VIIIThe morning after Courtney and Basil came to this clear and promising understanding, she got down to the seven-o'clock breakfast perhaps ten minutes late. She expected to find the two men and Winchie there, and was thinking of asking Gallatin to go to town with her and Winchie. When she entered the dining room, there was the table in its usual morning place, in the wide-flung door windows to the cast, and at it sat Winchie only, sunbeams sifting through the trellised morning glories to dance upon his shock of tawny hair."Where are the others?" she asked.Winchie, forgetful of his teaching, had his mouth full, far too full for immediate speech—unless he gulped it empty, and that would have been breaking another rule. So Lizzie, who was just entering from the kitchen hall, answered: "Mr. Richard telephoned up at half past six, and made me wake Mr. Gallatin. They had breakfast down at the Smoke House long ago."Winchie had climbed from his high chair and had come round to kiss his mother good morning. He was dressed for the trip to town—all white except dark blue edging round his wide collar, and a dark blue belt. His features suggested his father's and his mother's, yet were those of neither. That morning their usual suggestions of will and character were lost in a general expression of sweet good humor. He looked a sturdy bronzed cherub. After searching his mother's face with those inquiring, seeing eyes of his, he said: "Mamma's happy this morning," and resumed breakfast."Indeed she is!" exclaimed Courtney.She drew the bowl of yellow daisies and pink-white mountain holly from the center of the table, and fell to rearranging them. Each blossom seemed to glide into just its right position, as if there were magic in her fingers. She could not remember when she had felt quite so content and hopeful. And her spirits rose as the day advanced. On the way to town she stopped at the Vaughan farm across the highroad to inquire into a slight falling off in quality of butter and milk. She had never seen the farm so fascinating. The very dock weed and dog fennel carpeting the barnyard had an air and a charm. And the road to town, as she and Winchie sped along in the runabout—what a shady lane through Paradise it was! In town everyone seemed so agreeable, so glad to see her. After lunch with Sarah Carpenter, she shopped, made several calls. They did not start home until late, and supper was on the table when they arrived. At the table—always in the middle of the room for the evening meal, and formally set—at the table was Richard, alone, eating and figuring on his everlasting yellow pad."Hello!" said he, with barely a glance away from his pencil point. "Glad to have company.""Where's Mr. Gallatin?" asked Winchie."Gone," was Dick's curt answer in the tone of an interrupted man. "I sent him away."Courtney, crossing the room, halted. A moment of horrible silence. "Gone!" she echoed hoarsely, her eyes wide, as if a monster had suddenly appeared open-jawed in her very face. "You—sent—him away!"Vaughan, without looking up, said: "What did you say?"With her hand on her heart, "I thought I understood you to say Mr. Gallatin had gone.""So he has. For a few days.""Oh!" Courtney drew a vast breath of relief. She felt a tugging at her skirt, glanced down. It was Winchie, looking up at her with an expression of terror; and she knew she must have revealed herself in her face. Her pale cheeks flooded with color. She sank into her chair opposite her husband. She could lie to herself, cheat herself, no longer. "How much Basil means to me!" she muttered. Then, in terror, she glanced round, for she felt as if she had shouted it. But Vaughan was at his unending calculations. Only Winchie saw.OnlyWinchie! There was a look in his great gray-green eyes, a look of the accusing angel, that made her hang her head while the dark red burned upon her whole body."He'll be back Thursday or Friday," continued Vaughan, tossing the pad into the window seat, a dozen feet away."You sent him on business?" inquired she, to make conversation."He wanted to go to Pittsburg, so he told me. I guess it's some girl. I suspect our 'dressy' friend of being a ladies' man. He takes too much trouble about his clothes—and silk underclothes! Anyhow, I let him go."She sat there, the food untouched, her blood pounding at her temples, at her finger ends. For she was remembering her advice to Basil when she was trying both to persuade him to stay and to deceive herself as to why she intensely wished him to stay. And now, on her advice—on the advice of the woman who loved him—he was journeying—even as she sat quietly there at supper in respectable calm—he was journeying to his "old haunts"—to some woman—he who belonged to her! Such a wild tempest raged in her that she wondered how she could sit motionless, why she was not walking the floor and crying out. With another woman! Oh, the vileness of men! "And I was beginning to care for him!" she said to herself. "He's like the rest—worse than most. How many men are there who'd dare talk of love to a woman like me, and then go jauntily away to a low woman?"She went upstairs immediately after supper, shut herself in. She moved calmly about; she took her exercises; she read for several hours before turning out her light. But beneath a surface that could have been no more tranquil had she been observed and on guard, chaos reigned. One tempest succeeded another—anger against Basil, against herself—disgust, scorn, jealousy—and, before she slept, she had seen that in reality all these moods were jealousy under different forms. The following morning, when the coast was clear, she slipped into his room, knelt by his untouched bed, cried upon its pillow. This humility soon wept itself out, however; she flung herself into her work. "Nonsense! I don't care for him. It's simply pique and outraged friendship. How coarse men are!""What's the matter, mamma?" said Winchie, who was following her about the garden, looking after insects and dead leaves. Than his there never was a keener eye for signs of the red spider."Why, dear?""You treat the flowers as if you wanted to hurt them.""Your mamma is in a very naughty humor this morning.""And you were so happy yesterday. Is it because Mr. Gallatin's gone away?"Courtney, flushing deeply, looked hastily round. "Sh! You mustn't say those things!""Why not?"Already she was teaching the boy to conceal! "I didn't mean that, Winchie," said she. "You are to say whatever you please—as always.""I don't want you to like Mr. Gallatin.Idon't like him.""Why not?""Because he likes you.""You wouldn't want anybody not to like your mamma, would you?""No." A long silence. Then: "But he looks at you exactly like papa does when he's really seeing you."Courtney's skin burned. The same story—always the same! "Well—dear—I'll not like him.""I hope he won't come back."The suggestion set her heart to aching with loneliness. "I have no shame and no pride," she said to herself. "What a contemptible creature a woman is!" But these sneers availed her nothing. As she sat at table—dinner and supper—his vacant place gave her a sense of bereavement not unlike death itself.Another night of wakefulness and of the subtle and varied torments known only to those blessed and cursed with vivid imagination. What if he should not come back! That was the final and crudest twist of the rack. Next day, it was all day long as if the silence and darkness of the night were still suffocating her. The house, the grounds seemed a desolation of despair. What if he should not come back! A drizzling rain fell, and she sat miserably by the window, unable to sew, unable to read. And at the first sound from the piano—the melancholy notes her fingers instinctively struck—she sprang away as if a hateful ghost had breathed on her. It was only Wednesday; he would not be home until the next day—probably not until Friday—perhaps not then.She put fresh flowers in vases in all the rooms every day. That day she filled the vases in his sitting room with the best. And she lingered among his belongings, that promised his return. In the drawers, his fine tasteful shirts and ties; in the closets, those attractive suits, silk lined, agreeable to the touch, varied and always tasteful in pattern. She went back to his books—to the poetry, of which he was particularly fond. The volumes fell open naturally at poems that glorified the lofty, the spiritual side of love. Then, like a scorpion, scuttled across the page of Browning's "Last Ride" what Winchie had said—"He looks at you like papa does." She shuddered, was all dread and foreboding again. Was there no such thing in man as love for woman, but only its coarse and lying counterfeit?She heard an outside door open noisily. She darted along the hall and down to the angle of the stairway, to the landing from which the drive-front entrance could be seen. She leaned over the balustrade, looked. She drew back, stopping the glad cry that rose to her lips; for it was Basil. With features composed she leaned forward again. His soft hat and his rain coat were dripping; evidently, in his eagerness to arrive, he had crossed the lake in an open boat, instead of coming round by the road in a closed carriage. He was gazing toward the sitting-room door with an expression that thrilled her—and at the same time gave her the courage to treat him as her self-respect and her ideas of decency in a man dictated."Back already?" said she in a pleasant, indifferent tone.He turned, looked up at her, his face alight. "How are you?" he cried. "It seems an age.""We didn't expect you for several days yet," she went on, descending. When she reached the hall, he was waiting with extended hand. "Itisgood to be here again!" said he. "It was worth going, for the pleasure of getting back."She shook hands, smiled friendlily, continued on her way to the sitting room. He hesitated, an uneasy look in his eyes that did not escape her. He put his hat and coat on the rack, followed her. "Iamglad to be back!" said he.She laughed, friendlily enough, but her baffling manner only increased his uneasiness. "We're glad to have you," was her polite reply. "If you want to go to your room before supper, you'd better hurry.""I've been doing a great deal of thinking while I was away.""Really? That's good.""I see you've changed your mind—as I felt you would, when I thought it over. Your first impulse was to be lenient. But when you fully realized what a dishonorable thing it was for me to do—to——""Don't you think you'd better go up before supper?""Not till I've said one thing," replied he doggedly."Well?""I want you to know that you can trust me never to repeat my offense. I'd go to Vaughan and tell him and apologize——""And, pray, what has Richard to do with it?" inquired she coldly."I understand," he hastened to protest. "I'm not going to speak of it to him. It might put unjust suspicion of you in his head——"There she laughed outright at him. "You are making yourself perfectly absurd," she said, and turned away to go into the dining room.When he came down, the others were at table. Dick, figuring on his yellow pad, glanced up, rose, greeted him with unprecedented cordiality. "Why, when did you blow in?" he exclaimed."A few minutes ago." Gallatin glanced at Courtney. The quiet mockery of her absent gaze made him red and awkward. "I—I—got through—so—I—came," he explained with stammering lameness."Naturally," said Dick. He had taken up his pencil. "Make yourself at home."Gallatin's glance fell on Winchie frowning at him. "Howdy, Winchie?" said he.The boy made a curt bow, resumed his supper. He was permitted—or, rather, under Courtney's system of training him to think and act for himself, he permitted himself to eat only certain simple things, and very little of them—and he was wonderfully sensible about it. When he finished he kissed his mother good night, made his salute to his father and, almost imperceptibly, to Gallatin, and went upstairs. Gallatin nerved himself to several efforts at beginning conversation with Courtney. Each time, as he glanced up, he was checked and flung back into embarrassed silence by seeing in her absent eyes the same disconcerting mockery. After supper, Richard hurried away to the library. When she showed that she was going upstairs, Gallatin detained her. "One moment, please," he pleaded humbly. "What have I done to offend you?"Courtney flushed. But the raillery came back instantly. "I'm not offended. I'm amused.""At what?""At you." The smile broadened charmingly. "So you've had a successful trip?""Yes—in a way.""And have come back completely cured.""I want you to be my friend—if you will. I repeat, you can trust me now."Her eyes sparkled dangerously. "It's fortunate I understand men—and have a sense of humor.""I know I deserve any punishment you choose to give," said he. "And I'll take it. Only—I want to stay on here—and to have your friendship."She studied him critically. Her expression would have been trying enough in its penetrating judicial intelligence for the least self-conscious of men. It utterly disconcerted Basil, bred in the fashionable world's incessant consciousness of self. But in his desperation he withstood her look, returned it with eyes that were appealing yet not abject. It pleased her that he was not abject. "After all, you went on my advice, didn't you?" said she in a friendlier tone. "And you've been most manlike—have shown yourself to be just what I thought you. So I'm really unreasonable." She gave him her hand. "Yes, let us be friends.""And you forgive me?"She smiled queerly. "That's asking too much. I may—in time. Just at present—you've made me feel horribly cheap and—common."He hung his head. "If you knew how I've suffered for it," he said. "I was afraid you'd send me away—would never see me again.""Let's not talk about it," cried she, angry at her own weakness in not meting out to him what he apparently expected and certainly deserved. But she was not so angry that she held to her purpose of going upstairs. Instead, she sat at the piano and began to dash off the noisiest pieces she knew.IXThe friendship now throve like Courtney's best-placed flower bed. She had always been healthy; so she had not a touch of "temperament"—which is the misleading romantic name for internal physical conditions anything but romantic. Most of those who have mentality have also imperfect health through neglect of physical needs; and the somberer shades, the grays and blue blacks, made the more melancholy by imagination, usually canopy their lives. But with her it was not so. Always healthy in body and in mind, she now irradiated perfume and color like the rose that is getting just the right sun and rain.Late in that summer there were several weeks when one perfect day followed another like a child's dream of fairy-land. Vaughan wished to work alone, dropped completely out of their life, was forgotten. Every day, all day long, she and Basil were together, he helping her at the pastime that kept house and grounds beautiful. She was one of those human beings who abhor disorder; if anything went wrong it was righted at once. If a knob came off a door or a plant withered, she could not rest until the imperfection was remedied. It kept her incessantly occupied, but the results were worth the pains they cost. Her imagination, stimulated by Basil, planned many changes in grounds and gardens, changes that would bring the place still nearer the landscape artist's three ideals—contrast, variety, bounds concealed. And she and Basil together carried out these alterations.Then there were the leisure hours, as full as the hours of toil. They—with Winchie—strolled in the woods on the farm, across the highway, and picnicked under the trees beside the brook, or in the shadow of some gigantic fern-covered rock left on a hillside by the retreating glaciers of the ice age. Or, they went out on the lake, Winchie fishing, she and Gallatin talking in low tones or happy in sympathetic silence, with the boat moving languidly where the shadows of the great weeping willows were deepest, its keel troubling the dark clear waters hardly more than a floating leaf.She was fond of talking, he of listening. And she had so many things to say—the things that had been accumulating in those five years when she had said little, had read and thought much. When Basil did talk it was usually of what he had experienced in his wanderings over Europe and Asia. And, as she had been everywhere in fancy through her reading, she drew him out with questions that made it hard for him to believe she had not actually viewed with her own eyes. He seemed a wonderful person to her, he who had lived in the world's half dozen great capitals, had wandered all over the earth and had seen everything. Her comments astonished him, made him ashamed, and privately reverent of her "woman's intuition. No wonder it's considered better than brains.""I wish I'd had some one like you along when I was chasing about," said he. "It was usually horribly dull, and I went on at it chiefly because I was always hoping something interesting would turn up. Now, I see it was turning up all the time. You have a light way of looking at things. A man sees only the serious side.""Oh, it couldn't be dull—not anywhere on earth," insisted she."No—not with—that is, with somebody like you along." An awkward silence; then, "and I don't see how you ever learned so much without having experience.""I don't really know things," confessed she. "I justseemto know. As a matter of fact, I'm frightfully innocent.""That's the beautiful part of it," said he with enthusiasm."I hate it!" she cried."Oh, no," protested he."Yes, hate it," she insisted. The chief pleasure in this friendship with him was that it gave her freedom to be herself, to be frank. She would not let him spoil it for her, as Richard had in their early married days spoiled even the times of closest intimacy with formalism and restraint. "I want to know—I want tolive," she went on, with glowing, eager face. "I've always felt proud it was the woman who had the sense to eat the apple. I detest innocence. I lovelife!""Oh, you don't mean exactly that.""Just that.""Even—sin?" This, not an inquiry, but an argument proving her beyond question in the wrong.But she replied undauntedly: "It seems to me, the only way to learn is by doing things. And doesn't that mean making mistakes—sins, as you call it? Life's a good deal like gardening. You have to do it wrong first in order to learn how to do it right.""That's all very well for a man. But——"She was giving him one of those disconcerting eerie glances from the mysterious eyes. "I've got tolive, and in the same world you have. Also, I've got to bring up a boy to live in it.""I must say," confessed he, "I don't see just how to meet that." And she accepted the answer as evidence of his broad-minded sympathy. She did not realize that he was anything but convinced, but was simply admitting the "light cleverness" of her reply and was too eager about standing well with her to combat her "queer ideas."The interruption to the delights of this friendship came before she had nearly exhausted his novelty, and while she was still as uncritical of him as a starving man of the cooking. However, in any circumstances it would have been long before she could have made any accurate judgment of him. She had become his partisan; and a generous nature takes the most favorable, the always too favorable, view of a personality to which it is attracted.Until that summer Richard had been, for a young man, remarkably careful about regularity and exercise. At the very outset of his task, away back at Johns Hopkins, seven years before, he had realized that he was in for an investigation of all known elements in every possible combination—that is, for a long and hard struggle for about the most jealously guarded of nature's secrets—the origin of heat. And he knew that, if he was to win any victory worth while, he must resist the temptation to overwork, and must make health his first consideration. And although he had small liking for physical exercise and was as little fond of the grind of regularity as the next man, he had kept to his rules for himself with the same inflexible firmness that characterized him in all his serious purposes. But Basil's coming with the additional money he had needed, and the help, too, tempted him beyond his resistance. In exercise, as in everything else, there is system or there is nothing. Before Basil had been there a month Richard was breaking his rules; and soon the whole system went by the board. All summer he had not exercised, and he ate at any hours or not at all. Such a reversal of a long-established routine could not but create an immediate internal commotion. There were no physical surface signs; he looked the same as always; but his temper became uncertain. Where he had been simply absent-minded he was now irascible in it. Without reason—except the internal physical turmoil he himself did not feel or suspect—-he would burst from abstraction to attack Gallatin or Courtney or Winchie or one of the servants, or to rave against everything and everybody. And this new Richard appeared at just the time when it would stand out in sharpest, most odious relief—most dangerous contrast to the even temper of Basil Gallatin. Under the stimulus of her friendship with Gallatin, Courtney had got back much of her former gayety. Again she was overflowing with jest and laughter, with the joy she seemed to have absorbed from the bright things that grew or flitted and flew in her gardens.The change in Richard came rapidly, yet was so gradual that its cause escaped them all. It is not in human nature to be inexhaustibly patient even with the vagaries of an obvious invalid. Where the illness is unsuspected, patience with its victim soon turns to gall. This new development in Richard's character—for Courtney and all the others assumed it was character—changed her passive, almost unsuspected resentment and indifference into dislike that could easily deepen into aversion.He was disagreeably reminding her of his existence; he was saying in effect "Look at me!" She looked. She had bowed to fate, had accepted a loveless life of duty. She had done her part loyally. She had made a home, had kept it in order, had submitted whenever his physical necessities began to distract him from his work. Yes, she had accepted all the degradation without a murmur. And when love had come to her unsought, had tempted her, she had put the temptation aside. In order that his plans might not be upset, she had taken the hard instead of the easy way to combat this temptation, had let Basil Gallatin stay on. And what was her reward? Whenever Richard spoke, it was to say something disagreeable, to be as nearly insulting as a well-bred man could become."It's perhaps fortunate for Richard," reflected she, "that Basil showed the true nature of his love in that trip to Pittsburg. For what doIowe Richard Vaughan? Is there any woman anywhere who does not in her heart feel she'd be justified in doinganything, when her husband has treated her as mine has treated me?" And the obvious answer—that her husband was the normal husband, that it was she who, expecting what the conventional and customary marriage relation did not contemplate and did not provide, was in the wrong—this answer seemed to her no answer at all, but an insult to her intelligence and her self-respect.Because of Vaughan's rages Gallatin got into the habit of rising from the table as soon as he finished and leaving the Vaughans to themselves. Courtney, with the sex charm subtly seducing her to seek and exaggerate merits in Basil, was deeply moved by this thoughtfulness; for it increased her humiliation to have him there when Richard lost control of himself. One evening, as they finished supper, Vaughan was suddenly infuriated by the stealthy fiend of indigestion that is the chief cause of humanity's faults of temperament, from morbidness to acute mania. He burst out at Gallatin—sprang from absent-mindedness with flaming eyes like a madman from ambush. "You messed everything to-day!" cried this unsuspected and unconscious invalid, sicker far than many a one in bed with doctors and nurses. "You simply raised the devil. Another day or so like it, and I'll not let you come into the shop."Gallatin made no reply."I suppose you're cursing me," fumed Richard. "That's the way it always is. The whole world's mad on the subject of self-excuse. Somebody else is always to blame, and criticism is always an outrage.""Not at all," said Gallatin, and Courtney knew his self-control was wholly for her sake. "I was stupid to-day, Vaughan. It was wholly my fault. I know I came near blowing up the shop and sending us both to kingdom come——"An exclamation of terror from Courtney halted him. She was pale, was looking with frightened, questioning eyes from one man to the other.Vaughan blazed again. "There you go!" cried he to Gallatin. "Now, she'll think I'm at something as dangerous as a powder factory—when, in fact——""Yes, indeed, Mrs. Vaughan," interrupted Gallatin. "It was my stupidity that made all the danger. Really, we do nothing that ought to be dangerous.""That's not true," said Courtney quietly. "I know the truth now. And I never thought of it before!" She could not understand how she had been so unthinking; it was another, an unexpected measure of the cleavage between Richard's life and hers."You'd better confine your attention to things you understand," said Vaughan. "It was all Gallatin's folly, I assure you.""That's the truth, Mrs. Vaughan," said Gallatin earnestly. "The whole truth."She said no more, but her face showed she did not believe him. Gallatin, depressed and remorseful, went out on the veranda, strolled down toward the lake. Vaughan sat on, pulling savagely at his cigar. He was enraged because his outburst had caused the disclosure of the secret he had intended to keep from her, had given her a false idea which, as she was a woman, a creature of notions and whims, nothing could ever correct. He forgot his fine philosophy about self-excuse, and turned his rage from himself to her. "It's really all your fault," he exclaimed, glowering at her.Winchie, seated between his father and mother, took up his knife and raised it threateningly against his father, his gray-green eyes ablaze.In another mood Vaughan would have been secretly delighted, would have gravely accepted the rebuke and made apology to the boy and to Courtney. But the devil—the realest devil that torments spirit through flesh—was in him that night, was on the prowl. He pointed his cigar at the infuriated child. "What's the meaning of this?" he demanded."Winchie," said Courtney, in a low, firm voice.The boy's eyes shifted from father to mother."Put down that knife, go upstairs and go to bed."Son and mother looked at each other fully ten seconds; the boy lowered the knife, laid it on the table, descended from his chair, marched haughtily from the room. When he was gone Vaughan said: "You should have made him apologize to me."Courtney did not reply. She was pulling out the bows the flowing tie she was wearing under the loose collar of her shirt waist."I'll have Lizzie bring him back.""No," said Courtney, and her eyes met his. "You will not interfere with Winchie. I do not interfere with your work.""But you do!" Richard burst out. "It's your interfering that's making Gallatin so worthless."She shrank back in her chair, hastily veiled her eyes. Now it was the cuffs of the shirt waist that were engaging her attention."You dislike him, I know," Vaughan went on. "But why do you treat him so badly?"No answer. She could hardly believe that it had been so long since Richard had noted her and Basil. Besides, when had she ever treated him in a way that could be called badly?"I am sure you treat him badly. Why?"No answer."I asked you a question. Politeness would suggest——""Not in this family," said Courtney, cold and calm, her slim fingers touching her hair here and there."All I've got to say is, it's no wonder Gallatin's becoming useless at the shop. He must feel his position acutely. I can conceive of no reason why you should subject a gentleman—and my guest—to such indignity."Courtney looked as if she were sitting quietly alone."Has he been making love to you?" demanded Vaughan.Her eyelids fluttered, but it was the only sign she gave."Some time ago I observed he had a way of looking at you that was most loverlike."Still no answer, and no sign."Even so, you could deal with him tactfully. He is a gentleman.""You said that before," observed she, elbows on the table, her chin on the backs of her intertwined fingers, her gaze upon the bowl of old-fashioned yellow roses in the center of the table.He glowered at her. "So I did," said he. "Now I say it again, and perhaps you will be able to grasp it. And I want you to treat him as a gentleman should be treated. So long as he is my guest, so long as he conducts himself like a gentleman, you must be courteous to him."No answer; no change."Do you hear, Courtney?""Yes.""What do you intend to do?"Up went the long lashes and the deep green eyes burned coldly at him. "As I choose," said she. "And I may add, I will not put up with your bad temper any longer. At the next outburst from you, Winchie and I leave this house. I will not be insulted, and will not have my boy ruined by his father's bad example."Richard's eyes softened; he lowered them, the red mounted. After a silence he said "Excuse me" without looking at her, rose and went to the veranda. When she finished giving directions for the next day to Nanny and was going upstairs, he was still walking up and down, head bent, hands behind his back, sternness in that long aristocratic profile. An hour later, as she sat at her desk in her own sitting room upstairs, she heard his voice at the door into the hall."May I come in?" he asked."Certainly," replied she. Her back was toward the door."I want to beg your pardon.""Very well," said she, her voice cold and even. She did not realize how much this meant from a man who had not the apologizing spirit or habit. And if she had realized, she would have been no more appreciative."You do not accept it?" said he, ruffled at once, and feeling that she was now the one in the wrong."I do not care any thing about it, one way or the other."He was silent for a moment, then: "I hardly blame you," said he, with a great air of generous concession. "I've been out of temper, rude—disgracefully so—for some time. I'm sorry." And he stood looking at her expectantly, more complacent than penitent."I see you think a few words are enough to make up for all you've done.""What more can I do? It's not a bit like you, Courtney, to——""And what do you know about me?" inquired she, turning half round and looking calmly at him over her shoulder. "It's quite true," she went on, "that I have no means of support but what I earn here as your housekeeper and—wife. But, I——""Courtney!" he cried in a tone of imperative rebuke."A few plain words—of truth—seem to shock you more than your own conduct.""Such language from you! But you did not realize what you were saying.""I did. I meant just what I said.""That is not language for a wife to use to a husband."She rose from the desk and, without looking at him, went into her bedroom, closing the door behind her.She was working in the garden beneath the west windows. She moved among the flowers, as restless and graceful as any other of the elves always hovering about blooming things—bees, humming birds, butterflies. It was a rare chance to study the marvels of pose of which the human body is capable. Now she was stooping, now kneeling; bending forward, backward, to one side; or, erect and stretching upward, to relieve a tall rosebush of a dead leaf or spray. And the lines of her figure, ever changing, were ever alluring. Her arms, too—and her neck—how smooth and slenderly round, and how intensely alive! Her whole skin seemed aureoled with invisible, tremulous, magnetic waves. She was wearing a big pale-green garden hat; her hair was perfectly done, as always—as if it had taken no time or trouble, yet so that it formed a delightful frame for her small, delicate face, and splintered and reflected every stray of sunlight that dodged in under the brim. Her short skirt revealed slim, tapering ankles and small feet. There are feet that are merely short; then there are feet such as hers—exquisitely small—not useless looking, but the reverse. The same quality of the exquisite was in her figure. She was small, but she was not short. Her smallness enabled a perfection nature never gets in the long or the large. She made largeness suggest coarseness. Women of her form send thrilling through their lovers the feeling of being able completely to enfold and to possess.All alone and thinking only of the flowers, she entered one of the narrow paths that led toward the veranda. She stretched upward to re-curl a refractory tendril. Both arms were extended, her head thrown back, the rosy bronze face upturned—pathetic, yet laughter-loving mouth, eyes of deep, deep green. Like one awakening from a profound sleep she slowly became conscious that she and Basil Gallatin were gazing into each other's eyes with only the trellised creeper between. And his look made her heart leap. She straightened herself, colored, paled, stood trembling. The next thing she distinctly knew, he had come round to the lawn at the edge of the garden in which she was working."How you startled me!" she said, in a careless, casual tone.As he did not answer, she glanced at him. He was standing with eyes down. And his look made her vaguely afraid."Are you going to help me to-day?" she asked, resolved to brave it through."I can't stand it!" he cried, his voice trembling with passion. "I love you. I must go. I shall go as soon as Vaughan comes back. Until then I'll keep to the other part of the grounds.""Why not just do it, and not talk so much?" she demanded, suddenly angry."If you had ever loved," said he humbly, "you'd understand. But I didn't intend to say these things. I came to tell you Vaughan's away. They telegraphed for him to hurry to Washington—something about the duties on a lot of new instruments.""How long will he be?""Several weeks, perhaps. He's going afterwards to Baltimore, and then to Philadelphia and New York. He left word with Jimmie about sending a trunk after him. He had just time to catch the express. He asked me to explain to you."Nanny appeared at the drive-front corner of the house. He said to her: "Oh—Nanny. I've been upstairs packing a few of my belongings. Will you have them taken to Mr. Vaughan's apartment at the shop?""Jimmie says Mr. Vaughan locked everything up down there, and took the keys, and said no one was to go near it while he was away."Basil hesitated, but only for an instant. "How forgetful he is!" he exclaimed with a smile. "Of course I've got to sleep there—as watchman. Well, I'll force the stairway door. You can telephone over for a locksmith this afternoon or to-morrow. He'll make a new lock and key."Nanny departed, muttering. She did not like disobedience to the head of the house of Vaughan; but, on the other hand, she would have liked it much less had Gallatin stayed on at the house with Mr. Richard not there. Gallatin turned to Courtney. "Would it be too much trouble to send my meals to the shop?" he asked, in a constrained, formal tone that deeply offended her."Nanny will attend to that," replied she, eyes cold as winter seas."Thank you. If you should need anyone—there's the telephone to the shop. I'll re-connect it.""You needn't bother.""There have been several robberies round here of late, and——""As you please.... Thank you."He looked at her as wistfully as a prisoner at the fields of freedom beyond his cell window. She seemed impatient to resume work; he went reluctantly away. She stood gazing after him until he disappeared in the shrubbery at the far eastern edge of the lawns. Then she sighed and glanced at the unblemished sky as if she thought it was clouding.Three uneasy, tedious days and two wakeful nights. In the third night, toward one o'clock, she tossed away her book, put out her light, and opened all her shutters as usual, to air the rooms. "If I opened his door and window, I might get a breeze," she said to herself. "It's terribly close." She crossed the hall, entered the room Gallatin had occupied, raised a window, and leaned upon the sill—it was the small window beyond the end of the balcony, and so did not extend to the floor. The sky was clear; the moon was hidden by the house. Stillness—peace—beauty—beauty of view and of odor—the lake with its dark banks, trees tossing up into the blue-black sky and shimmering with moonlight—perfumes of foliage and flowers and of the fresh-cut grass in the meadows beyond the highroad."It's as if everybody in the world were dead except me," she murmured. She listened again to get the weird effect of utter absence of sound. This time she heard the faint plaint of a cricket, appealing for company in its blindness and solitude. Then—her nerves became tense. From the balcony, which ended just a few feet to her left, came a stealthy sound—like a step. Softly she crossed the room—the hall—her own room, to the high-boy. She took from its top drawer her pistol. She returned to Gallatin's bedroom—noiselessly unlocked the shutters over one pair of the long windows opening on the balcony—unbolted one of them and held it ajar. Yes, there was some one on that balcony. Several of the neighbors had been robbed; now, it was their turn. The pistol was self-cocking. Taking it in her right hand, she drew back the window with her left, stepped out. She thrust the pistol into the very face of the man.He sprang back. She saw what looked like a knife in one hand—nothing, apparently, in the other. At the same instant she heard him cry "Courtney!"The pistol dropped from her nerveless hand to the balcony floor."It's I!" Gallatin exclaimed. "I heard a second-story window go up very softly—I was walking and smoking in the path. I came—climbed a pillar—and——""O God! God!" she sobbed. Down she sank to the floor, her face buried in her hands. "My love! My love! And I almost killed you!"He knelt beside her. "Dearest—" He put his arm round her. Instantly he drew away and sprang to his feet. Up she started, gazing wildly round. "What is it?" she exclaimed. "Where?""Nothing—nothing," was his confused answer. But already she had felt a thrill from where his arm, his hand had been, and understood.A stifling silence. He said: "I must go now. I'm sorry to have disturbed you." And with his conventionality that was of instinct he lifted his hat and made a dignified bow. In her hysterical state, she did not miss the grotesque humor of this; she burst out laughing. She leaned against the window frame and laughed until she had to wipe away the flowing tears. He stood staring blankly at her, with rising offense, as he, always sensitive about himself, suspected she was laughing at him. For his sense of humor was not nearly so keen as she had been deceived into thinking by his store of jokes and songs, of odds and ends of amusing cleverness, all entirely new to her, and therefore seeming practically original with him."What is it?" he said stiffly, when she was somewhat calm. "I should like to laugh, too." It seemed to him characteristic indeed, but most untimely, this display of her utter incapacity for seriousness."Hysteria—reaction—and your everlasting good manners," replied she. "Is there anything on earth that would make you forget you are a gentleman from Philadelphia?""Nothing but you," answered he bitterly. "Good night.""Wait a second—please," she pleaded. And—why, she could not have told—she went on, to her own surprise, "The other day you said you had changed your mind and were going.""Yes.""Isn't that—cruel? I've learned to—to depend on your friendship."He did not answer immediately. When he did, his voice betrayed his agitation. "I'm going because my manhood demands it. It may be weakness, but if I stayed I should—should go all to pieces.""I can't argue against that. But there's one thing: As you're going, I want to be able to feel that there's no blot on our friendship. I've been condemning you unheard. Tell me——"She paused. He felt how embarrassed she was. "What?" he asked gently. "Anything you wish to know?""Did you go to—to Pittsburg because—because—I sent you?"He did not answer; it was too dark to make out his expression."I told you," she went on, speaking rapidly, as soldiers advance at a double quick, where if they advanced at ordinary pace they would have time to think, to be afraid, to turn and fly, "I told you to go back to your old haunts and cure yourself of—of your fancy for me.... You went?""You could suspect that!""If you did, don't lie to me. Say so, and I'll never think of it again. I'd understand. I'd—I'd—forgive.""There is no woman for me but you," he answered, drawing a step farther from her and putting his hands behind his back. "I went because my aunt telegraphed for me. I came as soon as I could get away."She clasped her hands and pressed them against her bosom. She leaned toward him, eyes like two of the few large stars in that summer night sky. "I am so glad," she murmured."Why did you suspect? How could you? Why did you care?""I was—jealous." The confession was almost inaudible."Courtney!" His arms impulsively extended.She waved him back. "Go—go! I am upset—hysterical. Forget what I said. We are friends again. There is jealousy in friendship, too. Good night."He hesitated. There she stood, all in that flimsy white—her coils of soft fine hair about her small head—her arms, her throat, her face tantalizingly half revealed in the dimness. "Courtney—do you love me?""No—no—not that," answered she, softly, hurriedly, pleadingly. "But I like you—and I'm a woman—and—and that tells the whole story. Good night, Mr. Basil." She held out her hand.He did not take it. "I dare not touch you—to-night," he said. "I can't be trusted—nor can you.""No," she assented, letting her hand drop. She drew a long, deep breath, and he also—a draught of that intoxicating air, surcharged with perfume and moonbeams and the freedom of the midnight outdoors."We are friends—through and through?""Yes." His reply was in the same low, hushed voice as her question."That is so much—so much." Their nerves like their voices were tense from the restraint of the passionate emotions damming up higher and higher within."And I'll see you at breakfast—and thank you for coming.... Good night, Mr. Basil."He bared his head. She did not feel like laughing now at his "everlasting good manners," but was shivering, with hot tears in her eyes. He said "Good night, Mrs. Courtney."Slowly she went in at the window of his room. Just as she was about to push the bolt, she opened it again. "You must come in this way," she said. "I'll let you out at the front door.""No, I'll go as I came.""Nonsense!""If any of the servants——""You make me feel guilty—when I'm not. Come!"He entered the room. Both began to close the window. Their hands touched, hesitated, clasped. She was in his arms, his lips were upon hers. A long kiss. Her form relaxed; she drew her lips away to murmur, "Hold me. I'm—faint." Again their lips met, and he clasped her to him until he could feel the wild pulsing of her blood against his face, against his chest, against his arms—could feel it in every part of that small form, so utterly within his embrace. "Don't," she gasped. "It is too much—too much.""I love you—I love you. You are mine—yes, you are, Courtney! There is nothing but love."She gently released herself, swayed, leaned against the casement, looked up into the summer starlight. Again he seized her, and again his lips found hers. Her head dropped upon his shoulder. A sound—one of those creakings that haunt the stillness of a house in the night hours. She startled, stiffened, shut her teeth upon a scream."It was nothing," he said. He, too, was rigid, with every sense alert for danger."What have we done!" she exclaimed. They stood silent, facing each other, overcome with shame, burning with longing. "Oh—Basil!"He took her in his arms. But she pushed him resolutely away. "No—not again," she said. He looked at her; she gazed up into the sky. "Love!" she murmured. "Love! And I—must not.""I forgot—forgot!" he cried. "O God—Courtney—I love you more than honor." And he opened the other the door windows, rushed past her, vanished round the corner of the house. She sighed, shivered, stepped out upon the balcony, stood at the rail until she saw a dark form rapidly cross the lawns toward the shrubbery densely inclosing the Smoke House. She looked all round—sky—lake—woods. "It is so lonely," she sobbed. "So lonely!"
VIII
The morning after Courtney and Basil came to this clear and promising understanding, she got down to the seven-o'clock breakfast perhaps ten minutes late. She expected to find the two men and Winchie there, and was thinking of asking Gallatin to go to town with her and Winchie. When she entered the dining room, there was the table in its usual morning place, in the wide-flung door windows to the cast, and at it sat Winchie only, sunbeams sifting through the trellised morning glories to dance upon his shock of tawny hair.
"Where are the others?" she asked.
Winchie, forgetful of his teaching, had his mouth full, far too full for immediate speech—unless he gulped it empty, and that would have been breaking another rule. So Lizzie, who was just entering from the kitchen hall, answered: "Mr. Richard telephoned up at half past six, and made me wake Mr. Gallatin. They had breakfast down at the Smoke House long ago."
Winchie had climbed from his high chair and had come round to kiss his mother good morning. He was dressed for the trip to town—all white except dark blue edging round his wide collar, and a dark blue belt. His features suggested his father's and his mother's, yet were those of neither. That morning their usual suggestions of will and character were lost in a general expression of sweet good humor. He looked a sturdy bronzed cherub. After searching his mother's face with those inquiring, seeing eyes of his, he said: "Mamma's happy this morning," and resumed breakfast.
"Indeed she is!" exclaimed Courtney.
She drew the bowl of yellow daisies and pink-white mountain holly from the center of the table, and fell to rearranging them. Each blossom seemed to glide into just its right position, as if there were magic in her fingers. She could not remember when she had felt quite so content and hopeful. And her spirits rose as the day advanced. On the way to town she stopped at the Vaughan farm across the highroad to inquire into a slight falling off in quality of butter and milk. She had never seen the farm so fascinating. The very dock weed and dog fennel carpeting the barnyard had an air and a charm. And the road to town, as she and Winchie sped along in the runabout—what a shady lane through Paradise it was! In town everyone seemed so agreeable, so glad to see her. After lunch with Sarah Carpenter, she shopped, made several calls. They did not start home until late, and supper was on the table when they arrived. At the table—always in the middle of the room for the evening meal, and formally set—at the table was Richard, alone, eating and figuring on his everlasting yellow pad.
"Hello!" said he, with barely a glance away from his pencil point. "Glad to have company."
"Where's Mr. Gallatin?" asked Winchie.
"Gone," was Dick's curt answer in the tone of an interrupted man. "I sent him away."
Courtney, crossing the room, halted. A moment of horrible silence. "Gone!" she echoed hoarsely, her eyes wide, as if a monster had suddenly appeared open-jawed in her very face. "You—sent—him away!"
Vaughan, without looking up, said: "What did you say?"
With her hand on her heart, "I thought I understood you to say Mr. Gallatin had gone."
"So he has. For a few days."
"Oh!" Courtney drew a vast breath of relief. She felt a tugging at her skirt, glanced down. It was Winchie, looking up at her with an expression of terror; and she knew she must have revealed herself in her face. Her pale cheeks flooded with color. She sank into her chair opposite her husband. She could lie to herself, cheat herself, no longer. "How much Basil means to me!" she muttered. Then, in terror, she glanced round, for she felt as if she had shouted it. But Vaughan was at his unending calculations. Only Winchie saw.OnlyWinchie! There was a look in his great gray-green eyes, a look of the accusing angel, that made her hang her head while the dark red burned upon her whole body.
"He'll be back Thursday or Friday," continued Vaughan, tossing the pad into the window seat, a dozen feet away.
"You sent him on business?" inquired she, to make conversation.
"He wanted to go to Pittsburg, so he told me. I guess it's some girl. I suspect our 'dressy' friend of being a ladies' man. He takes too much trouble about his clothes—and silk underclothes! Anyhow, I let him go."
She sat there, the food untouched, her blood pounding at her temples, at her finger ends. For she was remembering her advice to Basil when she was trying both to persuade him to stay and to deceive herself as to why she intensely wished him to stay. And now, on her advice—on the advice of the woman who loved him—he was journeying—even as she sat quietly there at supper in respectable calm—he was journeying to his "old haunts"—to some woman—he who belonged to her! Such a wild tempest raged in her that she wondered how she could sit motionless, why she was not walking the floor and crying out. With another woman! Oh, the vileness of men! "And I was beginning to care for him!" she said to herself. "He's like the rest—worse than most. How many men are there who'd dare talk of love to a woman like me, and then go jauntily away to a low woman?"
She went upstairs immediately after supper, shut herself in. She moved calmly about; she took her exercises; she read for several hours before turning out her light. But beneath a surface that could have been no more tranquil had she been observed and on guard, chaos reigned. One tempest succeeded another—anger against Basil, against herself—disgust, scorn, jealousy—and, before she slept, she had seen that in reality all these moods were jealousy under different forms. The following morning, when the coast was clear, she slipped into his room, knelt by his untouched bed, cried upon its pillow. This humility soon wept itself out, however; she flung herself into her work. "Nonsense! I don't care for him. It's simply pique and outraged friendship. How coarse men are!"
"What's the matter, mamma?" said Winchie, who was following her about the garden, looking after insects and dead leaves. Than his there never was a keener eye for signs of the red spider.
"Why, dear?"
"You treat the flowers as if you wanted to hurt them."
"Your mamma is in a very naughty humor this morning."
"And you were so happy yesterday. Is it because Mr. Gallatin's gone away?"
Courtney, flushing deeply, looked hastily round. "Sh! You mustn't say those things!"
"Why not?"
Already she was teaching the boy to conceal! "I didn't mean that, Winchie," said she. "You are to say whatever you please—as always."
"I don't want you to like Mr. Gallatin.Idon't like him."
"Why not?"
"Because he likes you."
"You wouldn't want anybody not to like your mamma, would you?"
"No." A long silence. Then: "But he looks at you exactly like papa does when he's really seeing you."
Courtney's skin burned. The same story—always the same! "Well—dear—I'll not like him."
"I hope he won't come back."
The suggestion set her heart to aching with loneliness. "I have no shame and no pride," she said to herself. "What a contemptible creature a woman is!" But these sneers availed her nothing. As she sat at table—dinner and supper—his vacant place gave her a sense of bereavement not unlike death itself.
Another night of wakefulness and of the subtle and varied torments known only to those blessed and cursed with vivid imagination. What if he should not come back! That was the final and crudest twist of the rack. Next day, it was all day long as if the silence and darkness of the night were still suffocating her. The house, the grounds seemed a desolation of despair. What if he should not come back! A drizzling rain fell, and she sat miserably by the window, unable to sew, unable to read. And at the first sound from the piano—the melancholy notes her fingers instinctively struck—she sprang away as if a hateful ghost had breathed on her. It was only Wednesday; he would not be home until the next day—probably not until Friday—perhaps not then.
She put fresh flowers in vases in all the rooms every day. That day she filled the vases in his sitting room with the best. And she lingered among his belongings, that promised his return. In the drawers, his fine tasteful shirts and ties; in the closets, those attractive suits, silk lined, agreeable to the touch, varied and always tasteful in pattern. She went back to his books—to the poetry, of which he was particularly fond. The volumes fell open naturally at poems that glorified the lofty, the spiritual side of love. Then, like a scorpion, scuttled across the page of Browning's "Last Ride" what Winchie had said—"He looks at you like papa does." She shuddered, was all dread and foreboding again. Was there no such thing in man as love for woman, but only its coarse and lying counterfeit?
She heard an outside door open noisily. She darted along the hall and down to the angle of the stairway, to the landing from which the drive-front entrance could be seen. She leaned over the balustrade, looked. She drew back, stopping the glad cry that rose to her lips; for it was Basil. With features composed she leaned forward again. His soft hat and his rain coat were dripping; evidently, in his eagerness to arrive, he had crossed the lake in an open boat, instead of coming round by the road in a closed carriage. He was gazing toward the sitting-room door with an expression that thrilled her—and at the same time gave her the courage to treat him as her self-respect and her ideas of decency in a man dictated.
"Back already?" said she in a pleasant, indifferent tone.
He turned, looked up at her, his face alight. "How are you?" he cried. "It seems an age."
"We didn't expect you for several days yet," she went on, descending. When she reached the hall, he was waiting with extended hand. "Itisgood to be here again!" said he. "It was worth going, for the pleasure of getting back."
She shook hands, smiled friendlily, continued on her way to the sitting room. He hesitated, an uneasy look in his eyes that did not escape her. He put his hat and coat on the rack, followed her. "Iamglad to be back!" said he.
She laughed, friendlily enough, but her baffling manner only increased his uneasiness. "We're glad to have you," was her polite reply. "If you want to go to your room before supper, you'd better hurry."
"I've been doing a great deal of thinking while I was away."
"Really? That's good."
"I see you've changed your mind—as I felt you would, when I thought it over. Your first impulse was to be lenient. But when you fully realized what a dishonorable thing it was for me to do—to——"
"Don't you think you'd better go up before supper?"
"Not till I've said one thing," replied he doggedly.
"Well?"
"I want you to know that you can trust me never to repeat my offense. I'd go to Vaughan and tell him and apologize——"
"And, pray, what has Richard to do with it?" inquired she coldly.
"I understand," he hastened to protest. "I'm not going to speak of it to him. It might put unjust suspicion of you in his head——"
There she laughed outright at him. "You are making yourself perfectly absurd," she said, and turned away to go into the dining room.
When he came down, the others were at table. Dick, figuring on his yellow pad, glanced up, rose, greeted him with unprecedented cordiality. "Why, when did you blow in?" he exclaimed.
"A few minutes ago." Gallatin glanced at Courtney. The quiet mockery of her absent gaze made him red and awkward. "I—I—got through—so—I—came," he explained with stammering lameness.
"Naturally," said Dick. He had taken up his pencil. "Make yourself at home."
Gallatin's glance fell on Winchie frowning at him. "Howdy, Winchie?" said he.
The boy made a curt bow, resumed his supper. He was permitted—or, rather, under Courtney's system of training him to think and act for himself, he permitted himself to eat only certain simple things, and very little of them—and he was wonderfully sensible about it. When he finished he kissed his mother good night, made his salute to his father and, almost imperceptibly, to Gallatin, and went upstairs. Gallatin nerved himself to several efforts at beginning conversation with Courtney. Each time, as he glanced up, he was checked and flung back into embarrassed silence by seeing in her absent eyes the same disconcerting mockery. After supper, Richard hurried away to the library. When she showed that she was going upstairs, Gallatin detained her. "One moment, please," he pleaded humbly. "What have I done to offend you?"
Courtney flushed. But the raillery came back instantly. "I'm not offended. I'm amused."
"At what?"
"At you." The smile broadened charmingly. "So you've had a successful trip?"
"Yes—in a way."
"And have come back completely cured."
"I want you to be my friend—if you will. I repeat, you can trust me now."
Her eyes sparkled dangerously. "It's fortunate I understand men—and have a sense of humor."
"I know I deserve any punishment you choose to give," said he. "And I'll take it. Only—I want to stay on here—and to have your friendship."
She studied him critically. Her expression would have been trying enough in its penetrating judicial intelligence for the least self-conscious of men. It utterly disconcerted Basil, bred in the fashionable world's incessant consciousness of self. But in his desperation he withstood her look, returned it with eyes that were appealing yet not abject. It pleased her that he was not abject. "After all, you went on my advice, didn't you?" said she in a friendlier tone. "And you've been most manlike—have shown yourself to be just what I thought you. So I'm really unreasonable." She gave him her hand. "Yes, let us be friends."
"And you forgive me?"
She smiled queerly. "That's asking too much. I may—in time. Just at present—you've made me feel horribly cheap and—common."
He hung his head. "If you knew how I've suffered for it," he said. "I was afraid you'd send me away—would never see me again."
"Let's not talk about it," cried she, angry at her own weakness in not meting out to him what he apparently expected and certainly deserved. But she was not so angry that she held to her purpose of going upstairs. Instead, she sat at the piano and began to dash off the noisiest pieces she knew.
IX
The friendship now throve like Courtney's best-placed flower bed. She had always been healthy; so she had not a touch of "temperament"—which is the misleading romantic name for internal physical conditions anything but romantic. Most of those who have mentality have also imperfect health through neglect of physical needs; and the somberer shades, the grays and blue blacks, made the more melancholy by imagination, usually canopy their lives. But with her it was not so. Always healthy in body and in mind, she now irradiated perfume and color like the rose that is getting just the right sun and rain.
Late in that summer there were several weeks when one perfect day followed another like a child's dream of fairy-land. Vaughan wished to work alone, dropped completely out of their life, was forgotten. Every day, all day long, she and Basil were together, he helping her at the pastime that kept house and grounds beautiful. She was one of those human beings who abhor disorder; if anything went wrong it was righted at once. If a knob came off a door or a plant withered, she could not rest until the imperfection was remedied. It kept her incessantly occupied, but the results were worth the pains they cost. Her imagination, stimulated by Basil, planned many changes in grounds and gardens, changes that would bring the place still nearer the landscape artist's three ideals—contrast, variety, bounds concealed. And she and Basil together carried out these alterations.
Then there were the leisure hours, as full as the hours of toil. They—with Winchie—strolled in the woods on the farm, across the highway, and picnicked under the trees beside the brook, or in the shadow of some gigantic fern-covered rock left on a hillside by the retreating glaciers of the ice age. Or, they went out on the lake, Winchie fishing, she and Gallatin talking in low tones or happy in sympathetic silence, with the boat moving languidly where the shadows of the great weeping willows were deepest, its keel troubling the dark clear waters hardly more than a floating leaf.
She was fond of talking, he of listening. And she had so many things to say—the things that had been accumulating in those five years when she had said little, had read and thought much. When Basil did talk it was usually of what he had experienced in his wanderings over Europe and Asia. And, as she had been everywhere in fancy through her reading, she drew him out with questions that made it hard for him to believe she had not actually viewed with her own eyes. He seemed a wonderful person to her, he who had lived in the world's half dozen great capitals, had wandered all over the earth and had seen everything. Her comments astonished him, made him ashamed, and privately reverent of her "woman's intuition. No wonder it's considered better than brains."
"I wish I'd had some one like you along when I was chasing about," said he. "It was usually horribly dull, and I went on at it chiefly because I was always hoping something interesting would turn up. Now, I see it was turning up all the time. You have a light way of looking at things. A man sees only the serious side."
"Oh, it couldn't be dull—not anywhere on earth," insisted she.
"No—not with—that is, with somebody like you along." An awkward silence; then, "and I don't see how you ever learned so much without having experience."
"I don't really know things," confessed she. "I justseemto know. As a matter of fact, I'm frightfully innocent."
"That's the beautiful part of it," said he with enthusiasm.
"I hate it!" she cried.
"Oh, no," protested he.
"Yes, hate it," she insisted. The chief pleasure in this friendship with him was that it gave her freedom to be herself, to be frank. She would not let him spoil it for her, as Richard had in their early married days spoiled even the times of closest intimacy with formalism and restraint. "I want to know—I want tolive," she went on, with glowing, eager face. "I've always felt proud it was the woman who had the sense to eat the apple. I detest innocence. I lovelife!"
"Oh, you don't mean exactly that."
"Just that."
"Even—sin?" This, not an inquiry, but an argument proving her beyond question in the wrong.
But she replied undauntedly: "It seems to me, the only way to learn is by doing things. And doesn't that mean making mistakes—sins, as you call it? Life's a good deal like gardening. You have to do it wrong first in order to learn how to do it right."
"That's all very well for a man. But——"
She was giving him one of those disconcerting eerie glances from the mysterious eyes. "I've got tolive, and in the same world you have. Also, I've got to bring up a boy to live in it."
"I must say," confessed he, "I don't see just how to meet that." And she accepted the answer as evidence of his broad-minded sympathy. She did not realize that he was anything but convinced, but was simply admitting the "light cleverness" of her reply and was too eager about standing well with her to combat her "queer ideas."
The interruption to the delights of this friendship came before she had nearly exhausted his novelty, and while she was still as uncritical of him as a starving man of the cooking. However, in any circumstances it would have been long before she could have made any accurate judgment of him. She had become his partisan; and a generous nature takes the most favorable, the always too favorable, view of a personality to which it is attracted.
Until that summer Richard had been, for a young man, remarkably careful about regularity and exercise. At the very outset of his task, away back at Johns Hopkins, seven years before, he had realized that he was in for an investigation of all known elements in every possible combination—that is, for a long and hard struggle for about the most jealously guarded of nature's secrets—the origin of heat. And he knew that, if he was to win any victory worth while, he must resist the temptation to overwork, and must make health his first consideration. And although he had small liking for physical exercise and was as little fond of the grind of regularity as the next man, he had kept to his rules for himself with the same inflexible firmness that characterized him in all his serious purposes. But Basil's coming with the additional money he had needed, and the help, too, tempted him beyond his resistance. In exercise, as in everything else, there is system or there is nothing. Before Basil had been there a month Richard was breaking his rules; and soon the whole system went by the board. All summer he had not exercised, and he ate at any hours or not at all. Such a reversal of a long-established routine could not but create an immediate internal commotion. There were no physical surface signs; he looked the same as always; but his temper became uncertain. Where he had been simply absent-minded he was now irascible in it. Without reason—except the internal physical turmoil he himself did not feel or suspect—-he would burst from abstraction to attack Gallatin or Courtney or Winchie or one of the servants, or to rave against everything and everybody. And this new Richard appeared at just the time when it would stand out in sharpest, most odious relief—most dangerous contrast to the even temper of Basil Gallatin. Under the stimulus of her friendship with Gallatin, Courtney had got back much of her former gayety. Again she was overflowing with jest and laughter, with the joy she seemed to have absorbed from the bright things that grew or flitted and flew in her gardens.
The change in Richard came rapidly, yet was so gradual that its cause escaped them all. It is not in human nature to be inexhaustibly patient even with the vagaries of an obvious invalid. Where the illness is unsuspected, patience with its victim soon turns to gall. This new development in Richard's character—for Courtney and all the others assumed it was character—changed her passive, almost unsuspected resentment and indifference into dislike that could easily deepen into aversion.
He was disagreeably reminding her of his existence; he was saying in effect "Look at me!" She looked. She had bowed to fate, had accepted a loveless life of duty. She had done her part loyally. She had made a home, had kept it in order, had submitted whenever his physical necessities began to distract him from his work. Yes, she had accepted all the degradation without a murmur. And when love had come to her unsought, had tempted her, she had put the temptation aside. In order that his plans might not be upset, she had taken the hard instead of the easy way to combat this temptation, had let Basil Gallatin stay on. And what was her reward? Whenever Richard spoke, it was to say something disagreeable, to be as nearly insulting as a well-bred man could become.
"It's perhaps fortunate for Richard," reflected she, "that Basil showed the true nature of his love in that trip to Pittsburg. For what doIowe Richard Vaughan? Is there any woman anywhere who does not in her heart feel she'd be justified in doinganything, when her husband has treated her as mine has treated me?" And the obvious answer—that her husband was the normal husband, that it was she who, expecting what the conventional and customary marriage relation did not contemplate and did not provide, was in the wrong—this answer seemed to her no answer at all, but an insult to her intelligence and her self-respect.
Because of Vaughan's rages Gallatin got into the habit of rising from the table as soon as he finished and leaving the Vaughans to themselves. Courtney, with the sex charm subtly seducing her to seek and exaggerate merits in Basil, was deeply moved by this thoughtfulness; for it increased her humiliation to have him there when Richard lost control of himself. One evening, as they finished supper, Vaughan was suddenly infuriated by the stealthy fiend of indigestion that is the chief cause of humanity's faults of temperament, from morbidness to acute mania. He burst out at Gallatin—sprang from absent-mindedness with flaming eyes like a madman from ambush. "You messed everything to-day!" cried this unsuspected and unconscious invalid, sicker far than many a one in bed with doctors and nurses. "You simply raised the devil. Another day or so like it, and I'll not let you come into the shop."
Gallatin made no reply.
"I suppose you're cursing me," fumed Richard. "That's the way it always is. The whole world's mad on the subject of self-excuse. Somebody else is always to blame, and criticism is always an outrage."
"Not at all," said Gallatin, and Courtney knew his self-control was wholly for her sake. "I was stupid to-day, Vaughan. It was wholly my fault. I know I came near blowing up the shop and sending us both to kingdom come——"
An exclamation of terror from Courtney halted him. She was pale, was looking with frightened, questioning eyes from one man to the other.
Vaughan blazed again. "There you go!" cried he to Gallatin. "Now, she'll think I'm at something as dangerous as a powder factory—when, in fact——"
"Yes, indeed, Mrs. Vaughan," interrupted Gallatin. "It was my stupidity that made all the danger. Really, we do nothing that ought to be dangerous."
"That's not true," said Courtney quietly. "I know the truth now. And I never thought of it before!" She could not understand how she had been so unthinking; it was another, an unexpected measure of the cleavage between Richard's life and hers.
"You'd better confine your attention to things you understand," said Vaughan. "It was all Gallatin's folly, I assure you."
"That's the truth, Mrs. Vaughan," said Gallatin earnestly. "The whole truth."
She said no more, but her face showed she did not believe him. Gallatin, depressed and remorseful, went out on the veranda, strolled down toward the lake. Vaughan sat on, pulling savagely at his cigar. He was enraged because his outburst had caused the disclosure of the secret he had intended to keep from her, had given her a false idea which, as she was a woman, a creature of notions and whims, nothing could ever correct. He forgot his fine philosophy about self-excuse, and turned his rage from himself to her. "It's really all your fault," he exclaimed, glowering at her.
Winchie, seated between his father and mother, took up his knife and raised it threateningly against his father, his gray-green eyes ablaze.
In another mood Vaughan would have been secretly delighted, would have gravely accepted the rebuke and made apology to the boy and to Courtney. But the devil—the realest devil that torments spirit through flesh—was in him that night, was on the prowl. He pointed his cigar at the infuriated child. "What's the meaning of this?" he demanded.
"Winchie," said Courtney, in a low, firm voice.
The boy's eyes shifted from father to mother.
"Put down that knife, go upstairs and go to bed."
Son and mother looked at each other fully ten seconds; the boy lowered the knife, laid it on the table, descended from his chair, marched haughtily from the room. When he was gone Vaughan said: "You should have made him apologize to me."
Courtney did not reply. She was pulling out the bows the flowing tie she was wearing under the loose collar of her shirt waist.
"I'll have Lizzie bring him back."
"No," said Courtney, and her eyes met his. "You will not interfere with Winchie. I do not interfere with your work."
"But you do!" Richard burst out. "It's your interfering that's making Gallatin so worthless."
She shrank back in her chair, hastily veiled her eyes. Now it was the cuffs of the shirt waist that were engaging her attention.
"You dislike him, I know," Vaughan went on. "But why do you treat him so badly?"
No answer. She could hardly believe that it had been so long since Richard had noted her and Basil. Besides, when had she ever treated him in a way that could be called badly?
"I am sure you treat him badly. Why?"
No answer.
"I asked you a question. Politeness would suggest——"
"Not in this family," said Courtney, cold and calm, her slim fingers touching her hair here and there.
"All I've got to say is, it's no wonder Gallatin's becoming useless at the shop. He must feel his position acutely. I can conceive of no reason why you should subject a gentleman—and my guest—to such indignity."
Courtney looked as if she were sitting quietly alone.
"Has he been making love to you?" demanded Vaughan.
Her eyelids fluttered, but it was the only sign she gave.
"Some time ago I observed he had a way of looking at you that was most loverlike."
Still no answer, and no sign.
"Even so, you could deal with him tactfully. He is a gentleman."
"You said that before," observed she, elbows on the table, her chin on the backs of her intertwined fingers, her gaze upon the bowl of old-fashioned yellow roses in the center of the table.
He glowered at her. "So I did," said he. "Now I say it again, and perhaps you will be able to grasp it. And I want you to treat him as a gentleman should be treated. So long as he is my guest, so long as he conducts himself like a gentleman, you must be courteous to him."
No answer; no change.
"Do you hear, Courtney?"
"Yes."
"What do you intend to do?"
Up went the long lashes and the deep green eyes burned coldly at him. "As I choose," said she. "And I may add, I will not put up with your bad temper any longer. At the next outburst from you, Winchie and I leave this house. I will not be insulted, and will not have my boy ruined by his father's bad example."
Richard's eyes softened; he lowered them, the red mounted. After a silence he said "Excuse me" without looking at her, rose and went to the veranda. When she finished giving directions for the next day to Nanny and was going upstairs, he was still walking up and down, head bent, hands behind his back, sternness in that long aristocratic profile. An hour later, as she sat at her desk in her own sitting room upstairs, she heard his voice at the door into the hall.
"May I come in?" he asked.
"Certainly," replied she. Her back was toward the door.
"I want to beg your pardon."
"Very well," said she, her voice cold and even. She did not realize how much this meant from a man who had not the apologizing spirit or habit. And if she had realized, she would have been no more appreciative.
"You do not accept it?" said he, ruffled at once, and feeling that she was now the one in the wrong.
"I do not care any thing about it, one way or the other."
He was silent for a moment, then: "I hardly blame you," said he, with a great air of generous concession. "I've been out of temper, rude—disgracefully so—for some time. I'm sorry." And he stood looking at her expectantly, more complacent than penitent.
"I see you think a few words are enough to make up for all you've done."
"What more can I do? It's not a bit like you, Courtney, to——"
"And what do you know about me?" inquired she, turning half round and looking calmly at him over her shoulder. "It's quite true," she went on, "that I have no means of support but what I earn here as your housekeeper and—wife. But, I——"
"Courtney!" he cried in a tone of imperative rebuke.
"A few plain words—of truth—seem to shock you more than your own conduct."
"Such language from you! But you did not realize what you were saying."
"I did. I meant just what I said."
"That is not language for a wife to use to a husband."
She rose from the desk and, without looking at him, went into her bedroom, closing the door behind her.
She was working in the garden beneath the west windows. She moved among the flowers, as restless and graceful as any other of the elves always hovering about blooming things—bees, humming birds, butterflies. It was a rare chance to study the marvels of pose of which the human body is capable. Now she was stooping, now kneeling; bending forward, backward, to one side; or, erect and stretching upward, to relieve a tall rosebush of a dead leaf or spray. And the lines of her figure, ever changing, were ever alluring. Her arms, too—and her neck—how smooth and slenderly round, and how intensely alive! Her whole skin seemed aureoled with invisible, tremulous, magnetic waves. She was wearing a big pale-green garden hat; her hair was perfectly done, as always—as if it had taken no time or trouble, yet so that it formed a delightful frame for her small, delicate face, and splintered and reflected every stray of sunlight that dodged in under the brim. Her short skirt revealed slim, tapering ankles and small feet. There are feet that are merely short; then there are feet such as hers—exquisitely small—not useless looking, but the reverse. The same quality of the exquisite was in her figure. She was small, but she was not short. Her smallness enabled a perfection nature never gets in the long or the large. She made largeness suggest coarseness. Women of her form send thrilling through their lovers the feeling of being able completely to enfold and to possess.
All alone and thinking only of the flowers, she entered one of the narrow paths that led toward the veranda. She stretched upward to re-curl a refractory tendril. Both arms were extended, her head thrown back, the rosy bronze face upturned—pathetic, yet laughter-loving mouth, eyes of deep, deep green. Like one awakening from a profound sleep she slowly became conscious that she and Basil Gallatin were gazing into each other's eyes with only the trellised creeper between. And his look made her heart leap. She straightened herself, colored, paled, stood trembling. The next thing she distinctly knew, he had come round to the lawn at the edge of the garden in which she was working.
"How you startled me!" she said, in a careless, casual tone.
As he did not answer, she glanced at him. He was standing with eyes down. And his look made her vaguely afraid.
"Are you going to help me to-day?" she asked, resolved to brave it through.
"I can't stand it!" he cried, his voice trembling with passion. "I love you. I must go. I shall go as soon as Vaughan comes back. Until then I'll keep to the other part of the grounds."
"Why not just do it, and not talk so much?" she demanded, suddenly angry.
"If you had ever loved," said he humbly, "you'd understand. But I didn't intend to say these things. I came to tell you Vaughan's away. They telegraphed for him to hurry to Washington—something about the duties on a lot of new instruments."
"How long will he be?"
"Several weeks, perhaps. He's going afterwards to Baltimore, and then to Philadelphia and New York. He left word with Jimmie about sending a trunk after him. He had just time to catch the express. He asked me to explain to you."
Nanny appeared at the drive-front corner of the house. He said to her: "Oh—Nanny. I've been upstairs packing a few of my belongings. Will you have them taken to Mr. Vaughan's apartment at the shop?"
"Jimmie says Mr. Vaughan locked everything up down there, and took the keys, and said no one was to go near it while he was away."
Basil hesitated, but only for an instant. "How forgetful he is!" he exclaimed with a smile. "Of course I've got to sleep there—as watchman. Well, I'll force the stairway door. You can telephone over for a locksmith this afternoon or to-morrow. He'll make a new lock and key."
Nanny departed, muttering. She did not like disobedience to the head of the house of Vaughan; but, on the other hand, she would have liked it much less had Gallatin stayed on at the house with Mr. Richard not there. Gallatin turned to Courtney. "Would it be too much trouble to send my meals to the shop?" he asked, in a constrained, formal tone that deeply offended her.
"Nanny will attend to that," replied she, eyes cold as winter seas.
"Thank you. If you should need anyone—there's the telephone to the shop. I'll re-connect it."
"You needn't bother."
"There have been several robberies round here of late, and——"
"As you please.... Thank you."
He looked at her as wistfully as a prisoner at the fields of freedom beyond his cell window. She seemed impatient to resume work; he went reluctantly away. She stood gazing after him until he disappeared in the shrubbery at the far eastern edge of the lawns. Then she sighed and glanced at the unblemished sky as if she thought it was clouding.
Three uneasy, tedious days and two wakeful nights. In the third night, toward one o'clock, she tossed away her book, put out her light, and opened all her shutters as usual, to air the rooms. "If I opened his door and window, I might get a breeze," she said to herself. "It's terribly close." She crossed the hall, entered the room Gallatin had occupied, raised a window, and leaned upon the sill—it was the small window beyond the end of the balcony, and so did not extend to the floor. The sky was clear; the moon was hidden by the house. Stillness—peace—beauty—beauty of view and of odor—the lake with its dark banks, trees tossing up into the blue-black sky and shimmering with moonlight—perfumes of foliage and flowers and of the fresh-cut grass in the meadows beyond the highroad.
"It's as if everybody in the world were dead except me," she murmured. She listened again to get the weird effect of utter absence of sound. This time she heard the faint plaint of a cricket, appealing for company in its blindness and solitude. Then—her nerves became tense. From the balcony, which ended just a few feet to her left, came a stealthy sound—like a step. Softly she crossed the room—the hall—her own room, to the high-boy. She took from its top drawer her pistol. She returned to Gallatin's bedroom—noiselessly unlocked the shutters over one pair of the long windows opening on the balcony—unbolted one of them and held it ajar. Yes, there was some one on that balcony. Several of the neighbors had been robbed; now, it was their turn. The pistol was self-cocking. Taking it in her right hand, she drew back the window with her left, stepped out. She thrust the pistol into the very face of the man.
He sprang back. She saw what looked like a knife in one hand—nothing, apparently, in the other. At the same instant she heard him cry "Courtney!"
The pistol dropped from her nerveless hand to the balcony floor.
"It's I!" Gallatin exclaimed. "I heard a second-story window go up very softly—I was walking and smoking in the path. I came—climbed a pillar—and——"
"O God! God!" she sobbed. Down she sank to the floor, her face buried in her hands. "My love! My love! And I almost killed you!"
He knelt beside her. "Dearest—" He put his arm round her. Instantly he drew away and sprang to his feet. Up she started, gazing wildly round. "What is it?" she exclaimed. "Where?"
"Nothing—nothing," was his confused answer. But already she had felt a thrill from where his arm, his hand had been, and understood.
A stifling silence. He said: "I must go now. I'm sorry to have disturbed you." And with his conventionality that was of instinct he lifted his hat and made a dignified bow. In her hysterical state, she did not miss the grotesque humor of this; she burst out laughing. She leaned against the window frame and laughed until she had to wipe away the flowing tears. He stood staring blankly at her, with rising offense, as he, always sensitive about himself, suspected she was laughing at him. For his sense of humor was not nearly so keen as she had been deceived into thinking by his store of jokes and songs, of odds and ends of amusing cleverness, all entirely new to her, and therefore seeming practically original with him.
"What is it?" he said stiffly, when she was somewhat calm. "I should like to laugh, too." It seemed to him characteristic indeed, but most untimely, this display of her utter incapacity for seriousness.
"Hysteria—reaction—and your everlasting good manners," replied she. "Is there anything on earth that would make you forget you are a gentleman from Philadelphia?"
"Nothing but you," answered he bitterly. "Good night."
"Wait a second—please," she pleaded. And—why, she could not have told—she went on, to her own surprise, "The other day you said you had changed your mind and were going."
"Yes."
"Isn't that—cruel? I've learned to—to depend on your friendship."
He did not answer immediately. When he did, his voice betrayed his agitation. "I'm going because my manhood demands it. It may be weakness, but if I stayed I should—should go all to pieces."
"I can't argue against that. But there's one thing: As you're going, I want to be able to feel that there's no blot on our friendship. I've been condemning you unheard. Tell me——"
She paused. He felt how embarrassed she was. "What?" he asked gently. "Anything you wish to know?"
"Did you go to—to Pittsburg because—because—I sent you?"
He did not answer; it was too dark to make out his expression.
"I told you," she went on, speaking rapidly, as soldiers advance at a double quick, where if they advanced at ordinary pace they would have time to think, to be afraid, to turn and fly, "I told you to go back to your old haunts and cure yourself of—of your fancy for me.... You went?"
"You could suspect that!"
"If you did, don't lie to me. Say so, and I'll never think of it again. I'd understand. I'd—I'd—forgive."
"There is no woman for me but you," he answered, drawing a step farther from her and putting his hands behind his back. "I went because my aunt telegraphed for me. I came as soon as I could get away."
She clasped her hands and pressed them against her bosom. She leaned toward him, eyes like two of the few large stars in that summer night sky. "I am so glad," she murmured.
"Why did you suspect? How could you? Why did you care?"
"I was—jealous." The confession was almost inaudible.
"Courtney!" His arms impulsively extended.
She waved him back. "Go—go! I am upset—hysterical. Forget what I said. We are friends again. There is jealousy in friendship, too. Good night."
He hesitated. There she stood, all in that flimsy white—her coils of soft fine hair about her small head—her arms, her throat, her face tantalizingly half revealed in the dimness. "Courtney—do you love me?"
"No—no—not that," answered she, softly, hurriedly, pleadingly. "But I like you—and I'm a woman—and—and that tells the whole story. Good night, Mr. Basil." She held out her hand.
He did not take it. "I dare not touch you—to-night," he said. "I can't be trusted—nor can you."
"No," she assented, letting her hand drop. She drew a long, deep breath, and he also—a draught of that intoxicating air, surcharged with perfume and moonbeams and the freedom of the midnight outdoors.
"We are friends—through and through?"
"Yes." His reply was in the same low, hushed voice as her question.
"That is so much—so much." Their nerves like their voices were tense from the restraint of the passionate emotions damming up higher and higher within.
"And I'll see you at breakfast—and thank you for coming.... Good night, Mr. Basil."
He bared his head. She did not feel like laughing now at his "everlasting good manners," but was shivering, with hot tears in her eyes. He said "Good night, Mrs. Courtney."
Slowly she went in at the window of his room. Just as she was about to push the bolt, she opened it again. "You must come in this way," she said. "I'll let you out at the front door."
"No, I'll go as I came."
"Nonsense!"
"If any of the servants——"
"You make me feel guilty—when I'm not. Come!"
He entered the room. Both began to close the window. Their hands touched, hesitated, clasped. She was in his arms, his lips were upon hers. A long kiss. Her form relaxed; she drew her lips away to murmur, "Hold me. I'm—faint." Again their lips met, and he clasped her to him until he could feel the wild pulsing of her blood against his face, against his chest, against his arms—could feel it in every part of that small form, so utterly within his embrace. "Don't," she gasped. "It is too much—too much."
"I love you—I love you. You are mine—yes, you are, Courtney! There is nothing but love."
She gently released herself, swayed, leaned against the casement, looked up into the summer starlight. Again he seized her, and again his lips found hers. Her head dropped upon his shoulder. A sound—one of those creakings that haunt the stillness of a house in the night hours. She startled, stiffened, shut her teeth upon a scream.
"It was nothing," he said. He, too, was rigid, with every sense alert for danger.
"What have we done!" she exclaimed. They stood silent, facing each other, overcome with shame, burning with longing. "Oh—Basil!"
He took her in his arms. But she pushed him resolutely away. "No—not again," she said. He looked at her; she gazed up into the sky. "Love!" she murmured. "Love! And I—must not."
"I forgot—forgot!" he cried. "O God—Courtney—I love you more than honor." And he opened the other the door windows, rushed past her, vanished round the corner of the house. She sighed, shivered, stepped out upon the balcony, stood at the rail until she saw a dark form rapidly cross the lawns toward the shrubbery densely inclosing the Smoke House. She looked all round—sky—lake—woods. "It is so lonely," she sobbed. "So lonely!"