IIIExcept courtship and honeymoon never had she been so happy as in the last two months before the baby came. "Every-one is spoiling me," she said, dazzled by the revelations of thoughtfulness and affection. Her friends, her acquaintances, showered attentions upon her. Even her mother, austere and cold, unbent. Her father, the shy, the silent, betrayed where she had got her silent, shy, intense longing for love. The two sour old-maid sisters were all tenderness and chaste excitement. As for Dick, he actually neglected his career. Again and again he would stop in the midst of an experiment to dash up to the house and inquire what he could do for her—this when there was a private telephone at his elbow.She was intelligent about diet and exercise; so she suffered hardly at all. As for the baby, he came into the world positively shrieking with health. Finally, she had none of the petty vanity that leads many a first-time mother into fancying and acting as if maternity were a unique achievement, original with herself. Thus the agitation quickly died away, and life resumed its former course, except that she had a baby to take care of. At first it was great fun. Dick helped her, forgot his chemistry, seemed in the way to become a father of unprecedented devotion. But this did not last long. He loved playthings and played with them; but the call of his career was the strong force in his life, and he went back to the laboratory. She might have given the baby over to a nurse, as all the other women were doing. But it seemed to her that, as she was responsible for the coming of this frisky helplessness, she could not do less than guard him until he was able to look out for himself. "When he can talk and tell me exactly how's he treated when I'm not around," said she, "why, perhaps I'll trust him to a nurse—if he needs one. But until then I'll be nurse myself."Many and many a time in the next eighteen months she wished she had not committed herself openly and positively. She loved her baby as much as any mother could—and a good-humored lovable baby he was, fat and handsome, and showing signs of being well bred while still a speechless animal. But, except in romances and make-believe life, the deepest love wearies of sacrifices, though it gladly makes them. This baby—Benedict they named him, but he changed it to Winchie as soon as he could—this baby made a slave of her. She understood why so many women retrograde after the birth of the first child. The temptation to go to seed is powerful enough in the most favorable circumstances, once a woman has caught a husband and secured a living for life. A baby, she soon saw, made that temptation tenfold stronger. She wondered what it was in her that compelled her to fight unyieldingly against being demoralized.Dick was deep in a series of experiments that forbade him a thought for anything else. He did occasionally spend a few moments in mechanical dalliance with his two playthings; but that interrupted his thoughts little if at all. By the slow, unnoted day-to-day action that plays the only really important part in human intimacies of all kinds, she had grown too shy and strange with him to ask his help or even to think of expecting it. She did not judge him—at least, not consciously. She assumed he was doing the best he could, the best anyone could, the best possible. To have complained, even in thought, would have seemed to her as futile as railing against any fundamental of life—against being unable to fly instead of walk. She made occupation for herself, as will presently appear. But, after all, it was Winchie who saved her. But for him she, with no taste for "chasing about," would have withdrawn within herself, would have become silent, cold, ever more and more like her mother, with barren cynicism in place of Mrs. Benedict's equally barren religiosity. Winchie's spirits of overflowing health, his newcomer's delight in life were infectious and stimulating. In keeping him in perfect health—outdoors, winter and summer, and always active, she made her own health so perfect that the cheerful and hopeful side of things was rarely so much as obscured.One evening after supper Richard, moved by the intermittent impulse to amuse himself, sought her in her sitting room, where she was reading. She always sat there in the evenings because she could hear Winchie if he became restless. He never did, but that fact no more freed her to go off duty than the absence of burglars the policeman. Dick gave her the kind of kiss that was always his signal for a "lighter hour." She merely glanced up, gave him the smile that is a matrimonial convention like "my dear," and went on with her book. Theretofore, whenever he had shown the least desire to take an hour off from that career of his, she had instantly responded. She assumed this readiness meant love; in fact, love had no part in it. She responded for two reasons, both unsuspected by her: because she did not know him well enough to have moods with him and to show them, and because refusal would have been admission of the truth of indifference to him which she had not yet discovered. That evening, for the first time, she did not respond. It was unconscious on her part, unnoted by him; yet it was the most significant event in their married life since the wedding ceremony two years and a half before.He stood behind her and began gliding his fingers over the soft down at the nape of her neck. It has become second nature to women to repress their active emotions, no matter how strong, and to wait upon the man—an evidence of inferior status that is crudely but sufficiently disguised as "womanly delicacy and reserve." In response to the signal of those caressing fingers Courtney mechanically put up her hand and patted his. Her gesture was genuinely affectionate—but there had been a time when it would not have been mechanical. She did not lift her eyes from the page."Is that a good love story?" asked he. "As good as ours?"A tender little smile of half absent appreciation played round her lips. But—her glance remained upon her reading. "It isn't a novel," replied she. "It's a treatise.""A treatise?" mocked he. "Gracious me! What a wise fairy it is! Put it away, and let's go on the balcony. There'll not be many more sit-out nights."He moved to pick her up in his arms. But she smilingly pushed him away. "I want to finish this chapter," said she."All right. I'll go out and smoke. Don't be long."And he sauntered through the window door. After perhaps a quarter of an hour she joined him in the hammock. Matrimony is a curious fabric of set phrases, set thoughts, and set actions. It was their habit, in such circumstances, for her to snuggle up to him and for him to put his arm round her. The habit was on this occasion observed. It was her habit to assume that she was happy—and she now so assumed. He began the conversation. "I've been watching you as I sat here," said he lazily. "What are all those books on the table? They look serious—businesslike.""Let's not talk about anything serious. You always laugh at me or get absent-minded.""But you seemed so absorbed. What was it?""Oh, I've been doing a little reading and thinking and studying for the past year. You see, when a woman takes care of a baby, she's got to look out or she'll become one herself.""But you are a baby." And there followed the usual caresses."Not a real baby," said she. "We both act like children at times—very little children. But we'd not care for each other as we do if either of us were really infantile. It takes a grown person to play baby attractively.""Baby," he insisted fondly. He was smiling with the masculinely patronizing tolerance to which she had grown so used that she never noted it. He appreciated that she was clever—with the woman sort of cleverness—bright, witty, sometimes saying remarkably keen things. But, being a man, he knew that man mind and woman mind are entirely different—never so different as when woman mind seems to be like man mind—just as purely instinctive actions of animals seem to display profound reasoning power. "And what was the baby wrinkling its brow over, in there? The care and feeding of infants?""Dear me, no," replied she with perfect good humor. "I went into that before Winchie came. You think it's all a joke—my reading and studying. But the real joke is your thinking so. You must remember I can't afford to let myself go, as you do."He had been chiefly absorbed in caresses and caressing thoughts. At this last remark he laughed. "Now, what does that mean?" he inquired."You've given up everything for chemistry. Haven't you noticed that we can hardly talk to each other—that you can hardly talk to anybody?""I never did have much talent for small talk.""But I didn't mean small talk. You care only for chemistry, know only chemistry. You never did know or care much about literature or art or music or any of the worth-while things except just your own specialty. And you can afford to be that way. It's your career, and also you're not a woman and a mother."He had stopped caressing her. "I confess I don't understand," said he stiffly."A man can afford to be narrow—not to know life or the world. But a mother—if she's the right sort—has to try to know everything. She's got to bring up children—and how can she hope to teach and train successfully if she doesn't know?""I don't agree with you," said he, a certain curtness in his voice. "A woman must be pure, innocent, womanly—as you are. Nature didn't make her to be learned or wise—to think. She has her instincts to keep her straight, and a father or a husband——""Dick—Dick!" she cried, patting him on the cheek. "What an old fogey it is! You talk like—like an ordinary man. How bored you'd be if you had that kind of wife—one who couldn't be comrade and companion, and didn't want to be—one who was merely a mistress."Vaughan was sitting bolt upright now. "Those books in there— Courtney, you're not reading impure, upsetting books?"She laughed delightedly."What are those books?" he insisted."They're—now, Dickey dear, please don't be shocked—they're on landscape gardening and interior decoration." She looked up at him mischievously in the starlight. "Are they womanly enough to suit you?""Yes, indeed," said he heartily. "But I might have known you'd not read anything a good woman oughtn't. I love you as you are—and I'd hate to see you changed, my spotless little angel."She submitted to his caresses. And presently, in that brain which he would have thought it absurd to look into except for the very lightest kind of amusement, there formed the first really disloyal thought she had ever permitted to be born. The thought was: "Dick certainly does take himself terribly seriously. If it weren't Dick, I'd say he was getting to be a prig." She was instantly shocked at herself, as one always is at the first impulse to doubt the idol one has set up for blind worship. She felt there was but one way to prevent the recurrence of such perilous blasphemy. After a brief silence she said in a constrained voice: "Dick, I was not a stupid, incurious fool as a girl, and I went to college, and I'm a wife and a mother. If by innocence you mean ignorance, I'm anything but innocent."She saw that he was highly amused."Women," she went on earnestly, "always tell each other that before men it's wise to pretend to be ignorant and too refined to know life, and to be shocked at everything. They say it pleases men. But I'm sure you're not that sort of man. Anyhow, I can't be a hypocrite.""That's right, dear," said he, nodding approvingly, the amused smile lingering. "Go on with your interior decoration and landscape gardening. You can't learn too much about them." He was leaning back again, secure, comfortable, happy, enjoying the sensation of caressing her.She gave it up, as she always did when she found herself being ruffled by that strange antiquated prejudice of his. It would yield in time. Besides, what did it really matter?—since they loved each other, and would be happy once their real life got under way. "I'd have taken up chemistry," she continued, "but one can't go far alone in that, with only books. And you wouldn't help me. I'm afraid you'll find me very rusty when I come down to the laboratory next spring."His lips were open to inquire what she meant, when he was unpleasantly spared the necessity. Out of a dark recess of memory sprang the ghost—the "whim." He was astounded, irritated, alarmed. He had supposed he had heard the last of that silly notion about helping him; she hadn't spoken of it in nearly two years. Now—here it was again!"Dick," she was saying, her hand clasping his, "I've appreciated your not speaking of it, or even talking about what you were doing. If you had, the delay'd have been much harder to bear. For, as long as Winchie needs me, I simply can't come.""I understand, dear," said he, much relieved."It's a dreadfully long delay, isn't it?" she went on, dreamily gazing up into the great quiet sky. "The more I see of married people, and the more I think about married life, the clearer I see that two must have a common interest, a common career, or they drift apart, and usually the woman sinks down and down into a gadabout or a fat frump or a professional minder of other people's business—a gossip or a charity worker."If she had been looking, even in that faint light she could have seen his expression of gathering displeasure."Or else," she went on, "she seeks love elsewhere. Isn't it strange, Dick, how in unhappy marriages the so-called good women are the bad ones, and the so-called bad ones good? I mean, when a weak woman finds herself married wrong she accepts it and gently rots, and people say she's a good soul, when she's really degrading herself and rotting everybody round her. While a strong woman—one that's worth while—refuses to be crushed, and people call her bad. But then I've begun to think life's like one of those exhibitions where some cut-up slips round and changes the labels so that everything's named wrong."She was talking along lightly, talking what seemed to her the plainest common sense, and was all unconscious that she had brought him and herself where both were almost peering into the abyss between them. He was sitting up, was getting ready to deliver himself. Her next remark checked him. "Thank Heaven, Dick, you and I are going to have the interest that makes two lives one—makes it impossible to grow apart. It seems to me I can't wait for Winchie to release me so that I may come and work with you. Aren't you glad I really, naturally, like chemistry, and already know something about it?"He winced, and instead of speaking, put his cigar between his opened lips.She leaned her head affectionately against his arm. "I feel close to you to-night—feel that we're in perfect sympathy. Sometimes—I—I don't feel quite that way. Of course I know it's all right, but I get—afraid. It's such a long, long delay—and your work absorbs you—and we almost never talk as we're talking to-night. There have been times when—-I've almost—been afraidwewere drifting apart.""What nonsense!" he cried sharply. "How could that be? Do you suppose I don't know you're a good woman? You talk foolishly at times—things you've picked up from loose people. But you are a lady and a good woman."She saw he was for some unknown reason irritated. She swiftly changed the subject. "Anyhow, dearest, we shan't be in danger much longer. We're nearly to the end of the life we've been leading ever since we got back from our wedding trip. Just think—ever since then! How time has gone!"He stirred uncomfortably, ventured: "We've been happy, and, even if things were to go on just as they are, we'd continue to be happy.""Of course, you've had your work and I've had Winchie, and once in a while we have each other. But most of the happiness has been in looking forward, hasn't it?"She assumed that his silence was assent."But don't think, dear," she said, "that I've been content just to wait. As soon as I saw it was going to be a long time before I could come to the laboratory——"He rose abruptly, under the pretense of lighting a fresh cigar."—I made another occupation for myself. It'll be next spring at the earliest before I can come to you. And even then I'll be able to spend only part of the day. Winchie'll have to be looked after when he's not at the kindergarten. Now that he's talking and understanding, it's more necessary than ever to watch over him. I've had to watch only his body. Now it's both his body and his mind; for, if any harm came to either, it'd be our fault, wouldn't it?""There's no doubt of that," said Dick with strong emphasis, as he seated himself in a chair opposite her. He thought this remark of hers opened the way out of his perplexity. "I don't see how you can come to the laboratory at all.""Oh, yes. It's not so bad as that. If it were, I don't know what I'd do. It'd be choice between losing you and neglecting him.""Trash!" exclaimed Dick impatiently. There seemed something essentially immoral in her whole attitude, an odor of immorality exuding from everything she said. It exasperated him that he could not locate it and use it as the text for the lecture he felt she greatly needed. "Your good sense must tell you there's not the slightest danger of your losing me."She laughed with raillery. "Oh, I know you're far too busy with your chemistry to wander. But that isn't what I meant. You understand." Her eyes shone upon him. "Sometimes—when we're holding each other tight and your lips are on mine—I can scarcely keep from crying. It seems to me we're like two held apart and trying to be one—and trying in vain. It's as if we touched only at the surface, and our bodies were keeping us from each other. But all that will soon end now, and we'll be really one. Closer and closer, day by day——"She sat on his lap, and he clasped her in his arms. He felt ashamed somehow, and in awe of this emotion that was beyond him. "How wonderful a pure woman is!" he thought.After a pause she sat up, went back to the hammock, seated herself, leaning toward him. "But I started to tell you my plans.""What plans?" he asked, in high good humor with her again and overflowing with "lighter-hour" tenderness. "Tell me quick and we'll go in. It's getting late." He moved to seat himself beside her."No," she said, laughingly. "Sit where you are. I want you to listen. It isn't often I can get you to listen. As I said, I've got to have something worth while to fill in as I look after Winchie when he's not at kindergarten. I've been getting ready for a year, and it has given me occupation when he was sleeping or playing, for I taught him to amuse himself and not to look to me for everything. That was good for him and saved me. Well, I studied gardening and interior decoration.""What a fuss you do make," said he, amused. "Why not just settle down and be a plain woman?""Shame on you! Tempting me to go to pieces.""You'll not improve on the good old-fashioned woman, my dear.""You deserve to be married to one of them.""I am," declared he. "Your whims don't deceive me. I know you. Let's go in, dear."She shook her head in smiling reproach. "Then you don't care to hear my plans?""Oh, yes. What are they?""I've got everything ready to make those changes we discussed on our honeymoon.""Really!" exclaimed he, seeing that enthusiasm was expected, though he hadn't the remotest idea what she was talking about."Of course, I'm going slowly at first, as I want to be sure, and mustn't be extravagant. I've been very careful. I've made drawings and even water colors, for I thought I ought to see how things would look."He was puzzled and alarmed. "I don't believe I know which scheme you mean," he said. "We discussed so many things on that trip.""I mean, to change the house and grounds," explained she with bright enthusiasm. "They'll not be ugly and stiff and cold looking much longer."He started up. "Courtney, what are you talking about?" he demanded."Why, Dick! Don't you remember? I told you some of my ideas on gardens and interiors, and you said——""I don't know what careless, unthinking remark I may have dropped," interrupted he angrily. "I certainly never intended to let you tear things up and make a mess." He walked up and down. "What possesses you anyhow?" he cried. "Why can't you behave yourself like a woman? I never heard of such nonsense! I want you to stop meddling in things that are beyond you. I want you to do your duty as a wife and a mother. I want you to stop annoying me. I didn't marry a blue-stocking, an unsexed thinking woman. I married a sweet, loving wife."She sat on the edge of the hammock, perfectly still. It was as if he had struck her unconscious so suddenly that she had not yet fallen over."What devil keeps nagging at you?" he demanded, pausing in his angry stride to face her. "It must be some woman's having a bad influence on you. I'll not have it. I'll not have my home upset and my wife spoiled. Who is it, Courtney?"She was silent."Answer me!""It's myself," replied she in a quiet, dumb way."It's not yourself.Youare womanly.""I've got to have something to do—something worth while—or I can't live.""Attend to your house and your baby, like all true women.""It isn't enough," replied she in the same monotonous, stupefied way. "It isn't enough for me, any more than it'd be for you.""Nonsense," said he, with the man's feeling that he had thereby answered her.She said dazedly: "You didn't mean it. No, you didn't mean it.""Mean what?""All my plans—my year's work—and such a beautiful house and place I'll make." She started up, clasped her hands round his arm. "O Dick—don't be narrow—and so distrustful of me. I know I can do it. Let me show you my plans—my sketches——"He took her hands, and said with gentle, firm earnestness, for he was ashamed of having lost his temper with a woman: "Courtney, I cannot have it. I will not let you disturb the place my grandfather gave his best thought to.""But you don't like it, dear," she pleaded."I respect my grandfather's memory.""But on our wedding trip you said——""Now, don't argue with me!""It's because you think I couldn't do it?""I know you couldn't—if you must have the truth.""Let me show you my sketches and paintings," she pleaded, in a queer kind of quiet hysteria. "Let me explain my plans. I'm sure you'll——""Now, Courtney! I've told you my decision. I want to hear no more about it."She looked up into his face searchingly. He was like the portrait of his unbending grandfather that made the library uncomfortable. Her arms fell to her sides. She went to the balcony rail, gazed out into the black masses of foliage. Taken completely by surprise, she could not at once realize any part, much less all, of what those words of his involved; but she felt in her heart the chill of a great fear—the fear of what she would think, of what she would know, when she did realize.His voice interrupted. "While you're on the unpleasant subject of these notions of yours," he said, with an attempt at lightness in his embarrassed tone, "we might as well finish it—get it out of the way forever. I want you to stop thinking about the laboratory."She turned, swift as a swallow."I admit I've been at fault—encouraging you to imagine I'd consent. But I thought you'd forget about it. Apparently you haven't."A long silence."I repeat, I'm sorry I misled you. It seemed to me a trifling deception."She did not speak, did not move."When you think it over, you'll see that I'm right—that we're much happier as we are."After a long silence, which somehow alarmed him, though he told himself such a feeling was absurd, she crossed the balcony to the window. As she paused there, not looking toward him, the profile of those sweet, irregular features of hers stood out clearly. That expression, though it was quiet, increased his absurd alarm. "It's getting late," she said, and her tone was gentle, apologetic. "I think I'll go in.""Are you angry, Courtney?""No," she replied. "I don't think so.""Why are you silent?""I don't know," she said slowly. "I seem to have stopped inside."He went and put his arms round her. She was passive as a doll. "Why, you're quite cold, child!""I must go in. Good night.""I'll join you in a few minutes."She shivered. "No," she said. "Good night."He was somewhat disconcerted. Then he reflected that she could hardly be expected to give up her whims without a little struggling. "It shows how sweet and good she is," thought he, "that she took it so quietly." And he went to bed in the room across the hall—the room he had been occupying most of the time since three months before Winchie came. As he fell asleep he felt that he had laid "the ghost" and had settled all his domestic affairs upon the proper basis. He slept, but she lay awake the whole night, watching, tearless, beside her dead.IVNext morning, after her usual breakfast alone, she took Winchie and went across in the motor boat to her father's. If she had been led blindfold into that house she would have known, from the instant of the opening of the door, that she was at home. Every home has its individual odor. Hers had a clean, comfortable perfume suggestive of lavender. She inhaled it deeply now as she paused a moment in the front hall—inhaled it with a sudden sense of peace, of sorrow shut out securely. She left the baby in the sitting room with her sister Lal, and sought out her mother in the pleasant old-fashioned back parlor with its outlook on the hollyhocks and sunflowers of the kitchen garden. Mrs. Benedict, a model of judicial sternness, as her husband was of judicial gentleness, sat reading a pious book by the open window. She glanced up as her daughter entered, and prepared her cold-looking cheek for the conventional salute. But Courtney was in no mood for conventions. She seated herself on the roll of the horsehair sofa. "Mother," she said, "I want to talk to you about Richard."The tone was a forewarning—an ominous forewarning because it was calm. Mrs. Benedict, for all her resolute unworldliness, had been unable to live sixty-seven years without there having been forced upon her an amount of wisdom sufficient to store to bursting the mind of any woman half her age. She closed the heavy-looking book in her lap, leaving her glasses to mark the place. "I don't think I need tell a daughter of mine that she cannot discuss her husband with anyone."Courtney flushed. "That's just it," replied she. "He is no longer my husband."She was astonished at her mother's composure. An announcement about the weather could not have been less excitedly received. She did not realize how plainly she was showing, in her changed countenance, in stern eyes and resolute chin, the evidences a mother could hardly fail to read—evidences of a mood a sensible mother would not aggravate by agitation. "I cannot live with him," she went on. "I've brought Winchie and come home."Her words startled herself. In this imperturbable, severely sensible presence they sounded hysterical, theatrical, though she had thought out the idea they conveyed with what she felt sure was the utmost deliberation. Her mother's gray-green eyes looked at her—simply looked."I know you don't believe in divorce, mother. But he and I have never been really married. He's entirely different from the man I loved. And he— What he feels for me isn't love at all. He doesn't know me—and doesn't want to know me.""Has he sent you away?""Oh, no.He'ssatisfied."Mrs. Benedict folded her ladylike hands upon the pious book, said coldly and calmly: "Then you will go back to him.""Never. I refuse to live with a man who classes me with the lower animals. I——"Her mother's stern, calm voice interrupted. "Don't say things you will have to take back. You will return because there is no place else for you.""Mother! Do you refuse to take me and Winchie? Oh, you don't understand. You—who believe in religion—you couldn't let me——""Your father," interrupted her mother in the same cold, placid way, "is not to be made judge again. We shall have to give up this house and retire to the farm. We have nothing but the farm. It will take every cent we can rake and scrape to pay the insurance premiums. The insurance premiums must be paid. The insurance is for your sisters. They have no husbands." And with these few bald statements she stopped, for she knew that under her daughter's youthful idealism there was the solid rock of common sense, that behind her impetuosity there was her father's own instinct for justice."The farm," said Courtney, stunned. "The farm." Twenty miles back in the wilderness—a living death—burial alive. "Oh, mother!" And the girl flung herself down beside the old woman and clasped her round the waist. "You shan't go there! I'll go back to Richard and we'll see that you and father and Lal and Ann stay on here."Her mother was as rigid as the old-fashioned straight-back chair in which she sat. The blood burned brightly in the center of each of her white cheeks, but her voice was distinctly softer as she said: "You will go back. But we accept nothing from anybody."Courtney hung her head. "Of course not," she said, hurried and confused. "I spoke on impulse.""You'd better sit in a chair," said Mrs. Benedict. "You are rumpling your dress."But Courtney was not hurt. She had an instinct why her mother wished her to sit at a distance. "Very well, mother," said she meekly, and obeyed.After a pause Mrs. Benedict spoke: "I was not surprised when you told me. I suppose there is not one woman in ten thousand who doesn't at least once in the first five years of her married life resolve to leave her husband.""But it's different with me. I must have something—and I have nothing.""You have your home and Winchie.""That house—those prim, dressed-up looking grounds—they've always oppressed me. And I hate them—now that—" She checked herself. How futile to relate and to rail. "As for Winchie, he's not enough.""There will be others presently."Courtney gave her mother a horrified look."You will do your duty as a wife, and the children will be your reward."Courtney could not discuss this; discussion would be both useless and painful. "There may be some women who could be content with looking after a house and the wants of children," said she. "But I'm not one of them, and I never saw or heard of a worth-while woman who was. How am I to spend the time? I'm like you—I don't care for running about doing inane things. I can't just read and read, with no purpose, no sympathy. It seems to me I could do almost anything with love—almost nothing without it.... Brought up and educated like a man, and then condemned to the old-fashioned life for women—a life no man would endure!"Her mother was looking out through the window, a strange expression about her stern mouth—the expression of one who, old and in a far, cold land, thinks of home and youth when the sun warmed the blood and the heart."What shall I do if I go back?" repeated Courtney. "But why ask that? I've simply got to go back. As you say, there's no place else for me." A flush of shame overspread her cheeks. "Oh, it's so degrading!""You forget Winchie," said her mother, and her tone was gentle."No, I thought of that excuse. But I was ashamed to speak it. It seemed like hypocrisy. Of course, I've got to go back for his sake. But if I hadn't him I'd go back just the same. Mother, you ought to have had me educated more or else less. If I knew less I could be content with the sort of life women used to think was the summit of earthly bliss. If I knew more I could make my own life. I could be independent. I begin to understand why women are restless nowadays. We're neither the one thing nor the other."Up to a certain point Mrs. Benedict could understand her daughter, could sympathize. She could even have supplemented Courtney's forebodings as to the future with drearier actualities of experience. But beyond that point the two women were hopelessly apart. "You are warring with God," she rebuked. "He has ordained woman's position." And to her mind that settled everything."It isn't God," replied Courtney. "It's just ignorance.""It is God," declared her mother, in the fanatic tone that told Courtney her mind was closed.The mother and daughter belonged to two different generations—the two that are perhaps further apart than any two in all human history. Courtney saw how far apart she and her mother were, thought she understood why her mother could sympathize with her restlessness in woman's ancient bondage, but could only say "sacrilege" when the younger and better educated woman went on from vague restlessness to open revolt."God has seen fit to make the lot of woman hard," said the mother."If that is God," cried the daughter, "then the less said about Him the better.""Courtney, your sinful heart will bring you to grief.""Is it a sin to think?""I sometimes believe it is—for a woman," replied the mother, with the kind of bitter irony into which the most reverent devotee is sometimes goaded by the whimsical cruelties of his deity.Courtney had long since learned to be unargumentative before her mother's somber and savage religion, so logical yet so inhuman. She had dimly felt that if she ever investigated religion, the misery of the world would compel her to choose between believing in her mother's devil god and believing nothing. So she left religion aside in her scheme of life, like so many of the men and women of her generation."I ought to have had more education or less," she repeated. "I ought to have had more, for it wouldn't have been fair to give me less than the rest of the girls have."She fancied it was her formal education of the college that had made her think and feel as she did. In fact, that had little, perhaps nothing, to do with it; for colleges, except the as yet few scientific schools—stupefy or stunt more minds than they stimulate. She was simply a child of her own generation, and the forces that were stirring her to restlessness were part of its universal atmosphere—the atmosphere all who live in it must breathe, the "spirit of the time" that makes the very yokel with his eyes upon the clod see things in it his yokel father never saw.She knew her mother would gladly help her, but she realized she might as hopefully appeal to Winchie. All her mother could say would be: "Yes, it is sad. But the only thing to do is to return and pretend to be the old-fashioned wife, and perhaps custom will make the harness cease to gall." Well, perhaps her mother was right; perhaps there was no solution, no self-respecting hopeful solution. Certainly she could not support herself, except in some menial and meager way that would more surely kill all that was aspiring in her than would submission to the lot which universal custom made abject only in theory. She could not support herself—and there was Winchie, too. Winchie had his rights—rights to the advantages his father's position and fortune gave. Dick had made it clear that he did not and would not have the kind of love, the kind of relationship, she believed in. She must go on his terms or not at all.She ended the long silence, during which her mother sat motionless in an attitude of patient waiting for the inevitable. "I will go," she said. "And I will try to be to him the kind of wife he wants."Mrs. Benedict looked at her daughter; there were tears of pride in her eyes. "That is right," she said, and they talked of it no more.But on the way back in the motor boat, and for the rest of that day, and for a good part of many a day and many a night thereafter, Courtney Vaughan's mind was stormily busy. It teemed with the thoughts that in this age of the break-up of the old-fashioned institution of the family force themselves early or late upon every woman endowed with the intelligence to have, or to dream of, self-respect.Thenceforth Dick Vaughan, if he had thought about it at all, would have congratulated himself on his wise and thorough adjustment of his threatened domestic affairs. But he gave no more thought to it than does the next human being. We do not annoy ourselves with what is going on in the heads of those around us. We look only at results. And usually this plan works well; for, no matter what the average human being may have in mind, the habit of a routine of action ultimately determines his or her real self. Once in a while, however, circumstances interfere, encourage the latent revolt against action's routine apparently so placidly pursued. But this is rare.The weeks, the months went by; and Courtney seemed, and thought herself, a typical "settled" wife and mother. That is, as "settled" as an intelligent, energetic, and young woman, restless in mind and body, could be. She did not attempt to come to a definite verbal understanding with him. What would be the use? There was nothing to change except herself. There was nothing to explain. She understood him. He did not understand her, did not wish to, could not on account of his prejudices, however carefully she might explain. "No," thought she, "the only thing is for me to accept my position as woman and adapt myself to it, since I haven't the right, or the courage, or the whatever it is I lack, to do as I'd like." The only outward difference in their relations was that she rarely talked with him, and when he was about, fell into his habit of abstraction.That winter he became extremely irregular about coming to dinner, and as the days lengthened with the spring he often worked on through supper time also. In late May or early June he began to note that when he did come up to the house for supper, his wife was sometimes there and sometimes not. Gradually her absence made an impression on him, and her always answering his inquiry with, "I was over at the club." As that meant the Outing Club, established and supported and frequented by the young people of Wenona and its suburbs, he was entirely satisfied. This, until about midsummer. One evening, when she returned in the dusk from supper at the club, she found him seated on the bench at the landing stage, smoking moodily. He was scantily civil to Shirley Drummond, who had brought her in the club launch. When Shirley was well on the way back to the north shore, Courtney, who had seated herself beside her husband, spoke of the heat and unwound the chiffon scarf about her bare neck and shoulders. Dick glanced round. In some moods he would not have seen at all. In other moods those slender shoulders, that graceful throat, and the small head with its lightly borne masses of auburn hair would have appealed to his pride and joy of possession. But things had gone wrong at "the shop," and he was in the mood that could readily either turn him to her for the consolation of a "lighter hour" or set him off in a rage. He frowned upon the exposed shoulders."Where did you get that dress?" he demanded.She heard simply the question. Her thoughts were on the events of the evening at the club. "Had it made here," said she, unconscious of his mood. "It's something like one I saw in a fashion picture from Paris. Like it?"To her amazement he replied angrily: "I do not. I've never seen a dress I disapproved of so thoroughly. Don't wear it again, and please be careful how you adopt a fashion you get that way. French fashions are set by a class of women I couldn't speak to you about. Respectable women have to alter them greatly.""Why, what's the matter with the dress?" exclaimed she. "Everyone admired it at the club.""It isn't decent," replied he. "I know you are so innocent that you don't think of those things. But it's my duty to protect you. I won't have men commenting on my wife's person.""But, Dick," protested she, "this isn't a low-cut dress. It's higher than those I usually wear. It has bands across the shoulders and a real back——""Then change all your dresses. You must not make yourself conspicuous.""Conspicuous! The other women wear much lower-cut dresses than I do.""I know about such things," said he peremptorily. "I don't believe in low-neck dresses anyhow. What business has a good woman flaunting her charms—rousing in other men thoughts she ought to rouse in her husband only?""Don't you think it's all a matter of custom?" she said persuasively. She was not convinced, or even shaken. But she admired the shrewdness of his argument. The reason she had never grown to dislike him was that even in his prejudices he was always plausible, and not in his narrowest narrowness was he ever petty. "Now really, Dick, if that were carried out logically, a woman'd have to cover her face and not speak, for often it's a woman's voice that charms a man"—with a little laugh—"and once in a long while what she says.""I would carry it out logically," replied he promptly, "if I had my way. That reminds me. You're away from home very often these days, I notice. You're over at the club a great deal.""The weather's been so fine, everybody goes.""I've no objection to your going occasionally. But after all the place for a good woman is at home."She thought so too, as a general principle; home undoubtedly was the place for a good woman, or any sort of woman, or for a man; that was to her mind the meaning of home—the most attractive, the most magnetic spot on earth. However, the Vaughan place was not "home." She could not discuss this with him, so she simply answered, "But I get bored—here alone—and with nothing to do. And nobody'll come at this time of year, with something on at the club every day and evening.""You don't even stay home to meals.""Neither do you.""But I haven't Winchie to look after.""He plays with the other children at the kindergarten. And Miss Brockholst can keep a child amused as I couldn't. When I stay out to supper I see that Nanny or Lizzie brings him home and puts him to bed. And I'm not out to supper often.""I don't like it," said Dick imperiously."You ought to come with me," rejoined she. "But you never will.""I've no time for foolishness. And I'm sure you haven't either.""What ought I to do with myself?""What other good women do. Our mothers didn't hang about clubs.""No. But these aren't pioneer times. Things are entirely different nowadays. That was why—" She did not finish. She did not wish to remind him how he had refused to let her either share his life or make a life of her own. She refrained because the subject might be unpleasant to him. It was no longer unpleasant to her; she now had not the least desire to share his life, was in a way content to drift aimlessly along with the rest of the aimless women."Yes, many of the women are different nowadays," said he. "The more reason for my wife's conducting herself as a woman should."She flushed with sudden anger. "Why can't you accept a woman as a human being?" exclaimed she. "Oh, you men—tempting—compelling—us to be hypocrites—and making our natural impulses rot into vices because they have to be hid away in the dark.""We will not quarrel," said he, in the calm superior tone he always took when their talk touched on the two sexes. "I simply say I will not tolerate my wife's being a club lounger."To have answered would have been to say what must precipitate a furious and futile quarrel. She kept silent, with less effort than many women would have to make in the circumstances. She had had the conventional feminine training in self-suppression, that so often gives women the seeming of duplicity and only too often imperceptibly leads them into forming the habit of duplicity. She had also had special training in self-concealment through having been brought up austerely. She kept silent, and made up her mind to obey. She had heard much talk among the women at the club about the "rights of a wife"; but it had not convinced her. She could not see that she, or any other of the women married as was she, contributed to the family anything that entitled her to oppose the husband's will as to how it should be conducted. And she would have scorned to get by cajolery what she could not have got honestly. She was thus the good wife, not through fear of him, for she was not a coward and he was not the sort of small tyrant that makes the women and the children tremble; nor was it because she was faithful to her marriage vows, for she never thought of them. Her submissiveness was entirely due to the agreement she had tacitly signed the day she went back to him, after the talk with her mother. In return for shelter and support she would be, so far as she could, the kind of wife he wanted.
III
Except courtship and honeymoon never had she been so happy as in the last two months before the baby came. "Every-one is spoiling me," she said, dazzled by the revelations of thoughtfulness and affection. Her friends, her acquaintances, showered attentions upon her. Even her mother, austere and cold, unbent. Her father, the shy, the silent, betrayed where she had got her silent, shy, intense longing for love. The two sour old-maid sisters were all tenderness and chaste excitement. As for Dick, he actually neglected his career. Again and again he would stop in the midst of an experiment to dash up to the house and inquire what he could do for her—this when there was a private telephone at his elbow.
She was intelligent about diet and exercise; so she suffered hardly at all. As for the baby, he came into the world positively shrieking with health. Finally, she had none of the petty vanity that leads many a first-time mother into fancying and acting as if maternity were a unique achievement, original with herself. Thus the agitation quickly died away, and life resumed its former course, except that she had a baby to take care of. At first it was great fun. Dick helped her, forgot his chemistry, seemed in the way to become a father of unprecedented devotion. But this did not last long. He loved playthings and played with them; but the call of his career was the strong force in his life, and he went back to the laboratory. She might have given the baby over to a nurse, as all the other women were doing. But it seemed to her that, as she was responsible for the coming of this frisky helplessness, she could not do less than guard him until he was able to look out for himself. "When he can talk and tell me exactly how's he treated when I'm not around," said she, "why, perhaps I'll trust him to a nurse—if he needs one. But until then I'll be nurse myself."
Many and many a time in the next eighteen months she wished she had not committed herself openly and positively. She loved her baby as much as any mother could—and a good-humored lovable baby he was, fat and handsome, and showing signs of being well bred while still a speechless animal. But, except in romances and make-believe life, the deepest love wearies of sacrifices, though it gladly makes them. This baby—Benedict they named him, but he changed it to Winchie as soon as he could—this baby made a slave of her. She understood why so many women retrograde after the birth of the first child. The temptation to go to seed is powerful enough in the most favorable circumstances, once a woman has caught a husband and secured a living for life. A baby, she soon saw, made that temptation tenfold stronger. She wondered what it was in her that compelled her to fight unyieldingly against being demoralized.
Dick was deep in a series of experiments that forbade him a thought for anything else. He did occasionally spend a few moments in mechanical dalliance with his two playthings; but that interrupted his thoughts little if at all. By the slow, unnoted day-to-day action that plays the only really important part in human intimacies of all kinds, she had grown too shy and strange with him to ask his help or even to think of expecting it. She did not judge him—at least, not consciously. She assumed he was doing the best he could, the best anyone could, the best possible. To have complained, even in thought, would have seemed to her as futile as railing against any fundamental of life—against being unable to fly instead of walk. She made occupation for herself, as will presently appear. But, after all, it was Winchie who saved her. But for him she, with no taste for "chasing about," would have withdrawn within herself, would have become silent, cold, ever more and more like her mother, with barren cynicism in place of Mrs. Benedict's equally barren religiosity. Winchie's spirits of overflowing health, his newcomer's delight in life were infectious and stimulating. In keeping him in perfect health—outdoors, winter and summer, and always active, she made her own health so perfect that the cheerful and hopeful side of things was rarely so much as obscured.
One evening after supper Richard, moved by the intermittent impulse to amuse himself, sought her in her sitting room, where she was reading. She always sat there in the evenings because she could hear Winchie if he became restless. He never did, but that fact no more freed her to go off duty than the absence of burglars the policeman. Dick gave her the kind of kiss that was always his signal for a "lighter hour." She merely glanced up, gave him the smile that is a matrimonial convention like "my dear," and went on with her book. Theretofore, whenever he had shown the least desire to take an hour off from that career of his, she had instantly responded. She assumed this readiness meant love; in fact, love had no part in it. She responded for two reasons, both unsuspected by her: because she did not know him well enough to have moods with him and to show them, and because refusal would have been admission of the truth of indifference to him which she had not yet discovered. That evening, for the first time, she did not respond. It was unconscious on her part, unnoted by him; yet it was the most significant event in their married life since the wedding ceremony two years and a half before.
He stood behind her and began gliding his fingers over the soft down at the nape of her neck. It has become second nature to women to repress their active emotions, no matter how strong, and to wait upon the man—an evidence of inferior status that is crudely but sufficiently disguised as "womanly delicacy and reserve." In response to the signal of those caressing fingers Courtney mechanically put up her hand and patted his. Her gesture was genuinely affectionate—but there had been a time when it would not have been mechanical. She did not lift her eyes from the page.
"Is that a good love story?" asked he. "As good as ours?"
A tender little smile of half absent appreciation played round her lips. But—her glance remained upon her reading. "It isn't a novel," replied she. "It's a treatise."
"A treatise?" mocked he. "Gracious me! What a wise fairy it is! Put it away, and let's go on the balcony. There'll not be many more sit-out nights."
He moved to pick her up in his arms. But she smilingly pushed him away. "I want to finish this chapter," said she.
"All right. I'll go out and smoke. Don't be long."
And he sauntered through the window door. After perhaps a quarter of an hour she joined him in the hammock. Matrimony is a curious fabric of set phrases, set thoughts, and set actions. It was their habit, in such circumstances, for her to snuggle up to him and for him to put his arm round her. The habit was on this occasion observed. It was her habit to assume that she was happy—and she now so assumed. He began the conversation. "I've been watching you as I sat here," said he lazily. "What are all those books on the table? They look serious—businesslike."
"Let's not talk about anything serious. You always laugh at me or get absent-minded."
"But you seemed so absorbed. What was it?"
"Oh, I've been doing a little reading and thinking and studying for the past year. You see, when a woman takes care of a baby, she's got to look out or she'll become one herself."
"But you are a baby." And there followed the usual caresses.
"Not a real baby," said she. "We both act like children at times—very little children. But we'd not care for each other as we do if either of us were really infantile. It takes a grown person to play baby attractively."
"Baby," he insisted fondly. He was smiling with the masculinely patronizing tolerance to which she had grown so used that she never noted it. He appreciated that she was clever—with the woman sort of cleverness—bright, witty, sometimes saying remarkably keen things. But, being a man, he knew that man mind and woman mind are entirely different—never so different as when woman mind seems to be like man mind—just as purely instinctive actions of animals seem to display profound reasoning power. "And what was the baby wrinkling its brow over, in there? The care and feeding of infants?"
"Dear me, no," replied she with perfect good humor. "I went into that before Winchie came. You think it's all a joke—my reading and studying. But the real joke is your thinking so. You must remember I can't afford to let myself go, as you do."
He had been chiefly absorbed in caresses and caressing thoughts. At this last remark he laughed. "Now, what does that mean?" he inquired.
"You've given up everything for chemistry. Haven't you noticed that we can hardly talk to each other—that you can hardly talk to anybody?"
"I never did have much talent for small talk."
"But I didn't mean small talk. You care only for chemistry, know only chemistry. You never did know or care much about literature or art or music or any of the worth-while things except just your own specialty. And you can afford to be that way. It's your career, and also you're not a woman and a mother."
He had stopped caressing her. "I confess I don't understand," said he stiffly.
"A man can afford to be narrow—not to know life or the world. But a mother—if she's the right sort—has to try to know everything. She's got to bring up children—and how can she hope to teach and train successfully if she doesn't know?"
"I don't agree with you," said he, a certain curtness in his voice. "A woman must be pure, innocent, womanly—as you are. Nature didn't make her to be learned or wise—to think. She has her instincts to keep her straight, and a father or a husband——"
"Dick—Dick!" she cried, patting him on the cheek. "What an old fogey it is! You talk like—like an ordinary man. How bored you'd be if you had that kind of wife—one who couldn't be comrade and companion, and didn't want to be—one who was merely a mistress."
Vaughan was sitting bolt upright now. "Those books in there— Courtney, you're not reading impure, upsetting books?"
She laughed delightedly.
"What are those books?" he insisted.
"They're—now, Dickey dear, please don't be shocked—they're on landscape gardening and interior decoration." She looked up at him mischievously in the starlight. "Are they womanly enough to suit you?"
"Yes, indeed," said he heartily. "But I might have known you'd not read anything a good woman oughtn't. I love you as you are—and I'd hate to see you changed, my spotless little angel."
She submitted to his caresses. And presently, in that brain which he would have thought it absurd to look into except for the very lightest kind of amusement, there formed the first really disloyal thought she had ever permitted to be born. The thought was: "Dick certainly does take himself terribly seriously. If it weren't Dick, I'd say he was getting to be a prig." She was instantly shocked at herself, as one always is at the first impulse to doubt the idol one has set up for blind worship. She felt there was but one way to prevent the recurrence of such perilous blasphemy. After a brief silence she said in a constrained voice: "Dick, I was not a stupid, incurious fool as a girl, and I went to college, and I'm a wife and a mother. If by innocence you mean ignorance, I'm anything but innocent."
She saw that he was highly amused.
"Women," she went on earnestly, "always tell each other that before men it's wise to pretend to be ignorant and too refined to know life, and to be shocked at everything. They say it pleases men. But I'm sure you're not that sort of man. Anyhow, I can't be a hypocrite."
"That's right, dear," said he, nodding approvingly, the amused smile lingering. "Go on with your interior decoration and landscape gardening. You can't learn too much about them." He was leaning back again, secure, comfortable, happy, enjoying the sensation of caressing her.
She gave it up, as she always did when she found herself being ruffled by that strange antiquated prejudice of his. It would yield in time. Besides, what did it really matter?—since they loved each other, and would be happy once their real life got under way. "I'd have taken up chemistry," she continued, "but one can't go far alone in that, with only books. And you wouldn't help me. I'm afraid you'll find me very rusty when I come down to the laboratory next spring."
His lips were open to inquire what she meant, when he was unpleasantly spared the necessity. Out of a dark recess of memory sprang the ghost—the "whim." He was astounded, irritated, alarmed. He had supposed he had heard the last of that silly notion about helping him; she hadn't spoken of it in nearly two years. Now—here it was again!
"Dick," she was saying, her hand clasping his, "I've appreciated your not speaking of it, or even talking about what you were doing. If you had, the delay'd have been much harder to bear. For, as long as Winchie needs me, I simply can't come."
"I understand, dear," said he, much relieved.
"It's a dreadfully long delay, isn't it?" she went on, dreamily gazing up into the great quiet sky. "The more I see of married people, and the more I think about married life, the clearer I see that two must have a common interest, a common career, or they drift apart, and usually the woman sinks down and down into a gadabout or a fat frump or a professional minder of other people's business—a gossip or a charity worker."
If she had been looking, even in that faint light she could have seen his expression of gathering displeasure.
"Or else," she went on, "she seeks love elsewhere. Isn't it strange, Dick, how in unhappy marriages the so-called good women are the bad ones, and the so-called bad ones good? I mean, when a weak woman finds herself married wrong she accepts it and gently rots, and people say she's a good soul, when she's really degrading herself and rotting everybody round her. While a strong woman—one that's worth while—refuses to be crushed, and people call her bad. But then I've begun to think life's like one of those exhibitions where some cut-up slips round and changes the labels so that everything's named wrong."
She was talking along lightly, talking what seemed to her the plainest common sense, and was all unconscious that she had brought him and herself where both were almost peering into the abyss between them. He was sitting up, was getting ready to deliver himself. Her next remark checked him. "Thank Heaven, Dick, you and I are going to have the interest that makes two lives one—makes it impossible to grow apart. It seems to me I can't wait for Winchie to release me so that I may come and work with you. Aren't you glad I really, naturally, like chemistry, and already know something about it?"
He winced, and instead of speaking, put his cigar between his opened lips.
She leaned her head affectionately against his arm. "I feel close to you to-night—feel that we're in perfect sympathy. Sometimes—I—I don't feel quite that way. Of course I know it's all right, but I get—afraid. It's such a long, long delay—and your work absorbs you—and we almost never talk as we're talking to-night. There have been times when—-I've almost—been afraidwewere drifting apart."
"What nonsense!" he cried sharply. "How could that be? Do you suppose I don't know you're a good woman? You talk foolishly at times—things you've picked up from loose people. But you are a lady and a good woman."
She saw he was for some unknown reason irritated. She swiftly changed the subject. "Anyhow, dearest, we shan't be in danger much longer. We're nearly to the end of the life we've been leading ever since we got back from our wedding trip. Just think—ever since then! How time has gone!"
He stirred uncomfortably, ventured: "We've been happy, and, even if things were to go on just as they are, we'd continue to be happy."
"Of course, you've had your work and I've had Winchie, and once in a while we have each other. But most of the happiness has been in looking forward, hasn't it?"
She assumed that his silence was assent.
"But don't think, dear," she said, "that I've been content just to wait. As soon as I saw it was going to be a long time before I could come to the laboratory——"
He rose abruptly, under the pretense of lighting a fresh cigar.
"—I made another occupation for myself. It'll be next spring at the earliest before I can come to you. And even then I'll be able to spend only part of the day. Winchie'll have to be looked after when he's not at the kindergarten. Now that he's talking and understanding, it's more necessary than ever to watch over him. I've had to watch only his body. Now it's both his body and his mind; for, if any harm came to either, it'd be our fault, wouldn't it?"
"There's no doubt of that," said Dick with strong emphasis, as he seated himself in a chair opposite her. He thought this remark of hers opened the way out of his perplexity. "I don't see how you can come to the laboratory at all."
"Oh, yes. It's not so bad as that. If it were, I don't know what I'd do. It'd be choice between losing you and neglecting him."
"Trash!" exclaimed Dick impatiently. There seemed something essentially immoral in her whole attitude, an odor of immorality exuding from everything she said. It exasperated him that he could not locate it and use it as the text for the lecture he felt she greatly needed. "Your good sense must tell you there's not the slightest danger of your losing me."
She laughed with raillery. "Oh, I know you're far too busy with your chemistry to wander. But that isn't what I meant. You understand." Her eyes shone upon him. "Sometimes—when we're holding each other tight and your lips are on mine—I can scarcely keep from crying. It seems to me we're like two held apart and trying to be one—and trying in vain. It's as if we touched only at the surface, and our bodies were keeping us from each other. But all that will soon end now, and we'll be really one. Closer and closer, day by day——"
She sat on his lap, and he clasped her in his arms. He felt ashamed somehow, and in awe of this emotion that was beyond him. "How wonderful a pure woman is!" he thought.
After a pause she sat up, went back to the hammock, seated herself, leaning toward him. "But I started to tell you my plans."
"What plans?" he asked, in high good humor with her again and overflowing with "lighter-hour" tenderness. "Tell me quick and we'll go in. It's getting late." He moved to seat himself beside her.
"No," she said, laughingly. "Sit where you are. I want you to listen. It isn't often I can get you to listen. As I said, I've got to have something worth while to fill in as I look after Winchie when he's not at kindergarten. I've been getting ready for a year, and it has given me occupation when he was sleeping or playing, for I taught him to amuse himself and not to look to me for everything. That was good for him and saved me. Well, I studied gardening and interior decoration."
"What a fuss you do make," said he, amused. "Why not just settle down and be a plain woman?"
"Shame on you! Tempting me to go to pieces."
"You'll not improve on the good old-fashioned woman, my dear."
"You deserve to be married to one of them."
"I am," declared he. "Your whims don't deceive me. I know you. Let's go in, dear."
She shook her head in smiling reproach. "Then you don't care to hear my plans?"
"Oh, yes. What are they?"
"I've got everything ready to make those changes we discussed on our honeymoon."
"Really!" exclaimed he, seeing that enthusiasm was expected, though he hadn't the remotest idea what she was talking about.
"Of course, I'm going slowly at first, as I want to be sure, and mustn't be extravagant. I've been very careful. I've made drawings and even water colors, for I thought I ought to see how things would look."
He was puzzled and alarmed. "I don't believe I know which scheme you mean," he said. "We discussed so many things on that trip."
"I mean, to change the house and grounds," explained she with bright enthusiasm. "They'll not be ugly and stiff and cold looking much longer."
He started up. "Courtney, what are you talking about?" he demanded.
"Why, Dick! Don't you remember? I told you some of my ideas on gardens and interiors, and you said——"
"I don't know what careless, unthinking remark I may have dropped," interrupted he angrily. "I certainly never intended to let you tear things up and make a mess." He walked up and down. "What possesses you anyhow?" he cried. "Why can't you behave yourself like a woman? I never heard of such nonsense! I want you to stop meddling in things that are beyond you. I want you to do your duty as a wife and a mother. I want you to stop annoying me. I didn't marry a blue-stocking, an unsexed thinking woman. I married a sweet, loving wife."
She sat on the edge of the hammock, perfectly still. It was as if he had struck her unconscious so suddenly that she had not yet fallen over.
"What devil keeps nagging at you?" he demanded, pausing in his angry stride to face her. "It must be some woman's having a bad influence on you. I'll not have it. I'll not have my home upset and my wife spoiled. Who is it, Courtney?"
She was silent.
"Answer me!"
"It's myself," replied she in a quiet, dumb way.
"It's not yourself.Youare womanly."
"I've got to have something to do—something worth while—or I can't live."
"Attend to your house and your baby, like all true women."
"It isn't enough," replied she in the same monotonous, stupefied way. "It isn't enough for me, any more than it'd be for you."
"Nonsense," said he, with the man's feeling that he had thereby answered her.
She said dazedly: "You didn't mean it. No, you didn't mean it."
"Mean what?"
"All my plans—my year's work—and such a beautiful house and place I'll make." She started up, clasped her hands round his arm. "O Dick—don't be narrow—and so distrustful of me. I know I can do it. Let me show you my plans—my sketches——"
He took her hands, and said with gentle, firm earnestness, for he was ashamed of having lost his temper with a woman: "Courtney, I cannot have it. I will not let you disturb the place my grandfather gave his best thought to."
"But you don't like it, dear," she pleaded.
"I respect my grandfather's memory."
"But on our wedding trip you said——"
"Now, don't argue with me!"
"It's because you think I couldn't do it?"
"I know you couldn't—if you must have the truth."
"Let me show you my sketches and paintings," she pleaded, in a queer kind of quiet hysteria. "Let me explain my plans. I'm sure you'll——"
"Now, Courtney! I've told you my decision. I want to hear no more about it."
She looked up into his face searchingly. He was like the portrait of his unbending grandfather that made the library uncomfortable. Her arms fell to her sides. She went to the balcony rail, gazed out into the black masses of foliage. Taken completely by surprise, she could not at once realize any part, much less all, of what those words of his involved; but she felt in her heart the chill of a great fear—the fear of what she would think, of what she would know, when she did realize.
His voice interrupted. "While you're on the unpleasant subject of these notions of yours," he said, with an attempt at lightness in his embarrassed tone, "we might as well finish it—get it out of the way forever. I want you to stop thinking about the laboratory."
She turned, swift as a swallow.
"I admit I've been at fault—encouraging you to imagine I'd consent. But I thought you'd forget about it. Apparently you haven't."
A long silence.
"I repeat, I'm sorry I misled you. It seemed to me a trifling deception."
She did not speak, did not move.
"When you think it over, you'll see that I'm right—that we're much happier as we are."
After a long silence, which somehow alarmed him, though he told himself such a feeling was absurd, she crossed the balcony to the window. As she paused there, not looking toward him, the profile of those sweet, irregular features of hers stood out clearly. That expression, though it was quiet, increased his absurd alarm. "It's getting late," she said, and her tone was gentle, apologetic. "I think I'll go in."
"Are you angry, Courtney?"
"No," she replied. "I don't think so."
"Why are you silent?"
"I don't know," she said slowly. "I seem to have stopped inside."
He went and put his arms round her. She was passive as a doll. "Why, you're quite cold, child!"
"I must go in. Good night."
"I'll join you in a few minutes."
She shivered. "No," she said. "Good night."
He was somewhat disconcerted. Then he reflected that she could hardly be expected to give up her whims without a little struggling. "It shows how sweet and good she is," thought he, "that she took it so quietly." And he went to bed in the room across the hall—the room he had been occupying most of the time since three months before Winchie came. As he fell asleep he felt that he had laid "the ghost" and had settled all his domestic affairs upon the proper basis. He slept, but she lay awake the whole night, watching, tearless, beside her dead.
IV
Next morning, after her usual breakfast alone, she took Winchie and went across in the motor boat to her father's. If she had been led blindfold into that house she would have known, from the instant of the opening of the door, that she was at home. Every home has its individual odor. Hers had a clean, comfortable perfume suggestive of lavender. She inhaled it deeply now as she paused a moment in the front hall—inhaled it with a sudden sense of peace, of sorrow shut out securely. She left the baby in the sitting room with her sister Lal, and sought out her mother in the pleasant old-fashioned back parlor with its outlook on the hollyhocks and sunflowers of the kitchen garden. Mrs. Benedict, a model of judicial sternness, as her husband was of judicial gentleness, sat reading a pious book by the open window. She glanced up as her daughter entered, and prepared her cold-looking cheek for the conventional salute. But Courtney was in no mood for conventions. She seated herself on the roll of the horsehair sofa. "Mother," she said, "I want to talk to you about Richard."
The tone was a forewarning—an ominous forewarning because it was calm. Mrs. Benedict, for all her resolute unworldliness, had been unable to live sixty-seven years without there having been forced upon her an amount of wisdom sufficient to store to bursting the mind of any woman half her age. She closed the heavy-looking book in her lap, leaving her glasses to mark the place. "I don't think I need tell a daughter of mine that she cannot discuss her husband with anyone."
Courtney flushed. "That's just it," replied she. "He is no longer my husband."
She was astonished at her mother's composure. An announcement about the weather could not have been less excitedly received. She did not realize how plainly she was showing, in her changed countenance, in stern eyes and resolute chin, the evidences a mother could hardly fail to read—evidences of a mood a sensible mother would not aggravate by agitation. "I cannot live with him," she went on. "I've brought Winchie and come home."
Her words startled herself. In this imperturbable, severely sensible presence they sounded hysterical, theatrical, though she had thought out the idea they conveyed with what she felt sure was the utmost deliberation. Her mother's gray-green eyes looked at her—simply looked.
"I know you don't believe in divorce, mother. But he and I have never been really married. He's entirely different from the man I loved. And he— What he feels for me isn't love at all. He doesn't know me—and doesn't want to know me."
"Has he sent you away?"
"Oh, no.He'ssatisfied."
Mrs. Benedict folded her ladylike hands upon the pious book, said coldly and calmly: "Then you will go back to him."
"Never. I refuse to live with a man who classes me with the lower animals. I——"
Her mother's stern, calm voice interrupted. "Don't say things you will have to take back. You will return because there is no place else for you."
"Mother! Do you refuse to take me and Winchie? Oh, you don't understand. You—who believe in religion—you couldn't let me——"
"Your father," interrupted her mother in the same cold, placid way, "is not to be made judge again. We shall have to give up this house and retire to the farm. We have nothing but the farm. It will take every cent we can rake and scrape to pay the insurance premiums. The insurance premiums must be paid. The insurance is for your sisters. They have no husbands." And with these few bald statements she stopped, for she knew that under her daughter's youthful idealism there was the solid rock of common sense, that behind her impetuosity there was her father's own instinct for justice.
"The farm," said Courtney, stunned. "The farm." Twenty miles back in the wilderness—a living death—burial alive. "Oh, mother!" And the girl flung herself down beside the old woman and clasped her round the waist. "You shan't go there! I'll go back to Richard and we'll see that you and father and Lal and Ann stay on here."
Her mother was as rigid as the old-fashioned straight-back chair in which she sat. The blood burned brightly in the center of each of her white cheeks, but her voice was distinctly softer as she said: "You will go back. But we accept nothing from anybody."
Courtney hung her head. "Of course not," she said, hurried and confused. "I spoke on impulse."
"You'd better sit in a chair," said Mrs. Benedict. "You are rumpling your dress."
But Courtney was not hurt. She had an instinct why her mother wished her to sit at a distance. "Very well, mother," said she meekly, and obeyed.
After a pause Mrs. Benedict spoke: "I was not surprised when you told me. I suppose there is not one woman in ten thousand who doesn't at least once in the first five years of her married life resolve to leave her husband."
"But it's different with me. I must have something—and I have nothing."
"You have your home and Winchie."
"That house—those prim, dressed-up looking grounds—they've always oppressed me. And I hate them—now that—" She checked herself. How futile to relate and to rail. "As for Winchie, he's not enough."
"There will be others presently."
Courtney gave her mother a horrified look.
"You will do your duty as a wife, and the children will be your reward."
Courtney could not discuss this; discussion would be both useless and painful. "There may be some women who could be content with looking after a house and the wants of children," said she. "But I'm not one of them, and I never saw or heard of a worth-while woman who was. How am I to spend the time? I'm like you—I don't care for running about doing inane things. I can't just read and read, with no purpose, no sympathy. It seems to me I could do almost anything with love—almost nothing without it.... Brought up and educated like a man, and then condemned to the old-fashioned life for women—a life no man would endure!"
Her mother was looking out through the window, a strange expression about her stern mouth—the expression of one who, old and in a far, cold land, thinks of home and youth when the sun warmed the blood and the heart.
"What shall I do if I go back?" repeated Courtney. "But why ask that? I've simply got to go back. As you say, there's no place else for me." A flush of shame overspread her cheeks. "Oh, it's so degrading!"
"You forget Winchie," said her mother, and her tone was gentle.
"No, I thought of that excuse. But I was ashamed to speak it. It seemed like hypocrisy. Of course, I've got to go back for his sake. But if I hadn't him I'd go back just the same. Mother, you ought to have had me educated more or else less. If I knew less I could be content with the sort of life women used to think was the summit of earthly bliss. If I knew more I could make my own life. I could be independent. I begin to understand why women are restless nowadays. We're neither the one thing nor the other."
Up to a certain point Mrs. Benedict could understand her daughter, could sympathize. She could even have supplemented Courtney's forebodings as to the future with drearier actualities of experience. But beyond that point the two women were hopelessly apart. "You are warring with God," she rebuked. "He has ordained woman's position." And to her mind that settled everything.
"It isn't God," replied Courtney. "It's just ignorance."
"It is God," declared her mother, in the fanatic tone that told Courtney her mind was closed.
The mother and daughter belonged to two different generations—the two that are perhaps further apart than any two in all human history. Courtney saw how far apart she and her mother were, thought she understood why her mother could sympathize with her restlessness in woman's ancient bondage, but could only say "sacrilege" when the younger and better educated woman went on from vague restlessness to open revolt.
"God has seen fit to make the lot of woman hard," said the mother.
"If that is God," cried the daughter, "then the less said about Him the better."
"Courtney, your sinful heart will bring you to grief."
"Is it a sin to think?"
"I sometimes believe it is—for a woman," replied the mother, with the kind of bitter irony into which the most reverent devotee is sometimes goaded by the whimsical cruelties of his deity.
Courtney had long since learned to be unargumentative before her mother's somber and savage religion, so logical yet so inhuman. She had dimly felt that if she ever investigated religion, the misery of the world would compel her to choose between believing in her mother's devil god and believing nothing. So she left religion aside in her scheme of life, like so many of the men and women of her generation.
"I ought to have had more education or less," she repeated. "I ought to have had more, for it wouldn't have been fair to give me less than the rest of the girls have."
She fancied it was her formal education of the college that had made her think and feel as she did. In fact, that had little, perhaps nothing, to do with it; for colleges, except the as yet few scientific schools—stupefy or stunt more minds than they stimulate. She was simply a child of her own generation, and the forces that were stirring her to restlessness were part of its universal atmosphere—the atmosphere all who live in it must breathe, the "spirit of the time" that makes the very yokel with his eyes upon the clod see things in it his yokel father never saw.
She knew her mother would gladly help her, but she realized she might as hopefully appeal to Winchie. All her mother could say would be: "Yes, it is sad. But the only thing to do is to return and pretend to be the old-fashioned wife, and perhaps custom will make the harness cease to gall." Well, perhaps her mother was right; perhaps there was no solution, no self-respecting hopeful solution. Certainly she could not support herself, except in some menial and meager way that would more surely kill all that was aspiring in her than would submission to the lot which universal custom made abject only in theory. She could not support herself—and there was Winchie, too. Winchie had his rights—rights to the advantages his father's position and fortune gave. Dick had made it clear that he did not and would not have the kind of love, the kind of relationship, she believed in. She must go on his terms or not at all.
She ended the long silence, during which her mother sat motionless in an attitude of patient waiting for the inevitable. "I will go," she said. "And I will try to be to him the kind of wife he wants."
Mrs. Benedict looked at her daughter; there were tears of pride in her eyes. "That is right," she said, and they talked of it no more.
But on the way back in the motor boat, and for the rest of that day, and for a good part of many a day and many a night thereafter, Courtney Vaughan's mind was stormily busy. It teemed with the thoughts that in this age of the break-up of the old-fashioned institution of the family force themselves early or late upon every woman endowed with the intelligence to have, or to dream of, self-respect.
Thenceforth Dick Vaughan, if he had thought about it at all, would have congratulated himself on his wise and thorough adjustment of his threatened domestic affairs. But he gave no more thought to it than does the next human being. We do not annoy ourselves with what is going on in the heads of those around us. We look only at results. And usually this plan works well; for, no matter what the average human being may have in mind, the habit of a routine of action ultimately determines his or her real self. Once in a while, however, circumstances interfere, encourage the latent revolt against action's routine apparently so placidly pursued. But this is rare.
The weeks, the months went by; and Courtney seemed, and thought herself, a typical "settled" wife and mother. That is, as "settled" as an intelligent, energetic, and young woman, restless in mind and body, could be. She did not attempt to come to a definite verbal understanding with him. What would be the use? There was nothing to change except herself. There was nothing to explain. She understood him. He did not understand her, did not wish to, could not on account of his prejudices, however carefully she might explain. "No," thought she, "the only thing is for me to accept my position as woman and adapt myself to it, since I haven't the right, or the courage, or the whatever it is I lack, to do as I'd like." The only outward difference in their relations was that she rarely talked with him, and when he was about, fell into his habit of abstraction.
That winter he became extremely irregular about coming to dinner, and as the days lengthened with the spring he often worked on through supper time also. In late May or early June he began to note that when he did come up to the house for supper, his wife was sometimes there and sometimes not. Gradually her absence made an impression on him, and her always answering his inquiry with, "I was over at the club." As that meant the Outing Club, established and supported and frequented by the young people of Wenona and its suburbs, he was entirely satisfied. This, until about midsummer. One evening, when she returned in the dusk from supper at the club, she found him seated on the bench at the landing stage, smoking moodily. He was scantily civil to Shirley Drummond, who had brought her in the club launch. When Shirley was well on the way back to the north shore, Courtney, who had seated herself beside her husband, spoke of the heat and unwound the chiffon scarf about her bare neck and shoulders. Dick glanced round. In some moods he would not have seen at all. In other moods those slender shoulders, that graceful throat, and the small head with its lightly borne masses of auburn hair would have appealed to his pride and joy of possession. But things had gone wrong at "the shop," and he was in the mood that could readily either turn him to her for the consolation of a "lighter hour" or set him off in a rage. He frowned upon the exposed shoulders.
"Where did you get that dress?" he demanded.
She heard simply the question. Her thoughts were on the events of the evening at the club. "Had it made here," said she, unconscious of his mood. "It's something like one I saw in a fashion picture from Paris. Like it?"
To her amazement he replied angrily: "I do not. I've never seen a dress I disapproved of so thoroughly. Don't wear it again, and please be careful how you adopt a fashion you get that way. French fashions are set by a class of women I couldn't speak to you about. Respectable women have to alter them greatly."
"Why, what's the matter with the dress?" exclaimed she. "Everyone admired it at the club."
"It isn't decent," replied he. "I know you are so innocent that you don't think of those things. But it's my duty to protect you. I won't have men commenting on my wife's person."
"But, Dick," protested she, "this isn't a low-cut dress. It's higher than those I usually wear. It has bands across the shoulders and a real back——"
"Then change all your dresses. You must not make yourself conspicuous."
"Conspicuous! The other women wear much lower-cut dresses than I do."
"I know about such things," said he peremptorily. "I don't believe in low-neck dresses anyhow. What business has a good woman flaunting her charms—rousing in other men thoughts she ought to rouse in her husband only?"
"Don't you think it's all a matter of custom?" she said persuasively. She was not convinced, or even shaken. But she admired the shrewdness of his argument. The reason she had never grown to dislike him was that even in his prejudices he was always plausible, and not in his narrowest narrowness was he ever petty. "Now really, Dick, if that were carried out logically, a woman'd have to cover her face and not speak, for often it's a woman's voice that charms a man"—with a little laugh—"and once in a long while what she says."
"I would carry it out logically," replied he promptly, "if I had my way. That reminds me. You're away from home very often these days, I notice. You're over at the club a great deal."
"The weather's been so fine, everybody goes."
"I've no objection to your going occasionally. But after all the place for a good woman is at home."
She thought so too, as a general principle; home undoubtedly was the place for a good woman, or any sort of woman, or for a man; that was to her mind the meaning of home—the most attractive, the most magnetic spot on earth. However, the Vaughan place was not "home." She could not discuss this with him, so she simply answered, "But I get bored—here alone—and with nothing to do. And nobody'll come at this time of year, with something on at the club every day and evening."
"You don't even stay home to meals."
"Neither do you."
"But I haven't Winchie to look after."
"He plays with the other children at the kindergarten. And Miss Brockholst can keep a child amused as I couldn't. When I stay out to supper I see that Nanny or Lizzie brings him home and puts him to bed. And I'm not out to supper often."
"I don't like it," said Dick imperiously.
"You ought to come with me," rejoined she. "But you never will."
"I've no time for foolishness. And I'm sure you haven't either."
"What ought I to do with myself?"
"What other good women do. Our mothers didn't hang about clubs."
"No. But these aren't pioneer times. Things are entirely different nowadays. That was why—" She did not finish. She did not wish to remind him how he had refused to let her either share his life or make a life of her own. She refrained because the subject might be unpleasant to him. It was no longer unpleasant to her; she now had not the least desire to share his life, was in a way content to drift aimlessly along with the rest of the aimless women.
"Yes, many of the women are different nowadays," said he. "The more reason for my wife's conducting herself as a woman should."
She flushed with sudden anger. "Why can't you accept a woman as a human being?" exclaimed she. "Oh, you men—tempting—compelling—us to be hypocrites—and making our natural impulses rot into vices because they have to be hid away in the dark."
"We will not quarrel," said he, in the calm superior tone he always took when their talk touched on the two sexes. "I simply say I will not tolerate my wife's being a club lounger."
To have answered would have been to say what must precipitate a furious and futile quarrel. She kept silent, with less effort than many women would have to make in the circumstances. She had had the conventional feminine training in self-suppression, that so often gives women the seeming of duplicity and only too often imperceptibly leads them into forming the habit of duplicity. She had also had special training in self-concealment through having been brought up austerely. She kept silent, and made up her mind to obey. She had heard much talk among the women at the club about the "rights of a wife"; but it had not convinced her. She could not see that she, or any other of the women married as was she, contributed to the family anything that entitled her to oppose the husband's will as to how it should be conducted. And she would have scorned to get by cajolery what she could not have got honestly. She was thus the good wife, not through fear of him, for she was not a coward and he was not the sort of small tyrant that makes the women and the children tremble; nor was it because she was faithful to her marriage vows, for she never thought of them. Her submissiveness was entirely due to the agreement she had tacitly signed the day she went back to him, after the talk with her mother. In return for shelter and support she would be, so far as she could, the kind of wife he wanted.