Claude went on to the office as a matter of routine, but when his father appeared he begged to be allowed to go home again. "I'm not well, father," he complained, his pallor bearing out his statement.
Masterman's expression was compassionate. He was very gentle with his son since the latter had been going so often to the Darlings'. "All right, my boy. Do go home. Better drop in on Thor. Give you something to put you to rights."
But Claude didn't drop in on Thor. He climbed the hill north of the pond, taking the direction with which he was more familiar in the gloaming. In the morning sunlight he hardly recognized his surroundings, nor did he know where to look for Rosie at this unusual time of day. He was about to turn into the conservatory in which he was accustomed to find her, when an Italian with beady eyes and a knowing grin, who was raking a bed that had been prepared for early planting, pointed to the last hothouse in the row. Claude loathed the man for divining what he wanted, but obeyed him.
It was a cucumber-house. That is, where two or three months earlier there had been lettuce there were now cucumber-vines running on lines of twine, and already six feet high. It was like going into a vineyard, but a vineyard closer, denser, and more regular than any that ever grew in France. Except for one long, straight aisle no wider than the shoulders of a man it was like a solid mass of greenery, thicker than a jungle, and oppressive from the evenness of its altitude. Claude felt smothered, not only by the heat, but by this compact luxuriance that dwarfed him, and which was climbing, climbing still. It was prodigious. In its way it was grotesque. It was like something grown by magic. But a few weeks previous there had been nothing here but the smooth green pavement of cheerful little plants that at a distance looked like jade or malachite. Now, all of a sudden, as it were, there was this forest of rank verdure, sprung with a kind of hideous rapidity, stifling, overpowering, productive with a teeming, incredible fecundity. Low down near the earth the full-grown fruit, green with the faintest tip of gold, hung heavy, indolent, luscious, derisively cool to touch and taste in this semi-tropical heat. The gherkin a few inches above it defied the eye to detect the swelling and lengthening that were taking place as a man looked on. Tendrils crept and curled and twisted and interlocked from vine to vine like queer, blind, living things feeling after one another. Pale blossoms of the very color of the sunlight made the sunlight sunnier, while bees boomed from flower to flower, bearing the pollen from the males, shallow, cuplike, richly stamened, to the females growing daintily from the end of the embryo cucumber as from a pinched, wizened stem.
Advancing a few paces into this gigantic vinery, Claude found the one main aisle intersected by numerous cross-aisles in any of which Rosie might be working. He pushed his way slowly, partly because the warm air heavy with pollen made him faint, and partly because this close pressure of facile, triumphant nature had on his nerves a suggestion of the menacing. On the pathway of soft, dark loam his steps fell noiselessly.
When he came upon Rosie she was buried in the depths of an almost imperceptible cross-aisle and at the end remote from the center. As her back was toward him and she had not heard his approach, he watched her for a minute in silence. His quick eye noticed that she wore a blue-green cotton stuff, with leaf-green belt and collar, that made her the living element of her background, and that her movements and attitudes were of the kind to display the exquisite lines of her body. She was picking delicately the pale little blossoms and letting them flutter to the ground. Her way was strewn with the frail yellow things already beginning to wither and shrivel, adding their portion of earth unto earth, to be transmuted to life unto life with the next rotation in planting.
"Rosie, what are you doing?"
He expected her to be startled, but he was not prepared for the look of terror with which she turned. He couldn't know the degree to which all her thoughts were concentrated on him, nor the fears by which each of her waking minutes was accompanied. She would have been startled if he had come at one of his customary hours toward night; but it was as death in her heart to see him like this in the middle of the forenoon. The emotion was the greater on both sides because the long, narrow perspective focused the eyes of each on the face of the other, with no possibility of misreading. Claude remained where he was. Rosie clung for support to the feeble aid of the nearest vine.
She began to speak rapidly, not because she thought he wanted his question answered, but because it gave her something to say. It was like the effort to keep up by splashing about before going down. She was picking off the superfluous female flowers, she said, in order that the strength of the plant might go into the remaining ones. One had to do that, otherwise—
He broke in abruptly. "Rosie, why did you tell me Thor never said anything about you and me being married?"
"Oh, what's he been saying?" She clasped her hands on her breast, with a sudden beseeching alarm.
"It's not a matter of what he's been saying. It's only a matter of what you say. And I want you to tell me why he's paying me for marrying you."
He spoke brutally not only because his suffering nerves made him brutally inclined, but in the hope of wringing from her some cry of indignation. But she only said:
"I didn't know he was doing that."
"But you knew he was going to do something."
It seemed useless to poor Rosie to keep anything back now; she could only injure her cause by hedging. "I knew he was going to do something, but he didn't tell me what it would be."
"And why should he do anything at all? What had it to do with him?"
She wrung her hands. "Oh, Claude, I don't know. He came to me. He took me—he took me by surprise. I never thought of anything like that. I never dreamt it."
Claude drew a bow at a venture. "You mean that you never thought of anything like that when he said"—he was obliged to wet his lips with his tongue before he could get the words out—"when he said he was in love with you."
She nodded. "And, oh, Claude, I didn't mean it. I swear to you I didn't mean it. I knew he'd tell you. I was always afraid of him. But I just thought itthen—just for a minute. I couldn't have done it—"
He had but the dimmest suspicion of what she meant, but he felt it well to say: "You could have done it, Rosie, and you would. You're that kind."
She took one timid step toward him, clasping her hands more passionately. "Oh, Claude, have mercy on me. If you knew what it is to be me! Even if I had done it, it wouldn't have been because I lovedyouany the less. It would have been for father and mother and Matt—and—and everything."
The way in which the words rent her made him the more cruel. They made him the more cruel because they rent him, too. "That doesn't make any difference, Rosie. You would have done it just the same. As it is, you were false to me—"
"Only that once, Claude!"
"And if you want me to have mercy on you, you'll have to tell me everything that happened—the very worst."
"The worst that happened was then."
"Then? When? There were so many times."
"But the other times he didn't say anything at all. He just came. I never dreamt—"
"But if you had dreamt, you would have played another sort of hand. Now, wouldn't you?"
"Claude, if you only knew! If you could only imagine what it is to have nothing at all!—to have to live and fight and scrimp and save!—and no one to help you!—and your brother in jail!—and coming out!—coming out, Claude!—and no one to helphim!—and everything on you—!"
"That's got nothing to do with it, Rosie—"
"Ithasgot something to do with it. It's got everything to do with it. If it hadn't, do you think that I'd have said that I'd marry him?"
Claude felt like a man who knows he's been shot, but as yet is unconscious of the wound. He spoke quietly: "I think I wouldn't have said that I'd marry two men at the same time, and play one off against the other."
There was exasperation in her voice as she cried: "But how could I help it, Claude? Can't yousee? It wasn'thim."
"Oh, I can see that well enough. But do you think it makes it any better?"
"It makes it better if I never would have done it unless I'd been obliged to."
"But you'd havedoneit—"
"No, Claude, I wouldn't—not when it came to the point."
"But why didn't it come to the point? Since you told him you were willing to marry him, why—?"
She implored him. "Oh, what's the use of asking me that, if he's told you already?"
"It's this use, Rosie, that I want to hear it from yourself. You've told me one lie—"
"Oh, Claude!"
"And I want to see if you'll tell me any more."
"I didn't mean it to be a lie, Claude; but what could I say?"
"When we don't mean a thing to be a lie, Rosie, we tell the truth."
"But howcouldI!"
"Well, perhaps you couldn't; but you can now. You can tell me just what happened—and why more didn't happen, since you were willing that it should."
She began with difficulty, wringing her hands. "It was last January—I think it was January—yes, it was—one evening—I was in the other hothouse making out bills—and he came all of a sudden—and he asked me—he asked me—"
"Yes, yes; go on."
"He asked me if I loved you, and I said I did. And he asked me how much I loved you, and I said—I said I'd die for you—and so I would, Claude. I'd do it gladly. You can believe me or not—"
"That's all right. What I want to know is what happened after that."
"And then he said he'd help us. I didn't understand how he meant to help us—and I didn't quite believe him. You see, Claude, even if he is your brother, I never really liked him—or trusted him—not really. There was always something about him I couldn't make out—and now I see what it is. I knew he'd tell. And he made me promise I wouldn't."
"He made you promise you wouldn't tell—what?"
"What he said to me. He said he might go and marry some one else—and then he wouldn't want what he said to me to be known, because it would make trouble."
"But what did he say?"
"Don't youknowwhat he said?"
"It doesn't matter whether I know or not, Rosie. It's for you to tell me."
She wrestled with herself. "Oh, Claude, I don't want to. I wish you wouldn't make me."
"Go on, Rosie; go on."
"He said he was in love with me himself—and that if I hadn't been in love with you—"
He was able to help her out. "That he'd have married you."
She nodded, piteously.
"And you said—?"
"Oh, Claude, what's the use?" She gathered her forces together. "I didn't say anything—not then."
"But you told him afterward that you were willing to marryhimwhether you were in love with me or not."
"No; not like that. I—I really didn't say anything at all."
"You just let him see it."
Again she nodded. "He said it himself. He could see—he could see how I felt—that it was like a temptation to me—that it was like bread and water held out to a starving man."
"That is, that the money was?"
She beat one hand against the other as she pressed them against her breast. "Don't you see? It had to be that way. I couldn't see all that money come right—come right into sight—and not wish—just for that minute—that I could have it. Could I, now?"
"No; I don't suppose you could, Rosie—being what you are. But, you see, I thought you were something else."
"Oh no, Claude, you didn't. You've known all along—"
"You mean, I thought I knew all along! But I find I didn't. I find that you're only willing to marry me because Thor wouldn't take you."
"He couldn't take me after I said I'd die for you. How could he?"
"And how can I—after you've said you were willing—!" He threw out his arms with a gesture. "Oh, Rosie, what do you think I feel?"
She crept a little nearer. "I should think you'd feel pity, Claude."
"So I do—for myself. One's always sorry for a fool. But you haven't told me everything yet. You haven't told me what he said about me."
She tried to recollect herself. "About you, Claude? Oh yes. He asked me what our relation was to each other, and I said I didn't know. And then he asked me if you were going to marry me, and I said I didn't know that, either. And then he said not to be afraid, because—because—"
"Because he'd make—"
"No, he didn't say that. I asked him if he'd make you, and he said he wouldn't have to, because you'd do it whether or no, or something like that—I don't just remember what."
"He didn't say I'd do it because he'd give me five thousand dollars a year for the job, did he?"
She shook her head. She began to look dazed. "No, Claude, he didn't say anything like that at all."
"Well, he said it to me. And he was going to do it. He thinks he's going to do it still."
"And isn't he?"
"No, Rosie. I've got better fish to fry than that. If I'm for sale I shall go high."
"Oh, Claude, what do you mean? What are you going to do?"
"I'll tell you, Rosie. It'll give you an idea of the chap I am—of what I was willing to renounce for you. I was talking to a girl last night who let me see that she was all ready to marry me. She didn't say it in so many words, of course; but that's what it amounted to. She lives in a big house, with ten or twelve servants, and is the only child of one of the richest men in the city. She's what you'd call an heiress—and she's a pretty girl, too."
"And what did you say to her, Claude?"
"I told her I couldn't. I told her about you."
"About me? Oh, Claude! And what did she say?"
"She said it was splendid for a chap with my future to fall in love with a girl like you and be true to her. But, you see, Rosie, I thought you were true to me."
"Oh, but I am, Claude!"
He laughed. "True? Why, Rosie, you don't know the meaning of the word! When Thor whistles for you—as he will—you'll go after him like that." He snapped his fingers. "He'll only have to name your price."
She paid no attention to these words, nor to the insult they contained. Her arms were crossed on her breast, her face was turned to him earnestly. "Yes; but what about this other girl, Claude?"
He spoke with apparent carelessness. "Oh, about her?" He nodded in the direction of the door at the end of the hothouse and of the world that lay beyond it. "I'm going to marry her."
She looked puzzled. Her air was that of a person who had never heard similar words before. "You're going to—what?"
"I'm going to marry her, Rosie."
For a few seconds there was no change in her attitude. She seemed to be taking his statement in. When the meaning came to her she withdrew her eyes from his face, and dropped her arms heavily. More seconds passed while she stood like that, meek, crushed, sentenced, her head partially averted, her eyes downcast. Presently she moved, but it was only to begin again, absently, mechanically, to pick the superfluous female blossoms from the nearest vine, letting the delicate, pale-gold things flutter to the ground. It was long before she spoke in a childish, unresentful voice:
"Are you, Claude?"
He answered, firmly, "Yes, Rosie; I am."
She sighed. "Oh, very well."
He could see that for the moment she had no spirit to say more. Her very movements betrayed lassitude, dejection. Though his heart smote him, he felt constrained to speak on his own behalf.
"You'll remember that it wasn't my fault."
She went on with her picking silently, but with a weary motion of the hands. The resumption of the task compelled her to turn her back to him, in the position in which he had found her when he arrived.
"I'm simply doing what you would have done yourself—only Thor wouldn't let you."
She made no response. The picking of the blossoms took her away from him, step by step. He made another effort to let her see things from his point of view.
"It wouldn't be honorable for me now, Rosie, to be paid for doing a thing like that. Itwouldbe payment to me, though he was going to settle the money on you."
Even this last piece of information had no effect on her; she probably didn't understand its terms. Her fingers picked and dropped the blossoms slowly till she reached the end of her row.
He thought that now she would have to turn. If she turned he could probably wring from her the word of dismissal or absolution that alone would satisfy his conscience. He didn't know that she could slip around the dense mass of foliage and be out of sight. When she did so, amazement came to him slowly.
Expecting her to reappear, he stood irresolute. He could go after her and clasp her in his arms again—or he could steal down the narrow aisle of greenery and pass out of her life for ever. Out of her life, she would be out of his life—and there was much to be said in favor of achieving that condition. There was outraged love in Claude's heart, and also some calculation. It was not all calculation, neither was it all outraged love. If Rosie had flung him one piteous backward look, or held out her hands, or sobbed, he might have melted. But she did nothing. She only disappeared. She was lying like a stricken animal behind the thick screen of leaves, but he didn't know it. In any case, he gave her the option of coming back.
He gave her the option and waited. He waited in the overpowering heat, amid the low humming of bees. The minutes passed; there was neither sound among the vines nor footstep beside him; and so, with head bent and eyes streaming and head aching and nerves unstrung and conscience clamoring reproachfully, he turned and went his way.
He surprised his father by going back to the bank. "Look here, father," he confessed, "I'm not ill. I'm only terribly upset about—about something. Can't you send me to New York? Isn't there any business—?"
Masterman looked at him gravely and kindly. He divined what was happening. "There's nothing in New York," he said, after a minute's thinking, "but there's the Routh matter in Chicago. Why shouldn't you go there? Mr. Wright was taking it up himself. Was leaving by the four-o'clock train this afternoon. Go and tell him I want you to take his place. He'll explain the thing to you and supply you with funds. And," he added, after another minute's thought, "since you're going that far, why shouldn't you run on to the Pacific coast? Do you good. I've thought for some time past that you needed a little change. Take your own time—and all the money you want."
Claude was trying to articulate his thanks when his father cut him short. "All right, my boy. I know how you feel. If you're going to take the four-o'clock you've no time to lose. Good-by," he continued, holding out his hand heartily. "Good luck. God bless you!"
The young man got himself out of his father's room in order to keep from bursting into tears.
As Thor and Lois breakfasted on the following Sunday the former was too busy with the paper to notice that his wife seemed preoccupied. He was made to understand it by her manner of saying, "Thor."
Dropping the paper, he gave her his attention. "Yes?"
Her head was inclined to one side as she trifled with her toast. "You know, Thor, that it's an old custom for newly married people to go to church together on the first Sunday they're at home."
"Oh, Lord!"
She had expected the exclamation. She also expected the half-humorous, half-repentant compliance which ensued.
"All right, I'll go."
It was the sort of yielding that followed on all his bits of resistance to her wishes—a yielding on second thought—a yielding through compunction—as though he were trying to make up to her for something he wasn't giving her. She laughed to herself at that, seeing that he gave her everything; but she meant that if she were not so favored she might have harbored the suspicion that on account of something lacking in their life he fell back on a form of reparation. As it was, she could only ascribe his peculiarity in this respect to the kindness of a nature that never seemed to think it could be kind enough.
It was her turn to feel compunction. "Don't go if you'd rather not. It's only a country custom, almost gone out of fashion nowadays."
But he persisted. "Oh, I'll go. Must put on another suit. Top-hat, of course."
With a good woman's satisfaction in getting her husband to church, if only for once, she said no more in the way of dissuasion. Besides, she hoped that, should he go, he might "hear something" that would comfort this hidden grief of which she no longer had a doubt, since Claude too, was aware of it. It was curious how it betrayed itself—neither by act nor word nor manner, nor so much as a sigh, and yet by a something indefinable beyond all his watchfulness to conceal from her. She couldn't guess at his trouble, even when she tried; but she tried only from inadvertence. When she caught herself doing so she refrained, respecting his secret till he thought it well to tell her.
She said no more till he again dropped the paper to give his attention to his coffee. "Have you been to see the Fays yet?"
He put the cup down without tasting it. He sat quite upright and looked at her strangely. He even flushed.
"Why, no."
The tone appealed to her ear and remained in her memory, though for the moment she had no reason to consider it significant. She merely answered, "I thought I might walk up the hill and see Rosie this afternoon," leaving the subject there.
Thor found the service novel, and impressive from its novelty. Except for the few weddings and funerals he had attended, and the service on the day he married Lois, he could hardly remember when he had been present as a formal participant at a religious ceremony. He had, therefore, no preconceived ideas concerning Christian worship, and not much in the way of prejudice. He had dropped in occasionally on the services of foreign cathedrals, but purely as a tourist who made no attempt to understand what was taking place. On this particular morning, however, the pressure of needs and emotions within his soul induced an inquiring frame of mind.
On reaching the pew to which Lois led him he sat down awkwardly, looking for a place in which to bestow his top-hat without ruffling its gloss. Lois herself fell on her knees in prayer. The act took him by surprise. It was new to him. He was aware that she said prayers in private, and had a vague idea of the import of the rite; but this public, unabashed devotion gave him a little shock till he saw that others came in and engaged in it. They entered and knelt, not in obedience to any pre-concerted ceremony, but each on his own impulse, and rose, looking, so it seemed to Thor, reassured and stilled.
That was his next impression—reassurance, stillness. There was a serenity here that he had never before had occasion to recognize as part of life. People whom he knew in a commonplace way as this or that in the village sat hushed, tranquil, dignified above their ordinary state, raised to a level higher than any that could be reached by their own attainments or personalities. It seemed to him that he had come into a world of new standards, new values. Lois herself, as she rose from her knees and sat beside him, gained in a quality which he had no capacity to gauge.
He belonged to the new scientific school which studies and co-relates, but is chary of affirmations, and charier still of denials. "Never deny anything—ne niez jamais rien"—had been one of the standing bits of advice on the part of old Hervieu, under whom he had worked at the Institut Pasteur. He kept himself, therefore, in a non-hostile attitude toward all theories and systems. He had but a hazy idea as to Christian beliefs, but he knew in a general way that they were preposterous. Preposterous as they might be, it was his place, however, to observe phenomena, and, now that he had an opportunity to do so, he observed them.
"How did you like it?" Lois ventured, timidly, as after service they walked along County Street.
"I liked it."
"Why?"
The answer astonished her. "It was big."
"Big? How?"
"The sweep—the ideas. So high—so universal! Makes a tremendous appeal to—the imagination."
She smiled toward him shyly. "It's something, isn't it, to appeal to the imagination?"
"Oh, lots—since imagination rules the world."
They were on their way to lunch with Thor's father and stepmother. Now that there were two households in the family, the father insisted on a domestic reunion once a week. It was his way of expressing paternal forbearance under the blow Thor had dealt him in marrying Lois Willoughby.
"Where's Claude?"
Thor asked the question on sitting down to table. His father looked at his mother, who replied, with some self-consciousness:
"He's—he's gone West."
"West? Where?"
"To Chicago first, isn't it, Archie?"
Masterman admitted that it was to Chicago first, and to the Pacific coast afterward. Thor's dismay was such that Lois looked at him in surprise. "Why, Thor? What difference can it make to you? Claude's able to travel alone, isn't he?"
The efforts made by both his parents to carry off the matter lightly convinced Thor that there was more in Claude's departure than either business or pleasure would explain. Before Lois, who was not yet in the family secret, he could ask no questions; but it seemed to him that both his father and his mother had uneasiness written in their faces. He could hardly eat. He bolted his food only to put Lois off the scent. The old tumult in his soul which he was seeking every means to still was beginning to break out again. If it should prove that he had given up Rosie Fay to Claude, and that, with his parents' connivance, Claude was trying to abandon her, then, by God....
But he caught Lois's eye. She was watching him, not so much in disquietude as with faint amusement. It seemed odd to her that Claude's going away for a holiday should vex him so. Poor Lois! He was already afraid on her account—afraid that if Rosie Fay were left deserted—free!—and a temptation he couldn't resist were to come to him!—Lois would be the one to suffer most.
By the middle of the afternoon, when his father had gone off in one direction and Lois in another, he found an opportunity for the word with his stepmother which he had hung about the house to get.
"There's nothing behind this, is there?"
She averted her head. "How do I know, Thor?Ihad nothing to do with it. All I know is just what happened. Claude came rushing home last Wednesday, and said he had to go right off to Chicago on business. I helped him pack—and he went."
"Why didn't any one tell me?"
"Well, you haven't been at the house. And it didn't seem important enough—"
"But it is important, isn't it? Doesn't father think so?"
She tried to look at him frankly. "Your father doesn't know any more about it than I know—and that's nothing at all. Claude came to him and said—but I really oughtn't to tell you, Thor. Your father would be annoyed with me."
"Then it's something that's got to be kept from me."
"N-no; not exactly. It's only poor Claude's secret. We didn't try to wring it from him because—Oh, Thor, I wish you would let things take their course. I'm sure it would be best."
"Best to let Claude be a scoundrel?"
"Oh, he couldn't be that. I want to be just to that girl, but we both know that there are queer things about her. There's that man who's giving her money—and dear knows what there may be besides. And so if theyhavequarreled—"
But Thor rushed away. Having learned all he needed to know on that side, he must hear what was to be said on the other. He had hoped never again to be brought face to face with Rosie till she was his brother's wife. That condition would have dug such a gulf between them that even nature would be changed. But if she was not to be Claude's wife—if Claude was becoming a brute to her—then she must see that at least she had a friend.
His heart was so hot within him as he climbed the hill that he forgot that Lois would probably be there before him. As a matter of fact, she was talking to Fay in a corner of the yard, standing in the shade of a great magnolia that was a pyramid of bloom. All around it the ground was strewn in a circle with its dead-white petals, each with its flush of red. Near the house there were yellow clumps of forsythia, while the hedge of bridal-veil to the south of the grass-plot seemed to have just received a fall of snow.
Fay confronted him as, slackening his pace, he went toward them; but Lois turned only at his approach. Her expression was troubled.
"Thor, I wish you'd explain to me what Mr. Fay is saying. He doesn't want me to see Rosie."
"Why, what's up?"
Fay's expression told him that something serious was up, for it was ashen. It had grown old and sunken, and the eyes had changed their starry vagueness to a dulled animosity.
"There's this much up, Dr. Thor," Fay said, in that tone of his which was at once mild and hostile, "that I don't want any Masterman to have anything to do with me or mine."
Thor tried to control the sharpness of his cry. "Why not?"
"You ought to know why not, Dr. Thor. And if you don't, you've only to look at my little girl. Oh, why couldn't you leave her alone?"
Lois spoke anxiously. "Is anything the matter with her?"
"Only that you've killed her between you."
Thor allowed Lois to question him. "Why, whatcanyou mean?"
"Just what I say, ma'am—that she's done for."
Lois grew impatient. "But I don't understand. Done for—how?" She turned to her husband. "Oh, Thor, do see her and find out what's the matter."
"No, ma'am," Fay said, firmly. "He's seen her once too often as it is."
Lois repeated the words. "'Once too often as it is'! What does that mean?"
"Better askhim, ma'am."
"It's no use asking me," Thor declared, "for I've not the slightest idea of what you're driving at."
"Oh, I know you can play the innocent, Dr. Thor; but it's no use keeping up the game. You took me in at first; you took me in right along. You were going to be a friend to me!—and buy the place!—and keep me in it to work it!—and every sort of palaver like that!—when you was only after my little girl."
Thor was dumb. It was Lois who protested. "Oh, Mr. Fay, how can you say such things? It's wicked."
"It may be wicked, all right, ma'am; but askhimhow I can say them. All I know is what I've seen. If you was going to marry this lady," he went on, turning again to Thor, "why couldn't you have kept away from my little girl? You didn't do yourself any good, and you did her a lot of harm."
It was to come to Thor's aid as he stood speechless that Lois said, soothingly: "But I had nothing to do with that, Mr. Fay. I never wanted anything of Rosie but to be her friend."
"You, ma'am? You're all of a piece. You're all Mastermans together. What had you to do with being a friend to her?—getting her to call!—and have tea!—and putting notions into her head! The rich and the poor can't be friends any longer. If the poor think they can, the more fool they! We'vebeenfools in my family, thinking because we were Americans we had rights. There's no rights any more, except the right of the strong to trample on the weak—till some one tramples onthem. And some one always does. There's that. We're down to-day, but you'll be down to-morrow. Don't forget it, ma'am. America has that kind of justice when it hasn't any other—that it makes everybody take their turn. It's ours now; but you'll get yours as sure as life is life."
Lois looked at Thor. "Can you make out what he means?"
"I can make out that he's very much mistaken—"
"Mistaken, Dr. Thor? I don't see how you can say that. I wasn't mistaken the night I saw you creeping into that hothouse over there, where you knew my little girl was at work. I wasn't mistaken when I saw you creep away. Still less was I mistaken when I stole in after you had gone, and found her with her arms on the desk, and her head bowed down on them, and she crying fit to kill herself. That was just a few days before she heard you was going to marry this lady—and she's never been the same child since. Always troubled—always something on her mind. Not once since that night have you darkened these doors, though you'd had a patient here. Have you, now?"
"I didn't come," Thor stammered, "because Dr. Hilary had done all that was necessary for Mrs. Fay, and—and I've been away."
"But if you didn't come," Fay went on, with the mildness that was more forcible than wrath, "some one else did. You'd left a good substitute. He's finished the work that you began. He was here with her an hour last Wednesday morning—just after I'd warned him off for good and all."
Thor started. "Let me go to her."
But Fay stood in his way. "No, sir. To see you would be the finishing touch. She can't hear your name without a shiver going through her from head to foot. We've tried it on her. Between the two of you—your brother and you—it's you she's most afraid of." There was silence for a second, while he turned his gray face first to the one and then to the other of his two listeners. "Why couldn't you all have let her be? What were you after? What have you got out of it?Ican't see."
"Fay, I swear to you that we never wanted anything but her good," Thor cried, with a passion that made Lois turn her troubled eyes on him searchingly. "If my brother hasn't told you what he meant, I'll do it now. He wanted to marry Rosie. Hewasto have married her. If there's trouble between them, it's all a mistake. Just let me see her—"
But Fay dismissed this as idle talk. "No, Dr Thor. Stories of that kind don't do any good. Your brother never wanted to marry her, or meant to, either—not any more than you. What you did want and what you did mean God only knows. It's mystery to me. But what isn't mystery to me is that we're all done for. Now that she's gone, we're all gone—the lot of us. I've kept up till now—"
"If money will do any good, Fay—" Thor began, with a catch in his voice.
"No, Dr. Thor; not now. Money might have helped us once, but I ain't going to take a price for my little girl's unhappiness."
"But whatwoulddo good, Mr. Fay?" Lois asked. "If you'd only tell us—"
"Then, ma'am, I will. It's to let us be. Don't come near me nor mine any more—none o' you."
She turned to Thor. "Thor, is it true that Claude wanted to marry Rosie? I've never heard of it."
"Oh yes, ma'am, you have," Fay broke in, with irony. "We've all heard of that kind o' marriage. It's as old as men and women on the earth. But it don't go down with me; and if I find that my little girl has been taken in by it, then I sha'n't be to blame if—if some one gets what he deserves."
The words were uttered in tones so mild that, as he shuffled away, leaving them staring at each other, they scarcely knew that there had been a threat in them.
It was an incoherent tale that Thor stammered out to Lois as he and she walked homeward. By trying to tell Claude's story without including his own he was, for the first time since the days of school-boy escapades, making a deliberate attempt at prevarication. He suppressed certain facts, and over-emphasized others. He did it with a sense of humiliation which became acute when he began to suspect that he was not deceiving her. She walked on, saying nothing at all. Now and then, when he ventured to glance at her in profile, she turned to give him a sick, sad smile that seemed to draw its sweetness from the futility of his efforts. "My God, she knows!" were the words actually in his mind while he went floundering on with the explanation of why he couldn't allow Claude to be a cad.
And yet, except for those smiles of an elusiveness beyond him, she betrayed no hint of being stricken in the way he was afraid of. On the contrary, she seemed, when she spoke, to be giving her mind entirely to the course of Claude's romance. "He won't marry her. He'll marry Elsie Darling."
An hour ago the assertion would have angered him. Now he was relieved that she had the spirit to make it at all. He endeavored to imitate her tone. "What makes you think so?"
"I know Claude. She's the sort of girl for him to marry. There's good in him, and she'll bring it out."
"Unfortunately, it's too late to think of Claude's good when he's pledged to some one else."
"Would you make him marry her?"
"I'd make him do his duty."
She gave him another of those faint smiles of which the real meaning baffled him. "I wouldn't lay too much stress on that, if I were you. To marry for the sake of doing one's duty is"—she faltered an instant, but recovered herself—"is as likely as not to defeat its own ends."
He was afraid to pursue the topic lest she should speak more plainly. On arriving home he was glad to see her go to her room and shut the door. It grieved him to think that she might be brooding in silence, but even that was better than speech. As Uncle Sim and Cousin Amy Dawes were coming to Sunday-night supper, the evening would be safe; and to avoid being face to face with her in the meanwhile he went out again.
Having passed an hour in his office, he strolled up into the wood above the village, his refuge from boyhood onward in any hour of trouble. There was space here, and air, and solitude. It was a diversion that was almost a form of consolation to be in touch with the wood's teeming life. Moreover, the trees, with their stately aloofness from mortal cares, their strifelessness and strength, shed on him a kind of benediction. From long association, from days of bird's-nesting in spring, and camping in summer, and nutting in autumn, and snow-shoeing in winter, he knew them almost as individual personalities—the great white oaks, the paper birches, the white pines with knots that were masses of dry resin, the Canada balsams with odorous boughs, the sugar-maples, the silver maples, the beeches, the junipers, the hemlocks, the hackmatacks, with the low-growing hickories, witch-hazels, and slippery-elms. Their green was the green of early May—yellow-green, red-green, bronze-green, brown-green, but nowhere as yet the full, rich hue of summer. Here and there a choke-cherry in full bloom swayed and shivered like a wraith. In shady places the ferns were unfolding in company with Solomon's-seal, wake-robin, the lady's-slipper, and the painted trillium. There was an abundance of yellow—cinquefoil, crowfoot, ragwort, bellwort, and shy patches of gold-colored violets.
In the sloping outskirts of the wood he stood still and breathed deeply, a portion of his cares and difficulties slipping from his shoulders. Somewhere within him was the sense of kinship with the wilderness that has become atavistic in Americans of six or eight generations on the soil. It was like skipping two centuries and getting back where life was primitive from necessity. There were few if any complications here, nor were there subtleties to consider. As far back as he knew anything of his Thorley ancestors, they had hewed and hacked and delved and tilled on and about this hillside, getting their changes from its seasons, their food from its products, their science from its bird-life and beast-life, their arts and their simples, their dyes and their drinks from its roots and juices. To the extent that men and the primeval could be one, they had been one with the forest of which nothing but this upland sweep remained, treating it as both friend and enemy. As enemy they had felled it; as friend they had lived its life and loved it, transmitting their love to this son, who was now bringing his heartaches, as he was accustomed also to bring his joys, where they had brought their own.
The advantage of the wood to Thor was that once within its shadows he could, to some degree, stop thinking of the life outside. He could give his first attention to the sounds and phenomena about him. As he stood now, listening to the resonant tapping of a hairy woodpecker on a dead tree-trunk he could forget that the world held a Lois, a Rosie, and a Claude, each a storm-center of emotions. It was a respite from emotions—in a measure, a respite from himself. He stepped craftily, following the sound of the woodpecker's tap till he had the satisfaction of seeing a black-and-white back, with a red band across the busily bobbing head. He stopped again to watch a chipmunk who was more sharply watching him. The little fellow, red-brown and striped, sat cocked on a stone, his fore paws crossed on his white breast like the hands of a meek saint at prayer. Strolling on again, he paused from time to time—to listen to a robin singing right overhead, or to catch the liquid, spiritual chant of a hermit-thrush in some stiller thicket of the wood, or to watch a bluebird fly directly into its nest, probably an abandoned woodpecker's hole, in a decaying Norway pine. These small happenings soothed him. Sauntering and pausing, he came up to the high, treeless ridge he had last visited on the day he asked Lois to marry him.
The ridge broke sharply downward to a stretch of undulating farms. Patches of green meadowland were interspersed with the broad, red fields in which as yet nothing had begun to grow. Had it not been Sunday the farmers would have been at work, plowing, sowing, harrowing. As it was, the landscape enjoyed a rich Sabbath peace, broken only by the swooping of birds, out of the invisible, across the line of sight, and on into the invisible again. It was all beauty and promise of beauty, wealth and promise of wealth. The cherry-trees were in bloom; the pear and the apple and the quince would follow soon. Above the farm-houses tall elms rose, fan-shaped and garlanded.
The very charm of the prospect called up those questions he had been trying for a minute to shelve. How was it that in a land of milk and honey men were finding it so hard to live? How was it that with conditions in which every man might have enough and to spare, making it his aim to see that his fellow had the same, there could be greed and ingenious oppression and social crime, with the menace of things graver still? What's the matter with us? he asked, helplessly. Was it something wrong with the American people? or was it something wrong with the whole human race? or was it a condition of permanent strife that the human race could never escape from? Was man a being capable of high spiritual attainment, as he had heard in the church that morning? or was he no better than the ruthless creatures of the woodland, where the weasel preyed on the chipmunk, and the owl on the mouse, and the fox on the rabbit, and the shrike on the ph[oe]be, and the ph[oe]be on the insect, in an endless round of ferocity? Had man emerged above this estate? or was it as foolish to expect him to spare his brother-man as to ask a hawk to spare a hen?
These questions bore on Thor's immediate thoughts and conduct. They bore on his relations with his father and Claude and Lois. Through the social web in which he found himself involved they bore on Rosie Fay; and from the social web they worked out to the great national ideals in which he longed to see his native land a sanctuary for mankind. But could man build a sanctuary? Would he know how to make use of one? Or was he, Thor Masterman, but repeating the error of that great-grandfather who had turned to America for the salvation of the race, and died broken-hearted because its people were only looking out for number one?
Because he couldn't find answers to these questions for himself, he tried, during supper, to sound Uncle Sim, leading up to the subject by an adroit indirectness. "Been to church," he said, after serving Cousin Amy Dawes with lobster à la Newburg.
"Saw you," came from Uncle Sim.
"Did you? What were you doing there? Thought you were a disciple of old Hilary."
"That was the reason. Hilary's idea. Can't go 'round to the different churches himself, so he sends me. Look in on 'em all."
"There's too much sherry in this lobster à la Newburg," Cousin Amy Dawes said, sternly. "I bet she's put in two tablespoonfuls instead of one."
Being stone-deaf, Cousin Amy Dawes took no part in conversation except what she herself could contribute. She was a dignified woman who had the air of being hewn in granite. There was nothing soft about her but three detachable corkscrew curls on each side of an immobile face and a heart that every one knew to be as maternal as milk. Dressed in stiff black silk, a heavy gold chain around her neck, and a huge gold brooch at her throat, and wearing fingerless black-silk mittens, she might have walked out of an old daguerreotype.
"I should think," Thor observed, dryly, "that you'd find your religion growing rather composite."
"No. T'other way 'round. Grows simpler. Get their co-ordinating principle—the common denominator that goes into 'em all."
"That is," Lois said, in the endeavor to be free to think her own thoughts by keeping him on a hobby, "you look for their points of contact rather than their differences."
"Oh, you get beyond the differences. 'Beyond these voices there is peace.' Doesn't some one say that? Well, you get there. If you can stand the clamor of the voices for a while you emerge into a kind of still place where they blend into one. Then you find that they're all trying to say the same thing, which is also the thing you're trying to say yourself."
As he sat back in his chair twisting his wiry mustache with a handsome, sun-burnt hand, Thor felt that he had him where he had been hoping to get him. "But whatdowe want to say, Uncle Sim? What do you want to say? And what do I?"
The old man held his sharp-pointed beard by the tip, eying his nephew obliquely. "That's the great secret, Thor. We're all like little babies, who from the time they begin to hear language are bursting with the desire to say something; only they don't know what it is till they learn to speak. Then it comes to 'em."
"Yes, but what comes to them?"
"Isn't it what comes to all babies—the instinct to say,Abba—Father?"
"Say, Lois," Cousin Amy Dawes requested, in her loud, commanding voice, "just save me a mite of this cold duck for old Sally Gibbs. It'll be tasty for the poor soul. I'll take it to her as we go up the hill. What do you pay your cook?" Without waiting for an answer she continued like an oracle, "I don't believe she's worth it."
Thor leaned across the table. "What I want to know is this: suppose the instinct to sayAbba—Fatherdoes come to us, is there anything there to respond that will show us a better way—personally and nationally, I mean, than the rather poor one we're finding for ourselves?"
"Can't give you any guarantees, Thor, if that's what you're after. Just got to sayAbba—Father, and see for yourself. Nothing but seeing for oneself is any good when it comes to the personal. And as for the national—well, there was a man once who went stalking through the land crying, 'O Israel, turn thee to the Lord thy God,' and I guess he knew what he was about. It was, 'Turn ye, turn ye! Why will ye die?' They didn't turn and so they died. Inevitable consequence. Same with this people or any other people. In proportion as it turns to the Lord its God it'll live; and in proportion as it doesn't it'll go to pot." He veered around to Lois as to one who would agree with him: "Ain't that it?"
She responded with a sweet, absent smile which showed to Thor at least that her thoughts were elsewhere. As a matter of fact, Thor's questions and Uncle Sim's replies, which continued in more or less the same strain, lay in a realm with regard to which she had few misgivings or anxieties. Her heart-searchings being of another nature, she was doing in thought what she had done when in the afternoon she had gone to her room and shut the door. She was standing before her mirror, contrasting the image reflected there with Rosie Fay's worn, touching prettiness.
How awesome, how incredible, that Thor, her great, noble Thor, should have let his heart go—perhaps the very best of his heart—to anything so insignificant, so unformed, so unequal to himself! It was this awesomeness, this incredibility, that overwhelmed her. Her mind fixed itself on it, for the time being, to the exclusion of other considerations. Thor was like meaner men! He could be caught by a pretty face! He was so big in body and soul that she had thought him free from petty failing—and yet here it was! There was a kind of shame in it. It weakened him, it lowered him.
She had seen it from the minute when he began to tell his halting tale about Claude. It was pitiful the way in which he had betrayed himself. From Fay she had got no more than a hint—a hint she had been quick to collate with her knowledge of some secret grief on Thor's part; but she hadn't been really sure of the truth till she saw he was trying to hide it. That Thor should be trying to hide anything made her burn inwardly with something more poignant than humiliation.
She had smiled when he looked so imploringly toward her, but she hardly knew why. Perhaps it was to encourage him, to give him heart. For the first time in her life she felt the stronger, the superior. She was sorry for him, even though there was something about this new and unexpected phase in him that she despised.
She had got no further than that when the guests came and she had to give them her attention. When they left, and Thor was seeing them to the door, she took the opportunity to slip up to her room again. She locked the door behind her, and locked the door that communicated with his dressing-room. Once more she took her stand before the pier-glass.
Something had come to her; she was sure of it. It had come almost since that afternoon. If it was not beauty, it rendered beauty of no importance. It was a spirit, a fire, that made her a woman who could be proud, a woman a man might be proud of. She had come to her own at last. She could see for herself that there was a subdued splendor about her which raised her in the scale of personality. She had little vanity; hitherto she had had little pride; but she knew now, with an assurance which it would have been hypocritical to disguise, that she was the true mate of the man she had taken Thor to be. She had known it before—diffidently and apologetically. She knew it now calmly, and as a matter of course, in a manner that did away with any necessity for shrinking or self-depreciation.
She moved away from the mirror, taking off the string of small pearls she wore and throwing them on the dressing-table. In the middle of the room she stood with a feeling of helplessness. It was so difficult to see what she ought to do. What was one's duty toward a husband who had practically told her that he had married her only because he couldn't marry a woman he loved better? Other questions began to rise within her, questions and protests and flashes of indignation, but she beat them back, standing in an attitude of reflection, and trying to discern the first steps of her way. She knew that the emotions she was keeping under would assert themselves in time, but just now she wanted only to see what she ought to do during the next half-hour.
There came into her mind what Uncle Sim had said at supper—"Just got to sayAbba—Father, and see." She shook her head. She couldn't sayAbba—Fatherat present. She didn't know why—but she couldn't. Whatever the passion within her, it was nothing she could bring before a Throne of Grace. It crossed her mind that if she prayed at all that night she would pass this whole matter over. And in that case, why pray at all?
And yet the thought of omitting her prayers disturbed her. If she did it to-night, why not to-morrow night? And if to-morrow night, where would it end? It was not a convincing argument, but it drew her toward her bedside.
Even then she didn't kneel down, but clung to one of the tall, fluted posts that supported a canopy. She couldn't pray. She didn't know what to pray for. Conventional petitions would have had no meaning, and for the moment she had no others to offer up. It was but half consciously that she found herself stammering: "Abba—Father! Abba—Father!" her lips moving dumbly to the syllables.
It brought her no relief. It gave her neither immediate light on her way nor any new sense of power. She was as dazed as ever, and as indignant. And yet when she raised herself from the weary clinging to the fluted post she went to both the doors she had locked and unlocked them.
The consciousness of something to be suppressed was with Lois when she woke. "Not yet! Not yet!" was the warning of her subliminal self whenever resentments and indignations endeavored to escape control.
With Thor she kept to subjects that had no personal bearing, clearly to his relief. At breakfast they talked of the Mexican rising under Madero, which was discussed in the papers of that morning. She knew that the question in his mind was, "Does she really know?" but she betrayed nothing that would help him to an answer.
When, after having kissed her with a timid, apologetic affection which partly touched and partly angered her, he left for the office, she put on a hat and, taking a parasol, went to see Dr. Hilary.
The First Parish Church, the oldest in the village, stands in a grassy delta where two of the rambling village lanes enter the Square. The white, barn-like nave, with its upper and lower rows of small, oblong windows, retires discreetly within a grove of elms, while a tall, slim spire grows slimmer through diminishing tiers of arches, balconies, and lancet lights till it dwindles away into a high, graceful pinnacle.
Behind the church, in the widest section of the delta, the parsonage, a white wooden box dating from the fifties supporting a smaller box by way of cupola, looks across garden, shrubbery, and lawn to Schoolhouse Lane, from which nothing but the simplest form of wooden rail protects the inclosure.
It was the time for bulbs to be in flower, and the spring perennials. Tulips in a wide, dense mass bordered the brick pavement that led from the gate to the front door. Elsewhere could be seen daffodils, irises, peonies just bursting into bloom, and long, drooping curves of bleeding-heart hung with rose-and-white pendents. By a corner of the house the ground was indigo-dark with a thick little patch of squills.
It was a relief to Lois to find the old man himself, bareheaded and in an alpaca house-jacket, rooting out weeds on the lawn, his thin, gray locks tossed in the breeze. On seeing her pause and look over the clump of wiegelia, which at this point smothered the rail, he raised himself, dusted the earth from his hands, and went forward. They talked at first just as they stood, with the budding shrubs between them.
"Oh, Dr. Hilary, I'm so anxious about Rosie Fay."
"Are you now?" As neither age nor gravity could subdue the twinkle in his eyes, so sympathy couldn't quench it. "Well, I am meself."
"I think if I could see her I might be able to help her. Or, rather," she went on, nervously, "I think I ought to see her, whether I can help her or not. Have you seen her?"
"I have not," he declared, with Irish emphasis. "The puss takes very good care that I sha'n't, so she does. She's only got to see me coming in the gate to fly off to Duck Rock; and that, so her mother tells me, is all they see of her till nightfall. It's three days now that she's been struck with a fit of melancholy, or maybe four."
"Do you know what the trouble is?"
He evaded the question. "Do you?"
"I do—partly."
"Then you'll be the one to tackle her. As yet I haven't asked. I prefer to know no more about people than what they tell me themselves."
She found it possible to secure his aid on the unexplained ground that there had been a misunderstanding between her husband and herself, on the one side, and Jasper Fay on the other. "I don'tknowthat I can help her. I dare say I can't. But if I could only see her—"
"Well, then, you shall see her. Just wait a minute while I change me coat and I'll go along with you."
On the way up the hill Lois questioned him about the Fays. "Did you know much of the boy?"
"Enough to see that he wasn't a thief—not by nature, that is. He's what might have been expected from his parents—the stuff out of which they make revolutionists and anarchists. He came into the world with desires thwarted, as you might say, and a detairmination to get even. He didn't steal; he took money. He took money because they needed it at home, and other people had it. He took it more in protest than in greed, if that's any excuse for him."
"The mother is better, isn't she?"
"She's clothed and in her right mind, if she'll only stay that way. She gets into one of her old tantrums every now and then; but I'm in hopes that the daughter's trouble will end them."
This hope seemed to be partially fulfilled in the welcoming way in which the door was opened to their knock. "I've brought you me friend, Mrs. Thor Masterman," was the old gentleman's form of introduction. "She wants to see Rosie. If Fay makes any trouble, tell him it's my wish."
"I've really only come to see Rosie, Mrs. Fay," Lois explained, not without nervousness, when the two women were alone on the door-step. "No, I won't go in, thank you, not if she's anywhere about the place. I'm really very anxious to have a talk with her."
Having feared a hostile reception, she was relieved to be answered with a certain fierce cordiality. "I'm sure I hope you'll get it. It's more'n her father and I can do."
"Perhaps she'd talk to me. Girls often will talk to a—to a stranger, when they won't to one of their own."
"Well, you can try." In spite of the coldness of the handsome features, something in the nature of a new life, a new softening humanity, was struggling to assert itself. "Wecan't get a word out of her. She'll neither speak, nor sleep, nor eat, nor do a hand's turn. It's the work that bothers me most—not so much that it needs to be done as because it'd be a relief to her." She added, with a shy wistfulness that contrasted oddly with the hard glint in her eyes, "I've found that out myself."
"Have you any idea where she is?"
She pointed toward Duck Rock. "Oh, I suppose she's over there. She was to have picked the cucumbers this morning, but I see she hasn't done it."
"Has Mr. Fay told you what the trouble is?"
"Well, he has. But then he's so romantic. Always was. Land's sake! I don't pay any attention to young people's goings-on. Seen too much of it in my own day. I don't say that the young fellow hasn't been foolish—and I don't say—you'll excuse me!—that Rosie ain't just as good as he is, even if heisArchie Masterman's son—"
"Oh no, nor I," Lois hastened to interpose.
"But there's nothing wrong. I've asked her—and Iknow. I'm sure of it."
Lois spoke eagerly. "Oh yes; so am I."
"So that there's that." She went on with a touch of her old haughtiness of spirit: "And she's every mite as good as he is. It's all nonsense, Fay's talking as if it was some young lord who'd jilted a girl beneath him. Young lord, indeed! I'll young lord him, if he ever comes my way. I tell Rosie not to demean herself to grieve for them that are no better than herself. It's nothing but romantics," she explained further. "I've no patience with Fay—talking as if some one ought to shoot some one or commit murder. That's the way Matt began. Fay ought to know better at his time of life. I declare he has no more sense than Rosie."
Lois had not expected to be called upon to defend Fay, but she said, "I suppose he naturally feels indignant when he sees—"
"There's a desperate streak in Fay," the woman broke in, uneasily, "and Rosie takes after him. For the matter of that, she takes after us both—for I'm sure I've been gloomy enough. There's been something lacking in us all, like cooking without salt. I see that now as plain as plain, though I can't get Fay to believe me. You might as well talk to a stone wall as talk to Fay when he's got his nose stuck into a book. I hate the very name of that Carlyle; and that Darwin, he's another. They're his Bible, I tell him, and he don't half understand what they mean. It's Duck Rock," she went on, with a quiver of her fine lips, while her hands worked nervously at the corner of her apron—"it's Duck Rock that I'm most afraid of. It kind o' haunted me all the time I was sick; and it kind o' haunts Rosie."
"Then I'll go and see if she's there," Lois said, as she turned away, leaving the austere figure to stare after her with eyes that might have been those of the woman delivered from the seven devils.
It was an easy matter for Lois to find her way among the old apple-trees—of which one was showing an early blossom or two on the sunny side—to the boulevard below, and thence to the wood running up the bluff. Though she had not been here since the berry-picking days of childhood, she knew the spot in which Rosie was likely to be found. As a matter of fact, having climbed the path that ran beneath oaks and through patches of brakes, spleenwort, and lady-ferns, she was astonished to hear a faint, plaintive singing, and stopped to listen. The voice was poignantly thin and sweet, with the frail, melancholy sound she had heard from distant shepherds' pipes in Switzerland. Had she not, after a few seconds, recognized the air, she would have been unable to detect the words: