"You saw the news in to-day's paper?" said Richard at supper a few days after Christmas.As he continued to look expectantly at her, she roused herself from her reverie, slowly grasped his question. "I didn't read to-day's papers," answered she."Well, Gallatin's engagement's announced—from Philadelphia."She nerved herself for the reaction of inward turmoil which would, she felt, certainly follow such a blow. To her amazement no reaction came. She felt as calm as if the news had been about some one of whom she had never heard."Why, you seem not to be interested.""Oh, yes," replied she indifferently."I remember, you didn't like him."It almost seemed true to her. Or, rather, that she had never cared about him one way or the other."And he so mad about you," continued Richard with raillery. "I'll never forget the looks he used to give you—or the ones he gave me, either. Well, it's all over now. He's evidently cured.""Evidently," said Courtney. She looked calmly at him, shifted her gaze. It happened to fall upon Winchie. The boy was frowning jealously into his plate. She colored. She never had the slightest self-consciousness about Basil with Richard, but only with the boy. However, the reminder soon passed in marvel at her amazing tranquillity. How could she be thus calm in face of such a blow? Had she really conquered her love? Had this sudden, unexpected news of his perfidy killed it all in an instant? Had she never loved him?Richard had been talking, and she had been so absorbed she had not heard. Now he was holding a letter across the table toward her. Mechanically she reached out, took it, fixed her eyes upon it. "And Mrs. Torrey says," Richard was explaining, "that we ought to ask Cousin Helen here—for a few months at least—until she gets over her father's death.""Wenona's no place for a girl in search of a husband.""A husband!" exclaimed Richard. "Who said anything about a husband?""Now that her father's dead, with nothing but a small life insurance, she's got to marry.""Yes, I suppose so.""That's what Mrs. Torrey's saying between these lines." And she handed the letter back."Mrs. Torrey's a fine, noble old lady. Such sordid ideas never'd enter her head.""Mrs. Torrey's a woman.""And a good one—and so is Helen," maintained Richard. "Marrying's about the last idea in her head at present.""I believe that is the theory—among men who know nothing about women.""She's doubtless almost prostrated with grief.""With anxiety, perhaps. Not with grief. Not for a worthless old drunkard.""You forget, Courtney. He was herfather."Courtney lifted her eyebrows. "So much the more certain she detested him. She had to live right up against him."Richard leaned forward slightly, to add emphasis to his rebuke. "I repeat, Helen is a good woman—a woman with a sense of duty. She must have loved him.""Why repeat such twaddle?" inquired Courtney, unimpressed. "What has duty to do with hearts?"Dick looked strong disapproval. "What is the matter, my dear? You're not talking in the least like yourself.""You always make that same remark," observed Courtney, "whenever I say anything that does not suit you.""Are you irritated by the prospect of Helen's coming? If you don't want her——""I am not irritated about anything. As for Helen, I care not a rap one way or the other."Winchie had finished. He kissed his father, then his mother good night, and went upstairs. Richard came out of a deep study to say, "It's a pity Gallatin isn't free and here—if Helen comes.""It would have made a good match," said Courtney judiciously. "A splendid living for Helen.""I wasn't thinking of Gallatin's wealth," protested Richard, reddening. Then he laughed, "At least, not altogether.""The living's the main point in marriage.""What an unpleasant mood you're in.""I? I never felt more amiable.""Have I said anything to offend you?""Not a thing." She rose languidly. "You're still the model—not a single redeeming fault."She stretched herself with slow, lazy grace. "But you," said he, "are a bundle of redeeming faults and vagaries—a bouquet of them." And he was about to kiss her.She flung away from him with flashing eyes. He stared, amazed. "How you startled me!" she exclaimed, quickly changing her expression from fury to half-laughing irritation."Miss Caprice!" And his gaze was soft and brilliant.There was a virgin coldness in her manner that puzzled and abashed him. "How I hate this body of mine, sometimes!" said she. "An admiring look makes me angry, and a kiss seems an insult. Come to me with your love when I'm old and ugly. Then, perhaps, I'll believe it."And she strolled out of the room and upstairs. The instant she had her bedroom door locked, she knew why she had come away—knew she had been obeying an instinct warning her secret self that she could not many minutes longer endure the strain. "But really I am calm," she insisted. In the same second her wound opened and was aching and bleeding and throbbing, unhealed. "I can never forget—never!" she cried. "Was it only this body of mine he cared for? What does it matter? Even the little he gave was more than I had to give. I ought to have been more humble about giving—I who had so little. And what happiness he gave me in exchange! No—not happiness, but more than happiness." Her eyes strained into the night. It was so dreary—so lonely. "Basil!—Basil! I'm dying for you—dying from the core out!"She flung her windows wide. The snow came whirling in. The wind was moaning among the branches. Somewhere, far away, a bell tolled. Silence, utter solitude, a stretch of white snow under a black sky, and the chilling cold. "Come to me!" she cried. "I am so cold—so lonely—so hungry! And I love you."Even where a woman cannot doubt that her lover has forgotten, there are times when memory—of his vows so convincing, of his caresses that seemed the inspiration of her charms alone—makes her defy certainty and believe. And Courtney had no real reason to think him either false or forgetful. They had been torn apart when their love was still hungry and thirsty, when even the long calm that precedes satiety was still far in the future, when they were so absorbed in loving that they had not yet had time to begin to get acquainted with each other's real self. It was doubt of him that was forced, belief in him that was natural. "If he were not so strong, so honorable!" she cried. "Ah, if he were only where I could tempt him!"Even the thought of Winchie now lost all power to check her; he was too much like part of herself. She seemed as placid in her slender youthfulness as those handsome matronly women who suggest extinct volcanoes covered with flowers and smiling fields. Beneath her manner of monotonous, emotionless calm she was battling with the temptation to take her boy and fly from that cold desolation of loveless loneliness, to fly to him. If Richard had not been absolutely apart from her life, absolutely out of her thoughts she would have hated him. As it was her rage fretted at the impersonal barriers and bonds that held her—not Richard, but conventionality and, above all, lack of money. "If only I had money!" she cried again and again.But she had nothing—her clothes, a few dollars that must be paid out for expenses already incurred. "If I went to him, it would be to become his dependent, just as I am Richard's. Oh, the horror of being a woman! Bred to dependence; bred for the market; bred to tease some man into undertaking her support for life. There is the rotten spot in my whole life. If Richard had ever deigned to speculate as to what was going on in my head, he'd never have dared touch me. He'd have feared I was his only for hire. But would he care? Doesn't he expect me to be true because he supports me? Isn't that what marriage means, beneath the cant and pretense? Yes, I'm simply part of his property, and the pretenses that gloze it over only make it the more revolting. Oh, if men had sensibilities, and if they knew what women thought!—why we smile and flatter and stay on, in spite of neglect and insult!"She felt that, if she should go to Basil, the day would come when their love would die of this poison exuding from the basic fact of their relations—his sense of his rights because of her dependence; or, her fear of losing or impairing her living; or, her feeling that since she took bread she must give body—all she had to pay with. Richard thought he could afford to be neglectful; and when it suited him to give passing attention to his property again—to walk in his garden and eat a little fruit from his tree—he thought he had a perfect right to do so. If Richard was thus, if all men believed thus, why fancy Basil an exception? Basil, in time, when passion cooled, would hold her in the same light disesteem. If a man lost his virtue, even hypocrisy did not go beyond a half smiling shake of the head; if a woman lost her virtue, she was "ruined." Ruined—that is, a worthless wreck. "No, I shall not go to Basil. No doubt, he still cares—in a man's way of caring. But he holds me, the unfaithful wife, cheap enough. If I were to lose reputation also, were to be unable to give him the pleasure of trespassing on another's property, were to be merely a ruined woman, living off him, he'd soon treat me like the slave that I am. No, I'll not change owners.... If only I had money!"What, then? She had seen all along that she was like one sinking in the ooze of a marsh—softly, inevitably toward suffocation. "If I stay on here, I'll become like the rest of the settled, disillusioned married women. I'll become a chronic sloven and—as my disposition isn't toward fat, squatted good nature—a shrew. A slovenly shrew!" Why not? What had she left to live for? In a few years Winchie would be away at school—then in some city at profession or business—and married and out of her life. "I might as well give up. Why not?"There seemed to be no reason. But our conduct in its main lines is not governed by reason, but by instincts that impel us even against will. When Richard had failed her at the outset of their married life, she had sunk; then her temperament of hope and energy had forced her up again in face of deepest discouragements. So now, while there was no reason why she should cease to sink, should begin to struggle, while Basil's announced engagement assuring a speedy marriage seemed just the thing to make her sink on, she began to rouse herself and to look about her. For the second time her longings and energies had lost their stimulus, their inspiration, their vitalizing center. And that center is to an unselfish nature as necessary as queen bee to swarm which clusters about her, labors for her, and renews through her. With human beings such as Courtney Vaughan longings and energies rarely die upon the corpse of their inspiration. After a while they fly upward, as did hers, and begin to circle in search of a new clustering center, a new reason for living and working on. "I can't stay here," she kept repeating. "I must go somewhere. I must do something. Where? What?" How settle her life problem so that it would be "settled right," and she could have peace and happiness? She found no answer. But she kept on thrusting the question at herself. It was as significant of her character as of her trend of thought that her cry "If only I had money!" changed to "If only I couldmakemoney!"XVIThey were at supper, Dick reading the paper, Winchie busy with bowl of rice and milk, Courtney listening to the storm that shrieked in baffled rage after each vain assault upon the house. Her whole being was quivering with the pain that never pierced her more acutely than when she was in the presence of Basil's vacant place at the table. Winchie, without looking up, broke the silence: "We shan't go, mamma, shall we, unless it clears up?"Dick, turning the paper, happened to hear. "Go where?" he asked."To grandfather's.""When?"Courtney said: "Winchie and I are going to-morrow.""Impossible," said Dick. "They'd think you were crazy.""Perhaps I am," Courtney replied. "Anyhow, we're going.""Why?""I need a change.""Put it off till spring." And he resumed the newspaper as if the matter were disposed of."No. To-morrow," said she, not in the least aggressively; but her tone was of unalterable determination."Or, if you must go somewhere, why not Saint X? You can visit Pauline Scarborough or the Hargraves—and bring Helen March back with you.""I prefer the farm."He laid the paper down. "You're not serious?""Quite.""Now, my dear—" he began. His tone was one he had unconsciously adopted from his grandfather. He used it whenever he, as head of the family, confronted an "irrational, feminine caprice.""What's the use of reasoning with me?" interrupted she. "Didn't your grandfather teach you that women can't reason?""I'm willing for you to go to Saint X. But——"She looked significantly toward Winchie. Dick took the hint, went back to his reading until they were alone. Then he resumed: "I'm sure you'll not persist now that I've pointed out to you——""If you wish me to keep my temper," interrupted she, "you'll not use that wheedling tone. I'd feel I was degrading Winchie by speaking to him in a way that belittled his intelligence."Dick looked astonished. "I had no intention——""I know—I know," said she appealingly. "It doesn't matter. I really don't care anything about it."But you'll not go when it's so clearly a folly to——""I am going," said she. "You ought to be grateful that I have such inexpensive whims. Most of us silly women—" She paused, with a lift of the long, slender eyebrows. How absurd to gird at him whose opinions interested her as little as hers interested him!He revolved what she had been saying, presently reddened. "I thought I had explained to you," said he, "that the laboratory is very expensive. I know I don't give you much. I've had to cut down the household allowance because I feel sure Gallatin will be withdrawing his capital. But just as soon as I——"She was even of temper again. "You remind me of old Hendricks," interrupted she pleasantly. "You know, he made three people toil for him all their lives, with no pay and mighty poor board and clothes—on the promise of a legacy—and they died before he did."But Dick was offended. "It seems to me," said he, "in view of what I'm doing at the shop——""Please don't," she cried. "You're trying to make me out an ingrate, who doesn't appreciate how you're toiling just for wife and child. Now, what's the fact? Isn't your work your amusement?""Of course, I like it, but——""Weren't you doing the same thing before you had a family? Wouldn't you be doing it if you should lose them? Isn't it your pride that you work solely for love of science?"He looked disconcerted assent."Then the fact is, you spend most of your income on your own amusement, as much as if you drank it."He reflected. "That never occurred to me before," said he. "Possibly I have viewed it too one-sidedly. I must think it over and see."She shrugged her shoulders. "Pray don't, on my account."He made no reply, put forward no further objections to her going, though the next morning developed a driving sleet. As she and Winchie were about to get into the carriage he asked; "How long will you be gone?""Until I feel better.""If you are ill, you must not go in this weather."She looked at him strangely. "If I were dying I should go," was her slow reply.He hesitated, studied her small, resolute face, her fever-bright eyes, with a puzzled expression. "I suppose it's best to give a woman her way in her whims, so long as they're harmless," said he aloud, but to himself rather than to her. She finished wrapping up the boy, went out to the carriage, and got in. He lifted Winchie in, tucked them both carefully, bade them a last good-by, his expression grave and constrained.In those fifteen miles through the searching cold, over roads like fields deep plowed and frozen hard, she debated how best to carry out her main purpose in going to that dreary farm—how to take her father partly, perhaps wholly, into her confidence so that she might get his help—for help she must have. Her mother was now impossible—quite demented on the subject of religion latterly through the long steeping of mind and heart in a theology whose heaven was hardly less formidable as an eternal prospect than its hell, and whose hell was a fiery sea canopied by shriek and stench of burning multitude. The old maid sisters had neither experience nor judgment, only bitterness. To them it would be inconceivable that a married woman, with a husband who supported her in comfort, could be other than blissfully happy. But her father— He had been a man of affairs, judge. He had lived and read and thought. She had heard her mother rebuke him for expressing "loose" opinions; probably he was concealing opinions even more liberal and enlightened and humane. Perhaps he could give her practical advice—or at least sympathy.But, arrived at the farmhouse, she had only to look into those four countenances to see that she was among people who knew no more of the life of the present day—or indeed of the real life of any day, even of what they themselves actually believed and felt—than deep-sea oysters in their bed know of Alpine flowers. Even her father— In this remote desert he had lost what knowledge of life he formerly possessed. She was now developed enough to realize that he in fact never did know much about life, that his was a book education only. She had journeyed for help in vain; she was still alone, dependent wholly upon her own courage and resource."Don't you wish we hadn't come, mamma?" said Winchie when they were in the room assigned them."No," she replied truthfully. She was watching the hickory flames in a calmer mood than she had known for weeks; at least she had got away where she could think, could get an outside point of view upon the posture of her affairs. "No, indeed," she went on to Winchie leaning against her knee and looking up at her. "No, I feel better already.""Then I guess I can stand it," said the boy with a sigh."You don't know about the hill where we can coast."As he had never coasted, this did not lighten the impression made on him by the gloomy farmhouse sitting room, its walls and ceilings covered with somber paper, by the shriveled grandparents, with deep-sunk, lack-luster eyes, by the sharp, sour faces of the two old maids. But next day, when the sun came out and the farmhands beat down a track on the long hill, Winchie found the situation vastly improved. Flat on her breast on a sled, with the boy breathless and happy upon her back, she initiated him into the raptures of "belly-buster.""Why, mamma, you look like a little girl, not a bit grown up," cried he after they had been at it all morning and were tugging up the hill for one last, magnificent rush down before going home to dinner. And she did indeed seem to be a sister of Winchie's, one hardly in her teens. Of course, the short skirt and her smallness of stature helped. But it was in her cheeks, in her eyes, in the curve of her lips as she showed her white teeth in the happiest of smiles."Iama little girl," declared she. And before starting out with him after dinner she did her hair in two long braids that hung below her waistline.They coasted every day; they took long sleigh rides, long romping walks; they hunted rabbits, went fishing through the ice, were uproarious outside the house and in—the latter to the scandal of the three women of the family, who regarded such goings-on as clearly forbidden in the Scriptures. Even Sunday wasn't so bad as might have been expected; for it snowed too violently for Mrs. Benedict to take them to the church where her favorite doctrines were expounded, and they slipped away to the glorious outdoors. In a sheltered hollow under a shelf of rock they built an enormous snow man, with a top hat of bark. They ate what Winchie regarded as the most wonderful meal of his life at the cottage of one of the farmhands. Never before had he seen such brown brownbread or such molassessy molasses or eaten off such big, strong dishes that there wasn't the least danger of breaking, no matter what you did to them. And he was fascinated by the farmhand's wife and daughter, both acting their company best and eating with the little finger of each hand stuck straight out. And in a box in the corner of the room where they ate was a most exciting brood of little chickens, chirping and squeaking. And in the midst of dinner a huge, hairy, black dog suddenly snatched a piece of meat from the farmhand's plate and retired to the kitchen with it. "Ain't he a caution?" said the farmhand, and Winchie thought he certainly was.Courtney was like those who put out to sea, leaving their troubles at the one shore, not to think of them until they touch the other. All around were the white hills, and there seemed to be no beyond. She abandoned her plan of studying her situation. She stopped thinking; she ate and slept, and played with the boy, and pretended that she was the little girl she looked, home from school for the holidays, and half hoping somehow something would happen so that there wouldn't be any school any more. She did not think, but she hoped. How? What? Where? She did not know; simply hope, that can burst the strongest grave despair ever buried it in.Well along in the second week, toward the middle of the afternoon, she and Winchie were on the long hill, rounding out one more happy day. She was as happy as he. When all is lost save youth and health, what is really lost? She on her breast on the sled and he sprawled along her back, his arms round her neck, they shot down the steep with shouts and screams. They stopped, all covered with flying snow, in a soft bank beneath which the zigzag fence was deep buried. They rolled in the snow, washed each other's faces, stood up—were within a few feet of a man in a fur-lined coat almost to his heels. They stared, astounded. Then Winchie's face darkened and hers grew more radiant still as the tears sprang to her eyes."Basil!" she murmured, Winchie forgotten. "Oh—Basil!" And all in that instant the misery of those months of despair was gloriously transformed into joy."Courtney!" he cried. "How beautiful you are!"He was extraordinarily handsome himself at that moment. Love is a matchless beautifier; and if ever love shone from a human countenance, it was shining, irradiating from his just then. With Winchie jealously watchful they shook hands. "Aren't you and Winchie going to speak to each other?" she asked. And Basil, with reluctance and some confusion held out a hand which the boy very hesitatingly touched."I'll pull your sled to the top for you," Basil offered. "Get on, Winchie."The boy planted his feet more firmly in the snow. "We were going home," said Courtney."Get on, Winchie," cried Basil friendlily. "I'll haul you.""I'm going to walk," replied the boy sullenly.Courtney understood. "Get on, Winchie," said she. "I'll pull it."The boy obeyed. The rope was long, so Basil felt free to speak in a lowered voice. "Seeing you—hearing you—touching you— O my darling! my Courtney!"She forgot where she was, who she was, everything but love. Love! The road danced before her. The cry of the chickadees, the twitter of the snowbirds, the call of Bob White from the fence sounded like supernal music in her ears. The blood tingled and dizzied her nerves. Love again! "You care—still?" she murmured."Care? There's only you for me in all the world."She caught her breath, like the swinger at the long swing's dizziest height when it halts to begin the delirious descent. "Love!" she murmured. "Love!""And I know you love me," he went on. "I've never doubted—not once. I've tried to doubt, but I couldn't. Up before me would come those dear eyes of yours, and—Courtney, there isn't a kiss—or a caress—hardly a touch of the hands you and I have ever lived that I haven't felt again and again.""Don't!" she pleaded, her eyes swimming. "Don't, or I'll break down. My love—my love!""I don't know what would have become of me," he went on, "if I hadn't known you'd send for me—yes—in spite of your note. I expected it, for I knew you wouldn't be able to come. The more I thought, the clearer I saw. Not to go any further, there was the boy." He glanced round at Winchie; the angry gray-green eyes were fixed upon him. He glanced away, disconcerted. But he forgot Winchie when his eyes returned to her. "Beautiful! Beautiful—little girl," he murmured, his look sweeping her small, perfect figure to the edge of her short skirt. "I like your new way of wearing your hair."She blushed. "I did it to make me feel young. I've been feeling so old—old and tired and lonely.""Thank God, you sent for me.""Sent for you! A hundred times a day in thought." She laughed aloud, sparkling like the ice-cased boughs in the late afternoon sun. "A thousand thousand times in longing—every time my heart beat.""Oh, it is so good to be with you!" He drew in a huge draught of the clean, cold, vital air. "Does the sun anywhere else shine on such happiness as this? But I've been mad with happiness ever since the word came.""The word? What word?""Vaughan's letter. I knew you got him to write it."Courtney stopped short. "I!" she exclaimed. "I don't know what you mean.""I got a letter from him three days ago. He asked me to take another quarter interest in his work—said he needed the money, as he found he'd been using more of his own in it than he could afford with justice to his family——""Oh!" cried Courtney sharply."What is it?" asked Basil.She was looking straight ahead. "Nothing—nothing. Go on." And she started to walk again."Your cry sounded like pain.""Did it? Go on.""I assumed you had at last succeeded in making the chance for me to come back. So, I telegraphed I'd accept, provided he'd let me work with him again—and that I'd be on at once to talk things over. I took the first train—and here I am.""Yes, here. That's another mystery to explain.""Nothing simpler. The station man at Wenona told me you were visiting your father. I jumped at the chance. I can say I thought you all were here. Anything more?""I saw the announcement of your engagement.""It's broken. I couldn't marry her—couldn't have done it in any circumstances. So, I gave her what she was losing by our not marrying. And I'm free. You want me to stay?"He spoke indifferently about the money he had given up, and he evidently felt indifferent. She would have been hurt had he acted otherwise. At the same time it was a measure of his generosity and of his love, a sordid but certain measure. She regarded that payment as a sort of ransom—his ransom for the right to come to her. "That was his price for the right," thought she. "He paid it without a second thought—would have paid any price. My price for the right to be his may be harder. But I must pay, too—as generously as he."He was watching her anxiously. "Courtney, I can't go away!""You mustn't," replied she. Then a reason—the reason—the solution of her life problem—came to her as if by inspiration. "It's my only chance to be a good woman. That sounds strange, doesn't it?""Not to me. I understand. If you hadn't sent for me soon—" he checked himself."What?""You didn't know that my coming here last spring—and loving you—cured me of the drinking habit. I know, it's stupid and disgusting. I used to loathe myself when I gave way. But it's the only resort in loneliness. And if I realized that you were lost to me, what would I care?"She nodded sympathetically. "I was going all to pieces, in another way. I was sliding down as fast as Winchie and I were coasting the hill back there. I was going the way of all women who have no love—grown-up love—in their lives. I know now, the reason I used to keep myself together and built myself up and looked after things was because I was waiting and hoping for love, and was expecting it. Love is all of a woman's life, as things are run in this world—at present.""And quite enough it is, too," said he."No," disagreed she. "But let that pass. If I went back to—to that life—alone, I'd be going to ruin. And I'd probably drag him and Winchie down with me. A woman of that unburied-dead sort drags down everybody about her.... You've only to look round, in any station of life, to see those women by the scores. Some few are saved by children—not many and they are of a different nature from me—from most women, I think.... If I don't go back, I either go to you disgraced, a shame to my family, a lifelong stain on my boy here, a miserable, afraid dependent of yours.... No, don't interrupt; I've thought it all out.... Or, I'd plunge into a life of social dissipation. If possible, that sort of woman is worse for herself and for her husband and children than the domestic rotter. A chattering, card-playing gadabout. Possibly I might remain true to my husband, but— If the world weren't the fool it is, it would have discovered long ago that there are worse vices than—" As always when she forced herself to say frank, merciless things, she looked straight into his eyes with defiant audacity—"worse vices than ours.""But—" he began, shifting his gaze and coloring."Oh, yes, it is. Don't make any mistake about it. But I know lots of 'good' women—liars, gossips, naggers, petty swindlers of their husbands, envious, malicious, spiteful—lots and lots of so-called good women beside whom I'd feel white as this snow.""Rather!" exclaimed Basil."So—if you'll go with me—I'm going home—to make it a home—to be a good mother—to give Richard at least his money's worth in care and comfort and—" She looked at him with eyes suddenly solemn—"and that is all, Basil—all. It's all I can give him, all he has the right to.... I'm going home to be a good woman, if you'll come and be there too.""There's only one life for me—to be as near you as you'll let me."A long silence. Then she again, sadly: "I don't know how it will work out. But—what else is there for us? We're not heroes. We're human. We must do the best we can. Together we may survive. Apart, I at least will perish—and destroy those near me. I suppose I'm all wrong. But"—with a sigh—"I'm doing the best I can."Silence again. Then he, deeply moved: "I'll try to be worthy of you, dear.""Worthy ofme? For God's sake, don't say those things. There isn't any pedestal I wouldn't fall off of and break to bits.... Basil—" wistfully—"you don't care for me in just a physical way—do you, dear?""I care for you in every way," he answered. "Courtney, I never believed I could respect a woman as I respect you. You know, men aren't brought up really to respect women—or themselves, for that matter.""Then—couldn't we try to—" She lowered her head, faltered—"couldn't we live as if we were engaged only?""Why should we?" he cried."I know it's only a fancy. But fancies count more than facts.... I'd feel less the—" She faltered—paused."Yes—yes—I understand. And— Well, it doesn't do a man any good to be pretending friendship and smiling in another fellow's face, when all the time— I'll try, Courtney— But—it won't be exactly easy."Her gaze burned for an instant on his, then dropped. "I should hope not!" murmured she.They, absorbed in each other, moved so slowly along the road that Winchie, silent, motionless, sullen, upon the sled they were trailing as far as the rope permitted, was stiff with cold. But he did not murmur. By the time they reached the door of the farmhouse, Courtney and Basil had it all planned. He was to leave immediately after supper, was to go at once to Vaughan, make the arrangements, reinstall himself. She was to come home in three or four days—unless Vaughan sent, asking her to come sooner. He dined with the family at the farmhouse, made himself so agreeable that they were all pleased with him—even sister Ann whose bitterness over her failure at what she secretly regarded as woman's only excuse for being alive, took the unoriginal disguise of aggressive man-hating. At six o'clock he drove away in the starlight with a merry jingling of sleigh bells that echoed in Courtney's happy heart. The cold was intense; but she felt only warmth—that delicious warmth that comes from within. She stood on the little front porch, with the stars brilliant above and the snow white and smooth over hill and valley. She watched the swift dark sleigh—listened to those laughing bells, their music growing fainter and fainter—but not in her heart. She was so happy that the tears were in her eyes and the sobs in her throat. It was for her one of those moments in life when she asked nothing more, could imagine nothing that would add to joy. Love again!—and oh, what exalted love, to warm the heart and fill it with light and joy, to brighten every moment of life, to guide her up and ever up.Winchie, standing beside her and looking up at her rapt face, tugged angrily at her skirts.XVIIWhen the mail cart on the third afternoon failed to bring a letter from Richard, she decided that prudence had been satisfied, that she need wait no longer. Toward four she and Winchie set out, snuggled deep in furs and straw in the rear of a huge country sleigh. The roads were perfect; the snow was like a strand at low tide, rolled smooth and firm by the broad tires of high tide's billows. The big horses, steaming as if they were engines, flew as if they were a wind. But her impatient heart was always far ahead, fretting at their laggard pace.They dashed into the outskirts of Wenona. The journey was ended except the mile and a half round the curve of the lake. She became all at once serenely calm. Life her real life—was now about to begin. It was far from the life she would have chosen, had she been prearranging her own fate. However—who could live an ideal life in such a topsy-turvy world? Nature and conventionality ever at war; right and wrong, not two straight paths, one up, the other down, but a tangle, a maze, a labyrinth. One must often travel the path of the wrong in order to reach the path of the right; and keeping to the path of the right often meant arriving in a hopeless network of blind alleys of the wrong. She was in the confused state about right and wrong characteristic of this era of transition that has seen the crumbling of the despotism of dogma, and has not yet received, or created, a moral guidance to replace it. "Life is a compromise, unless one lives alone and miserably and uselessly," thought she. "My life's to be a thistle with fig grafts. I'll do the best I can with it—Basil and I. With him to help me—his strength and character and self-denying love—with him to help, all may go well. Is my compromise—Basil's and mine—worse than those almost everyone has to make? If so, then they ought to educate women differently, and change marriage."And when the sleigh reached the drive-front porch, making a dashing and musical arrival, she was in a mood of moral exaltation that might have stirred the enthusiasm of a saint—that is, a saint ignorant of the foundations of that mood or the processes by which it had reared itself skyward. Saints who are wise in the ways of humanity do not interrogate too closely the glitter and lift of moral temples; they know humanity has only humble materials with which to build.The doors opened wide and, in a flood of bright warm air, redolent of the perfume of flowers, out came Dick to welcome them. "Iamglad!" cried he. Because of the peculiar relations long established between them—relations such as must exist in some degree between a husband and a wife before the triangular situation can ever even threaten—because of these peculiar relations, she had not anticipated and did not feel the least embarrassment. She was not defying or ignoring her husband; she had no husband. After he swung Winchie to the porch he turned to do the same service for her. But she had quickly disengaged herself from the robes and was standing beside him. He looked into her face, fully revealed by the pour of soft light from the hall. "Your trip certainly has done you good," said he."Thank you," replied she absently, presenting her left cheek for the necessary formality of the occasion. Her attention was wholly elsewhere.In the hall before her there had appeared two people, hanging back discreetly, so that they would not intrude upon the family reunion. Basil, she expected. The woman beside him so astonished her that she forgot to be glad to see him.Whowas she? This tall, slender girl with the proud, regular features, the attractively done dark hair, the big, honest brown eyes? She glanced at Basil, standing beside this lovely girl and making a laughing remark; her feminine sight instantly noted how the remark was received by the girl—the flattering glance and smile a marriageable woman rarely wastes upon anything from one of her own sex or from an ineligible man. And through Courtney shot a pang that dissolved her structure of moral uplift as a needle thrust collapses a toy balloon. Who was this woman?—thisyoungwoman—thistallwoman—thishandsomewoman—so pleased with Basil Gallatin?"Aren't you surprised to find Helen March here?" Dick was now saying.Helen March! So, that scrawny, raw-boned girl, all freckles and pimples, and unable to manage her mouth, the Helen March she had seen three years before and had not seen since—so, that prim and homely gawk had developed into this stately creature! Prim, still—unless that expression was the familiar maidenly pose to attract wife hunters. But certainly neither homely nor awkward. She even dressed her hair well, and wore her clothes with quite an air. All this Courtney saw and felt and thought in a few twinklings of an eye—for in such circumstances a woman's mind works with the rapidity of genius, and with genius's grasp of essential detail. Helen was advancing."Don't you recognize me, Courtney?" she asked. The voice was one of those honest, pleasant voices that disarm the most cynical pessimists about human nature—the voice that makes theblasécity man fall to dreaming of taking a country girl to wife."NowI do, of course," said Courtney sweetly. And the two embraced and kissed.To do this, Helen had to bend, as she was more than a head the taller. She bent with not a suggestion of condescension in manner or in thought. Nevertheless Courtney, for the first time in her life painfully sensitive about her stature, flamed and was resentful—and in her scorn of her own pettiness felt tinier within than without. True, Helen's figure was commonplace, the bust too high and ominously large for her age, the hips already faintly menacing, the waist and arms somewhat too short for the great length of leg. True, her own figure was—certainly better. Still, Helen had that advantage of height—could look at Basil level-eyed, could make her seem—short! And this Helen here to stay indefinitely!There was pathos in the slow, sweet smile Courtney gave Basil as their trembling hands met in what seemed to the others a formal greeting. She turned away with a sigh. Just as she, the thirsty, the desert-bound, was all ready to rush forward and drink—the mirage vanished. Was it to be always so? Was life to be ever a succession of mirages, vanishing at approach, only to reappear and revive hope—and cheat again? Through her mind flashed the memory of the first one—an indelible memory, always for her symbolic of vain expectation: A fourth of July when she was a very small child—how she awakened at sunrise, rushed to the window to find sky clear and world radiant and ready for the picnic that was to be her first great positive joy; how she was dressed in her best, in wonderful new white frock, in white stockings and shoes and white bows covering the top buttons, shimmering sash of pale green, and bows of pale green on her braids; how, just as she descended in all her glory to issue forth, down came the rain—in floods—and no picnic, nothing but stay at home all day and weep and watch the downpour. "It was my horoscope," thought she, as she stood there in the hall too sad for bitterness over her spoiled home-coming. "Is it fate? Or, is it somehow my fault? My fault, I suppose. I must be asking of life something no one—at least, no woman—has the right to expect."She was near the library door, with Winchie on its threshold staring round big-eyed and crying, "Oh, mamma Courtney. Look!" His eyes were no more wondering than her own. She had been too disheartened to make the library over into a conservatory that year; now, here it was transformed into a conservatory—the carpet up from the hardwood floor, plants beautiful for bloom or for foliage or for both in boxes, in jars, in pots—everywhere. A conservatory like that of former years, but more elaborate.The others were laughing and watching her face. So she exclaimed "I am surprised!" in the indefinite tone the listener can easily adapt to his expectations. But she was not pleased—far from it. Another fierce pang of jealousy. She, modest about her own abilities, did not realize that the room lacked just the finishing touch of her exquisite taste. To her it seemed better far than she could have done. Why, she hadn't been needed, or missed even! Things went on as well in her absence as when she was here. And near her, side by side, were Basil and Helen—how she could feel them!—so well matched physically—and he fair, she dark. And Courtney had not that self-complacent, satisfied vanity which shelters so many of us from any and all misgivings and doubts."Helen did most of it," explained Vaughan. "She's a trump, you'll find. Look out, Helen, or we'll make you do all the work.""Cousin Dick proposed it and really carried it out," protested Helen in her school-teacherish or collegiate speech and manner. "And Mr. Gallatin was invaluable in showing us how you had it last winter. We wanted to get it exactly the same."Courtney turned brilliant, grateful eyes on Basil. "So, you remembered, did you?" she ventured to say, sure her meaning and her tone would pass the others safely.Basil flushed. "You can judge for yourself," said he."I'm so overcome I don't know what to say." Their smiling, friendly faces, all bent upon her, made her natural generosity burst forth like April's unending green at the first warmth of the sun. Her eyes filled. "Thank you—thank you all!" she cried. "I am so—so—happy!" And she kissed Helen again, ashamed of her mean impulses toward one whose aloneness and poverty commanded kindness and consideration and help from another woman, especially from a woman who had known the bitterness of dependence and aloneness.Good sense and decent instincts, having driven off jealousy, held the field—not without occasional alarms and excursions, but still decisively. It was the merriest party that had gathered about the mahogany dining-room table since Colonel 'Kill imported it from beyond the mountains, along with sundry novelties in those parts, in that early day—carpets and curtains and window glass, wall paper and carved beds and crystal chandeliers. In Colonel 'Kill's time the atmosphere had been genial but austere; Aunt Eudosia, during her brief reign between his death and her own, had maintained his traditions reverently; and Courtney had struggled not altogether with success, though bravely and resolutely, against the atmosphere that lingered on after all her brightening changes. But that night, the spell was broken. Dick put aside his chemistry; Basil and Courtney forgot him and their burden of deceit. Helen belied her mourning which, as Courtney had shrewdly guessed, was mere formality anyhow. Everyone was gay, even jealous little Winchie, devoting himself to Helen, determined to make her love him. And Courtney was gayest of all; was not that vacant place at the table filled once more? Her heart overflowed with joy and her lips and eyes with laughter each time she looked in that direction and saw—him! Everyone was gay except old Nanny, listening sourly to the merriment that came through door and hall into kitchen and sounded like a burst from a ballroom whenever Lizzie was passing in or out. "Poor young man!" muttered Nanny to her dishes and pans. "If he only knowed the whited sepulchre he's living amidst, what a holocaust there'd be." She did not know what holocaust meant, having got merely its vague sense from a sermon; thus, it gave her a conception of anarchy and chaos far beyond the scope of words she understood.Courtney's emerald eyes, dancing and laughing though they were, scrutinized Basil. Not that she really suspected him; she simply wished to fortify herself against the folly and the unhappiness of suspicion—as women look under a bed before getting into it. Having fortified herself, she concentrated on Helen—Helen, the homeless, the unmarried, the eager to be married. There the results of her scrutiny were not so satisfactory. Basil would have called Helen's manner mere civility; and perhaps, in strict justice, it was nothing more. But Courtney the woman, judging Helen the woman, saw the hidden truth beneath the surface truth—saw that Helen was not without an instinct for a possible customer for the virtue so carefully nurtured against the coming of an opportunity for it to expand in the garden of matrimony with the flower and leaf and fruit of wife and mother. Courtney judged fairly, conceded that Helen was the reverse of forward, was using no arts, no subtleties. But the candidate for matrimony showed in her charmingly receptive and appreciative attitude toward the young man. The danger which Courtney foresaw and feared lay in the fact that Basil and Helen were both attractive. To Courtney it seemed a question of a very brief time when, without any effort whatever on her part, Helen must fall in love with him. What then? A well-bred, pretty woman in love is always more and ever more attractive to the man she centers upon. And Helen was free—and could be honorable throughout!As Courtney undressed for bed, these reflections, so forbidding of aspect, faced her whichever way she turned. "I like Helen," she thought, "and it's decent and right to give her a home. If I were what I ought to be—ought to try to be—I'd give her every opportunity to win Basil. She's got to have some one to support her. I'm provided for. It's mean of me to stand in her way." She found some cheer in the reflection that, while most women would straight off hate Helen and look on her as an impudent interloper, she herself had generosity enough to be just in thought at least. "But I'm human," said she. "Helen has got to go. She doesn't love him. I do. She doesn't need him. I do. She's got to go!"It was her habit to sit on the rug before the fire in her sitting room, and do her hair for the night; then she would sometimes stretch herself out flat upon her breast and read by the fire light or watch it and dream or think. She was lying that way, head pillowed upon a book and face toward the fire, when Dick opened the door, glanced in, entered. So absorbed was she that she did not know he was in the room until he spoke."It's like what Nanny would call a special providence, isn't it?" said he, seating himself on the sofa parallel to the fireplace but well back from it. He had a long dressing gown over his pajamas and was smoking a last cigarette."Special providence? What?" inquired she without turning her head. His entrance had not interrupted her train of thought. Her answer was, as usual, a reflex action from her surface mind."Why, Basil's coming back."No reply. She was not thinking of Dick's statement of Basil's return as coming from him but as if she had herself begun to revolve it of her own accord."And Helen's being here."A restless shiver. She was unconscious of Dick's presence. She was gazing absorbed at the proposition: Helen is here."It's just as we wanted it," he went on.The lithe, delicately formed body grew tense. "Speak for yourself," she said curtly.Richard received this rebuff in silence. "I know you don't like Basil," said he at length. "And, it's true he was a tank and a tear-about at college——"There he stopped, shamefaced. He forgot he had told her about Basil; he felt it was undignified and unworthy gossip now that he had matrimonial designs upon him. "That slipped out," he said to her apologetically. "I never intended to tell you. Anyhow, he has dropped all that sort of thing, and I don't believe he'll ever turn loose again.... I wonder why that girl broke the engagement. He tells me he's free, and I suspect he wanted to come back because he's pretty badly cut up.... You will be nice to him, Courtney?—and help him and Helen along? They were intended for each other—height—contrast of coloring——"Courtney sat up impatiently, turned her back to the fire to warm it, clasped her knees in her arms. She was conscious of him now, vaguely, unpleasantly conscious, though the ideas he had suggested still held most of her attention. Gradually she became uncomfortable; no, it was not the cold. Her wandering glance happened upon Richard's face. His expression— That was it! Not cold, but the sense of being looked at by eyes that had not the right. She blushed furiously from head to feet, had an impulse to snatch the rug about her and dart from the room."You are—beautiful!" he exclaimed, rising. "I was just contrasting you with Helen March this evening. She's undoubtedly handsome. Has height, and go, and, for a girl, really a surprising amount of——"Courtney was not listening. She was thinking of her oversight in not locking her doors into the hall."Of charm—aside from the freshness that's about all there is to most girls, I imagine."She must be careful not to irritate him, not to rouse him to the vigilance that nothing can escape. What a luckless beginning of a new life!"And you're so well now—so alive——""I'm all but dead," she declared, pretending a yawn. "I must go to bed." She sprang lightly up. "Good night," she said. And to take away the sting—for, his slight wince showed her there was sting—she stood on tiptoe, hands behind her and face upturned.His lips touched her cheek hesitatingly; fired by the contact, he took her in his arms and kissed her. She did not draw away; an instinct of prudence, not a deliberate thought, restrained her. She flushed from head to foot, her modesty wounded, her pride abased. "Good night," said he, lingeringly."Good night," she echoed, turning away to screen the fire.Half an hour later all the lights in the house were out. She had gone to bed, but not to sleep. She suddenly sat up, gazed eagerly toward the window giving on the small veranda. It was open for the night; the shutters were latched, however, and through them came intensely cold air and some faint light. She thought she heard a tapping at the shutter—that shutter she had so often thrown wide in the hope that Basil had secretly returned. She listened. After a long wait, again the tapping—so soft that only the attention of an expectant listener would have been attracted."Basil!" she murmured. "I must have been expecting him."She was about to dart to the window when there came a thought like a blow in the face flinging her back and making her cover her head. First the one man; now the other. "God!" she muttered. "How they will degrade me, between them."No, it should not be! She grew angry with Basil. At the first opportunity, breaking his promise, trying to tempt her to become what he could not but despise.Thatwas what he calledlove! And how poorly he must think of her! ... She uncovered her head, listened. No repetition of the sound. She ran to the window, opened the shutter. No one! Yes—the snow on the rail had been disturbed. She leaned out. Snow—the black boughs—the biting midnight air—stars—the crescent moon with a pendant planet—the distant muffled sound of a horse stamping in its stall. She closed the shutter, went shivering back to bed—heartsick with disappointment.
"You saw the news in to-day's paper?" said Richard at supper a few days after Christmas.
As he continued to look expectantly at her, she roused herself from her reverie, slowly grasped his question. "I didn't read to-day's papers," answered she.
"Well, Gallatin's engagement's announced—from Philadelphia."
She nerved herself for the reaction of inward turmoil which would, she felt, certainly follow such a blow. To her amazement no reaction came. She felt as calm as if the news had been about some one of whom she had never heard.
"Why, you seem not to be interested."
"Oh, yes," replied she indifferently.
"I remember, you didn't like him."
It almost seemed true to her. Or, rather, that she had never cared about him one way or the other.
"And he so mad about you," continued Richard with raillery. "I'll never forget the looks he used to give you—or the ones he gave me, either. Well, it's all over now. He's evidently cured."
"Evidently," said Courtney. She looked calmly at him, shifted her gaze. It happened to fall upon Winchie. The boy was frowning jealously into his plate. She colored. She never had the slightest self-consciousness about Basil with Richard, but only with the boy. However, the reminder soon passed in marvel at her amazing tranquillity. How could she be thus calm in face of such a blow? Had she really conquered her love? Had this sudden, unexpected news of his perfidy killed it all in an instant? Had she never loved him?
Richard had been talking, and she had been so absorbed she had not heard. Now he was holding a letter across the table toward her. Mechanically she reached out, took it, fixed her eyes upon it. "And Mrs. Torrey says," Richard was explaining, "that we ought to ask Cousin Helen here—for a few months at least—until she gets over her father's death."
"Wenona's no place for a girl in search of a husband."
"A husband!" exclaimed Richard. "Who said anything about a husband?"
"Now that her father's dead, with nothing but a small life insurance, she's got to marry."
"Yes, I suppose so."
"That's what Mrs. Torrey's saying between these lines." And she handed the letter back.
"Mrs. Torrey's a fine, noble old lady. Such sordid ideas never'd enter her head."
"Mrs. Torrey's a woman."
"And a good one—and so is Helen," maintained Richard. "Marrying's about the last idea in her head at present."
"I believe that is the theory—among men who know nothing about women."
"She's doubtless almost prostrated with grief."
"With anxiety, perhaps. Not with grief. Not for a worthless old drunkard."
"You forget, Courtney. He was herfather."
Courtney lifted her eyebrows. "So much the more certain she detested him. She had to live right up against him."
Richard leaned forward slightly, to add emphasis to his rebuke. "I repeat, Helen is a good woman—a woman with a sense of duty. She must have loved him."
"Why repeat such twaddle?" inquired Courtney, unimpressed. "What has duty to do with hearts?"
Dick looked strong disapproval. "What is the matter, my dear? You're not talking in the least like yourself."
"You always make that same remark," observed Courtney, "whenever I say anything that does not suit you."
"Are you irritated by the prospect of Helen's coming? If you don't want her——"
"I am not irritated about anything. As for Helen, I care not a rap one way or the other."
Winchie had finished. He kissed his father, then his mother good night, and went upstairs. Richard came out of a deep study to say, "It's a pity Gallatin isn't free and here—if Helen comes."
"It would have made a good match," said Courtney judiciously. "A splendid living for Helen."
"I wasn't thinking of Gallatin's wealth," protested Richard, reddening. Then he laughed, "At least, not altogether."
"The living's the main point in marriage."
"What an unpleasant mood you're in."
"I? I never felt more amiable."
"Have I said anything to offend you?"
"Not a thing." She rose languidly. "You're still the model—not a single redeeming fault."
She stretched herself with slow, lazy grace. "But you," said he, "are a bundle of redeeming faults and vagaries—a bouquet of them." And he was about to kiss her.
She flung away from him with flashing eyes. He stared, amazed. "How you startled me!" she exclaimed, quickly changing her expression from fury to half-laughing irritation.
"Miss Caprice!" And his gaze was soft and brilliant.
There was a virgin coldness in her manner that puzzled and abashed him. "How I hate this body of mine, sometimes!" said she. "An admiring look makes me angry, and a kiss seems an insult. Come to me with your love when I'm old and ugly. Then, perhaps, I'll believe it."
And she strolled out of the room and upstairs. The instant she had her bedroom door locked, she knew why she had come away—knew she had been obeying an instinct warning her secret self that she could not many minutes longer endure the strain. "But really I am calm," she insisted. In the same second her wound opened and was aching and bleeding and throbbing, unhealed. "I can never forget—never!" she cried. "Was it only this body of mine he cared for? What does it matter? Even the little he gave was more than I had to give. I ought to have been more humble about giving—I who had so little. And what happiness he gave me in exchange! No—not happiness, but more than happiness." Her eyes strained into the night. It was so dreary—so lonely. "Basil!—Basil! I'm dying for you—dying from the core out!"
She flung her windows wide. The snow came whirling in. The wind was moaning among the branches. Somewhere, far away, a bell tolled. Silence, utter solitude, a stretch of white snow under a black sky, and the chilling cold. "Come to me!" she cried. "I am so cold—so lonely—so hungry! And I love you."
Even where a woman cannot doubt that her lover has forgotten, there are times when memory—of his vows so convincing, of his caresses that seemed the inspiration of her charms alone—makes her defy certainty and believe. And Courtney had no real reason to think him either false or forgetful. They had been torn apart when their love was still hungry and thirsty, when even the long calm that precedes satiety was still far in the future, when they were so absorbed in loving that they had not yet had time to begin to get acquainted with each other's real self. It was doubt of him that was forced, belief in him that was natural. "If he were not so strong, so honorable!" she cried. "Ah, if he were only where I could tempt him!"
Even the thought of Winchie now lost all power to check her; he was too much like part of herself. She seemed as placid in her slender youthfulness as those handsome matronly women who suggest extinct volcanoes covered with flowers and smiling fields. Beneath her manner of monotonous, emotionless calm she was battling with the temptation to take her boy and fly from that cold desolation of loveless loneliness, to fly to him. If Richard had not been absolutely apart from her life, absolutely out of her thoughts she would have hated him. As it was her rage fretted at the impersonal barriers and bonds that held her—not Richard, but conventionality and, above all, lack of money. "If only I had money!" she cried again and again.
But she had nothing—her clothes, a few dollars that must be paid out for expenses already incurred. "If I went to him, it would be to become his dependent, just as I am Richard's. Oh, the horror of being a woman! Bred to dependence; bred for the market; bred to tease some man into undertaking her support for life. There is the rotten spot in my whole life. If Richard had ever deigned to speculate as to what was going on in my head, he'd never have dared touch me. He'd have feared I was his only for hire. But would he care? Doesn't he expect me to be true because he supports me? Isn't that what marriage means, beneath the cant and pretense? Yes, I'm simply part of his property, and the pretenses that gloze it over only make it the more revolting. Oh, if men had sensibilities, and if they knew what women thought!—why we smile and flatter and stay on, in spite of neglect and insult!"
She felt that, if she should go to Basil, the day would come when their love would die of this poison exuding from the basic fact of their relations—his sense of his rights because of her dependence; or, her fear of losing or impairing her living; or, her feeling that since she took bread she must give body—all she had to pay with. Richard thought he could afford to be neglectful; and when it suited him to give passing attention to his property again—to walk in his garden and eat a little fruit from his tree—he thought he had a perfect right to do so. If Richard was thus, if all men believed thus, why fancy Basil an exception? Basil, in time, when passion cooled, would hold her in the same light disesteem. If a man lost his virtue, even hypocrisy did not go beyond a half smiling shake of the head; if a woman lost her virtue, she was "ruined." Ruined—that is, a worthless wreck. "No, I shall not go to Basil. No doubt, he still cares—in a man's way of caring. But he holds me, the unfaithful wife, cheap enough. If I were to lose reputation also, were to be unable to give him the pleasure of trespassing on another's property, were to be merely a ruined woman, living off him, he'd soon treat me like the slave that I am. No, I'll not change owners.... If only I had money!"
What, then? She had seen all along that she was like one sinking in the ooze of a marsh—softly, inevitably toward suffocation. "If I stay on here, I'll become like the rest of the settled, disillusioned married women. I'll become a chronic sloven and—as my disposition isn't toward fat, squatted good nature—a shrew. A slovenly shrew!" Why not? What had she left to live for? In a few years Winchie would be away at school—then in some city at profession or business—and married and out of her life. "I might as well give up. Why not?"
There seemed to be no reason. But our conduct in its main lines is not governed by reason, but by instincts that impel us even against will. When Richard had failed her at the outset of their married life, she had sunk; then her temperament of hope and energy had forced her up again in face of deepest discouragements. So now, while there was no reason why she should cease to sink, should begin to struggle, while Basil's announced engagement assuring a speedy marriage seemed just the thing to make her sink on, she began to rouse herself and to look about her. For the second time her longings and energies had lost their stimulus, their inspiration, their vitalizing center. And that center is to an unselfish nature as necessary as queen bee to swarm which clusters about her, labors for her, and renews through her. With human beings such as Courtney Vaughan longings and energies rarely die upon the corpse of their inspiration. After a while they fly upward, as did hers, and begin to circle in search of a new clustering center, a new reason for living and working on. "I can't stay here," she kept repeating. "I must go somewhere. I must do something. Where? What?" How settle her life problem so that it would be "settled right," and she could have peace and happiness? She found no answer. But she kept on thrusting the question at herself. It was as significant of her character as of her trend of thought that her cry "If only I had money!" changed to "If only I couldmakemoney!"
XVI
They were at supper, Dick reading the paper, Winchie busy with bowl of rice and milk, Courtney listening to the storm that shrieked in baffled rage after each vain assault upon the house. Her whole being was quivering with the pain that never pierced her more acutely than when she was in the presence of Basil's vacant place at the table. Winchie, without looking up, broke the silence: "We shan't go, mamma, shall we, unless it clears up?"
Dick, turning the paper, happened to hear. "Go where?" he asked.
"To grandfather's."
"When?"
Courtney said: "Winchie and I are going to-morrow."
"Impossible," said Dick. "They'd think you were crazy."
"Perhaps I am," Courtney replied. "Anyhow, we're going."
"Why?"
"I need a change."
"Put it off till spring." And he resumed the newspaper as if the matter were disposed of.
"No. To-morrow," said she, not in the least aggressively; but her tone was of unalterable determination.
"Or, if you must go somewhere, why not Saint X? You can visit Pauline Scarborough or the Hargraves—and bring Helen March back with you."
"I prefer the farm."
He laid the paper down. "You're not serious?"
"Quite."
"Now, my dear—" he began. His tone was one he had unconsciously adopted from his grandfather. He used it whenever he, as head of the family, confronted an "irrational, feminine caprice."
"What's the use of reasoning with me?" interrupted she. "Didn't your grandfather teach you that women can't reason?"
"I'm willing for you to go to Saint X. But——"
She looked significantly toward Winchie. Dick took the hint, went back to his reading until they were alone. Then he resumed: "I'm sure you'll not persist now that I've pointed out to you——"
"If you wish me to keep my temper," interrupted she, "you'll not use that wheedling tone. I'd feel I was degrading Winchie by speaking to him in a way that belittled his intelligence."
Dick looked astonished. "I had no intention——"
"I know—I know," said she appealingly. "It doesn't matter. I really don't care anything about it.
"But you'll not go when it's so clearly a folly to——"
"I am going," said she. "You ought to be grateful that I have such inexpensive whims. Most of us silly women—" She paused, with a lift of the long, slender eyebrows. How absurd to gird at him whose opinions interested her as little as hers interested him!
He revolved what she had been saying, presently reddened. "I thought I had explained to you," said he, "that the laboratory is very expensive. I know I don't give you much. I've had to cut down the household allowance because I feel sure Gallatin will be withdrawing his capital. But just as soon as I——"
She was even of temper again. "You remind me of old Hendricks," interrupted she pleasantly. "You know, he made three people toil for him all their lives, with no pay and mighty poor board and clothes—on the promise of a legacy—and they died before he did."
But Dick was offended. "It seems to me," said he, "in view of what I'm doing at the shop——"
"Please don't," she cried. "You're trying to make me out an ingrate, who doesn't appreciate how you're toiling just for wife and child. Now, what's the fact? Isn't your work your amusement?"
"Of course, I like it, but——"
"Weren't you doing the same thing before you had a family? Wouldn't you be doing it if you should lose them? Isn't it your pride that you work solely for love of science?"
He looked disconcerted assent.
"Then the fact is, you spend most of your income on your own amusement, as much as if you drank it."
He reflected. "That never occurred to me before," said he. "Possibly I have viewed it too one-sidedly. I must think it over and see."
She shrugged her shoulders. "Pray don't, on my account."
He made no reply, put forward no further objections to her going, though the next morning developed a driving sleet. As she and Winchie were about to get into the carriage he asked; "How long will you be gone?"
"Until I feel better."
"If you are ill, you must not go in this weather."
She looked at him strangely. "If I were dying I should go," was her slow reply.
He hesitated, studied her small, resolute face, her fever-bright eyes, with a puzzled expression. "I suppose it's best to give a woman her way in her whims, so long as they're harmless," said he aloud, but to himself rather than to her. She finished wrapping up the boy, went out to the carriage, and got in. He lifted Winchie in, tucked them both carefully, bade them a last good-by, his expression grave and constrained.
In those fifteen miles through the searching cold, over roads like fields deep plowed and frozen hard, she debated how best to carry out her main purpose in going to that dreary farm—how to take her father partly, perhaps wholly, into her confidence so that she might get his help—for help she must have. Her mother was now impossible—quite demented on the subject of religion latterly through the long steeping of mind and heart in a theology whose heaven was hardly less formidable as an eternal prospect than its hell, and whose hell was a fiery sea canopied by shriek and stench of burning multitude. The old maid sisters had neither experience nor judgment, only bitterness. To them it would be inconceivable that a married woman, with a husband who supported her in comfort, could be other than blissfully happy. But her father— He had been a man of affairs, judge. He had lived and read and thought. She had heard her mother rebuke him for expressing "loose" opinions; probably he was concealing opinions even more liberal and enlightened and humane. Perhaps he could give her practical advice—or at least sympathy.
But, arrived at the farmhouse, she had only to look into those four countenances to see that she was among people who knew no more of the life of the present day—or indeed of the real life of any day, even of what they themselves actually believed and felt—than deep-sea oysters in their bed know of Alpine flowers. Even her father— In this remote desert he had lost what knowledge of life he formerly possessed. She was now developed enough to realize that he in fact never did know much about life, that his was a book education only. She had journeyed for help in vain; she was still alone, dependent wholly upon her own courage and resource.
"Don't you wish we hadn't come, mamma?" said Winchie when they were in the room assigned them.
"No," she replied truthfully. She was watching the hickory flames in a calmer mood than she had known for weeks; at least she had got away where she could think, could get an outside point of view upon the posture of her affairs. "No, indeed," she went on to Winchie leaning against her knee and looking up at her. "No, I feel better already."
"Then I guess I can stand it," said the boy with a sigh.
"You don't know about the hill where we can coast."
As he had never coasted, this did not lighten the impression made on him by the gloomy farmhouse sitting room, its walls and ceilings covered with somber paper, by the shriveled grandparents, with deep-sunk, lack-luster eyes, by the sharp, sour faces of the two old maids. But next day, when the sun came out and the farmhands beat down a track on the long hill, Winchie found the situation vastly improved. Flat on her breast on a sled, with the boy breathless and happy upon her back, she initiated him into the raptures of "belly-buster."
"Why, mamma, you look like a little girl, not a bit grown up," cried he after they had been at it all morning and were tugging up the hill for one last, magnificent rush down before going home to dinner. And she did indeed seem to be a sister of Winchie's, one hardly in her teens. Of course, the short skirt and her smallness of stature helped. But it was in her cheeks, in her eyes, in the curve of her lips as she showed her white teeth in the happiest of smiles.
"Iama little girl," declared she. And before starting out with him after dinner she did her hair in two long braids that hung below her waistline.
They coasted every day; they took long sleigh rides, long romping walks; they hunted rabbits, went fishing through the ice, were uproarious outside the house and in—the latter to the scandal of the three women of the family, who regarded such goings-on as clearly forbidden in the Scriptures. Even Sunday wasn't so bad as might have been expected; for it snowed too violently for Mrs. Benedict to take them to the church where her favorite doctrines were expounded, and they slipped away to the glorious outdoors. In a sheltered hollow under a shelf of rock they built an enormous snow man, with a top hat of bark. They ate what Winchie regarded as the most wonderful meal of his life at the cottage of one of the farmhands. Never before had he seen such brown brownbread or such molassessy molasses or eaten off such big, strong dishes that there wasn't the least danger of breaking, no matter what you did to them. And he was fascinated by the farmhand's wife and daughter, both acting their company best and eating with the little finger of each hand stuck straight out. And in a box in the corner of the room where they ate was a most exciting brood of little chickens, chirping and squeaking. And in the midst of dinner a huge, hairy, black dog suddenly snatched a piece of meat from the farmhand's plate and retired to the kitchen with it. "Ain't he a caution?" said the farmhand, and Winchie thought he certainly was.
Courtney was like those who put out to sea, leaving their troubles at the one shore, not to think of them until they touch the other. All around were the white hills, and there seemed to be no beyond. She abandoned her plan of studying her situation. She stopped thinking; she ate and slept, and played with the boy, and pretended that she was the little girl she looked, home from school for the holidays, and half hoping somehow something would happen so that there wouldn't be any school any more. She did not think, but she hoped. How? What? Where? She did not know; simply hope, that can burst the strongest grave despair ever buried it in.
Well along in the second week, toward the middle of the afternoon, she and Winchie were on the long hill, rounding out one more happy day. She was as happy as he. When all is lost save youth and health, what is really lost? She on her breast on the sled and he sprawled along her back, his arms round her neck, they shot down the steep with shouts and screams. They stopped, all covered with flying snow, in a soft bank beneath which the zigzag fence was deep buried. They rolled in the snow, washed each other's faces, stood up—were within a few feet of a man in a fur-lined coat almost to his heels. They stared, astounded. Then Winchie's face darkened and hers grew more radiant still as the tears sprang to her eyes.
"Basil!" she murmured, Winchie forgotten. "Oh—Basil!" And all in that instant the misery of those months of despair was gloriously transformed into joy.
"Courtney!" he cried. "How beautiful you are!"
He was extraordinarily handsome himself at that moment. Love is a matchless beautifier; and if ever love shone from a human countenance, it was shining, irradiating from his just then. With Winchie jealously watchful they shook hands. "Aren't you and Winchie going to speak to each other?" she asked. And Basil, with reluctance and some confusion held out a hand which the boy very hesitatingly touched.
"I'll pull your sled to the top for you," Basil offered. "Get on, Winchie."
The boy planted his feet more firmly in the snow. "We were going home," said Courtney.
"Get on, Winchie," cried Basil friendlily. "I'll haul you."
"I'm going to walk," replied the boy sullenly.
Courtney understood. "Get on, Winchie," said she. "I'll pull it."
The boy obeyed. The rope was long, so Basil felt free to speak in a lowered voice. "Seeing you—hearing you—touching you— O my darling! my Courtney!"
She forgot where she was, who she was, everything but love. Love! The road danced before her. The cry of the chickadees, the twitter of the snowbirds, the call of Bob White from the fence sounded like supernal music in her ears. The blood tingled and dizzied her nerves. Love again! "You care—still?" she murmured.
"Care? There's only you for me in all the world."
She caught her breath, like the swinger at the long swing's dizziest height when it halts to begin the delirious descent. "Love!" she murmured. "Love!"
"And I know you love me," he went on. "I've never doubted—not once. I've tried to doubt, but I couldn't. Up before me would come those dear eyes of yours, and—Courtney, there isn't a kiss—or a caress—hardly a touch of the hands you and I have ever lived that I haven't felt again and again."
"Don't!" she pleaded, her eyes swimming. "Don't, or I'll break down. My love—my love!"
"I don't know what would have become of me," he went on, "if I hadn't known you'd send for me—yes—in spite of your note. I expected it, for I knew you wouldn't be able to come. The more I thought, the clearer I saw. Not to go any further, there was the boy." He glanced round at Winchie; the angry gray-green eyes were fixed upon him. He glanced away, disconcerted. But he forgot Winchie when his eyes returned to her. "Beautiful! Beautiful—little girl," he murmured, his look sweeping her small, perfect figure to the edge of her short skirt. "I like your new way of wearing your hair."
She blushed. "I did it to make me feel young. I've been feeling so old—old and tired and lonely."
"Thank God, you sent for me."
"Sent for you! A hundred times a day in thought." She laughed aloud, sparkling like the ice-cased boughs in the late afternoon sun. "A thousand thousand times in longing—every time my heart beat."
"Oh, it is so good to be with you!" He drew in a huge draught of the clean, cold, vital air. "Does the sun anywhere else shine on such happiness as this? But I've been mad with happiness ever since the word came."
"The word? What word?"
"Vaughan's letter. I knew you got him to write it."
Courtney stopped short. "I!" she exclaimed. "I don't know what you mean."
"I got a letter from him three days ago. He asked me to take another quarter interest in his work—said he needed the money, as he found he'd been using more of his own in it than he could afford with justice to his family——"
"Oh!" cried Courtney sharply.
"What is it?" asked Basil.
She was looking straight ahead. "Nothing—nothing. Go on." And she started to walk again.
"Your cry sounded like pain."
"Did it? Go on."
"I assumed you had at last succeeded in making the chance for me to come back. So, I telegraphed I'd accept, provided he'd let me work with him again—and that I'd be on at once to talk things over. I took the first train—and here I am."
"Yes, here. That's another mystery to explain."
"Nothing simpler. The station man at Wenona told me you were visiting your father. I jumped at the chance. I can say I thought you all were here. Anything more?"
"I saw the announcement of your engagement."
"It's broken. I couldn't marry her—couldn't have done it in any circumstances. So, I gave her what she was losing by our not marrying. And I'm free. You want me to stay?"
He spoke indifferently about the money he had given up, and he evidently felt indifferent. She would have been hurt had he acted otherwise. At the same time it was a measure of his generosity and of his love, a sordid but certain measure. She regarded that payment as a sort of ransom—his ransom for the right to come to her. "That was his price for the right," thought she. "He paid it without a second thought—would have paid any price. My price for the right to be his may be harder. But I must pay, too—as generously as he."
He was watching her anxiously. "Courtney, I can't go away!"
"You mustn't," replied she. Then a reason—the reason—the solution of her life problem—came to her as if by inspiration. "It's my only chance to be a good woman. That sounds strange, doesn't it?"
"Not to me. I understand. If you hadn't sent for me soon—" he checked himself.
"What?"
"You didn't know that my coming here last spring—and loving you—cured me of the drinking habit. I know, it's stupid and disgusting. I used to loathe myself when I gave way. But it's the only resort in loneliness. And if I realized that you were lost to me, what would I care?"
She nodded sympathetically. "I was going all to pieces, in another way. I was sliding down as fast as Winchie and I were coasting the hill back there. I was going the way of all women who have no love—grown-up love—in their lives. I know now, the reason I used to keep myself together and built myself up and looked after things was because I was waiting and hoping for love, and was expecting it. Love is all of a woman's life, as things are run in this world—at present."
"And quite enough it is, too," said he.
"No," disagreed she. "But let that pass. If I went back to—to that life—alone, I'd be going to ruin. And I'd probably drag him and Winchie down with me. A woman of that unburied-dead sort drags down everybody about her.... You've only to look round, in any station of life, to see those women by the scores. Some few are saved by children—not many and they are of a different nature from me—from most women, I think.... If I don't go back, I either go to you disgraced, a shame to my family, a lifelong stain on my boy here, a miserable, afraid dependent of yours.... No, don't interrupt; I've thought it all out.... Or, I'd plunge into a life of social dissipation. If possible, that sort of woman is worse for herself and for her husband and children than the domestic rotter. A chattering, card-playing gadabout. Possibly I might remain true to my husband, but— If the world weren't the fool it is, it would have discovered long ago that there are worse vices than—" As always when she forced herself to say frank, merciless things, she looked straight into his eyes with defiant audacity—"worse vices than ours."
"But—" he began, shifting his gaze and coloring.
"Oh, yes, it is. Don't make any mistake about it. But I know lots of 'good' women—liars, gossips, naggers, petty swindlers of their husbands, envious, malicious, spiteful—lots and lots of so-called good women beside whom I'd feel white as this snow."
"Rather!" exclaimed Basil.
"So—if you'll go with me—I'm going home—to make it a home—to be a good mother—to give Richard at least his money's worth in care and comfort and—" She looked at him with eyes suddenly solemn—"and that is all, Basil—all. It's all I can give him, all he has the right to.... I'm going home to be a good woman, if you'll come and be there too."
"There's only one life for me—to be as near you as you'll let me."
A long silence. Then she again, sadly: "I don't know how it will work out. But—what else is there for us? We're not heroes. We're human. We must do the best we can. Together we may survive. Apart, I at least will perish—and destroy those near me. I suppose I'm all wrong. But"—with a sigh—"I'm doing the best I can."
Silence again. Then he, deeply moved: "I'll try to be worthy of you, dear."
"Worthy ofme? For God's sake, don't say those things. There isn't any pedestal I wouldn't fall off of and break to bits.... Basil—" wistfully—"you don't care for me in just a physical way—do you, dear?"
"I care for you in every way," he answered. "Courtney, I never believed I could respect a woman as I respect you. You know, men aren't brought up really to respect women—or themselves, for that matter."
"Then—couldn't we try to—" She lowered her head, faltered—"couldn't we live as if we were engaged only?"
"Why should we?" he cried.
"I know it's only a fancy. But fancies count more than facts.... I'd feel less the—" She faltered—paused.
"Yes—yes—I understand. And— Well, it doesn't do a man any good to be pretending friendship and smiling in another fellow's face, when all the time— I'll try, Courtney— But—it won't be exactly easy."
Her gaze burned for an instant on his, then dropped. "I should hope not!" murmured she.
They, absorbed in each other, moved so slowly along the road that Winchie, silent, motionless, sullen, upon the sled they were trailing as far as the rope permitted, was stiff with cold. But he did not murmur. By the time they reached the door of the farmhouse, Courtney and Basil had it all planned. He was to leave immediately after supper, was to go at once to Vaughan, make the arrangements, reinstall himself. She was to come home in three or four days—unless Vaughan sent, asking her to come sooner. He dined with the family at the farmhouse, made himself so agreeable that they were all pleased with him—even sister Ann whose bitterness over her failure at what she secretly regarded as woman's only excuse for being alive, took the unoriginal disguise of aggressive man-hating. At six o'clock he drove away in the starlight with a merry jingling of sleigh bells that echoed in Courtney's happy heart. The cold was intense; but she felt only warmth—that delicious warmth that comes from within. She stood on the little front porch, with the stars brilliant above and the snow white and smooth over hill and valley. She watched the swift dark sleigh—listened to those laughing bells, their music growing fainter and fainter—but not in her heart. She was so happy that the tears were in her eyes and the sobs in her throat. It was for her one of those moments in life when she asked nothing more, could imagine nothing that would add to joy. Love again!—and oh, what exalted love, to warm the heart and fill it with light and joy, to brighten every moment of life, to guide her up and ever up.
Winchie, standing beside her and looking up at her rapt face, tugged angrily at her skirts.
XVII
When the mail cart on the third afternoon failed to bring a letter from Richard, she decided that prudence had been satisfied, that she need wait no longer. Toward four she and Winchie set out, snuggled deep in furs and straw in the rear of a huge country sleigh. The roads were perfect; the snow was like a strand at low tide, rolled smooth and firm by the broad tires of high tide's billows. The big horses, steaming as if they were engines, flew as if they were a wind. But her impatient heart was always far ahead, fretting at their laggard pace.
They dashed into the outskirts of Wenona. The journey was ended except the mile and a half round the curve of the lake. She became all at once serenely calm. Life her real life—was now about to begin. It was far from the life she would have chosen, had she been prearranging her own fate. However—who could live an ideal life in such a topsy-turvy world? Nature and conventionality ever at war; right and wrong, not two straight paths, one up, the other down, but a tangle, a maze, a labyrinth. One must often travel the path of the wrong in order to reach the path of the right; and keeping to the path of the right often meant arriving in a hopeless network of blind alleys of the wrong. She was in the confused state about right and wrong characteristic of this era of transition that has seen the crumbling of the despotism of dogma, and has not yet received, or created, a moral guidance to replace it. "Life is a compromise, unless one lives alone and miserably and uselessly," thought she. "My life's to be a thistle with fig grafts. I'll do the best I can with it—Basil and I. With him to help me—his strength and character and self-denying love—with him to help, all may go well. Is my compromise—Basil's and mine—worse than those almost everyone has to make? If so, then they ought to educate women differently, and change marriage."
And when the sleigh reached the drive-front porch, making a dashing and musical arrival, she was in a mood of moral exaltation that might have stirred the enthusiasm of a saint—that is, a saint ignorant of the foundations of that mood or the processes by which it had reared itself skyward. Saints who are wise in the ways of humanity do not interrogate too closely the glitter and lift of moral temples; they know humanity has only humble materials with which to build.
The doors opened wide and, in a flood of bright warm air, redolent of the perfume of flowers, out came Dick to welcome them. "Iamglad!" cried he. Because of the peculiar relations long established between them—relations such as must exist in some degree between a husband and a wife before the triangular situation can ever even threaten—because of these peculiar relations, she had not anticipated and did not feel the least embarrassment. She was not defying or ignoring her husband; she had no husband. After he swung Winchie to the porch he turned to do the same service for her. But she had quickly disengaged herself from the robes and was standing beside him. He looked into her face, fully revealed by the pour of soft light from the hall. "Your trip certainly has done you good," said he.
"Thank you," replied she absently, presenting her left cheek for the necessary formality of the occasion. Her attention was wholly elsewhere.
In the hall before her there had appeared two people, hanging back discreetly, so that they would not intrude upon the family reunion. Basil, she expected. The woman beside him so astonished her that she forgot to be glad to see him.Whowas she? This tall, slender girl with the proud, regular features, the attractively done dark hair, the big, honest brown eyes? She glanced at Basil, standing beside this lovely girl and making a laughing remark; her feminine sight instantly noted how the remark was received by the girl—the flattering glance and smile a marriageable woman rarely wastes upon anything from one of her own sex or from an ineligible man. And through Courtney shot a pang that dissolved her structure of moral uplift as a needle thrust collapses a toy balloon. Who was this woman?—thisyoungwoman—thistallwoman—thishandsomewoman—so pleased with Basil Gallatin?
"Aren't you surprised to find Helen March here?" Dick was now saying.
Helen March! So, that scrawny, raw-boned girl, all freckles and pimples, and unable to manage her mouth, the Helen March she had seen three years before and had not seen since—so, that prim and homely gawk had developed into this stately creature! Prim, still—unless that expression was the familiar maidenly pose to attract wife hunters. But certainly neither homely nor awkward. She even dressed her hair well, and wore her clothes with quite an air. All this Courtney saw and felt and thought in a few twinklings of an eye—for in such circumstances a woman's mind works with the rapidity of genius, and with genius's grasp of essential detail. Helen was advancing.
"Don't you recognize me, Courtney?" she asked. The voice was one of those honest, pleasant voices that disarm the most cynical pessimists about human nature—the voice that makes theblasécity man fall to dreaming of taking a country girl to wife.
"NowI do, of course," said Courtney sweetly. And the two embraced and kissed.
To do this, Helen had to bend, as she was more than a head the taller. She bent with not a suggestion of condescension in manner or in thought. Nevertheless Courtney, for the first time in her life painfully sensitive about her stature, flamed and was resentful—and in her scorn of her own pettiness felt tinier within than without. True, Helen's figure was commonplace, the bust too high and ominously large for her age, the hips already faintly menacing, the waist and arms somewhat too short for the great length of leg. True, her own figure was—certainly better. Still, Helen had that advantage of height—could look at Basil level-eyed, could make her seem—short! And this Helen here to stay indefinitely!
There was pathos in the slow, sweet smile Courtney gave Basil as their trembling hands met in what seemed to the others a formal greeting. She turned away with a sigh. Just as she, the thirsty, the desert-bound, was all ready to rush forward and drink—the mirage vanished. Was it to be always so? Was life to be ever a succession of mirages, vanishing at approach, only to reappear and revive hope—and cheat again? Through her mind flashed the memory of the first one—an indelible memory, always for her symbolic of vain expectation: A fourth of July when she was a very small child—how she awakened at sunrise, rushed to the window to find sky clear and world radiant and ready for the picnic that was to be her first great positive joy; how she was dressed in her best, in wonderful new white frock, in white stockings and shoes and white bows covering the top buttons, shimmering sash of pale green, and bows of pale green on her braids; how, just as she descended in all her glory to issue forth, down came the rain—in floods—and no picnic, nothing but stay at home all day and weep and watch the downpour. "It was my horoscope," thought she, as she stood there in the hall too sad for bitterness over her spoiled home-coming. "Is it fate? Or, is it somehow my fault? My fault, I suppose. I must be asking of life something no one—at least, no woman—has the right to expect."
She was near the library door, with Winchie on its threshold staring round big-eyed and crying, "Oh, mamma Courtney. Look!" His eyes were no more wondering than her own. She had been too disheartened to make the library over into a conservatory that year; now, here it was transformed into a conservatory—the carpet up from the hardwood floor, plants beautiful for bloom or for foliage or for both in boxes, in jars, in pots—everywhere. A conservatory like that of former years, but more elaborate.
The others were laughing and watching her face. So she exclaimed "I am surprised!" in the indefinite tone the listener can easily adapt to his expectations. But she was not pleased—far from it. Another fierce pang of jealousy. She, modest about her own abilities, did not realize that the room lacked just the finishing touch of her exquisite taste. To her it seemed better far than she could have done. Why, she hadn't been needed, or missed even! Things went on as well in her absence as when she was here. And near her, side by side, were Basil and Helen—how she could feel them!—so well matched physically—and he fair, she dark. And Courtney had not that self-complacent, satisfied vanity which shelters so many of us from any and all misgivings and doubts.
"Helen did most of it," explained Vaughan. "She's a trump, you'll find. Look out, Helen, or we'll make you do all the work."
"Cousin Dick proposed it and really carried it out," protested Helen in her school-teacherish or collegiate speech and manner. "And Mr. Gallatin was invaluable in showing us how you had it last winter. We wanted to get it exactly the same."
Courtney turned brilliant, grateful eyes on Basil. "So, you remembered, did you?" she ventured to say, sure her meaning and her tone would pass the others safely.
Basil flushed. "You can judge for yourself," said he.
"I'm so overcome I don't know what to say." Their smiling, friendly faces, all bent upon her, made her natural generosity burst forth like April's unending green at the first warmth of the sun. Her eyes filled. "Thank you—thank you all!" she cried. "I am so—so—happy!" And she kissed Helen again, ashamed of her mean impulses toward one whose aloneness and poverty commanded kindness and consideration and help from another woman, especially from a woman who had known the bitterness of dependence and aloneness.
Good sense and decent instincts, having driven off jealousy, held the field—not without occasional alarms and excursions, but still decisively. It was the merriest party that had gathered about the mahogany dining-room table since Colonel 'Kill imported it from beyond the mountains, along with sundry novelties in those parts, in that early day—carpets and curtains and window glass, wall paper and carved beds and crystal chandeliers. In Colonel 'Kill's time the atmosphere had been genial but austere; Aunt Eudosia, during her brief reign between his death and her own, had maintained his traditions reverently; and Courtney had struggled not altogether with success, though bravely and resolutely, against the atmosphere that lingered on after all her brightening changes. But that night, the spell was broken. Dick put aside his chemistry; Basil and Courtney forgot him and their burden of deceit. Helen belied her mourning which, as Courtney had shrewdly guessed, was mere formality anyhow. Everyone was gay, even jealous little Winchie, devoting himself to Helen, determined to make her love him. And Courtney was gayest of all; was not that vacant place at the table filled once more? Her heart overflowed with joy and her lips and eyes with laughter each time she looked in that direction and saw—him! Everyone was gay except old Nanny, listening sourly to the merriment that came through door and hall into kitchen and sounded like a burst from a ballroom whenever Lizzie was passing in or out. "Poor young man!" muttered Nanny to her dishes and pans. "If he only knowed the whited sepulchre he's living amidst, what a holocaust there'd be." She did not know what holocaust meant, having got merely its vague sense from a sermon; thus, it gave her a conception of anarchy and chaos far beyond the scope of words she understood.
Courtney's emerald eyes, dancing and laughing though they were, scrutinized Basil. Not that she really suspected him; she simply wished to fortify herself against the folly and the unhappiness of suspicion—as women look under a bed before getting into it. Having fortified herself, she concentrated on Helen—Helen, the homeless, the unmarried, the eager to be married. There the results of her scrutiny were not so satisfactory. Basil would have called Helen's manner mere civility; and perhaps, in strict justice, it was nothing more. But Courtney the woman, judging Helen the woman, saw the hidden truth beneath the surface truth—saw that Helen was not without an instinct for a possible customer for the virtue so carefully nurtured against the coming of an opportunity for it to expand in the garden of matrimony with the flower and leaf and fruit of wife and mother. Courtney judged fairly, conceded that Helen was the reverse of forward, was using no arts, no subtleties. But the candidate for matrimony showed in her charmingly receptive and appreciative attitude toward the young man. The danger which Courtney foresaw and feared lay in the fact that Basil and Helen were both attractive. To Courtney it seemed a question of a very brief time when, without any effort whatever on her part, Helen must fall in love with him. What then? A well-bred, pretty woman in love is always more and ever more attractive to the man she centers upon. And Helen was free—and could be honorable throughout!
As Courtney undressed for bed, these reflections, so forbidding of aspect, faced her whichever way she turned. "I like Helen," she thought, "and it's decent and right to give her a home. If I were what I ought to be—ought to try to be—I'd give her every opportunity to win Basil. She's got to have some one to support her. I'm provided for. It's mean of me to stand in her way." She found some cheer in the reflection that, while most women would straight off hate Helen and look on her as an impudent interloper, she herself had generosity enough to be just in thought at least. "But I'm human," said she. "Helen has got to go. She doesn't love him. I do. She doesn't need him. I do. She's got to go!"
It was her habit to sit on the rug before the fire in her sitting room, and do her hair for the night; then she would sometimes stretch herself out flat upon her breast and read by the fire light or watch it and dream or think. She was lying that way, head pillowed upon a book and face toward the fire, when Dick opened the door, glanced in, entered. So absorbed was she that she did not know he was in the room until he spoke.
"It's like what Nanny would call a special providence, isn't it?" said he, seating himself on the sofa parallel to the fireplace but well back from it. He had a long dressing gown over his pajamas and was smoking a last cigarette.
"Special providence? What?" inquired she without turning her head. His entrance had not interrupted her train of thought. Her answer was, as usual, a reflex action from her surface mind.
"Why, Basil's coming back."
No reply. She was not thinking of Dick's statement of Basil's return as coming from him but as if she had herself begun to revolve it of her own accord.
"And Helen's being here."
A restless shiver. She was unconscious of Dick's presence. She was gazing absorbed at the proposition: Helen is here.
"It's just as we wanted it," he went on.
The lithe, delicately formed body grew tense. "Speak for yourself," she said curtly.
Richard received this rebuff in silence. "I know you don't like Basil," said he at length. "And, it's true he was a tank and a tear-about at college——"
There he stopped, shamefaced. He forgot he had told her about Basil; he felt it was undignified and unworthy gossip now that he had matrimonial designs upon him. "That slipped out," he said to her apologetically. "I never intended to tell you. Anyhow, he has dropped all that sort of thing, and I don't believe he'll ever turn loose again.... I wonder why that girl broke the engagement. He tells me he's free, and I suspect he wanted to come back because he's pretty badly cut up.... You will be nice to him, Courtney?—and help him and Helen along? They were intended for each other—height—contrast of coloring——"
Courtney sat up impatiently, turned her back to the fire to warm it, clasped her knees in her arms. She was conscious of him now, vaguely, unpleasantly conscious, though the ideas he had suggested still held most of her attention. Gradually she became uncomfortable; no, it was not the cold. Her wandering glance happened upon Richard's face. His expression— That was it! Not cold, but the sense of being looked at by eyes that had not the right. She blushed furiously from head to feet, had an impulse to snatch the rug about her and dart from the room.
"You are—beautiful!" he exclaimed, rising. "I was just contrasting you with Helen March this evening. She's undoubtedly handsome. Has height, and go, and, for a girl, really a surprising amount of——"
Courtney was not listening. She was thinking of her oversight in not locking her doors into the hall.
"Of charm—aside from the freshness that's about all there is to most girls, I imagine."
She must be careful not to irritate him, not to rouse him to the vigilance that nothing can escape. What a luckless beginning of a new life!
"And you're so well now—so alive——"
"I'm all but dead," she declared, pretending a yawn. "I must go to bed." She sprang lightly up. "Good night," she said. And to take away the sting—for, his slight wince showed her there was sting—she stood on tiptoe, hands behind her and face upturned.
His lips touched her cheek hesitatingly; fired by the contact, he took her in his arms and kissed her. She did not draw away; an instinct of prudence, not a deliberate thought, restrained her. She flushed from head to foot, her modesty wounded, her pride abased. "Good night," said he, lingeringly.
"Good night," she echoed, turning away to screen the fire.
Half an hour later all the lights in the house were out. She had gone to bed, but not to sleep. She suddenly sat up, gazed eagerly toward the window giving on the small veranda. It was open for the night; the shutters were latched, however, and through them came intensely cold air and some faint light. She thought she heard a tapping at the shutter—that shutter she had so often thrown wide in the hope that Basil had secretly returned. She listened. After a long wait, again the tapping—so soft that only the attention of an expectant listener would have been attracted.
"Basil!" she murmured. "I must have been expecting him."
She was about to dart to the window when there came a thought like a blow in the face flinging her back and making her cover her head. First the one man; now the other. "God!" she muttered. "How they will degrade me, between them."
No, it should not be! She grew angry with Basil. At the first opportunity, breaking his promise, trying to tempt her to become what he could not but despise.Thatwas what he calledlove! And how poorly he must think of her! ... She uncovered her head, listened. No repetition of the sound. She ran to the window, opened the shutter. No one! Yes—the snow on the rail had been disturbed. She leaned out. Snow—the black boughs—the biting midnight air—stars—the crescent moon with a pendant planet—the distant muffled sound of a horse stamping in its stall. She closed the shutter, went shivering back to bed—heartsick with disappointment.