VIShe did not go down to breakfast next morning until Richard and his guest would surely be gone. Her anger against the guest had evaporated because it was clearly unjust. Her anger against Richard was subsiding because it was clearly futile—and also because she hadn't it in her to foster harsh feeling. But there remained a dislike and dread of Gallatin because he had her secret. She could not think with composure of facing him, intolerably her partner in a secret she was ashamed of, was hiding from her husband, was trying to hide from herself. She would be unable to look at him, to remember his existence even, without at the same time having it thrust at her that her married life was a sham, a hypocrisy.Half an hour before dinner Richard came to her in the big greenhouse she had built back of the library. As the day was warm, all its doors and sashes were open. Richard sent Jimmie's son Bill away and said with agitated abruptness: "Courtney, Gallatin seems determined to take rooms over at the hotel.""I'm glad of that," replied she. "It's much better." She had not paused in her delicate task of extricating plants from their winter bed and arranging them in a basket for taking into the garden."But it's the first step toward going away. He'll never put up with the hotel's discomforts." Her indifference, her inattention made him impatient. "My dear, you don't understand. I need him. I've branched out on the strength of the capital he's supplying and has promised to supply. If he leaves, I'll be in a hole. We'll have to cut down in every direction, for I simply can't abandon my new plans.""I don't like him," said Courtney. She had abruptly stopped work, was leaning against the frame facing him. "I want him out of the house."Dick took the tone of gentle, forbearing remonstrance. "It's too late to change him to the Smoke House. He feels your dislike—is eager to get away. If there were any ground for dislike, I'd say nothing. As it is, I— I don't like to assert authority, but your frivolous whimsicality makes it necessary. I want you at once to convince him that you wish him to stay.""But I don't." Her voice showed that those brief words were all she could trust to it."You do, since I wish it.""Why should I consider what you wish? When have you considered what I wish?""When have I been inconsiderate of what was for your good?"She was silent—silenced, he thought. His handsome face and his voice were gentle; but underneath there was sternness in both as he said: "You'll not oppose me in this. It'd be a very severe strain upon my love for you, if I found you so contemptuous of my interests. I'm sure you'll not risk that strain."She saw into what an impossible position her anger had hurried her. Usually women, through playing upon the husband's passions and weaknesses generally, get enough control over him to be able to maintain—with only an occasional slight lapse—the pleasant fiction that they are of full human rank. They take care to avoid such crises as was this. Courtney, by long keeping away from the bars of her cage, had been lured into believing her pretense that they were not there. She now found herself bleeding and exhausted against them. "Very well," said she, after a moment's silence. It had taken her quick mind only a moment to see the alternatives—submission or a clash in which she could not but be defeated. "I'll try to get him to stay." Her voice was low and broken, but not from anger. Deeper than the sense of Richard's tyranny burned the humiliating sense of her servitude. In fact, her own plight so mortified her that she had no emotional capacity for raging against him as the author of it. She felt, as always in these sex conflicts, that the fault was not his, but fate's; he was simply playing his part as man, she her part as woman."That's a good girl," cried her approving husband, kissing her brow. It did not occur to him, the deep-down reason of sordidness that enabled him to compel; but she could think of nothing else. "Be sweet to him," Dick went on, in an amiable, petting tone. "And you may rest assured, dear, I'll get rid of him as soon as I can. I don't like intruders into our happiness any more than you do."Her cheeks flushed, and she turned again to the frame, to resume her digging. Her whole body to her finger tips was in a tremor.Through dinner she was silent and cold; Gallatin hardly lifted his gaze from his plate. Whenever Richard could catch her eye, he frowned and glanced significantly at Gallatin. But her eyes met his hints with a vacant look that made him twitch in his chair with nervousness and exasperation. As soon as Gallatin in politeness could, he excused himself and left the family of three alone.Richard, unmindful of Winchie, burst out, "What's the meaning of this?"You must let me humble myself in my own way," said Courtney coldly. "Come, Winchie." And the two went out on the lawn.As Gallatin a few minutes later issued from the front door with Richard, she called: "Oh, Mr. Gallatin, I want to speak to you a moment."He halted. The color flared into his face. Richard said, "I'll go on. You needn't hurry," and strode along the path into the eastern shrubbery. Gallatin hesitatingly crossed the grass. Winchie, who had on first sight taken an instinctive dislike to him, held a fold of Courtney's walking skirt and glowered like a small but very fierce storm."Go to the veranda, Winchie," said his mother.The boy released his hold and reluctantly obeyed. Gallatin stood before her like a prisoner arraigned for sentence. "Richard tells me you're talking of moving to the hotel over in town," said she."Yes, I'm going to-morrow.""Because you feel I want you out of the house?""I think a man in my position couldn't help being an intruder.""I want you to stay."His fair skin paled. "I thank you," said he, "but I must go.""I want you to stay. I ask you to stay.""That's very kind. I appreciate it. But I really must go.""I did wish you to go. But now I sincerely wish you to stay."Their eyes met. She was as pale as her bronze complexion permitted. She went on, her deep, clear voice steady, "If you go, you'll put me in a very painful position."Gallatin looked at her, flushed, looked hastily away. In a voice of intense embarrassment he said: "I've another reason for wishing to go. It's even stronger than the knowledge that you're—very naturally—displeased at my being forced upon you.""Oh," said Courtney, baffled. Then, "Please tell Richard what it is.""I cannot." His gaze was on the ground now.Somehow Courtney was liking him better. As he glanced up, her eyes met his. "Be frank with me," she urged winningly. "Is it because you dislike it here?""No." His gaze was wandering again. "No, indeed.""I'm glad of that," said she. "Do you believe me when I say I wish you to stay?"He lowered his eyes, remained silent."If I were free to choose, I would wish you to go," she went on, speaking with the utmost deliberation. "I am not free. So, I wish you to stay because it will be most unpleasant for me if you persist in going. I venture to ask you, if it is not too great a sacrifice, to stay on—at least, for the present. But if you still say you must go, I shall not misjudge.""I'll stay," was his prompt response. "Gladly." And his tone and eyes were sincere."Thank you," said she simply.He looked at her with an appeal that was very engaging. "I know you'll hate me for having created this situation.""I thought I did a few minutes ago," replied she. "Now, I feel I don't. I feel I'd like to be friends with you—" Her small, sweet face lit up with a faint smile—"since we can't be enemies.""You mean that?" he asked with an eagerness that sounded only the more eager for his effort to restrain it."Indeed, I do," replied she. "Will you help me with the gardening—when you have time?""There's nothing I'd like so well.""Then—it's all settled?""Quite."They smiled gravely; they shook hands; they laughed. "And a little while ago I was thinking I never could forgive you!" exclaimed she gayly. "Now I'm wondering what on earth there was to forgive." And she felt and looked very well acquainted with him. It was part of her upright-downright nature either to like thoroughly or to be so indifferent that she was little short of oblivious.Before her generous friendliness the laughter died out of his face. "I'll try to be worthy of your friendship and your trust," said he gravely."That sounds mysterious—somehow.""Does it? ... When may I help you?""Whenever you can get off. Soon?""To-morrow, I think.""That's good.""I'll join Vaughan." He hesitated, blushed. "He knows you were to ask me to stay?""Yes. But not how," was her calm answer."I understand." Their eyes met. He colored; but her expression, sweet and grave, did not change. As he went Winchie, seated morosely afar off on the veranda steps, scowled at his back.That evening Richard said: "Well, I think he's going to stay. How did you manage it?""I've asked him to help me with the gardening. He's fond of it.""A good idea," approved Richard. "I'll back you up."She gazed silently out over the unruffled lake, so peaceful, so suggestive of peace unchanging, endless—the lazy, graceful sails—beyond, the town among its trees, lights coming out as the dusk gathered.But their friendship, thus auspiciously begun, did not prosper. Gallatin almost pointedly avoided her. He helped her only when Richard, disturbed from time to time by his unrelaxed reserve, urged him to take a day or an afternoon off "and amuse yourself with the flowers, since you like that sort of thing." If it had not been that occasionally in talking or working at the gardening he seemed to forget his solemn and formal pose and showed unmistakable enthusiasm, she would have thought his profession of interest a pretense. She had a peculiar horror of gloom—doubtless born of the austerity of her bringing up. There was in her circumstances only too much to discourage her natural brightness, and she had within herself a struggle as incessant as that against weeds and destructive insects in her gardens. She had no desire to make this struggle harder; so she saw as little of him as she in courtesy could—the only course open to her, since she did not know him well enough to try to help him."What's the matter with Gallatin?" Richard asked her one day. "He says he likes it here and is going to stay, yet he acts as if he were revolving something different. He used to be full of fun and life. Now he's enough to give anyone the blues.""Heisrather heavy," admitted Courtney."I wonder if it's the booze," said Richard reflectively."The booze?""He always drank a lot more than was good for him. And there in Pittsburg he got to lapping it up like the get-rich-quick crowd he traveled in. That was why he wanted to come here—to break off and take a fresh start. I suppose he's gloomy because he's fighting his taste for rum.""Probably," said Courtney.Drink was a vice she could not comprehend—and we always are unsympathetic toward the vices we do not comprehend. She associated drinking and stupidity; the Wenona men who drank to excess were the dull ones, like Shirley Drummond. When Richard thus disclosed to her what Gallatin had meant by his mysterious hint as to his reason for coming to Wenona, she lost the interest in him started by his fine frank way of meeting her advances and his appreciation of her work. She recalled his other mysterious hint—about there being a hidden reason for his wishing to go. "No doubt," thought she, "he meant he's finding it hard to keep straight here, where it's so quiet. I wish now that he'd gone—though, when a man can give way to such a dull, dirty habit as drunkenness, he'd find excuse anywhere."As the mail came in the middle of the morning and the middle of the afternoon, she saw it first. Thus, she noted that about once a week there was for him a foreign letter so heavy that it carried several stamps. These letters were from the same person, the same woman. And as the writing was large, rapid, and affectedly angular, she more than suspected that the woman was young. Somewhat tardily these facts, obvious though their leading was, wove together in her mind, incurious about other people's affairs; she knew that there was traveling abroad a young woman who taking the trouble to write their guest regularly and at great length. But when she happened to recall that he had a young married sister, she assumed the letters were from her.One day he casually said that his sister had taken a house at Bar Harbor for the summer. The moment he said this, she for some unknown reason, or for no reason at all, jumped to the conclusion that his depressed state was due to the lady of the letters—to her being so far away—perhaps to some difficulty in their love—the objection of her parents to his drinking habit.All was now clear to her. And thenceforth she looked at him with deep sympathy. He was not handsome; his mouth, for example, was so heavy that it flatly gave the lie to his idealist, poetic eyes. His nose was not good, was too small for a man's face. Somewhere there lurked a suggestion of weakness, and this was not lessened by his attention to dress—though she liked his clothes and his way of wearing them. He was far from her ideal of a man. But the longer one knew him, the better one thought of him, chiefly because the more confidence one had in his essential generosity and kindness. And she felt that he had capacity for tenderness of a very manly sort, and for appreciation of love and of all the beautiful things; just the kind of nature fate seemed to delight in making the sport of its maliciousness.One night, in the pensive mood to which she sometimes yielded for an hour, she was at the piano softly playing; and singing that saddest of sad love's songs:"Alas for lovers! Pair by pairThe wind has swept them all away—The young, the yare; the fresh, the fair—Where are the snows of yesterday?"Through the window she saw him leaning against a pillar of the veranda. His profile was outlined clear against the luminous dusk. Its expression made her voice die altogether in a sob. She forgot her own sense of fleeting wasting youth, of supreme joy forever denied, of love never to be hers. This sorrow before her in those profiled features—they were strong features now—was no vague dream, but a living reality. She longed to go to him and try to console him; and at the same time, no matter how well she had known him, she could not have gone—for in that unsuspected strength of his there was the hopelessness that is beyond consolation. From that time he was the foremost figure in her thoughts; and her fancy put its own color into everything he said and did. If he had begun to drink she would have been only the more sympathetic; for, she could comprehend how unhappy love might drive its victim to any excess—were not her own longings, for three years now latent except for an occasional outburst, once more throbbing and aching day and night?It was part of her routine to make a careful tour every day to see that everything was up to the mark. One day, in their guest's sitting room, she happened to see half fallen from the stationery rack a letter from his foreign correspondent. It was apparently unopened. The shock of this made her take a second look before she realized how she was intruding upon his sacred privacy. But she had seen; the letter was indeed unopened. And she knew that the last come of these letters had been at least three days in his possession.Her heart ached for him; she felt she understood. His love affair had been going more and more badly—his increasing silence and sadness made that certain. And this letter must contain some news he dared not read—some words that meant the burial of his dead hope. She went downstairs with a heavy heart, and out into the sunshine—out to the rose garden in the western part of the grounds. She had been dreaming all along that this romance of which she was unsuspected, deeply moved spectator would surely "come out all right." Life did not always mock the story books. Love was not always sad, not always mere deceptive echo of one's own heart call—echo that flitted mockingly on as one pursued. No; this love that meant so much to him would prove real. Such had been her dream. Now— The flowers, their perfume, the gay birds, the sunbeams—all the sights and sounds she loved seemed tricks of a black enchanter. She remembered the day they buried her little brother. There had been just such radiant glory as this. She remembered the day she had seen that her own dream of love was dead. There had been just such sunshine and music and perfume. How could anyone with a human heart even for a moment laugh, jest? To be light was to make oneself party to this cruel levity of bird and flower and sunbeam. Laugh, when loved ones were dying somewhere—and the living were bending over dead faces with cracking hearts? Jest, when the winds of time and change were blowing love and lovers all away?She caught her breath in a kind of terror when, on her return to the house, Lizzie told her that Mr. Gallatin had dashed in, had packed a bag, and had rushed off to Chicago. "He has business there," Richard explained at dinner. "And I've asked him to buy some stuff for the laboratory." She was uneasy, at times unhappy, throughout the following week, as she thought of him trying to rid himself of his too heavy burden. Probably he was dissipating—she hoped he was, if it would give him relief. She began to debate whether she ought not to tell Richard what she had accidentally discovered, and suggest that he go to Chicago to help his friend, who might have fallen ill or worse. At dinner and at supper, even at breakfast, where she had seen him only occasionally, she positively missed Gallatin. Until he came, the time spent at table had been the stupidest part of each day—Richard and she in silence or abstraction, or exchanging disconnected commonplaces about the weather, the food, their friends. While Gallatin was far from lively, still he and she had talked—usually about gardening and plants, the difficulties and mysteries of inducing things to grow, the comparative merits of various species for flowering and for hardiness—not exciting conversation, but interesting, a relief to a monotony the dreariness of which she did not appreciate until he came—and went.On the eighth day, as they were at supper, he appeared unexpectedly on the threshold. There was no forcing in the cordiality of her smile. At first glance, she suspected that he was in much better spirits. And this impression was soon confirmed. Certainly good news—the best—must have reached him in Chicago. Otherwise he could not sit there eating heartily, laughing, making amusing remarks, telling funny incidents of the trip. Courtney tried to continue to feel delighted that he had found surcease from sorrow. But her spirits went steadily down. She felt horribly alone. She had been company for him in his unhappiness—though he did not know it. Now, she quite unreasonably felt as if he had deserted her. She was ashamed of this, so ungenerous, so selfish, but she could not help it.After supper Richard left them alone; they went out on the veranda—out where the full beauty of that place, now at summer's climax, could be seen in the soft sunset light. She stood watching a belated bird, a tall white sail—listening to the faint sounds of the town that came tinkling across the water. But she was thinking of the man beside her. "You've been enjoying yourself in Chicago," said she."No," was his unexpected answer. "I've been impatient to get back." He glanced round at trees and lawns, gardens and shrubbery, with delighted eyes. "I had to go away, to appreciate how well off I was." He went to the edge of the veranda to get a broader sweep. He seemed to be noting, reveling in, every detail. He drew a deep breath, returned to the big lounge chair, and lit a cigarette. "Yes," continued he. "Yes—I didn't dream it, or imagine it. It's all true. It's all here." Without looking at her: "And you happen to be wearing the same dress you had on the evening I came. Now, don't tell me you made it—as you've made those gardens and these rooms.""I superintend," said Courtney, thinking him a pleasant and agreeable, if deplorably shallow person. "I'm not one of those dreadful original women who get up their own awful costumes, and think they're individual because they're different.""If you lived in Paris, you'd set the styles," declared he. "And you're equally good at gardening and decorating houses.""That's laid on with the trowel," laughed she. "But I like it." She returned to the subject that fitted her thoughts. "You're much livelier than when you went away; I'm sure you've had good news.""No—nothing. I simply took myself in hand." He reflected in silence, then lifted his head and looked at her with a boyish simplicity and candor. "You see," he proceeded to explain, "I've had something on my mind ever since I came—that is, almost ever since—something that was my own affair entirely. And I let it prey on me—made myself a nuisance and a bore, I've no doubt."There was a gleam of mischievous humor in her eyes as she nodded assent and said: "You were solemner than I thought a human being could be.""Precisely. Well, that's over. As I said before, I didn't realize how well off I was, how much I had to be thankful for, as the pious people say. I do realize it. And I'm going to behave myself."Courtney felt she ought to be scandalized by this vanishing of the last solemn tatters of the tragic romance she had woven about him; for it was clear as the lake that he had gotten over his bereavement in that one brief week, had gotten over it entirely. But somehow she was not scandalized; was, on the contrary, taking quite cheerfully this confirmation of his fickleness, of his incapacity for deep emotion. After all, wasn't that the best way to be? Wasn't he perhaps philosopher rather than shallow changeling? Wasn't he simply exemplifying the truth that fire burns out, that the dead are forgotten, that life leans always at the bow of the ship, never at the stern? She, eager to escape from her own shadows and thorns, slipped easily into his mood. "I should say you did have a lot to be thankful for!" answered she. "And you'll soon forget her." She colored at her slip. "I assume it was a love affair," she hastened to add. "We women always do.""Yes, it was.""You'll get over it.""I do not wish to get over it." He was not smiling back at her. She felt his thoughts traveling over land and sea, into Europe, whence came those letters—there were two of them waiting on his desk upstairs. "I do not wish to get over it," he repeated. "I've learned—" His voice, full of earnest young seriousness, sounded as if he were thinking aloud rather than talking to her—"I've learned there's a love deeper than the love that demands—a love that appreciates where it dares not aspire—a love that asks nothing but just silently to love."There was a long silence, broken by the snapping of the match, as he lit a cigarette. She startled, rose, and leaned against a pillar. With eyes half veiled by her long lashes she watched the gardens wane dreamily in the evening light. She inhaled the odors of rose, of lilac, of jasmine, of honeysuckle—perfumes so sweet that they were sad. How cruelly she had misjudged him! She felt a kind of reverence for him now, him with this nobility of soul so unconscious, so lofty. Here was a man worth a woman's while. "Why couldn't I have had such a love as he is giving?" she thought. "Oh, if she had learned what I've learned!""Come into the sitting room, Gallatin," called Richard from that direction.Gallatin went, and for a few minutes Courtney heard, in intervals between her thoughts, snatches of the talk between the two men about the shopping Gallatin had done for the laboratory—talk about a new crusher, about a promising bomb calorimeter. After a while came in Vaughan's voice, "Courtney, what do you think of that?"She stood in the window with an inquiring glance."I've been telling Gallatin you're going to introduce him round among the Wenona girls. And he says he has no use for women.""I!" exclaimed Basil. "On the contrary, I think women—a woman—the most important element in a man's life."Richard laughed. "Why, the man's in love!" cried he.Courtney saw Gallatin wince as his wound was struck by this careless, jovial hand."Only a lover," proceeded Dick, "would exaggerate woman in that frenzied fashion. To live isn't to love. It's to do—to achieve.""I don't agree with you," said Gallatin. "Love's the center—the mainspring—the purpose—the meaning.""You ought to have been a woman.""Why not?" retorted Gallatin. Courtney saw that Dick had irritated him. "In one respect I envy women. A womanknowswhether or not a man loves her. A man can only hope and believe." And he glanced swiftly at her.He looked confused, frightened, as her expression showed that she, the married woman, the lovelessly married woman, understood. She turned away abruptly, two bright red spots burning in her cheeks."Well," said the unobserving Richard to Gallatin, "I confess I don't grasp your meaning. But it doesn't matter. A good woman loves her husband, and he knows it. The rest's of no consequence. We must get him a wife, Courtney. He'd make an ideal husband, don't you think?""A good wife does not think," said Courtney.Richard was amused. "But if she did?" he persisted."Then she'd probably think it fortunate for husbands that wives aren't independent."Vaughan again looked puzzled. "That sounds as irrelevant as what Gallatin said a minute ago. Now will you tell us, what has it to do with what we were talking about?""I don't know," replied she. And she did not. She was astonished before this apparition of a thought she had not been conscious of having definitely in mind since that conversation with her mother long ago; and here it was popping up as if it were her constant companion. "It just came into my head," she went smilingly on. "You know we women are irresponsible, irrational beings, and so we don't think straight or talk connectedly."She said good night, went up to her apartment. She was wishing now that Gallatin had not told her about this love of his for the woman across the seas. It had made her discontented—unhappy. It had compelled her to think what a patchwork of makeshifts her own life was. "Yet I ought to be contented. Haven't I Winchie? And I can't even complain of poor health or discomfort of any kind. I don't deserve my good fortune. Other women would envy me." No, they would not. She saw in remembered faces of women friends the same discontent she was hiding in her heart. A woman—a woman grown—craved more than material comfort could give, more than work or play, however interesting, more than motherhood could give—craved that grown-up, equal love without which life was like a wonderful watch with a broken mainspring. She thought of Basil Gallatin again. At least she was more fortunate than he. Suppose she, like him, loved and it were not returned. Then indeed would her heart ache.When she saw him alone next day, she said shyly and with color high: "It seems to me you can't have told her—told her as you told me. Won't you go to her—not write, but go—and try again? Believe me, Mr. Gallatin, women appreciate love—at least, any woman who could inspire the love you give her. And if she knew, she'd love you—she couldn't help it."She feared she had intruded. But when he at last spoke, his tone was not the tone of one who is offended. "Thank you, thank you," he stammered. "But— I assure you it's hopeless. She is not for me.""Oh!" Courtney shrank. "She cares for some one else. I—I'm so sorry I spoke. I——""No—no," he said; "it was friendly. It was—like you."This began their real friendship. And she needed friendship just then. What he had told her put her in a mood where all her occupations were in vain, and all the wisdom she had gathered from books and from thinking about things as they are, and all the patiently, slowly acquired stoicism of the matrimonial routine. Her heart was clamoring as it had not since those first months of her discovery that love was delusion and that she must learn to live without it. She wished Gallatin had not told her; she wished he had never come. And at the same time she felt that through the sadness he had brought there had come into her life a pleasure she would not wish to give up—the sympathy between him and her, based on their knowledge each of the other's secret. She felt very proud of his confidence, of his friendship. Also, there was the fascination that always issues from a great emotion, even though it be seen but in mimic on the stage. This great emotion of his was a vivid actuality. It made a smile upon his features heroism; it made a look of sadness tragedy.He helped her in the gardens often now. Richard, making some secret experiments, did not want him at the laboratory. Sometimes he and she worked together at changing color schemes or improving mass effects or vistas. Again each worked alone, perhaps at some surprise for the other. It was after a morning of hard labor in opposite ends of the grounds that she said when they met at the house: "Richard's not coming up, so Nanny has to take him his dinner. And Lizzie's away and Mazie not well. I'll wait on you.""Let's have a picnic," suggested he, "out under that big elm."And with Winchie helping they carried everything to the rustic table and proceeded to have one of those happy-go-lucky meals that make the blue devils put their tails between their legs and fly away on their forks. Winchie, let eat what he pleased, forgot his dislike of Gallatin—at least so far that he only frowned occasionally as Gallatin and Courtney talked the most hopeless nonsense with the keenest pleasure. When Basil's face was animated it was never homely; when he smiled it was always handsome. For the first time since he came he lost all constraint, and the sparkle of girlhood came back to her. They stayed out there nearly three hours, and it seemed no time at all. Nanny, sour and scowling at the impropriety of such conduct in a married woman—one married into the ancient and rigid house of Vaughan—took away the dishes and linen. But the hint so plain in her dour looks went unnoted. It was a shower that broke up the party, sent them scurrying to the house, he carrying furious and protesting Winchie. She punished Winchie for his rudeness by sending him up to his bedroom to sit alone and think down his temper."You oughtn't to have done that," said Basil, when the boy, defiant even in obedience, disappeared."It's the only way to make him remember. And I can't whip him. I'm too selfish, even if I didn't know it was equally degrading to him.""He can't help not liking me," persisted Basil. "We're not to blame for our likes and dislikes.""No. But we are to blame for giving way to them." She was arranging freshly cut flowers in vases and jars in the sitting room."Yes, for giving way to them," said Basil thoughtfully, after a long time."To what?" asked Courtney, who had forgotten."Our feelings.""Oh, I remember.""You're right about that." Basil was speaking with an effort. "For example, if a man were to—to fall in love with a married woman, he'd be a—miserable cur if he told her. Those last few words came explosively."Gracious!" Courtney beamed mischievously at him from behind a gorgeous spread of half blown roses. "You are fierce! Well, that's settled. If he heard you, he'd never dare tell her."She saw his face, and it flashed over her that it was a married woman he loved. Yes, of course! Why had she not guessed it at once! And he was saying these harsh things to make it impossible for himself to yield to the impulse. The smile left her eyes. He was at the window with his back to her. She looked tender sympathy. "Poor boy!" she thought. "And I saw to-day how happy he could be, and how happy he could make a woman.... Perhaps she does love him. What a sorrow that would be! And utterly hopeless!"He turned abruptly. "Will you be my friend?"She came straight up to him, put out her hand. "Indeed I will," she said.He took her hand, pressed it. Then he drew back with his hands behind him. "You are a good woman," he said. "Good through and through. I want you to help me fight a battle I'm having just now. I thought I'd won it. I haven't. But I will!""I understand, I think. It is hard. But you are strong and honorable. You— The woman— She is already—" She paused, looked at him inquiringly."Yes—God help me!" he cried, turning away.His cry could not have reached a more responsive heart. After a pause she said: "If she doesn't love you, it'd be useless to tell her.""Worse! It would mean I was a cur.""And if she does love you, it'd be wicked to tell her—to add to her unhappiness.""If you were in my place— Suppose I could be with her—could go and live near her——""Oh, no; you oughtn't to do that! You ought to spare yourself and her that.""But suppose," he urged eagerly, "suppose she didn't care for me—never would—and I could keep my secret——""But you couldn't! And she might grow to care."He sat in a big chair by the window, stared moodily at the floor. "It seems to me Ican'tdo that!" he said at last. "I don't love her as men usually love. She means infinitely more to me than that. And, loving her as I do, I'm in no danger of telling her. And it would make me almost happy so much of the time, and a better man—yes, a better man—to be near her. What you say I ought to do—it's like turning a man out into the desert without food or drink—to wander—on and on——""I know, I know," she interrupted, her small, sweet face all tenderness and distress. "Oh, I'm not competent to advise. You mustn't ask anyone. You must do what you think is right.""Right!" he echoed forlornly.She who had eaten of the husks that went by the name of right hadn't the heart to urge them on him. She returned to the table, to the arranging of the flowers. Without looking up he went on: "I haven't told you quite all. There's another thing. I—I'm engaged.""Engaged!""Don't look at me that way. I can feel it, though I'm not seeing. You can't think less of me than I think of myself. But let me tell you. The girl's a distant cousin of mine. And her grandfather, who was crazy about families, left her a fortune on condition that she married me. He left an equal sum to me on condition that I marry her. But there's this difference: What he left her is all she'd have—every cent. I've got enough without his legacy to me.""And you— Oh, it's dreadful, isn't it?""We're not in love—not in the least. But I've given her my promise, and she'd be penniless if I broke it. She's nineteen. We've got till she's twenty-one. She's abroad now.""The letters I've seen in the mail—they're from her?""From her," replied he. "How can I marry when I love another woman?""I see," said Courtney. She was sitting now, her hands full of roses and listless in her lap. "Then you've no more right to love this woman than she has to love you.... Oh, I don't know what to say!""Don't think I'm trying to shift part of my burden to you. I'm not. But I felt if I could talk it out loud with some one who was sympathetic I'd see the way better. And I do." The expression of his eyes thrilled her; it was so manly, so honest, so resolved."What have you decided—if you don't mind telling me?""To go to Starky—-that's my cousin—her real name's Estelle, but she detests it—I'll go to her and we'll marry.""No—no!" cried Courtney. "Whatever's right, that isn't. Oh, you don't know. She has a right to love. You're cheating her—cheating her!""But I can never give her that.""You may——""Never!"Courtney shook her head slowly, lifted the roses, buried her face in them, inhaled their perfume deeply. "Then—you mustn't marry her," she said."You don't know her. She cares for money—the things money buys—more than for anything else in the world. It's the way we bring 'em up in the East."Believe me," cried Courtney, solemn in her earnestness, "that's not true. There isn't any woman anywhere who doesn't put love first. Go to your cousin—yes. But go and try to love her."His eyes suddenly blazed upon her. "Love her after—" he began impetuously. He reddened, his head sank. "After the woman I—" He muttered confusedly, "I can't talk about it," and hastily left the room by the door-window nearest him.She sighed sympathetically, rose, moved slowly toward the vase she had only half finished. Midway she halted. That look of his had just penetrated to her. "Oh!" she gasped. And she wheeled round and stared with blanching cheeks, as if he were still standing there before her with his secret betrayed in his eyes. "Oh!" she repeated under her breath. How her mistaken romancings about his sadness had misled her woman's instinct! For now, like steel filings round a magnet, a swarm of happenings since he came ranged round that telltale look of his—where they belonged.VIIBasil was last in to supper, came with his nervousness plain in his features. His uneasy glance at her met a smile of ingenuous friendliness that could not but reassure. Richard was there, absent-minded as usual, and unconscious of them both. They were unconscious of him also, Basil no less so than she, for he had long since acquired the habit of the household. No one spoke until Richard, having finished, lighted a cigarette and fell to explaining to Basil an experiment he had made that day. He was full of it, illustrated his points with diagrams drawn on the yellow pad which was never far from his hand. Courtney, relieved of the necessity of trying to look natural before Basil, was able to turn her thoughts again to the subject that had been occupying her steadily from the moment she discovered his secret.If Gallatin could have seen into her mind, he would have been as nearly scandalized as it is possible for an infatuated, unsatisfied lover to be. For even where a man feels he himself has the right to revolt against exasperating musts and must nots of conventional morality, he is unusual indeed if he honestly approves any such revolt, however timid, in a woman. Man is the author and guardian of that morality; in the division of labor he has imposed upon woman the duty of being its exemplar. Thus, though human, she must pretend not to be; she must stifle if possible, conceal at any cost, her human fondness for the free and the frank. For Courtney there was double attraction in this love of Basil's—because it was love for her and because she was lonely—how lonely she had never realised until now. There is the loneliness of physical solitude, the loneliness for company—and a great unhappiness it is, especially to those who approach the lower animals in lack of resources within themselves. Courtney had never suffered from this; she had never cared for "just people." Then there is the loneliness of soul solitude, the loneliness for comradeship—and who suffers from this suffers torment. It may lull, but it will surely rage again, and it will never cease until it is satisfied or the heart itself ceases to beat. This was the loneliness of Courtney Vaughan. "If he," thought she, "were bad, and I, too—no, perhaps not exactly bad, but—well, different—less—less conscientious—how happy we might be! That is, of course, if I cared for him—or could make myself believe I did—which is impossible." She lingered over this impossible supposition as over a sweet, fantastic dream. She dropped it and turned away, only to return to it. And thinking of it filled her with the same tender sadness she got from love stories and love songs. "I would not if I could, I could not if I would, but—" Love! Into the silence of that void in her life had come a sound. It was the right word, but not the right voice. Still, there was joy in the right word. And she would not have been human had she bent other than kindly eyes and kindly thoughts upon the man who pronounced that word of words. Long since—from her first notion that he was hiding a romantic secret—his real self had begun to receive from her imagination the transfiguring veil of illusion. The discovery that she herself was the secret certainly did not make the veil thinner. A strong imagination flings out this beautiful, trouble-making drapery always; not quite so eagerly if there has been sad warning experience, but none the less inevitably. It would be many a day, if ever, before Courtney could again see Basil Gallatin as he was in reality.As she sat there, silent, all but oblivious of her immediate surroundings, she was awakened by hearing him say, in reply to something from Richard: "But I'm afraid I'll have to—to change my plans—and—go away." It was said hesitatingly, with much effort."Go away!" cried Richard. Courtney could not have spoken."I'm afraid so.""Not for good?""Probably—in fact, almost certainly.""Why, man, you can't do that!" protested Dick. "You can't leave me in the lurch.""Oh, I want to keep my interest. It's simply that I can't stay on, myself.""But I need you now as much as I need the capital. Why, it'd upset everything for a year—perhaps longer. I couldn't easily find a competent man I could trust."Basil repeated in a final, dogged way, "It's impossible for me to stay.""Is there anything unsatisfactory in——""No—no indeed. My own affairs entirely, I assure you."As he had finished supper, Vaughan took him out on the veranda, where Courtney heard them—or, rather, heard Dick—arguing and protesting. Presently she drifted into the sitting room, sat at the piano, let her fingers wander soundlessly over the keys. What should she do? What was best for him—for her—"and there's Richard, too, who needs him." Why should he go? How would it help matters? True, she had declared that to be the right course; but then she was merely theorizing, merely talking the conventional thing. This was no theory, but actuality, calling for good common sense. It was not the first time she had found the facts of life making mockery of the most convincing theories about it. Presently she felt that Basil was in the window farthest from her, was watching her—probably with the same loving, despairing expression she had often seen without a suspicion that it was for her."Where's Richard?" inquired she, not looking in his direction."In the library.""You've upset him dreadfully.""I'm sorry. But things will soon adjust themselves." He advanced a step, was visible now in the half darkness, looked pallidly handsome in his becoming dinner suit. "A few weeks at most," he went on, somewhat huskily, "and I'll be the vaguest sort of a memory here."She was glad her back was toward him and that the twilight had darkened into dusk. Of course, he did not really love her. It was simply another case of a man's being isolated with a woman and his head getting full of sentimental fancies. Still— While his love was not real, and therefore its pain largely imaginary, the pain no doubt seemed real, and the love, too. So she was sad for him—very sad. As soon as she felt sure of her voice, she said: "Won't you please light the big lamp for me? I wore a négligée this evening because I wanted to sew. I'm making a suit for Winchie—like one I saw in a French magazine."He lit the lamp beside the table where she worked in the evenings when she did not go to her own room. "Anything else?" he asked."Only sit and talk to me.""I couldn't talk this evening.""Then sit and smoke."She began her work, he smoking in the deep shadow near the window. She could hardly see him; he could see every wave and ripple in her lovely hair, every shift of the sweeping dark lashes, every change in that sweet, small face, in the wide wistful mouth. Even better than playing on the piano, sewing brings out the charm of delicate, skillful fingers. She did not need to look at him to feel his gaze, its longing, its hopelessness. And never before had she thought of him in such a partial, personal way—the way a woman must feel toward the man she knows loves her, even though she only likes him.She had made up her mind what to do, how to deal practically with this situation. But she had to struggle with her timidity before she could set about the audacious experiment she had planned and resolved. She had long had the frankness of thought that is inseparable from intelligence. The courage to speak her thoughts was as yet in the bud. "Do you mind my speaking again of what you were saying this afternoon?" said she as she sewed industriously."No," said he."I've been thinking about it. At first I was startled—very much startled. But I soon began to look at it sensibly. I want you to stay. Richard wants you to stay. There's no reason why you shouldn't stay and conquer your delusion.""It's no delusion.""Real love is always mutual. So yours must be delusion." She was pointing a thread for the eye of the needle. "You've led a very—very man sort of life, haven't you?"He shifted uncomfortably, then confessed: "You know the standards for men are different from those for women."She smiled, threaded the needle. "Yes, I know. I don't understand, but I know. You needn't explain. I don't want to understand. It doesn't interest me. As I was about to say—" Her courage failed her, and she sewed a while in silence. At last she dared. It was with no sign of inward disturbance, but the contrary, that she went on: "You've been shut in here too long. Go to your old haunts for a few days. You'll come back cured."She had practiced saying it, this advice which she believed wise and necessary in the circumstances. She said it in calm, matter-of-fact fashion; and it was the less difficult for her to do so because, in thought at least, she had long since emancipated herself from what she regarded as the hypocrisies of modesty, and had taught herself to look at all things rationally and humanly. She knew her frankness would not please him; so she was not surprised when after a pause he said roughly, "I don't like to hear you say that sort of thing."She laughed pleasantly, put quite at ease by his impertinence. "And I don't in the least care whether you approve of me or not. You men seem to think you've got a sort of general roving commission to superintend the propriety of women.""I beg your pardon.""Certainly. Give me that pair of scissors—on the stand in the corner."He rose, issued from the deep shadow. She could now see into what confusion her words had thrown him. The hand that held out the scissors was trembling. He moved to go upon the veranda. "Please," said she. "I'm not nearly done. Won't you sit down?"He seated himself."You see," she went on lightly, busy with her hem again, "I know your awful secret.""You've no right to laugh at me," muttered he."I'm not laughing at you.... I'm only looking at it in a friendly, practical way.... I want to help you.... Why are you going away?"She sewed on, feeling his emotion gather behind his self-control. The stillness was unbroken. A light breeze, cool and scented, came fluttering in at the open windows to play with the soft brilliant hair that grew so beautifully round her temples. In a low voice, so low that she scarcely heard, his answer at last came: "Because I love you. I love you and I am not a cur."Her needle missed its way into the cloth, pierced her finger. She put the wounded finger in her mouth. When she looked toward him she was smiling. "Still you've not answered my question. Because you think you care for me—that's no reason why you should go.'"I can't control myself. I—" He made a gesture of helplessness. "I can't think of you as—as married. You seem like a girl to me—free. I keep forgetting.""It doesn't seem to occur to you that I might be trusted to remember.""I know," said he humbly.She held the garment at arms' length, eyeing the hem critically. "No, you don't. You're like all the men. You fancy weak woman can always be overborne by man, big and strong and superior.""You wrong me.""Why else should you talk of going away?""Because it's torment to me to be near you—to——"She stopped sewing, looked at him with anger in her deep green eyes. "Then your feeling is just what I thought.""It is not! It is love!"Again she sewed a long time in silence. It was very calm there, in that quiet room with its flowers and tasteful, gracefully arranged furniture, and the single lamp like a jewel shedding all its radiances upon her small industrious figure. "Then tell me," she said in her sweet, gentle way, without looking up or pausing, "what do you want that you cannot have? You can see me as much as you like. You can talk as freely as you like. You can count on sympathy, on friendship. And, if you want to, you can keep right on loving me in that exalted way you profess. Nobody's going to hinder you."She sewed on in silence, he motionless watching her, perplexity in his honest, rather boyish face. After a while her voice broke the silence. "Love!" She laughed with raillery that did not sting. "My dear friend, don't you see I was right? Go away for a few days and——""For God's sake, don't suggest that again.""Then don't say it's love that makes you want to leave and upset everything." She put the needles, thread, and thimble into her workbox, rolled up the little suit, rose. "It's always the same story," she said, sad rather than bitter. "A woman means only one thing to a man. Yes, I think you had best go.""You're too severe," he cried. "It's true there's such a thing as passion without love. And I'll admit that I, like all men have felt it often—have lied to myself as well as to the woman—and have called it love. But it's also true there's no love without some passion—at least,youcouldn't hope to inspire it. And though in your innocence you may think so, you'd not want to have less than all love has to give—if you loved."Her eyes, large and softly brilliant, were burning into the darkness beyond the open window. "I'm not innocent," she said. "And I try not to be a hypocrite. If I loved, I'd want all."There was a long silence, she at the window gazing out into the gathering night. Then he said: "You were right. It was not love that made me feel like flight. I can conquer that feeling. Will you let me stay?"She turned slowly. In the look she fixed on him there was doubt, hesitation. "You've made me a little uneasy—a little afraid."In his eagerness he sprang up. "Don't!" he cried. "Don't send me away. I'll never speak of love again. You've taught me my lesson.""I do want you to stay," said she. "It'd seem very lonely here with you gone. For I've come to depend on you as a friend. It hurts to find you seeking your own selfish pleasure under the pretense of a feeling for me."He winced—not because he felt scandalized by her candor, but because he felt convicted by it. "How well you understand men!" he exclaimed. "Better than they understand themselves.""In that one way I do," was her reply, an arresting hardness in the deep voice that was usually altogether sweet. These last few days she was understanding a great many things about the relations of men and women—or, perhaps, was letting herself realize that she understood them.He lowered his eyes, that he might not read her thoughts, that she might not read the same thoughts in his own mind. "You often make me think of the lake out there," said he. "There's the surface one sees at a glance. Then there's a little distance below the surface, that one sees when he looks intently straight down. And then there's fathoms on fathoms where all sorts of strange things—strange thoughts and feelings—lie hid. Sometimes—for an instant—one of them shows or almost shows at the surface.""When one lives alone a great deal, one gets the habit of living within oneself—don't you think?""I suppose that's it—partly. A brook couldn't hide very much—and most people are like brooks or ponds. The ones that seem to have depth seem so simply because the water's muddy."She looked admiringly at him; and her admiration of his originality and insight did not lessen when he added, "At least, so a friend of mine used to say." He returned tothesubject. "Then—I may stay?"Her face brightened. In her eyes as they looked at a smile slowly dawned. Quickly all her features were responding, especially that wide, expressive fascinating mouth. "I hope you will. But—no more dreariness!""I hate gloom as much as you do." He glanced round the room—at the harmonies of woodwork and walls and furnishing, with here and there bright flowers always in the restraint of those of gentle hue. "As much as you do," repeated he. "And that's saying a great deal. Howdoyou manage it!—house and garden, always gay yet never gaudy—and such variety! Is there no end to your variety?""Oh, one's a new person every day, isn't one?—and different.""Youcertainly are. But no one else I ever saw." He colored furiously at his finding himself, without intending it, upon the forbidden ground. She had turned away, and was leaving the room—the safest course, since it enabled her to hide her pleasure in the compliment that peculiarly appealed to her, and also seemed to give him a sufficient yet not harsh rebuke.Her aversion to restraint was perhaps stronger than is the average woman's—certainly had more courage. She had been too thoroughly trained in the conventionalities not to have the familiar timidity as to action, so strong in all conventionally bred people, so dominant over women. But the "unhand-me" spirit of her time was finding outlet in thought and feeling. Reflecting much in her aloneness, she had reached many audacious conclusions about life and the true meaning of its comedy drama—that meaning so different from what we pretend, from what usually passes as truth in history, philosophy, and literature, based as they are upon man's cheap hankering for idealistic strut. The audacities of thought that occasionally showed at her surface in speech or commentary of smiling eyes and lips were conventional in comparison with whole schools of deep-swimming ideas and fancies that kept hours of aloneness from being hours of loneliness. Physically, her passion for freedom showed itself in her dislike of tight or stuffy garments. She could pass her hand round her waist inside her closest-fitting corset. Her liking for few clothes and for as little yoke and sleeves as custom allowed came not from the thought for the other sex that often explains this taste, but from aversion to restraint.As usual, the first thing she did that night, when she was alone in her rooms, was to rid herself of all her clothing and put on the thinnest of thin white nightgowns, almost sleeveless, and cut out at the neck. She thrust her feet into bedroom slippers, braided her long hair with its strands of red almost brown, with its strands of brown almost gold. She turned out the light, threw open all the long shutters screening her windows, to let her bedroom fill with warm, perfumed freshness from lake and gardens. She stepped out on the balcony to take the breathing exercises that kept her body straight, her chest high, her bosom firm as a girl's, and her form slim and supple. The fireflies were floating and darting in the creepers and the near-hanging boughs. The slight agitations of the air stole among the folds of her gown and over her neck and arms like charmed fingers. There was no moon; but she did not miss it in the dim splendor of the thronging stars."Aren't you about ready to come in?"She startled, suppressed a scream. She turned. Richard was standing in the window. Her blood which had rushed to her heart surged out again and into her brain in an angry wave. She hated to be taken by surprise. It was on the tip of her tongue to cry furiously, "I detest being spied upon." But she had resolved soon after Winchie was born never to speak angrily to him, never to let him hear her speak angrily. The habit restrained her now, as it had scores of times. Instead, she said: "Why, how did you get in? I'm sure I locked my door.""So you did," replied Dick in the cheerful unconscious way that so irritated her in certain moods. Not always could she bear with composure his masculine assumption that whatever pleased him must delight his wife. "So you did," said he. "And it's still locked. But there was the window from the front balcony into your sitting room—and the door from your sitting room to this room. You see, I was determined to find you."His tone of laughing tenderness helped her half to guess, half to make out his expression. Usually she accepted without a protesting thought the whole of the routine of married life. But to-night she grew hot with a burning blush of imperiled modesty as he advanced toward her. "Don't," she said; "I'm doing my exercises.""No—you were dreaming. Of what?" Then, without waiting for an answer about a matter of so little importance, "Gallatin tells me he has decided to stay on—if he can arrange it—and he seems to think he can. So I'm feeling fine. You don't know what a jolt he gave me at supper. Did you talk with him about it?""Yes.""Urged him to stay?""I tried to show him he ought to stay.""Ever so much obliged."She stopped in her exercises to say quickly: "Oh, I didn't do it for you. I did it for myself.""Why, you dislike him.""He's some one to talk with—some one that listens and answers. And—I don't dislike him."Richard laughed. "That's right. Try to make the best of it. Well, if you're not coming in——""Not for an hour or longer.""Then—good night. I must be up early. I think I'll sleep down at the Smoke House. I'm so glad about Gallatin—just as much obliged as if you'd done it for me. And I believe you did." He put his arms round her to kiss her good night. As soon as his lips touched her cheek she drew away, disengaged herself. "What's the matter, Courtney?" She had long since learned that for all his absent-mindedness and ignoring of things that didn't directly interest him, he became as sensitive—and as accurate—as photographic plate to light, the instant his attention happened to be caught. "What's the matter? Why do you draw away?""I don't know," replied she—truthfully, yet with a sense of being untruthful. "I seem not to like to be touched to-night.""I don't remember you being that way before."She went on with her exercises; he yawned and departed.
VI
She did not go down to breakfast next morning until Richard and his guest would surely be gone. Her anger against the guest had evaporated because it was clearly unjust. Her anger against Richard was subsiding because it was clearly futile—and also because she hadn't it in her to foster harsh feeling. But there remained a dislike and dread of Gallatin because he had her secret. She could not think with composure of facing him, intolerably her partner in a secret she was ashamed of, was hiding from her husband, was trying to hide from herself. She would be unable to look at him, to remember his existence even, without at the same time having it thrust at her that her married life was a sham, a hypocrisy.
Half an hour before dinner Richard came to her in the big greenhouse she had built back of the library. As the day was warm, all its doors and sashes were open. Richard sent Jimmie's son Bill away and said with agitated abruptness: "Courtney, Gallatin seems determined to take rooms over at the hotel."
"I'm glad of that," replied she. "It's much better." She had not paused in her delicate task of extricating plants from their winter bed and arranging them in a basket for taking into the garden.
"But it's the first step toward going away. He'll never put up with the hotel's discomforts." Her indifference, her inattention made him impatient. "My dear, you don't understand. I need him. I've branched out on the strength of the capital he's supplying and has promised to supply. If he leaves, I'll be in a hole. We'll have to cut down in every direction, for I simply can't abandon my new plans."
"I don't like him," said Courtney. She had abruptly stopped work, was leaning against the frame facing him. "I want him out of the house."
Dick took the tone of gentle, forbearing remonstrance. "It's too late to change him to the Smoke House. He feels your dislike—is eager to get away. If there were any ground for dislike, I'd say nothing. As it is, I— I don't like to assert authority, but your frivolous whimsicality makes it necessary. I want you at once to convince him that you wish him to stay."
"But I don't." Her voice showed that those brief words were all she could trust to it.
"You do, since I wish it."
"Why should I consider what you wish? When have you considered what I wish?"
"When have I been inconsiderate of what was for your good?"
She was silent—silenced, he thought. His handsome face and his voice were gentle; but underneath there was sternness in both as he said: "You'll not oppose me in this. It'd be a very severe strain upon my love for you, if I found you so contemptuous of my interests. I'm sure you'll not risk that strain."
She saw into what an impossible position her anger had hurried her. Usually women, through playing upon the husband's passions and weaknesses generally, get enough control over him to be able to maintain—with only an occasional slight lapse—the pleasant fiction that they are of full human rank. They take care to avoid such crises as was this. Courtney, by long keeping away from the bars of her cage, had been lured into believing her pretense that they were not there. She now found herself bleeding and exhausted against them. "Very well," said she, after a moment's silence. It had taken her quick mind only a moment to see the alternatives—submission or a clash in which she could not but be defeated. "I'll try to get him to stay." Her voice was low and broken, but not from anger. Deeper than the sense of Richard's tyranny burned the humiliating sense of her servitude. In fact, her own plight so mortified her that she had no emotional capacity for raging against him as the author of it. She felt, as always in these sex conflicts, that the fault was not his, but fate's; he was simply playing his part as man, she her part as woman.
"That's a good girl," cried her approving husband, kissing her brow. It did not occur to him, the deep-down reason of sordidness that enabled him to compel; but she could think of nothing else. "Be sweet to him," Dick went on, in an amiable, petting tone. "And you may rest assured, dear, I'll get rid of him as soon as I can. I don't like intruders into our happiness any more than you do."
Her cheeks flushed, and she turned again to the frame, to resume her digging. Her whole body to her finger tips was in a tremor.
Through dinner she was silent and cold; Gallatin hardly lifted his gaze from his plate. Whenever Richard could catch her eye, he frowned and glanced significantly at Gallatin. But her eyes met his hints with a vacant look that made him twitch in his chair with nervousness and exasperation. As soon as Gallatin in politeness could, he excused himself and left the family of three alone.
Richard, unmindful of Winchie, burst out, "What's the meaning of this?
"You must let me humble myself in my own way," said Courtney coldly. "Come, Winchie." And the two went out on the lawn.
As Gallatin a few minutes later issued from the front door with Richard, she called: "Oh, Mr. Gallatin, I want to speak to you a moment."
He halted. The color flared into his face. Richard said, "I'll go on. You needn't hurry," and strode along the path into the eastern shrubbery. Gallatin hesitatingly crossed the grass. Winchie, who had on first sight taken an instinctive dislike to him, held a fold of Courtney's walking skirt and glowered like a small but very fierce storm.
"Go to the veranda, Winchie," said his mother.
The boy released his hold and reluctantly obeyed. Gallatin stood before her like a prisoner arraigned for sentence. "Richard tells me you're talking of moving to the hotel over in town," said she.
"Yes, I'm going to-morrow."
"Because you feel I want you out of the house?"
"I think a man in my position couldn't help being an intruder."
"I want you to stay."
His fair skin paled. "I thank you," said he, "but I must go."
"I want you to stay. I ask you to stay."
"That's very kind. I appreciate it. But I really must go."
"I did wish you to go. But now I sincerely wish you to stay."
Their eyes met. She was as pale as her bronze complexion permitted. She went on, her deep, clear voice steady, "If you go, you'll put me in a very painful position."
Gallatin looked at her, flushed, looked hastily away. In a voice of intense embarrassment he said: "I've another reason for wishing to go. It's even stronger than the knowledge that you're—very naturally—displeased at my being forced upon you."
"Oh," said Courtney, baffled. Then, "Please tell Richard what it is."
"I cannot." His gaze was on the ground now.
Somehow Courtney was liking him better. As he glanced up, her eyes met his. "Be frank with me," she urged winningly. "Is it because you dislike it here?"
"No." His gaze was wandering again. "No, indeed."
"I'm glad of that," said she. "Do you believe me when I say I wish you to stay?"
He lowered his eyes, remained silent.
"If I were free to choose, I would wish you to go," she went on, speaking with the utmost deliberation. "I am not free. So, I wish you to stay because it will be most unpleasant for me if you persist in going. I venture to ask you, if it is not too great a sacrifice, to stay on—at least, for the present. But if you still say you must go, I shall not misjudge."
"I'll stay," was his prompt response. "Gladly." And his tone and eyes were sincere.
"Thank you," said she simply.
He looked at her with an appeal that was very engaging. "I know you'll hate me for having created this situation."
"I thought I did a few minutes ago," replied she. "Now, I feel I don't. I feel I'd like to be friends with you—" Her small, sweet face lit up with a faint smile—"since we can't be enemies."
"You mean that?" he asked with an eagerness that sounded only the more eager for his effort to restrain it.
"Indeed, I do," replied she. "Will you help me with the gardening—when you have time?"
"There's nothing I'd like so well."
"Then—it's all settled?"
"Quite."
They smiled gravely; they shook hands; they laughed. "And a little while ago I was thinking I never could forgive you!" exclaimed she gayly. "Now I'm wondering what on earth there was to forgive." And she felt and looked very well acquainted with him. It was part of her upright-downright nature either to like thoroughly or to be so indifferent that she was little short of oblivious.
Before her generous friendliness the laughter died out of his face. "I'll try to be worthy of your friendship and your trust," said he gravely.
"That sounds mysterious—somehow."
"Does it? ... When may I help you?"
"Whenever you can get off. Soon?"
"To-morrow, I think."
"That's good."
"I'll join Vaughan." He hesitated, blushed. "He knows you were to ask me to stay?"
"Yes. But not how," was her calm answer.
"I understand." Their eyes met. He colored; but her expression, sweet and grave, did not change. As he went Winchie, seated morosely afar off on the veranda steps, scowled at his back.
That evening Richard said: "Well, I think he's going to stay. How did you manage it?"
"I've asked him to help me with the gardening. He's fond of it."
"A good idea," approved Richard. "I'll back you up."
She gazed silently out over the unruffled lake, so peaceful, so suggestive of peace unchanging, endless—the lazy, graceful sails—beyond, the town among its trees, lights coming out as the dusk gathered.
But their friendship, thus auspiciously begun, did not prosper. Gallatin almost pointedly avoided her. He helped her only when Richard, disturbed from time to time by his unrelaxed reserve, urged him to take a day or an afternoon off "and amuse yourself with the flowers, since you like that sort of thing." If it had not been that occasionally in talking or working at the gardening he seemed to forget his solemn and formal pose and showed unmistakable enthusiasm, she would have thought his profession of interest a pretense. She had a peculiar horror of gloom—doubtless born of the austerity of her bringing up. There was in her circumstances only too much to discourage her natural brightness, and she had within herself a struggle as incessant as that against weeds and destructive insects in her gardens. She had no desire to make this struggle harder; so she saw as little of him as she in courtesy could—the only course open to her, since she did not know him well enough to try to help him.
"What's the matter with Gallatin?" Richard asked her one day. "He says he likes it here and is going to stay, yet he acts as if he were revolving something different. He used to be full of fun and life. Now he's enough to give anyone the blues."
"Heisrather heavy," admitted Courtney.
"I wonder if it's the booze," said Richard reflectively.
"The booze?"
"He always drank a lot more than was good for him. And there in Pittsburg he got to lapping it up like the get-rich-quick crowd he traveled in. That was why he wanted to come here—to break off and take a fresh start. I suppose he's gloomy because he's fighting his taste for rum."
"Probably," said Courtney.
Drink was a vice she could not comprehend—and we always are unsympathetic toward the vices we do not comprehend. She associated drinking and stupidity; the Wenona men who drank to excess were the dull ones, like Shirley Drummond. When Richard thus disclosed to her what Gallatin had meant by his mysterious hint as to his reason for coming to Wenona, she lost the interest in him started by his fine frank way of meeting her advances and his appreciation of her work. She recalled his other mysterious hint—about there being a hidden reason for his wishing to go. "No doubt," thought she, "he meant he's finding it hard to keep straight here, where it's so quiet. I wish now that he'd gone—though, when a man can give way to such a dull, dirty habit as drunkenness, he'd find excuse anywhere."
As the mail came in the middle of the morning and the middle of the afternoon, she saw it first. Thus, she noted that about once a week there was for him a foreign letter so heavy that it carried several stamps. These letters were from the same person, the same woman. And as the writing was large, rapid, and affectedly angular, she more than suspected that the woman was young. Somewhat tardily these facts, obvious though their leading was, wove together in her mind, incurious about other people's affairs; she knew that there was traveling abroad a young woman who taking the trouble to write their guest regularly and at great length. But when she happened to recall that he had a young married sister, she assumed the letters were from her.
One day he casually said that his sister had taken a house at Bar Harbor for the summer. The moment he said this, she for some unknown reason, or for no reason at all, jumped to the conclusion that his depressed state was due to the lady of the letters—to her being so far away—perhaps to some difficulty in their love—the objection of her parents to his drinking habit.
All was now clear to her. And thenceforth she looked at him with deep sympathy. He was not handsome; his mouth, for example, was so heavy that it flatly gave the lie to his idealist, poetic eyes. His nose was not good, was too small for a man's face. Somewhere there lurked a suggestion of weakness, and this was not lessened by his attention to dress—though she liked his clothes and his way of wearing them. He was far from her ideal of a man. But the longer one knew him, the better one thought of him, chiefly because the more confidence one had in his essential generosity and kindness. And she felt that he had capacity for tenderness of a very manly sort, and for appreciation of love and of all the beautiful things; just the kind of nature fate seemed to delight in making the sport of its maliciousness.
One night, in the pensive mood to which she sometimes yielded for an hour, she was at the piano softly playing; and singing that saddest of sad love's songs:
"Alas for lovers! Pair by pairThe wind has swept them all away—The young, the yare; the fresh, the fair—Where are the snows of yesterday?"
"Alas for lovers! Pair by pairThe wind has swept them all away—The young, the yare; the fresh, the fair—Where are the snows of yesterday?"
"Alas for lovers! Pair by pair
The wind has swept them all away—
The wind has swept them all away—
The young, the yare; the fresh, the fair—
Where are the snows of yesterday?"
Where are the snows of yesterday?"
Through the window she saw him leaning against a pillar of the veranda. His profile was outlined clear against the luminous dusk. Its expression made her voice die altogether in a sob. She forgot her own sense of fleeting wasting youth, of supreme joy forever denied, of love never to be hers. This sorrow before her in those profiled features—they were strong features now—was no vague dream, but a living reality. She longed to go to him and try to console him; and at the same time, no matter how well she had known him, she could not have gone—for in that unsuspected strength of his there was the hopelessness that is beyond consolation. From that time he was the foremost figure in her thoughts; and her fancy put its own color into everything he said and did. If he had begun to drink she would have been only the more sympathetic; for, she could comprehend how unhappy love might drive its victim to any excess—were not her own longings, for three years now latent except for an occasional outburst, once more throbbing and aching day and night?
It was part of her routine to make a careful tour every day to see that everything was up to the mark. One day, in their guest's sitting room, she happened to see half fallen from the stationery rack a letter from his foreign correspondent. It was apparently unopened. The shock of this made her take a second look before she realized how she was intruding upon his sacred privacy. But she had seen; the letter was indeed unopened. And she knew that the last come of these letters had been at least three days in his possession.
Her heart ached for him; she felt she understood. His love affair had been going more and more badly—his increasing silence and sadness made that certain. And this letter must contain some news he dared not read—some words that meant the burial of his dead hope. She went downstairs with a heavy heart, and out into the sunshine—out to the rose garden in the western part of the grounds. She had been dreaming all along that this romance of which she was unsuspected, deeply moved spectator would surely "come out all right." Life did not always mock the story books. Love was not always sad, not always mere deceptive echo of one's own heart call—echo that flitted mockingly on as one pursued. No; this love that meant so much to him would prove real. Such had been her dream. Now— The flowers, their perfume, the gay birds, the sunbeams—all the sights and sounds she loved seemed tricks of a black enchanter. She remembered the day they buried her little brother. There had been just such radiant glory as this. She remembered the day she had seen that her own dream of love was dead. There had been just such sunshine and music and perfume. How could anyone with a human heart even for a moment laugh, jest? To be light was to make oneself party to this cruel levity of bird and flower and sunbeam. Laugh, when loved ones were dying somewhere—and the living were bending over dead faces with cracking hearts? Jest, when the winds of time and change were blowing love and lovers all away?
She caught her breath in a kind of terror when, on her return to the house, Lizzie told her that Mr. Gallatin had dashed in, had packed a bag, and had rushed off to Chicago. "He has business there," Richard explained at dinner. "And I've asked him to buy some stuff for the laboratory." She was uneasy, at times unhappy, throughout the following week, as she thought of him trying to rid himself of his too heavy burden. Probably he was dissipating—she hoped he was, if it would give him relief. She began to debate whether she ought not to tell Richard what she had accidentally discovered, and suggest that he go to Chicago to help his friend, who might have fallen ill or worse. At dinner and at supper, even at breakfast, where she had seen him only occasionally, she positively missed Gallatin. Until he came, the time spent at table had been the stupidest part of each day—Richard and she in silence or abstraction, or exchanging disconnected commonplaces about the weather, the food, their friends. While Gallatin was far from lively, still he and she had talked—usually about gardening and plants, the difficulties and mysteries of inducing things to grow, the comparative merits of various species for flowering and for hardiness—not exciting conversation, but interesting, a relief to a monotony the dreariness of which she did not appreciate until he came—and went.
On the eighth day, as they were at supper, he appeared unexpectedly on the threshold. There was no forcing in the cordiality of her smile. At first glance, she suspected that he was in much better spirits. And this impression was soon confirmed. Certainly good news—the best—must have reached him in Chicago. Otherwise he could not sit there eating heartily, laughing, making amusing remarks, telling funny incidents of the trip. Courtney tried to continue to feel delighted that he had found surcease from sorrow. But her spirits went steadily down. She felt horribly alone. She had been company for him in his unhappiness—though he did not know it. Now, she quite unreasonably felt as if he had deserted her. She was ashamed of this, so ungenerous, so selfish, but she could not help it.
After supper Richard left them alone; they went out on the veranda—out where the full beauty of that place, now at summer's climax, could be seen in the soft sunset light. She stood watching a belated bird, a tall white sail—listening to the faint sounds of the town that came tinkling across the water. But she was thinking of the man beside her. "You've been enjoying yourself in Chicago," said she.
"No," was his unexpected answer. "I've been impatient to get back." He glanced round at trees and lawns, gardens and shrubbery, with delighted eyes. "I had to go away, to appreciate how well off I was." He went to the edge of the veranda to get a broader sweep. He seemed to be noting, reveling in, every detail. He drew a deep breath, returned to the big lounge chair, and lit a cigarette. "Yes," continued he. "Yes—I didn't dream it, or imagine it. It's all true. It's all here." Without looking at her: "And you happen to be wearing the same dress you had on the evening I came. Now, don't tell me you made it—as you've made those gardens and these rooms."
"I superintend," said Courtney, thinking him a pleasant and agreeable, if deplorably shallow person. "I'm not one of those dreadful original women who get up their own awful costumes, and think they're individual because they're different."
"If you lived in Paris, you'd set the styles," declared he. "And you're equally good at gardening and decorating houses."
"That's laid on with the trowel," laughed she. "But I like it." She returned to the subject that fitted her thoughts. "You're much livelier than when you went away; I'm sure you've had good news."
"No—nothing. I simply took myself in hand." He reflected in silence, then lifted his head and looked at her with a boyish simplicity and candor. "You see," he proceeded to explain, "I've had something on my mind ever since I came—that is, almost ever since—something that was my own affair entirely. And I let it prey on me—made myself a nuisance and a bore, I've no doubt."
There was a gleam of mischievous humor in her eyes as she nodded assent and said: "You were solemner than I thought a human being could be."
"Precisely. Well, that's over. As I said before, I didn't realize how well off I was, how much I had to be thankful for, as the pious people say. I do realize it. And I'm going to behave myself."
Courtney felt she ought to be scandalized by this vanishing of the last solemn tatters of the tragic romance she had woven about him; for it was clear as the lake that he had gotten over his bereavement in that one brief week, had gotten over it entirely. But somehow she was not scandalized; was, on the contrary, taking quite cheerfully this confirmation of his fickleness, of his incapacity for deep emotion. After all, wasn't that the best way to be? Wasn't he perhaps philosopher rather than shallow changeling? Wasn't he simply exemplifying the truth that fire burns out, that the dead are forgotten, that life leans always at the bow of the ship, never at the stern? She, eager to escape from her own shadows and thorns, slipped easily into his mood. "I should say you did have a lot to be thankful for!" answered she. "And you'll soon forget her." She colored at her slip. "I assume it was a love affair," she hastened to add. "We women always do."
"Yes, it was."
"You'll get over it."
"I do not wish to get over it." He was not smiling back at her. She felt his thoughts traveling over land and sea, into Europe, whence came those letters—there were two of them waiting on his desk upstairs. "I do not wish to get over it," he repeated. "I've learned—" His voice, full of earnest young seriousness, sounded as if he were thinking aloud rather than talking to her—"I've learned there's a love deeper than the love that demands—a love that appreciates where it dares not aspire—a love that asks nothing but just silently to love."
There was a long silence, broken by the snapping of the match, as he lit a cigarette. She startled, rose, and leaned against a pillar. With eyes half veiled by her long lashes she watched the gardens wane dreamily in the evening light. She inhaled the odors of rose, of lilac, of jasmine, of honeysuckle—perfumes so sweet that they were sad. How cruelly she had misjudged him! She felt a kind of reverence for him now, him with this nobility of soul so unconscious, so lofty. Here was a man worth a woman's while. "Why couldn't I have had such a love as he is giving?" she thought. "Oh, if she had learned what I've learned!"
"Come into the sitting room, Gallatin," called Richard from that direction.
Gallatin went, and for a few minutes Courtney heard, in intervals between her thoughts, snatches of the talk between the two men about the shopping Gallatin had done for the laboratory—talk about a new crusher, about a promising bomb calorimeter. After a while came in Vaughan's voice, "Courtney, what do you think of that?"
She stood in the window with an inquiring glance.
"I've been telling Gallatin you're going to introduce him round among the Wenona girls. And he says he has no use for women."
"I!" exclaimed Basil. "On the contrary, I think women—a woman—the most important element in a man's life."
Richard laughed. "Why, the man's in love!" cried he.
Courtney saw Gallatin wince as his wound was struck by this careless, jovial hand.
"Only a lover," proceeded Dick, "would exaggerate woman in that frenzied fashion. To live isn't to love. It's to do—to achieve."
"I don't agree with you," said Gallatin. "Love's the center—the mainspring—the purpose—the meaning."
"You ought to have been a woman."
"Why not?" retorted Gallatin. Courtney saw that Dick had irritated him. "In one respect I envy women. A womanknowswhether or not a man loves her. A man can only hope and believe." And he glanced swiftly at her.
He looked confused, frightened, as her expression showed that she, the married woman, the lovelessly married woman, understood. She turned away abruptly, two bright red spots burning in her cheeks.
"Well," said the unobserving Richard to Gallatin, "I confess I don't grasp your meaning. But it doesn't matter. A good woman loves her husband, and he knows it. The rest's of no consequence. We must get him a wife, Courtney. He'd make an ideal husband, don't you think?"
"A good wife does not think," said Courtney.
Richard was amused. "But if she did?" he persisted.
"Then she'd probably think it fortunate for husbands that wives aren't independent."
Vaughan again looked puzzled. "That sounds as irrelevant as what Gallatin said a minute ago. Now will you tell us, what has it to do with what we were talking about?"
"I don't know," replied she. And she did not. She was astonished before this apparition of a thought she had not been conscious of having definitely in mind since that conversation with her mother long ago; and here it was popping up as if it were her constant companion. "It just came into my head," she went smilingly on. "You know we women are irresponsible, irrational beings, and so we don't think straight or talk connectedly."
She said good night, went up to her apartment. She was wishing now that Gallatin had not told her about this love of his for the woman across the seas. It had made her discontented—unhappy. It had compelled her to think what a patchwork of makeshifts her own life was. "Yet I ought to be contented. Haven't I Winchie? And I can't even complain of poor health or discomfort of any kind. I don't deserve my good fortune. Other women would envy me." No, they would not. She saw in remembered faces of women friends the same discontent she was hiding in her heart. A woman—a woman grown—craved more than material comfort could give, more than work or play, however interesting, more than motherhood could give—craved that grown-up, equal love without which life was like a wonderful watch with a broken mainspring. She thought of Basil Gallatin again. At least she was more fortunate than he. Suppose she, like him, loved and it were not returned. Then indeed would her heart ache.
When she saw him alone next day, she said shyly and with color high: "It seems to me you can't have told her—told her as you told me. Won't you go to her—not write, but go—and try again? Believe me, Mr. Gallatin, women appreciate love—at least, any woman who could inspire the love you give her. And if she knew, she'd love you—she couldn't help it."
She feared she had intruded. But when he at last spoke, his tone was not the tone of one who is offended. "Thank you, thank you," he stammered. "But— I assure you it's hopeless. She is not for me."
"Oh!" Courtney shrank. "She cares for some one else. I—I'm so sorry I spoke. I——"
"No—no," he said; "it was friendly. It was—like you."
This began their real friendship. And she needed friendship just then. What he had told her put her in a mood where all her occupations were in vain, and all the wisdom she had gathered from books and from thinking about things as they are, and all the patiently, slowly acquired stoicism of the matrimonial routine. Her heart was clamoring as it had not since those first months of her discovery that love was delusion and that she must learn to live without it. She wished Gallatin had not told her; she wished he had never come. And at the same time she felt that through the sadness he had brought there had come into her life a pleasure she would not wish to give up—the sympathy between him and her, based on their knowledge each of the other's secret. She felt very proud of his confidence, of his friendship. Also, there was the fascination that always issues from a great emotion, even though it be seen but in mimic on the stage. This great emotion of his was a vivid actuality. It made a smile upon his features heroism; it made a look of sadness tragedy.
He helped her in the gardens often now. Richard, making some secret experiments, did not want him at the laboratory. Sometimes he and she worked together at changing color schemes or improving mass effects or vistas. Again each worked alone, perhaps at some surprise for the other. It was after a morning of hard labor in opposite ends of the grounds that she said when they met at the house: "Richard's not coming up, so Nanny has to take him his dinner. And Lizzie's away and Mazie not well. I'll wait on you."
"Let's have a picnic," suggested he, "out under that big elm."
And with Winchie helping they carried everything to the rustic table and proceeded to have one of those happy-go-lucky meals that make the blue devils put their tails between their legs and fly away on their forks. Winchie, let eat what he pleased, forgot his dislike of Gallatin—at least so far that he only frowned occasionally as Gallatin and Courtney talked the most hopeless nonsense with the keenest pleasure. When Basil's face was animated it was never homely; when he smiled it was always handsome. For the first time since he came he lost all constraint, and the sparkle of girlhood came back to her. They stayed out there nearly three hours, and it seemed no time at all. Nanny, sour and scowling at the impropriety of such conduct in a married woman—one married into the ancient and rigid house of Vaughan—took away the dishes and linen. But the hint so plain in her dour looks went unnoted. It was a shower that broke up the party, sent them scurrying to the house, he carrying furious and protesting Winchie. She punished Winchie for his rudeness by sending him up to his bedroom to sit alone and think down his temper.
"You oughtn't to have done that," said Basil, when the boy, defiant even in obedience, disappeared.
"It's the only way to make him remember. And I can't whip him. I'm too selfish, even if I didn't know it was equally degrading to him."
"He can't help not liking me," persisted Basil. "We're not to blame for our likes and dislikes."
"No. But we are to blame for giving way to them." She was arranging freshly cut flowers in vases and jars in the sitting room.
"Yes, for giving way to them," said Basil thoughtfully, after a long time.
"To what?" asked Courtney, who had forgotten.
"Our feelings."
"Oh, I remember."
"You're right about that." Basil was speaking with an effort. "For example, if a man were to—to fall in love with a married woman, he'd be a—miserable cur if he told her. Those last few words came explosively.
"Gracious!" Courtney beamed mischievously at him from behind a gorgeous spread of half blown roses. "You are fierce! Well, that's settled. If he heard you, he'd never dare tell her."
She saw his face, and it flashed over her that it was a married woman he loved. Yes, of course! Why had she not guessed it at once! And he was saying these harsh things to make it impossible for himself to yield to the impulse. The smile left her eyes. He was at the window with his back to her. She looked tender sympathy. "Poor boy!" she thought. "And I saw to-day how happy he could be, and how happy he could make a woman.... Perhaps she does love him. What a sorrow that would be! And utterly hopeless!"
He turned abruptly. "Will you be my friend?"
She came straight up to him, put out her hand. "Indeed I will," she said.
He took her hand, pressed it. Then he drew back with his hands behind him. "You are a good woman," he said. "Good through and through. I want you to help me fight a battle I'm having just now. I thought I'd won it. I haven't. But I will!"
"I understand, I think. It is hard. But you are strong and honorable. You— The woman— She is already—" She paused, looked at him inquiringly.
"Yes—God help me!" he cried, turning away.
His cry could not have reached a more responsive heart. After a pause she said: "If she doesn't love you, it'd be useless to tell her."
"Worse! It would mean I was a cur."
"And if she does love you, it'd be wicked to tell her—to add to her unhappiness."
"If you were in my place— Suppose I could be with her—could go and live near her——"
"Oh, no; you oughtn't to do that! You ought to spare yourself and her that."
"But suppose," he urged eagerly, "suppose she didn't care for me—never would—and I could keep my secret——"
"But you couldn't! And she might grow to care."
He sat in a big chair by the window, stared moodily at the floor. "It seems to me Ican'tdo that!" he said at last. "I don't love her as men usually love. She means infinitely more to me than that. And, loving her as I do, I'm in no danger of telling her. And it would make me almost happy so much of the time, and a better man—yes, a better man—to be near her. What you say I ought to do—it's like turning a man out into the desert without food or drink—to wander—on and on——"
"I know, I know," she interrupted, her small, sweet face all tenderness and distress. "Oh, I'm not competent to advise. You mustn't ask anyone. You must do what you think is right."
"Right!" he echoed forlornly.
She who had eaten of the husks that went by the name of right hadn't the heart to urge them on him. She returned to the table, to the arranging of the flowers. Without looking up he went on: "I haven't told you quite all. There's another thing. I—I'm engaged."
"Engaged!"
"Don't look at me that way. I can feel it, though I'm not seeing. You can't think less of me than I think of myself. But let me tell you. The girl's a distant cousin of mine. And her grandfather, who was crazy about families, left her a fortune on condition that she married me. He left an equal sum to me on condition that I marry her. But there's this difference: What he left her is all she'd have—every cent. I've got enough without his legacy to me."
"And you— Oh, it's dreadful, isn't it?"
"We're not in love—not in the least. But I've given her my promise, and she'd be penniless if I broke it. She's nineteen. We've got till she's twenty-one. She's abroad now."
"The letters I've seen in the mail—they're from her?"
"From her," replied he. "How can I marry when I love another woman?"
"I see," said Courtney. She was sitting now, her hands full of roses and listless in her lap. "Then you've no more right to love this woman than she has to love you.... Oh, I don't know what to say!"
"Don't think I'm trying to shift part of my burden to you. I'm not. But I felt if I could talk it out loud with some one who was sympathetic I'd see the way better. And I do." The expression of his eyes thrilled her; it was so manly, so honest, so resolved.
"What have you decided—if you don't mind telling me?"
"To go to Starky—-that's my cousin—her real name's Estelle, but she detests it—I'll go to her and we'll marry."
"No—no!" cried Courtney. "Whatever's right, that isn't. Oh, you don't know. She has a right to love. You're cheating her—cheating her!"
"But I can never give her that."
"You may——"
"Never!"
Courtney shook her head slowly, lifted the roses, buried her face in them, inhaled their perfume deeply. "Then—you mustn't marry her," she said.
"You don't know her. She cares for money—the things money buys—more than for anything else in the world. It's the way we bring 'em up in the East.
"Believe me," cried Courtney, solemn in her earnestness, "that's not true. There isn't any woman anywhere who doesn't put love first. Go to your cousin—yes. But go and try to love her."
His eyes suddenly blazed upon her. "Love her after—" he began impetuously. He reddened, his head sank. "After the woman I—" He muttered confusedly, "I can't talk about it," and hastily left the room by the door-window nearest him.
She sighed sympathetically, rose, moved slowly toward the vase she had only half finished. Midway she halted. That look of his had just penetrated to her. "Oh!" she gasped. And she wheeled round and stared with blanching cheeks, as if he were still standing there before her with his secret betrayed in his eyes. "Oh!" she repeated under her breath. How her mistaken romancings about his sadness had misled her woman's instinct! For now, like steel filings round a magnet, a swarm of happenings since he came ranged round that telltale look of his—where they belonged.
VII
Basil was last in to supper, came with his nervousness plain in his features. His uneasy glance at her met a smile of ingenuous friendliness that could not but reassure. Richard was there, absent-minded as usual, and unconscious of them both. They were unconscious of him also, Basil no less so than she, for he had long since acquired the habit of the household. No one spoke until Richard, having finished, lighted a cigarette and fell to explaining to Basil an experiment he had made that day. He was full of it, illustrated his points with diagrams drawn on the yellow pad which was never far from his hand. Courtney, relieved of the necessity of trying to look natural before Basil, was able to turn her thoughts again to the subject that had been occupying her steadily from the moment she discovered his secret.
If Gallatin could have seen into her mind, he would have been as nearly scandalized as it is possible for an infatuated, unsatisfied lover to be. For even where a man feels he himself has the right to revolt against exasperating musts and must nots of conventional morality, he is unusual indeed if he honestly approves any such revolt, however timid, in a woman. Man is the author and guardian of that morality; in the division of labor he has imposed upon woman the duty of being its exemplar. Thus, though human, she must pretend not to be; she must stifle if possible, conceal at any cost, her human fondness for the free and the frank. For Courtney there was double attraction in this love of Basil's—because it was love for her and because she was lonely—how lonely she had never realised until now. There is the loneliness of physical solitude, the loneliness for company—and a great unhappiness it is, especially to those who approach the lower animals in lack of resources within themselves. Courtney had never suffered from this; she had never cared for "just people." Then there is the loneliness of soul solitude, the loneliness for comradeship—and who suffers from this suffers torment. It may lull, but it will surely rage again, and it will never cease until it is satisfied or the heart itself ceases to beat. This was the loneliness of Courtney Vaughan. "If he," thought she, "were bad, and I, too—no, perhaps not exactly bad, but—well, different—less—less conscientious—how happy we might be! That is, of course, if I cared for him—or could make myself believe I did—which is impossible." She lingered over this impossible supposition as over a sweet, fantastic dream. She dropped it and turned away, only to return to it. And thinking of it filled her with the same tender sadness she got from love stories and love songs. "I would not if I could, I could not if I would, but—" Love! Into the silence of that void in her life had come a sound. It was the right word, but not the right voice. Still, there was joy in the right word. And she would not have been human had she bent other than kindly eyes and kindly thoughts upon the man who pronounced that word of words. Long since—from her first notion that he was hiding a romantic secret—his real self had begun to receive from her imagination the transfiguring veil of illusion. The discovery that she herself was the secret certainly did not make the veil thinner. A strong imagination flings out this beautiful, trouble-making drapery always; not quite so eagerly if there has been sad warning experience, but none the less inevitably. It would be many a day, if ever, before Courtney could again see Basil Gallatin as he was in reality.
As she sat there, silent, all but oblivious of her immediate surroundings, she was awakened by hearing him say, in reply to something from Richard: "But I'm afraid I'll have to—to change my plans—and—go away." It was said hesitatingly, with much effort.
"Go away!" cried Richard. Courtney could not have spoken.
"I'm afraid so."
"Not for good?"
"Probably—in fact, almost certainly."
"Why, man, you can't do that!" protested Dick. "You can't leave me in the lurch."
"Oh, I want to keep my interest. It's simply that I can't stay on, myself."
"But I need you now as much as I need the capital. Why, it'd upset everything for a year—perhaps longer. I couldn't easily find a competent man I could trust."
Basil repeated in a final, dogged way, "It's impossible for me to stay."
"Is there anything unsatisfactory in——"
"No—no indeed. My own affairs entirely, I assure you."
As he had finished supper, Vaughan took him out on the veranda, where Courtney heard them—or, rather, heard Dick—arguing and protesting. Presently she drifted into the sitting room, sat at the piano, let her fingers wander soundlessly over the keys. What should she do? What was best for him—for her—"and there's Richard, too, who needs him." Why should he go? How would it help matters? True, she had declared that to be the right course; but then she was merely theorizing, merely talking the conventional thing. This was no theory, but actuality, calling for good common sense. It was not the first time she had found the facts of life making mockery of the most convincing theories about it. Presently she felt that Basil was in the window farthest from her, was watching her—probably with the same loving, despairing expression she had often seen without a suspicion that it was for her.
"Where's Richard?" inquired she, not looking in his direction.
"In the library."
"You've upset him dreadfully."
"I'm sorry. But things will soon adjust themselves." He advanced a step, was visible now in the half darkness, looked pallidly handsome in his becoming dinner suit. "A few weeks at most," he went on, somewhat huskily, "and I'll be the vaguest sort of a memory here."
She was glad her back was toward him and that the twilight had darkened into dusk. Of course, he did not really love her. It was simply another case of a man's being isolated with a woman and his head getting full of sentimental fancies. Still— While his love was not real, and therefore its pain largely imaginary, the pain no doubt seemed real, and the love, too. So she was sad for him—very sad. As soon as she felt sure of her voice, she said: "Won't you please light the big lamp for me? I wore a négligée this evening because I wanted to sew. I'm making a suit for Winchie—like one I saw in a French magazine."
He lit the lamp beside the table where she worked in the evenings when she did not go to her own room. "Anything else?" he asked.
"Only sit and talk to me."
"I couldn't talk this evening."
"Then sit and smoke."
She began her work, he smoking in the deep shadow near the window. She could hardly see him; he could see every wave and ripple in her lovely hair, every shift of the sweeping dark lashes, every change in that sweet, small face, in the wide wistful mouth. Even better than playing on the piano, sewing brings out the charm of delicate, skillful fingers. She did not need to look at him to feel his gaze, its longing, its hopelessness. And never before had she thought of him in such a partial, personal way—the way a woman must feel toward the man she knows loves her, even though she only likes him.
She had made up her mind what to do, how to deal practically with this situation. But she had to struggle with her timidity before she could set about the audacious experiment she had planned and resolved. She had long had the frankness of thought that is inseparable from intelligence. The courage to speak her thoughts was as yet in the bud. "Do you mind my speaking again of what you were saying this afternoon?" said she as she sewed industriously.
"No," said he.
"I've been thinking about it. At first I was startled—very much startled. But I soon began to look at it sensibly. I want you to stay. Richard wants you to stay. There's no reason why you shouldn't stay and conquer your delusion."
"It's no delusion."
"Real love is always mutual. So yours must be delusion." She was pointing a thread for the eye of the needle. "You've led a very—very man sort of life, haven't you?"
He shifted uncomfortably, then confessed: "You know the standards for men are different from those for women."
She smiled, threaded the needle. "Yes, I know. I don't understand, but I know. You needn't explain. I don't want to understand. It doesn't interest me. As I was about to say—" Her courage failed her, and she sewed a while in silence. At last she dared. It was with no sign of inward disturbance, but the contrary, that she went on: "You've been shut in here too long. Go to your old haunts for a few days. You'll come back cured."
She had practiced saying it, this advice which she believed wise and necessary in the circumstances. She said it in calm, matter-of-fact fashion; and it was the less difficult for her to do so because, in thought at least, she had long since emancipated herself from what she regarded as the hypocrisies of modesty, and had taught herself to look at all things rationally and humanly. She knew her frankness would not please him; so she was not surprised when after a pause he said roughly, "I don't like to hear you say that sort of thing."
She laughed pleasantly, put quite at ease by his impertinence. "And I don't in the least care whether you approve of me or not. You men seem to think you've got a sort of general roving commission to superintend the propriety of women."
"I beg your pardon."
"Certainly. Give me that pair of scissors—on the stand in the corner."
He rose, issued from the deep shadow. She could now see into what confusion her words had thrown him. The hand that held out the scissors was trembling. He moved to go upon the veranda. "Please," said she. "I'm not nearly done. Won't you sit down?"
He seated himself.
"You see," she went on lightly, busy with her hem again, "I know your awful secret."
"You've no right to laugh at me," muttered he.
"I'm not laughing at you.... I'm only looking at it in a friendly, practical way.... I want to help you.... Why are you going away?"
She sewed on, feeling his emotion gather behind his self-control. The stillness was unbroken. A light breeze, cool and scented, came fluttering in at the open windows to play with the soft brilliant hair that grew so beautifully round her temples. In a low voice, so low that she scarcely heard, his answer at last came: "Because I love you. I love you and I am not a cur."
Her needle missed its way into the cloth, pierced her finger. She put the wounded finger in her mouth. When she looked toward him she was smiling. "Still you've not answered my question. Because you think you care for me—that's no reason why you should go.'
"I can't control myself. I—" He made a gesture of helplessness. "I can't think of you as—as married. You seem like a girl to me—free. I keep forgetting."
"It doesn't seem to occur to you that I might be trusted to remember."
"I know," said he humbly.
She held the garment at arms' length, eyeing the hem critically. "No, you don't. You're like all the men. You fancy weak woman can always be overborne by man, big and strong and superior."
"You wrong me."
"Why else should you talk of going away?"
"Because it's torment to me to be near you—to——"
She stopped sewing, looked at him with anger in her deep green eyes. "Then your feeling is just what I thought."
"It is not! It is love!"
Again she sewed a long time in silence. It was very calm there, in that quiet room with its flowers and tasteful, gracefully arranged furniture, and the single lamp like a jewel shedding all its radiances upon her small industrious figure. "Then tell me," she said in her sweet, gentle way, without looking up or pausing, "what do you want that you cannot have? You can see me as much as you like. You can talk as freely as you like. You can count on sympathy, on friendship. And, if you want to, you can keep right on loving me in that exalted way you profess. Nobody's going to hinder you."
She sewed on in silence, he motionless watching her, perplexity in his honest, rather boyish face. After a while her voice broke the silence. "Love!" She laughed with raillery that did not sting. "My dear friend, don't you see I was right? Go away for a few days and——"
"For God's sake, don't suggest that again."
"Then don't say it's love that makes you want to leave and upset everything." She put the needles, thread, and thimble into her workbox, rolled up the little suit, rose. "It's always the same story," she said, sad rather than bitter. "A woman means only one thing to a man. Yes, I think you had best go."
"You're too severe," he cried. "It's true there's such a thing as passion without love. And I'll admit that I, like all men have felt it often—have lied to myself as well as to the woman—and have called it love. But it's also true there's no love without some passion—at least,youcouldn't hope to inspire it. And though in your innocence you may think so, you'd not want to have less than all love has to give—if you loved."
Her eyes, large and softly brilliant, were burning into the darkness beyond the open window. "I'm not innocent," she said. "And I try not to be a hypocrite. If I loved, I'd want all."
There was a long silence, she at the window gazing out into the gathering night. Then he said: "You were right. It was not love that made me feel like flight. I can conquer that feeling. Will you let me stay?"
She turned slowly. In the look she fixed on him there was doubt, hesitation. "You've made me a little uneasy—a little afraid."
In his eagerness he sprang up. "Don't!" he cried. "Don't send me away. I'll never speak of love again. You've taught me my lesson."
"I do want you to stay," said she. "It'd seem very lonely here with you gone. For I've come to depend on you as a friend. It hurts to find you seeking your own selfish pleasure under the pretense of a feeling for me."
He winced—not because he felt scandalized by her candor, but because he felt convicted by it. "How well you understand men!" he exclaimed. "Better than they understand themselves."
"In that one way I do," was her reply, an arresting hardness in the deep voice that was usually altogether sweet. These last few days she was understanding a great many things about the relations of men and women—or, perhaps, was letting herself realize that she understood them.
He lowered his eyes, that he might not read her thoughts, that she might not read the same thoughts in his own mind. "You often make me think of the lake out there," said he. "There's the surface one sees at a glance. Then there's a little distance below the surface, that one sees when he looks intently straight down. And then there's fathoms on fathoms where all sorts of strange things—strange thoughts and feelings—lie hid. Sometimes—for an instant—one of them shows or almost shows at the surface."
"When one lives alone a great deal, one gets the habit of living within oneself—don't you think?"
"I suppose that's it—partly. A brook couldn't hide very much—and most people are like brooks or ponds. The ones that seem to have depth seem so simply because the water's muddy."
She looked admiringly at him; and her admiration of his originality and insight did not lessen when he added, "At least, so a friend of mine used to say." He returned tothesubject. "Then—I may stay?"
Her face brightened. In her eyes as they looked at a smile slowly dawned. Quickly all her features were responding, especially that wide, expressive fascinating mouth. "I hope you will. But—no more dreariness!"
"I hate gloom as much as you do." He glanced round the room—at the harmonies of woodwork and walls and furnishing, with here and there bright flowers always in the restraint of those of gentle hue. "As much as you do," repeated he. "And that's saying a great deal. Howdoyou manage it!—house and garden, always gay yet never gaudy—and such variety! Is there no end to your variety?"
"Oh, one's a new person every day, isn't one?—and different."
"Youcertainly are. But no one else I ever saw." He colored furiously at his finding himself, without intending it, upon the forbidden ground. She had turned away, and was leaving the room—the safest course, since it enabled her to hide her pleasure in the compliment that peculiarly appealed to her, and also seemed to give him a sufficient yet not harsh rebuke.
Her aversion to restraint was perhaps stronger than is the average woman's—certainly had more courage. She had been too thoroughly trained in the conventionalities not to have the familiar timidity as to action, so strong in all conventionally bred people, so dominant over women. But the "unhand-me" spirit of her time was finding outlet in thought and feeling. Reflecting much in her aloneness, she had reached many audacious conclusions about life and the true meaning of its comedy drama—that meaning so different from what we pretend, from what usually passes as truth in history, philosophy, and literature, based as they are upon man's cheap hankering for idealistic strut. The audacities of thought that occasionally showed at her surface in speech or commentary of smiling eyes and lips were conventional in comparison with whole schools of deep-swimming ideas and fancies that kept hours of aloneness from being hours of loneliness. Physically, her passion for freedom showed itself in her dislike of tight or stuffy garments. She could pass her hand round her waist inside her closest-fitting corset. Her liking for few clothes and for as little yoke and sleeves as custom allowed came not from the thought for the other sex that often explains this taste, but from aversion to restraint.
As usual, the first thing she did that night, when she was alone in her rooms, was to rid herself of all her clothing and put on the thinnest of thin white nightgowns, almost sleeveless, and cut out at the neck. She thrust her feet into bedroom slippers, braided her long hair with its strands of red almost brown, with its strands of brown almost gold. She turned out the light, threw open all the long shutters screening her windows, to let her bedroom fill with warm, perfumed freshness from lake and gardens. She stepped out on the balcony to take the breathing exercises that kept her body straight, her chest high, her bosom firm as a girl's, and her form slim and supple. The fireflies were floating and darting in the creepers and the near-hanging boughs. The slight agitations of the air stole among the folds of her gown and over her neck and arms like charmed fingers. There was no moon; but she did not miss it in the dim splendor of the thronging stars.
"Aren't you about ready to come in?"
She startled, suppressed a scream. She turned. Richard was standing in the window. Her blood which had rushed to her heart surged out again and into her brain in an angry wave. She hated to be taken by surprise. It was on the tip of her tongue to cry furiously, "I detest being spied upon." But she had resolved soon after Winchie was born never to speak angrily to him, never to let him hear her speak angrily. The habit restrained her now, as it had scores of times. Instead, she said: "Why, how did you get in? I'm sure I locked my door."
"So you did," replied Dick in the cheerful unconscious way that so irritated her in certain moods. Not always could she bear with composure his masculine assumption that whatever pleased him must delight his wife. "So you did," said he. "And it's still locked. But there was the window from the front balcony into your sitting room—and the door from your sitting room to this room. You see, I was determined to find you."
His tone of laughing tenderness helped her half to guess, half to make out his expression. Usually she accepted without a protesting thought the whole of the routine of married life. But to-night she grew hot with a burning blush of imperiled modesty as he advanced toward her. "Don't," she said; "I'm doing my exercises."
"No—you were dreaming. Of what?" Then, without waiting for an answer about a matter of so little importance, "Gallatin tells me he has decided to stay on—if he can arrange it—and he seems to think he can. So I'm feeling fine. You don't know what a jolt he gave me at supper. Did you talk with him about it?"
"Yes."
"Urged him to stay?"
"I tried to show him he ought to stay."
"Ever so much obliged."
She stopped in her exercises to say quickly: "Oh, I didn't do it for you. I did it for myself."
"Why, you dislike him."
"He's some one to talk with—some one that listens and answers. And—I don't dislike him."
Richard laughed. "That's right. Try to make the best of it. Well, if you're not coming in——"
"Not for an hour or longer."
"Then—good night. I must be up early. I think I'll sleep down at the Smoke House. I'm so glad about Gallatin—just as much obliged as if you'd done it for me. And I believe you did." He put his arms round her to kiss her good night. As soon as his lips touched her cheek she drew away, disengaged herself. "What's the matter, Courtney?" She had long since learned that for all his absent-mindedness and ignoring of things that didn't directly interest him, he became as sensitive—and as accurate—as photographic plate to light, the instant his attention happened to be caught. "What's the matter? Why do you draw away?"
"I don't know," replied she—truthfully, yet with a sense of being untruthful. "I seem not to like to be touched to-night."
"I don't remember you being that way before."
She went on with her exercises; he yawned and departed.