. He stared straight ahead, answered awkwardly, "Helen and I are simply good friends."
The phrase jarred upon her a little. "Simply good friends." As she repeated it, she remembered suddenly, vividly, the beginning of their own love. They too had been "simply good friends." The phrase kept recurring to her, dinning disagreeably in her ears. She frowned on herself; she laughed at herself. But it continued to ring and to jar. "I certainly have a nasty jealous streak hidden away in my disposition," she said to herself. "I mustn't encourage it."
During the next few days every time Helen and Basil were together, she caught herself watching them for signs—"Signs of what?" she demanded of herself. But in spite of herself she kept on watching. That specter of the dreadful days without him—that specter so easily called up—began to glide about in the background of her thoughts, rousing those fears before which she was abject coward.
Helen had the young girl's usual assortment of harmless little tricks. Her favorite was to note when a man made a remark which she thought he regarded as clever, to go back to it after a moment or so, and repeat it and laugh or admire according as it had been intended to be amusing or profound. She was constantly doing this—with Richard, with Basil, with every man she met. The time came when the overworked trick began to get upon Courtney's nerves, especially as Helen, being entirely without humor and a close-to-shore wader in the waters of thought, was not always happy in her selection of the remark. Still, her intentions being of the best, Courtney endured; and at times she got not a little secret amusement from seeing how Basil and even Richard were flattered by the trick, never suspecting, even after Helen had again and again laughed or admired effusively in quite the wrong place. As she watched Helen and Basil now, the only "sign" she saw was this clever-stupid subtlety of Helen's for flattering male vanity—Helen practicing it on Basil, Basil purring each time like a cat under the stroking of an agreeable hand. This certainly was not serious. She laughed at herself with a reproachful "You don't deserve happiness—trying to poison it with contemptible suspicion." And the specter faded, and she no longer heard the sound of rain beating, of rain drizzling, of rain dripping through days and nights of aloneness and despair.