To give exhaustive reasons for the impulse which brought Miss Mary Davis to Bainbridge at this particular time would be to delve too deeply into the complex psychology of that lady. But we shall not be far wrong if we sum up the determining impulse in one word—curiosity.
The news of Benis Spence's unexpected marriage had been something of a shock to more than one of his friends. But especially so to Mary Davis. Upon a certain interesting list, which Miss Davis kept in her well-ordered mind, the name of this agreeable bachelor had been distinctly labelled "possible." To have a possibility snatched from under one's nose without warning is annoying, especially if the season in possibilities threatens to be poor. The war had sadly depleted Miss Davis' once lengthy list. And she, herself, was five years older. It would be interesting, and perhaps instructive, to see the young person from nowhere who had still further narrowed her personal territory.
"It does seem rather a shame," she confided to a select friend or two, "that clever men who have escaped the perils of early matrimony should in maturity turn back to the very thing which constituted that peril."
"You mean men like them young?" said a select friend with brutal candor.
"I mean they like them too young. In the case I'm thinking of, the girl is a mere child. And quite uncultured. What possibility of intellectual companionship could the most sanguine man expect?"
"None. But they don't want intellectual companionship." Another select friend spoke bitterly. "I used to think they did. It seemed reasonable. As the basis for a whole lifetime, it seemed the only possible thing. But what's the use of insisting on a theory, no matter how abstractly sound, if it is disproved in practice every day? Remember Bobby Wells? He is quite famous now; knows more about biology than any man on this side of the water. He married last week. His wife is a pretty little creature who thinks protoplasm another name for appendicitis."
There was a sympathetic pause.
"And biology was always such a fad of yours," sighed Mary thoughtfully. "Never mind! They are sure to be frightfully unhappy."
"No, they won't. That's it. That's the point I am making. They'll be as cozy as possible."
Miss Davis thought this point over after the select friend who made it had gone. She did not wish to believe that its implication was a true one. But, if it were, if youth, just youth, were the thing of power, then it were wise that she should realize it before it was too late. Her own share of the magic thing was swiftly passing.
From a drawer of her desk she took a recent letter from a Bainbridge correspondent and re-read the part referring to the Spence reception.
"Really, it was quite well done," she read. "Old Miss Campion has a 'flair' for the suitabilities, and now that so many are trying to be smart or bizarre, it is a relief to come back to the old pleasant suitable things—you know what I mean. And the old lady has an air. How she gets it, I don't know, for the dear Queen is her idea of style. Perhaps there is something in the 'aura' theory. If so, Miss Campion's aura is the very glass of fashion.
"And the bride! But I hear you are coming down, so you will see the bride for yourself. There was a silly rumor about her being part Indian. Well, if Indian blood can give one a skin like hers, I could do with an off-side ancestor myself! She is even younger than report predicted. But not sweet or coy (Heavens, how one wearies of that type!) And Benis Spence, as a bride-groom, has lost something of his 'moony' air. He is quite attractive in an odd way. All the same, I can't help feeling (and others agree with me) that there is something odd about that marriage. My dear, they do not act like married people. The girl is as cool as a princess (I suppose princesses are). And the professor's attitude is so—so casual. Even John Rogers' manner to the bride is more marked than the bridegroom's. But you know I never repeat gossip. It isn't kind. And any-way it may not be true that he drops in for tea nearly every day."
Miss Davis replaced the letter with a musing smile. And the next morning she called up on long distance. A visit to Bainbridge, she felt, might be quite stimulating....
Observe her, then, on the morning of her arrival having breakfast in bed. Breakfast in bed is always offered to travellers at the Spence home—a courtesy based upon the tradition of an age which travelled hard and seldom. Miss Davis quite approved of the custom. She had not neglected to bring "matinees" in which she looked most charming. Negligee became her. She openly envied Margot Asquith her bedroom receptions.
Young Mrs. Spence, inquiring with true western hospitality, whether the breakfast had been all that could be desired, was conscious of a pang, successfully repressed, at the sight of that matinee. She saw at once that she had never realized possibilities in this direction. Her night-gowns (even the new ones) were merely night-gowns and her kimonas were garments which could still be recognized under that name.
"It is rather a duck," said Mary, reading Desire's admiring glance. "Quite French, I think. But of course, as a bride, you will have oceans of lovely things. I adore trousseaux. Perhaps you will show me some of your pretties?" (The bride's gowns, she admitted, might be passable but what really tells the tale is the underneaths.)
"Oh, with pleasure." Desire's assent was instant and warm. "I shall love to let you see my things."
It was risky—but effective. Mary's desire to see the trousseau evaporated on the instant. No girl would be so eager to show things which were not worth showing. And Mary was no altruist to rejoice over other people's Paris follies.
After all, she really knew very little about Benis's wife. And you never can tell. She began to wish that she had brought down with her some very special glories—things she had decided not to waste on Bainbridge. Her young hostess had eyes which were coolly, almost humorously, critical. "Absurd in a girl who simply can't have any proper criteria!" thought Miss Davis crossly.
"When you are quite rested," said Desire kindly, "you will find us on the west lawn. The sun is never too hot there in the morning."
"Yes—I remember that." The faintest sigh disturbed the laces of Mary's matinee. Her faun-like eyes looked wistful. "But if you do not mind, I think I shall be really lazy—these colds do leave one so wretched."
Desire agreed that colds were annoying. She had not missed the sigh which accompanied Mary's memory of the west lawn and very naturally misread it. Mary's regretful decision to challenge no morning comparison in the sunlight on any lawn was interpreted as regret of a much more tender nature. Desire's eyes grew cold and dark with shadow as she left her charming visitor to her wistful rest.
That Mary Davis was the lady of her husband's one romance, she had no longer any doubt. Anyone, that is, any man, might love deeply and hopelessly a woman of such rare and subtle charm. Possessing youth in glorious measure herself, Desire naturally discounted her rival's lack of it. With her, the slight blurring of Mary's carefully tended "lines," the tired look around her eyes, the somewhat cold-creamy texture of her delicate skin, weighed nothing against the exquisite finish and fine sophistication which had been the gift of the added years.
In age, she thought, Mary and Benis would rank each other. They were also essentially of the same world. Neither had ever gazed through windows. Both had been free of life from its beginning. Love between them might well have been a fitting progression.
The one fact which did not fit in here was this—in the story as told by Benis the affair had been one of unreciprocated affection. This presupposed a blindness on the lady's part which Desire began increasingly to doubt. She had already reached the point when it seemed impossible that anyone should not admire what to her was entirely admirable. Even the explanation of a prior attachment (the "Someone Else" of the professor's story), did not carry conviction. Who else could there be—compared with Benis?
No. It looked, upon the face of it, as if there had been a mistake somewhere. Benis had despaired too soon!
This fateful thought had been crouching at the door of Desire's mind ever since Mary had ceased to be an abstraction. She had kept it out. She had refused to know that it was there. She had been happy in spite of it. But now, when its time was fully come, it made small work of her frail barriers. It blundered in, leering and triumphant.
Men have been mistaken before now. Men have turned aside in the very moment of victory. And Benis Spence was not a man who would beg or importune. How easily he might have taken for refusal what was, in effect, mere withdrawal. Had Mary retreated only that he might pursue? And had the Someone Else been No One Else at all?
If this were so, and it seemed at least possible, the retreating lady had been smartly punished. Serve her right—oh, serve her right a thousand times for having dared to trifle! Desire wasted no pity on her. But what of him? With merciless lucidity Desire's busy brain created the missing acts which might have brought the professor's tragedy of errors to a happy ending. It would have been so simple—if Benis had only waited. Even pursuit would not have been required of him. Mary, unpursued, would have come back; unasked, she might have offered. But Benis had not waited.
Desire saw all this in the time that it took her to go down-stairs. At the bottom of the stairs she faced its unescapable logic: if he were free now, he might be happy yet.
How blind they had both been! He to believe that love had passed; she to believe that love would never come. Desire paused with her hand upon the library door. He was there. She could hear him talking to Yorick. She had only to open the door ... but she did not open it. Yesterday the library had been her kingdom, the heart of her widening world. Now it was only a room in someone else's house. Yesterday she would have gone in swiftly—hiding her gladness in a little net of everyday words. But today she had no gladness and no words.
Miss Davis had been in Bainbridge a week. Her cold was entirely better and her nerves, she said, much rested. "This is such a restful place," murmured Miss Davis, selecting her breakfast toast with care.
"I'm glad you find it so," said Aunt Caroline. "Though, with the club elections coming on next week—" she broke off to ask if Desire would have more coffee.
Desire would have no more, thanks. Miss Campion, looking over her spectacles, frowned faintly and took a second cup herself—an indulgence which showed that she had something on her mind. Her nephew, knowing this symptom, was not surprised when later she joined him on the side veranda. Being a prompt person she began at once.
"Benis," she said, "I have a feeling—I am not at all satisfied about Desire. If you know what is the matter with her I wish you would tell me. I am not curious. I expect no one's confidence, nor do I ask for it. But I have a right to object to mysteries, I think."
As Aunt Caroline spoke, she looked sternly at the smoke of the professor's after-breakfast cigarette, the blue haze of which temporarily clouded his expression. Benis took his time in answering.
"You think there is something the matter besides the heat?" he inquired mildly.
"Heat! It is only ordinary summer weather."
"But Desire is not used to ordinary summer, in Ontario."
"Nonsense. It can't be much cooler on the coast. Although I have heard people say that they felt quite chilly there. It isn't that."
"What is it, then?"
Not noticing that she was being asked to answer her own question, Aunt Caroline considered. Then, with a flash of shrewd insight, "Well," she said, "if there were any possible excuse for it, I should say that it is Mary Davis."
"My dear Aunt!"
"You asked me, Benis. And I have told you what I think. Desire has changed since Mary came. Before that she seemed happy. There was something about her—well, I admit I liked to look at her. And she seemed to love this place. Even that Yorick bird pleased her, a taste which I admit I could never understand. Now she looks around and sees nothing. The girl has some-thing on her mind, Benis. She's thinking."
"With some people thought is not fatal."
"I am serious, Benis."
"So am I."
"What I should like to know is—have you, by any chance, been flirting with Mary?"
"What?"
"Don't shout. You heard what I said perfectly. I do not wish to interfere. It is against my nature. But if you had been flirting with Mary, that might account for it. I don't believe Desire would understand. She might take it seriously. As for Mary—I am ashamed of her. I shall not invite her here again."
"This is nonsense, Aunt."
"Excuse me, Benis. The nonsense is on your side. I know what I am talking about, and I know Mary Davis. She is one of those women for whom a man obscures the landscape. She will flirt on her deathbed, or any-body else's deathbed, which is worse. Come now, be honest. She has been doing it, hasn't she?"
"Certainly not."
"I suppose you have to say that. I'll put it in another way. What is your opinion of Mary?"
"She is an interesting woman."
"You find her more interesting than you did upon her former visit?"
"I hardly remember her former visit. I never really knew her before."
"And you know her now?"
"She has honored me with a certain amount of confidence."
Aunt Caroline snorted. "I thought so. Well, she doesn't need to honor me with her confidence because I know her without it. Was she honoring you that way last night when you stayed out in the garden until mid-night?"
"We were talking, naturally."
"And—your wife?"
There was a moment's pause while the cigarette smoke grew bluer. "My wife," said Benis, "was very well occupied."
"You mean that when Dr. John saw how distrait and pale she was, he took her for a run in his car? Now admit, Benis, that you made it plain that you wished her to go."
"Did I?"
"Yes," significantly, "too plain. Mary saw it—and John. You are acting strangely, Benis. I don't like it, that's flat. Desire is too much with John. And you are too much with Mary. It is not a natural arrangement. And it is largely your fault. It is almost as if you were acting with some purpose. But I'll tell you this—whatever your purpose may be—you have no right to expose your wife to comment."
She had his full attention now. The cigarette haze drifted away.
"Comment?" slowly. "You mean that people—but of course people always do. I hadn't allowed for that. Which shows how impossible it is to think of everything. I'm sorry."
"I do not pretend to understand you, Benis. But then, I never did. Your private affairs are your own, also your motives. And I never meddle, as you know. I think though, that I may be permitted a straight question. Has your feeling toward Desire changed?"
"Neither changed nor likely to change."
Miss Campion's expression softened.
"Are you sure that she knows it?"
"I am not sure of anything with regard to Desire."
"Then you ought to be. Don't shilly-shally, Benis. It is a habit of yours. All of the Spences shilly-shally. Make certain that Desire is aware of your—er—affection. Mark my words—I have a feeling. She is fretting over Mary."
"I happen to know that she is not."
Small red flags began to fly from Miss Campion's prominent cheek-bones.
"We shall quarrel in a moment, Benis. You are pig-headed. Exactly as your father was, and without his common sense. I know you think me an interfering old maid. But I like Desire, and I won't have her made miserable. I want—"
"Hush—here she comes."
"Ill leave you then," in a sepulchral whisper. "And for goodness' sake, Benis, do something! ... Were you looking for me, my dear?" added Aunt Caroline innocently as Desire came slowly toward them. "Do not try to be energetic this morning. It is so very hot. Sit here. I'll send Olive out with something cool. I'd like you both to try the new raspberry vinegar."
Greatly pleased with her simple stratagem the good soul bustled away. Desire looked after her with a grateful smile.
"I believe Aunt Caroline likes me," she said with a note of faint surprise.
"Is that very wonderful?"
"Yes."
Benis looked at her quickly and looked away. She was certainly paler. She held her head as if its crown of hair were heavy.
"It does not seem wonderful to other people who also—like you."
Her eyes turned to him almost timidly. It hurt him to notice that the old frank openness of glance was gone. Good heavens! was the child afraid of him? Did she think that he blamed her? That he did not understand how helpless she was before her awakening womanhood? He forgot how difficult speech was in the overpowering impulse to reassure her.
"I wish you could be happy; my dear," he said. "You are so young. Can't you be a little patient? Can't you be content as things are—for a while?"
Even Spence, blinded as he was by the bitterness of his own struggle, noticed the strangeness of her look.
"You want things to go on—as they are?"
"Yes. For a time. We had better be quite sure. We do not want a second mistake."
"You see that there has been a mistake?"
"Can I help seeing it, Desire?"
"No, I suppose not.... And when you are sure?" Her voice was very low.
"When I—when we are both sure, I shall act. There are ways out. It ought not to be difficult."
"No, quite easy, I think. I hope it will not be long."
His mask of reasonable acquiescence slipped a little at the wistfulness of her voice.
"Don't speak like that!" he said sharply. "No man is worth it."
Desire smiled. It was such a sure, secret little smile, that it maddened him.
"You can't—you can't care like that!" he said in a low, furious tone. "You said you never could!"
"I do," said Desire.
It was the avowal which she had sworn she would never make. Yet she made it without shame. Love had taught Desire much since the day of the episode of the photograph. And one of its teachings had to do with the comparative insignificance of pride. Why should he not know that she loved him? Of what use a gift that is never given? Besides, as this leaden week had passed, she knew that, more than anything else, she wanted truth between them. Now, when he asked it of her, she gave him truth.
"It is breaking our bargain," she went on with a wavering smile. "But I was so sure! I cannot even blame myself. It must be possible to be quite sure and quite wrong at the same time."
"Yes. There is no blame, anywhere. I—I didn't think of what I was saying."
"Well, then—you will guess that it isn't exactly easy. But I will wait as you ask me. When you are quite sure—you will let me go?"
"Yes," he said.
Neither of them looked at the other.
Does Jove indeed laugh at lover's perjuries? Even more at their stupidities, perhaps!
For they really were stupid! Looking on, we can see so plainly what they should have seen, and didn't.
If thoughts are things (and Professor Spence continues to argue that they are) a mistaken thought is quite as powerful a reality as the other kind. Only let it be conceived with sufficient force and nourished by continual attention and it will grow into a veritable highwayman of the mind—a thievish tyrant of one's mental roads, holding their more legitimate travellers at the stand and deliver.
Desire, usually so clearsighted, ought to have seen that the attentions of Benis to the too-sympathetic Mary were hollow at the core. But this, her mistaken Thought would by no means allow. Ceaselessly on the watch, it leapt upon every unprejudiced deduction and turned it to the strengthening of its own mistaken self. What might have seemed merely boredom on the professor's part was twisted by the Thought to appear an anguished effort after self-control. Any avoidance of Mary's society was attributed to fear rather than to indifference. And so on and so on.
Spence, too, a man learned in the byways of the mind, ought to have known that, to Desire, John was a refuge merely, and Mary the real lion in the way. But his mistaken Thought, born of a smile and a photograph, grew steadily stronger and waxed fat upon the everyday trivialities which should have slain it. So powerful had it become that, by the time of Desire's arrival on the veranda, it had closed every road of interpretation save its own.
Nor was John in more reasonable case. His mistaken Thought was different in action but equally successful in effect. Born of an insistent desire, and nursed by half fearful hope, it stood a beggar at the door of life, snatching from every passing circumstance the crumbs by which it lived. Did Desire smile—how eagerly John's famished Thought would claim it for his own. Did she frown—how quick it was to find some foreign cause for frowning. And, as Desire woke to love under his eyes, how ceaselessly it worked to add belief to hope. How plausibly it reasoned, how cleverly it justified! That Spence loved his wife, the Thought would not accept as possible. All John's actual knowledge of the depth and steadfastness of his friend's nature was pooh-poohed or ignored. Benis, dear old chap, cared nothing for women. Hadn't he always shunned them in his quiet way? And hadn't he, John, warned Benis, anyway? The Thought insisted upon the warning with virtuous emphasis. It pointed out that Benis had laughed at the warning. Even if—but we need not follow John's excursions further. They all led through devious ways to the old, old justification of everything in love and war.
As time went on, the thing which fed the mistaken thoughts of both Benis and John was the change in Desire herself. That she was increasingly unhappy was evident to both. And why should she be unhappy—unless?
To John Rogers, that summer remained the most distracting summer of his life. Desire should have seen this—would have seen it had her mind-roads not been closed by their own obsession. The probability is that she did not consciously think of John at all. He was there and he was kind. She saw nothing farther than that.
The relationship between the two men remained apparently the same and indeed it is likely that, in the main, their conception one of the other did not change. To Benis, John's virtues were still as real and admirable as ever. To John, Benis was still a bit of a mystery and a bit of a hero>. (There were war stories which John knew but had never dared to tell, lest vengeance befall him.) But, these basic things aside, there were new points of view. Seen as a possible mate for Desire, Benis found John most lamentably lacking. Seen in the same light, Benis to John was undesirable in the extreme. "If it could only be someone more subtle than John," thought Benis. And, "If only old Benis were a bit more stable," thought John. Both were insincere, since no possible combination of qualities would have satisfied either.
Of this fatally misled quartette, Mary Davis was perhaps the one most open to reason. And yet not altogether so, for the thought of Benis Spence as eternally escaped was not a welcome one. She realized now that she might have liked the elusive professor more than a little. They would have been, she thought, admirably suited. At the worst, neither would have bored the other. And the Spence home was quite possible—as a home for part of the year at least. It was certainly annoying that fate should have cut in so unexpectedly. And for what? Apparently for nothing but that a girl with grey, enigmatic eyes and close-shut lips should keep from Mary a position which she did not want herself. For Mary, captive of her Thought, was more than ready to believe that Desire's hidden preference was for John. She naturally could not grant her rival a share of her own discriminating taste in loving.
"I suppose," thought Mary, "it is her immaturity which makes her prefer the doctor person to one who so far outranks him. She admires sleek hair and a straight nose. The finer fascinations of Benis escape her."
Meanwhile she stayed on.
"I know I should come home," she wrote the most select of the select friends. "And I know dear Miss Campion thinks so! But the situation here is too absorbing. And, as my invitation was indefinite, I can hardly be accused of outstaying it. I can't be supposed to know that I'm not wanted. I justify myself by the knowledge that I am of some use to Benis. You know I can interest most men when I try, and this time my 'heart is in it'—like Sentimental Tommy. I am even teaching a perfectly dear parrot they have here to sing, 'Oh, What a Pal was Mary.' Will you run over to my rooms and send down that London smoke chiffon frock with the silver underslip? Stockings and slippers to match in a box in the bottom drawer. I am contemplating a moon-light mood and must have the accessories. One loses half the effect if one does not dress the part. Madam Enigma never dresses in character. Because she never assumes one. So dull to be always just oneself, don't you think? Even if one knew what one's real self is, which I am sure I do not.
"This girl annoys me. How she can be so simple and yet so complex I can't understand. I thought perhaps a dash of jealousy might be revealing. But she hasn't turned a hair. I have my emotions pretty well in hand myself but even if I didn't adore my husband, I'd see that no one else appropriated him. But as far as Madam Coolness is concerned it looks as if I might put her husband in my pocket and keep him there indefinitely.
"I told you in my last about the good-looking doctor. What she sees in him puzzles me. He is handsome but as dull as all the proverbs. Can't be original even in his love affairs—otherwise he would hardly select his best friend's bride—so bookish! Why doesn't someone fall in love with the wife of his enemy? It seems to have gone out since Romeo's time. (Now don't write and tell me that Juliet wasn't married.)
"Another thing which I find odd, is the attitude of Benis himself. He is quite alive, painfully so, to the drift of the thing. Yet he does nothing. And this is not in keeping with his character. He is the type of man who, in spite of an unassertive manner, holds what he has with no uncertain grasp. Why, then, does he let this one thing go? The logical deduction is that he knows that he never had it. All of which, being interpreted, means that things may happen here through the sheer inertia of other things. Almost every day I think, 'Something ought to be done.' But I know I shall never do it. I am not the novelist's villainess who arranges a compromising situation and produces the surprised husband from behind a door. Neither am I a peacemaker or an altruist. I am not selfish enough in one way nor un-selfish enough in another. (Probably that is why life has lost interest in my special case.) Even my emotions are hopelessly mixed. There are times when I find myself viciously hoping that Madam Composure will go the limit and that right quickly. And there are other times when I feel I should like to choke her into a proper realization of what she is risking. Not for her sake—I'm far too feminine for that—but because I hate to see her play with this man (whom I like myself) and get away with it."
It is worth while remembering the closing sentences of this letter. They explain, or partially explain, a certain future action on the part of the writer, which might otherwise seem out of keeping with her well defined attitude of "Mary first."
"There is one thing which I simply do not understand." Miss Davis dug the point of a destructive parasol into the well-kept gravel of the drive and allowed a glance of deep seriousness to drift from under the shadow of her hat. Unfortunately, her companion was not attending.
It was the day of Mrs. Burton Jones' garden party, the Bainbridge event for which Miss Davis was, presumably, staying over. Mary, in a new frock of sheerest grey and most diaphanous white, and a hat which lay like a breath of mist against the gold of her hair, had come down early. In the course of an observant career, she had learned that, in one respect at least, men are like worms. They are inclined to be early. Mary had often profited by this bit of wisdom, and was glad that so few other women seemed to realize its importance. One can do much with ten or fifteen uninterrupted minutes.
But today Mary had not done much. She had found Benis, as she expected, on the front steps. They had talked for quite ten minutes without an interruption—but also without any reason to deplore one.
This was failure. And Mary, whose love of the chase grew as the quarry proved shy, was beginning to be seriously annoyed with Benis. He might at least play up! Even now he was not looking at her, and he did not ask her what it was that she simply did not understand. Mary decided that he deserved something—a pin-prick at least.
"Why don't you get a car, Benis?" she asked inconsequently. "If you had one, Desire might ride in it some-times, instead of always in Dr. Rogers'. Can't you see that it's dangerous?"
"One has to take risks," said Spence plaintively. "John is careless. But he has never killed anyone yet."
"You're impossible, Benis."
"Yes, I know. But particularly impossible as a chauffeur. That's why I haven't a car. What would I do with a driver when I wasn't using him? Desire will have a car of her own as soon as she likes to try it. Aunt won't drive and I—don't."
This was the first approach to a personal remark the professor had made. No one was in sight yet and Mary began to hope again. Once more she tried the gently serious gaze.
"Why not?" she asked, not too eagerly.
Yorick, sunning himself by the door, gave vent to a goblin chuckle. "Oh, what a pal was M-Mary! Oh, what a pal—Nothing doing!" he finished with a shriek and began to flap his wings.
The professor laughed. "Yorick gets his lessons mixed," he said. "But isn't he a wonder? Did you ever know a bird who could learn so quickly?"
Mary did not want to talk about birds. "Do tell me why you dislike driving?" she asked with gentle insistence.
"Oh, I like it.-It's not that. I used to drive like Jehu, or John. Never had an accident. But when I came back from overseas I found I couldn't trust my nerve—no quick judgment, no instinctive reaction—all gone to pieces. Rather rotten."
With unerring intuition Mary knew this for a real confidence. Fortunately she was an expert with shy game.
"Quite rotten," she said soberly. He went on.
"It's little things like that that hit hard. Not to be One's own man in a crisis—d'y' see?"
Mary nodded.
"But it's only temporary," he continued more cheer-fully. "I'll try myself out one of these days. Only, of course, arranged tests are never real ones. The crisis must leap on one to be of any use. Some little time ago, when I was at the coast, an incident happened—a kind of unexpected emergency"—he paused thoughtfully as a sudden vision of a moon-lit room flashed before him—"I got through that all right," he added, "so I'm hopeful."
"How thrilling," said Mary. "Won't you tell me what it was?"
His eyes met hers with a placidity for which she could have shaken him.
"It wouldn't interest you," he said. "I hear Aunt coming at last."
Miss Campion's voice had indeed preceded her.
"Oh, there you are, Mary," she said with some acidity. "I told Desire you were sure to be down first."
"I try to be prompt," said Mary meekly. "I have been keeping Benis company until you were ready." She spoke to Miss Campion but her slightly mocking eyes watched for some change upon the face of her young hostess. Desire, as usual, was serene.
"Mary thinks we are all heathens not to have a car," said Benis. "When are you going to choose yours, Desire?"
"Not at all, I think," said Desire.
Men, even clever men, are like that. The professor had seen no possible sting in his idly spoken words. But the sore, hot spot, which now seemed ever present in Desire's heart, grew sorer and hotter. To owe a car to the reminder of another woman! Naturally, Desire could do very well without it.
"But don't you miss a car terribly?" asked Mary with kind concern.
"I cannot miss what I have never had."
"Oh, in the west, I suppose one does have horses still."
"There may be a few left, I think." Desire's slow smile crept out as memory brought the asthmatic "chug" of the "Tillicum." "My father and I used a launch almost exclusively." In spite of herself she could not resist a glance at the professor. His eyes met hers with a ghost of their old twinkle.
"A launch?" Mary's surprise was patent. "Did you run it yourself?"
"We had a Chinese engineer," said Desire demurely. "But I could manage it if necessary."
Further conversation upon modes of locomotion on the coast was cut off by the precipitate arrival of John who, coming up the drive in his best manner, narrowly escaped a triple fatality at the steps.
"You people are careless!" he exclaimed indignantly. "What do you mean by standing on the drive? Some-one might have been hurt! Anyone here like to get driven to the garden party?"
"Do doctors find time for garden parties in Bainbridge?" asked Mary in mock surprise.
"Healthiest place you ever saw!" declared Dr. John gloomily. "And anyway, this garden party is a prescription of mine. Naturally I am expected to take my own medicine. I said to Mrs. B. Jones, 'What you need, dear Mrs. Jones, is a little gentle excitement combined with fresh air, complete absence of mental strain and plenty of cooling nourishment.' Did you ever hear a garden party more delicately suggested? Desire, will you sit in front?"
"Husbands first," said Benis. "In the case of a head-on collision, I claim the post of honorable danger."
It was surely a natural and a harmless speech. But instantly the various mistaken thoughts of his hearers turned it to their will. Desire's eyes grew still more clouded under their lowered lids. "He does not dare to sit beside Mary," whispered her particular mental highwayman. "Oho, he is beginning to show human jealousy at last," thought Mary. "He has noticed that she likes to sit beside me," exulted John. Of them all, only Aunt Caroline was anywhere near the truth. "He has taken my warning to heart," thought she. "But then, I always knew I could manage men if I had a chance."
A garden party in Bainbridge is not exciting, in itself. In themselves, no garden parties are exciting. As mere garden parties they partake somewhat of the slow and awful calm of undisturbed nature. One could see the grass grow at a garden party, if so many people were not trampling on it. So it is possible that there were those in Mrs. Burton Jones' grounds that afternoon who, bringing no personal drama with them, had rather a dull time. For others it was a fateful day. There were psychic milestones on Mrs. Burton Jones' smooth lawn that afternoon.
It was there, for instance, that the youngest Miss Keith (the pretty one) decided to marry Jerry Clarkson, junior (and regretted it all her life). It was there that Mrs. Keene first suspected the new principal of the Collegiate Institute of Bolshevik tendencies. (He had said that, in his opinion, kings were bound to go.) And it was there that Miss Ellis spoke to Miss Sutherland for the first time in three years. (She asked her if she would have lemon or chocolate cake—a clear matter of social duty.) It was there also that Miss Mary Sophia Watkins, Dr. Rogers' capable nurse, decided finally that a longer stay in Bainbridge would be wasted time. It was the first time she had actually seen her admired doctor and the object of his supposed regard together, and a certain look which she surprised on Dr. John's face as his eyes followed Desire across the lawn, convinced her so thoroughly that, like a sensible girl, she packed up that night and went back to the city.
Perhaps it was that very look which also decided Spence. For decide he did. There was no excuse for waiting longer. He must "have it out" with John. Desire must be given her freedom. Of John's attitude he had small doubt. His infatuation for Desire had been plain from the beginning. Time had served only to centre and strengthen it. He could not in justice blame John. He didn't blame John. That is to say, he would not officially permit himself to blame John, though he knew very well that he did blame him. A sense of the rights of other people as opposed to one's own rights has been hardly gained by the Race, and is by no means firmly seated yet. Let primitive passions slip control for an instant and presto! good-bye to the rights of other people! The primitive man in Spence would not have argued the matter. Having obtained his mate by any means at all, it would have gone hard with anyone who, however justly, attempted to take her from him. Today, at Mrs. Burton-Jones' garden party, the acquired restraints of character seemed wearing thin. The professor decided that it might be advisable to go home.
Desire and Mary noticed his absence at about the same time. And both lost interest in the party with the suddenness of a light blown out.
"Things are moving," thought Mary with a thrill of triumph. But in spite of her triumph she was angry. It is not pleasant to have the power of one's rival so starkly revealed. Malice crept into her faun-like eyes as she looked across to where Desire sat, a composed young figure, listening with apparent interest to the biggest bore in Bainbridge. What right had she to hold a man's hot heart between her placid hands! Mary ground her parasol into Mrs. Burton-Jones' best sod and her small white teeth shut grindingly behind her lips.
Desire was trying to listen to the little man with the enlarged ego who attempted to entertain her. But she was very much aware of Mary and all her moods. "She is selfish. She will make him miserable," thought Desire. "But she will make him happy first. And, in any case, he must be free."
"Yes, Mrs. Spence," the little man beside her was saying, "a man like myself, however diffident, must be ready to do his full duty by the community in which he lives. That is why I feel I must accept the nomination for mayor of this town—if I am offered it. My friends say to me, 'Miller, you are a man, and we need a man. Bainbridge needs a man.' What am I to do under such circumstances? If there is no man—"
"You might try a woman," said Desire, suddenly losing patience. The garden party was stupid. The egotist was stupid. She was probably stupid too, because she knew that a few weeks ago she would have found both the party and the egotist entertaining. She would have been delighted to peep in at a window where every-thing was labelled "Big I." She would have enjoyed Mrs. Burton-Jones' windows immensely—but now, windows bored her. In the only window that mattered the blinds were down. Desire's life had narrowed as it broadened. It wasn't life that she wanted any more—it was the one thing which could have made life dear.
A great impatience of trivialities came upon her. She hardly heard the injured tones of the little man who had embarked upon a heated repudiation of a feminine mayoralty. It did not amuse her even when he proved logically that women could never be anything because they were always something else. Instead she looked to Dr. John for rescue, and Dr. John, most observant of knights, immediately rescued her.
"Did you see that?" asked Mrs. Keene (the same who discovered the Bolshevik principal). She touched Miss Davis significantly on the arm.
Mary, who had seen perfectly well, looked blank.
"Of course you are not one of us," went on Mrs. Keene. "So you can scarcely be expected.... Still, living in the same house ... and knowing the dear professor so well."
"Did you wish to speak to him? He has gone home, I think," said Mary, innocently. "I fancy he doesn't suffer garden parties gladly."
"No—such a pity! With a wife so young and, if I may say so, so different. One feels that she has not been brought up amongst us. So sad. I always say 'Let our young men marry at home.' So sensible. One knows where one is then, don't you think?"
Mary agreed that, in such a position, one might know where one was.
"And book writing," said Mrs. Keene, "so fatiguing! So liable to occupy one's attention—to the exclusion of other matters.... The dear professor.... So bound up in the marvels of the human brain!"
"Not brain, mind," corrected Mary gently. "The professor is a psychologist."
"Well, of course if you wish to separate them, in a scriptural sense. But what I mean is that such biological studies are dangerous. So absorbing. When one examines things through a microscope—"
"One doesn't—in psychology."
"Well, perhaps not so much as formerly, especially since vivisection is so looked down upon. But it is terribly absorbing, as I say. And one can hardly expect an absorbed man to see things. And yet—"
"What is it," asked Mary bluntly, "that you think Professor Spence ought to see?"
This was entirely too blunt for Mrs. Keene. She, in her turn, looked blank. What did Miss Davis mean? She was not aware that she had suggested the professor's seeing anything. Probably there was nothing at all to see. Young people have such latitude nowadays. She herself was not a gossip. She despised gossip. "What I always say," declared she, virtuously, "is 'do not hint thing's.' Say them right out and then we shall know where we are. Don't you think so?"
Mary agreed that, under these conditions also, one might be fairly sure of one's position in space. "Unless," she concluded maliciously, "there is anything in the Einstein theory."
This latter shot had the effect intended, for Mrs. Keene said hurriedly, "Oh, of course in that case—" and moved away.
"I'm going home, Mary," said Aunt Caroline, coming up. Aunt Caroline had had enough garden party. She had noticed both the rescue of Desire by John, and the conversation of Mary with Mrs. Keene—the "worst old gossip in Bainbridge."
Desire was quite ready to go. So was Mary. The centre of attraction for them both had shifted itself. John too, felt that he ought to turn up at the office. But all three ladies politely declined a lift home in his car.
"It is so hot," he pleaded.
"It is not hot," said Aunt Caroline.
Mary smiled mockingly and murmured something about the great distances of small towns. Desire said, "No, thank you, John," in her detached way—a way which drove him mad even while he adored it.
So the Burton-Jones garden party faded into history. But history-in-the-making caught up its effects and carried them on....
It was a lovely night. But indoors it was hot with the accumulated heat of the day. Instead of going to bed, Mary slipped out into the garden. It was fresher there, and she was restless. The front of the house lay in darkness, but, from the library window at the side, stretched a ribbon of light. Benis must be still at work. With slippers which made no sound upon the grass, Mary crossed over to the window and looked in.
What she saw there stung her already fretted soul to unreasoning anger, and for once the circumspect Miss Davis acted upon impulse undeterred by thought. Entering the house softly, she ran upstairs to the west room which she entered without knocking.
Desire, seated at the dressing table, turned in surprise. She was ready for bed, but lingered over the brushing of her hair. With another spasm of anger, Mary noticed the hair she brushed—hair long and lustrous and lifted in soft waves. A pink kimona lay across the back of her chair, a pretty thing—but not at all French.
"Put it on," said Mary, "and come here. I want to show you something."
Desire did not ask "What?" Nor did she keep Mary waiting. Pleasant or unpleasant, it was not Desire's way to delay revelation. Together the two girls hurried out into the dew-sweet garden. As they went, Mary spoke in gusty sentences.
"I don't care what you do." (She was almost sobbing in her anger.) "I don't understand you.... I don't want to.... But you're not going to get away with it ... that cool air of yours ... pretending not to see.... If you are human at all you'll see ... and remember all your life."
They were close to the library window now. Desire looked in.
She looked so long and stood so still that Mary had time to get back a little of her breath and something of her common sense. An instinct which her selfish life had pretty well buried began to stir.
"Come away," she whispered, "I shouldn't have ... it wasn't fair ... he would never forgive us if he knew we had seen him like this!"
Desire drew back instantly.
"No," she said. Her voice was toneless. Her face in the darkness gleamed wedge-shaped and unfamiliar between the falling waves of her hair.
"I'm sorry," said Mary sulkily. "But I thought you ought to know what you are doing. It takes a lot to break up a man like that."
"Yes," said Desire. "All the same I had no right—"
"You will have," said Desire evenly.
They were at her door now. She paused with her hand on the knob.
"I knew he cared," she said in the same level voice, "but I didn't know that he cared like that."
"You know now," said Mary. Her irritation was returning.
"Yes," said Desire. "Good-night."
She opened the door and went in.