CHAPTER VIIIDRIFTING
America was not going to preserve her neutrality and keep from the European shambles much longer. As the days passed and 1917 drew closer, there was less and less doubt about it.
TheLusitaniatragedy had forecast what might possibly come; the President’s famous note of May 13 had met with general approval. Wilson had received a vote of confidence. He was free to deal with the situation created by the various peace proposals of the winter of 1916-1917. But the negotiations which followed in December and January were obscure at the time and the vital issue by no means clear. Then on the twenty-second of January came the announcement of unrestricted submarine warfare. Declaration of war on April 6 was only a matter of dénouement.
When Madelaine came home for the spring vacation, she was hardly in a mood, with the swift and ominous trend of world events moving about her, to consider any advances of a marital tenor from Gordon or any other man. Then one night in late February it came to her how short the space can really be between a blind exasperation and intolerance of anything threatening a fierce desire for complete independence, and a frantic heart-cry after reliance on a man’s strength, the most tender and intimate dependence life had to offer her.
She would arise in the morning fully determined to postpone her studies until the German menace was blasted forever and follow scores of her sister students to France,—to work out her own salvation on bloody fields where men in the abstract needed her most. She went to bed to clutch the counterpane hysterically as the most lonesome and unwanted woman in God’s bloody world. Between these twomoods she swayed back and forth, wondering at times if she were losing her capacity for straight, cold-brained reasoning.
Gordon came up to the house that February night and found Madelaine in the upstairs library. Mrs. Theddon was down in the city directing some Red Cross affair. The servants were below in the rear, out of sight and—in so far as Madelaine went—out of mind. A coal fire glowed beautifully in the open grate. In silken gown which only accentuated the strength and comeliness of her figure, the young woman sank down before the coals with Gordon across from her. Neither spoke for a long time. Madelaine knew it was no ordinary call which had brought Gordon up to-night. The man’s manner was perturbing.
“Madge,” he said at last, “I’ve been doing a lot of thinking lately.”
“About what, Gordon?”
“About the war—and myself.”
“I wonder if we’re really going to have war, Gordon?”
“We are! There’s not a doubt about it. They’re expecting it at the Works and preparing accordingly.”
“Mother told me last night you’d been promoted again. I’m glad you’re doing so finely. I’m really proud of you!”
“That’s just the trouble, Madge. Sooner or later I’ve got to reach a decision.”
“What sort of decision?”
“Whether I’m going to be a ‘desk cootie’ through this Big Show, or whether I’m going to do my stunt like a he-man.”
“Explain a little more fully, Gordon. Do you mean——”
“If we get into the Big Show, there’s going to be a draft. Everybody’s talking about it down at the office. There’s no other way, with so much factional feeling among these hyphenated Americans. If they have a draft, it’s only reasonable to suppose that certain of us who know our jobs extra well at home may be ordered to enlist and yet to remain on those jobs as being more valuable at home than stabbing Germans. It looks as if that sort of thing might come to me—old Dalliworth is making plans along that line already. And Madge—I—I——”
“Don’t be afraid to talk it out, Gordon. You may tell me without fear of being misunderstood.”
“You bet I can!” cried the fellow thickly. “God blessyou, Madge! What I started to say was, I can’t make up my mind which I ought to do—stay home and direct the making of shells or go to France and have a part in firing them off!”
“Which do you want to do, Gord?”
“I think I want to go to France, Madge. I know my job and all that. But—well, there ought to be lots of older chaps unfitted for active service who could do the home job as well as myself.”
“Then, Gordon,” said the woman, without an instant’s hesitation, “I’d go to France!”
Silence fell between them. It was broken by the man’s long sigh. He looked around the room.
“This used to be your mother’s chamber, wasn’t it, Madge—before she had the house done over? It was in this room I met you first.”
“You—as you are now, Gordon—were never that hot-headed little boor. Not only do I refuse to admit it, but I can’t conceive it. You’ve changed so, Gordon. You’re not the same fellow at all.”
He laughed a depreciating laugh.
“Well,” he said philosophically, “if that’s true, you know what I told you down in Boston a while ago. You and you alone have been responsible. ‘You made me what I am to-day—I hope you’re satisfied.’” And once more he laughed. But it was plain the laugh did not come from his heart.
“How long have we known each other, Gord? Let’s see, I’m tweny-seven this spring and I was eleven when mother brought me here and gave me this home; that’s sixteen years ago! It doesn’t seem possible—sixteen years! How time slips away!”
Gordon leaned forward toward her, elbows on his knees.
“Madelaine,” he asked suddenly, sincerely, “are you happy—really happy?”
“Why do you ask me such a question, Gord? Of course I’m happy! After all I’ve had done for me, why shouldn’t I be happy?”
“There seem to be times—forgive me, Madge, if I’m rude—but there seem to be times when I fancy you’re not. I don’t know exactly what it is—an expression on your face, perhaps, a glance of your eye—I could almost believeyou were secretly grieving over something, dear. Isn’t it so?”
The girl felt the springs of emotion beginning to well deep in her spirit. She averted her face. She looked down at her hands, laced together suddenly and tightly in her lap.
“You know, Gordon, I’ve always had a slight mist of tragedy hovering over me, never knowing who my parents were, how I came to be found as I was. A woman could never quite forget that, especially when strangers have been kind to her and tried to treat her like their own.”
“I like that pretty little fantasy associated with you as a girl, Madge. I mean about the fairies leaving you for earthly persons to discover. It makes you very sweet and rare, Madelaine. To me you will ever be that—a fine and tender woman, brought to earth in babyhood by the fairies!”
“Gordon! Please—don’t!”
“How can I help it, Madelaine? Every man must have some sweet, rare, fine, tender woman in his life, mustn’t he—to work for—to please—to bring out the best that’s in him? And having been that to me, how can I help telling you so, dear girl?”
“I’ve just been—myself!” the girl responded huskily.
“Yourself! Yes! Thank God for that! Yourself! Madge, does a woman ever realize what she can mean to a man sometimes—who loves her because she has given him a goal and a promise—of still finer things to be—and faith—the essence of things hoped for, but not seen?”
“I’ll tell you the truth, Gordon. Yes, there are moments when I’m miserable—terribly miserable—and not because of my clouded parentage, either. Sometimes I don’t think I quite know what it is. And yet—and yet—at others——”
“Madge, you’ve never been really in love, have you—away down deep inside—so deep that you could give that loved one up, if need be, to insure that loved one’s happiness?”
“No, Gordon, I don’t believe I have.”
“That’s strange, Madge. It’s extraordinary for a woman to reach twenty-seven and never have known a love affair—a real one. And yet in your case, I don’t know that it’s so extraordinary, after all. You’re so different in many ways——”
He stopped abruptly at the mask of pain which slipped over the girl’s cameo features. “So different!” Always she had heard that “so different.” And never once had she ever wanted to be different, not realizing how beautifully Gordon meant it, what a compliment he was trying to pay her, entirely aside from any question of policy or to abet his own suit.
“Please don’t say I’m different, Gordon,” she pleaded. “It hurts—terribly!”
“But you are different, you know. Not queer or eccentric, I don’t mean. You’re so much more elegant and delicate—oh, tosh! I don’t mean to sound silly, or indulge in the callow ravings of a school kid. But—oh, Madge, the man who gets you will get a gift direct from the fairies, indeed!” He waited a moment and then added softly, “And, God!—howI’d appreciate being that man!”
Tumultuous emotions swept and swayed the girl. She studied the toe of her satin house slipper. That feeling of helplessness came over her again—the sensation of drifting, drifting—on and on—into Gordon Ruggles’s arms at last—his wife! Well, and what of it? He was proving himself a man and he loved her. There was not a doubt about that. He loved her.
“Gordon,” she said unevenly, “you’re going to keep at me and keep at me until you make me your wife, aren’t you?” There was no rebuke in her voice.
“In what other way, dear, does a man win the heart of the woman he loves?”
Madelaine sprang from the divan and walked down the room. She threw up her soft, bare, beautiful arms. From her throat came a cry.
“Yes, I’m different—different!—different because romance has never come to me as it has come to other girls—sweet, wild romance that would make me love a man so deeply and fiercely I’d follow him over the world and live with him in a hovel, to be close beside him!—love him so that he would beat me, if you please, and I could suffer it—because I loved him! Oh, Gordon! Gordon! You may win, after all, for you’ve overcome the most of any man I’ve ever known. But you’ll never know the heart of a woman! You’ll never know! You’ll never know!”
He kissed her hand when he left her at the door that night.Despite his great love, despite the inspiration she was in his life—was he hurting her by denying her that Great Romance she might possibly find after he had married her?
For that would be a terrific hurt. Madelaine would be true as steel to any man whom she had once promised to love, honor and cherish, come what might, afterward. She was that kind of woman.